in the UK Taxies must carry a Bail of Hay for the horses.
in the Strathclyde area a local bylaw states that if a stranger comes to your door requesting to use your bathroom you must allow them. if you refuse they are allowed by law to urinate on your door step.
Ddureing the Victorian era womens bareknuckle boxing awa a verry popular spectator event.
Bare knuckles?!
How scandalous!!!!!!! 
this was more lowel class women. you know Fishmongers and mill wokers ect.
this was more lowel class women. you know Fishmongers and mill wokers ect.
It's still scandalous!
Ancient egyptian workers' pay consisted in beer jars.
Guest_StreetMagic_*
A doctor (pointlessly?) cut off Napoleon's penis when he died. It's been missing ever since.
On a related note, since Napoleon was killed by slow poisoning with arsenic, it had the odd effect of preserving his corpse. When people dug it up years later, he was mostly in tact. Except for the missing penis, as previously mentioned.
Ancient egyptian workers' pay consisted in beer jars.
Speaking of beer, here's a tragic yet somewhat amusing piece of London history:
The London Beer Flood happened on 17 October 1814 in the parish of St. Giles, London, England. At the Meux and Company Brewery on Tottenham Court Road, a huge vat containing over 135,000 imperial gallons (610,000 L) of beer ruptured, causing other vats in the same building to succumb in a domino effect. As a result, more than 323,000 imperial gallons (1,470,000 L) of beer burst out and gushed into the streets. The wave of beer destroyed two homes and crumbled the wall of the Tavistock Arms Pub, trapping teenage employee Eleanor Cooper under the rubble. Within minutes neighbouring George Street and New Street were swamped with alcohol, killing a mother and daughter who were taking tea, and surging through a room of people gathered for a wake.
^ lol
Assassins Order video game is based on the harsh side of Isma'ilism which now has become a weird video game series.
Isma'ilism is the most respected branch of Islam for me alongside Mu'tazila.
Speaking of beer, here's a tragic yet somewhat amusing piece of London history:
That reminded me of a bizarre event in Boston's history, known as The Great Molasses Flood.
On January 15th, 1919, in what was probably the most bizarre disaster in United States' history, a storage tank burst on Boston's waterfront releasing two million gallons of molasses in a 15 ft-high, 160 ft-wide wave that raced through the city's north end at 35mph destroying everything it touched.
The wave killed young Pasquale Iantosca, smashing a railroad car into the ten-year-old. It pinned Walter Merrithew, a railroad clerk on the Commercial Street wharf, against the wall of a freight shed, his feet 3 ft off the floor. He hung there as he watched a horse drowning nearby. The wave broke steel girders of the Boston Elevated Railway, almost swept a train off its tracks, knocked buildings off their foundations, and toppled electrical poles, the wires hissing and sparking as they fell into the brown flood. The Boston Globe reported that people 'were picked up and hurled many feet'. Rivets popping from the tank scourged the neighbourhood like machine gun bullets, and a small boat was found slammed through a wooden fence like an artillery shell. By the time it passed, the wave had killed 21 people, injured 150, and caused damage worth $100 million in today's money. All caused by molasses.....
....It was around 12.30pm, lunchtime for many workers, when the tank broke. Buildings of the nearby Northend Paving Yard were instantly reduced to kindling as the molasses cascaded out. The threestorey Engine 31 Fire House was torn from its foundations, trapping three firefighters who fought to keep their heads above the rising tide. A piece of the tank was blown into the elevated railway tracks, breaking girders and almost forcing a northbound train off its tracks. Seeing a brown mass surging towards him, Royal Albert Leeman, a brakeman for the Boston Elevated, stopped his train and ran up the tracks to stop a second train.
The entire waterfront area was levelled and rails from the overhead railway dangled like Christmas tinsel.
First on the scene were 116 sailors from the lightship USS Nantucket that was docked nearby. They were soon joined by Boston police, Red Cross workers and army personnel. When Suffolk County medical examiner George Magrath arrived, several bodies had already been pulled from the molasses. He said they looked 'as though covered in heavy oil skins ... eyes and ears, mouths and noses filled'. A makeshift hospital was set up at Haymarket Relief Station about half a mile from the waterfront, and volunteers removed molasses from victims' noses and mouths so they could breathe. Those already on duty were soon covered from head to foot with brown syrup and blood,' the Boston Post reported. 'The whole hospital reeked of molasses. It was on the floors, on the walls, the nurses were covered with it, even in their hair.' At the destroyed city stables, police shot injured horses trapped in the molasses.
