WTF Fun Fact 13046 – The Three Hundred and Thirty Five Years’ War

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What’s now referred to as the Three Hundred and Thirty Five Years’ War was not really a war by modern standards. But technically it’s true that the Netherlands and the Isles of Scilly (off the coast of Great Britain) were in a diplomatic state of war for 335 years. But it’s because they forgot to sign a peace treaty.

The longest “war’?

Also called the Dutch-Scilly War, the bloodless war didn’t officially end until 1986.

During the English Civil War, Oliver Cromwell and the Parliamentarians fought the Royalists for control of the government. When Cromwell took Cornwall, the Royalist Navy retreated from England into the Isles of Scilly.

At the time, the Dutch Navy was aligned with the Parliamentarians. They took heavy losses from the Royalist fleet. In 1651, Lieutenant-Admiral Maarten Harpertszoon Tromp went to the Scilly Isles to demand payback for the Royalists’ attacks on their ships. But there was no agreement, and he declared war on the Isles of Scilly themselves.

How does a war last three hundred and thirty five years?

The Parliamentarians won the English Civil war, so the fact that the Dutch had declared their war on the Royalists on the Isles of Scilly meant very little after that. The Dutch left without ever firing a shot.

However, since the war was peripheral to the main event, they never declared peace either. Tromp’s declaration of war was so obscure and relatively meaningless that no one really noticed it was happening.

It wasn’t until a historian on the Isles of Scilly started researching the legend of the war that he realized it was technically still in effect. Roy Duncan wrote to the Dutch Embassy in London and that’s when everyone discovered there was no peace treaty.

As a result, Duncan invited the Dutch ambassador Jonkheer Rein Huydecoper to visit Scilly and declare peace on April 17, 1986, 335 years after the war began.

Huydecoper joked that it must have been terrifying to the residents of the island “to know we could have attacked at any moment.” — WTF fun facts

Source: “Dutch Proclaim End of War Against Britain’s Scilly Isles” — New York Times

WTF Fun Fact 13045 – The Tale of Two Lovers

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One of the most popular novels of the 15th century was an erotic one. A man who later became pope wrote it. It’s called The Tale of Two Lovers.

No stranger to love

It turns out that like many early popes, Enea Silvio Bartolomeo Piccolomini had an interesting life even before his rise to power. Born in October 1405 in what is now Pienza in Tuscany, Piccolomini was already a secretary to bishops and cardinals by 1435. But that’s when things got a little steamy.

In 1435, the Church sent him on a diplomatic mission to Scotland to meet with King James I. The boat trips weren’t exactly luxury cruises in those days. So when he got to shore, he vowed to walk all the way from Dunbar to Whitekirk to give thanks at the nearest shrine to the Virgin Mary. That meant trekking 8 miles – in the snow. He had leg pain for the rest of his life after that.

At some point after his arduous trek, he started having some impure thoughts. We know he fathered children in Scotland (as well as England), but that didn’t derail his religious career.

The tale of two lovers

In 1444, Piccolomini must have had some pent up lust to get out. That’s when he set about writing a steamy novel called Historia de duobus amantibus (The tale of two lovers).

The epitolary novel (one whose story is told via a series of letters between characters) is set in SIena. It’s about a married woman named Lucretia and Euryalus, a courtier of the Duke of Austria. They fall in love, realize their feeling are mutual, and begin writing erotic letters to each other.

Piccolomini is responsible for the words, but by the time the book was printed, the publisher, Ulrich Zell, also found someone to supply erotic images to go along with it.

Naturally, it became hugely popular (even if someone couldn’t read, they could still enjoy the images, after all).

While the book was set in Siena and written by an Italian priest, one of the remaining copies lies in the National Museum of Scotland (and another at the British Museum). However, it went through many printings.

Piccolomini becomes pope

Years after the novel was written, Piccolomini became a Cardinal. In another interesting turn of events, he served on a papal conclave (the meeting to select the next pope) and nominated himself for the role. No one knows precisely what goes on in these meetings, but it appears to have been a unanimous vote to crown Piccolomini over a wealthy French Cardinal who was also in the running.

The Church made the university-educated, world-traveling, dad-of-at-least-2 pope on September 3, 1458. He even chose the name Pope Pius II. —WTF fun facts

Source: “The Tale of Two Lovers” — National Library of Scotland

WTF Fun Fact 13044 – The History of Pink Lemonade

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The history of lemonade is far older than we would have imagined. The same goes for the history of pink lemonade – which has its origins in the circus of all places.

The origins of lemonade

The first lemonade dates back to 1630s France and was made from sparkling water, lemons, and honey (yum!). In the U.S., that means lemonade goes back to the first immigrants in the 17th century.

The trend of harvesting ice in the 19th century made drinks like lemonade even more popular. And it makes sense that – since traveling circuses date back to around that time – it would be associated with community events.

