The Book Of General Ignorance Part 9

JEREMY HARDY 'All anybody knows about it is the hairstyles. All anybody says, 'Oh, it's Roundheads and Cavaliers,' and you think, 'Yeah, that's it, really, one lot looks like the 'All anybody knows about it is the hairstyles. All anybody says, 'Oh, it's Roundheads and Cavaliers,' and you think, 'Yeah, that's it, really, one lot looks like the Grumbleweeds, the other looked like Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen,' so it all kicks off. Grumbleweeds, the other looked like Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen,' so it all kicks off.

What's the word for Napoleon's most humiliating defeat?

Rabbits.

While Waterloo was no doubt Napoleon's most crus.h.i.+ng defeat, it was not his most embarra.s.sing.

In 1807, Napoleon was in high spirits having signed the Peace of Tilsit, a landmark treaty between France, Russia and Prussia. To celebrate, he suggested that the Imperial Court should enjoy an afternoon's rabbit-shooting.

It was organised by his trusted chief-of-staff, Alexandre Berthier, who was so keen to impress Napoleon that he bought thousands of rabbits to ensure that the Imperial Court had plenty of game to keep them occupied.

The party arrived, the shoot commenced, and the gamekeepers released the quarry. But disaster struck. Berthier had bought tame, not wild, rabbits, who mistakenly thought they were about to be fed rather than killed.

Rather than fleeing for their life, they spotted a tiny little man in a big hat and mistook him for their keeper bringing them food. The hungry rabbits stormed towards Napoleon at their top speed of 35 mph (56 kph).

The shooting party now in shambolic disarray could do nothing to stop them. Napoleon was left with no other option but to run, beating the starving animals off with his bare hands. But the rabbits did not relent and drove the Emperor back to his carriage while his underlings thrashed vainly at them with horsewhips.

According to contemporary accounts of the fiasco, the Emperor of France sped off in his coach, comprehensively beaten and covered in shame.

Who blew the nose off the Sphinx?

The Sphinx, which means 'strangler' in Greek, was a mythical beast with the head of a woman, the body of a lion and the wings of a bird. As you may have noticed, its giant 6,500-year-old statue beside the pyramids has no nose.

Over the centuries, many armies and individuals British, German and Arab have been accused of deliberately blowing it off for various reasons, but Napoleon generally gets the blame.

Almost none of these accusations is true. In fact, the only person that we can definitely say damaged it at all was an Islamic cleric named Sa'im al-dahr, who was lynched for vandalism in 1378.

The British and the German armies in either of the two World Wars are not guilty: there are photographs of the Sphinx without its nose dating from 1886.

As for Napoleon, there are sketches in existence of a noseless Sphinx done in 1737, thirty-two years before he was even born. When he first clapped eyes on it as a twenty-nine-year-old general, it had probably been missing for hundreds of years.

Napoleon went to Egypt with a view to disrupting British communications with India. He fought two battles there: the battle of the Pyramids (which wasn't, as it happens, at the Pyramids), and the battle of the Nile (which wasn't at the Nile). As well as 55,000 troops, Napoleon brought with him 155 civilian experts known as 'savants'. It was the first professional archaeological expedition to the country.

When he returned to France after Nelson sank his fleet, the Emperor left behind his army and the savants, whose work continued. They produced the Description de l'Egypte Description de l'Egypte, the first accurate picture of the country to reach Europe.

Despite all this, Egyptian guides at the Pyramids today still tell tourists that the Sphinx's nose was 'stolen by Napoleon' and taken back to the Louvre in Paris.

The most likely reason for the missing organ is the action of 6,000 years of wind and weather on the soft limestone.

What's the name of the Piccadilly Circus statue in London?

a) Eros b) The Angel of Christian Charity c) Cupid d) Anteros The famous monument in Piccadilly Circus was erected in 1892 to commemorate the work of Lord Shaftesbury, the Victorian philanthropist.

Designed by the sculptor, Sir Alfred Gilbert, it represents Anteros and stands for, 'reflective and mature love, as opposed to Eros or Cupid, the frivolous tyrant'. Anteros was the younger brother of Eros.

This complicated idea never caught on. Because of the bow and the nudity, and people's generally shaky grasp of cla.s.sical mythology, everyone a.s.sumed it was Eros (known to the Romans as Cupid), the Greek G.o.d of love.

As a result, a counter-rumour was spread by those wanting to protect Shaftesbury's reputation, claiming the memorial was, in fact, the Angel of Christian Charity (Greek, agape agape), a rather obscure, but less racy, alternative.

Whatever its name, the statue was technologically groundbreaking, as it was the first in the world to be cast in aluminium.

