User:Flowersofnight/Death by potatoes

Death by Potatoes

Despite the fact that it is completely illogical, there have been numerous accounts in history of 'Death by Potatoes'. The Scottish king John XI was killed by his cousin James in 1623, who attacked him by inciting peasants to throw things at him, but the peasants didn't have anything to throw at him except for potatoes. As a result he was buried in a one-ton heap of potatoes and was crushed to death under their weight. His cousin took the throne as James VII after a brief period of intrigue, when the rest of John's family was killed by potato attacks as well.

Also, during the Russian Revolution the Tsar's forces were routinely attacked by angry peasants who were so poor that they only had potatoes to fight the police and the army. These peasants were so great in number that they managed to kill at least five soldiers with potatoes alone. Then Lenin began actually arming these people, at which point were fighting the White Russians who opposed Communism.

Due to all these incidents of 'Death by potatoes', a word was coined to mean just that: just as defenestration means 'death by falling out of a window', detuberstration means 'death by potatoes'. It officially entered the English language in 1974.

Although there are many incidences with potatoes, there are others with onions, beets, and even radishes. This resulted in the 1993 coining of the word 'devegestration' to mean 'Death by vegetables'. It was even reported that way by a minor publication when insurgents in Iraq fired beets from a bazooka at US soldiers when they ran out of real ammo on July 16th, 2003.

The most recent incident was when a terrorist killed a tourist in Ireland with radish shrapnel in January, 2004.