Where does pink lemonade come from?

According to Smithsonian Magazine (cited below), “The earliest known mention of pink lemonade comes from an 1879 article in West Virginia’s Wheeling Register, explicitly linking the two.”

As for it’s precise origin, we can’t be sure. But it likely started at the circus.

In How the Hot Dog Got its Bun: Accidental Discoveries And Unexpected Inspirations That Shape What We Eat And Drink, author Josh Chetwynd says there are two stories that vie for the the best pink lemonade origin story.

“The first, he says, is a 1912 New York Times obituary for Henry E. Allott , a Chicago native who ran away to the circus in his early teens. Allott is believed to have ‘invented’ pink lemonade after accidentally dropping red-colored cinnamon candies in a vat of traditional lemonade. Adhering to the old circus adage ‘the show must go on,’ Allott simply sold the pink-hued beverage as is.”

That would be nice, but there’s an earlier origin story for the history of pink lemonade that isn’t so sweet. It was recounted by lion tamer George Conklin who “claims his brother Pete Conklin came up with pink lemonade in 1857 while selling lemonade at the circus. Conklin ran out of water and thinking on the fly, grabbed a tub of dirty water in which a performer had just finished wringing out her pink-colored tights. In true circus form, Conklin didn’t miss a beat. He marketed the drink as his new ‘strawberry lemonade,’ and a star was born.” — WTF fun facts

Source: “The Unusual Origins of Pink Lemonade” — Smithsonian Magazine

WTF Fun Fact 13043 – The Whiskey Empire of George Washington

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George Washington spent his post-presidential years running a booming whiskey business. Seemingly not content to retire from working life altogether, at age 65 he decided to into the alcohol trade thanks to the ability to grow rye at Mount Vernon.

George Washington’s whiskey

In 1797, Washington returned to Mount Vernon. When he hired a Scottish plantation manager who had moved to Virginia a few years earlier, the man – James Anderson – noticed that the estate could be used to grow rye as a cover crop.

Rye not being a very popular grain for eating, Anderson pitched the idea of turning it into whiskey. Washington ran the idea past a friend who was a rum maker and presumably got the thumbs up.

Using just two stills, Anderson’s first whiskey was so appealing to Washington that he greenlit the construction of a full distillery with five stills.

According to Smithsonian Magazine (cited below), by 1799, Washington’s distillery was the largest in the U.S. and “produced 11,000 gallons of clear, un-aged whiskey, which Washington sold for a total of $1,800 ($120,000 by today’s standards).”

What happened to Washington’s whiskey empire?

Of course, Washington also died in 1799, and he left the distillery to his nephew. Lawrence Lewis wasn’t able to keep things running. And when a fire destroyed the operation in 1814, he didn’t have it rebuilt,

The state of Virginia purchased the site of the former distillery in the 1930s. But turning it back into an alcohol producer was thwarted by Prohibition and the Depression.

It wasn’t until 1997 that archaeologists found the site of the distillery. They used imaging technology to reconstruct what it would have looked like.

Smithsonian notes that “after securing key funding from the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States (DISCUS) in 2001, a group of archaeologists, historians, and distillers …carefully searched records for hints about how the distillery functioned on an industrial level…” And by 2007, the distillery was reconstructed and opened to the public.

Today, they do distillation twice a year, just as Anderson did for Washington. And they also make peach brandy. — WTF fun facts

Source: “Long Before Jack Daniels, George Washington Was a Whiskey Tycoon” — Smithsonian Magazine

WTF Fun Fact 13042 – The World’s Oldest Tattoos

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Right now, the world’s oldest tattoos date to around 3300 BCE. But dating isn’t an exact science. In addition, one tattooed body was found in the deserts of Egypt, while the other was encased in ice in the Alps. While that makes it harder to piece apart the details, it does tell us that tattooing is at least 5000 years old – and by that time, it was already being practiced on two continents!

The first discovery of the oldest tattoo

We know that the ancient Greeks and Romans used tattoos to brand enslaved people or signal a person of a particular profession (like prostitutes). But the practice appears to have been initially related to art, medicine, or spirituality. Without more evidence, we can only guess.

The “Iceman” known as Ötzi was discovered naturally mummified by ice in 1991 in the Alps between Austria and Italy. He was found with many wounds and is believed to have been murdered.

For two decades, Ötzi was our oldest example of a person with a tattoo. He had 61 of them, divided into 19 groups of black parallel lines grouped together. The tattoos can be found along his lumbar, behind his right knee, right ankle, along his legs, and on his left wrist. The “ink” appears to have been made from fire ash.

Since age and strain-induced degeneration have been discovered in those same areas, some researchers believe the tattoos were for healing purposes. Nearly half are located along what is currently known as acupuncture lines. However, the body dates to 2000 years before the use of this practice in China.

