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Author Topic: More fun facts  (Read 3175 times)

Offline Dare

More fun facts
« on: April 09, 2016, 12:49:01 AM »
Not sure on the accuracy but here goes


Blame it on the Pope:  The bubonic plague epidemic was caused in part by the Pope.
Pope Gregory IX told his followers that cats were associated with the devil. As a result, people started killing cats. With fewer cats around to hunt rats, the rat population exploded...leading to the spread of the bubonic plague.
 
 
Napoleon was once attacked by rabbits.
Napoleon’s Representative collected hundreds of rabbits for a hunt Napoleon wanted to have but when the rabbits were released
instead of running away, they swarmed Napoleon and his guests, driving them away.
 
 
Confederate General Robert E. Lee didn't own any slaves at the beginning of the Civil War.
But you know who did? Union general Ulysses S. Grant.
 
 
I guess you could say the first transplants were actually TEETH.  Open-mouthed smile
Dentures used to be made of the teeth of dead soldiers.
The corpses' teeth would be removed, then placed in artificial gums for use by living people.
 
 
Ronald Reagan worked as a lifeguard.
Before he was president, and even before he was an actor, the future world leader saved 77 people as a lifeguard at his local pool.
 
 
Egyptian servants were sometimes slathered in honey to keep flies away from the Pharaoh.
Fortunately for those servants, honey has antibacterial properties, so their skin probably looked great.
 
 
Lord Byron kept a pet bear in his dorm.
When the poet became a student at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1805, he was told pet dogs were banned. So he brought a (tame) bear to live with him.
 
 
The Austrian army once attacked itself.
In 1788, the Austrians were scouting for forces of the Ottoman Empire near the city of Karansebes, but two different sections mistook each other for Ottomans, and fired on each other instead. 10,000 soldiers died, and two days later, the Ottomans showed up and captured the city.
 
 
17th century rich people ate human corpses.
They thought that consuming flesh, drinking human blood, and even rubbing human fat on the outside of the skin could cure any number of diseases. Spoiler alert: it cannot.
 
 
A giant honey mushroom in Oregon is over 2,400 years old.
Its root system covers over 3 square miles of land...but you can't tell from above that it's all connected.
 
 
Women drank beaver testicle potion as birth control.
I think we can all be glad we're not living in 16th-century Canada right now.
 
 
Winston Churchill smoked up to 15 cigars a day.
He died at age 90 of a stroke - not lung cancer.
 
 
In the early 20th century, children were given morphine in syrup form.
The highly addictive opiate drug was sold over-the-counter.
 
 
King Tut's parents were brother and sister.
DNA tests show that Tutankhamen's mother and father both had the same father.
 
 
Russian faith healer Rasputin survived multiple assassination attempts - in a single day.
He was shot, stabbed, and poisoned unsuccessfully. His murderers eventually prevailed, though, and threw his body into a river.
 
 
During the Great Depression, people started reusing the fabric from flour sacks to make dresses.
When the flour companies realized this, they started printing their bags with floral and other designs to make them more appealing to consumers.
 
 
At least one Civil War general provided prostitutes for his men.
Reasoning that his men would be in better spirits if their, er, physical needs were attended to, General Hooker hired women for his whole troop. Legend says that his name was then used as a term for sex workers, but the word "hooker" as applied to a lady of the night was used in the 1840s, well before the Civil War.
 
 
General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna ordered a full military funeral in 1838...for his leg.
The Mexican leader lost his left leg when it was hit by a cannon, and had a funeral - with full military honors - for it when it was buried.
 
 
 
Notorious gangster Al Capone started one of the first soup kitchens.
During the Great Depression, churches and other organizations started soup kitchens to help feed the many unemployed people. One such kitchen was started by Al Capone, who made all his money in organized crime. The Chicago Tribune claimed that he served 120,000 meals to hungry Chicagoans.
 
 
 The U.S. Air Force at the start of World War I was, to put it mildly, quite small.
The Air Force in 1912 was a part of the U.S. Army, and had only 18 men in it. And only 12 planes!
 
 
 
The Magnificent Argentine Bird, one of the largest birds ever to exist.
It had a wingspan of up to 21 feet. It's now extinct.
 
 
These two men happened to go to the same prison in 1903. They looked like Twins but They were not related...but they had the same name.
Both men were named William West, though one went by "Will." When the second William West arrived at Leavenworth Prison in Kansas, the clerk was sure he'd seen him before, though he'd never been there. The confusion led to an important identification method we still use today: taking fingerprints.
 
 
In the time before alarm clocks, there was a job called a "knocker-up."
The knocker-up would knock on clients' doors or windows to wake them up for work during the Industrial Revolution. At least one of these people, according to stories, used a pea-shooter to rouse her clients.
 
 
Albert Einstein was once offered the presidency of Israel.
He declined, saying that he didn't have the people skills that would be needed.
 
 
George Washington grew hemp in his fields.
While the hemp plant is related to marijuana, it's unlikely that our first president actually smoked his crop.
 
 
Paul Revere was a dentist.
Revere was trained as a silversmith, but when his business started to sag during a recession in the 1760s, he took up dentistry to help make ends meet.
 
 
 
General Custer is the youngest general ever promoted in the U.S. Army.
 He was 23 when he was made a general.
 


Mark Twain once opined, "it's easier to con someone than to convince them they've been conned."

Offline cosworth151

Re: More fun facts
« Reply #1 on: April 09, 2016, 03:52:53 PM »
Good stuff, Dare! I love this kind of historical information.

A little further explanation about Grant. Grant's wife, Julia Dent Grant, came from a slave holding family. When her father died, he willed one slave, William Jones, to Grant. Grant immediately freed the man. It's worth noting that Grant was in a desperate financial situation at the time and he family could have made good use of the money he would have received from the sale of Mr. Jones. This occurred in 1859.

Interestingly, Lee did the same thing with his father-in-law's slaves.
“You can search the world over for the finer things, but you won't find a match for the American road and the creatures that live on it.”
― Bob Dylan

Offline lkjohnson1950

Re: More fun facts
« Reply #2 on: April 09, 2016, 09:04:33 PM »
Here's a good one: When Lee turned down Lincoln's offer to be Union CinC, Lincoln seized his land in Virginia and turned it into Arlington National Cemetery.
Lonny

 


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