Fascinating History

The first bar of chocolate was produced in 1847, even though cocoa had been known to the Europeans since 1502. The first chocolate bars were of dark chocolate and consisted mainly of cocoa solids, which made them rather dry and not very pleasant to eat. All throughout the 1870s, European sales of chocolate were very high. In 1876, a Daniel Peter of Switzerland, invented milk chocolate. He had discovered that adding powdered milk to the chocolate mix made for a wonderfully tasting bar. Until then efforts to add milk in it's liquid form to chocolate, had resulted in the milk going rancid and the consistency of the chocolate not being solid enough. An Englishman called George Page, developed Daniel Peter's work on chocolate even more. However, milk chocolate didn't really become popular until the early 20th century, as people were used to the bitter, intense taste of dark chocolate. By the 1890s chocolate had become a common purchase and the German, British and American soldie

The laws of England, Scotland and Wales can sometimes be very peculiar, as there are plenty of outdated ones which have not been written off and are technically still applicable. For example, did you know that it is illegal in London to check in to a hotel with a false name specificaly for the purpoose of having sex? Apparently if you get caught you are faced with the once hefty fine of £20! I am sure it is not the fine which would worry most who might get caught nowadays though... ;-) It seems that this is a law which was made with adulterers in mind; after all, why would people use assumed names if thy were not hiding something. Laws targeting adulterers have been many and some are funny,like the above, but others are very unpleasant indeed. In Nottingham, if a married woman seduces the husband of another man and gets found out by the seduced's wife, that lady has the right to monetary compensation from the seducer's husband. This sounds to me to be really unfair, espec

Ancient bust of Nefertiti and Computer reconstruction of Nefertiti's face from skull Queen Nefertiti of Ancient Egypt, was said to be one of the most beautiful women of her time. Much of the details of her life are shrouded in mystery as are the circumstances of her death and where indeed her mummy was burried. She was the wife of Pharaoh Amenhotep IV, who later on called himself Akhenaten. Her name means "the beautiful one has come", which makes archaeologists wonder whether she had actually come to Egypt from elsewhere and was not Egytian at all. Others say she was the daughter of the nobleman Ay, who later became Pharaoh himself. No matter what her genealogy was, Nefertiti became a legend. When her husband, after 4 years on the throne, decided to start worhiping the Aten a new god whose sympbol was the sun-disk, dismiss all other gods and moved the capital to the middle of the desert, building there a new city called Amarna, that really rubbed the priests of Amon up

When we use the term gentleman nowadays what do we really mean? Well, most people using the word are probably thinking of the 19th century concept of the Victorian gentleman. Seeing as not even the Victorians were really sure what constituted a gentleman and what didn't, we cannot really be blamed for not being certain ourselves. There are various views on the definition of the gentleman. Below are the relevant links: The Victorian Gentleman http://www.victorianweb.org/history/Gentleman.html Newman's Gentleman http://www.his.com/~z/gentleman.html Uses of the word and etymology http://www.searchword.org/ge/gentleman.html I leave you to decide...

Valeria Messalina Valeria Messalina was the third wife of the emperor Claudius. She was notorious for being an absolute nymphomaniac. She married Claudius in A.D. 38 and bore him two children; Britannicus and Octavia, who were rumoured to have actually been fathered by Caligula as she was a frequent attendee to his many banquets and orgies... Claudius became emperor in A.D. 41, after Caligula was finally murdered and Messalina, although now empress, did not supress her urges. In fact she became all the more adventurous and behind Claudius's back she had many affairs, many of them at the same time and in the same room. At night she would even dress up as a prostitute and incognito she would trade as a prostitute - such was her insatiable appetite for men. She once challenged the famous Roman prostitute, Scylla, to an all-night sex-athon, whereby the winner was the one who copulated with the most men. Messalina won. She copulated all night and although Scylla gave up at dawn, exhaust

