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American History

Historic Love and Marriages From Hell

Jerry Lee Lewis - Myra Gale Brown
Jerry Lee Lewis and his child bride, back home after a disastrous overseas trip. The Commercial Appeal

34. Princess Bride Kicks Off Wedding by Vomiting on Wedding Dress, Then Hurling on Mother in Law

Princess Augusta’s wedding portrait. Wikimedia

Britain’s royal family was in a rush to conduct the wedding, in order to squelch rumors that the Prince of Wales was about to marry a British noblewoman. There was no wooing or any attempt to try and get Augusta of Saxe-Gotha Altenburg to fall in love with the Prince of Wales. Almost immediately upon her arrival in England, Augusta was shoved into a wedding dress, and on May 8th, 1736, she was led up the aisle of the Royal Chapel in Saint James Palace to marry the 29-year-old Frederick.

Finding herself in an entirely new environment, and taking part in a ceremony conducted in a language she did not understand, Augusta grew increasingly nervous. As the groom’s mother, Queen Caroline, translated from English into German and whispered it into Augusta’s ear, the bride suddenly vomited all over her wedding gown. As her mother-in-law lent a hand to wipe the mess off Augusta’s dress, the nervous bride had a second bout of the heaves, and hurled all over the queen.

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A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.

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