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The Bat Bomb Invention and Other Odd Facts from History and War

Khalid Elhassan May 10, 2020 33 min

8. Things Start to Go Wrong, And the Histrionics Begin to Flow

Chateau de Chantilly, site of Francois Vatel’s final banquet. Domaine de Chantilly

During a preliminary dinner a few days before the royal banquet, there were more guests than expected. As a result, two out of twenty-six tables had to go without roast. A mortified Francois Vatel wept that he had lost honor and could not bear the shame.

Reassurances from the Grand Conde that the dinner had gone great, and that King Louis XIV was pleased, did little to assuage Vatel. He kept obsessing about the tables that had gone without roast. Later that night, a grand display of fireworks flopped because fog and low clouds descended, which lowered Vatel’s spirits even further.

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.