Crazy Facts About In the past.

Interesting and Crazy Facts About In the past.

• Historians have called beer the national drink of ancient Egypt. The pharoahs appointed a "royal chief beer inspector" to protect its quality.
• About 4000 years ago, it was the accepted practice in Babylonia that for a month after the wedding, the bride's father would supply his son-in-law with all the mead he could drink. Mead is a honey beer, and because their calender was lunar based, this period was called the "honey month" or what we know to day as the "Honey moon".
• In Ancient Peru, when a woman found an 'ugly' potato, it was the custom for her to push it into the face of the nearest man.
• In 1647 the English Parliament abolished Christmas.
• Ancient drinkers warded off the devil by clinking their cups.
• The Toltecs, Seventh-century native Mexicans, went into battle with wooden swords so as not to kill their enemies.
• Because they had no proper rubbish disposal system, the streets of ancient Mesopotamia became literally knee-deep in rubbish.
• Many sailors used to wear gold earrings so that they could afford a proper burial when they died.
• The Chinese used silk to make their paper.
• Many years ago in England, pub frequenters had a whistle baked into the rim or handle of their ceramic cups. When they needed a refill, they used the whistle to get some service. "Wet your whistle" is the phrase inspired by this practice.
• Human skulls had been used as drinking cups for hundreds of years. The muscles and flesh were scraped away, the bottom was hacked off and then they were suitable to hold any beverage.
• According to the Greek historian Herodotus, Egyptian men never became bald. The reason for this, Herodotus claimed, was that as children Egyptian males had their heads shaved, and their scalps were continually exposed to the health-giving rays of the sun.
• Limelight was how we lit the stage before electricity was invented. Basically, illumination was produced by heating blocks of lime until they glowed.
• The Chinese, in olden days, used marijuana only as a remedy for dysentery.
• The ancient Egyptians recommended mixing half an onion with beer foam as a way of warding off death.
• The pharaohs of ancient Egypt wore garments made with thin threads of beaten gold. Some fabrics had up to 500 gold threads per one inch of cloth.
• More than 5,000 years ago, the Chinese discovered how to make silk from silkworm cocoons. For about 3,000 years, the Chinese kept this discovery a secret. Because poor people could not afford real silk, they tried to make other cloth look silky.
• Women would beat on cotton with sticks to soften the fibers. Then they rubbed it against a big stone to make it shiny. The shiny cotton was called "chintz." Because chintz was a cheaper copy of silk, calling something "chintzy" means it is cheap and not of good quality.
• The Aztec Indians of Mexico believed turquoise would protect them from physical harm, and so warriors used these green and blue stones to decorate their battle shields.
• Doors in London in the eighteenth century had up to ten keyholes to confuse burglars.
• The British aristocracy suffered its greatest disaster on October 14th 1066 when 50% of its membership was killed at the Battle of Hastings.
• For a very brief time in 1964, it seemed that the biggest challenger to the Beatles' phenomenon was the Dave Clark Five.
• Ancient Egyptians shaved off their eyebrows to mourn the death of their cats.
• Florida was a loyal British colony during the American Revolution.
• Black death came to Europe when Mongols threw corpses into a city occupied by Italians that they wanted to get rid of.
• Pennsylvania used to be part of Connecticut.
• In Queen Victoria's time it was a crime to be a male homosexual. It was not a crime for women because Queen Victoria said "women would never do such a thing".
• From 1942 until the end of World War II, Oscars were made out of plaster to conserve metal. After the war, the winners received "real" replacement statues.
• The X's that people sometimes put at the end of letters or notes to mean a kiss, actually started back in the 1000's when Lords would sign their names at the end of documents to other important people. It was originally a cross that they would kiss after signing to signify that they were faithful to God and their King. Over the years though, it slanted into the X.
• In ancient Rome it was considered a sign of leadership to be born with a crooked nose.
• During the time of Peter the Great, any Russian man who had a beard was required to pay a special tax.
• Clocks made before 1687 had only one hand, an hour hand.
• In 1221 Genghis Khan killed 1,748,000 people at Nishapur in one hour.
• In medieval Thailand, they had moveable type printing presses. The type was made from baked oxen dung.
• The Ottoman Empire once had seven emperors in seven months. They died of (in order): burning, choking, drowning, stabbing, heart failure, poisoning and being thrown from a horse.
• When Saigon fell, the signal for all Americans to evacuate was Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" being played on the radio.
• Roman Emperor Caligula made his horse a senator.
• There was once a town in West Virginia called "6."
• The Mona Lisa has no eyebrows. It was the fashion in Renaissance Florence to shave them off.
• The Mona Lisa used to hang on the wall of Napoleon’s bedroom.
• Sex workers (Prostitutes) in Roman times charged the equivalent price of eight glasses of red wine.
• In ancient Greece, children of wealthy families were dipped in olive oil at birth to keep them hairless throughout their lives.