Interesting and Crazy Facts About History
The first man to distill bourbon whiskey in the United States was a Baptist preacher, in 1789.
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.
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 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.
The ancient Egyptians recommended mixing half an onion with beer foam as a way of warding off death.
The Chinese, in olden days, used marijuana only as a remedy for dysentery.
"Scientific America" carried the first magazine automobile ad in 1898. The Winton Motor Car Company of Cleveland, OH, invited readers to "dispense with a horse".
In France - Captain Sarret made the first parachute jump from an airplane in 1918.
The first paperback book was printed - by Penguin Publishing in 1935.
In 1956 the phrase, "In God We Trust", was adopted as the U.S. national motto.
Henry Ford flatly stated that history is "bunk."
The first Eskimo Bible was printed in Copenhagen in 1744.
The last words spoken from the moon were from Eugene Cernan, Commander of the Apollo 17 Mission on 11 December 1972. "As we leave the Moon at Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came, and, God willing, we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind."
The first dictionary of American English was published on April 14th, 1828, by - who else? - Noah Webster.
No automobile made after 1924 should be designated as antique.
John Hancock was the only one of fifty signers of the Declaration of Independence who actually signed it on July 4.
The first United States coast to coast airplane flight occurred in 1911 and took 49 days.
Escape maps, compasses, and files were inserted into Monopoly game boards and smuggled into POW camps inside Germany during W.W.II; real money for escapees was slipped into the packs of Monopoly money.
Values on the Monopoly gameboard are the same today as they were in 1935.
Incan soldiers invented the process of freeze-drying food. The process was primitive but effective — potatoes would be left outside to freeze overnight, then thawed and stomped on to remove
The first wooden shoe comes from the Netherlands. The Netherlands have many seas so people wanted a shoe that kept their feet dry while working outside. The shoes were called klompen and they had been cut of one single piece of wood. Today the klompen are the favorite souvenir for people who visit the Netherlands.
When airplanes were still a novel invention, seat belts for pilots were installed only after the consequence of their absence was observed to be fatal - several pilots fell to their deaths while flying upside down.
Limelight was how we lit the stage before electricity was invented. Basically, illumination was produced by heating blocks of lime until they glowed.
On November 29, 1941, the program for the annual Army-Navy football game carried a picture of the Battleship Arizona, captioned: "It is significant that despite the claims of air enthusiasts no battleship has yet been sunk by bombs." Today you can visit the site—now a shrine—where Japanese dive bombers sunk the Arizona at Pearl Harbor only nine days later.
Leonardo da Vinci could write with one hand and draw with the other at the same time.
During the California Gold Rush of 1849 miners sent their laundry to Honolulu for washing and pressing. Due to the extremely high costs in California during these boom years it was deemed more feasible to send the shirts to Hawaii for servicing.
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.
The Ramses brand condom is named after the great pharaoh Ramses II who fathered over 160 children.
The British once went to war over a sailors ear. It happened in 1739, when Britain launched hostilities against Spain because a Spanish officer had supposedly sliced off the ear of a ships captain named Robert Jenkins.
Alexander Hamilton and his son, Philip, both died on the same spot, and both during duels. Philip went first, 3 years before his father would be killed in that same field by Aaron Burr.
Florence Nightingale served only two years of her life as a nurse. She contracted fever during her service in the Crimean War, and spent the last 50 years of her life as an invalid.
Emir Beysari (1233-1293), an Egyptian of great wealth, drank wine from gold and silver cups, yet he never in all his life used the same cup twice.
The first European to visit the Mississippi River was DeSoto.
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.
The first Bowie knife was forged at Washington, Arkansas.
All the dirt from the foundation to build the World Trade Center in NYC was dumped into the Hudson River to form the community now known as Battery City Park.
Louis XV was the first person to use an elevator: in 1743 his "flying chair" carried him between the floors of the Versailles palace.
The last words spoken from the moon were from Eugene Cernan, Commander of the Apollo 17 Mission on 11 December 1972. "As we leave the Moon at Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came, and, God willing, we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind."
Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history. Spades - King David; Clubs - Alexander the Great; Hearts - Charlemagne; and Diamonds - Julius Caesar.
Salim (1569-1627, heir to the throne of India, had 4 wives when he was only 8 years of age.
Spiral staircases in medieval castles are running clockwise. This is because all knights used to be right-handed. When the intruding army would climb the stairs they would not be able to use their right hand which was holding the sword because of the difficulties of climbing the stairs. Left-handed knights would have had no troubles, except left-handed people could never become knights because it was assumed that they were descendants of the devil.
Alexander the Great was an epileptic.
Shakespeare spelled his OWN name several different ways.
Historians report that the Roman Emperor Gaius (Caligula) (AD 37-41) was so proud of his horse that he gave him a place as a senate consul before he died.
Napoleon constructed his battle plans in a sandbox.
Daniel Boone detested coonskin caps.
The Tower of London, for which construction was begun in 1078 by William the Conqueror, once housed a zoo. It also has served as an observatory, a mint, a prison, a royal palace, and (at present) the home of the Crown Jewels.
In the original architectural design, the French Cathedral of Chartes had six spires (It was built with two spires).
Vincent Van Gogh painted a picture a day in the last 70 days of his life.
It took 20,000 men 22 years to build the Taj Mahal.
It took 214 crates to transport the Statue of Liberty from France to New York in 1885.
Fourteen years before the Titanic sank, novelist Morgan Robertson published a novel called "Futility". The story was about an ocean liner that struck an iceberg on an April night. The name of the ship in his novel - The Titan.
