A “dirty look,” a “withering glance,” “if looks could kill,” and “to stare with daggers” are a few common expressions that derive from one of the most universal of fears, the evil eye. It has been found in virtually all cultures. In ancient Rome, professional sorcerers with the evil eye …
Today, covering the mouth when yawning is considered an essential of good manners. But the original custom stemmed not from politeness but from fear—a fear that in one giant exhalation the soul, and life itself, might depart the body. A hand to the lips held back the life force. …
You probably didn’t know, and it also came as a surprise to me, that for 12 days, the city of Limerick in Ireland and its surrounding area was a self-declared Soviet Republic. This came about at the start of the Irish war of Independence as a protest against …
Who was the worst novelist in history? A worthy candidate would be a schoolmistress from Northern Ireland whose novels were so uniquely and thrillingly terrible that, in the early years of the last century, she became an ironic cause célèbre among the cultural luminaries of her time. Step forward, Amanda …
This famous piece of advice was supposedly given by Queen Victoria to her 17-year-old daughter, Princess Victoria Adelaide Mary Louise, on her wedding night in 1857, and has since become a catch-phrase for anything unpalatable. But it is most unlikely that the Queen ever said it; the phrase only appeared …
Sir Tatton Sykes ( 1826 – 1913) was convinced that in order to maintain good health the body should be kept at a constant temperature. In order to achieve this he had a collection of overcoats made for him, each a different colour and all made to fit over …
I am currently finishing off another small book, this time on superstitions, in my new “Short History” series. So I thought that I would share with you an excerpt – the history of the four-leaf clover… More than any other factor, the rarity of the four-leaf clover (normally, the clover …
I have just put together a short Kindle book on the history of beans. In which you will discover the decidedly odd history of the humble bean . Discover why Pythagarus would not eat beans, why it was forbidden for nuns to eat them, how a fart from eating beans started …
Did you know that kites originated in China as military signaling devices. Around 1200 B.C., a Chinese kite’s colour, its painted pattern, and particularly the air movements it was forced to execute communicated coded messages between camps. The ancient Chinese became so proficient in constructing huge, lightweight kites that they …
With the conquest of England in 1066 by William of Normandy, the Anglo-Saxon language of the British Isles underwent several alterations. As the French-speaking Normans established themselves as the ruling caste, they treated the native Saxons and their language as inferior. Many Saxon words were regarded as crude simply because …
