Winston Churchill (an old friend of our blog) once famously said, “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it”.
Now, although we are big fans of that classic movie “Groundhog Day”,
in an effort to not just become another ‘repeater’ of history, this week we thought we’d share a few strange but true historical snippets that we all might learn - though not exactly sure what - some kind of lesson from. So, hold onto your belief systems because here we go…..
Turkeys were once worshipped as gods.
Though the argument could be made that, in the USA on Thanksgiving day every November, that still holds true, in 300 B.C. these big birds were heralded by the Mayan people as vessels of the gods and were honored as such. So much so that they were domesticated to have roles in religious rites. They were symbols of power and prestige and can be found everywhere in Maya iconography and archaeology.
Napoleon was once attacked by a horde of bunnies.
The emperor had requested that a rabbit hunt be arranged for himself and his men. His chief of staff, Alexandre Berthier, set it up and had men round up reportedly 3,000 rabbits for the occasion. When the rabbits were released from their cages the bunnies charged toward Bonaparte and his men in a viscous and unstoppable onslaught.
Captain Morgan was a real guy.
While some of us may have thought we've met him after too many glasses of his famous rum, he actually was a Welsh privateer (aka a pirate) who fought alongside the English against the Spanish in the Caribbean in the 1660s and 1670s. His first name was Henry and he was knighted by King Charles II of England. His exact birth date is unknown, but it was sometime around 1635. He died in Jamaica in 1688, apparently very rich.
Using forks used to be considered sacrilegious.
Yes indeed, forks were once seen as blasphemous. First introduced in Italy in the 11th Century, these spiked spaghetti-twirling instruments were seen as an offense to God. Why, you may ask? Because they were seen as "artificial hands" and, as such, were considered to be sacrilegious.
Pope Gregory IV declared a war on cats.
In the 13th century, Pope Gregory IV said that black cats were instruments of Satan and ordered the extermination of these felines across Europe. But, as the saying goes - be careful what you wish for - his plan backfired as it resulted in an increase in the population of plague-carrying rats.
Ketchup was sold in the 1830’s as medicine.
In 1834, ketchup was sold as a cure for indigestion by an Ohio physician named John Cook. Tomato ketchup was popularized as a condiment commercially in the late 1800’s and today, in the USA alone, more than 10 billion ounces of ketchup are sold annually. Of course, in the 1980’s, during the administration of US President Ronald Reagan, ketchup was classified as a vegetable…..
At this point it seems appropriate to refer back up to Churchill’s quote at the beginning of this blog post.
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