George Washington, who was nearly toothless himself, was meticulous with the teeth of the six white horses that pulled his presidential coach. He had their teeth picked and cleaned daily to improve their appearance.
The military salute is a motion that evolved from medieval times, when knights in armor raised their visors to reveal their identity.
Civil War General Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson has two separate burial sites. His left arm, which was amputated after the battle of Chancellorsville was buried on a nearby farm. A week later, Jackson died and was buried in Lexington, Virginia.
The first advertisement printed in English in 1477 offered a prayer book. The ad was published by William Caxton on his press in Westminster Abbey. No price was mentioned, only that the book was "good chepe."
Czar Paul 1 banished soldiers to Siberia for marching out of step.
Louis XIV had forty personal wigmakers and almost 1000 wigs.
Before 1863, postal service in the United States was free.
The practice of exchanging presents at Christmas originated with the Romans.
New York was the first state to require the licensing of motor vehicles. The law was adopted in 1901.
Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was the first American to have plumbing installed in his house, in 1840.
Seating on the first scheduled inter-city commuter airplane flight consisted of moveable wicker chairs. There were 11 of them on the first Ford Tri-Motors. After several years, Ford replaced them with aluminum framed leather chairs.
President George Washington oversaw construction of the White House, but he never lived there. It was our second President, John Adams, elected in 1796, who first lived in the White House. His term was almost over by the time he moved in, and only six rooms had been finished.
Pope Paul IV, who was elected on 23 May 1555, was so outraged when he saw the naked bodies on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel that he ordered Michelangelo to paint on to them.
American astronomer, mathematician, clock-maker, surveyor and almanac editor Benjamin Banneker has been called the "first black man of science." Banneker took part in the original survey of Washington, DC. His almanac was published 1792 to 1797.
The Aztec Indians in Central America used animal blood mixed with cement as a mortar for their buildings, many of which still remain standing today.
While performing her duties as queen, Cleopatra sometimes wore a fake beard.
The Coliseum received its name not for its size, but for a colossal statue of Nero that stood close by, placed there after the destruction of his palace.
In 1778, fashionable women of Paris never went out in blustery weather without a lightning rod attached to their hats.
In Northern parts of China it was once a common practice to shave pigs. When the evenings got cold the Chinese would take a pig to bed with them for warmth and found it more comfortable if the pig was clean-shaven.
The traditional symbol of the pawnbroker—three golden balls—is thought to be derived from the coat of the arms of the Medici family, who ruled Italian city of Florence between the 15th and 16th centuries. The symbol was spread by the Lombards—Italian bankers, goldsmiths, and moneylenders who set up businesses in medieval London.
When the U.S. War Department was established in 1789, there were 840 soldiers in the regular army. Their job was to supervise public lands and guard the indian frontier.
In 1907 the first taxicab took to the streets of New York City.
WWI flying ace Jean Navarre attacked a zeppelin armed with only a kitchen knife.
Catherine the Great relaxed by being tickled.
Despite his great scientific and artistic achievement, Leonardo Da Vinci was most proud of his ability to bend iron with his bare hands.
Louisa May Alcott, author of the classic "Little Women," hated kids. She only wrote the book because her publisher asked her to.
Soldiers arrived to fight the Battle of Marne in World War I - not on foot or by military airplane or military vehicle - but by taxi cabs. France took over all the taxi cabs in Paris to get soldiers to the front.
The U.S. Automobile Association was formed in 1905 for the purpose or providing "scouts" who could warn motorists of hidden police traps.
New Zealand was the first place in the world to allow women to vote. The state of South Australia was next, in 1894, and it was also the first place to allow women to stand for parliament.
The Taj Mahal complex in India was built between 1631 and 1634 at a cost of about 40-million rupees.
The first telephone exchange opened on January 28, 1878, in New Haven, Connecticut.
A female pharaoh was unknown in Egypt before Hatshepsut, who had herself portrayed in male costume, with a beard and without breasts.
After being forced to state in public that the earth does not rotate, Galileo is said to have muttered under his breath, "But it does move."
The 16th century astronomer Tycho Brahe lost his nose in a duel with one of his students over a mathematical computation. He wore a silver replacement nose for the rest of his life.
"Hot cockles" was a popular game at Christmas in medieval times. It was a game in which the other players took turns striking the blindfolded player, who had to guess the name of the person delivering each blow. "Hot cockles" was still a Christmas pastime until the Victorian era.
Civil War General Stonewall Jackson died when he was accidentally hit by fire from his own troop.
When Napoleon wore black silk handkerchiefs around his neck during a battle, he always won. At Waterloo, he wore a white cravat and lost the battle and his kingdom.
The steel industry, in 1943, introduced the 5-day, 40 hour work week. Henry Ford adopted it in 1926.
1892 By Presidential Proclamation 1.8 million acres of Crow Indian reservation in Montana were opened to White settlers. The U.S. government had induced the Crow to give up a sizable portion of their land in the mountainous western area of Montana. The Crow received 50 cents per acre for their land.
DaVinci made detailed drawings of human anatomy, which are still highly regarded today.
DaVinci wrote notebook entries in mirror (backwards) script, a trick that kept many of his observations from being widely known until decades after his death. It is believed that he was hiding his scientific ideas from the powerful Roman Catholic Church, whose teachings sometimes disagreed with what Leonardo observed.
When Gaius Caesar was a boy, Roman soldiers affectionately nicknamed him "little boots" for the boy-sized military footwear he sported.
