Historical Facts and Time Perception

When we think of historical facts, we often confuse the sequence of events in history.
The Coliseum in Rome, Italy, was unveiled in 80 A.D., about the same time the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles in the Bible were written.
Oxford University in England was created before the emergence of the Aztec Empire in modern Mexico.
Tiffany & Company is older than the nation of Italy. The Italian Republic did not happen until 1861 and Tiffany was founded in 1837.
The Titanic sank the same month that Boston’s Fenway Park opened during 1912 and the same year vitamins and Oreos were invented.

The fax machine was invented the same year the first wagon crossed the Oregon Trail in 1843.
The Brooklyn Bridge was being built during the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876.
Nintendo was founded when Jack the Ripper was still on the loose in 1889.
Buffalo Bill Cody was alive at the same time the Germans were bombing with Zeppelins in 1916.

Cowboy Wyatt Earp was a movie consultant in his later years and knew William S. Hart, Tom Mix, Charlie Chaplin, Jack London, and more. He died in 1929.

Marilyn Monroe, Chuck Berry, Queen Elizabeth, Don Rickles, and Fidel Castro were born the same year in 1926.
Prisoners arrived at Auschwitz just days after the original McDonald's was founded in May, 1940.

The guillotine was still in use when Jimmy Carter was President of the United States, the year the first Star Wars was released, the year Charlie Chaplin Died, and Apple was incorporated. The last person was beheaded by the device in France during 1977.
The first man to achieve powered flight lived to see it accomplished at speeds faster than sound. Orville Wright lived until 1948, a year after a plane passed the speed of sound during 1947, and a few years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed in 1945.
The last eligible Civil War widow and American pensioner from the Civil War died in 2008. Pensions payable to surviving children and their spouses continued until at least 2017. That means the United States was continuing to incur costs related to the Civil War over 150 years after it ended.
Woolly mammoths were still roaming the earth when the pyramids were built at Giza. The great mammals coexisted with humans for several thousand years and the date of their final demise is several centuries after the construction of the pyramids.

Americans were on the moon in July, 1969, before women in Switzerland were allowed to vote in October, 1969.

Recipes and Rx

Retail prescription drugs in the US are over $200 billion annually. The origin of the Rx symbol comes from medieval time as an abbreviation for a form of the Late Latin word recipere meaning 'to take' or the imperative form of recipe, meaning 'take'.

By the late 1500s it came to mean medical prescription. This meaning lasted until the mid-1700s, when it was also applied to food preparation.

Physicians typically begin their directive with the command recipe, abbreviated to Rx. Other abbreviations used in the medical field for charting are “dx” (diagnosis), “sx” (signs and symptoms), and “hx” (history). Incidentally, females in the US fill almost fifty percent more prescriptions per capita than males.

Do You Testify

To 'testify' was based on men in the Roman court swearing to a statement made by swearing on their testicles.

Chew the Fat

During the middle ages in England, folks could seldom afford pork. When they did, it made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man could 'bring home the bacon.' They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and 'chew the fat.'

Teeth Jewels

Teeth with jewels and gold might seem like a new thing, but gem-studded teeth were popular among people from all walks of life in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, purely for decorative purposes.

As far back as 2,500 years ago, dentists could drill teeth using obsidian drill-like devices, which are capable of penetrating bone. They may even have used some kind of herbal anesthetic. Then they attached the gemstones using plant resin adhesive. The ancient drillers knew enough to avoid the pulp inside teeth, and so managed to avoid an infection or broken tooth. Now celebrities are starting to tattoo their teeth.

Speaking of BCE

My son told me about the new designations for BC and AD, so I had to go look it up. - There really is no difference between an AD/BC and BCE/CE system when it comes to historical dates. The year 23 AD is exactly the same as the year 23 CE, and 4004 BC is also 4004 BCE.

References to historical dates under either classification shouldn't create confusion. Major historical dates such as 1492 AD is now 1492 CE and 1776 AD is 1776 CE.

The AD/BC method of identifying historical dates is traced back to Catholic historians working in the early Middle Ages. Identifying historical dates until that point was often a complicated proposition, since different historians worked under different calendars. Converting historical dates to the standard Gregorian calendar would not have been easy, so they began using the birth of Jesus Christ as a central point.

The term BC is short for "Before Christ". Historical dates before the birth of Christ become smaller as they approach the theoretical Year Zero.

Historical dates after the birth of Christ are classified as AD, short for the Latin phrase Anno Domini, or "in the year of our Lord". Another goodie that we learned in school has become useless - and that was one of the few things I actually remembered.

Iodine

Iodine was discovered in 1811 by accident by Bernard Courtois. He had a factory that produced saltpeter (potassium nitrate), which was a key ingredient in ammunition. He had figured out how to fatten his profits and get his saltpeter potassium for next to nothing by getting it from the seaweed that washed up daily on the shores. Iodine is plentiful in saltwater and concentrated in seaweed. All he had to do was collect it, burn it, and extract the potassium from the ashes.

One day, while his workers were cleaning the tanks used for extracting potassium, they accidentally used a stronger acid than usual and mysterious clouds billowed from the tank. When the smoke cleared, he noticed dark crystals on all the surfaces that had come into contact with the fumes.

When he had the crystals analyzed, they turned out to be a previously unknown element, which he named iodine, after the Greek word for “violet.” It was soon discovered that goiters, enlargements of the thyroid gland, were caused by a lack of iodine in the diet. That's why iodine is now added to table salt and goiters are mostly a thing of the past.

Eyes

The term "it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye" is not from your mother. It is from ancient Rome, where the only rule during wrestling matches was no eye gouging. The only way to be disqualified was to poke someone's eyes out. And I thought my mother made that up.

Emilio Marcos Palma is Thirty

He was the first person known to be born on the continent of Antarctica in January, 1978. He is also listed in Guinness Records as the only known first-born on any continent.

Emilio had secured a scholarship to study Mechanical Engineering in the Army because he was an 'Anartic', but lost it by having to work on a website as a consultant, and then none of his brothers responded with a military vocation.

He is the fourth of five brothers, Carlos Jorge, María Silvia, Juan Santos, and Luciano, who was born 20 years after Emilio in the same bed, in the same room, in the same hospital in Neuquén, where his father was transferred.