The use of a nude figure on a public monument was controversial, but it was generally well received. The Magazine of Art Magazine of Art described it as '... a striking contrast to the dull ugliness of the generality of our street sculpture'. described it as '... a striking contrast to the dull ugliness of the generality of our street sculpture'.

Old London hands tell you that the memorial used to stand bang in the middle of Piccadilly Circus, aiming its bow down Shaftesbury Avenue ('he buries buries his his shaft shaft in Shaftes-bury'). During the Second World War the statue was removed for safe-keeping. When it was returned, so the story goes, the whey-faced bureaucrats of the London County Council decided to move it to one side and point it down Lower Regent Street instead. in Shaftes-bury'). During the Second World War the statue was removed for safe-keeping. When it was returned, so the story goes, the whey-faced bureaucrats of the London County Council decided to move it to one side and point it down Lower Regent Street instead.

This isn't so. It was certainly removed, but it has always always pointed down Lower Regent Street, because Gilbert designed it to face the direction of Shaftesbury's home in Wimbourne St Giles, Dorset. pointed down Lower Regent Street, because Gilbert designed it to face the direction of Shaftesbury's home in Wimbourne St Giles, Dorset.

What did Nero do while Rome burned?

He certainly didn't play the fiddle, which wasn't invented until the fifteenth century.

The other charge was that Nero sang a song about the burning of Troy while Rome burned in AD AD 64, implying that he had set fire to the city himself in order to do so. 64, implying that he had set fire to the city himself in order to do so.

In fact, when the fire broke out, he was more than 56 km (35 miles) away at his seaside holiday home. When told the news, he raced back to Rome and took personal charge of the fire-fighting efforts.

The suspicion that he wanted to burn down Rome may have arisen from his stated ambition to redevelop the city. He eventually managed to s.h.i.+ft the blame on to the Christians.

As to what Nero actually did: he was a transvest.i.te who loved acting in women's clothes, singing, playing music and having orgies, and he had his mother killed. He was very proud of his musical abilities; his dying words are reported to have been 'What an artist the world is losing in me!'

According to some, he generally accompanied himself on the kithara kithara (related to the lyre) but he also played the bagpipes. (related to the lyre) but he also played the bagpipes.

Dio Chrysostom, a Greek writing around AD AD 100, noted: 'They say that he can write, carve statues, play the 100, noted: 'They say that he can write, carve statues, play the aulos aulos both with his mouth, and also with the armpit, a bag being thrown under it.' both with his mouth, and also with the armpit, a bag being thrown under it.'

Early in the sixth century, Procopius, a Greek historian, mentions that the bagpipes were the instrument of choice of the Roman infantry while the trumpet was used in the cavalry.

Nero also invented ice cream (runners brought mountain snow flavoured with fruit juice) and his personal poisoner Locusta was history's first doc.u.mented serial killer.

Locusta means 'lobster' or 'locust': Latin uses the same word for both.

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What's more likely: being killed by lightning or by an asteroid?

Absurd as it may seem, death by asteroid is almost twice as likely.

It is estimated that a large asteroid (nowadays known as a Near Earth Object or NEO) hits the Earth once every million years. Statistically, this event is now well overdue.

A 'dangerous' NEO is one more than 2 km (1.2 miles) in diameter. The shock of the impact would be equivalent to one million megatons of TNT. If it happened, the death toll would be in excess of a billion, so the chances of you personally dying in any given year are one in six million.

The chance of being killed by lightning in the UK in any given year is about one in ten million, roughly the same as being bitten by an adder.

Lightning is a giant electrical spark, with a brightness equivalent to 100 million light bulbs going on and off. Some strokes reach a peak current of 100,000 amps and 200 million volts creating a temperature of 30,000 C, five times hotter than the surface of the Sun. A bolt of lightning travels at speeds of up to 100 million feet per second, or over 115 million kph.

Each 'flash' is really composed of several strokes, each lasting less than a millionth of a second. Because they are so short, the energy value of lightning is limited a single stroke would only generate enough energy to run an average household for a day. Lightning strikes the Earth more 8 million times every day, or about fifty times every second.

Strikes are commonest in coastal areas, occurring at a rate of about two per square kilometre per year. They don't seem to do much damage: the electricity dissipates rapidly across the surface of the sea and whales have been observed to sing quite happily through ferocious electrical storms.

Human beings, on the other hand, are struck by lightning ten times more frequently than they ought to be under the laws of chance.

Men are struck by lightning six times more often than women.

