The Man Who Ate Everything

William Buckland was, by any reasonable measure, a brilliant scientist. He was the first person to formally describe a dinosaur. He pioneered modern geology. He won the Copley Medal, the highest honor the Royal Society could bestow.

He also wanted to eat every animal on Earth.

Buckland kept a pet hyena named Billy, taught classes by waving skulls at students, and served dinner guests mice on toast, crocodile steak, and roast panther. He declared the common mole the most revolting thing he had ever tasted, until he tried the bluebottle fly. Once, in an Italian cathedral, he licked a dark stain believed to be a martyr's blood and announced it was bat urine.

His most famous moment came at a dinner party in 1848. Lord Harcourt passed around a silver locket containing what guests were told was the mummified heart of King Louis XIV. The room treated it with reverence.

Buckland studied it for a moment, said he had eaten many strange things but never the heart of a king, and swallowed it.