The History Gossip: A Slice of Ye Olde Scandal for Every Day of the Year

Henry VIII marries a teenager, an 11-year-old sends unsolicited beauty tips to Abraham Lincoln, and a surgeon performs Britain’s first nose job in this witty debut. Kennedy adapts her popular TikTok account of the same name into a calendar commemorating sensational historical events on every day of the year, including scandalous births and deaths, posthumous beheadings, and drunken disasters like the man who in 1845 threw “a sculpted stone exhibit at a glass cabinet” containing a Roman vase at the British Museum (“He spends the next two months in prison with a severe hangover”). Kennedy’s overview not only reaches back to ancient times with incidents like Cleopatra’s suicide but delves into more recent episodes, including Liz Truss’s 2022 stint as “the shortest-serving prime minister of the UK.” Kennedy combines bizarre facts—the ancient Greeks used “shards of pottery” as toilet paper—with droll and occasionally fabulist asides, such as Henry VIII calling “Pope Clement VII slurs on Playstation” after being forbidden to remarry. Some of the most laugh out loud sections depart from the book’s overarching structure with playful lists like “beauty tips for the modern flapper” that include such lethal advice as “spic[e] up that mud mask with some radium-based Kemolite mud.” It makes for a joyful journey through some of history’s most cringeworthy moments. (May)