Between three and six Britons and a hundred Americans are killed by lightning every year, many of them because they are carrying portable lightning conductors about their person golf-clubs, carbon-fibre fis.h.i.+ng rods and underwired bras.

If caught in a thunderstorm in the open, the safest position is well away from any trees, crouching down with your bottom sticking up in the air.

How many people died in the Great Fire of London?

Five.

Despite destroying 13,200 houses, 87 churches, 44 Livery Halls and over 80 per cent of the city, fewer than half a dozen deaths were recorded.

The dead were: the maid of the baker who started it; Paul Lowell, a Shoe Lane watchmaker; an old man who rescued a blanket from St Paul's but succ.u.mbed to the smoke; and two others who fell into their cellars in an ill-fated attempt to rescue goods and chattels.

The true death-toll may never be known. John Evelyn talks of the 'stench that came from some poor creatures' bodies', and modern forensic evidence suggests that, given the intense heat, some corpses would almost certainly have been vaporised and thus not recorded.

However, the leisurely pace of the fire (it burned for five days) made it relatively easy for people to evacuate, and the five cited remain the only definite casualties.

The authorities' response to the fire wasn't overly speedy. The Lord Mayor, Thomas Bludworth, went back to bed on the first night claiming 'a woman might p.i.s.s it out' and Samuel Pepys found time to safeguard his valuables by burying a 'large parmazan cheese' in his back garden.

In the previous 'Great Fire' of London (in 1212), 3,000 people died, and in the two years prior to 1666, the plague had killed 65,000. The fire stopped the plague by destroying the black rats and their breeding grounds but the cost of the damage was estimated at 10 million. With the entire annual income of the City of London running at 12,000, these costs would, theoretically, have taken 800 years to pay off.

Over 100,000 people lost their homes. Many of them camped out in a shanty town at Moorfields, or built shacks near their burned-out properties. But such was the speed of the rebuilding that by 1672 almost all had been rehoused.

The fire started in the King's bakery run by Thomas Farynor in Pudding Lane. Farynor denied this at the time and a deluded French watchmaker called Robert Hubert claimed he did it. Although it was evident to judge and jury that he couldn't have done, they hanged him anyway. His corpse was torn apart by an angry mob, suspecting a Popish plot.

Justice wasn't finally done until 1986, when the Wors.h.i.+pful Company of Bakers claimed official responsibility and apologised for the fire.

How did Roman Emperors order the death of a gladiator?

Thumbs up.

Neither Roman spectators calling for the death of a gladiator, nor Roman Emperors authorising one, ever gave a thumbs down. In fact, the Romans didn't use a 'thumbs down' sign at all.

If death was desired, the thumb was stuck up like a drawn sword. For a loser's life to be spared, the thumb was tucked away inside the closed fist as with a sheathed weapon. This is expressed in Latin as pollice compresso favor iudicabatur pollice compresso favor iudicabatur, 'goodwill is decided by the thumb being kept in'.

Before Ridley Scott agreed to direct Gladiator Gladiator, Hollywood executives showed him the painting Pollice Verso Pollice Verso by the nineteenth-century artist Jean-Leon Gerome. In the painting, a Roman gladiator waits while the emperor stretches his thumb down to give the death sentence. Scott was captivated by the image, and decided on the spot that he must direct the film. by the nineteenth-century artist Jean-Leon Gerome. In the painting, a Roman gladiator waits while the emperor stretches his thumb down to give the death sentence. Scott was captivated by the image, and decided on the spot that he must direct the film.

Little did Scott know that the source of his inspiration was utterly wrong. The painting is single-handedly responsible for one of the greatest fallacies of the last two centuries, namely that 'thumbs down' indicated death.

Historians agree that Gerome wrongly a.s.sumed that the Latin pollice verso pollice verso 'turned thumb' meant 'turned down' when in fact it meant 'turned up'. 'turned thumb' meant 'turned down' when in fact it meant 'turned up'.

If further proof were needed, in 1997 a Roman medallion of the second or third century AD AD was discovered in southern France. It shows two gladiators at the end of a battle and a referee pressing his thumb against a closed fist. The inscription reads: 'Those standing should be released.' was discovered in southern France. It shows two gladiators at the end of a battle and a referee pressing his thumb against a closed fist. The inscription reads: 'Those standing should be released.'

The use of thumb signs can still be dangerously ambiguous in the modern world. In the Middle East, South America and Russia, a 'thumbs up' is considered to be a very rude insult, comparable to the Western V-sign. This has been problematic in Iraq, where American soldiers are unsure whether locals are welcoming them or about to blow them up.