Although most people think that Napoleon was short, he was actually five feet six inches tall (1.676 meters), an average height for a Frenchman in those days.
The German Kaiser Wilhelm II had a withered arm and often hid the fact by posing with his hand resting on a sword, or by holding gloves.
More than 5,600 men died while building the Panama Canal. Today, it takes more than 8,000 workers to run and maintain the canal. It takes a ship an average of 33 hours to travel the length of the canal.
Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was the first American to have plumbing installed in his house, in 1840.
The ancient Etruscans painted women white and men red in the wall paintings they used to decorate tombs.
The dirt road that General Washington and his soldiers took to fight off General Clinton during the Battle of Monmouth was called the Burlington Path.
All of the officers in the Confederate army were given copies of Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo, to carry with them at all times. Robert E. Lee, among others, believed that the book symbolized their cause. Both revolts were defeated.
Marco Polo was born on the Croatian island of Korcula (pronounced Kor-Chu-La).
Karl Marx was targeted for assassination when he met with two Prussian officers in his house in Cologne in 1848. Marx had friends among the German labor unions, and he was considered a threat to the autocrats. Dressed in his bathrobe, he forced the officers out at the point of a revolver, which, it turned out, was not loaded.
The right arm and torch of the Statue of Liberty crossed the Atlantic Ocean three times. It first crossed for display at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition and in New York, where money was raised for the foundation and pedestal. It was returned to Paris in 1882 to be reunited with the rest of the statue, which was then shipped back to the U.S.
Playing cards were issued to British pilots in WWII. If captured, they could be soaked in water and unfolded to reveal a map for escape.
The first telephone book ever issued contained only fifty names. It was published in New Haven, Connecticut, by the New Haven District Telephone Company in February, 1878.
The first time an enormous amount of clothing was needed all at once was during the Civil War, when the Union needed hundreds of thousands of uniforms for its troops. Out of this need came the ready-made clothing industry.
Traffic engineering was not developed in London, New York or Paris, but rather in ancient Rome. The Romans, of course, were noted road builders. The Appian Way, for example, stretched 350 miles from the Eternal City to Brundisium. In Rome itself there were actually stop signs and even alternate-side-of-the-street parking.
Until the 19th century, solid blocks of tea were used as money in Siberia.
"John has a long mustache" was the coded-signal used by the French Resistance in WWII to mobilize their forces once the Allies had landed on the Normandy beaches.
Unfortunately Gaius grew up and became emperor, incongruously retaining his boyhood diminutive. "Little boots" in Latin is "Caligula." As you may know, he was a bloodthirsty, sadistic fiend.
Before winning the election in 1860, Abraham Lincoln lost eight elections for various offices.
In ancient Greece, courtesans wore sandals with nails studded into the sole so that their footprints would leave the message "Follow me".
In 1937 the emergency 999 telephone service was established in London. More than 13,000 genuine calls were made in the first month.
In 1974 there were 90 tornadoes in the U.S. in one day.
Akhbar the Great Mughal routed the Hindus under Hemu by turning their elephants against them at the battle of Panipat in the Hindu revolt.
At the outbreak of World War I, the American air force consisted of only fifty men.
Before all-porcelain false teeth were perfected in the mid-19th century, dentures were commonly made with teeth pulled from the mouths of dead soldiers following a battle. Teeth extracted from U.S. Civil War soldier cadavers were shipped to England by the barrel to dentists.
King Charles VII, who was assassinated in 1167, was the first Swedish king with the name of Charles. Charles I, II, III, IV, V, never existed. No one knows why. To add to the mystery, almost 300 years went by before there was a Charles VIII (1448-57).
Many hundreds of years ago when the well-known style of Irish dancing began in the country side of Ireland, most houses of the poor - and that means most houses - only had a dirt floor which was not a lot of use for dancing on if you were holding a ceildh (pronounced kay-lee and meaning party - more or less). So in order to make the dancing easier the owners of the house which was holding the party would take the doors off their hinges and lay them on the floor. There was just enough room on each door for two people to dance, providing they did not fling their arms about - hence the original name for Irish dancing - Door Dancing.
In 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the first minimum wage in the United States. The new law, considered controversial at the time, established at.25 cents per hour minimum wage and a maximum 44 hour work week for minors.
In Britain, the law was changed in 1789 to make the method of execution hanging. Prior to that, burning was the modus operandi. The last female to be executed by burning in England was Christian Bowman. Her crime was making counterfeit coins.
A painting of the Madonna in Fiorano Castle, Italy, escaped without even being scorched when invading soldiers set the castle afire, yet all the rest of the building was destroyed.
U.S. Army doctor D.W. Bliss had the unique role of attending to two U.S. presidents after they were shot by assassins. In 1865 he was one of 16 doctors who tried to save Abraham Lincoln, and in 1881 he supervised the care of James Garfield.
The very first enclosed shopping mall was and is Valley Faire in Appleton, Wisconsin. Not in Minnesota as most people believe. Appleton is also famous for being the birth place of Harry Houdini and the first city in America to use Hydro-electric power in homes.
It is a well known trivial fact that Neil Armstrong was the first man to step onto the moon. However, many do not know that he stepped onto the moon with his left foot.
Until 1796, there was a state in the United States called Franklin. Today it is known as Tennessee.
In the 15th century, scholars in China compiled a set of encyclopedia that contained 11,095 volumes.
