The Book Of General Ignorance Part 30

Domestication is different from taming. It implies selective breeding. Elephants can be tamed, but are not domesticated.

ALAN What's that Tony Hanc.o.c.k joke? Where he sees the reindeer head on the wall in the gentlemen's club, and says, 'Cor! He must have been s.h.i.+fting when he hit the other side of that wall!' What's that Tony Hanc.o.c.k joke? Where he sees the reindeer head on the wall in the gentlemen's club, and says, 'Cor! He must have been s.h.i.+fting when he hit the other side of that wall!'

What was odd about Rudolf the Red-nose Reindeer?

He was a girl.

Despite being called Rudolph and referred to as 'him', like all Santa's reindeer 'he' must in fact have been female. Male reindeer lose their antlers at the beginning of the winter. Females keep their antlers until they give birth in the spring.

Reindeer/caribou are the only female deer to have antlers. They are shed and regrow every year. They are shorter and simpler than those of the males but still grow at a rate of more than 2.5 cm (1 inch) a day, making them the fastest-growing tissue of any mammal.

The other possibility is that Rudolph was a eunuch. The Sami sometimes castrate male reindeer, thus enabling them to keep their antlers, and to carry especially heavy loads.

Where do turkeys come from?

Despite being native to North America, the domesticated turkeys that graced the tables of the Pilgrim Fathers had travelled out with them from England.

Turkeys first reached Europe in the 1520s, brought back from their native Mexico first to Spain and then sold throughout the continent by Turkish merchants. They quickly became a favourite food for the richer cla.s.ses.

By 1585, turkey had become a Christmas tradition in England. Norfolk farmers set to work to produce a heavier-breasted, more docile version of the wild bird. The Norfolk Black and the White Holland were both English breeds reintroduced to America, and most domestic turkey now consumed in the USA derives from them.

From the late sixteenth century, English turkeys walked the 160 km (100 miles) from Norfolk to Leadenhall Market in London each year. The journey would take three months and the birds wore special leather boots to protect their feet.

A flock of 1,000 turkeys could be managed by two drovers carrying long wands of willow or hazel with red cloth tied on the ends. Traffic jams were caused by the vast flocks entering London from Norfolk and Suffolk in the weeks before Christmas.

Turkeys have nothing to do with Turkey. They were called 'Turkie c.o.c.ks' in England because of the traders who supplied them. Maize, also originally from Mexico, was once called 'turkie corn' for the same reason.

In most other countries including Turkey they were named after India, perhaps because the Spanish returned with it from the 'Indies' (as America was called).

Only the Portuguese got close to the truth, calling the turkey a peru peru. The Native American word for turkey was furkee furkee, according to the Pilgrim Fathers, although no one seems to know which Algonquin language it comes from. In Choctaw they are called fakit fakit, based on the sound the bird makes.

Even science seemed unsure what to call the turkey. The Latin name Meleagris gallopavo Meleagris gallopavo translates literally as the 'guinea-fowl chicken-peac.o.c.k', which looks like linguistic spread-betting. translates literally as the 'guinea-fowl chicken-peac.o.c.k', which looks like linguistic spread-betting.

A male turkey is called a stag, gobbler or tom. The female is always a hen. Turkeys are the largest creatures able to give birth without s.e.x: the offspring of such virgin births are male, and invariably sterile.

Most languages write the turkey's gobble as glu glu glu glu or or kruk kruk, kruk kruk. In Hebrew, however, they go mekarkerim mekarkerim.

ALAN They live in vast aircraft hangers, pecking each other to death their legs snapping under their vast, bulbous, amphetamine, antibiotic-filled bodies. They live in vast aircraft hangers, pecking each other to death their legs snapping under their vast, bulbous, amphetamine, antibiotic-filled bodies.

JO Sounds a bit like my house. Sounds a bit like my house.

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Who was born by Immaculate Conception?

Mary.

This catches out a lot of non-Catholics. The Immaculate Conception refers to birth of the Virgin Mary, not the virgin birth of Jesus.

It is commonly confused with the doctrine of the Virgin Birth, by which Mary became pregnant with Jesus through the Holy Spirit.

Under the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, Mary was granted immunity from all suspicion of sin at the moment she was conceived.

Unfortunately, the Bible doesn't make any reference to this happening. It only became an official Catholic dogma in 1854.

Many theologians believe the doctrine to be unnecessary because Jesus redeemed everyone anyway.

The Virgin Birth is a core doctrine of the Church but that doesn't mean it is beyond controversy. It is explicitly mentioned in Luke and Matthew's Gospels but not by the earlier Gospel of St Mark, or the even earlier letters of St Paul.

St Paul, in his letter to the Romans, states clearly that Jesus 'was made of the seed of David, according to the flesh'. We also know that the earliest Jewish Christians, called Nazarenes, didn't believe in the virgin birth either.

