World's End," we are treated to yet another chapter of Hollywood-style piracy. Escaping into the drama, the swashbuckling, the romance (and the hotness of Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley), we can easily murderers, kidnappers and thieves. Perhaps now is the best time to a look at real-life piracy.

transported valuables on water, easily more than 3,000 years. According to Greek myth, an ancient band of pirates once tried to kidnap Dionysus, the god of wine. Dionysus would have none of it.

He turned into a lion and transformed the pirates into dolphins. These days, sentence: the sulfide headache.
did not change their outfits until they wore out.

(Makes because of the bucs' B.O.)
Blackbeard, real name Edward Teach, was an active pirate have braided his beard with cannon fuse, which he lit during battles.

That scared the grog out of his enemies. Many surrendered without a fight. Blackbeard also had at The food aboard pirate ships was, by all accounts, awful.

When the salted meat ran out (or turned rancid), the staple of the diet became hardtack, a bone-dry, rock-hard biscuit made from flour, water and salt. If in. According to lore, pirates often ate hardtack in the dark to avoid seeing the weevils crawling inside.

Captain Kidd was executed in London on May 23, 1701. As part of his sentence, his corpse was hanged in an iron cage, called a gibbet, and put on public display. It Despite pirate lore, the death sentence of "walking the plank" was rarely, if ever, handed down.

Instead, pirates usually shot, hanged, marooned or simply tossed their enemies overboard. There was also the gruesome punishment of keelhauling. The unlucky soul was stripped naked, tied with rope at his hands and feet then tossed over one side of the ship.

He was then pulled up on the other side of the boat, after scraping lucky ones. Most pirates didn't live to see their 30s, and not because of the violence that came with the Mary Read, who along with Anne Bonny became the most famous female pirates ever, dressed in men's clothing to keep her gender a secret. According to legend, during a sword duel with a foe, Read exposed one of her breasts.

Shocked, her enemy hesitated ...

long enough for Read to slice his throat. (Almost 300 years later, Janet Jackson repeated the stunt.) When eventually caught, Read and Bonny were sentenced to pregnant) and neither hanged.

Between battles and on-shore fun, life on the seas was well-lubricated. Often more beer was stored on boats than drinking water.