Ishi had made it very clear before he died that he did not want to be autopsied. However, his wishes were ignored and his body was autopsied and the brain removed and sent to the Smithsonian, where scientists were collecting brains for a study of brain size and race. After 83 years, the Smithsonian is finally returning the brain of Ishi to his closest relatives so they can bury his remains.
Spartacus led the revolt of the Roman slaves and gladiators in 73 A.D.
Seat belts became mandatory on U.S. cars on March 1, 1968.
There were 57 countries involved in World War II.
Socrates committed suicide by drinking poison hemlock.
The Korean War began on June 25, 1950.
A B-25 bomber airplane crashed into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building on July 28, 1945.
India tested its first nuclear bomb in 1974.
After the great fire of Rome in A.D. 64, the emperor Nero ostensibly decided to lay the blame on Christians residing in the city of Rome. These he gathered together, crucified, covered in pitch (tar), and burnt alive. He walked around his gardens admiring the view.
The first known item made from aluminum was a rattle—made for Napoleon III in the 1850s. Napoleon also provided his most honored guests with knives and forks made of pure aluminum. At the time the newly discovered metal was so rare, it was considered more valuable than gold.
General Henry Heth (1825-1888) leading a confederate division in the Battle of Gettysburg, was hit in the head by a Union bullet, but his life was saved because he was wearing a hat two sizes too large, with newspaper folded inside the sweatband. The paper deflected the bullet, and the general, unconscious for 30 hours, recovered and lived another 25 years.
During the American revolution, more inhabitants of the American colonies fought for the British than for the Continental Army.
During the Crimean War, the British Army lost ten times more troops to dysentery than to battle wounds.
During the Renaissance blond hair became so much de rigueur in Venice that a brunette was not to be seen except among the working classes. Venetian women spent hours dyeing and burnishing their hair until they achieved the harsh metallic glitter that was considered a necessity.
During the Renaissance, fashionable aristocratic Italian women shaved their hair several inches back from their natural hairlines.
During the Spanish American War in 1898 there were 45 stars on the American flag.
During World War II the original copies of the U. S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence was taken from the Library of Congress and kept at Fort Knox, Kentucky.
During World War II, the U.S. Navy had a world champion chess player, Reuben Fine, calculate - on the basis of positional probability - where enemy submarines might surface.
In 1865 opium was grown in the state of Virginia and a product was distilled from it that yielded 4 percent morphine. In 1867 it was grown in Tennessee: six years later it was cultivated in Kentucky. During these years opium, marijuana and cocaine could be purchased legally over the counter from any druggist.
The Roman emperor Commodos collected all the dwarfs, cripples, and freaks he could find in the city of Rome and had them brought to the Coliseum, where they were ordered to fight each other to the death with meat cleavers.
High-wire acts have been enjoyed since the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Antique medals have been excavated from Greek islands depicting men ascending inclined cords and walking across ropes stretched between cliffs. The Greeks called these high-wire performers neurobates or oribates. In the Roman city of Herculaneum there is a fresco representing an aerialist high on a rope, dancing and playing a flute. Sometimes Roman tightrope walkers stretched cables between the tops of two neighboring hills and performed comic dances and pantomimes while crossing.
There was a "pony express" in Persia many centuries before Christ. Riders on this ancient circuit, wearing special colored headbands, delivered the mails across the vast stretch of Asia Minor, sometimes riding for hundreds of miles without a break.
It was only after 440 A.D. that December 25 was celebrated as the birth date of Jesus Christ.
The first aerial photograph was taken from a balloon during the U.S. civil war.
Olive oil was used for washing the body in the ancient Mediterranean world.
In 1801, 20 percent of the people in the U.S. were slaves.
Slaves under the last emperors of China wore pigtails so they could be picked out quickly.
Dinner guests during the medieval times in England were expected to bring their own knives to the table.
It is estimated that a few years after Columbus discovered the New World, the Spaniards killed off 1.5 million Indians.
The Fish Bowl was invented by Countess Dubarry, Mistress of King Louis XV (Born 1710 Died 1774)
Leonardo DaVinci painted the Mona Lisa on a piece of pinewood, 77 x 53 cm (30 x 20 7/8 in) in the year 1506.
Today the painting hangs in the Musee du Louvre, Paris, France.
When Elizabeth I of Russia died in 1762, 15,000 dresses were found in her closets. She used to change what she was wearing two and even three times an evening.
Napoleon, the famous French general, was not born in France. He was born on the Mediterranean island of Corsica of Italian parents.
When he resigned in 1923 because of illegal behavior in the Teapot Dome Affair, Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall was offered an appointment to the Supreme Court by President Harding. In 1931, Fall was tried and found guilty of conspiracy to defraud.
Jahangir, a 17th-century Indian Mughal ruler, had 5,000 women in his harem and 1,000 young boys. He also owned 12,000 elephants.
If the arm of King Henry I of England had been 42 inches long, the unit of measure of a "foot" today would be fourteen inches. But his arm happened to be 36 inches long and he decreed that the "standard" foot should be one-third that length: 12 inches.
When Thomas Jefferson became U.S. President in 1801, 20 percent of all people in the young nation were slaves.
Early Egyptians wore sandals made from woven papyrus leaves.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the fathers of communism, wrote 500 articles for the "New York Tribune" from 1851 to 1862.
Karl Marx was targeted for assassination when he met with two Prussian officers in his house in Cologne in 1848. Marx had friends among the German labor unions, and he was considered a threat to the autocrats. Dressed in his bathrobe, he forced the officers out at the point of a revolver, which, it turned out, was not loaded.
