CoolFacts--History
- A B-25 bomber airplane crashed into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building on July 28, 1945.
- A golden razor removed from King Tut's Tomb was still sharp enough to be used.
- Abdul Kassam Ismael, Grand Vizier of Persia in the tenth century, carried his library with him wherever he went. The 117,000 volumes were carried by 400 camels trained to walk in alphabetical order.M
- According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th Edition, from 1910-1911, the word toast was borrowed from the Old French toste, which has the Latin root of torrere, tostum, meaning to scorch or burn.
- Acting was once considered evil, and actors in the first English play to be performed in America were arrested.
- 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.
- All office seekers in the Roman empire were obliged to wear a certain white toga for a period of one year before the election.
- Any Russian man who wore a beard was required to pay a special tax, during the time of Peter the Great.
- At the turn of the 19th century, Dublin Ireland had the largest slave market in the world, run by the Vikings.
- Before the 1800's there were no separately designed shoes for right and left feet.
- Boxers and wrestlers had to swear under oath they were not communists, in 1954, before they could compete in the state of Indiana.
- Czar Paul I banished soldiers to Siberia for marching out of step.
- Dinner guests during the medieval times in England were expected to bring their own knives to the table.
- Dog Days: Days of great heat. The Romans called the hottest weeks of summer canculares dies. Their theory was that the Dog Star (Sirius) rising with the sun, added to its heat and the dog-days (about July 3 to August 11) bore the combined heat of both.
- During 18th century France, visitors to the royal palace in Versailles were allowed to stand in a roped-off section of the main dining room and watch the king and queen eat.
- During the American revolution, many brides used to wear the colour red instead of white as a symbol of rebellion.
- During the Cambrian period, about 500 million years ago, a day was only 20.6 hours long.
- During the Depression, banks first used Scotch tape to mend torn currency.
- During the eighteenth century, books that were considered offensive were sometimes punished by being whipped.
- During the middle ages, few people were able to read or write. The clergy were virtually the only ones that could.
- During the middle ages, it was widely believed that men had one less rib than woman. This is because of the story in the Bible that Eve had been created out of Adam's rib.
- Eating chocolate was once considered a temptation of the devil.
- Everyone believed in the Middle Ages--as Aristotle had--that the heart was the seat of intelligence.
- Evidence of shoemaking exists as early as 10,000 B.C.
- 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.
- If a family had 2 servants or less in the U.S. in 1900, census takers recorded it as lower middle-class.
- If we had the same mortality rate as in the 1900s, more than half the people in the world today would not be alive.
- If you were born in Los Alamos, New Mexico during the Manhattan project (where they made the atomic bomb), your birth place is listed as a post office box in Albequerque.
- In 1281, the Mongol army of Kublai Khan tried to invade Japan but were ravaged by a hurricane that destroyed their fleet.
- In 1778, fashionable women of Paris never went out in blustery weather without a lightning rod attached to their hats.
- In 1801, 20 percent of the people in the U.S. were slaves.
- In 1917, Margaret Sanger was jailed for one month for establishing the first birth control clinic.
- In ancient Egypt, killing a cat was a crime punishable by death.
- In certain parts of India and ancient China, mouse meat was considered a delicacy.
- In midieval England, beer often was served with breakfast.
- In Puritan times, to be born on a Sunday was interpreted as a sign of great sin.
- In the 19th century, the British Navy attempted to dispel the superstition that Friday was an unlucky day to embark on a ship. The keel of a new ship was laid on a Friday, she was named H.M.S Friday, commanded by a Captain Friday, and finlly went to sea on a Friday. Neither the ship nor her crew were ever heard of again.
- In the Great Fire of London in 1666, half of London was burnt down but only six people were injured.
- In the marriage ceremony of the ancient Inca Indians of Peru, the couple was considered officially wed when they took off their sandals and handed them to each other.
- In Turkey, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, anyone caught drinking coffee was put to death.
- In Victorian times, there was an intense fear of being buried alive, so when someone died, a small hole was dug from the casket to the surface, then a string was tied around the dead persons finger which was then attached to a small but loud bell that was hung on the surface of the grave, so then if someone was buried alive, they could ring the bell and whomever was on duty would go and dig them up. Someone was on the clock 24 hours a day- hence the grave yard shift.
- Income tax was first introduced in England in 1799 by British Prime Minister, William Pitt.
- It cost more to buy a car today in the United States than it cost Christopher Columbus to equip and undertake three voyages to the New World.