The rescue continued for days. Bodies were often so covered by a brown glaze that they could not be seen. The body of truck driver Flamino Gallerini was taken from the water underneath the railroad freight houses eleven days after the tank burst, and almost four months after that a final body, that of Cesare Nicolo, was pulled from the water under the Commercial Wharf.
The clean-up eventually took some 87,000 man hours. Fire department pumps groaned as they removed thousands of gallons of molasses from cellars. Workers used chisels, brooms and saws to break up the hardening gunk. The harbour water, used to flush the streets clean, was brown until the summer. Meanwhile, rescue workers, sightseers and residents carried the gooey brown residue on their clothes and boots to other parts of the city, making streetcar seats, trolley platforms and public phones sticky. The whole city smelled of molasses.
A Sticky Tragedy: The Boston Molasses Disaster
Some Boston residents claim you can still smell Molasses in some parts of the area that was affected, on hot summer days.
Here's a few things from my medieval history professor, the class was about women in the middle ages:
There exists the testimony of one John Rykener, a transvestite prostitute that went by the name Eleanor. His services were quite popular with the local nunnery in the 13th century.
There were various recorded instances of brother monks in monasteries who were discovered during burial preparations not to be brothers at all, but woman who had passed as men for decades to live out their lives as monks
A doctor (pointlessly?) cut off Napoleon's penis when he died. It's been missing ever since.
On a related note, since Napoleon was killed by slow poisoning with arsenic, it had the odd effect of preserving his corpse. When people dug it up years later, he was mostly in tact. Except for the missing penis, as previously mentioned.
the whites of Nepolions eyes were luminous Yellow due to a condition i can not recall. it was said he could stare down anyone.
The siege of the Cartagena (Carthago Nova)
that is all
Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner are divorcing
The two vow to move forward "with love and friendship for one another" after 10 years of marriage.
A Hollywood (hi)story.
Here's a weird one: Jeremy Bentham, a social reformer known as the first major exponent of utilitarianism in moral philosophy, made a strange request in his will: He asked that his body be preserved, dressed in his usual attire, placed sitting on top of a wooden chair, where it would be made into an 'auto-icon' permanently on display. His reasons for making this request are unknown, but his close friend Dr. Southwood Smith honored the request, and Bentham's preserved skeleton is on display at University College in London:
The head is made of wax; Bentham's actual head (with glass eyes place in it) was intended to be part of the auto-icon, but it became badly dessicated during the preservation process. Originally, it was placed on the floor of the auto-icon between Bentham's legs, but was such a frequent target of student pranks that it had to be locked away securely. I included a picture of it in spoiler tags; while it's not super gross, it definitely ain't pretty:
Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner are divorcing
The two vow to move forward "with love and friendship for one another" after 10 years of marriage.
A Hollywood (hi)story.
when splitting from Whinona Ryder Johnny Depp had his Tattoo " Whinona Forever" altered to say
Wino forever
Actual recording of LBJ ordering pants from a White House phone.
Australia gets lots of flak for its "Emu War" but they are actually just joining a long tradition of wars against the natural world.
Emperor Gaius Caesar Germanicus (better known by the diminutive nickname Caligula) declared war on the Ocean.
Australia gets lots of flak for its "Emu War" but they are actually just joining a long tradition of wars against the natural world.
Emperor Gaius Caesar Germanicus (better known by the diminutive nickname Caligula) declared war on the Ocean.
I thought it was against Poseidon/Neptune?
I thought it was against Poseidon/Neptune?
not much of a difference
Australia gets lots of flak for its "Emu War" but they are actually just joining a long tradition of wars against the natural world.
Emperor Gaius Caesar Germanicus (better known by the diminutive nickname Caligula) declared war on the Ocean.
Polandball will forever be my favored form of quickly passing on history
Since the 4th of July just passed, I thought I'd write something about Peter Francisco. In his day he was perhaps the most famous common soldier of the American Revolution, lionized as the Giant of the Revolution or the Virginia Hercules. The acts of heroism that made him a celebrity weren't bizarre, but his origins were.
