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.”
Well-behaved women never make history. - Maria Shriver
Peace is preferable to a place in history. - Justo P Benitez
For most of history, Anonymous was a woman. - Virginia Woolf
That great dust-heap called 'history'. - Augustine Birrell
The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it. - Oscar Wilde
Epochodor: The smell of history found at museums - Daffynitions joe-ks.com
History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. - Will Rogers
Each time history repeats itself, the price goes up. - Ronald Wright
History will be kind to me for I intend to write it. - Winston Churchill
We are not makers of history. We are made by history. - Martin Luther King, Jr.
History is an endless repetition of the wrong way of living. - Lawrence Durrell
People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them. - James A. Baldwin
Study history. In history lies all the secrets of statecraft. - Winston Churchill
History never looks like history when you are living through it. - John W. Gardner
The history of Scotland is one of theology tempered by homicide. - Ivor Brown
It is the soothing thing about history that it does repeat itself. - Gertrude Stein
History is a tool used by politicians to justify their intentions. - Ted Koppei
I think we may class the lawyer in the natural history of monsters. - John Keats
I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past. - Thomas Jefferson
In life you have to rely on the past, and that's called history. - Donald Trump
Irish people are educated not only about artistry but local history. - Fiona Shaw
It takes an endless amount of history to make even a little tradition. - Henry James
All of history is fused with His meaning because history is HIS-story. - Ravi Zacharias
I love hockey because of the respect for history and for the game itself. - George Vecsey
History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies. - Alexis de Tocqueville
More history is made by secret handshakes than by battles, bills, and proclamations. - John Barth
If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians. - Warren Buffett
I work with gold that holds history, diamonds that see the future, and rubies that long for love. - Waris Ahluwalia
We live in a world where amnesia is the most wished-for state. When did history become a bad word? - John Guare
In the whole history of technology it would be difficult to find a greater single advance than this. - L.T.C. Rolt
That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history. - Aldous Huxley
We're at a point in history where everyone needs to pay attention to politics. Too much is at stake for us to be apathetic. - Kevin Costner
History is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future. To try to hold fast is to be swept aside. - John F Kennedy
He's ... probably the greatest corporate leader in the history of a major company... Somebody like that would be absolutely incredible. - Donald Trump
God created us for love, for union, for forgiveness and compassion and, yet, that has not been our storyline. That has not been our history. - Richard Rohr
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
I know of no other man in our time, or indeed in recent history, who so convincingly demonstrated the power of the spirit over material things. - Stafford Cripps
Peaceful transfer of authority is rare in history, yet common in our country with a simple oath, we affirm old traditions, and make new beginnings. - George W. Bush
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
Round Table
 One At A Time |  Ventriloquist Isolation |  Detroit Discovery |  Down Under Statue |  Frankfurt Subway Entrance |
 Missing Mother-In-Law |  I'll Be Right There |  Flower Frame Heels |  Studley Tool Chest |  Dr. Hedgehog |
 Enjoy The View |  Locks Of Love |  Redneck Speed Bump |  Save A Tree |  Baby Papaya Crossing |
 So You Want A Day Off |  Mexico Will Pay For The Wall |  Behind Every Man |  Truck Driver Birth |  Motion Picture Selfie |
11-Aug-2020 |