AWKWARD ZOMBIE

Honestly, we pretty much either know about Tesla already and if you don't The Oatmeal explained plenty.

I'd like to see you do a bit about Michiel de Ruyter.

Tesla is interesting (I researched him yesterday), but yeah, I want to try and do people who aren't perhaps the most well known. Do you like the style of the last one anyway? I don't want to just do all 20th century women, ahaha.

and Terraem I'm looking at that person now, hm perhaps but I'm going to have a fish around for some more people. I'm going camping this weekend, so I'll try and do one for Friday so this thread doesn't sink.

What about Nolan Bushnell?

Do William Chester Minor.

edit: I could do it if tales is too busy.

Hm, well actually I suppose the point of this thread is to educate people about those that they don't know about, so I don't want to take too many suggestions. Now though we're going back in time to 16th century Hungary, to learn about a particularly mad woman called... Elizabeth Báthory.

Countess Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed (7 August 1560 – 21 August 1614) also known as The Blood Countess is the most prolific female serial killer in history. She has been compared to Vlad the Impaler, and is whom Count Dracula is based off. She had no real motive for committing so many murders, and later writings have said that she bathed in the blood of virgins in order to retain her youth.



After her husband Ferenc Nádasdy's death, she and four collaborators were accused of torturing and killing hundreds of girls, with one witness attributing to them over 650 victims, though the number for which they were convicted was 80. Elizabeth herself was neither tried nor convicted. In 1610, she was imprisoned in Csejte Castle, now in Slovakia , where she remained bricked in a set of rooms until her death four years later.

Rumours began to spread in 1602 to 1604 when people started to notice the disappearance of local peasant's daughters, many who were lured to her castle with the offer of being well-paid handmaids. Later, she is said to have begun to kill daughters of the lesser gentry, who were sent to her gynaeceum by their parents to learn courtly etiquette. Abductions were said to have occurred as well. The atrocities described most consistently included severe beatings, burning or mutilation of hands, biting the flesh off the faces, arms and other body parts, freezing or starving to death and sexual abuse.

Witnesses reported seeing traces of torture on dead bodies, some of which were buried in the grave yard. Many more witnesses came forward to give their testimony, and some people began to thing that it was a conspiracy to overthrow her. When her castle was raided one dead body and one dying girl was supposedly found in the cellar. Báthory remained under house arrest and was immured within the tower with only but one slit to give her provisions. She remained there for four years, until her death. On 21 August 1614, Elizabeth Báthory was found dead in her castle. Since there were several plates of food untouched, her actual date of death is unknown.

A+ thread

Women serial killers
oh my

I know of another woman serial killer too, this time from the agricultural revolution. I can do her sometime, if you want me to.

yes this thread will feature men at some point, haha

Yes, do her...

more woman serial killers I lied.


Mary Ann Cotton (October 1832 – 24 March 1873) is Britain's first serial killer, committing her first murder in sometime in 1852. It is thought that she killed 21 people, ranging from a dozen children, her husbands, and even her own mother! Her method of killing was arsenic poisoning, a popular method during those times. It dissolved easily in liquids, caught be bought cheaply in large quantities, and was often used in cleaning sheets. She often worked as a maid, the perfect alibi. Arsenic poisoning often causes symptoms similar to gastroenteritis, and it was much more common in those days to suffer from that illness than to being poisoned.

During her lifetime she had 4 husbands and 2 lovers - she would marry them, take out life insurance and then murder the man shortly. This way she would earn up to £35, about half a year's wages. This was not enough for her however - she soon started to murder her husbands children also. According to death and burial certificates, all her victims had died of gastric ailments.

Mary Ann's downfall came when she was asked by a parish official, Thomas Riley, to help nurse a woman who was ill with smallpox. She complained that the last surviving Cotton boy, Charles Edward, was in the way and asked Riley if he could be committed to the workhouse. Riley, who also served as West Auckland's assistant coroner, said she would have to accompany him. She told Riley that the boy was sickly and added: “I won’t be troubled long. He’ll go like all the rest of the Cottons.” Mary Ann’s first port of call after Charles' death was not the doctor’s but the insurance office. There, she discovered that no cheddar would be paid out until a death certificate was issued. The doctor soon performed a post mortem and found traces of arsenic in his body.

Throughout her life she claimed that she was innocent, a victim of a miscarriage of judgement or an average person "facing the hardships of being a woman". The defence at Mary Ann's trial claimed that Charles died from inhaling arsenic used as a dye in the green wallpaper of the Cotton home. The jury retired for 90 minutes before finding Mary Ann guilty. She was hanged in Durham Gaol.

Here is a nursery rhyme about her:

Mary Ann Cotton,
Dead and forgotten
She lies in her bed,
With her eyes wide open
Sing, sing, oh, what can I sing,
Mary Ann Cotton is tied up with string
Where, where? Up in the air
Sellin' black puddens a penny a pair.



Ok, I'm done with murderers for the time being. I think I might go back to posting about old Hollywood or something.

I read another version, which is the same, but the second verse is She's dead and she's rotton instead.

Also, for those who didn't know, the 'Black puddings' bit refers to the way hanged people's limbs would swell and go black, like said foodstuff~

[Horrible Histories is awesome]

Hrm, wasn't the countess the one who nailed a girl's intestines to the wall?

I think it was her.

Rehost yr images Tales, wikimedia doesn't like hotlinking.