12696. History Facts

Instead of a hollow pumpkin with a candle inside, Celtic people are said to have used real human heads cut from defeated enemies to keep away ghosts and ghouls in the autumn.

12697. History Facts

Chimney sweeps used to have three baths a year – one in the spring, one in the autumn and one for Christmas.The rest of the time, they were covered in soot.

12698. History Facts

In the past, European women sometimes wore a tube filled with sticky tree sap around their necks or on animal fur.These were supposed to attract and trap any fleas on their bodies.

12699. History Facts

The earliest cosmetic surgery was practised by doctors in India who made fake noses for criminals who had their noses cut off as a punishment for their crimes.

12700. History Facts

If sheep grazed on pastures full of clover, shepherds sometimes had to puncture the stomachs of sheep with a sharp knife to release all the gases that built up inside them.

12701. History Facts

In the old days, a ‘whipping boy' used to sit next to a royal prince in lessons. If the prince made a mistake, or did something wrong, the whipping boy was punished instead of the prince.

12702. History Facts

In the Middle Ages a royal farter was employed to jump around farting in front of the king to amuse him.

12703. History Facts

In Africa, it was common to bend back springy saplings and tie them beneath the ears of someone about to be beheaded, so that the person's last sensation would be of their head flying through the air.

12704. History Facts

Until 1868, criminals could be transported from England – sent to Australia for seven or fourteen years – for even petty crimes. The youngest victim was a boy of nine, transported for stealing.

12705. History Facts

King Henry VIII of England, employed the death penalty more than any other English king in history.

12706. History Facts

A punishment used in China in the old days was for a prisoner to be kept in an iron cage with his head sticking out the top.The cage was too tall to sit in, and too short to stand up. Some prisoners were left to starve to death inside.

12707. History Facts

A common test for the guilt of a person accused of witchcraft was to throw them in a pond. If they floated, they were guilty and were executed. If they sank, they were innocent – but probably drowned.

12708. History Facts

At banquets, the Gauls used to award the legs of roast animals to the bravest warriors. Sometimes fights to the death resulted from the squabbles over who should get them.

12709. History Facts

Long ago, criminals would be hanged in a metal cage called a gibbet, or in chains, near the scene of their crime ‘until their bones rotted to nothing'.

12710. History Facts

In 1577, an outbreak of typhus in an Oxford jail killed 300 people – the judges, jury, witnesses and spectators at criminal trials.The prisoners, used to living in filthy conditions, all survived.

12711. History Facts

Vlad the Impaler used to entertain guests to dinner surrounded by the bodies of people he had executed, impaled on spikes.

12712. History Facts

During the French Revolution, large crowds watched public executions by guillotine and people would rush forward to try to collect blood dripping from the heads lifted to show the crowd. They would keep bloody handkerchieves as souvenirs of the outing.

12713. History Facts

In 1857, a group of Indian people who rebelled against the ruling British were strapped across the mouths of live cannons and blown to bits when cannon balls were shot through them.

12714. History Facts

People who killed themselves used to be buried at a cross-roads with a stake through their heart. It was thought that they couldn't go to heaven, and the cross-roads would confuse their ghost so that it couldn't find the way home to haunt anyone.

12715. History Facts

A trusted servant of William of Orange, a Dutch king of England, spent money the king had given him for clothes on pistols, which he used to shoot the king. As punishment, he had his flesh pulled off with red-hot pincers, his guts pulled out and his body cut into pieces.

Fact
Post-It Notes, which are adhesive notes, were invented while looking for a way to improve the acrylate adhesive found in tapes      .. More >>