History

Weird history facts all gathered right here under our history category.  Once you have had your fill of history facts head over to our random fact generator to learn more random factoids!

WTF Fun Fact 13056 – Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin

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Did you know a woman was elected to Congress before women in the U.S. even had the right to vote? Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin was elected to represent the state of Montana in 1916. That was four years before the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote.

Who was Jeannette Rankin?

Born in 1880 near Missoula, Montana (then a territory), Rankin was born to a prosperous rancher who had emigrated from Canada.

Jeannette Rankin was educated at what was then called Montana State University in Missoula (now known as the University of Montana). She graduated in 1902 with a biology degree, became a teacher, and then an apprentice to a seamstress.

After a trip to San Francisco in 1904, Rankin started volunteering and developed an interest in social work. She graduated from the New York School of Philanthropy (now called the Columbia University School of Social Work) in 1909. Then she moved to Spokane, Washington to take a job helping children in need.

Rankin served two nonconsecutive terms in the House during World War I and II but was known for voting against America’s entry into those wars. Her platform largely centered around expanding women’s voting rights, ensuring better working conditions for American laborers, and improving access to healthcare for women and children.

In 1917, when she took office, she said, “I may be the first woman member of Congress. But I won’t be the last.”

Jeannette Rankin’s road to Congress

Rankin then traveled around the country, doing everything from organizing immigrant laborers after the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory to supporting nationwide suffrage for women.

She played one of the most significant roles in helping women gain the right to vote in Montana and then decided to run for one of Montana’s at-large House seats in 1916. While there was no national right to suffrage for women at the time, many Western states had passed their own laws.

When Rankin ran for office, she was one of many women who ran that year but the only female winner. In Kansas, over 300 women ran for office. In her own state, Rankin’s campaign was entirely ignored by the local press.

According to her webpage on the U.S. House of Representatives website (cited below), she won the Republic primary by more than 7000 votes. “Her platform supported several prominent issues during the Progressive Era—including nationwide suffrage, child welfare legislation, and the prohibition of alcohol.“

“Because Montana was so sparsely populated, election results trickled in over three days. But in early November 1916, news arrived that Rankin had become the first woman in American history to win a seat in Congress. Although she trailed the frontrunner, Democratic Representative John Morgan Evans, by 7,600 votes, Rankin secured the second At-Large seat by topping the third-place candidate—another Democrat—by 6,000 votes.”

Not surprisingly, as the first female member of Congress, she was held to different standards, often being asked about her clothing more often than her politics.

But when she was sworn into office, she was greeted with loud applause.

Rankin’s political career

As a pacifist, she was criticized often, despite correspondence from her constituents leaning in favor of the U.S. staying out of WWI. But once the U.S. entered the war, she turned her attention to ensuring troops had what they needed while continuing to fight for national suffrage and workers’ rights in factories.

Redistricting eliminated her at-large House seat in 1917, so she ran for Senate in 1918. However, she lost by 2000 votes.

She continued her service work outside of Congress until 1940, when she challenged an anti-Semitic House Representative for Montana’s western district. She won the primary and then the election, returning to the House with 54% of the vote.

When Jeannette Rankin returned to Congress decades after her first stint, she sat alongside six other women.

However, her second stint was less successful since her pacifism was even less popular during WWII. She did not run for re-election in 1942. At the time of her death in 1973, however, she was considering another House campaign to protest the war in Vietnam. — WTF fun facts

Source: “RANKIN, Jeannette” — U.S. House of Representatives

WTF Fun Fact 13055 – The Original Thanksgiving

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America celebrates Thanksgiving each year on the 4th Thursday of November. And while most of us learn a similar origin story for the holiday in elementary school, that version was largely manufactured for children. The original Thanksgiving in America was a religious holy day. And Puritan immigrants commemorated it by fasting rather than feasting.

The story of the original Thanksgiving

Here’s the gist of what many (but not all) Americans learn as children regarding Thanksgiving: The Pilgrims were persecuted in England and sailed to America to find religious freedom. They were sick and hungry when they landed at Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts. The local Native American Wampanoag tribe helped the Pilgrims plant corn and hunt turkey. To celebrate a successful harvest, they shared a communal meal.

