Just some interesting things I’ve been learning about Napoleon. I’m still busy going through his voluminous, and very interesting, personal memoirs.

A general fact about Napoleon is that he was left handed.

But in his memoirs, I uncovered something I never knew. That was when Napoleon was on his final exile on St Helena, where he later died (the British had poisoned him over a long period of time) with arsenic, that he learned how to read English.

One of his people, a fascinating fellow named Les Cases, was well versed in English and had even gone into exile in Britain for 10 years. Les Cases taught Napoleon English and Napoleon learned to read English newspapers and books so that he did not have to rely on anyone else to interpret for him.

What is quite astounding is how quickly Les Cases taught Napoleon and how well it worked.