I bet you didnt know that

MonkieSocks

Here are some facts about the year 1500:


They used to use urine to tan animal skins, so families used to all peein 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"
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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.
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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 of flowers to hide the body odour.

Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.
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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!"
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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."
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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 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.

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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.
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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...

Chancer3001

The yearly bath makes no sense.

If they had the tub why wouldn't they bathe more often

Surely the tub is the difficult part to procure. Heating water is easy

New Home

Not if you have to go to the local fountain or stream to get it, then heat it, and you have to fill a tub that's, what, 80 litres?

Chancer3001

Fourier wrote: »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFrHWLHPQrg

That's pretty much exactly what I was thinking. Bravo

Buford T. Justice XIX

New Home wrote: »

Not if you have to go to the local fountain or stream to get it, then heat it, and you have to fill a tub that's, what, 80 litres?

And you would have to fetch the wood for the fire as well before you started.

Chancer3001

New Home wrote: »

Not if you have to go to the local fountain or stream to get it, then heat it, and you have to fill a tub that's, what, 80 litres?

I'm sure there's a bit of work involved. But 5 or 6 big buckets from the nearest water source would be grand. Pribabaly only have to boil one buckets worth to make it warm

Chancer3001

Buford T. Justice V wrote: »

And you would have to fetch the wood for the fire as well before you started.

Well yeah. But they generally had a fire going every single day anyways. Not just for bath day . Fire was there. Heat a pot of water over it

New Home

Buford T. Justice V wrote: »

And you would have to fetch the wood for the fire as well before you started.

Or have enough money for buying the coal.

Chancer3001 wrote: »

Well yeah. But they generally had a fire going every single day anyways. Not just for bath day . Fire was there. Heat a pot of water over it

A large pot of water is 3 or 4 litres, a bucket is 4-6. Repeat 20 times at least.
For the poorest, the fire would've been kept mostly for cooking and therefore at a bare minimum, heating was a luxury few could afford.

Ted_YNWA

New Home wrote:

Not if you have to go to the local fountain or stream to get it, then heat it, and you have to fill a tub that's, what, 80 litres?

And it's a 6 mile walk to get it.

Uphill in both directions.

New Home

Chancer3001 wrote: »

I'm sure there's a bit of work involved. But 5 or 6 big buckets from the nearest water source would be grand. Pribabaly only have to boil one buckets worth to make it warm

If you have one part of boiling water and add two parts of cold water you get water that's approx. 33 degrees Celsius, less than body temperature, and therefore it would be perceived as barely lukewarm.

New Home

Ted_YNWA wrote: »

And it's a 6 mile walk to get it.

Uphill in both directions.

You forgot about the snow...

Oh, wait...

Water John

Having grown up in a rural house without a washing machine, I remember wash day (clothes). Large fire going that day, boiling a big pots of water.

Chancer3001

New Home wrote: »

If you have one part of boiling water and add two parts of cold water you get water that's approx. 33 degrees Celsius, less than body temperature, and therefore it would be perceived as barely lukewarm.

Pretty sure swimming pools are only around 28. 33 be grand

New Home

KERSPLAT!

Water John wrote: »

Having grown up in a rural house without a washing machine, I remember wash day (clothes). Large fire going that day, boiling a big pots of water.

Fetch the Water John

gozunda

Ted_YNWA wrote: »

And it's a 6 mile walk to get it.

Uphill in both directions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgbEVDi8Zdc

As to the joys and dangers of fetching water forward to 26:00

Professor Moriarty

Chancer3001 wrote: »

Pretty sure swimming pools are only around 28. 33 be grand

Peaches are cooking on trees in Australia at the moment due to temperatures reaching 45 degrees.

quickbeam

Maybe this is common knowledge but it’s new to me...

How to work out what a binary number is in decimal:

Starting from the right hand number assign it a 1. Then the one to the left of it double that at 2. Then the one to the left of that double again at 4, etc.

Then everywhere you have a 1 you add the assigned number to it and everywhere you have a 0 you don’t.

So: 1100100 = 64+32+0+0+4+0+0 = 100.