Thanksgiving is also considered a secular holiday in America. While the Pilgrims immigrated for religious reasons, those aren’t really part of the Thanksgiving story (other than the occasional mention that they all said a prayer before their meal).

The real story of Thanksgiving

For some more context into Thanksgiving, it’s important to know that the Pilgrims were a splinter group of Puritans. They were called Separatists and followed the teachings of John Calvin. Calvin taught that Scripture was the only guide to life. The Separatists first tried to go to Holland after leaving England but eventually decided to leave Europe altogether and set out for what Europeans called “the New World.”

On the way to their ship from Holland, the Separatists stopped in Plymouth, England, for supplies. The Mayflower carried them to the shores of North America, where they did struggle to survive on what they called Plimoth Plantation.

There were multiple small groups of Separatist immigrants, and each established its own church with its own pastor. Only one church has records of any harvest-time feast in 1636. We don’t have any other records from these early immigrants, so the story of Thanksgiving is entirely concocted from later stories.

Even 100 years later, there are some vague references to harvest-time feasts to celebrate American military battles. But none that refer to Native Americans.

A religious holiday of fasting and repentance

The Puritans would practice “public days” in response to things like droughts or other meaningful events. But these days involved reading Scripture, attending church services, and fasting to repent for their sins.

If there were formal 17th-century “Thanksgiving” celebrations, they would have originated from these public days and would not have involved feasting. Public atonement would have been highly religious in nature as well, not a secular holiday.

The Boston Globe (cited below) describes one such public day. In the archives was a record of a January 1697 public day of atonement for the Salem Witch Trials and the execution of innocent women.

If Thanksgiving stemmed from an early Puritan settler tradition, it was likely days like these.

The Boston Globe states, “It may be hard to see a connection between such earnest supplications and our modern Thanksgiving, but it was that Colonial holiday that America’s founders had in mind when they declared national days of thanksgiving.”

The first – but not original – Thanksgiving

In 1777, the Continental Congress announced the first national day of thanksgiving (not yet a formal holiday, so with a lowercase “t”). They instructed the public to give thanks and offer “penitent Confession of their manifold Sins.” It had nothing to do with a meal.

President George Washington declared a national day of thanksgiving on November 26 in honor of the Constitution to thank God “for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed.” His instructions for Americans were to “unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions.” Again, no turkey.

Later, “President John Adams called for national fast days in 1798 and 1799. His proclamation announcing the first ‘day of fasting & humiliation’ was ‘a loud call to repentance and reformation’ in the face of possible war with France. President Madison called for two thanksgiving days, but by 1815 the custom of public days in America had died out.”

Abraham Lincoln created the enduring legend of the Native Americans and Pilgrims during the Civil War. He created what we now celebrate as Thanksgiving in 1863, declaring it a federal holiday. He also linked the day to the harvest, shifting the focus to food as a means of celebrating national unity. —WTF fun facts

Source: “The opposite of Thanksgiving” — The Boston Globe
* Note: While containing factual info, this was printed in the opinion section. A scholarly article on the same topic is available in the journal Gastronomica but is partly behind a paywall.

WTF Fun Fact 13054 – Longest Surgery Ever Performed

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The longest surgical procedure in history took place in 2001 and lasted 103 hours. It took place in Singapore, and the team separated a pair of conjoined twin sisters from Nepal who were born sharing a brain cavity. The girls were infants at the time of surgery and lived to be 7 years old.

The longest surgery ever performed

Ganga and Jamuna Shrestha were born in Nepal. They were conjoined twins who had no real chance at life without a wildly expensive surgery that required a team of highly skilled surgeons.

The team included 16 doctors – from neurologists to plastic surgeons – who worked around the clock and who doubted that the operation could be entirely successful.

An infant craniopagus

The surgery on the infant girls from Khalanga, a mountain village in Nepal is called a craniopagus and before that day, the longest surgery was around 30 hours.

