History lesson Did you ever wonder where the saying comes from?

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SWMO

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Jul 27, 2007
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715
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Carthage MO
The next time you are washing your hands and complain because the water
temperature isn't just how you like it, think about how things used to be.

Here are some facts about the 1500s:

Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in
May, and still smelled pretty good by June. However, they were starting
to smell, so brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor.
Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.

Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the
house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons
and men, then the women and finally the children. Last of all the babies.
By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it.
Hence the saying, Don't throw the baby out with the bath water.. 

Houses had thatched roofs-t hick straw-piled high, with no wood
underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the
cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof. When it
rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall
off the roof. Hence the saying,  It's raining cats and dogs.

There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This
posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could
mess up your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung
over the top afforded some protection. That's how canopy beds came into
existence.

The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt.
Hence the saying, Dirt poor. The wealthy had slate floors that would get
slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (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 the terminology thresh
hold came into existence.

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

In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that
always hung over the fire. Every day they lit the fire and added things
to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They
would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold
overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes stew had food in it
that had been there for quite a while. Hence the rhyme, Peas porridge
hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old..

Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special.
When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It
was a sign of wealth that a man could bring home the bacon. They would
cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and chew
the fat..

Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid
content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead
poisoning death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next
400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.

Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of
the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the upper
crust.

Lead cups were used to drink ale or whiskey. The combination would
sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone walking
along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They
were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family
would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake
up. Hence the custom of holding a wake.

England is old and small and the local folks started running out of
places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the
bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins,
1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and
they realized they had been burying people alive. So they would tie a
string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up
through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in
the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift) to listen for the bell. Thus

someone could be saved by the bell or was considered a dead ringer..

And that's the truth...



Now, whoever said history was boring ! ! !




 

knabe

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Feb 7, 2007
Messages
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Location
Hollister, CA
saw an article in wired this month about ancient beer making techniques.

http://mooregroup.wordpress.com/2007/09/01/beer-haiku-and-all-that/

this isn't a link to it, but basically the article states that the u-shaped structures that people have found around stonehenge and other places are for making beer.  they found they could heat stones in a fire, throw the hot stones in the u-shaped trough, sometimes lined with stone (an improvement?).  kinda reminds me of the communal spittoons of other cultures where they let it ferment and then they drink it after it ferments.

copied from link
one noteworthy variant of the mashing process is spit beer. Human saliva contains the same enzymes as
the malt. So if you don’t know how to malt grain, you can still make the conversion to sugar by chewing on
raw grain. Many of you will experience a sweetness if you hold a cracker in your mouth for a few minutes
without swallowing. That’s your salivary enzymes converting starch to sugar. The fact that we are designed
to digest raw grain should not be surprising—that’s what we did before brewers and bakers. Spit beer
continues to be produced by some people.

ops are the preferred spice used in beer for a simple reason—they are poisonous to bacteria. When boiled
two important groups of chemicals are released. The first group of chemicals taste bitter and are the
Page 4
principle source of bitterness in beer. They bond to cellular machinery in bacteria and render the bacteria
incapable of metabolizing or reproducing. They don’t kill the bacteria, but they leave them bound and
gagged and watching network television. Its not a pretty sight. These chemicals are nature’s own
preservatives. The second group of chemicals are anti-oxidants, which help preserve the beer from staling.
That hops has these properties is not surprising: many spices are strongly anti-bacterial or anti-fungal. For
example, cinnamon is commonly applied to flesh wounds of orchids to prevent fungal infection. Hops
bitterness are particularly effective against Lactobacillus, a common brewery infection. When Lactobacillus
gets into beer, it makes it sour, sometimes buttery, and sometime like overboiled cabbage. Without hops
bitterness, beer can be quite sweet, even cloying. So the hops bitterness is used to balance the malty
sweetness. Of course, hops also adds floral components that make beer smell good. What is truly
remarkable about humans is that they can digest a variety of poisons from chocolate to alcohol to hops to
cinnamon to salt to tobacco. Humans are remarkable omnivores. In last week’s edition of Science, the best
theory for extinction of the Neanderthals during the last ice age is because they could not adapt to the
changing food supply. Modern man will pretty much eat anything but dry grass.



the dry grass, that's what cows are for!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

if beer is this old, no wonder their are "genes" for abuse.
 

DL

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Jan 29, 2007
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SWMO - very very cool! Are you going to do the 1800s?? ;D
 

itk

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May 6, 2007
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KS
SWMO that makes you around 500 years old.....oops wrong post! O0
 

CAB

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Mar 5, 2007
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Location
Corning,Iowa
SO YOU THINK YOU KNOW EVERYTHING?



A dime has 118 ridges around the edge.



A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.



A crocodile cannot stick out its tongue.



A dragonfly has a life span of 24 hours.



A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.



A "jiffy" is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.



A shark is the only fish that can blink with both eyes.



A snail can sleep for three years.



Al Capone's business card said he was a used furniture dealer.



All 50 states are listed across the top of the Lincoln Memorial on the

back of the $5 bill.



Almonds are a member of the peach family.



An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.



Babies are born without kneecaps. They don't appear until the child

reaches 2 to 6 years of age.



Butterflies taste with their feet.



Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds. Dogs only have about 10.



"Dreamt" is the only English word that ends in the letters "mt".



February 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full moon.



In the last 4,000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.



If the population of China walked past you, in single file, the line would

never end  because of the rate of reproduction.



If you are an average American, in your whole life, you will spend an

average of 6 months waiting at red lights.



It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.



Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors.



Maine is the only state whose name is just one syllable.



No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, or purple.



