10 Things you might know or maight not know

1. Andorra declared war on Imperial Germany during World War I, but did not actually take part in the fighting. It remained in an official state of belligerency until 1957 as it was not included in the Versailles Peace Treaty.

2. Only two people signed the Declaration independence on 4 July 1776 – John Hancock and Charles Thomson. The majority of the other members of Congress signed on 2 August, although the final signature wasn’t added for another five years.

3. As a restorative medicine in ancient Rome, people would drink a mixture of wine and the dung of wild boars.

4. During the Western Schism (1378 to 1417), three men simultaneously claimed to be the legitimate Pope. When the cardinals didn’t like the Pope they originally elected, they elected a second (invalidly). This caused great troubles in the Church which lead to the election of a third Pope by the council of Pisa (also invalidly). Thus there were three claimants to the throne: Pope Gregory XII, Antipope Benedict XIII, and Antipope John XXIII. It was finally ended when the original election was considered the only valid one of the lot.

5. Sir William Paterson (pictured above), founder of the Bank of England, is suspected to have been a pirate in his years before founding the bank.

6. In 1904, tea bags were invented accidentally. The inventor, Thomas Sullivan (a tea merchant) decided that it was cheaper to send small samples to prospective customers in silk bags – rather than boxes. The recipients mistakenly believed they were meant to be dunked and soon Sullivan was inundated with orders for his “tea bags”.

7. The oldest parachute design appears in an anonymous manuscript from 1470s Renaissance Italy (over 400 years before the airplane), showing a free-hanging man clutching a cross bar frame attached to a conical canopy. As a safety measure, four straps run from the ends of the rods to a waist belt.

8. In the late 1700s, a tobacco enema was used to infuse tobacco smoke into a patient’s rectum for various medical purposes, primarily the resuscitation of drowning victims. A rectal tube inserted into the anus was connected to a fumigator and bellows that forced the smoke towards the rectum (machine pictured above).

9. Income tax, along with many other taxes imposed during the Civil War, was repealed after 1865 because the government simply had no need for the extra revenue. The majority of federal income came from taxes on tobacco and alcohol, which were hot commodities at war’s end.

10. In Rome, there were people who specialized in armpit plucking. Somewhere around 1 AD, Roman aristocrats interested in fashion, removed all of their body hair. Requirements for the profession were tweezers, a strong arm and the ability to deal with their customer’s pain.