Dead Parrot sketch of "Death in Paradise". A joke dated AD 400, recently translated from Greek, shows similarities to the Parrot sketch. It was written by Hierocles and Philagrius and was included in a compilation of 265 jokes titled "Philogelos: The Laugh Addict". In the Greek version, a man complains to a slave-merchant that his new slave has died. The slave-merchant replies, "When he was with me, he never did any such thing!" In Mark Twain's humorous short story "A Nevada Funeral", two characters use a series of euphemisms for death including 'kicked the bucket' and 'departed to that mysterious country from whose
Georg Friedrich Parrot Georg Friedrich Parrot Georg Friedrich Parrot (15 July 1767 – 8 July 1852) was a German scientist, the first rector of the Imperial University of Dorpat (today Tartu, Estonia) in what was then the Governorate of Livonia of the Russian Empire. Georges-Frédéric Parrot was born in Mömpelgard (now Montbéliard) (then part of the Duchy of Württemberg, from 1806 in France). His father, a surgeon by profession and the local duke’s physician in ordinary, had a respectable position in the society becoming the mayor of his hometown. As the family was Protestants, they sent Georg Friedrich to study physics and mathematics