Deebles McBeebles

01000111 01101111 00100000 01101111 01101110 00100000 01111001 01100001 00100000 01100111 01101111 01101111 01100100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01101110 01100111

SuperS54

"Go on ya good thing", apparently

01010011 01101000 01100101 00100000 01110011 01100101 01101100 01101100 01110011 00100000 01110011 01100101 01100001 00100000 01110011 01101000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01110011 00100000 01101111 01101110 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01110011 01100101 01100001 01110011 01101000 01101111 01110010 01100101 00100000

rgmmg

Am sure this may have been covered elsewhere but, prior to the French Revolution, the Ace was the lowest value card in a deck of cards i.e. 1. Post the Revolution, the common man was seen as above Royalty, so the lowly Ace was re-ranked to be higher than the King.

Realt Dearg Sec

rgmmg wrote: »

Am sure this may have been covered elsewhere but, prior to the French Revolution, the Ace was the lowest value card in a deck of cards i.e. 1. Post the Revolution, the common man was seen as above Royalty, so the lowly Ace was re-ranked to be higher than the King.

I was reading up on this lately and it's kind of a half-truth. Traditionally the ace was a 1, but there are games dating back well before the revolution in which aces were high. What's more likely is that this practice became aligned with political beliefs, as reflected in the proliferation of artworks that venerated the ace and so on. So the rule change was first, the idea that it was a clever reflection of political transformations came second.

Apparently picture cards were "deposed" after the revolution: new decks at the time still had picture cards but they no longer possessed crowns and were instead now allegorical figures for liberty equality and fraternity. When Napoleon became emporer, and royalty was back on the menu, this was reversed, with new picture cards that were reflective of contemporary royalty. Eventually people's preference for medieaval designs won out, though, so this brief transformation of cards ended up with them looking as they always had done.

mzungu

Above is the Irukandji jellyfish (found on the coast of Queensland, Australia) with an adult size being roughly a cubic centimetre, they are both the smallest and one of the most venomous jellyfish in the world. Unlike most jellyfish, which have stingers only on their tentacles, the Irukandji also has stingers on its bell. Biologists have yet to discover the purpose of this unique characteristic. The hypothesis is that the feature enables the jellyfish to be more likely to catch its prey of small fish.

If a human is stung, they get what is known as Irukandji syndrome. It is rarely fatal, but always requires hospitalisation. Symptoms include muscle cramps in the arms and legs, severe pain in the back and kidneys, a burning sensation of the skin and face, headaches, nausea, restlessness, sweating, vomiting and an increase in heart rate and blood pressure etc.


Above is a Malo kingi (venomous species of Irukandji) in a clear plastic vial.

Lorelli!

Maybe this is well known but David Bowie helped bring down the Berlin Wall, sort of. It's said he was a catalyst.

He held an open concert in 1987 in West Germany near the wall. Thousands of East Berliners were listening from the other side. Before he sang Heroes (which was written about a couple standing at the wall), he gave a shout out and said 'we send our wishes to all our friends who are on the other side of the wall' which was met with cheers.

After he performed Heroes, the East Berliners apparently began chanting 'the wall must go' or 'the wall must fall.' Riots began and these were the first in a sequence of riots and protests that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall two years later.

topmanamillion

MonkieSocks wrote: »

Here are some facts about the year 1500:


They used to use urine to tan animal skins, so families used to all peein 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.
______________________________________________

While some of the others are dubious at best this one stood out to me as a myth.

The expression piss-poor is recent and has nothing to do with tanning. The current state of research suggests that it may have been invented during the Second World War, because the first examples in print date from 1946. Though it is still classed as low slang by dictionaries, its mildly unpleasant associations have become blunted by time and familiarity.

The origin is straightforward. Piss began to be attached to other words during the twentieth century to intensify their meaning. Ezra Pound invented piss-rotten in 1940 (distasteful or unpleasant, the first example on record) and we’ve since had piss-easy (very easy), piss-weak (cowardly or pathetic), piss-elegant (affectedly refined, pretentious), piss-awful (very unpleasant) and other forms.

Capt'n Midnight

mzungu wrote: »

Above is the Irukandji jellyfish (found on the coast of Queensland, Australia)

“Describing his experience with the sting of an extremely toxic jellyfish, he did something you don't often see a scientist do: he shivered.”
― Bill Bryson, In a Sunburned Country

MonkieSocks

topmanamillion wrote: »

While some of the others are dubious at best this one stood out to me as a myth.

