Fierce History

5,000 years of startling stories from Ireland and around the globe

Bestselling author, Colin Murphy, explores the historical figures and events that have existed for centuries in the fringes and brings them out into the open for the reader. Full of historical stories which will intrigue you, captivate you, revolt you and even make you laugh! Colin Murphy welcomes you into the fringes of history where shocking stories and compelling facts await you...

Fierce History is a collection of bizarre, grotesque and unexpected episodes from history from all over the world, and from ancient to more modern including:

Siblings of famous people

• Al Capone’s brother who hunted down illegal distillers
• Irishman Frank Shackleton, brother of legendary Antarctic explorer Ernest, who was pretty much rubbish at everything, and may have stolen the Irish Crown Jewels
• Napoleon’s sex-maniac sister

Weird historical incidents

• Flaming camels of war,
• Living turkey parachutes;
• Crazy assassination attempts

Bizarre medical practices:

• Dr Evan O'Neill Kane, who in 1921 performed an appendectomy on himself.
• ‘Radioactive water’ to cure arthritis, gout, neuralgias, poor circulation and a variety of other illnesses – eh, no, it just kills you.

Remarkable children:

• William Rowan Hamilton by the age of twelve could speak fourteen languages, and went on to discover the quaternion, essential to the development of modern theories of electromagnetism and quantum mechanics, scratching his new mathematical formula on to the side of Broom Bridge in north Dublin