Dragons Part 9

Observe: Ulisse Aldrovandi.

To most people, this guy just looks pretty much like Copernicus or Galileo or someone who lived like forever ago and made some sort of discovery we take for granted today. To me, this guy not only lived forever ago, but he was also a giant douche pot. That's right, I said that; and no, I don't regret it; and no, I haven't been drinking.

Ulisse Aldrovandi (note his weird name), an Italian (note his weird country of origin), wrote the first book specifically on dragons in the "modern era." Whoever considers the year 1640 the "modern era" is an idiot, but regardless, he did publish a gay and useless book once upon a time entitled Historia serpentum et draconum ("Natural History of Serpents and Dragons").

Aldrovandi (note again his weird name) claimed to have been the first to "scientifically" diagram, accurately proportionate and definitively illustrate dragons text-book style. Here's what he came up with:
Really. Really? That's what you come up with? That is NOT a dragon, its just a FAT snake with stubby arms and a stupid head! That's really all it is. At the time of its publication, people hailed this as a brilliant discovery, and they said "Oh Ulisse! What a mean-looking dragon! You're a genius!" He's not a genius, and he couldn't even speak English. He was, possibly, the first real enemy of the beautiful, mystical world of dragon lore. Personally, I hate the guy.

Want more proof that this guy was a total blubber muffin? That should just about be evidence enough that this guy wasn't so much trying to realistically document dragons as he was designing early concepts for Star Wars: Episode VI.

I want to use this opportunity to make a point, that just because some guy from Italy wrote some book in some language like forever ago, doesn't mean that it's worth reading, or worth anything for that matter. I wish I could bring Aldrovandi back from the dead just so he could apologize to me for this crap and for all the stress I've had to deal with as a result of his dumb publication.

Is Aldrovandi really Italy's "Father of Zoology" as many scholars claim? Probably not; in reality, he was just another quack who lost his mind and died of dropsy.