Issue No. 218: (Tranny) Napoleon Bonaparte Turns 243 Today!

Napoleon on his Imperial throne wearing his laurel leaf crown.
Painting by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres in 1806.

b. Ajaccio, Corsica, 1769. Believe what you will, but stories to the effect that the emperor of France was not the man he was cracked up to be have circulated for more than a century and a half. The basis for these stories seems to have been the post-mortem report of one Dr. Henry, revealing the "progressive feminization" that Napoleon's body had undergone through the years: "The whole surface of the body was deeply covered with fat. Over the sternum, where generally the bone is very superficial, the fat was upwards of an inch deep and an inch and a half or two inches on the abdomen. There was scarcely any hair on the body, and that of the head was thin, fine and silky. The whole genital system (very small) seemed to exhibit a physical cause for the absence of sexual desire, and the chastity which had been stated to have characterized the deceased [Napoleon had been kept prisoner on St. Helena for seven years]. The skin was noticed to be very white and delicate, as were the hands and arms. Indeed the whole body was slender and effeminate. The pubis much resembled the mons vernis in women. The muscles of the chest were small, the shoulders narrow, and the hips wide." So much for 19th-century science.

From The Gay Book of Days by Martin Grief. 1982.