The girls’ actual separation took place 88 hours into the surgery. The whole event lasted 52 hours longer than expected and surgeons had to take short naps in shifts in order to stay alert throughout the procedure.

According the The Guardian (cited below): “Claire Ang, one of the anaesthetists, said the team went through a whole gamut of emotions.

‘It varied from hysterical to euphoric and involved light-headedness, frustration and mood swings – from being very emotional to not caring at all and just wanting to sleep,’ she said.”

The paper also noted that the operation was made possible by advanced computer technology.

“The imaging software combines a series of scans of the babies’ brains to build a 3-D virtual model. The Singapore surgeons spent six months studying the brains and rehearsing. Wearing 3-D glasses, they manipulated the image by moving their hands, without buttons, keyboard or mouse.”

Survival

The girls did survive the surgery. Sadly, Ganga died of a chest infection at age 7. Jamuna is still alive.

—WTF fun facts

Source: “Nepalese babies survive 103-hour operation” — The Guardian

WTF Fun Fact 13050 – The Cost of Daylight Savings Time

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While it may be nice to “fall back” in November and get an extra hour of sleep (if you’re lucky), the cost of daylight savings time on our health is high. Is it worth it? Most Americans don’t think so.

(Also, it’s technically called daylight saving time, with no “s” at the end.)

The high cost of daylight savings time

CBS News (cited below) gathered studies that showed that daylight savings time has been linked to
– More heart attacks and strokes
– More car crashes
– More workplace injuries
– More deer strikes
– More headaches
– More depressive episodes,
– Lower SAT scores

And there are multiple studies to show these connections. It’s just not beneficial to our health to mess around with our biological clocks.

Where did the idea of daylight saving come from?

Most people believe it was Ben Franklin who came up with the idea of daylight saving. But it wasn’t. You can “thank” an entomologist from New Zealand named George Vernon Hudson for the time changes. Believe it or not, he was interested in having more daylight for hunting bugs and originally suggested a 2-hour time change.

According to National Geographic:

“Seven years later, British builder William Willett (the great-great grandfather of Coldplay frontman Chris Martin) independently hit on the idea while out horseback riding. He proposed it to England’s Parliament as a way to prevent the nation from wasting daylight. His idea was championed by Winston Churchill and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle—but was initially rejected by the British government.”

The idea came around again in 1916 when the Germans decided to pick up Britain’s idea in order to save energy.

In 1916, two years into World War I, the German government started brainstorming ways to save energy. Once they did, other countries saw the potential energy-saving benefits. In 1918, the US Congress enacted the first daylight savings law (which also formally defined US time zones as well).

While it did save energy in a coal-powered world, the US House of Representatives is trying to pass a law to end daylight saving. It’s up to the Senate to take a look at the bill now. — WTF fun facts

Source: “Not-so-fun facts about Daylight Saving Time” — CBS News

WTF Fun Fact 13048 – The Shakespeare Your Mom Joke

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Did “yo momma” jokes originate with Shakespeare? Well, no. Insulting people’s mothers probably goes back much further, but the Shakespeare Your Mom joke is still one of our best and earliest examples.

Shakespeare’s humor

There’s no doubt that The Bard had some epic insults in his works. For example, in Act 2, Scene 2 of King Lear one character calls another a “base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy worsted-stocking knave; a lily-liver’d, action-taking, whoreson, glass-gazing, superserviceable, finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pandar, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch; one whom I will beat into clamorous whining if thou deniest the least syllable of thy addition.”

It’s overkill, but it’s funny.

The Shakespeares Your Mom joke

As for the early “yo momma” joke, that comes from Act 4, Scene 2 of Titus Andronicus. Chiron and Demetrius are insulting Aaron, who has slept with their mother.

Demetrius: “Villain, what hast thou done?”
Aaron: “That which thou canst not undo.”
Chiron: “Thou hast undone our mother.”
Aaron: “Villain, I have done thy mother.”

It actually gets pretty grim after that when the brothers are baked in a pie and served to that same mother. Shakespeare didn’t shy away from violence or other eye-popping acts.

“Yo momma” jokes are at least 3500 years old. But we don’t necessarily expect to see them in Shakespeare. And that’s part of what makes it all so funny.