The first man to distill bourbon whiskey in the United States was a Baptist preacher, in 1789.
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.
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 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.
The ancient Egyptians recommended mixing half an onion with beer foam as a way of warding off death.
The Chinese, in olden days, used marijuana only as a remedy for dysentery.
"Scientific America" carried the first magazine automobile ad in 1898. The Winton Motor Car Company of Cleveland, OH, invited readers to "dispense with a horse".
In France - Captain Sarret made the first parachute jump from an airplane in 1918.
The first paperback book was printed - by Penguin Publishing in 1935.
In 1956 the phrase, "In God We Trust", was adopted as the U.S. national motto.
Henry Ford flatly stated that history is "bunk."
The first Eskimo Bible was printed in Copenhagen in 1744.
The last words spoken from the moon were from Eugene Cernan, Commander of the Apollo 17 Mission on 11 December 1972. "As we leave the Moon at Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came, and, God willing, we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind."
The first dictionary of American English was published on April 14th, 1828, by - who else? - Noah Webster.
No automobile made after 1924 should be designated as antique.
John Hancock was the only one of fifty signers of the Declaration of Independence who actually signed it on July 4.
The first United States coast to coast airplane flight occurred in 1911 and took 49 days.
Escape maps, compasses, and files were inserted into Monopoly game boards and smuggled into POW camps inside Germany during W.W.II; real money for escapees was slipped into the packs of Monopoly money.
Values on the Monopoly gameboard are the same today as they were in 1935.
Incan soldiers invented the process of freeze-drying food. The process was primitive but effective — potatoes would be left outside to freeze overnight, then thawed and stomped on to remove
The first wooden shoe comes from the Netherlands. The Netherlands have many seas so people wanted a shoe that kept their feet dry while working outside. The shoes were called klompen and they had been cut of one single piece of wood. Today the klompen are the favorite souvenir for people who visit the Netherlands.
When airplanes were still a novel invention, seat belts for pilots were installed only after the consequence of their absence was observed to be fatal - several pilots fell to their deaths while flying upside down.
Limelight was how we lit the stage before electricity was invented. Basically, illumination was produced by heating blocks of lime until they glowed.
On November 29, 1941, the program for the annual Army-Navy football game carried a picture of the Battleship Arizona, captioned: "It is significant that despite the claims of air enthusiasts no battleship has yet been sunk by bombs." Today you can visit the site—now a shrine—where Japanese dive bombers sunk the Arizona at Pearl Harbor only nine days later.
Leonardo da Vinci could write with one hand and draw with the other at the same time.
During the California Gold Rush of 1849 miners sent their laundry to Honolulu for washing and pressing. Due to the extremely high costs in California during these boom years it was deemed more feasible to send the shirts to Hawaii for servicing.
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.
The Ramses brand condom is named after the great pharaoh Ramses II who fathered over 160 children.
The British once went to war over a sailors ear. It happened in 1739, when Britain launched hostilities against Spain because a Spanish officer had supposedly sliced off the ear of a ships captain named Robert Jenkins.
Alexander Hamilton and his son, Philip, both died on the same spot, and both during duels. Philip went first, 3 years before his father would be killed in that same field by Aaron Burr.
Florence Nightingale served only two years of her life as a nurse. She contracted fever during her service in the Crimean War, and spent the last 50 years of her life as an invalid.
Emir Beysari (1233-1293), an Egyptian of great wealth, drank wine from gold and silver cups, yet he never in all his life used the same cup twice.
The first European to visit the Mississippi River was DeSoto.
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.
The first Bowie knife was forged at Washington, Arkansas.
All the dirt from the foundation to build the World Trade Center in NYC was dumped into the Hudson River to form the community now known as Battery City Park.
Louis XV was the first person to use an elevator: in 1743 his "flying chair" carried him between the floors of the Versailles palace.
The last words spoken from the moon were from Eugene Cernan, Commander of the Apollo 17 Mission on 11 December 1972. "As we leave the Moon at Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came, and, God willing, we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind."
Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history. Spades - King David; Clubs - Alexander the Great; Hearts - Charlemagne; and Diamonds - Julius Caesar.
Salim (1569-1627, heir to the throne of India, had 4 wives when he was only 8 years of age.
Spiral staircases in medieval castles are running clockwise. This is because all knights used to be right-handed. When the intruding army would climb the stairs they would not be able to use their right hand which was holding the sword because of the difficulties of climbing the stairs. Left-handed knights would have had no troubles, except left-handed people could never become knights because it was assumed that they were descendants of the devil.
Alexander the Great was an epileptic.
Shakespeare spelled his OWN name several different ways.
Historians report that the Roman Emperor Gaius (Caligula) (AD 37-41) was so proud of his horse that he gave him a place as a senate consul before he died.
Napoleon constructed his battle plans in a sandbox.
Daniel Boone detested coonskin caps.
The Tower of London, for which construction was begun in 1078 by William the Conqueror, once housed a zoo. It also has served as an observatory, a mint, a prison, a royal palace, and (at present) the home of the Crown Jewels.
In the original architectural design, the French Cathedral of Chartes had six spires (It was built with two spires).
Vincent Van Gogh painted a picture a day in the last 70 days of his life.
It took 20,000 men 22 years to build the Taj Mahal.
It took 214 crates to transport the Statue of Liberty from France to New York in 1885.
Fourteen years before the Titanic sank, novelist Morgan Robertson published a novel called "Futility". The story was about an ocean liner that struck an iceberg on an April night. The name of the ship in his novel - The Titan.