19th Century Portrait of the then middle-aged Francisco
On June 23, 1765 a ship dropped anchor at City Point, Virginia. Two sailors from the ship boarded a long boat and rowed ashore with a 5 year old boy as a passenger, who they abandoned on the docks, before rowing back to their ship and sailing away. When found sitting on the dock by residents and workers, and questioned about his origins, he could only answer in a foreign language that might have been Portuguese mixed with a spattering of French. The only thing the colonists could make out was a name he kept repeating, "Pedro Francisco." He was described as large for his age, of swarthy complection with black hair and dark eyes, and brave in bearing despite his predicament. He was also dressed in high quality clothing typical of people from wealthy backgrounds, although a bit weathered from a sea voyage, with silver buckles on his shoes bearing the initials P.F.
The boy's mysterious origins made him the talk of the town. Dock workers arranged a bed for him in a warehouse, with the wharf's night's watchmen keeping a protective eye over him while the women of the town provided him with food. Later he was taken by a local Judge as an indentured servant and taught English. The colonists also anglicized his first name to Peter. After learning enough English to communicate with the people around him, he was asked again about his origins but the boy could not remember much. He remembered living on an island that he did not know the name of in a mansion overlooking the sea. He remebered little of his father but spoke fondly of a beautiful French-speaking mother and a young sister, both of whom he loved deeply. He stated that he was playing in the garden one day with his sister when two men he didn't know lured him and a sister to the gate with cakes. After coming to the gate both children were seized by the men, who bound and gagged Peter and took him to a nearby ship. Somehow on the way to the ship his sister managed to escape.
These men then transported the boy across the ocean to the American colonies, where he was then abandoned on a city dock in Virginia. Later in his life Peter thought he was from the Azores, and a 20th Century historian was able to dig up records of him being born into a wealthy family there. The reason for his kidnapping and abandonment in the Americas remains a mystery however. One theory was that he was kidnapped for the purpose of being sold into slavery, perhaps by pirates who were known to occasionally raid the Azores for slaves, but for whatever reason his kidnappers later balked. Another theory is tied to a local lore in the Azores. According to that local lore, Peter's father had fallen into disfavor with the powers-that-be and there was plot in the works to murder his son in reprisal, and that learning of the plot, the father arranged the kidnapping to smuggle his son to safety. Either way, the reason for his kidnapping will probably never be known.
As a servant Peter wasn't taught to read and write, but instead trained as a blacksmith. He soon started to gain a reputation for what people saw as near superhuman strength. By his teenaged years he was already much taller and stronger than most adults, and described as a born athlete who could outrun or outfight any of his peers in the whole county. By the time he reached adulthood he stood at 6'8 (203 cm) and 260 lbs (118 kg). While barely 15 years old he once broke up a tavern fight by lifting both men off their feet until they agreed to cease their argument.
Not long after he happened to pass by the windows of a church just as Patrick Henry began to deliver his now famous 'Give me liberty or give me death" speech. The speech had an effect on the him, and he immediately sought to enlist with the rebels. His status as an indentured servant was a barrier however, so he first had to gain permission from the Judge that had indentured him. The Judge, despite the injustice done to Peter by making him an indentured servant, had apparently grown fond of the 'boy who could do the work of three men,' and in his own way had come to love him like a son. He promised to release him from servitude on his sixteenth birthday, and once freed Peter enlisted as a private in the 10th Virginia Regiment of the fledgling Continental Army.
He first saw action during the Battle of Brandywine. The battle had been a defeat for the rebels, and the 10th Virginia had been committed in a delaying action to bide time for most of the rebel army to retreat. The 10th Virginia held out for 45 minutes, help buying Washington time to escape with his army intact, but during the course of this fight Francisco took the first of his six wounds in the war. A musketball slammed into one of his legs. While convalescing in the hospital Francisco met and developed a fast friendship with the Marquis de Lafayette, who had also been wounded in the same battle. The two would remain lifelong friends.
He returned to the line just in time for the Battle of Germantown, where once again Peter was in the thick of the fight, his unit committed to cover a retreat.
He next saw action during the Siege of Fort Mifflin, where he was described as being among the bravest of its defenders and the peer of its best, and the Battle of Monmouth, where was wounded a second time. He had been shot in the leg again, though this wound was more severe than the first and had caused bone damage. He recovered from the wound without amputation, but it would cause him pain in his leg throughout his life.
