Strange things can happen during wartime. In his book Blundering to Glory: Napoleon's Military Campaigns, author Owen Connelly tells the story of how Napoleon Bonaparte, out on a rabbit hunt, was charged by the furry critters. The rabbits had been brought in to ensure Bonaparte and his companions would have a high kill rate, but they mistook Bonaparte for their keeper and swarmed him, looking for food. Although the populace in 1807 howled with laughter over the incident, Bonaparte was not amused.
In fact, Connelly posits that "The Little Corporal" didn't have much of a sense of humor about anything -- and particularly not about himself. He had few friends and only associated with people who could advance his career. Napoleon allegedly didn't understand theatrical comedies and demanded to see tragedies instead.
Interesting facts about Napoleon Bonaparte::
- As a young man, Louis Braille studied "night writing," a system developed by Captain Charles Barbier of the French Army. Napoleon had requested a code that soldiers could read without needing light. Braille altered the system and developed the Braille alphabet, allowing millions of visually impaired people to learn to read.
- In an effort to efficiently feed his army, Napoleon offered a cash prize to anyone who could come up with a good food preservation method. Nicolas François Appert invented a way to hermetically seal and cook food inside glass bottles. Philippe de Girard patented the method of using tin cans for food preservation.
- Napoleon greatly admired U.S. President George Washington and ordered 10 days of mourning in France when word reached him that Washington had died.