Why they called it French is because of a notorious outbreak of it in the French army, but you may know that this phrase referes to the dreaded Syphilis. The disease is thought to have reached Europe from America, via Columbus's ships and the first known epidemic struck Italy in the late 1400s. Interestingly enough it has been called the English disesase by the French, Polish by the Russians, and the Christian disease by the tribes of the Arabian lands. Many well known figures in history are said to have suffered from suphilis, most notably Guy de Maupassant, Charles VIII of France, Friedrich Nietzsche, Al Capone, Paul Gaugin and even Adolf Hitler. In its late stages the disease causes dementia, whereby the suffered became insane. Nowadays syphilis is treated with antibiotics but before the Second World War people were very unfortunate indeed if they happened to contract it. It is very much a sexually transmitted disease and therefore when you got it you were instantly stigmat

Did you know that up until recently mail travelled in tunnels underneath London? Well, I didn't know. Apparently, in 1913 digging started for an underground railway, specifically for the Post Office. The work finished in 1927 and in December of that year the first mail-ridden trains started to run underground. The whole purpose of this sustem was to reduce the number of mail vans in London streets and in that respect it did not fail. The journey started at Paddington, then stopped under a street near Selfridges, then further down Ofxord street, past High Holborn, Bloomsbury, stopping at the biggest Post Office depot in London, Mount Pleasant, under the remains of the Roman wall, past St. Pauls' Cathedral, Liverpool Street station, finally arriving at a post office in Whitechapel Road.. The underground mail tunnel was tiny, only 9 feet in diameter. Bagfuls of mail would be sent down shafts from sorting offices, leading to the Mail Rail platforms. Then the bags were loaded

In 18th century London you could order your false teeth via post. All you had to do was get a pice of soft wood, bite into it (thus leaving your teeth marks on it) and send this, together with a ribbon which measured your gums, to the person who made the teeth. After a short wait you would receive your new teeth, which cost around £3 and 4 shillings. False teeth in those days were not as reliable as the ones you can get nowadays. The dentures were made of wood. If you were lucky enough to only need the bottom set of teeth then you could look forward to a firly firm set of teeth, with which you could eat with as well. On the other hand, if you required the top part, you could look forward to your teeth sliding out at the most inconvenient and embarassing moments. If you needed the whole lot, both top and bottom, there was a solution to this problem by way of a spring attached to the back, holding top and bottom set together and allowing you to open your mouth. However, once you did

"Every woman's husband and every man's wife". Thus is Julius Caesar characterized by Curio, according to Suetonius. Julius Caesar was a man of great intensity. He openly enjoyed the "company" of both men and women and there were many scandals to go with this. He never hesitated to "borrow" other noblemen's wives and also "lend" his own wife Pompeia. He was notorious for this and a typical ditty of the time, after his triumph in Gaul, says: "Look to your wives, ye citizens, a lecher bald we bring, In Gaul adultery cost thee gold, here 'tis but borrowing." Yes, he was bald and although this did not deter him from his conquests, it was a source of constant bother to him as he was often ridiculed for his baldness, by his enemies. Actually, with all the "borrowing" he got up to no-wonder he made so many enemies. Amongst the ladies he "borrowed" were Postumia, the wife of Servius Sulipcius, Lollia, the wife

Necrosis of finger tips caused by septicemic plague When people get to 40 or 50 year old nowadays, we consider them middle-aged. In Elizabethan times you were lucky if you got past the age of 30. The poor however, were not expected to live longer than 20, at the most 25. Thomas Paynel wrote in 1541: "nowadays, alas, if a man may approach to forty of sixty years men repute him happy and fortunate" . Indeed, if you got to live past the age of 40, you were thought to be extremely old, as old as people over 100 seem to us today. Life was short and riddled with suffering. Diseases ran wild and the plague was as much a part of everyday life as having a cold is today. In Elizabethan times a plague epidemic occured roughly every four years. It was something you knew would come but you didn't know exactly when and where it would strike. Laws in 1568 decreed that an affected person's house had to be shut up for a minimum of twenty days, all windows and doors boarded up and nobo