The expression piss-poor is recent and has nothing to do with tanning. The current state of research suggests that it may have been invented during the Second World War, because the first examples in print date from 1946. Though it is still classed as low slang by dictionaries, its mildly unpleasant associations have become blunted by time and familiarity.

The origin is straightforward. Piss began to be attached to other words during the twentieth century to intensify their meaning. Ezra Pound invented piss-rotten in 1940 (distasteful or unpleasant, the first example on record) and we’ve since had piss-easy (very easy), piss-weak (cowardly or pathetic), piss-elegant (affectedly refined, pretentious), piss-awful (very unpleasant) and other forms.

Well Done

New Home

More here.

retalivity

Only 9% of the population of China hold passports.

fxotoole

New Home wrote: »

More here.

Dogs only have 2 colour cones. They’re dichromatic.

4068ac1elhodqr

fxotoole wrote: »

Dogs only have 2 colour cones. They’re dichromatic.

Artic foxes can see or sense magnetic fields when judging distances and exact locations of their prey under snow. Yes, they mainly use sound to detect (before jumping and pouncing on the snow burried prey), but magnetic sensing, is also used for exact pin-point accuracy.

There was a blind chap (alex levitt) on stan lee's superhuman tv shows that when blindfolded in a dark room is able to 'view' items with accuracy.

Of course it was just an 'entertainment' show, but if there was any validity, might well have been viewing surrounds like the artic fox.

Some other blind folks train their hearing to detect distances by vocally clicking and calculating spatial areas from the return sound radar. A 'plate reverb' would also suggest hard surfaces, whereas 'hall/studio echo types might suggest more organic matter ahead.

Capt'n Midnight

You want good vision the Mantis Shrimp as way more than 4 colour receptors.

https://theoatmeal.com/comics/mantis_shrimp


They can also see ultraviolet and infrared and well as linear and circular polarised light. And each of it's eyes can estimated distance far more accurately than we can.

New Home

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

You want good vision the Mantis Shrimp as way more than 4 colour receptors.

https://theoatmeal.com/comics/mantis_shrimp


They can also see ultraviolet and infrared and well as linear and circular polarised light. And each of it's eyes can estimated distance far more accurately than we can.

Ah, but we knew that already!

1 and 2.

New Home

New Home

I think they mean during the whole of 2018.

antodeco

retalivity wrote: »

Only 9% of the population of China hold passports.

The other 91% got sore arms from holding them for so long

Capt'n Midnight

New Home wrote: »

Ah, but we knew that already!

1 and 2.

The bits about UV, IR, linear and circular polarisation are new

The ancient Assyrians called them "sea locusts" , locusts were really bad news back then.

Rubecula

New Home wrote: »

was he running for his life?

New Home wrote: »

I think they mean during the whole of 2018.

I think it must be or it wouldn't make sense

SuperS54

New Home wrote: »

Given some of the things we've learned in this thread about Australian wildlife, I think I might manage that too although I'd be screaming as well as naked!

764dak

Two 16-year-olds faced each other in the 1997 Wimbledon Ladies' Singles Semifinals:

Candlemass

Rubecula wrote: »

was he running for his life?



I think it must be or it wouldn't make sense

Most of those picture facts from that site are incorrect, some made up, as i used to see loads of them on Instagram which were total rubbish, just my two cents:)

rgmmg

fxotoole wrote: »

Dogs only have 2 colour cones. They’re dichromatic.

Bulls are colour blind so only react to the flag being waved rather than it being red.

Wibbs

Candlemass wrote: »

Most of those picture facts from that site are incorrect, some made up, as i used to see loads of them on Instagram which were total rubbish, just my two cents:)

I would say a fair few are exaggerated alright C. The Aussie footprints one funny enough, isn't. Well.. It's the largest collection of such ancient footprints on the planet. Handily Aboriginal folks are some of the best trackers on the planet so really helped the researchers out. The trackways have kids and women strolling around, even a one legged man and one guy who was going at some speed, which they estimate wasn't far off olympic sprint speed. Estimate. It makes a good headline and scientists aren't immune to egging up figures to get one.

Professor Moriarty

Wibbs wrote: »

I would say a fair few are exaggerated alright C. The Aussie footprints one funny enough, isn't. Well.. It's the largest collection of such ancient footprints on the planet. Handily Aboriginal folks are some of the best trackers on the planet so really helped the researchers out. The trackways have kids and women strolling around, even a one legged man and one guy who was going at some speed, which they estimate wasn't far off olympic sprint speed. Estimate. It makes a good headline and scientists aren't immune to egging up figures to get one.

