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 still smelled pretty good by June. However, 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, 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 dogs, cats and other small animals (mice rats, and 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 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 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 sliding outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entryway, hence, “a threshold.”
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 awhile - 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 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 paysan bread which was so old and hard that they could use them 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.”
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 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 they 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, one 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.”
History is a set of lies agreed upon. - Napoleon Bonaparte
Live out of your imagination, not your history. - Stephen Covey
Epochodor: The smell of history found at museums - Daffynitions joe-ks.com
History will never accept difficulties as an excuse. - John F Kennedy
We are not makers of history. We are made by history. - Martin Luther King, Jr.
If history repeats itself, I am so getting a dinosaur! - Unknown
History repeats itself; historians repeat one another. - Rupert Brooke
History books that contain no lies are extremely dull. - Anatole France
History may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme a lot. - Mark Twain
The trouble with history is its dependence upon diplomats. - Gerald F Lieberman
A people without history is like the wind on the buffalo grass. - Lakota Sioux Proverb
History never looks like history when you are living through it. - John W. Gardner
Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy. - Margaret Thatcher
A poet in history is divine, but a poet in the next room is a joke. - Max Eastman
I think we may class the lawyer in the natural history of monsters. - John Keats
If some countries have too much history, we have too much geography. - William Lyon Mackenzie King
All of history is fused with His meaning because history is HIS-story. - Ravi Zacharias
We would like to live as we once lived, but history will not permit it. - John F Kennedy
The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice. - Mark Twain
History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon. - Napoleon Bonaparte
Our old history ends with the cross; our new history begins with the resurrection. - Watchman Nee
The history of free men is never really written by chance but by choice; their choice! - Dwight D Eisenhower
If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians. - Warren Buffett
History is merely a list of surprises. It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again. - Kurt Vonnegut
History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind. - Edward Gibbon
Step out of the history that is holding you back. Step into the new story you are willing to create. - Oprah Winfrey
A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history. - Mahatma Gandhi
Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is God's Gift. That's why we call it the 'Present.' - Bill Keane
Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him. - Dwight D Eisenhower
Over the years, I learned so much from mom. She taught me about the importance of home and history and family and tradition. - Martha Stewart
Mr. Gorbachev has apparently stumbled onto one of the best-kept secrets in recent Soviet history: Communism doesn't work. - Frank Zappa
I often say of George Washington that he was one of the few in the whole history of the world who was not carried away by power. - Robert Frost
The shoulders I stand on are broad and strong, full of history and courage and love. How about you? Whose shoulders are you standing on? - Molly Johnson
It is always self-defeating to pretend to the style of a generation younger than your own; it simply erases your own experience in history. - Renata Adler
History has repeatedly been changed by people who had the desire and the ability to transfer their convictions and emotions to their listeners. - Dale Carnegie
Our history is an inevitable component of our being. One thing only can release us from the grip of our history. That one thing is forgiveness. - Lewis B Smedes
History will see advertising as one of the real evil things of our time. It is stimulating people constantly to want things, want this, want that. - Malcolm Muggeridge
The simple act of opening a bottle of wine has brought more happiness to the human race than all the collective governments in the history of earth. - Jim Harrison
Success in creating AI would be the biggest event in human history. Unfortunately, it might also be the last, unless we learn how to avoid the risks. - Stephen Hawking
see also History Section
1910 Street Light Replacement
1920 Strongwoman
1934 Modern Home
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29-Nov-2020 |