- It has been calculated that in the last 3,500 years, there have only been 230 years of peace throughout the civilized world.
- It is estimated that a few years after Columbus discovered the New World, the Spaniards killed off 1.5 million Indians.
- Jaclyn Smith, Kate Jackson and Farah Fawcett played the original Charlie's Angels.
- January is National Soup month.
- Leif Erikson was the first European to set foot on North America in the year 1000. NOT Colombus.
- Long ago, the people of Nicaragua believed that if they threw beautiful young women into a volcano it would stop erupting.
- Medieval Jewish mystics practiced rolling in the snow to purge themselves from evil urges. They were the first snow angels.
- Morocco was the first country to recognize the United States in 1789.
- Native Americans never actually ate turkey; killing such a timid bird was thought to indicate laziness.
- New Zealand was the first country to give woman the vote, in 1890.
- Olive oil was used for washing the body in the ancient Mediterranean world.
- On June 13th 1944, a single Tiger tank headed by Cpt. Michael Wittman stopped the advance of the entire British 7th armored division (the famous 'desert rats') in the town of Villers Bocage, Normandy. This has been the deadliest single action in the entire war and stopped the British offensive, planned by Montgomery, to break through German lines. Wittman died later in August fighting against 12 Canadian Sherman tanks.
- Orville Wright was the pilot in the first fatal air crash.
- Over 150 people were tried as witches and wizards in Salam, Massachusetts in the late 1600s.
- Pilgrims ate popcorn at the first Thanksgiving dinner.
- Pope Paul IV, who was elected on 23 May 1555, was so outraged when he saw the naked bodies on the ceiling of the Sistene Chapel that he ordered Michelangelo to paint on to them.
- Sumerians (from 5000 BC) thought that the liver made blood and the heart was the center of thought.
- The ancient Etruscans painted women white and men red in the wall paintings they used to decorate tombs.
- The Civil War was the first war in which news from the front was published within hours of its occurrence.
- The earliest recorded case of a man giving up smoking was on April 5, 1679, when Johan Katsu, Sheriff of Turku, Finland, wrote in his diary: "I quit smoking tobacco." He died one month later.
- The eight-dollar bill was designed and printed by Benjamin Franklin for the American Colonies.
- The first American in space was Alan B. Shepard Jr.
- The first people to arrive on Iceland were Irish explorers, in 795 A.D.
- The first police force was established in Paris in the year 1667.
- 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 guards of some of the emperors of Byzantium were Vikings
- The Hundred Years War lasted for 116 years.
- The Indianapolis 500 is run on Memorial Day.
- The Korean War began on June 25, 1950.
- The name of Charles Darwin's survey ship was "The Beagle."
- The name of the asteroid that was believed to have killed the dinosaurs was named Chixalub (pronounced Sheesh-uh-loob).
- The Nobel Prize resulted from a late change in the will of Alfred Nobel, who did not want to be remembered after his death as a propagator of violence - he invented dynamite.
- The ruins of Troy are located in Turkey.
- The shortest war in history was between Zanzibar an England in 1896. Zanzibar surrendered after 38 minutes.
- The Spanish Inquisition once condemned the entire Netherlands to death for heresy.
- The Toltecs, seventh-century native Mexicans, went to battle with wooden swords so as not to kill their enemies.
- The United States has never lost a war in which mules were used.
- 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.
- There was a ratio of 35 women to one man in England mental asylums in 197 However in England prisons, this ratio was the opposite.
- There were no ponies in the Pony Express.
- Those condemned to die by the ax in medieval and Renaissance England were obliged to tip their executioner to ensure that he would complete the job in one blow. In some executions, notably that of Mary, Queen of Scots, it took fifteen whacks of the blade before the head was severed.
- To strengthen the Damascus sword, the blade was plunged into a slave.
- Until the Middle Ages, underwater divers near the Mediterranean coastline collected golden strands from the pen shell, which used the strands to hold itself in place. The strands were woven into a luxury textile and made into ladies' gloves so fine that a pair could be packed into an empty walnut shell.
- Welsh mercenary bow men in the medieval period only wore one shoe at a time.
- Westmount, Quebec, was the first city in Canada to be granted a coat of arms.
- When Saigon fell the signal for all Americans to evacuate was Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" being played on the radio.
- World Tourist day is observed on September 27.
- Yo-yos were used as weapons by warriors in the Philippines in the 16th century.
