The cardinal who won a cursing contest, allegedly

In 1817, Lord Byron is said to have challenged an Italian cardinal to a multilingual cursing contest. He lost.

In 1817, Lord Byron is said to have challenged an Italian cardinal to a multilingual cursing contest.

The English poet reputedly opened the contest by uttering as many different imprecations as he could in the languages he had studied.

Byron recalled later that he swore “in all the tongues in which I knew a single oath or adjuration to the gods, against p…