While Ötzi is fascinating, he may no longer be the oldest tattooed body.

Pushing back the dates for the world’s oldest tattoos

In 2018, two mummies dating from around the same time as Ötzi were found with tattoos – on a different continent. These mummies were in Egypt, and it took years for researchers to even notice the tattoos.

Multispectral techniques were used to reveal these tattoos – and at least one of the bodies may be older than Ötzi’s.

The British Museum’s blog notes that a male mummy known as “Gebelein Man A,” had a tattoo on his bicep:

“Dark smudges on his arm, appearing as faint markings under natural light, had remained unexamined. Infrared photography recently revealed that these smudges were in fact tattoos of two slightly overlapping horned animals. The horned animals have been tentatively identified as a wild bull (long tail, elaborate horns) and a Barbary sheep (curving horns, humped shoulder). Both animals are well known in Predynastic Egyptian art. The designs are not superficial and have been applied to the dermis layer of the skin, the pigment was carbon-based, possibly some kind of soot.“

A female mummy from a few hundred years later also had tattoos. That means it was not just a practice among men. It turns out the world’s oldest tattoos are a puzzle for the ages.

As Open Culture (cited below) notes: “In Middle Kingdom tattooing practices, a series of marks seemed to provide protection, especially in fertility and childbirth rites, functioning as permanent amulets or a kind of practical magic…And it does seem clear that tattooing was important to ancient, Predynastic men and women, maybe for similar reasons.” — WTF fun facts

Source: “The Oldest Tattoos Ever Discovered on an Egyptian Mummy Date Back 5,000 Years” — Open Culture

WTF Fun Fact 13041 – Oldest Mummy Ever Found

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You might be surprised to know that the oldest mummy ever found does not come from Egypt. The practice of mummification likely began in Chile.

The first mummies

The Chinchorro people settled in the bays of the Atacama Desert of present-day Chile around 7,000 BCE. All evidence points to these people developing a mummification technique around 5000 BCE. That’s two millennia before the the first ancient Egyptian mummies.

According to CNN (cited below), the oldest mummies ever found are currently kept the San Miguel de Azapa Archaeological Museum in the village of San Miguel de Azapa. The museum has 300 specimens but only displays around 10% of the collection to the public.

“It’s a very sacred collection because the majority of the items are related to the ceremony of death,” Mariela Santos, the museum curator and conservationist told CNN.

The first mummies

In Chile, the first mummies were babies and fetuses. And the area developed at least five separate mummification processes. However, 2 (black and red mummies) are the most common.

“Making the black mummies involved taking the dead person’s body completely apart, treating it and then reassembling it, skin and all. The red ones were created by making small incisions to remove internal organs and then drying the body cavity. Both were typically stuffed with sticks and reeds (to fill out the forms), adorned with wigs, and masked with clay over the faces — the former painted in manganese and the latter in ochre.”

Recognition for the site of the oldest mummy ever found

Chile’s Chinchorro sites were declared UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 2021. This makes it more popular with tourists and gives the area more resources to preserve their mummies. It should also put Chile on the map as far as the history of mummification is concerned. However, an influx of tourists can also hurt local communities.

Athropologist Bernardo Arriaza has studied the Chinchorro mummies and is an advocate for the site getting the attention it deserves.

“What we’re trying to show is that we not only have the oldest evidence of intentional mummification, but it was done by pre-ceramic hunter-gatherer people in a pristine environment that remains today,” he told CNN. — WTF fun facts

Source: “Surprise! The world’s oldest mummies are not in Egypt” — CNN

WTF Fun Fact 13040 – The Oldest Toothpaste

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We tend to think of ancient people as having horrible tooth decay. In fact, it’s often referred to went talking about their shorter lifespans. But it turns out that toothpaste (and teeth cleaning generally) is an ancient concept. The oldest toothpaste comes from Egypt.

Ancient toothpaste

Dental hygiene has always been of relative importance. People who lived thousands of years ago may not have had twice-yearly dental cleanings, but they did have bristled toothbrushes and toothpaste.

According to Open Culture (cited below): “not only did ancient people use toothbrushes, but it is believed that ‘Egyptians… started using a paste to clean their teeth around 5000 BC,’ even before toothbrushes were invented.”

The world’s oldest toothpaste recipe

According to The Telegraph, in 2003, the oldest toothpaste formula (so far) was found at a Viennese museum. It dates from the 4th century AD. The Egyptian papyrus (which is written in Greek) “describes a ‘powder for white and perfect teeth’ that, when mixed with saliva, makes a ‘clean tooth paste.'”

It requires:
1 drachma of rock salt (about one-hundredth of an ounce)
2 drachmas of mint
1 drachma of dried iris flower
20 grains of pepper

The ingredients are to be crushed and mixed together.

