#635: “During the Middle Ages German men went to the barber to take a bath as well as to get a shave.”
True.
Clicking on the German page for “barber surgeon” will take you to this which, translated (thanks to Google), means “owner of the bathhouse.” In those bathhouses, men could both go to the barber and take a bath.
Bathing was very popular in medieval Germany. One sixteenth-century man records that he took over a hundred baths in the span of twenty days.
#634: “The champagne used to christen a ship is a substitute for human blood. In bygone times the Vikings and various South Sea tribes sacrificed human beings on the prows of their ships so that the spirits of the murdered victims would guard the craft. Later wine was substituted for blood, and, in our day, champagne for wine.”
True.
Not only did the Vikings and Tahitians make human sacrifices, Babylonians and Turks did too. A Babylonian narrative talks about christening a ship and using oxen as their sacrifice.
For their christening of the ship, the Greeks drank wine to honor the gods, and this eventually carried over to wine, and later champagne, being used as christening fluid.
As an aside, the tradition of having a woman be the ship’s sponsor didn’t start until relatively recently.
#633: “Date-palm trees in Iraq are passed down through generations as part of family legacies. The trees are given individual names, have carefully recorded personal histories, and are considered a basic part of family wealth.”
Difficult to determine.
Date palm trees are indeed very important in Iraq and the Middle East. Saudis mention finding over three hundred ways to use the tree! But I couldn’t find anything on how date trees were important to a family’s legacy.
Iraq used to have a ton of those trees, but after many years of war, they don’t have as many trees. Today, the Iraqi government wants to expand their number of trees to bring back this symbol of Iraq and the Middle East.
#632: “Tibetans drink tea made of salt and rancid yak butter. Tibetan women carry a special instrument with metal blades for cleaning their ears and picking their nose.”
True. Difficult to determine.
Butter tea is commonly drunk by Tibetans, and it’s usually made with tea leaves, salt and fresh yak butter. Rancid butter is used to add a different taste.
I couldn’t find anything on the ear- and nose-cleaning instrument.
#631: “In Elizabethan England the spoon was such a novelty, such a prized rarity, that people carried their own folding spoons to banquets.”
Plausible.
In the sixteenth century, folding spoons became popular. People had to supply their own spoons and knives to eat with, and table silver hadn’t been introduced yet.
Wealthy people would travel with a folding metal spoon while poor people had to do with wooden utensils.
As a side note, collar ruffs (as worn by Queen Elizabeth I) caused problems for their wearers if they wanted to eat. One French royal lady had to eat from a spoon that was two feet long.
#630: “In medieval China and parts of Africa one method of enforcing chastity was to sew up a girl’s vaginal labia as soon as she reach puberty. The stitches were not cut until the marriage; the husband then had the option of sewing them up again if he was called to war or on a long journey.”
Inaccurate, some true.
Female genital mutilation, as this practice is known, is done exclusively in Africa and some parts of the Middle East. Here’s a _link to a map_{http://www.circumstitions.com/Images/map-fgm66.gif} that shows where it’s practiced. I couldn’t find any evidence it was done in China.
Infibulation, or one of the most severe forms of female genital mutilation, is commonly used. I won’t go into too much depth here. But the girl is indeed sewn up at some point, leaving only a small hole for her period blood and pee to pass through. Her husband would eventually break the hole, either through intercourse or at birth. No re-sewing up was involved, however.
As an aside, I found an interesting article comparing female infibulation arguments from Africa to male circumcision arguments from America.
#629: “The ancient Egyptians slept on pillows made of stone.”
Not always.
Egyptian headrests were made of wood, ivory or stone. But one pillow was recently found that was made out of plant fibers then coated with wax. So some pillows were much more comfortable.
This is a headrest:
[credit: http://www.globalegyptianmuseum.org/glossary.aspx?id=174]
It allowed for more air circulation, a necessity in the warm climate.
#628: “When ancient Egyptian priests held a banquet, a large mummy was often carried into the feast chamber and propped up at the table where all the priests could see it, a reminder that even while at pleasure, death was ever near.”
Not plausible.
I didn’t find anything confirming or denying this, but this Wikipedia article says that the ancient Egyptians really cared about the body after death. They intentionally fixed damage to a mummy caused after two people were later buried in the same place. If mummies were that fragile and if they really cared about the sanctity of the dead body, they wouldn’t brazenly display the body at a feast.
On a side note, Egyptian priests had clogged arteries because of their diet of rich food from ritual sacrifices and would often die young. So they didn’t really need the death reminder.
#627: “The pilgrims in Massachusetts used a special tool in church, a wooden ball attached to a long string on a stick. If anyone fell asleep during a sermon (which might go on for seven or eight hours) a specially appointed member of the clergy would hoist the pole over the reprobate’s head and clop him with the wooden ball.”
True, but inaccurate.
It was actually the Puritans who had long church services. (Puritans, not Pilgrims, were loyal to the Church of England.) A deacon, or tithingman, was appointed and he had a staff with a heavy knob at one end and foxtails attached. He would poke sleeping men and misbehaving boys with the knob and tickle the sleeping women’s and girls’ faces to wake them.
Here’s a picture of a tithingman poking a boy with the staff:
#626: “In ancient Japan public contests were held to see who in a town could break wind loudest and longest. Winners were awarded many prizes and received great acclaim.”
Plausible.
I found this scroll, called “He-Gassen” or “Fart War.” It’s hilarious- it’s all people farting at each other. My favorite is the guy executing a fart attack from horseback:
A citation in this blog post notes that farting isn’t embarrassing in Japanese culture, so it’s plausible that they had farting contests with prizes, but I haven’t found any definitive information.