People love their mom’s so much that insulting them is just about the worst thing someone can say.

Shakespeare’s linguistic legacy

The Shakespeare mom joke was far from his only legacy. Shakespeare also left us with some common phrases that have nothing to do with one’s mother, such as:

– “For goodness sake” –Henry VIII

– “Neither here nor there” – Othello

– “A wild goose chase” – Romeo and Juliet

– “Not slept one wink” –Cymbeline

–“Send him packing” –Henry IV

– “Vanish into thin air” – Othello

— WTF fun facts

Source: “William Shakespeare’s 450th birthday: The five best insults ever dished out by the Bard” — The Independent

WTF Fun Fact 13047 – Robert Liston’s Infamous Surgery

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Robert Liston was a respected 19th-century surgeon. In fact, surgical instruments have been named in his honor. And while he might have taken great pride in amputating limbs as fast as possible, the goal was to save the patient from prolonged pain. There were no anesthetics back in that day. The faster the surgery was over, the better. But one amputation went horribly awry, killing 3 people.

The surgery with a 300% fatality rate

While there’s a chance it may be an apocryphal story, Liston’s most infamous amputation involved 3 fatalities. During a leg amputation, he cut so fast that he severed the fingers of his surgical assistant. And while he was switching instruments, he slashed the white coat of a doctor observing nearby.

Many patients died during amputations in the 19th century, so one fatality could be expected. However, the assistant ended up dying of a blood infection. To top it off, the man whose coat he had slashed wasn’t physically injured but ended up dying of shock because he thought he had been stabbed.

That makes this amputation the only one with a 300% fatality rate.

Robert Liston, showman

Liston was a show-off, but he was also a great surgeon. He also aided in the introduction of ether as an anesthetic.

During one procedure that lasted only 25 seconds, he gave the patient ether, severed the limb, and when the patient came to he asked when the surgery would take place. This greatly impressed the crowd. (In those days, surgeries took place in operating theaters with many other physicians watching.)

Robert Liston died in a sailing accident not long after that and didn’t get to see the evolution of anesthetics. However, he was remembered not only for being “the fastest knife of the West End” but for his willingness to take on the cases that other doctors would not. —WTF fun facts

Source: “‘Time Me, Gentlemen’: The Fastest Surgeon of the 19th Century” — The Atlantic

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 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 13037 – The First Trick or Treat

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According to CBC News (cited below): “While the act of going door-to-door in costume in exchange for something sweet to eat has been around since the Middle Ages, it wasn’t until sometime in the last century that people started saying ‘trick or treat.'” Apparently, the very first trick-or-treat took place in Alberta, Canada.

The first trick or treat

Nick Rogers, who teaches history at York University in Toronto and wrote Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night, the earliest use of the phase can be traced to a newspaper clipping from 1927. On November 3rd of that year, The Blackie Timesof Blackie, Alberta, noted that:

Halloween gave an opportunity to the young to use up some of their surplus energy which was freely taken advantage of. Threshing outfits, wagons, old autos, barrels, etc., decorated the front streets and buildings were overturned, while front and back doors were invaded and inmates held up by the awful word “Trick or Treat” from the youthful invaders who carried…

Prior to this, historians believed the first use of the phrase occurred in 1947.

Trying to end Halloween fun

The holiday has long been associated with a bit of misbehavior, especially among older kids. Throughout the 20th century, North Americans have long tried to get ahold of Halloween hooliganism, even trying to replace the holiday with a more wholesome one.

CBC noted that “[i]n July 1950, the U.S. Senate recommended that Halloween be renamed ‘Youth Honor Day,’ andyoung adults and teenagers would pledge good behaviour on Halloween and try totone down the holiday.”

It never really took off.

Rodgers explained that while Halloween is something wild today, going door to door at this time of year wasn’t always associate with tricks or treats.

