12795. History Facts

In 167 BCE, a Roman commander had a group of soldiers trampled to death by elephants for deserting (running away from battle).

12796. History Facts

The Mongolian ruler Ghengis Khan imposed the death penalty for urinating in water because water was so precious in the Mongolian desert.

12797. History Facts

Lord Nelson (1758–1805) admiral of the English fleet, slept in a coffin in his cabin.The coffin was made from the mast of an enemy French ship.

12798. History Facts

The Spanish Inquisition was set up to find people who committed crimes against the church and its teachings. They often questioned and tortured people until they confessed. In the case of a child under 10, though, they could go straight to the torture and not bother with the questions.

12799. History Facts

In India, people used to believe that the eyes from a slow lorris – a nocturnal creature like a monkey with no tail – could work as a love potion.

12800. History Facts

An Ancient Egyptian cure for burns involved warming a frog in goat dung and applying it to the burn.

12801. History Facts

During the time of Henry VIII of England, who reigned from 1508 to 1547, the punishment for poisoners was to be boiled alive.

12802. History Facts

To make violin strings, the gut of a sheep – which could be 30 metres long (over 98 feet) in length – was removed intact. The blood, flesh and fat were then scraped off the outside, the halfdigested grass was squeezed out and it was washed out carefully. The wider end was used as sausage skins, the rest for violin strings.

12803. History Facts

The Roman emperor Valerian was captured by visigoths (a barbaric tribe) invading Rome in 260 CE, who skinned him alive and then displayed the skin as a signal of their triumph.

12804. History Facts

Ancient Greeks used to blow up a pig's bladder like a balloon and use it as a ball.

12805. History Facts

An Anglo-Saxon cure for baldness was to rub the ash from burnt bees into the head.

12806. History Facts

Soldiers fighting in the trenches in World War I often suffered from trench foot (spending too long in cold, wet trenches made their feet rot). Some had to have their feet amputated because of it…

12807. History Facts

When Sir Walter Ralegh was executed in 1618, his wife had his head embalmed. She carried it around with her for 29 years, until her own death.

12808. History Facts

A French medieval torture involved trapping a person in the stocks – a wooden structure that held their ankles while they sat on the ground – pouring salt water over their bare feet and letting a goat lick it off.

12809. History Facts

The servants of a dead Egyptian pharaoh were often killed and buried with him or sealed alive in his pyramid.

12810. History Facts

The poet Shelley drowned off the coast of Italy in 1822. His body was washed up, half eaten by fish, and cremated on the beach by his friends. One of them cut his heart from the burnt body and gave it to Shelley's wife who kept it all her life.

12811. History Facts

The Hungarian countess Elizabeth Bathori killed more than 600 young girls in the 1500s in order to drink and bathe in their blood.

12812. History Facts

A Saxon cure for madness was a beating with a whip made from the skin of a dolphin.

12813. History Facts

Ancient Egyptians sometimes brought a mummified body to banquets to remind diners that one day they would die.

12814. History Facts

Monks in Sicily, Italy, mummified dead bodies until 1920. A display of 6,000 can be seen in catacombs in Palermo, standing around or lying on shelves.

12815. History Facts

Hanging, drawing and quartering was a punishment for the worst crimes in England from 1241. The prisoner was nearly strangled by hanging, then cut open and had his innards removed and cooked in front of him, and finally chopped into four pieces. By the mid-1700s, prisoners were killed before the drawing and quartering.

12816. History Facts

Early Colonists in America used to clean their windows with rags dipped in urine.

12817. History Facts

In the Middle Ages, butchers often killed animals for meat in their shops, then threw the innards out into the street.

12818. History Facts

Romans who killed a relative would be executed by being tied in a sack with a live dog, cockerel, snake and monkey and thrown into a river.

12819. History Facts

Wool used to be softened by people trampling on it in a large vat of stale (two-week-old) urine and ground clay. The people who did this were called ‘fullers'.

12820. History Facts

Fashionable women in Japan and Vietnam stained their teeth black until the mid-1900s.

12821. History Facts

A dead body found in the Alps in 1991 was at first thought to be a climber who had died. Investigators discovered it was a man who had been mummified naturally in the ice after dying 5,300 years ago.They named him Otzi.

12822. History Facts

So many people associated with the discovery of Otzi have died young that some believe the mummy is cursed.

12823. History Facts

The Incas of South America used to mummify their dead kings and leave them sitting on their thrones.

12824. History Facts

During a famine and drought in Jamestown, America, in 1609, one settler was executed for eating his dead wife.

12825. History Facts

Queen Christina of Sweden, who reigned from 1640 to 1654, had a miniature cannon and crossbow for executing fleas.

12826. History Facts

In the 1700s, people wore huge hairstyles made of a mixture of real hair and horse hair or other fibres. As they rarely cleaned them – keeping them in place for months on end – they carried sticks to knock vermin out of their hair-does.

12827. History Facts

Sailors in the olden days often had a single gold tooth, which could be pulled out and used to pay for their funeral if they died away from home.

12828. History Facts

The French actress Sarah Bernhardt took a coffin with her on all her travels. She learned her lines while lying in the coffin and even entertained her lovers in it.

12829. History Facts

An Egyptian mummy can have more than 20 layers of bandages, with glue between the layers. Every finger and toe was wrapped separately. It took 15 days to wrap a royal mummy.

12830. History Facts

Ancient Romans made hair dye from pigeon faeces.

12831. History Facts

Uruguay's rugby team was stranded in the Andes in South America after a plane crash in 1979. It took seventy days for them to be rescued, and they had to eat the other passengers who had died in the crash.

12832. History Facts

An Ancient Egyptian who was feeling a bit unwell might eat a mixture of mashed mouse and faeces. Mmmmmmm, bound to make you feel better!

12833. History Facts

In 1846, eighty-seven pioneers crossing the mountains of Nevada, USA, became trapped in bad weather. By the end of the winter, forty of them had been eaten by the others.

12834. History Facts

In the 1700s, European women had their gums pierced so that they could fit hooks to hold their false teeth in place.

12835. History Facts

King Pepi II of Egypt had himself surrounded by naked slaves smeared with honey so that any biting flies would be attracted to them and not bite him.

12836. History Facts

In the 1800s, flea circuses were popular – the fleas were glued into costumes and stuck to wires or each other to look as though they were performing tricks.

12837. History Facts

Ivan the Terrible blinded the two architects who designed his new church of Saint Basil's so that they could never make anything more beautiful.

12838. History Facts

The Russian ruler Peter the Great had his wife's lover decapitated and insisted that she keep his head in a jar of alcohol beside her bed as a reminder of her crime.

12839. History Facts

Mongolian leader Tamerlane played polo using the skulls of enemies killed in battle.

12840. History Facts

In the Middle Ages, people made washing powder from wood ash and urine.

12841. History Facts

In China in the 1500s, a common method of committing suicide was by eating a pound of salt.

12842. History Facts

The word ‘thug' comes from ‘Thuggees', who were an Indian cult – sometimes described as the world's first mafia – who used to trick and murder people as human sacrifices to their goddess Kali.

12843. History Facts

In the 1600s and later, Egyptian mummies were ground up to use in medicines around Europe.

12844. History Facts

Vlad the Impaler, ruler of Transylvania, had over 20,000 enemies impaled on spikes between 1456 and 1476.

Fact
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