jamestown was the first permanent english colony in north america. unfortunately, they ran out of supplies and made enemies of the local native americans by demanding food from them. by the winter of 1609 -1610, they had resorted to cannibalism. between that, starvation, and ill ness, more than  80% of the4 colonists died.

when french king louis xiv died after a 72-year reign, his body was dug up and his heart stolen by peasants. the reverend william buckland, who was fond of exotic cuisine, purchased it from the peasants, slow roasted it with some beans, and ate it.

he thought that it would make him immortal.

between colomus's arrival in the new world in 1492 and the pilgrims' arrival in 1620, countless groups of europeans tried to make a go of colonization. they all died of starvation because they spent most of their time digging for gold and raiding native american graves. before they died, many turned to cannibalism.

during the battle of leningrad, the soviet police formed a special unit to investigate cases of cannibalism.

james jameson, the whiskey fortune heir, once bought an 11-year-old girl and gave her to cannibals so that he could observe and record the cooking process.

victorian scientist william buckland, who published the first scientific study of a dinosaur, was obsessed with eating one of every animal on earth - including puppies and a humans.

in france in 1772, an unusual baby was born, called tarrare. tarrare had an interesting affliction: he was hungry all the time, no matter how much he ate. eventually his parents threw him out because they couldn't feed him. he was terribly thin, had a mouth that stretched from ear to ear and blackened teeth, a high body temperature, and smelled terrible. his cheeks were wrinkled sacks that puffed out like a frog when he ate. before eating, the flesh of his belly was so loose that he could wrap it around himself like a belt, and it distended like a balloon when he ate enough to fill it - which was rarely.

for awhile, he made his way by performing, eating rocks and bushels of apples without chewing and even live cats and eels, drinking their blood and dropping them down his throat whole, plus offal from gutters, rats, and anything else he could find. he became a soldier, and ate so many rations that the army sent him to a hospital to find out what was wrong with him. to test his hunger, the doctors prepared food for 15 people. he ate it in one sitting, plus medical poultices, and sucked blood from people awaiting leeches. such was his hunger that they had to stop him from eating the dead in the morgue. he was finally thrown out when a 14-month-old baby went missing.

plot for a movie about a vampire or ghoul? an 'x files' script that never got made? no - a true story about a real man.

during tarrare's autopsy, they discovered that his stomach filled almost his entire torso, and that his gullet was as wide as his huge mouth. given the era, they were unable to tell whether it was illness or some mutation involving metabolism that caused his terrible hunger, but there were reports of one or two other people from his village that suffered the same affliction. as far as we know, it has not reappeared since.

the first british settlers at jamestown were cannibals. during the winter of 1609-1610, 540 of the 600 colonists died due to starvation, lack of clean water, and disease. many were eaten by the survivors.

technically, cannibalism is legal, provided that it's consensual and the person being eaten does not die. so i guess that's, what, cannibal noshing?

human flesh tastes surprisingly similar to veal (or so we've heard). some have also compared it to pork, which is where the pacific island cannibal term 'long pig' comes from.

there is a company that wants to collect the dna of celebrities, grow them in test tubes, and turn them into salami. (damn! one of the 2 lunch meats that i don't like as much. tertiary fact: pimento loaf is my kryptonite.)