“It goes right back to Hallow Mass to the original Christian holiday of honouring the dead,” Rodgers said. “Back thenit was called ‘souling,’ where people would collect food from neighbours’ homes in exchange for praying for their dead relatives. ‘The idea being that, if you prayed hard enough, you would help them get to heaven.'” —WTF fun facts

Source: “Albertans may have been 1st to say ‘trick or treat'” — CBC News

WTF Fun Fact 13036 – The Original Potato Jack-o-lantern

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We wouldn’t dream of carving anything other than a pumpkin on Halloween. But the carving tradition actually originated in Ireland with the potato jack-o-lantern.

Stingy Jack and the origins of the potato jack-o-lantern

The history of jack-lanterns on Halloween originates with an Irish folktale about a man named Stingy Jack from centuries ago.

According to History.com (cited below):

“According to the story, Stingy Jack invited the Devil to have a drink with him. True to his name, Stingy Jack didn’t want to pay for his drink, so he convinced the Devil to turn himself into a coin that Jack could use to buy their drinks. Once the Devil did so, Jack decided to keep the money and put it into his pocket next to a silver cross, which prevented the Devil from changing back into his original form. Jack eventually freed the Devil, under the condition that he would not bother Jack for one year and that, should Jack die, he would not claim his soul. The next year, Jack again tricked the Devil into climbing into a tree to pick a piece of fruit. While he was up in the tree, Jack carved a sign of the cross into the tree’s bark so that the Devil could not come down until the Devil promised Jack not to bother him for ten more years.”

Jack sounds pretty savvy, but the story gets even more convoluted.

Jack of the Lantern

When Jack died, the folktale says that God refused to let him into heaven because of his sneaky deeds. The Devil didn’t want him either. So, “[h]e sent Jack off into the dark night with only a burning coal to light his way. Jack put the coal into a carved-out turnip and has been roaming the Earth with ever since.”

That’s really not a story we could have guessed.

Nevertheless, Jack’s glowing figure was eventually referred to by the Irish as “Jack of the Lantern” and later simplified to “Jack O’Lantern.”

The spooky tradition of carving one’s own Jack-o-lantern started in Ireland and Scotland, where potatoes and turnips were plentiful. (Pumpkins are native to South America, so there were no pumpkins in Europe before colonization.)

Even creepier is England’s use of beets (which would look bloody and bright!).

The tradition came to America with immigrants, who realized the pumpkins made an even better vessel for Jack’s face. —WTF fun facts

Source: “How Jack O’Lanterns Originated in Irish Myth” — History.com

WTF Fun Fact 13034 – The Ronald McNair Library Story

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Google sees quite a few searches for the Ronald McNair library story. And this one is true.

Ronald McNair library story

In 1959, a nine-year-old Black child named Ronald McNair walked into a segregated library to check out a calculus book. The librarian threatened to call the police if he didn’t leave. The young aspiring astronaut waited while the librarian called the police and his parents. It appears he was eventually allowed to check out the book after the officer asked the librarian why she wouldn’t just give him the books.

Ronald McNair, astronaut

That same boy would go on to get a Ph.D. from MIT and earn 4 honorary doctorates. A NASA program supported by Star Trek actress Nichelle Nichols designed to attract more people of color recruited McNair, and his dreams of becoming an astronaut came true. He was the second African American to go to space.

Sadly, one of his missions was aboard the space shuttle Challenger, which famously disintegrated 73 seconds after takeoff, killing its whole crew.

His original burial place was Rest Lawn Memorial Park in his hometown of Lake City, South Carolina. The city moved to the city’s new Ronald E. McNair Memorial Park in 2004.

And that’s not the only site people named in his honor. The library that tried to refuse him that calculus book as a boy is now named after him as well – it’s called the Ronald McNair Life History Center.

Other interesting facts about Ronald McNair

McNair was more than a hometown hero and NASA trailblazer. He was a nationally-recognized laser physicist, a 5th-degree black belt in karate, the first member of the Bahá’í Faith to go to space, and a talented saxophonist.

