A Smorgasbord of History Fun Facts

lookninjas:

seldnei:

sensiblydeluded:

Here’s another from the History Secret
Santa Archive! For today, rather than sort of getting into a longer,
more in depth description of some historical event or person, I
thought it would be fun to mix things up a bit, and just give you a
bunch of amusing little snippets. I hope you all like them!

The emperor Domitian, the last of the
Flavian dynasty in the Roman Empire, was a) not a very well-liked
ruler and b) very paranoid about assassination. After executing
random senators, sexual debauchery, and indulging in weird
psychological torture involving a meal of all black food in a totally
black room, a freedman named Stephenus finally got Domitian alone and
stabbed him to death with the ruse of saying, seriously, something
along the lines of, “Emperor, I need to speak with you in private!
I have just learned of a conspiracy to assassinate you!”

Mithridates VI of Pontus, also called
Mithridates the Great, is most notable for waging an almost
successful war against Rome (no mean feat), and also being terrified
of being poisoned. Like some sort of Dread Pirate Robert’s times
1,000, this king spent most of his young adulthood eating small doses
of various poisons and building up his immunity to almost every known
toxin. In addition, he invented a supposedly universal antidote that
is still called mithridae
(one recipe includes
frankincese, myrhh, and
cinnamon!) Unfortunately, after Pompey defeated Mithridates in
battle, the Pontian king tried to commit suicide by poison, but found
he couldn’t turn off his immunity. He ended up dying by sword,
instead.

The
month February takes
its name from the februa,
or a cord of goat hide that specially selected men would use in a
religious festival to essentially smack fertility into women (or at
least, that’s how the Romans saw it). In the Lupercalia, the young
men chosen dressed in the
skins of recently slaughtered goats, and most sort of arranged these
skins into loincloths as best they could, so they could run around
the city whipping various women without flashing the entire city.
Marc Antony, however, did not care about modesty, basically at all,
and he participated in this festival, and, to make a long story
short, we have historical verification that at least one member of
the Second Triumvirate was VERY well endowed.

Laksmibai,
Queen of Jhansi, and instrumental figure in the Indian Rebellion of
1857, was awesome in many ways, but she was a particularly skilled at
horsemanship. She could apparently ride a horse no-handed, clutching
the bridle in her teeth to steer, and would often go into battle as
described, but swinging a sword in each hand.

Romulus,
the mythical founder of Rome, was probably named after the city, and
not vice-versa as the legend suggests. Many possible meaning for the
name exist, including the idea that the name may originate from
rumina, a descriptor
for what the hill of the original city may have reminded people of.
Rumina means “breast”
in early Latin.

The
16^th
President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, apparently really
liked cats. At one point, after a big loss for the Union side in the
American Civil War, one of his generals kept trying to brief him on
how their troops could recover and what needed to be done, but
Lincoln kept getting distracted by some abandoned kittens he could
see in the background of the camp.  In the end, the general had to
promise that the kittens would be taken care of before the president
would focus on the aftermath of the battle.

Gaius
Octavian, later Augustus, was quite short, even
by Roman standards, and wore
platform shoes to make himself appear taller. And
speaking of Roman emperors, the process of deifying dead emperors had
become so common by the beginning of the Flavian dynasty that, on his
deathbed, the emperor Vespasian announced, “Oh dear. I think I’m
becoming a god.”

I’ve
seen varying historical opinions on this fact, but Romans may not
have generally learned to read silently. So, every time they, for
example, got a letter, they had to read it aloud. Julius Caesar
seemed to be one of very few people who could read silently, and this
ability apparently freaked people the hell out.

Suetonius,
an ancient Roman author who described the lives of the first twelve
emperors, as well as Julius Caesar, only had his works saved because
they’d all been thrown in to a well preserved garbage dump. The
complete works of Confucius were only preserved because someone hid
them in a wall. My personal favorite historical preservation story,
though, is that Christian monks apparently preserved the works of
Livy and Virgil
because they both wrote short poems about some awesome baby being
born soon that would end up saving the world. These passages were
later interpreted as being about Jesus, but, in reality, at the time
both Augustus’s and Marc Antony’s wives were pregnant, and both
writers were likely trying to butter up the two most powerful men in
Rome.

Marcus
Caelius, a prodigy of Cicero’s, was once working as basically a
prosecuting attorney in the case of a man believed to had poisoned
his wife. The defense argued
that the accused couldn’t have used the type of poison (aconite)
because it has distinct symptoms when consumed. Marcus Caelius argued
that aconite had fewer recognizable symptoms if absorbed via a, ahem,
different orifice. Such as the vagina. In the trial, Marcus Caelius
announced, presumably eyes blazing and pointing at the accused, “I
do not point the finger of guilt! I point at the guilty finger!”
essentially making a fingering joke in the middle of a SERIOUS MURDER
TRIAL.

I read most of this to Mr Seldnei this morning, and he quite enjoyed the Domitian story, replying with:  “I have uncovered a plot to kill you!  And it is me! Stabby stabby stabby.”

What I’ve taken from all this is that
Laksmibai,
Queen of Jhansi, is a lot like who I wish I was.  And Abraham Lincoln is a lot more like who I actually am.

Further evidence that humans have always been humans.