Take the time to read actually pretty neat stuff that I did not even know myself....

Here is some historical facts that just might amaze you as well as make you do a bit of thinking....

They used to use urine to tan animal skins, so families used to all pee in a pot and then once a day it was taken and sold to the tannery.......if you had to do this to survive you were "Piss Poor". But worse than that were the really poor folk who couldn't even afford to buy a pot...........they "didn't have a pot to piss in" and were the lowest of the low.

The next time you are washing your hands and complain because the water temperature isn't just how you like it, think about how things used to be.

Here are some facts about the 1500s:

Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, and they still smelled pretty good by June.. However, since they were starting to smell . .. . brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.

Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water.. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children. Last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it. Hence the saying, "Don't throw the baby out with the Bath water!"

Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof. Hence the saying "It's raining cats and dogs."

There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could mess up your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That's how canopy beds came into existence.

The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt. Hence the saying, "Dirt poor." The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until, when you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entrance-way. Hence: a thresh hold.

(Getting quite an education, aren't you?)

In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire... Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day Sometimes stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while. Hence the rhyme: Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old.

Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special.. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man could, "bring home the bacon." They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and chew the fat.

Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.

Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the upper crust.

Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of holding a wake.

England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift.) to listen for the bell; thus,someone could be, saved by the bell or was considered a dead ringer...

And that's the truth...Now, whoever said History was boring ! ! !

So . . . get out there and educate someone! ~~~ Share these facts with a friend like I just did! ! !


So do you have any history to share that may be odd or unusual?

That is like the fear of Friday the 13th which actually was the day of a terrible massacre and purge of the Knight's Templar.

The children's song Ring Around the Rosey is about the Bubonic plague in England. It was a common practice then to carry pouches of flowers or scented media and wear them on your face to help stave off bad humors or, this one comes from Italy, Mal Aire or Bad Air which eventually became the name of a disease Malaria which was associated back then to a host of diseases thought to be born of contaminated air. Out of public fear bodies were burned but then again Bubonic Plague left many of the dead and dying looking like they were burned to death as their skin died and turned black and immediately began to decay. The last line of the song is a reference to the fact a lot of towns and villages utterly died out. Some countries were hit a lot harder than others partially because like Italy many towns and villages were flat out paranoid and actually walled in entire families stricken with the disease. England and France handled it differently and they suffered for it more.


I do so love educational stuff!


This one is a little more archaic, Remember the phrase, Don't accept any wooden nickles? Although it is arguable that the phrase was around since the late 1800s it came into vogue in comedy in the 1930's where the value of the dollar fell out. Many state fares used their own sort of currency and many had wooden nickles and other wooden coin. While a fair was in town people actually freely traded them like real money until the fair left. But then came the 1930's. Work and money were hard to come by and the phrase became a way of saying, "Do not accept any substitute for money." I bet there are a lot of people working for the state of California right now wanting to say something about being paid in IOUs! A wooden nickel is worth a hell of a lot more! By the way, I actually got one! It has a buffalo on it! I also got a real buffalo nickel but that isn't so special.

I would like to know what your sources are because I am positive that you have quoted quite a bit of misinformation. So please check your sources before you claim what you say to be true. Although I will say that it was a quite interesting read.

A prime example of why I like this site so much. Excellent post.

I have book full of cool tidbits sort of like this. Will be happy to post some when I have a bit more time on my hands.

Actually I will admit I did get this in a e-mail but since you have brought it to my attention that some of these things may not be true then as I go along during the day today I will in fact do a bit of research to see if I can find if each item is true or not.

Ahem??

Really?


Misinformation??





Seriously, this stuff was on History Channel, PBS, a number of history websites, even some of my college textbooks.

I bet you are also going to tell me I am misinformed when I say that the one group of people spared the Bubonic Plague were horse handlers because the fleas responsible didn't like horses even though that was a noted forensic fact?

How about this, historically what was the one group of people spared the ravages of Smallpox in our past history?

This led to vaccination in general medically speaking.











Milkmaids. It was noted that not only did milkmaids not get small pox at all their hands were always soft. It was found that they had been infected with Cow Pox which does very little if anything to us but it also makes it so the small pox virus cannot affect the infected.
Wanna know the man's name who made this discovery???

The word Vaccination comes from the Latin-Vacca, for cow.

Just to make sure I am not stepping overboard I also know that a lot of her references are actually historically based and some of this stuff is derived as recently as the early 1900's because housing as we know it did not come about until the 1920. Thatch was used in the USA up till about 1840 in rural areas. Colonial housing WAS predominately thatch roofs.

Also a lot of the sayings she sites are from Europe and are traditional but the basis of the saying s have roots in day to day living. They are anachronisms of the past we still apply today not knowing what they really meant or really came from.