McNair also has a crater on the moon and a building at MIT named after him. He also has two dozen U.S. K-12 schools named after him. — WTF fun facts

Source: “‘Black in Space’ Looks at Final Frontier of Civil Rights” — Snopes

WTF Fun Fact 13033 – The Proposed U.S. Referendum on War

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The request for a referendum on war has come up many times since WWI. But one of the more memorable proposals of a U.S. referendum on war came from a group of Nebraskans in 1916 who largely wanted to encourage either peace or isolationism. At the very least, they wanted the people who voted for war to walk to the walk.

A referendum on war

A 1987 article in the NYT (cited below) listed some of the amendments citizens have proposed over the years. Among them was one from a group of Nebraskans that tends to recirculate any time the U.S. appears to be about to engage in a war effort.

“The petition, sent to Washington by a group of Nebraska residents in 1916, proposed an amendment requiring a national referendum before Congress could declare war. To dissuade votes for war, the petition proposed that all those who voted in favor of the United States entering World War I be willing to enlist.”

The petition got so many signatures in the petitioner’s town that the US Archives noted that he had to add extra pieces of paper to accommodate them all.

The Ludlow Amendment

The 1916 attempt to give citizens the power to declare war wasn’t the only attempt.

The Ludlow Amendment was a constitutional amendment proposed in 1938 by Indiana Representative Louis Ludlow. According to the US House of Representatives Archives, it “called for a national referendum before the United States could enter a war, except in cases of invasion or attack on U.S. soil.” This would have removed the power to declare war from Congress in most cases.

A poll found that many people favored this amendment, but the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor changed everything. “On December 8, the House of Representatives voted 388 to 1 to approve President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s request to declare war on Japan, with the President signing the declaration later that day. On December 11, Congress approved war resolutions against Germany and Italy, with Roosevelt also signing them the day they were passed.” (Source)

— WTF fun facts

Source: “WASHINTON TALK; Letters to Congress: Amend the Constitution? Let Us Count the Ways” — NY Times Archives

WTF Fun Fact 13030 – Mary Really Did Have a Little Lamb

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Do you remember the children’s nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb”? Well, it turns out that it was based on a real little girl named Mary Sawyer.

Mary and her little lamb

Around 1816, a girl named Mary Sawyer from Sterling, Massachusetts headed off to school one day. And as you may have guessed by now, her lamb followed her.

There was even a book published in 1928 about that fateful day, citing all of the evidence.

It turns out that Mary adopted the little lamb after it had been rejected by its mother. It was near death, and Mary’s father refused to let it in the house so she could nurse it back to health. But Mary didn’t relent. She went and asked her mother, who allowed the lamb inside.

The lamb became Mary’s pet. She gave it milk and kept it warm, and it eventually responded to her calls and followed her everywhere.

Mary’s lamb goes to school

The story recounted by Mary is that she and her brother decided to take the lamb to school one day. (And, yes, it was against the rules). They wrapped it in a blanket but when it let out a bleat, the jig was up. She had to take it home at lunchtime.

As an old woman, Mary Sawyer is said to have recounted the story to a man named John Roulstone, who wrote the nursery rhyme. However, according to the New England Historical Society (cited below): “Sarah Josepha Hale had written and published Mary’s Lamb in 1830. She included it in a little book, book, Poems for Our Children. Hale’s version of Mary Had a Little  Lamb had three additional stanzas that added a moral lesson to the tale.” In addition, there’s no written evidence that Roulstone wrote the nursery rhyme for Mary.

The controversy over a nursery rhyme

The reason there is an argument over who really wrote the nursery rhyme had to do with selling stockings knitted from the lamb’s wool.

“Mary’s mother made some stockings out of the lamb’s wool for Mary, and she treasured them. Then, when Mary was an old woman living in Somerville, Mass., preservationists started raising money to save the Old South Meeting House. Mary donated the wool from her stockings to the fundraising efforts. Volunteers picked apart the stockings and attached the wool to cards that said, ‘Knitted wool from the first fleece of Mary’s Little Lamb.’ They sold like hotcakes.”

While we still don’t know exactly who wrote the nursery rhyme first. But we know it had meaning because it was linked to the fundraising effort for the Meeting House. — WTF fun facts

Source: “Mary Had a Little Lamb – Yes, There Was a Mary and She Did Have a Little Lamb” — New England Historical Society