For most people, history lessons in school were boring and tedious. Memorizing names and dates, repeating it all and cramming for hours … But in school textbooks they never write about the most interesting things, so they are rather inaccurate. But the story has a scandalous part, often much more interesting.
1. Trafficking in wives in England
There were many unhappy marriages in England during the Industrial Revolution, but divorce was a long and costly process that was not available to the lower classes. Therefore, they came up with a new tradition: selling your wife. A similar concept emerged around the mid-1700s and became popular in the 19th century. This was not an official procedure, and in fact the marriage was not legally dissolved.
Unbelievable: Wives were sold in England during the Industrial Revolution.
However, most local magistrates were willing to turn a blind eye to cases where husband and wife negotiated a sale. Moreover, wives were sometimes put up for auction and sold to those who paid the most.
2. Hate like Morse code
Promotional video:
Samuel Morse is remembered today for his role in the development and commercialization of the telegraph, and for the code of the same name that he used to communicate. At the same time, everyone forgot about his unsuccessful political career, built on an anti-Catholic and anti-immigration platform. In 1834, Morse joined the growing nativist movement and began writing a series of articles under the pseudonym "Brutus" denouncing the "Catholic conspiracy to destroy the American way of life."
Unbelievable: Samuel Morse hated Catholics and immigrants.
Morse's main targets were poor immigrants from Ireland and Italy, who "brought with them ignorance and Roman Catholicism." Many of Morse's friends and former followers were shocked by his outspoken views, but he became the leader of the Nativist party. In fact, they asked him to run for mayor in New York in 1836. As a result, Morse took the last place among the candidates, but this allowed him to devote his time to working on the telegraph.
3. Reflections on suicide from Seneca
Lucius Anneus Seneca or Seneca the Younger was a statesman and adviser to Nero. A follower of Stoicism, Seneca was also a very prolific author. Among his most famous works is a collection of 124 letters entitled Epistula Moralis and Lucilum, known as Moral Epistles.
Unbelievable: Seneca's thoughts of suicide.
As the name suggests, they were about moral issues. In letter No. 70, Seneca expressed his thoughts of suicide. He was a proponent of this practice, arguing: "A wise person will live as long as he must, not as long as he can." He preferred “the quality of years to their number,” and in his opinion, dying was better than living badly.
4. The destroyed sketch of da Vinci
Given that Leonardo da Vinci is one of the most influential artists of all time, any work of his is considered priceless. One has only to imagine the excitement in the 1990s, when a previously unknown sketch of a Renaissance master was discovered, found among the drawings of Count Stefano della Bella of the 17th century.
Impossible to believe: experts have destroyed Leonardo da Vinci's priceless sketch.
The sketch represented Orpheus being attacked by the furies. To save the sketch, special care had to be taken, so a team of restorers was called in, who…. destroyed the priceless sketch by treating it with alcohol and water, causing the ink to disappear
5. Lewis and Clarke's "weak" diarrhea
The Lewis and Clark Expedition is one of the most famous chapters in American history. It was the first land expedition across the United States from St. Louis to the Pacific coast and back. Not surprisingly, historians and researchers have sought to reproduce its details. However, this was difficult to do as the expedition lasted 28 months and passed through 600 different locations.
Impossible to Believe: Diarrhea and Sexually Transmitted Diseases of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
Archaeologists have found a unique way to identify a series of events that took place at that time: by analyzing toilets. It was found that the waste was abundant in mercury. The surviving records revealed that the researchers had ample supplies of Dr. Rush's Bile Pill, a very powerful laxative.
One tablet contained 10 grains of calomel, also known as mercuric chloride. These mercury-coated tablets have also been helpful for another common travel condition: syphilis. Most of the 30 people on the expedition had sexually transmitted diseases.
6. The Ravenous Franklin
Benjamin Franklin has done many strange things in his life. While he lived in London, he tried to seduce the wife of a friend named James Ralph (Franklin admitted this in his autobiography). According to him, Ralph and his new bride did not have enough money to start a family. So Ralph left London to teach at a rural school in Berkshire and left his wife in Franklin's care.
During this time, Ralph wrote frequently to Franklin, sending him fragments of an epic poem he was working on and asking for comments. This annoyed Franklin, who didn't like the teacher's artistic ambitions, but he still responded.
