Amazing facts to bore your mates with!

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, as time passed they were starting to smell, so brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor.

Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water; followed by his sons, and other men living under the same roof. Then came the women and finally the children. Last of all were 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 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, thus

came the saying, "It's raining cats and dogs." ?

There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house either. 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. 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 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

entrance way creating a "thresh hold."

In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always

hung over the fire. Every day they lighted the fire and added things to

the pot. They ate mostly vegetables without much meat. They would eat the

stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight, then start

over the next day. Often times the kettle contained the same stew for quite

a while, hence the rhyme, "peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas

porridge in the pot nine days old."

Families that could obtain pork considered themselves quite special. When

visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was an

outward sign of wealth that a man could "bring home the bacon." Another

indication was to cut off a sliver of bacon to share with guests and sit

around to "chew the fat."

Those with money had plates made of pewter. Unknowingly at the time, 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.

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 reused for quite some

time. Trenchers were never washed, and worms and mold got into the wood

and old bread. After eating off wormy, moldy trenchers, one would get "trench

mouth."

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."

Lead cups were used to drink ale or whiskey. The combination would

sometimes knock them out for a couple of days. Someone walking along

roadside would often take them for dead, and prepare them for burial.

The "deceased" were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days,

and families would gather around, and eat, drink and wait to see if the person

would wake up, thus began the custom of holding a "wake."

England is old and small, and the locals started running out of places to

bury people. They would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a

"bone-house" and reuse the grave. When reopening coffins, 1 out of 25

coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside. Realizing they

had been burying people alive came the thought of looping a string around the

wrist of the corpse, through a hole in the coffin, and up through the

ground attached to a bell. Someone had to sit in the graveyard all night long --

the "Graveyard Shift" -- to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be "saved

by the bell" or was considered a "dead ringer."

In English pubs, ale is ordered by pints and quarts. So in

old England, when customers got unruly, the bartender would yell at

to mind their own pints and quarts and settle down. It's

where we get the phrase "mind your P's and Q's.

Many years ago in England, pub frequenters had a whistle

baked into the rim or handle of their ceramic cups. When they needed a

refill, they used the whistle to get some service. "Wet your >

whistle," is the phrase inspired by this practice.

In ancient England a person could not have sex unless you had

consent of the King (unless you were in the Royal Family). When

anyone wanted to have a baby, they got the consent of the King and the

King gave them a placard that they hung on their door while they were

having sex. The placard had F. U. C. K. on it (Fornication Under

Consent of the King). Now you know where that came from.

The legbones of a bat are so thin that no bat can walk.

No matter how big or small the piece of paper, you can't fold it in half eight times

.

The Beatles song "Dear Prudence" was written about Mia Farrow's sister,

Prudence, when she wouldn't come out and play with Mia and the Beatles at a religious retreat in India.

The state of Maryland has no natural lakes.

Cranberries are sorted for ripeness by bouncing them; a fully ripened cranberry can be dribbled like a basketball.

St. Paul, Minnesota was originally called Pigs Eye after a man who ran a saloon there

.

The numbers '172' can be found on the back of the U.S. $5 dollar bill in the bushes at the base of the Lincoln Memorial.

Moisture, not air, causes superglue to dry.

Charles Lindbergh took only four sandwiches with him on his famous transatlantic flight.

Sarsaparilla is the root that flavors root beer.

The U.S. Mint in Denver, Colorado is the only mint that marks its pennies.

A full moon always rises at sunset.

It is physically impossible for pigs to look up into the sky.

Rabbits love licorice.

Kelsey Grammar sings and plays the piano for the theme song of Fraiser

.

If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle; if the horse has one front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds recieved in battle; if the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural cause

.

In 1963, baseball pitcher Gaylord Perry remarked, "They'll put a man on the moon before I hit a home run." On July 20, 1969, a few hours after Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, Gaylord Perry hit his first, and only, home run.

Panama hats come from Ecuador not Panama.