On a Canadian two dollar bill, the flag flying over the Parliament

building is an  American flag.



Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never

stop growing.



Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite..



Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.



"Stewardesses" is the longest word typed with only the left hand and

"lollipop" with your right.



The average person's left hand does 56% of the typing.



The cruise liner, QE2, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel

that it burns.



The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a

chocolate bar melted in his pocket.



The sentence: "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" uses every

letter of the alphabet.



The winter of 1932 was so cold that Niagara Falls froze completely solid.



The words 'racecar,' 'kayak' and 'level' are the same whether they are

read left to right or right to left (palindromes).



There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar.



There are more chickens than people in the world.



There are only four words in the English language which end in "dous":

tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous



There are two words in the English language that have all five vowels in

order:  "abstemious" and "facetious."



There's no Betty Rubble in the Flintstones Chewables Vitamins.



Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.



TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on

one row of the keyboard.



Winston Churchill was born in a ladies' room during a dance.



Women blink nearly twice as much as men.



Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks;

otherwise it will digest itself.



..............Now you know everything

 
 

CAB

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Joined
Mar 5, 2007
Messages
5,607
Location
Corning,Iowa
Many years ago in Scotland, a new game was invented. It was ruled
"Gentlemen Only...Ladies Forbidden"...and thus the word GOLF entered into
the English language.

In the 1400's a law was set forth that a man was not allowed to beat his
wife with a stick no thicker than his thumb. Hence we have "the rule of
thumb"

The first couple to be shown in bed together on prime time TV were Fred
and Wilma Flintstone.

Every day more money is printed for Monopoly than the US Treasury.

Men can read smaller print than women can; women can hear better.

Coca-Cola was originally green.

It is impossible to lick your elbow.

The State with the highest percentage of people who walk to work: Alaska

The percentage of Africa that is wilderness: 28% (now get this...)

The percentage of North America that is wilderness: 38%

The cost of raising a medium-size dog to the age of eleven: $6,400

The average number of people airborne over the US any given hour: 61,000

Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.

The first novel ever written on a typewriter: Tom Sawyer.

The San Francisco Cable cars are the only mobile National Monuments.

Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history:

Spades - King David

Hearts - Charlemagne

Clubs -Alexander, the Great

Diamonds - Julius Caesar

111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321

If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the
air, the person died in battle. If the horse has one front leg in the air
the person died as a result of wounds received in battle. If the horse has
all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.

Only two people signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, John
Hancock and CharlesThomson. Most of the rest signed on August 2, but the
last signature wasn't added until 5 years later.

Q. Half of all Americans live within 50 miles of what?
A. Their birthplace

Q. Most boat owners name their boats. What is the most popular boat name
requested?
A. Obsession

Q. If you were to spell out numbers, how far would you have to go until
you would find the letter "A"?
A. One thousand

Q. What do bulletproof vests, fire escapes, windshield wipers, and laser
printers all have in common?
A. All invented by women.

Q. What is the only food that doesn't spoil?
A. Honey

Q. Which day are there more collect calls than any other day of the year?
A. Father's Day

In Shakespeare's time, mattresses were secured on bed frames by ropes.
When you pulled on the ropes the mattress tightened, making the bed firmer
to sleep on. Hence the phrase......... "goodnight, sleep tight."


It was the accepted practice in Babylon 4,000 years ago that for a month
after the wedding, the bride's father would supply his son-in-law with all
the mead he could drink. Mead is a honey beer and because their calendar
was lunar based, this period was called the honey month . which we know
today as the honeymoon.


In English pubs, ale is ordered by pints and quarts... So in old England,
when customers got unruly, the bartender would yell at them "Mind your
pints and quarts, and settle down."
It's where we get the phrase "mind your P's and Q's"

Many years ago in England, pub frequenters had a whistle baked into the
rim, or handle, of their ceramic cups. When they needed a refill, they
used the whistle to get some service. "Wet your whistle" is the phrase
inspired by this practice.

~~~~~~~~~~~AND FINALLY~~~~~~~~~~~~

At least 75% of people who read this will try to lick their elbow


I sent the  first post to a friend today and she sent these back to me. You can never know too much, even if most of it is probably worthless info.
 

cowz

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Jan 10, 2007
Messages
1,492
CAB, I know what you need to ask Santa Claus for!!

Ask for The Dangerous Book for Boys.  It is full of very interesting trivia essential to all males!
 

CAB

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Joined
Mar 5, 2007
Messages
5,607
Location
Corning,Iowa
  Thanks cows, I'll be looking into it. As you can probably figure out, it has been a slow day here in front of the pc.
 

SWMO

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Joined
Jul 27, 2007
Messages
715
Location
Carthage MO
Well, I now know that I wasn't the only person without enough to do yesterday.  Glad I'm not alone.

DL the only way the 1800's will get done is if it is sent to me in an e mail and I can cut and paste. ;D
 

ROAD WARRIOR

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Jun 9, 2007
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Location
Iowa
Doc said:
CAB, I'm in that 75% group & no I can't do it. ;D

I'm with Doc - close but no cigar. I'm not sure if my tongue is too short or my are is too long!
 

knabe

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Feb 7, 2007
Messages
13,639
Location
Hollister, CA
i'll betcha someone who can dislocate their shoulder can do it.  mine almost pops out from an injury i never had fixed and i swear i'm about 1/2" away.  come from a long line of nose touchers too.  saw my grandma do it when i was a kid
 

aj

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Location
western kansas
Dad always told my brothers and I that eating things that we didn't like would do the following. it would put hair on our chest's or would put lead in our pencil. I always wondered what the heck?
 
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