As a result, Franklin fell in love with his friend's wife and, out of any religious restraint, "tried to get to know" her. Mrs. T. did not reciprocate his feelings and told her husband when he returned. Thus their friendship ended. Franklin later said that this was only in his hands, since no one else sent him poetry.
7. Violence in Oxford
One of the earliest scholarly papers on university violence in medieval times was written by Professor Andrew Larsen of Marquette University, who studied the history of violence at Oxford University. He identified four main categories of student violence. The first was personal conflict violence between several people based on personal problems between them.
Unbelievable: Violence in universities was once very widespread.
While many of these cases resulted in beatings or persecution, they were also the most poorly documented. "Urban violence" was a bickering between students and townspeople. In such cases, there was often the potential for the greatest damage and turning into full-blown riots.
This was the case in 1355 during the celebration of Saint Scholastic's Day, which killed almost 100 people, including more than 60 scientists. The other two categories are north-south violence and faculty squabbles. They were usually caused by conflicts between nationalities or religions, or were the result of elections. Although the paper focused on Oxford, these incidents were common in other universities. There was a violent riot in Cambridge in 1381.
In 1229, students from the University of Paris attacked and robbed the tavern, and some were later killed by the city guards. Larsen identified the likely factors that contributed to the violence. Most of the students were men between the ages of 14 and 21, had easy access to weapons, and were clergymen, and therefore outside the jurisdiction of secular courts.
8. Necrophilia according to Herodotus
The ancient Egyptians were probably not the first to practice embalming, but they certainly took it to the next level. One of the first and most detailed descriptions of the process belongs to Herodotus in his landmark work "History". All embalmers were skilled performers who practiced their craft as a business. According to Herodotus, they usually had three wooden "corpses" that served as mannequins to showcase their various services, varying according to the client's budget.
The Greek historian detailed the work of the most expensive, premium service, which involved removing the brain and rinsing the skull, then emptying, cleansing and rinsing the abdomen, after which it was filled with spices and incense. The body was then left in a sitting position for 70 days before being washed again, wrapped in fine linen and taken to the family. The average package included the use of cedarwood oil, which was injected into the body and liquefied the insides.
For the poorer classes, they simply cleaned the intestines and left the body sitting until the family took it. Herodotus also mentions that dead beautiful women (especially the wives of high-ranking officials) were always left at home for three or four days before the embalmers were invited. This was done so that their bodies began to decompose, and this prevented the embalmers from engaging in necrophilia.
9. "Hour" erotica of the Victorian era
When people invented pocket watches, it didn't take long for them to take the next logical step by creating an erotic pocket watch. Initially, it was customary to order images of the owner's wife or mistress for these watches. Eventually, people got bored and wanted a little something more delicate.
Unbelievable: The Victorians hid erotic images in their watches.
The watches usually had highly detailed graphics that were hidden behind the dials. This allowed men to covertly wear their "pocket erotica" and gain access to it by turning a tiny knob or pressing a button. Such watches were created by master watchmakers and sold for huge sums of money, which made them inaccessible to most people.
10. Cheap porn Marcantonio Raimondi
During the fifteenth century, printing evolved to a stage where low-quality images, often representing copies of paintings, could be mass-produced and then sold at a relatively low cost. This made them accessible to the lower classes (previously, such works of art could only be admired by wealthy people, who usually did not exhibit works of art for public viewing). Not surprisingly, overtly pornographic prints soon appeared.
Unbelievable: Mass production of obscene prints.
Given the enormous influence of the Catholic Church at the time, the engravers took certain precautions to disguise their work, giving it a classic artistry. They usually featured mythological creatures such as Roman gods or historical figures such as Antony and Cleopatra. Perhaps the most notable erotic engraver was Marcantonio Raimondi, who was effectively imprisoned by Pope Clement VII for his obscene prints.
Marcantonio Raimondi created I Modi (Poses), a series of engravings, each clearly depicting a sexual position. They were paired with obscene sonnets written by the poet Pietro Aretino, who was also persecuted by the Church, forcing him to flee Rome. The church confiscated Raimondi's original drawings and destroyed any prints it could find. Today, only copies of the original engravings have survived.