All in History
One of New York’s honoured New Year’s Eve traditions is the Times Square ‘ball drop’ which starts at 11:59pm on December 31 and ends at precisely 0:00 on New Year’s Day. The ‘time ball’ was originally a visual way to signal time to ships in harbours so they could synchronise their ship clocks - accurate time being a critical way to know your longitude at sea.
Carp. We know them as overgrown goldfish that live in ponds. But many Central and Eastern Europeans know them as Christmas dinner. Parents usually buy living carp a few days before Christmas, with the lucky carp’s temporary new home becoming the family bathtub. Just before dinner, the carp leaves the bathtub for an untimely and brutal meeting with a mallet. Holy carp! As a result many families have found their Christmas dinner plans spoiled, because what happens when you mix live animals with children? The carp quickly stops becoming a Christmas meal and instead gets a name and the protection of a loving child.
What to do when you’ve gots to get your cola but you’ve got no hard currency? In 1989, the Soviet Union paid for a whopping $3b worth of Pepsi with 17 submarines, a cruiser, a frigate and a destroyer. Had Pepsi chosen to re-operationalise their newly acquired military hardware, they’d have been the 6th largest military power in the world and the 4th largest submarine power.
Why do we use ‘o’clock’ when telling the time? When mechanical clocks were first introduced in the 14th Century, the most common way to tell time was using a sundial - which often showed a different time than the mechanical clock. Saying ‘of the clock’ (later shortened to ‘o’clock’) let someone know which time you meant.
Finland developed the ‘Molotov cocktail’ during the 1939-40 Winter War to attack Soviet tanks in response to Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov declaring on state radio that bombing missions over Finland were humanitarian food deliveries. In naming their improvised fire bomb, the Finns called it the ‘Molotov cocktail’ - “a drink to go with the food".
Until writing developed in Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq), there was no record of people's names. The first person in history whose name we know is 'Kushim', an accountant. Around 3200BC he signed a receipt on a clay tablet which read "29,086 measures barley 37 months Kushim".
Before the germ theory of disease, humans had interesting ways to 'prevent' illness. For example, during the Great Plague of London (1665-1666), 'doctors' advised people to keep foul-smelling remedies to breathe in when exposed to infection - diluting the 'bad air' with something as potent. And the quickest way to keep something smelly on hand? Store your farts in a jar.
While most people might associate tea with the British, it was an American who invented the tea bag in 1908, and entirely by accident. New York tea merchant Thomas Sullivan, decided that it was cheaper to send small samples to potential customers in silk bags instead of boxes. Some assumed that the silk bags were supposed to be used in the same way as metal infusers, putting the entire bag into the pot rather than emptying the contents. Customers soon started specifically requesting more of Sullivan’s ‘tea bags’.
In 1858, while playing for the All-England 11, English cricketer HH Stephenson took three consecutive wickets in a match against Hallam in Sheffield. As was customary at the time, fans had a collection for Stephenson and then bought him a hat to honour his unique feat. The 'hat-trick' as it became known, was soon adopted by many other sports.
It might seem like just a saying, but if you count papyrus, there's an actual 'oldest trick in the book'. The 18th-16th century BCE Westcar Papyrus tells the story of King Cheops (of Great Pyramid fame) calling for the magician Dedi. Dedi 'pulls the heads off' a goose, a duck, and an ox and restores them to life - a magic trick that is still performed today.
