Short answers, pulled from the story.
The oldest directly dated example of a skull cup dates to 14,700 calendar years before present. This artifact from Gough's Cave in Somerset, England represents the earliest known instance found by archaeologists.
Khan Krum of the First Bulgarian Empire fashioned a jeweled cup from the skull of Byzantine emperor Nicephorus I after killing him in 811 AD. Theophanes the Confessor and Joannes Zonaras document this event following the Battle of Pliska.
In India and Tibet, the skull cup is known as a kapala within Buddhist tantric and Hindu tantric rituals. Hindu deities such as Kali are sometimes depicted holding a kapala full of human blood.
Lord Byron used a skull found by his gardener at Newstead Abbey as a drinking vessel in 19th-century Britain. He wrote a darkly witty poem inscribed upon it titled Lines Inscribed upon a Cup Formed from a Skull and passed claret around among members of the Order of the Skull.
Laoshang son of Xiongnu chieftain Modu Chanyu killed the king of the Yuezhi around 162 BC and made a drinking cup out of his enemy's skull. Han shu records that this specific cup was later used when Xiongnu chiefs concluded a treaty with two Han ambassadors under Emperor Yuan of Han.