George Washington, who was nearly toothless himself, was meticulous with the teeth of the six white horses that pulled his presidential coach. He had their teeth picked and cleaned daily to improve their appearance.
The military salute is a motion that evolved from medieval times, when knights in armor raised their visors to reveal their identity.
Civil War General Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson has two separate burial sites. His left arm, which was amputated after the battle of Chancellorsville was buried on a nearby farm. A week later, Jackson died and was buried in Lexington, Virginia.
The first advertisement printed in English in 1477 offered a prayer book. The ad was published by William Caxton on his press in Westminster Abbey. No price was mentioned, only that the book was "good chepe."
Czar Paul 1 banished soldiers to Siberia for marching out of step.
Louis XIV had forty personal wigmakers and almost 1000 wigs.
Before 1863, postal service in the United States was free.
The practice of exchanging presents at Christmas originated with the Romans.
New York was the first state to require the licensing of motor vehicles. The law was adopted in 1901.
Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was the first American to have plumbing installed in his house, in 1840.
Seating on the first scheduled inter-city commuter airplane flight consisted of moveable wicker chairs. There were 11 of them on the first Ford Tri-Motors. After several years, Ford replaced them with aluminum framed leather chairs.
President George Washington oversaw construction of the White House, but he never lived there. It was our second President, John Adams, elected in 1796, who first lived in the White House. His term was almost over by the time he moved in, and only six rooms had been finished.
Pope Paul IV, who was elected on 23 May 1555, was so outraged when he saw the naked bodies on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel that he ordered Michelangelo to paint on to them.
American astronomer, mathematician, clock-maker, surveyor and almanac editor Benjamin Banneker has been called the "first black man of science." Banneker took part in the original survey of Washington, DC. His almanac was published 1792 to 1797.
The Aztec Indians in Central America used animal blood mixed with cement as a mortar for their buildings, many of which still remain standing today.
While performing her duties as queen, Cleopatra sometimes wore a fake beard.
The Coliseum received its name not for its size, but for a colossal statue of Nero that stood close by, placed there after the destruction of his palace.
In 1778, fashionable women of Paris never went out in blustery weather without a lightning rod attached to their hats.
In Northern parts of China it was once a common practice to shave pigs. When the evenings got cold the Chinese would take a pig to bed with them for warmth and found it more comfortable if the pig was clean-shaven.
The traditional symbol of the pawnbroker—three golden balls—is thought to be derived from the coat of the arms of the Medici family, who ruled Italian city of Florence between the 15th and 16th centuries. The symbol was spread by the Lombards—Italian bankers, goldsmiths, and moneylenders who set up businesses in medieval London.
When the U.S. War Department was established in 1789, there were 840 soldiers in the regular army. Their job was to supervise public lands and guard the indian frontier.
In 1907 the first taxicab took to the streets of New York City.
WWI flying ace Jean Navarre attacked a zeppelin armed with only a kitchen knife.
Catherine the Great relaxed by being tickled.
Despite his great scientific and artistic achievement, Leonardo Da Vinci was most proud of his ability to bend iron with his bare hands.
Louisa May Alcott, author of the classic "Little Women," hated kids. She only wrote the book because her publisher asked her to.
Soldiers arrived to fight the Battle of Marne in World War I - not on foot or by military airplane or military vehicle - but by taxi cabs. France took over all the taxi cabs in Paris to get soldiers to the front.
The U.S. Automobile Association was formed in 1905 for the purpose or providing "scouts" who could warn motorists of hidden police traps.
New Zealand was the first place in the world to allow women to vote. The state of South Australia was next, in 1894, and it was also the first place to allow women to stand for parliament.
The Taj Mahal complex in India was built between 1631 and 1634 at a cost of about 40-million rupees.
The first telephone exchange opened on January 28, 1878, in New Haven, Connecticut.
A female pharaoh was unknown in Egypt before Hatshepsut, who had herself portrayed in male costume, with a beard and without breasts.
After being forced to state in public that the earth does not rotate, Galileo is said to have muttered under his breath, "But it does move."
The 16th century astronomer Tycho Brahe lost his nose in a duel with one of his students over a mathematical computation. He wore a silver replacement nose for the rest of his life.
"Hot cockles" was a popular game at Christmas in medieval times. It was a game in which the other players took turns striking the blindfolded player, who had to guess the name of the person delivering each blow. "Hot cockles" was still a Christmas pastime until the Victorian era.
Civil War General Stonewall Jackson died when he was accidentally hit by fire from his own troop.
When Napoleon wore black silk handkerchiefs around his neck during a battle, he always won. At Waterloo, he wore a white cravat and lost the battle and his kingdom.
The steel industry, in 1943, introduced the 5-day, 40 hour work week. Henry Ford adopted it in 1926.
1892 By Presidential Proclamation 1.8 million acres of Crow Indian reservation in Montana were opened to White settlers. The U.S. government had induced the Crow to give up a sizable portion of their land in the mountainous western area of Montana. The Crow received 50 cents per acre for their land.
DaVinci made detailed drawings of human anatomy, which are still highly regarded today.
DaVinci wrote notebook entries in mirror (backwards) script, a trick that kept many of his observations from being widely known until decades after his death. It is believed that he was hiding his scientific ideas from the powerful Roman Catholic Church, whose teachings sometimes disagreed with what Leonardo observed.
When Gaius Caesar was a boy, Roman soldiers affectionately nicknamed him "little boots" for the boy-sized military footwear he sported.