Prehistoric women typically had stronger arms than modern elite rowers and some of them had stronger legs than modern ultramarathon runners.

Wibbs

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

Prehistoric women typically had stronger arms than modern elite rowers and some of them had stronger legs than modern ultramarathon runners.

Neandertal women yes, but that's much less the case with Modern Humans P, which those folks were. Their skeletons look the same as current Aboriginal people. They would have been stronger yeah, because of their workload, but not that much stronger. Though I do recall reading that studies of the legs and pelvis of an even earlier ancestor Homo Erectus strongly indicated they were built for speed and could have been faster than modern human olympic runners. One hypothesis goes that part of their food gathering strategy was to get to animal kills more quickly than other scavengers and fast ground speed was their adaptation, or it was a straightforward hunting adaptation. Much like the San Bushmen even today can chase and run down antelopes by wearing them down. Native Americans would run down horses in a similar way.

There are two things about humans that we kinda forget. As far as eye level goes we're one of the tallest animals on the planet and about the tallest predator, and there are very few animals modern humans can't run down over distance. Wild canids like wolves about the only ones we couldn't as they have a similar hunting strategy when it comes to game bigger than themselves. And that's another difference with us, we're one of the very few predators that routinely hunted and took down prey bigger than ourselves. You see that with our pets. Cats are superbly built predators, but they're generally not so daft to go after bigger prey than themselves. On the other hand your average terrier if it sees a deer or cow will figure "fcuk it, let's have a go!" and we're the same. Daft essentially. Though occasionally it didn't go so well...

Professor Moriarty

Wibbs wrote: »

Neandertal women yes, but that's much less the case with Modern Humans P, which those folks were. Their skeletons look the same as current Aboriginal people. They would have been stronger yeah, because of their workload, but not that much stronger. Though I do recall reading that studies of the legs and pelvis of an even earlier ancestor Homo Erectus strongly indicated they were built for speed and could have been faster than modern human olympic runners. One hypothesis goes that part of their food gathering strategy was to get to animal kills more quickly than other scavengers and fast ground speed was their adaptation, or it was a straightforward hunting adaptation. Much like the San Bushmen even today can chase and run down antelopes by wearing them down. Native Americans would run down horses in a similar way.

There are two things about humans that we kinda forget. As far as eye level goes we're one of the tallest animals on the planet and about the tallest predator, and there are very few animals modern humans can't run down over distance. Wild canids like wolves about the only ones we couldn't as they have a similar hunting strategy when it comes to game bigger than themselves. And that's another difference with us, we're one of the very few predators that routinely hunted and took down prey bigger than ourselves. You see that with our pets. Cats are superbly built predators, but they're generally not so daft to go after bigger prey than themselves. On the other hand your average terrier if it sees a deer or cow will figure "fcuk it, let's have a go!" and we're the same. Daft essentially. Though occasionally it didn't go so well...

Actually, it wasn't just Neanderthal women, it was women right up to and including the Iron Age. Basically, they did most of the farming and household chores.There's a good article on it here. It wouldn't be PC for me to mention that modern women might think of doing more housework to tone up. So I won't say it.

Wibbs

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

Actually, it wasn't just Neanderthal women, it was women right up to and including the Iron Age. Basically, they did most of the farming and household chores.

Oh sure P there were certainly physical changes in humans, particularly women when the agricultural revolution took off, but in the context of those trackways in Australia 20,000 years ago that wasn't in play.

Markcheese

A lot of the "strength" came from repeated daily grinding grain.. It took something like 4 to 6 a day, hours to grind enough for a family..

Grayson

Malaysia has just elected a new king.

Turns out that they have 9 royal families and the royal families vote on who will have a 5 year term as king. So the King is technically an elected representative (not elected by the country but you know what I mean).

Also, the last king abdicated because he had a secret marriage to a russian beauty queen.

Chancer3001

There's a lot of incorrect use of the term strength in the last few posts.

Strength is the ability to move a maximum force one time.

So hours grinding or chores or farm work isn't the ideal training to build strength.

That builds muscular endurance mainly.

Being able to lift a huge load one time (like weightlifting at the Olympics) is strength.

Loads of push ups or farm work isn't really