Fascinating History

If you sat at a dinner or banquet in Tudor times you would not find a familiar setting. For one thing, you had to bring your own cutlery as this was never provided, even in the richest of households or at Court. Spoons in particular were highly prized items, often silver or gold and considered essential. They were a popular christening gifts, thus we now have the expression "born with a silver spooon in his mouth" . The more expensive the spoon the higher up in society you were, therefore it became a status symbol as well. At the dinner table you would not have had a plate for youself but you would be sharing with up to 4 people from a large dinner plate. The head of the table of course, would only share with one other as he or she (in the case of Queen Elizabeth) were the privilidged ones. As you were sharing with others you were expected to maintain a certain standard of behaviour. For example, you were not allowed to put your bones or discarded food back in the dinn

Apparently when Henry VIII was young he was a great athlete. He was involved in various sports, amongst which were football. This contrasts markedly with the image we have of him as a fat bloke riddled with gout, which of course describes his later years. When he became king he was only 18 years old. His brother Arthur, who had been the heir to the throne had died several years earlier. He was thus made Prince of Wales and future king and also had to marry his brother's wife, Katharine of Aragon. Henry's marriage to Katharine did not make him very happy as the desired male heir was not forthcoming. Over 10 years she suffered many miscarriages and when a boy was born he only died a few months later. This made Henry extremely depressed. He could not understand why Katharine could not come up with a male child and came to the conclusion that God must be angry with him. He could not think why though until he came across a passage in the Levitikon book of the Bible, which gave him a

If your idea of a medieval woman was that of a damsel in distress, passively waiting for her brave knight to save her then you are seriously mistaken. The passivity of Medieval women was a Victorian invention. On the contrary, sources of the time tell us of women who are expected to be sexually active and are. Damsels were married women in the service of noblewomen and it was common for them to take lovers. If their husbands expressed any complaints about this they could easily be silenced when the damsel in question would explain to her husband what a brave and famous knight she was bedding. Presumably, even if that did shut him up, it didn't eradicate his resentment. Indeed, being a prude was not valued in the Middle Ages. In one of her letters to Abelard, Heloise declares: "The name of wife may seem more sacred or more worthy, but sweeter to me will always be the word lover or, if you permit me, that of concubine or whore." Another suprising fact of the time was th

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...