It was during a surprise attack on a British stronghold nicknamed 'Little Gibraltar' on the Hudson River however where he would gain fame. A weakness had been detected in the abatis for the British works at Stony Point, and Washington planned to carry them in a surprise night assault. While rebels troops conducted a diversionary attack on another part of the British works, General 'Mad' Anthony Wayne (he was given the sobriquet 'mad' after the battle) and his men would exploit the weak point in the works by scrambling over the 300 foot high cliffs of Stony Point and storming the position in a bayonet assault. Francisco was one of twenty hand-picked men selected to accompany Wayne as the 'forlorn hope,' a lead element in the assault meant to clear a way through dense vegetation and some of the fortifications with axes, for the rest of the infantry to follow. The risk of severe casualties among this group was high, hence 'forlorn hope' being a common description of the era for the lead element of any assault on enemy fortifications. Francisco was the second man into the fortifications, and shouting, 'The Fort's our own!" he and the survivors (the group was now under heavy fire) of the forlorn hope, participated in a charge of the works' flagstaff. He killed two grenadiers in hand-to-hand combat before being slashed across the abdomen with a bayonet by a third, who in turn was killed by Peter. In spite of his wound he continued in the charge of the flagstaff, and was the first to seize the British flag after it had been cut down by Francois de Fleury, a French nobleman, engineer, and military adventurer who had joined the rebels as a Colonel. The fortifications had been successfully captured, and Francisco's bravery during the assault made him famous both within the army and throughout the colonies.
Fanciful 19th Century Portrayal of the Storming of Stony Point
Francisco's enlistment in the Continental Army expired while he was recuperating from his third wound, and he returned home for a time. Not content to sit out the rest of the war however, after fully recovering he enlisted in a local militia unit. During this time he would participate in the Battle of Camden, more a route than a battle, and the worst defeat suffered by the rebels in the war. As untrained and undisciplined militamen panicked and fled all around him, Francisco, by then a battle-hardened veteran who had been trained with the regulars, tried to stop and rally his comrades. He too however was eventually forced to retreat. During this time he stumbled across a British soldier attempting to bayonet the commander of his militia regiment, and shot the man before he could carry it out. This was noticed by a a dragoon serving with Banastre Tarleton's then infamous British Legion (despite the name, the rank-and-file were American loyalists), who raised his sword and ordered Peter to surrender. Instead he stood his ground, and as the cavalryman came at him he sidestepped the charge and bayoneted the dragoon, throwing him from his horse. He then mounted the man's horse and began his escape by riding through the ranks of loyalists, pretending to be a Tory himself, shouting, "Hurrah my brave boys! Yonder goes the damned rebels!" While making his escape he again came across the commander of his militia regiment, who had been taken prisoner. He cut his captor down, pulled the captured officer up onto his horse, and rode off to safety. In appreciation the officer promised to bequeath him 1,000 acres of land and presented him with a ceremonial sword. The sword is now preserved in a museum, but Francisco never saw the land...after the war it got tied up in a legal dispute.
Battle of Camden
After the disaster at Camden Francisco returned to his home in Virginia, where he heard that a local Captain in the Continental Army was recruiting a troop of light dragoons to serve with Colonel Washington's (a second cousin to George Washington) cavalry. Either using the horse he had stolen from the Tory or finding another, he again enlisted in the Continental Army.
It was at this time that he supposedly complained that his sword was too small for him, and a broadsword that was near six feet long was specifically made for the giant.
His next battle would be at Guilford Courthouse. Peter's unit was in reserve as the British infantry moved up to assault the American position. The first and second lines of the rebel infantry opened fire, their volleys at first breaking the redcoats and driving them back in disorder. They reformed however and came on a second time, breaching the rebel line on the second assault. It was at this time that a bugler sounded the charge and Colonel Washington's troops, with Peter Francisco in the lead, crashed into the advancing British line. During this fight Francisco killed or wounded 11 of the redcoats. One of them managed to to bayonet him clear through the leg, before according to a contemporary account, "he assisted the assailant to draw forth his bayonet, when, with terrible force, he brought down his broadsword and cleft the poor fellow's head to his shoulders."