Urea is found in humna urine and dalmatian dogs and nowhere else

.

Human birth control pills work on gorillas.

The Earl of Condom was a knighted personal physician to England's King Charles

II in the mid-1600's. The Earl was requested to produce a method to protect the

King from syphillis.(Charles the II's pleasure-loving nature was notorious.) The

result should be obvious.

There is no word in the English language that rhymes with orange

.

Lynyrd Skynard was the name of the gym teacher of the boys who went on to form that band. He once told them, "You boys ain't never gonna amount to nothin'.

"

M & M's were developed so that soldiers could eat candy without getting their fingers sticky.

The Grateful Dead were once called The Warlocks.

Pinocchio was made of pine.

A banana tree is not a tree; it is an herb.

Alma mater means bountiful mother.

Glass flutes do not expand with humidity so their owners are spared the nuisance of tuning them.

Carnivorous animals will not eat another animal that has been hit by a lightning strike.

The female ferret is referred to as a `jill'

.

Alexander the Great was an epileptic

Elvis had a twin brother named Garon, who died at birth, which is why Elvis' middle name was spelled Aron; in honor of his brother

A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.

A crocodile cannot stick out its tongue.

A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.

A "jiffy" is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.

A shark is the only fish that can blink with both eyes.

A snail can sleep for three years.

February 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full moon.

If the population of China walked past you, in single file, the line would never end because of the rate of reproduction.

If you are an average American, in your whole life, you will spend an average of 6 months waiting at red lights.

It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.

On a Canadian two dollar bill, the flag flying over the Parliament building is an American flag.

Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but mens noses and ears never stop growing.

When Coca-Cola began to be sold in China, they used characters that would sound like "Coca-Cola" when spoken. Unfortunately, what they turned out to mean was "Bite the wax tadpole". It did not sell well.

Raw cashews are poisonous and must be roasted before they can be eaten (this is

probably one reason that you can't buy cashews in the shell)

Vietnamese currency consists only of paper money; no coins.

During his entire life, Vincent Van Gogh sold exactly one painting, Red Vineyard at Arles.

A pig's orgasm lasts for 30 minutes.

Skin is thickest on the back -- 1/6 of an inch

The most sensitive finger is the forefinger.

Alaska is the most northern, western and eastern state; it also has the highest

latitude,the most eastern longitude and the most western longitude.

Cinderella's slippers were originally made out of fur. The story was changed in the 1600s by a translator.

It was the left shoe that Aschenputtel (Cinderella) lost at the stairway, when the prince tried to follow her

A large flawless emerald is worth more than a similarly large flawless diamond.

The characters Bert and Ernie on Sesame Street were named after Bert the cop and

Ernie the taxi driver in Frank Capra's "Its A Wonderful Life"

A penguin only has sex twice a year.

Mr. Spock's (of Star Trek) blood type was T-Negative

.

A dragonfly has a lifespan of 24 hours.

A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.

The statue of Christ in Rio de Janeiro is exactly facing the statue of Christ in Lisbon, Portugal.

There are 118 ridges on the outside of a dime.

The dot above an 'i' is called a tittle.

A peanut is not a nut; it is a legume.

It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.

.

The phrase "sleep tight" originated when mattresses were set upon ropes woven through the bed frame. To remedy sagging ropes, one would use a bed key to tighten the rope.

Tomatoes and cucumbers are fruits.

Winston Churchill was born in a ladies' room during a dance

Women blink nearly twice as much as men.

Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks; otherwise it will digest itself.

A baby eel is called an elver, a baby oyster is called a spat.

Bingo is the name of the dog on the Cracker Jack box.

On a trip to the South Sea islands, French painter Paul Gauguin stopped off briefly in Central America, where he worked as a laborer on the Panama Canal.

There are only 12 letters in the Hawaiian alphabet.

Charles de Gaulle's final words were, "It hurts."

Brooklyn is the Dutch name for "broken valley"