Jesters

Richard Russell also known as "Sky King," was the man behind the 2018 Horizon Air Q400 incident. Russell was a 29-year-old ground service agent for Horizon Air, a regional subsidiary of Alaska Airlines, at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. On August 10, 2018, he stole an empty Q400 turboprop aircraft and took off without formal flight training. During the flight, he performed dangerous aerial maneuvers, including loops and barrel rolls, while communicating with air traffic controllers. Tragically, after flying for around an hour, Russell crashed the plane into Ketron Island in Puget Sound, killing himself.

Tarrare was a French showman, soldier and spy noted for his unusual appetite and eating habits. Able to eat vast amounts of meat, he was constantly hungry; his parents could not provide for him and he was turned out of the family home as a teenager. He travelled around France in the company of a band of prostitutes and thieves before becoming the warm-up act for a travelling charlatan. In this act, he swallowed corks, stones, live animals, and a whole basketful of apples. He then took this act to Paris where he worked as a street performer.

Floccinaucinihilipilification is a rarely used English word that refers to the act or habit of describing or regarding something as unimportant, valueless, or trivial. It is one of the longest words in the English language, consisting of 29 letters, and is often cited as an example of linguistic complexity. The word originated in the 18th century as a humorous combination of several Latin terms: flocci, nauci, nihili, and pili, all of which mean "nothing" or "worthless." It was coined by students at Eton College as a way to demonstrate their command of classical languages and to express disdain for things considered insignificant. Despite its length and rarity, it has found occasional use in academic and literary contexts to convey an exaggerated sense of dismissiveness.

Roy Cohn (1927–1986) was an American lawyer and political figure who rose to prominence as chief counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy during the 1950s Red Scare. Known for his aggressive and often controversial legal tactics, Cohn played a central role in McCarthy's anti-communist hearings, which sought to expose alleged communist influence in government and other institutions. Following his work with McCarthy, Cohn became a powerful and polarizing figure in New York's legal and political circles. He represented high-profile clients, including business leaders and organized crime figures, and was known for his connections to influential individuals, including Donald Trump, whom he mentored during Trump's early career. Cohn's career was marked by accusations of unethical behavior, including the manipulation of evidence and witness intimidation. In 1986, he was disbarred by the New York Supreme Court on charges of professional misconduct. He died later that year from complications related to AIDS, a diagnosis he denied publicly.

The goliards were a group of generally young clergy in Europe who wrote satirical Latin poetry in the 12th and 13th centuries of the Middle Ages. They were chiefly clerics who served at or had studied at the universities of France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and England, who protested against the growing contradictions within the church through song, poetry and performance. Disaffected and not called to the religious life, they often presented such protests within a structured setting associated with carnival, such as the Feast of Fools, or church liturgy.

Allan Bridge was an American conceptual artist best known for his creation in 1980 of the confessional phone system known as the Apology Line. He went by the pseudonym Mr. Apology (a label which has since been adopted by an advice columnist) and used new technology of the time, an answering machine, to record confessions from anonymous callers.

Joe Orton was an English playwright, author, and diarist. His public career, from 1964 until his murder in 1967, was short but highly influential. During this brief period he shocked, outraged, and amused audiences with his scandalous black comedies. The adjective Ortonesque refers to work characterised by a similarly dark yet farcical cynicism. Orton met Kenneth Halliwell at RADA in 1951 and moved into a West Hampstead flat with him and two other students that June. Halliwell was seven years older than Orton; they quickly formed a strong relationship and became lovers. A lack of serious work led them to amuse themselves with pranks and hoaxes. Orton created the second self "Edna Welthorpe", an elderly theatre snob, whom he later revived to stir controversy over his plays. Orton chose the name as an allusion to Terence Rattigan's archetypal playgoer "Aunt Edna". From January 1959, Orton and Halliwell began surreptitiously to remove books from several local public libraries and modify the cover art or the blurbs before returning them. A volume of poems by Sir John Betjeman was returned to the library with a new dust jacket featuring a photograph of a nearly naked, heavily tattooed middle-aged man. On 9 August 1967, Halliwell bludgeoned to death the 34-year-old Orton at their home in Noel Road with nine hammer blows to the head. Halliwell then killed himself with an overdose of Nembutal. In 1970, The Sunday Times reported that four days before the murder, Orton had told a friend that he wanted to end his relationship with Halliwell, but did not know how to go about it.