Desmond Morris, author of The Naked Ape The Naked Ape, traces the positive connotations of the 'thumbs up' in Britain to the Middle Ages, where it was used to close business deals. It found a new lease of life in World War Two when US airforce pilots adopted it as a signal to ground crews before take-off.

Ridley Scott was eventually told about the 'thumbs down' fallacy but felt obliged to have Commodus give the 'thumbs up' when sparing Maximus, in order 'not to confuse the audience'.

ALAN Now, were the Romans the only ... really the only people who had that kind of ... men killing each other thing for sport? Now, were the Romans the only ... really the only people who had that kind of ... men killing each other thing for sport?

STEPHEN The Greeks didn't do it, no, they ... they had naked wrestling instead, which is much more the thing. The Greeks didn't do it, no, they ... they had naked wrestling instead, which is much more the thing.

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What was interesting about the birth of Julius Caesar?

Almost nothing is known about the birth of Julius Caesar, except that, contrary to the a.s.sertion in the Oxford English Dictionary Oxford English Dictionary and countless other reference books, it did not take place by Caesarean section. and countless other reference books, it did not take place by Caesarean section.

Such operations did occur at the time, but they always involved the death of the mother, and Caesar's mother Aurelia is known to have survived into his adulthood. The suggestion that he was born by C-section does not appear in any of the contemporary sources, and is first mentioned in medieval times. It was not used in a medical context in English before 1615.

The confusion probably started with Pliny the Elder who, in his Natural History Natural History (about 77 (about 77 AD AD) claims that the first Caesar was 'cut from his mother's womb'. This may well have been true, but it wasn't the Caesar we know as Gaius Julius Caesar.

The Roman three-part naming convention meant that Gaius was his 'given name' and he was part of the 'Caesar' branch of the 'Julian' clan, so no one knows how many Caesars there had been previously. Nor do we know exactly what 'Caesar' means and none of the meanings are particularly apt to our man. There is Pliny's 'cut' from caedere. caedere. Or Or caeseries caeseries meaning 'hairy' (but he was balding); or meaning 'hairy' (but he was balding); or caesius caesius 'grey' (but his eyes were black) or even 'elephant' (from the Phoenician and perhaps applied to a Julian ancestor who had killed one). 'grey' (but his eyes were black) or even 'elephant' (from the Phoenician and perhaps applied to a Julian ancestor who had killed one).

The Romans p.r.o.nounced 'Caesar' kaisar (hence the German word Kaiser Kaiser and the Russian and the Russian czar czar, both ultimately derived from the Latin name). Roman emperors usually included 'Caesar' in their long formal names.

Caesar Salad is no relation, however. It was invented by Cesar Cardini in an Italian restaurant in Tijuana, Mexico, in 1923.

ALAN Stephen Wright said he was born by Caesarean section. It doesn't really affect him except when he goes into a room, he leaves by the window Stephen Wright said he was born by Caesarean section. It doesn't really affect him except when he goes into a room, he leaves by the window.

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What's a vomitorium for?

Vomitorium, despite being derived from the Latin vomere vomere, meaning 'to spew forth' isn't the place where the Romans threw up after their meals. It was the name for the entrance or exit from an amphitheatre and is still used in that sense today in some sports stadiums.

The vomitoria of the Colosseum in Rome were so well designed that it's said the venue, which seated at least 50,000, could fill in fifteen minutes. (There were eighty entrances at ground level, seventy-six for ordinary spectators and four for the imperial family.) The confusion of the exit with a specialised vomit chamber appears to be a recent error. The earliest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary Oxford English Dictionary finds Aldous Huxley using the term in his 1923 comic novel, finds Aldous Huxley using the term in his 1923 comic novel, Antic Antic Hay, but notes that the usage is 'erron[eous]'. Lewis Mumford in Hay, but notes that the usage is 'erron[eous]'. Lewis Mumford in The City in History The City in History (1961) compounded the confusion by saying the exits were named after the chambers where gluttons threw up 'in order to return to their couches empty enough to enjoy the pleasures of still more food'. (1961) compounded the confusion by saying the exits were named after the chambers where gluttons threw up 'in order to return to their couches empty enough to enjoy the pleasures of still more food'.

The problem with this theory is that no Roman writer ever refers to them, nor have any purpose-built rooms that fit the bill been found. Romans certainly threw up on purpose. Indeed, in ancient times vomiting seems to have been a standard part of the fine-dining experience. The orator Cicero says in Pro Rege Deiotaro Pro Rege Deiotaro (45 (45 BC BC) that Julius Caesar 'expressed a desire to vomit after dinner' and elsewhere suggests that the dictator took emetics for this purpose.