Attila the Hun was quite short. He may have been less than five feet tall.
All Buttoned Up
Buttons were invented around 1200, but they were just for decoration. They didn’t actually button anything together. Before 1330 if you wanted a snug-fitting bodice and sleeves, you had to be sewn into your clothing every day by your servant. But around 1330 the functional button came into popular use. Now instead of having to lower a tunic over your head, or sew two sides together, you could have a garment that buttoned up the front, which fit you more snugly.
Yucky Puck
The first pucks used in ice hockey were frozen pieces of cow dung.
Deadly Dust
During the first part of the 20th century, detectives used a grey powder to dust for fingerprints at a crime scene. It was a mixture of chalk and mercury. Many suffered chronic mercury poisoning.
Heavy Lifting
Medieval swords often weighed over thirty pounds.
A Parthian Shot
The Parthians, a warrior tribe from what is now modern-day Iran, were expert archers. Riding at full gallop on light horses, they pretended to retreat from an enemy, but turned in the saddle and fired arrows with deadly precision. This was not easy, especially because stirrups hadn’t yet been invented. Roman poets Ovid and Virgil dubbed it a “Parthian shot.” By the nineteenth century, the phrase seems to have morphed into a “parting shot,” which means delivering a hostile statement or gesture as you depart, and that your opponent has no opportunity to reply to.
Teed Off
King James IV of Scotland (1473 – 1513) imposed a ban on golf to encourage archery practice. He decreed “in na place of the realme there be usit golfe,” although secretly he played the game himself.
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source: Arthur Vincent Taylor, ed. Originies Golfinanae, 1912
Deadly Dome
During the early 19th century construction of the cathedral of St. Isaac in St. Petersburg, Russia, workers gilded the domes with a gold-mercury amalgam. Sixty workers died of mercury poisoning.
What’s Up?
On July 14, 1789, a mob stormed the Bastille, marking the beginning of the French Revolution. At his palace at Versailles, King Louis XVI’s diary entry for that day was: “14 juillet: rien.”
What’s the Point?
I was sorting through my closet and came upon a pair of shoes I bought a few years ago. The toes are so pointy I have never worn them. They are just too uncomfortable. I suppose it could have been worse. This could be the fourteenth century.
Crusaders returning from the holy lands flaunted a new shoe style for men that featured curled-back, pointy toes (known as poulaines). In the 14th and 15th centuries the fashion evolved. Toes grew and grew until some men sported points two feet long that had to be tied to their garters. These points made it hard to walk without tripping.
A steel version of the pointy toed fashion was even worn by knights. During the Battle of Sempach in 1386, knights were forced to break off the points of their shoes before leaping from their horses to battle on the ground.*
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*Source: Schnurnberger, Let There Be Clothes, page 135