Having been wounded a fourth time and bleeding heavily, he galloped off a short distance before tumbling off his horse unconscious. This may have ended up saving his life. The battle had devolved into a ferocious scrum with the outcome very much in the balance, when the British commander, General Cornwallis...made the desperate (though correct) decision to order his artillery to fire on the mass of friend and foe alike. Cannon shot and cannister felled both rebels and British soldiers, but it had the desired effect of breaking off the rebel attack, leaving the field to Cornwallis. (The battle is usually regarded as a tactical victory for Cornwallis but a strategic victory for Greene, the rebel commander. Cornwallis took the field but suffered twice as many casualties, and the losses would cause him to retreat to Yorktown and abandon the Carolinas to the rebels)
Francisco's attempt to ride off for medical treatment ended getting him out of the line of fire when Cornwallis ordered his artillery to fire on the confused mass of men. He was probably thought dead after he collapsed, and was later found after the battle lying near several corpses by a local civilian scouting the field for survivors. The civilian treated his wound and nursed him back to health, and by the time he returned to Army he learned that his battlefield heroics had once again singled him out for praise. Colonel Washington offered him an officer's commission, but Francisco refused, citing his lack of a formal education. Instead General Greene had an ornate razer case made for him as a tribute to his 'worth and valor.' The case is now held in a museum at the Guilford Courthouse military park.
Battle of Guilford Courthouse by Don Troiani
Francisco was later employed as a scout, reporting on the activities of Tartelton's dragoons in Virginia. It was in this role while Francisco, sitting in the yard of a tavern and enjoying a mug of ale, when nine of Tartleton's troopers rode up and dismounted. Surrounded and outnumbered, Peter surrendered without a fight. With one man left to guard him the other eight troops entered the tavern. The trooper guarding him demanded Peter give up his valuables, including the silver buckles on his shoes. Peter refused, giving the excuse that the buckles were a present from a valued friend. The trooper ignored him, and tucking his sabre underneath his arm with the hilt first, simply bent down to grab them from his shoes. Taking a step backward Peter grabbed the man's sabre and slashed him across the face and neck. Although mortally wounded the dying trooper managed to draw a pistol and fire as he stumbled backward. The round grazed Francisco's side, his sixth and final wound in the war. The other eight troopers poured out of the tavern at the sound of the gunshot, and one of them was handed a musket by the innkeeper. The trooper who had been handed a musket raised it and attempted to fire at Peter, but the weapon misfired. Peter then rushed the man and disarmed him in a brief struggle, in which the trooper was wounded. He then made an escape on one of the trooper's horses, taking the other eight horses with them, and slashing another trooper across the back with the sabre as he fled. He was pursued for a short while by some other of Tarleton's dragoons who were nearby, but in the pursuit he managed to get beyond their line of sight and slip behind them. He kept one of the horses for himself, and named it Tarleton.
The skirmish at the tavern was to be his last experience of combat in the war, though he was in the lines with Lafayette in the aftermath of the siege of Yorktown, and witnesses the surrender of Cornwallis' army. He accompanied Lafayette on the ride back to Richmond afterwards, and while passing through the city, caught a young lady who had tripped. It was the first meeting of a woman he would later marry.
Following the war he made it a priority to acquire an education, learned to read, and assembled his own library. He had children, became a prosperous farmer and a member of the local gentry, but never forgot his humble roots and donated some of his crop to feed the poor. He was eventually appointed a Sergeant-At-Arms in the Virginia Legislature, and when he died at age 70, the Virginia Assembly adjourned out of respect for someone who 'was no common man,' and 'whose exploits have scarcely ever been excelled.' He was granted a state funeral with full military honors, held in the hall of the Virginia House of Delegates.
This thread is awesome, I needz moar.
Can't really think of anything off the top of my head right now. Sept those dark days during the Three Hundred and Thirty Five Years war between the Netherlands and Sicily. Its the longest war ever to this day. went from 1651-1986. There were a grand total of 0 casualties and no victors.
Then there of course was that dark day in July 1807, the time of Napoleons greatest failure.....When he was attacked by a ravenous horde of rabbits. For A hunt one day they were collected en-mass (some sources say about 3000 of them), upon being released from their cages, instead of fleeing as they were meant to they turned toward napoleon and attacked Napoleon himself in bloody fury. Napoleon was forced to flee the field to his carriage where the horde divided in two and flanked the sides of Napoleons carriage with him inside, laying siege to it. It did not end until his carriage fled the field.
Oh also the ancient egyptians used slabs of stone as pillows
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