Although most people think that Napoleon was short, he was actually five feet six inches tall (1.676 meters), an average height for a Frenchman in those days.
The German Kaiser Wilhelm II had a withered arm and often hid the fact by posing with his hand resting on a sword, or by holding gloves.
More than 5,600 men died while building the Panama Canal. Today, it takes more than 8,000 workers to run and maintain the canal. It takes a ship an average of 33 hours to travel the length of the canal.
Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was the first American to have plumbing installed in his house, in 1840.
The ancient Etruscans painted women white and men red in the wall paintings they used to decorate tombs.
The dirt road that General Washington and his soldiers took to fight off General Clinton during the Battle of Monmouth was called the Burlington Path.
All of the officers in the Confederate army were given copies of Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo, to carry with them at all times. Robert E. Lee, among others, believed that the book symbolized their cause. Both revolts were defeated.
Marco Polo was born on the Croatian island of Korcula (pronounced Kor-Chu-La).
Karl Marx was targeted for assassination when he met with two Prussian officers in his house in Cologne in 1848. Marx had friends among the German labor unions, and he was considered a threat to the autocrats. Dressed in his bathrobe, he forced the officers out at the point of a revolver, which, it turned out, was not loaded.
The right arm and torch of the Statue of Liberty crossed the Atlantic Ocean three times. It first crossed for display at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition and in New York, where money was raised for the foundation and pedestal. It was returned to Paris in 1882 to be reunited with the rest of the statue, which was then shipped back to the U.S.
Playing cards were issued to British pilots in WWII. If captured, they could be soaked in water and unfolded to reveal a map for escape.
The first telephone book ever issued contained only fifty names. It was published in New Haven, Connecticut, by the New Haven District Telephone Company in February, 1878.
The first time an enormous amount of clothing was needed all at once was during the Civil War, when the Union needed hundreds of thousands of uniforms for its troops. Out of this need came the ready-made clothing industry.
Traffic engineering was not developed in London, New York or Paris, but rather in ancient Rome. The Romans, of course, were noted road builders. The Appian Way, for example, stretched 350 miles from the Eternal City to Brundisium. In Rome itself there were actually stop signs and even alternate-side-of-the-street parking.
Until the 19th century, solid blocks of tea were used as money in Siberia.
"John has a long mustache" was the coded-signal used by the French Resistance in WWII to mobilize their forces once the Allies had landed on the Normandy beaches.
Unfortunately Gaius grew up and became emperor, incongruously retaining his boyhood diminutive. "Little boots" in Latin is "Caligula." As you may know, he was a bloodthirsty, sadistic fiend.
Before winning the election in 1860, Abraham Lincoln lost eight elections for various offices.
In ancient Greece, courtesans wore sandals with nails studded into the sole so that their footprints would leave the message "Follow me".
In 1937 the emergency 999 telephone service was established in London. More than 13,000 genuine calls were made in the first month.
In 1974 there were 90 tornadoes in the U.S. in one day.
Akhbar the Great Mughal routed the Hindus under Hemu by turning their elephants against them at the battle of Panipat in the Hindu revolt.
At the outbreak of World War I, the American air force consisted of only fifty men.
Before all-porcelain false teeth were perfected in the mid-19th century, dentures were commonly made with teeth pulled from the mouths of dead soldiers following a battle. Teeth extracted from U.S. Civil War soldier cadavers were shipped to England by the barrel to dentists.
King Charles VII, who was assassinated in 1167, was the first Swedish king with the name of Charles. Charles I, II, III, IV, V, never existed. No one knows why. To add to the mystery, almost 300 years went by before there was a Charles VIII (1448-57).
Many hundreds of years ago when the well-known style of Irish dancing began in the country side of Ireland, most houses of the poor - and that means most houses - only had a dirt floor which was not a lot of use for dancing on if you were holding a ceildh (pronounced kay-lee and meaning party - more or less). So in order to make the dancing easier the owners of the house which was holding the party would take the doors off their hinges and lay them on the floor. There was just enough room on each door for two people to dance, providing they did not fling their arms about - hence the original name for Irish dancing - Door Dancing.
In 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the first minimum wage in the United States. The new law, considered controversial at the time, established at.25 cents per hour minimum wage and a maximum 44 hour work week for minors.
In Britain, the law was changed in 1789 to make the method of execution hanging. Prior to that, burning was the modus operandi. The last female to be executed by burning in England was Christian Bowman. Her crime was making counterfeit coins.
A painting of the Madonna in Fiorano Castle, Italy, escaped without even being scorched when invading soldiers set the castle afire, yet all the rest of the building was destroyed.
U.S. Army doctor D.W. Bliss had the unique role of attending to two U.S. presidents after they were shot by assassins. In 1865 he was one of 16 doctors who tried to save Abraham Lincoln, and in 1881 he supervised the care of James Garfield.
The very first enclosed shopping mall was and is Valley Faire in Appleton, Wisconsin. Not in Minnesota as most people believe. Appleton is also famous for being the birth place of Harry Houdini and the first city in America to use Hydro-electric power in homes.
It is a well known trivial fact that Neil Armstrong was the first man to step onto the moon. However, many do not know that he stepped onto the moon with his left foot.
Until 1796, there was a state in the United States called Franklin. Today it is known as Tennessee.
In the 15th century, scholars in China compiled a set of encyclopedia that contained 11,095 volumes.
