12723. History Facts

Over 100,000 people have been tried for witchcraft in Europe since 1100, most of them tortured and eventually executed.

12724. History Facts

It is reported that during Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812 some soldiers cut open dead horses and sheltered inside them to avoid freezing to death.

12725. History Facts

Some Stone-Age people believed the spirit could only escape when the flesh had gone from the body, so they left corpses to rot or be eaten by wild animals, or hacked off the flesh, before burying them.

12726. History Facts

As well as people, the ancient Egyptians mummified all kinds of animals including cats, crocodiles, birds – even fish and dung beetles.

12727. History Facts

At the Aztec festival celebrating Xipe Totec – the Aztec god of spring – prisoners of war were flayed alive.Their skins were then worn ceremonially by priests to represent the renewal of earth and the start of new life in spring.

12728. History Facts

People of the North American Sioux tribe used to make an amulet of their own, dried umbilical cord – the cord which connects the unborn baby to its mother's body – which they thought guaranteed a long life.

12729. History Facts

A 1,000-year-old grave in England was found to contain a rich woman in a coffin beneath a poor woman pinned down by a big stone. She was probably a slave, buried alive to serve the rich woman after death.

12730. History Facts

In the 1700s, the penalty for wearing tartan or playing the bagpipes in Britain was death.

12731. History Facts

The ancient Britons used to practise euthanasia by jumping off cliffs to their deaths. If individuals were too elderly to jump they would be pushed!

12732. History Facts

Anglo-Saxon parents were allowed to sell children up to the age of seven to be slaves ‘if they needed to do so'.

12733. History Facts

A lhasa apso dog was once imprisoned and kept on death row in a prison in Washington, USA, for over eight years for biting.

12734. History Facts

For nearly 1,000 years, Chinese women had their feet bound to keep them small. The toes were bent underneath, breaking all the bones, and the feet were kept tightly bandaged from childhood until death. The practice was banned in 1911.

12735. History Facts

Apart from the heart, an Egyptian mummy doesn't have any internal organs left inside the body.The others were removed and put into separate canopic jars that were buried with it.

12736. History Facts

British schools used to keep at least two types of standard cane for hitting naughty children. Children over 15 years of age could be hit with the senior cane, which was longer and thicker than that used on younger children.

12737. History Facts

People used to believe that smearing their clothes with fat from a dead pig would keep away fleas.

12738. History Facts

The Jivaros in the Andes shrunk the heads of enemies killed in battle. They skinned the head, then stitched up the eyes and mouth and stewed the skin for a couple of hours with herbs. Then they dried it, stuffed it with hot stones and sand and polished it.

12739. History Facts

In the War of the Pacific (1879–1884), Chile fought against Bolivia and Peru over who was allowed to collect bird faeces and whether they should have to pay a tax on them.

12740. History Facts

Before modern plumbing, a gong scourer was a boy who was sent into cess pits to scoop and scrape all the muck into buckets and remove it. The job was so horrible it was done at night so that people wouldn't have to see it happening.

12741. History Facts

When King Philip of Spain died in 1560, his devastated wife would not allow him to be buried, but had his coffin accompany her everywhere.

12742. History Facts

Csar Peter III of Russia was crowned 34 years after he died. His coffin was opened so that the crown could be put on his head.

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Book : debacle
Author : emile zola.      .. More >>