Dental hygiene surprises

Rock salt, mint, and pepper are probably not a recipe for the most pleasant experience for your gums, but it would be refreshing.

Once we get into the middle ages, we start to see things like charms and amulets used for dental health – so at least ancient Egyptian toothpaste would remove some germs.

Dental health care is also described in Gilbertus Anglicus’ 13th-century Compendium of Medicine. It advises rubbing teeth with a cloth to remove “corrupt matter.”

It’s pretty clear that people have long understood the importance of dental hygiene for health. — WTF fun facts

Source: “Try the Oldest Known Recipe For Toothpaste: From Ancient Egypt, Circa the 4th Century BC” — Open Culture

WTF Fun Fact 13039 – Alternate Names for the Seven Dwarfs

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The Disney movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is based on an 1812 fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm. But in the original, the dwarfs did not have names. And when Disney decided to make their 1937 film, they went through some interesting alternate names for the seven dwarfs.

Decisions, decisions

According to Disney Diary, “It wasn’t until the 1912 Broadway play “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” that they were given monikers. And the names were not what you think. They were called Blick, Flick, Glick, Pick, Quee, Snick, and Whick.”

Disney didn’t necessarily love those names, so they went through quite a few alternate names for the seven dwarfs until they finally settled on Bashful, Doc, Dopey, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, and Sneezy.

We can’t confirm it, but according to Treasured Family Travels, “It is popularly believed that Walt Disney named the Seven Dwarfs after his own seven staff animators: Carmine Coppola, Ted Sears, Les Clark, Wolfgang Reitherman, Eric Larson, John Lounsbery, and William Cottrell.” Or, at least, he named them after their personality traits.

The Seven Dwarfs’ alternate names

According to Mental Floss (cited below): “Disney and co. went through dozens of names before deciding on the seven we know today.” Some of them include Jumpy, Deafy, Chesty (?!), Hickey (again, ?!), Wheezy, Baldy, Gabby, Tubby, Burpy, and Awful.

Some of those might be a bit too on-the-nose to illustrate in an inoffensive way.

Modern Seven Dwarf Names

Disney Diary notes that modern retellings still change the names of the dwarfs.

“In ‘Mirror Mirror’ with Julia Roberts the dwarfs are named Butcher, Chuckles, Grimm, Grub, Half Pint, Napoleon, and Wolf. In the upcoming “Snow White and the Huntsman,” being released June 1, the names are Beith, Coll, Duir, Gort, Muir, Nion and Quert.”

We may just be biased by childhood fondness, but we think the Disney names are the best.

If you’re bothered by the spelling dwarfs (as opposed to dwarves, you may be interested to know that “dwarves” didn’t become a popular plural until JR Tolkien’s use of the word in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. — WTF fun facts

Source: “Burpy, Hickey, Chesty and Other Alternate Dwarf Names” — Mental Floss

WTF Fun Fact 13038 – Men Spend on Halloween

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Halloween spending continues to rise, with even our furry friends getting increasingly involved. Of course, they’re not the ones who spend money on the holiday. In fact, the biggest spenders are men. A 2018 National Retail Federation (NRF) survey found men spend on Halloween at higher rates than women.

Halloween spending

According to the most recent NRF Halloween spending report, “Participation in Halloween-related activities will resume to pre-pandemic levels, with 69% of consumers planning to celebrate the holiday this year, up from 65% in 2021 and comparable to 68% in 2019, according to the National Retail Federation’s annual survey conducted by Prosper Insights & Analytics. With the spike in participation, total Halloween spending is expected to reach a record $10.6 billion, exceeding last year’s record of $10.1 billion.”

Consumers plan to spend about $100 a piece on the holiday in 2022. That’s down from an all-time high of $103 last year.

And what are they spending it on? The NRF says “The top ways consumers plan to celebrate include handing out candy (67%), decorating their home or yard (51%), dressing up in costume (47%), carving a pumpkin (44%) and throwing or attending a Halloween party (28%). Similar to last year, one in five plan to dress their pet up in a costume.”

What do men spend on Halloween?

The last time the Halloween spending survey was broken down along gender lines appears to have been 2018. That survey (cited below) found that “Celebrants are planning to spend an average of$87.Although men and women plan to purchase the same festive items, men plan on spending$14 more, on average, than their female counterparts.” They were also more likely to find costume inspiration on social media sites like YouTube.

The costumes may be the factor that pushed men’s spending up. “Women are much more likely than men to celebrate by carving pumpkins and decorating their homes. Men, on the other hand, are significantly more likely to attend a party.” Who doesn’t want to look their best for those Instagram photos? —WTF fun facts

Source: “2018 Halloween shopping behavior” — National Retail Federation