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Horrific Facts from History that Will Invade Nightmares

Khalid Elhassan October 31, 2021 35 min

Hulagu and a cowering Caliph after the fall of Baghdad. Deadliest Blogger

Emperor Jing of Han, who appointed his cousin Liu Pengli as ruler of Jidong. Geni

27. The Ancient Chinese Ruler Who Became History’s First Serial Killer

Liu Pengli, a second century BC prince of Ancient China, was a member of the Han Dynasty‘s imperial family. He was also the first serial killer in recorded history. In 144 BC, Emperor Jing, Liu Pengli’s cousin, appointed him to rule the city of Jidong and its countryside. That turned out to be unfortunate for the good people of Jidong, who were governed by Pengli for the next 23 years. Among other things, Pengli liked to murder his subjects for the sheer fun of it.

The psychotic prince probably would have liked Ramsey Bolton from HBO’s Game of Thrones, because like that fictional character, Liu Pengli liked to hunt human beings for sport. A minimum of 100 people were killed by him for his amusement, and odds are that the true number of his victims was much higher. As seen below, his reign of psychotic terror lasted for over two decades, in which his subjects were too scared to come out of their homes at night.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

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.