She was very right about "peas porridge hot." Cooking practices were very different when your kitchen was in your fire place.

Careful when messn' with history buffs!

Hummm just goes to show we should not believe all we read and only part of what we see. After some research here is what I found they seem to explain each subject that I had in fact posted.

So to correct myself here seems to be the real facts.

Off to my corner now


"Facts" About the 1500s?

by Halvor Moorshead

For the last couple of years an item has been circulating around the Internet about so-called Facts about the 1500s (sometimes 1600s). A quick search using the search-engine Google pointed to over 400 websites that were carrying this piece. Interesting reading. The problem is that most of it is completely invented. The original author is not credited in any of the versions we have seen. Here we present the original version and our attempt to correct the errors.


The phrase "raining cats and dogs" had nothing to do with animals living in thatched roofs.
Next time you are washing your hands and complain because the water temperature isn't just how you like it, think about how things used to be. Here are some facts about the 1500s. Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May and still smelled pretty good by June. However, they were starting to smell, so brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor.
There is no evidence that June was a popular month to get married until the last 100 years. Flowers have been associated with weddings since the earliest times, probably as symbol of fertility.

Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children — last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it — hence the saying, "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water."
This explanation makes no sense when you consider the expression and its meaning. Additionally bathing was so rare that there were no bathing tubs.

Houses had thatched roofs — thick straw — piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the dogs, cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof — hence the saying "It's raining cats and dogs."
A believable explanation is given in Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable: mythology associated the cat with rain and the dog with wind.


Canopy beds may have been designed to protect against insects, but they weren't designed to protect against droppings from the roof.
There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could really mess up your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That's how canopy beds came into existence.
Canopy beds may have originated as a means of keeping out flying insects but if you think about it, people rich enough to afford a canopy bed — a huge investment in the 1500s — would also be living in homes with proper ceilings.

The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt, hence the saying "dirt poor."
Probably correct — except that the expression is American — and from centuries later.

The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on the floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they kept adding more thresh until when you opened the door it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entranceway — hence, a "thresh hold."
The term threshold predates the 12th century according to the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary. And isn't wet straw at least as slippery as wet slate?


The phrase "peas porridge in the pot nine days old" had nothing to do with life in the 1500s.
In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes the stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while — hence the rhyme, "peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old."
According to the Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, this chant was not used before 1762.

Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man "could bring home the bacon." They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and "chew the fat."
We couldn't find a convincing explanation for chew the fat. One was that it was of US Civil War origin, another that it was from Cockney Rhyming Slang meaning "have a chat" — and rhyming slang came was not known until after WWI.

Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with a high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning and death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.
It is true that tomatoes were thought to be poisonous until about 1830 — however tomatoes were extremely rare in Europe in the 1500s and in any case are not acidic enough to affect pewter.

Most people did not have pewter plates, but had trenchers, a piece of wood with the middle scooped out like a bowl. Often trenchers were made from stale bread, which was so old and hard that they could be used for quite some time. Trenchers were never washed and a lot of times worms and mold got into the wood and old bread. After eating off wormy, moldy trenchers, one would get "trench mouth."
The expression trench mouth was first used during WWI.

Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or "upper crust."
This one may be true; the term upper crust does predate the 1500s.

Lead cups were used to drink ale or whiskey. The combination would sometimes knock them out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up — hence the custom of holding a "wake."
A wake refers to what the visitors do, not what you expect the corpse to do! In this context a wake means a watch or a vigil. It originated from an all-night watch kept in church before certain holy days. It later became associated with fairs and revelries held at such times. Some towns in the north of England still observe local holidays called wakes. (Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable).

England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a "bone-house" and reuse the grave. When re-opening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they thought they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the "graveyard shift") to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be "saved by the bell" or was considered a "dead ringer".
Saved by the bell is a boxing term dating from the 1930s and dead ringer is from horse racing about 1890 and refers to a horse — or somebody — who looks virtually identical to someone else.

And that's the truth — whoever said that history was boring!
History is not boring and the real explanations are just as interesting — and not hard to find either!

This article originally appeared in our February/March 2002 issue.


http://www.history-magazine.com/facts.html

Sometimes the 'history' is better than the truth


History-'His-Story' as in written by men without the benefit of the woman's perspective.

Mystery-'Miss-Story' That which is held as the woman's truth about the world.




It's a mystery...know one knows...well, some woman knows but she is keeping her mouth shut about it.

Those are great Kristi! Always wondered about the raining cats and dogs thing.


That trench mouth thing rings a bell. My Dad came home from Europe with that in WWII. While in a German prison camp they were fed on dirty dishes and with dirty utensils. Had to have every tooth in his head pulled when he got home, (at age 19 no less) and treated with penicillin.

calm down psycho.

[Breathing heavily trying to calm down...]