The 'supernatural' elements of Jesus's life story became exaggerated as the new religion gradually absorbed pagan ideas to broaden its appeal.

The virgin birth wasn't a part of Jewish tradition. But Perseus and Dionysus in Greek mythology, Horus in Egyptian and Mithra, a Persian deity whose cult rivalled Christianity in popularity, were all 'born of virgins'.

Was Jesus born in a stable?

No.

Not according to the New Testament. The idea that Jesus was born in a stable is an a.s.sumption made only because St Luke's Gospel says he was 'laid in a manger'.

Nor is there any biblical authority for the presence of animals at the Nativity. Of course, we're all familiar with the scene from the crib we see in churches and schools, but it was 1,000 years before it was invented.

St Francis of a.s.sisi is credited with making the first crib, in 1223 in a cave in the hills above Greccio. He placed some hay on a flat rock (which can still be seen), put a baby on top and added carvings of an ox and an a.s.s (though no Joseph, Mary, Wise Men, Shepherds, angels or lobsters).

RICH In America, they just In America, they just ... ... they just milk it in ads, at Christmas. Everything. 'Autolite. The sparkplug Jesus would have used.' they just milk it in ads, at Christmas. Everything. 'Autolite. The sparkplug Jesus would have used.'

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How many commandments are there in the Bible?

Either thirteen, nineteen or 613.

A careful reading of the 'Ten Commandments' (as set down twice in the Bible, in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5) makes it quite clear that there are actually more than ten of them. Here's a count based on the list in Exodus: 1 Thou shalt have no other G.o.ds before me.

2 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.

3 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them nor serve them.

4 Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord your G.o.d in vain.

5 Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.

6 Six days shalt thou labour and do all thy work.

7 The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy G.o.d: in it thou shalt not do any work.

8 Honour thy father and thy mother.

9 Thou shalt not kill 10 Thou shalt not commit adultery.

11 Thou shalt not steal.

12 Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.

13 Thou shalt not covet your neighbour's house.

There follow another six of your neighbour's possessions thou shalt not covet, including oxen, a.s.ses, maidservants, etc., which could arguably be interpreted as separate commandments in their own right.

But it doesn't stop there. After the first nineteen imperatives, the list goes on for another three pages, including: 'If an ox gore a man or a woman, that they die, then the ox shall surely be stoned.' 'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.' 'Three times thou shalt keep a feast unto me in the year.' 'Thou shalt not oppress a stranger.' 'Whosoever lieth with a beast shall surely be put to death.'

The opening books of the Bible are called the Five Books of Moses (Pentateuch in Greek). In Judaism, they are called the Torah (or 'Teaching'). The third in the series is the twenty-seven-chapter Book of Leviticus. Here the Lord G.o.d really gets into his stride, issuing commandments on every conceivable subject, forbidding the eating of camels, hares, eagles, vultures, cuckoos, swans, weasels, tortoises and bats and specifying the death penalty for h.o.m.os.e.xuals, wizards and adulterers. 'Do not prost.i.tute thy daughter,' He commands. 'Thou shalt not multiply horses.' 'Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy father's wife's daughter.' 'Neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard.' According to Orthodox Judaism, there are a total of 613 commandments in the Bible, breaking down into 248 'thou shalts' and 365 'thou shalt nots'. And, if that were not enough, in case He might have forgotten something, the sting in the tail comes in Deuteronomy 18:13: Thou shalt be perfect with the Lord thy G.o.d.

How many sheep were there on Noah's Ark?

Seven. Or fourteen.

The relevant pa.s.sage in the King James Bible appears in Genesis 7: 2, where G.o.d tells Noah: 'Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of the beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female.'

'Unclean' beasts are the extensive range of creatures that Jews were (and are) forbidden to eat, including pigs, camels, rock-badgers, chameleons, eels, snails, ferrets, lizards, moles, vultures, swans, owls, pelicans, storks, herons, lapwings, bats,ravens, cuckoos and eagles.

'Clean' (edible) animals include sheep, cattle, goats, antelopes and locusts.

So there were at least seven sheep on the Ark, not two as taught in Sunday school. But the pa.s.sage is slightly ambiguous: does it mean seven males and seven females, or seven altogether? Those who know say that seven of each would be a disaster: fights would break out between the rams. A more practical solution would be one ram and six ewes.

However, the Douay-Rheims Bible, the authoritative Catholic translation of the Latin Vulgate published in 1609, is quite clear on the matter: 'Of all clean beasts, take seven and seven, the male and the female.' So it looks like there were fourteen sheep on the Ark.

Medieval rabbis spent a good deal of time debating whether fish were left to fend for themselves in the Flood, or whether Noah dutifully brought them on board the ark in an aquarium. In the mid-sixteenth century, Johannes Buteo calculated that Noah's Ark would have had a usable s.p.a.ce of 350,000 cubic cubits, of which 140,000 must have been taken up by hay.

