1) The oldest piece of
chewing gum ever found is believed to be at least 5,000 years old, if
not older. A Scottish archeology student named Sarah Pickin found the
gum in Finland in 2007. Pickin told reporters that she first thought
the gum “might have been a bit of fossilised poo,” which makes
archeology suddenly sound disgusting.
Pickin consulted her
colleagues, and everyone agreed that the filthy little lump appeared
to be a piece of birch-bark tar, which was the Stone Age equivalent
of Juicy Fruit. The thing had actual tooth marks in it, which was
kind of a tip-off. Ancient people probably chewed this stuff to treat
mouth infections.
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| I bet it tasted like crap. ~ a paulchu shot |
2) Flush toilets date back to the 26th century BC. No, I didn't know that either. I
would've thought, you know, like 150 years or so. Looks like we were
both wrong.
The Indus Valley
Civilization, located in what is now northwest India and Pakistan,
was an advanced Bronze Age culture with a sophisticated urban sewage
system. In the cities of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, just about every
household had a flush toilet.
Flush toilet technology
arrived in Greece in the 18th century BC and spread
throughout Europe with the Romans. Modern types of sewage disposal
disappeared from Europe with the fall of the Roman Empire.
In the late 1500s,
Englishman Sir John Harrington designed the first modern flush
toilet. This is the one where the cistern hangs on the wall over your
head, and you have to yank the chain and hope it doesn't snap.
The first American toilet
design was patented in 1857. The general idea didn't really start to
catch on until around the turn of the century, when an innovative and
profit-minded fellow named Thomas Crapper established a showroom to
advertise the toilets, bathtubs and washbasins his company traded in.
Naturally, Crapper slapped
his surname all over his toilet tanks.
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| And we still call them "crappers" to this day. ~Oxyman |
3) If any group of people
takes the History Crazy Cake, it's the Roman Emperors. Some scholars
think it's because the Romans used lead pipes for plumbing, which may
have caused widespread brain damage.
To be fair, one or two of
the Emperors were not only perfectly sane, but really good rulers.
Take Ceasar Augustus, the adopted son of Julius Ceasar, for example.
Augustus gets the credit for establishing the 200-year Pax Romana,
and for laying the framework that supported Roman civilization for
1500 years after his death, until the fall of the Empire. He gave
Rome firemen, policemen, a standing army, a comprehensive highway
infrastructure, a postal system, and all kinds of other cool sh*t,
like tax collectors.
Many of his successors,
however, were batsh*t insane. Nero, for instance, castrated a boy,
married him, and then insisted the kid was his wife. He carried on a
sexual affair with his own mother, and then attempted to assassinate
her – without success – at least five times before finally
managing to have her executed.
Most people reckon Caligula
was the craziest Emperor, probably because he nominated his horse for
public office and believed himself to be the god Jupiter. Bet you
didn't know that Caligula started out fairly normal, and then went
crazy after suffering a serious illness about six months into his
reign.
My personal favorite Crazy
Roman Emperor is Elagabalus. He came from Syria, and belonged to a
family of priests serving the Sun God El-Gabal. Prior to becoming
Emperor at the age of 13, Elagabalus was legitimately considered an
actual living god, kind of like the Pharoah, I guess.
Elagabalus set himself up as
the head of the Roman pantheon, insisting that everyone in Rome start
worshipping him instead of Jupiter. He then started wearing makeup
and women's clothes, and whoring himself out from the palace, for
reasons presumably unrelated to religion. He took five wives, one of
whom was a Vestal Virgin, which was not cool, since they were
supposed to be virgins. Of course, it's entirely possible that he
never f*cked her, or any of this other wives. He never produced any
children, and he seemed to prefer the company of Hierocles, one of
his two husbands.
He lasted about four years.
Caligula lasted for five years. Nero, one of the most murdering-est
of all, lasted for fifteen years. In the Roman Empire, rape, incest,
murder, orgies, and torturing people for no reason could be
tolerated, but being a cross-dressing homosexual prostitute was just taking things a little too far.
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| Poor bastard. ~ G. dallorto |
4) For some time now,
Eygptologists have believed that the ancient Egyptians built the
pyramids by hauling huge limestone blocks via sledges and ramps. Some
scientists believe that the upper blocks were made of poured concrete, which would take a lot of the huge-block-hauling out of the
equation. Ancient Greek historian, Herodotus, believed that the
pharaohs used slave labor to build their pyramids, with work forces
numbering in the hundreds of thousands.
Herodotus, however, was rather famously full of sh*t, and this pyramid thing was no exception. He
wrote about them centuries after the fact, and made use of his
awe-inspiring powers of exaggeration when he did so. His view,
however, remained the accepted one for centuries, until modern
Egyptologists actually tried the rock-dragging thing and discovered
that it only takes between eight and 20 men to haul one of these
stones, depending on the size of the stone and whether they're
dragging it on an flat surface or a slope.
Modern Egyptologists, like
Mark Lehner, believe that it would have taken 20,000 to 30,000 men to
construct the Great Pyramid. This number includes more than just the
stone-dragging grunts – it also takes into account the cooks,
carpenters, metal workers and others who supported the manual labor
force. Sensibly enough, Lehner points out that fewer laborers would
have been needed on a particular pyramid as construction neared its
end.
It's also highly likely that
few slaves were used to build the pyramids. Most of the workers were locals who lived in villages erected specifically to house them. Farmers probably also pitched in during the inundation, or yearly flooding of the Nile, when they had nothing better to do. Construction of all the significant pyramids occurred over about two centuries' time. As one pyramid neared completion, they'd start
another one, so that everyone had a job of some sort, year-round. The
workers were paid in food, and got a day off every ten days.
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| And that's how you keep an economy going. |