Ishi had made it very clear before he died that he did not want to be autopsied. However, his wishes were ignored and his body was autopsied and the brain removed and sent to the Smithsonian, where scientists were collecting brains for a study of brain size and race. After 83 years, the Smithsonian is finally returning the brain of Ishi to his closest relatives so they can bury his remains.
Spartacus led the revolt of the Roman slaves and gladiators in 73 A.D.
Seat belts became mandatory on U.S. cars on March 1, 1968.
There were 57 countries involved in World War II.
Socrates committed suicide by drinking poison hemlock.
The Korean War began on June 25, 1950.
A B-25 bomber airplane crashed into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building on July 28, 1945.
India tested its first nuclear bomb in 1974.
After the great fire of Rome in A.D. 64, the emperor Nero ostensibly decided to lay the blame on Christians residing in the city of Rome. These he gathered together, crucified, covered in pitch (tar), and burnt alive. He walked around his gardens admiring the view.
The first known item made from aluminum was a rattle—made for Napoleon III in the 1850s. Napoleon also provided his most honored guests with knives and forks made of pure aluminum. At the time the newly discovered metal was so rare, it was considered more valuable than gold.
General Henry Heth (1825-1888) leading a confederate division in the Battle of Gettysburg, was hit in the head by a Union bullet, but his life was saved because he was wearing a hat two sizes too large, with newspaper folded inside the sweatband. The paper deflected the bullet, and the general, unconscious for 30 hours, recovered and lived another 25 years.
During the American revolution, more inhabitants of the American colonies fought for the British than for the Continental Army.
During the Crimean War, the British Army lost ten times more troops to dysentery than to battle wounds.
During the Renaissance blond hair became so much de rigueur in Venice that a brunette was not to be seen except among the working classes. Venetian women spent hours dyeing and burnishing their hair until they achieved the harsh metallic glitter that was considered a necessity.
During the Renaissance, fashionable aristocratic Italian women shaved their hair several inches back from their natural hairlines.
During the Spanish American War in 1898 there were 45 stars on the American flag.
During World War II the original copies of the U. S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence was taken from the Library of Congress and kept at Fort Knox, Kentucky.
During World War II, the U.S. Navy had a world champion chess player, Reuben Fine, calculate - on the basis of positional probability - where enemy submarines might surface.
In 1865 opium was grown in the state of Virginia and a product was distilled from it that yielded 4 percent morphine. In 1867 it was grown in Tennessee: six years later it was cultivated in Kentucky. During these years opium, marijuana and cocaine could be purchased legally over the counter from any druggist.
The Roman emperor Commodos collected all the dwarfs, cripples, and freaks he could find in the city of Rome and had them brought to the Coliseum, where they were ordered to fight each other to the death with meat cleavers.
High-wire acts have been enjoyed since the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Antique medals have been excavated from Greek islands depicting men ascending inclined cords and walking across ropes stretched between cliffs. The Greeks called these high-wire performers neurobates or oribates. In the Roman city of Herculaneum there is a fresco representing an aerialist high on a rope, dancing and playing a flute. Sometimes Roman tightrope walkers stretched cables between the tops of two neighboring hills and performed comic dances and pantomimes while crossing.
There was a "pony express" in Persia many centuries before Christ. Riders on this ancient circuit, wearing special colored headbands, delivered the mails across the vast stretch of Asia Minor, sometimes riding for hundreds of miles without a break.
It was only after 440 A.D. that December 25 was celebrated as the birth date of Jesus Christ.
The first aerial photograph was taken from a balloon during the U.S. civil war.
Olive oil was used for washing the body in the ancient Mediterranean world.
In 1801, 20 percent of the people in the U.S. were slaves.
Slaves under the last emperors of China wore pigtails so they could be picked out quickly.
Dinner guests during the medieval times in England were expected to bring their own knives to the table.
It is estimated that a few years after Columbus discovered the New World, the Spaniards killed off 1.5 million Indians.
The Fish Bowl was invented by Countess Dubarry, Mistress of King Louis XV (Born 1710 Died 1774)
Leonardo DaVinci painted the Mona Lisa on a piece of pinewood, 77 x 53 cm (30 x 20 7/8 in) in the year 1506.
Today the painting hangs in the Musee du Louvre, Paris, France.
When Elizabeth I of Russia died in 1762, 15,000 dresses were found in her closets. She used to change what she was wearing two and even three times an evening.
Napoleon, the famous French general, was not born in France. He was born on the Mediterranean island of Corsica of Italian parents.
When he resigned in 1923 because of illegal behavior in the Teapot Dome Affair, Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall was offered an appointment to the Supreme Court by President Harding. In 1931, Fall was tried and found guilty of conspiracy to defraud.
Jahangir, a 17th-century Indian Mughal ruler, had 5,000 women in his harem and 1,000 young boys. He also owned 12,000 elephants.
If the arm of King Henry I of England had been 42 inches long, the unit of measure of a "foot" today would be fourteen inches. But his arm happened to be 36 inches long and he decreed that the "standard" foot should be one-third that length: 12 inches.
When Thomas Jefferson became U.S. President in 1801, 20 percent of all people in the young nation were slaves.
Early Egyptians wore sandals made from woven papyrus leaves.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the fathers of communism, wrote 500 articles for the "New York Tribune" from 1851 to 1862.
Karl Marx was targeted for assassination when he met with two Prussian officers in his house in Cologne in 1848. Marx had friends among the German labor unions, and he was considered a threat to the autocrats. Dressed in his bathrobe, he forced the officers out at the point of a revolver, which, it turned out, was not loaded.
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interesting tidbits
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