But the flood really happened. More than 500 different flood-myths exist in cultures all over the world.

Human beings evolved during the last Ice Age. Towards the end of it, as the temperature rose, there were vast catastrophic rises in sea level caused by the melting ice-caps. The story of Noah is thought to describe the disappearance of the TigrisEuphrates Delta under the Persian Gulf.

The sudden shortage of land could no longer support hunter-gathering, and, for the first time, human beings were forced to turn to farming.

Aborigines, whose culture and oral tradition reaches back to the last Ice Age, can name and locate mountains that have been under the sea since the ice-caps melted 8,000 years ago.

ALAN 'The animals went in by two-by-two, hurrah, hurrah.' 'The animals went in by two-by-two, hurrah, hurrah.'

BILL [sings] 'Except for the camels 'cause they were filthy, hurrah, hurrah! And then the sheep, and then came the amoeba: One. No, two. No, four. No, eight. No, sixteen. No, thirty-two [sings] 'Except for the camels 'cause they were filthy, hurrah, hurrah! And then the sheep, and then came the amoeba: One. No, two. No, four. No, eight. No, sixteen. No, thirty-two ... ...'

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Who's the oldest man in the Bible?

Enoch, Methuselah's father, who's still alive. He's 5,387 years old, give or take a week. Methuselah lived to a measly 969.

Methuselah is famous for being the oldest man who ever lived but, according to the Bible, he was not that much older than his own grandfather, Jared, who lived to be 962. The direct line of Adam's descendants up until the Flood (with their ages) is as follows: Adam (930); Seth (912); Enos (905); Cainan (910); Mahalaleel (895); Jared (962); Enoch (365 not out); Methuselah (969); Lamech (777); Noah (950).

Though all of these characters were abnormally old, all but one of them died in a perfectly normal way. The exception is the mysterious Enoch, who was a stripling of just 365 when G.o.d 'took him'. Enoch never died at all: a distinction not even granted to Jesus Christ. In the New Testament St Paul reiterates the story of Enoch's immortality in his Epistle to the Hebrews.

'By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and was not found, because G.o.d had translated him: for before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased G.o.d' (Hebrews 11:5).

The French philosopher Descartes believed it ought to be possible for all human beings to live as long as the Biblical Patriarchs around 1,000 years and was convinced he was on the brink of cracking the secret when he died in 1650, aged fifty-four.

Where were the first modern Olympics held?

At Much Wenlock, Shrops.h.i.+re, in 1850. The games were held there annually and inspired Baron Coubertin to organise the Athens Olympiad of 1896: 'Much Wenlock is a town in Shrops.h.i.+re, a county on the borders of Wales, and if the Olympic Games that modern Greece has not yet been able to revive still survive today, it is due not to a Greek, but to Dr W. P. Brookes.'

Brookes believed a rigorous programme of physical training would help make people better Christians by keeping them out of the pubs. His knowledge of the ancient Olympics inspired him to found the Much Wenlock Society for the Promulgation of Physical Culture in 1841.

The first of the annual 'Brookes' Olympian Games' was held in 1850 with small cash prizes for running, long jump, football, quoits and cricket. Other events were gradually added, such as a blindfold wheelbarrow race, a pig race and a medieval tilting contest. Winners were crowned with laurel wreaths and medallions inscribed with Nike, the Greek G.o.ddess of victory.

The fame of the Wenlock Olympics quickly spread, attracting entries from all parts of Britain. They were even noticed in Athens and King George I of the h.e.l.lenes sent a silver medal to be awarded as a prize.

With visions of reviving the ancient games on an international scale, Brookes founded the National (British) Olympic a.s.sociation in 1865 and staged its first games at the Crystal Palace in London. Without sponsors, it was snubbed by the leading sportsmen of the day.

In 1888 Brookes began a correspondence with Baron Coubertin. In 1890, the Baron came to see the Wenlock Games for himself, planting an oak that still stands in the village. He returned home determined to re-establish the ancient games, founding the International Olympic Committee in 1894.

Through his wealth, prestige and political connections, Coubertin succeeded where Brookes had failed. He staged the first international revival of the games in Athens in the summer of 1896.

Dr Brookes had died the previous year, aged 86. The Wenlock Games are still held annually in his honour.

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Why is a marathon 26 miles and 385 yards long?

For the convenience of the British royal family.

At the first three modern Olympics, the marathon was run over a distance of roughly 42 km (26 miles), varying from games to games. In 1908 the Olympic Games were held in London and the starting line was put outside a window at Windsor Castle from which one half of the royal family could watch, with the finish in front of the royal box in the White City stadium where the other half of the family was waiting. This distance was 26 miles and 385 yards: the standard length of a marathon ever since.