Random Interesting Information
Weird, interesting and bizarre historical facts.
It’s believed that people as far back as the 14th century thought that concealed shoes would ward off evil spirits and bring good luck. They are often found near chimneys, perhaps because evil spirits would enter through the highest point of the house, as well as near other access points like doors and windows. The shoes are usually well-worn, and are more likely to have belonged to children or women than men.
Nábrókarstafur, or “Necropants,” is an Icelandic magical stave, or runelike symbol, associated with a pair of pants made from a dead man’s skin. As the Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft cheerfully notes, ”If you want to make your own necropants, you have to get permission from a living man to use his skin after his dead.”
Cockle bread was a bread baked by English women in the seventeenth century which was supposed to act as a love charm or aphrodisiac. The dough was kneaded and pressed against the woman’s vulva and then baked. This bread was then given to the object of the baker’s affections.
A scold’s bridle, sometimes called “the branks”, as well as “brank’s bridle” was a punishment device used primarily on women, as a form of torture and public humiliation.
This is a spintria (plural, spintriae). Some scholars have argued that spintriae were used to pay prostitutes, possibly for use in brothels. Since there were a lot of foreigners coming to the city that did not speak the language and most of the prostitutes were slaves captured from other places the coins made the transactions easy and efficient. One side of these coins showed what the buyer wanted and the other showed the amount of money to be paid for the act. There is no direct ancient evidence, however, to support the theory that spintriae were created as tokens for exchange in place of official coinage.
September 10th, 1945 finds a strapping (but tender) five and a half month old Wyandotte rooster pecking through the dust of Fruita, Colorado. The unsuspecting bird had never looked so delicious as he did that, now famous, day. Clara Olsen was planning on featuring the plump chicken in the evening meal. Husband Lloyd Olsen was sent out, on a very routine mission, to prepare the designated fryer for the pan. Nothing about this task turned out to be routine. Lloyd knew his Mother in Law would be dining with them and would savor the neck. He positioned his ax precisely, estimating just the right tolerances, to leave a generous neck bone. “It was as important to Suck-Up to your Mother in Law in the 40’s as it is today.” A skillful blow was executed and the chicken staggered around like most freshly terminated poultry.
The remote Arctic island in Siberia is believed to be the final place on Earth to support woolly mammoths as an isolated population until their extinction about 2000 BCE, making them the most recent surviving population known to science.
The use of mirrors in Mesoamerican culture was associated with the idea that they served as portals to a realm that could be seen but not interacted with. Mirrors in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica were fashioned from stone and served a number of uses, from the decorative to the divinatory.
