Q&A

Follically challenged
Is there any truth to the story that in 1674 a nine-year-old boy was imprisoned for making a joke about Louis XIV’s bald head?
Illustration by Glen McBeth
The most common version of this story goes that nine-year-old schoolboy Francis Seldon made a pun about Louis XIV’s baldness during a royal visit to a school in Clermont. Louis had the boy thrown into the Bastille, where he remained in solitary confinement for 69 years. But the story has been exaggerated, possibly through public knowledge of Louis’ sensitivity regarding his bald head...
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