[KISS]

Fun and useless facts

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:

They used to use urine to tan animal skins, so families used to all pee in a pot & then once a day it was taken & sold to the tannery. If you had to do this to survive you were "Piss Poor"

But worse than that were the really poor folk who couldn't even afford to buy a pot. They "didn't have a pot to piss in" and were the lowest of the low. Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, and they still smelled pretty good by June. However, since they were starting to smell.. Brides carried a bouquet to hide the body odor. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.

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 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. 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 mess up your and ice 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 floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until, when you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entrance-way. Hence: a thresh hold.

(Getting quite an education, aren't you? )

In those old days, 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 stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while. 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 high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.

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 the upper crust.

Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would sometimes knock the imbibers 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 the local folks 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, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So 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.

[BlackVY]

Awesome stuff there.. is it all true?

[shazamataz]

Wow, those are amazing, the only one I knew was about tying the bell to the wrist of people when they buried them..

Very interesting, thanks!

[twinkiedooter]

Ah, those definitely were the good old days. Now we have to take baths more than once a year (whether we need to or not).

Definitely informative. Have any more to educate us with? Those definitely were eye openers.

[artlady]

Sad to say if you go on most Indian Reservations today that is not a gambling mecca,poverty is rife and there is little change from what you have posted here.
No water ! Even thought we promise this .

[Stringer]

Those were very interesting Kiss, thanks.

[Just Dahlia]

I heard everything before except for the 'pee thing' and no matter how many times I hear it, I am still amazed to read it again. That was great!:D

I remember something about matresses and ropes. The tighter you pulled them the firmer the bed and better the sleep? Hence 'sleep tight' ?
And there was something about 'bed bugs' because the saying was 'sleep tight, don't let the bed bigs bite'

Anybody?:confused:

[HelpinHere]

Sorry Dahlia, sounds familiar, but don't know it.

Does anyone know the story behind "Breadwinner"?

Always curious, but never bothered to Google it... :p. Can't trust the internet! :D

[Cat1864]

Until the wide use of generalized pesticides, bedbugs were very common, possibly the most common pest and parasite. They were one of the big reasons for "sunning" mattresses.

Bedbugs are becoming more common again as specific pesticides are being used and global travel is carrying the little critters everywhere. Now they are training dogs to sniff them out.

[sergie]

Whatver, every bit of information up above is quite educational, I must be a moron not to know all these things until today. :)

[ohsohappy]

Yeah I know quite a bit of this stuff, but dang, that's pretty cool to remember some of it, even though some of it was ridiculous. Lol

[firmbeliever]

For those of you who like word origins.
Etymologically Speaking...

Broke (In the sense of having no money)
Many banks in post-Renaissance Europe issued small, porcelain "borrower's tiles" to their creditworthy customers. Like credit cards, these tiles were imprinted with the owner's name, his credit limit, and the name of the bank. Each time the customer wanted to borrow money, he had to present the tile to the bank teller, who would compare the imprinted credit limit with how much the customer had already borrowed. If the borrower were past the limit, the teller "broke" the tile on the spot.

Husband
Comes from the Old German words hus and bunda, which mean "house" and "owner," respectively. The word originally had nothing to do with marital status, except for the fact that home ownership made husbands extremely desirable marriage partners.

[BlackVY]

Awesomeness...

I love these facts... :)

[adam_89]

These are really great. I hope there are more out there to be shared.

[firmbeliever]

From that same link...
Look at what was and what it has become :D!

Worm
From the Old English "wyrm," meaning "dragon."

Villain
From "Villaneus," meaning, "inhabitant of a villa," i.e. a "peasant."

Noon
Derived from the Latin word for ninth. The word "noon" originally meant the ninth hour after sunrise, or 3:00 p.m.--generally the hottest part of the day and the time when most people in the Roman Empire would break for lunch.