Total Trivia

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Ancient and Mediaeval medical lore says that a woman cannot conceive a whole, healthy child unless she orgasms.

 

[Gaia_Lorraine]

Ancient and Mediaeval medical lore says that a woman cannot conceive a whole, healthy child unless she orgasms.

Practice makes perfect

 

[Gaia_Lorraine]

Reportedly, box office stars Humphrey Bogart and Spencer Tracy never appeared in a film together because they never agreed on who would get top billing.

 

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Abraham Lincoln was the first U.S. president to not leave a will.

 

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During the ancient 12-day Christmas celebration, the log burned was called the "Yule log." Sometimes a piece of the Yule log would be kept to kindle the fire the following winter, to ensure that the good luck carried on from year to year. The Yule log custom was handed down from the Druids.

 

[RUlookingup]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04dihLjAZzc

In the movie "Reservoir Dogs", director Quentin Tarantino postulates that Madonna's "Like A Virgin" is about a girl who meets a guy with a big dick, and now feels "like a virgin".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpQ4YhvmFbY&feature=related

 

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Practice makes perfect

But of course!


Some other Mediaeval tidbits.

Many view the Middle Ages to be dark and sexually repressive. However, during this time, a number of coital manuals detailing foreplay, sexual techniques, positions, and ideal conditions for sex were distributed. Although each of the religions (Christian, Jewish, and Muslim in the case of Spain) published their own versions of the manuals, they all seem to be in the same vein. Although some of their assumptions can be considered to be laughable, they are nonetheless relatively sex positive for both men and women.

 

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According to the National Safety Council, coffee is not successful at sobering up a drunk person, and in many cases it may actually increase the adverse effects of alcohol.

 

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The first college on record to use the word "campus" to describe its grounds was Princeton. "Campus" is Latin for "field."

 

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Roulette was invented by the great French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal. It was a by product of his experiments with perpetual motion.

 

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Prompted by Atlanta's 1886 prohibition of alcohol, chemist John S. Pemberton decided to market a non-alcoholic version of his popular medicinal wine, which also included kola nut and coca leaves. As a result, on May 8 that year, the first Coca-Cola in the world was sold.

 

[Gaia_Lorraine]

The 'Sinner's Bible' is a version of the Bible printed in 1631 which, thanks to a typesetting error in the Ten Commandments, said 'Thou shalt commit adultery' instead of 'Thou shalt not commit adultery.' The printers were fined £300, and almost all the copies were destroyed.

 

[Gaia_Lorraine]

When the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in Paris in 1911, one of the people arrested on suspicion of its theft was Pablo Picasso. He'd been implicated by his friend, the poet Guillaume Apollinaire; both men were questioned, and eventually released.

 

[Gaia_Lorraine]

The microscopic parasite Toxoplasma gondii has an interesting effect when it infects rats and mice - it makes them become unafraid of cats. This is pretty helpful to the Toxoplasma, which can only sexually reproduce if its host is eaten by a cat.

 

[Gaia_Lorraine]

The small town of Codell in Kansas was hit by a deadly tornado on May 20th, 1918. Not especially remarkable - except it had also been hit by tornados at around the same time in the evening, on the same day, in 1917 and 1916 as well.

 

[Gaia_Lorraine]

The equals sign was invented by a Welshman - physician and mathematician Robert Recorde, who created the "=" sign in 1557, on the grounds that writing 'is equal to' repeatedly was 'tedious'.
He chose two parallel lines because 'noe 2 thynges can be moare equalle'.

 

[Gaia_Lorraine]

The city of Richmond, Virginia is a historic one in the world of beer cans. The very first canned beer was sold there in 1935 (a can of Krueger's Finest Beer), while the 'stay-on tab' ring pull was invented there by Dan Cudzik of Reynolds Metals in 1975.

 

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King Charles VI of France, also known as Charles the Mad, suffered from the delusion he was made of glass. He even had protective iron bars sewn into his clothes to prevent him from shattering if he fell.

 

[Gaia_Lorraine]

Bumps the thread and wonders why I should keep it going?
Time to pull the plug and admit defeat

 

[NattyBumppo]

In Spain on New Year's Eve, Spaniards eat one grape in each of the last twelve seconds of the year to symbolize the departure of the twelve months of the previous year.

 

[Gaia_Lorraine]

The state of Maine was once known as the "Earmuff Capital of The World". Earmuffs were invented there by Chester Greenwood in 1873.

 

[NattyBumppo]

Ferguson Jenkins is the only pitcher in the baseball HOF with over 3,000 career strikeouts and less than 1,000 career walks. When Greg Maddux is enshrined, he will be the second pitcher with these statistics (squeaking in with 999).

Ironically, both pitched for the Chicago Cubs.

 

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The term "Casino" originally meant a small villa, summerhouse or pavilion built for pleasure, usually on the grounds of a larger Italian villa or palazzo. There are examples of such casinos at Villa Giulia and Villa Farnese. In modern day Italian, this term designates a bordello (also called casa chiusa, literally "closed house"), while the gambling house is spelled casinò with an accent.

 

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Dice, as integral to gambling as a deck of cards, originated in the ancient game of bone rolling. Dice are possibly the oldest form of gambling, predating playing cards by hundreds of years. Originally a form of fortune telling in ancient Egypt, bone rolling slowly evolved into a gambling game. The original dice were made of bones and teeth of animals; dice in the shape we know today originate in Korea and were used in a Buddhist game called Promotion. Dice are used today in modern casino games such as craps and sic bo.

 

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Cards were also an early form of gambling. The earliest found playing card dates from the 11th century and comes from Chinese Turkestan. But the French are credited for having first introduced the type of playing cards we're familiar with today including the recognizable suits: spades, clubs, diamonds and hearts. Other countries used different kinds of cards. India, for example, had round game tokens, and the Chinese, of course, had dominoes.

First there were cards and then there were card games. Baccarat originated in 15th-century Italy, and blackjack in 18th-century France. Poker was played in New Orleans in the early 19th century.