Exploring some ancient history – Comedy News

Exploring some ancient history – Comedy News

In 1500, most of the houses had thatched roofs – thick straw, piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the dogs, cats and other small animals (mice, rats, and bugs) lived in the roof. When it rained it became
slippery, and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof, hence the saying, "It’s raining cats and dogs" came into being.

Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children – last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could
actually lose someone in it. Hence it paved a way for the saying, "Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water."

The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (the straw left over after threshing grain) on the floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they kept adding more and more thresh until when
you opened the door it would all start slipping outside. To prevent this, a piece of wood was placed in the entrance way – hence a "thresh hold" became the common term.

Most people did not have pewter plates, but had trenchers (a piece of wood with the middle scooped out like a bowl). Often trenchers were made from stale bread that was so old and hard that they could use them for quite some time. Trenchers were never washed
and a lot of times worms and mold got into the wood and old bread. After eating off wormy, moldy trenchers, one would get "trench mouth."

Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, "the upper crust."

The country was old and small and they started out running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins to reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, one out of 25 coffins was found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized
they had been burying people alive. So they thought they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the "graveyard
shift") to listen for the bell.

Thus, someone could be "saved by the bell" or was considered "a dead ringer."

So next time you are washing your hands and complain because the water temperature isn’t just how you like it, think about how things used to be in past.

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Posted by Irfan Khokhar on Dec 29 2011. Filed under Entertainment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry