12.10.2012

HISTORY WITHOUT THE BORING THINGS - ABOUT FAMILY AND FOOD

circa 350 BC 

Philosopher Urinates on Diners 


The Greek philosopher Diogenes, disdaining the social niceties, lived like a dog – naked, scratching and defecating in the street – so earning the nickname ‘the Dog’ (Greek kuon – thus his followers became known as the Cynics, from the Greek kunikos). The citizens of Athens indulged Diogenes’ foibles, even throwing bones to him at a banquet. He showed his gratitude by urinating on their legs.

210 BC 

The Rotting Emperor and the Putrid Fish 

The first Chinese emperor, Shi Huangdi, died while searching for the Islands of the Immortals off the east coast of China. His chief minister, Li Si, was worried that if the imperial death became common knowledge there would very likely be a popular rebellion, so brutal and oppressive had been the emperor’s rule. So during the two-month journey back to the capital, Li Si visited the emperor’s carriage daily, giving the impression that he was discussing the affairs of the realm. And he disguised the smell of the emperor’s bodily decay by positioning wagons full of fish before and after the emperor’s carriage.

41 BC 

The Most Expensive Banquet in History? 

When Mark Antony first met Cleopatra, at Tarsus in modern-day Turkey, their political discussions were lubricated with feast after feast. Indeed Cleopatra wagered Mark Antony that she would lay on the most expensive banquet in history. The next evening, as the banquet neared its end, Mark Antony observed that, though impressive, the meal had been no more lavish than the previous ones. At this Cleopatra took off one of her pearl earrings, extracted a huge pearl, ground it up and dissolved it in wine vinegar, then drank it down. The bet was won.

2 BC 

Roman Family Values 

Julia, the daughter of the emperor Augustus and wife of his heir Tiberius, shocked Rome and her father by her adulteries and participation in late-night drinking parties in the Forum. She was even said to have put her favours up for sale, and when asked how all her children resembled her husband, explained that she ‘only took on new passengers when the boat was already full’. Augustus, who (despite his own infidelities) was determined to uphold family values, exiled his daughter to the tiny volcanic island of Pandataria (modern Ventotene), and forbade her wine and the company of men. Any visitors had to be approved by the emperor, who required details of their stature, complexion and any marks or scars on their body. Julia was allowed to return after five years, but when Tiberius became emperor he confined her to a single room, and may have had her starved to death.

AD 37 

An Incestuous Emperor 


Caligula became Roman emperor, despite the prediction of an astrologer that he had no more chance of donning the purple than of riding a horse across the Gulf of Baiae. To show his contempt for this prophecy, Caligula had a pontoon bridge comprising scores of ships built across the Gulf, and proceeded to ride across wearing the breastplate of Alexander the Great.
Caligula turned out to be a mad and depraved despot, who slept with his sisters (and anyone else – of either sex – who caught his fancy), made it an offence for anyone to look at him (he was sensitive about his thinning pate and copious body hair), devised new methods of torture (such as covering the victim with honey, and letting loose a swarm of wasps), and (according to one story) appointed his favourite horse, Incitatus, to the consulship. Another story has it that when his sister Drusilla became pregnant by him, he was so impatient to see his child that he had it ripped from Drusilla’s womb. Whether or not this story is true, Drusilla certainly died, whereupon Caligula declared her to be a goddess.

In AD 41 (24 January) Caligula was fatally stabbed in the genitals by two of his guards, whom he had humiliated. They went on to kill his wife, and smashed his baby daughter’s head against a wall.

circa AD 43 

Legalization of Flatulence 

The emperor Claudius, worried that holding in flatulence might be injurious to health, passed a law permitting the unleashing of intestinal gases at banquets.

circa AD 50 

Sow’s Womb and Mackerel Guts 

By the 1st century AD, only one in ten people in Rome had access to a hearth where they could cook – so the purveyors of takeaway food did a roaring trade. For the wealthy who dined at home, popular items included roast dormouse, kale cooked in saltpetre, and sow’s womb (served with or without udders). Spattered over everything was a ubiquitous fish sauce called garum, made from slow-cooked mackerel guts (production of the pungent, salty sauce within the city was prohibited on account of the stench). A dish for special occasions was the porcus troianus (‘Trojan pig’), a whole roasted pig stuffed with fruit and sausages. Brought to the table standing on its legs, its belly was then cut open, letting spill the sausages as if they were the animal’s entrails. By this time the earlier fashion of allowing one’s fish to expire at table (preferably in a sauce) had gone out of favour.

AD 54 

Viper Flesh and Opium 

Nero became emperor of Rome, in the wake of an epidemic of conspiracies and murders among the ruling Julio-Claudian dynasty: his predecessor, Claudius, was almost certainly poisoned, possibly with Nero’s connivance. Aware of the risks attaching to his master’s new job, Nero’s physician, Andromachus, developed a poison antidote involving 64 ingredients, chief among them viper flesh and opium. This substance, known as theriac, derived from a concoction attributed to one of the ancient kings of Pontus, who used his prisoners as guinea pigs. Theriac became a popular remedy for more or less any ailment (particularly after the proportion of opium was increased), and was still on sale in Italy towards the end of the 19th century.

AD 69 

Pheasant Brain and Flamingo Tongues


(17 April) Vitellius, a noted glutton, became emperor of Rome. Once in power he would send the navy to distant parts to obtain his favourite dishes, such as the brains of pheasants, the livers of pike and the tongues of flamingos. Such were the gustatory excesses of his banquets that one of his regular dining companions, who missed several days of feasting due to illness, reportedly sighed, ‘Thank heaven I was sick, otherwise I would be dead.’ By the end of the year Vitellius had been overthrown and killed.

circa AD 70 

A Tax on Public Lavatories 

The Roman emperor Vespasian imposed a tax on public lavatories. His son Titus was horrified at such an undignified measure, but Vespasian would have none of it. Thrusting a handful of coins under his son’s nose he declared ‘Pecunia non olet’ (‘money does not smell’). In honour of the emperor, the public urinals that once graced many a street corner in French towns and cites were known as vespasiennes. The vespasiennes, however, did smell – pungently so.

AD 77 

On the Iniquities of Soap 

Publication of Pliny the Elder’s Historia Naturalis, in which he disapprovingly noted the use of soap among the German and Gallic tribes – especially the men. The Romans considered the stuff only good for a hair pomade, preferring to cleanse their skin by rubbing it with olive oil, and then scraping off both oil and grime with a special metal implement.

circa 210 

Self-Castration 

Taking note of the words of Matthew 19:12 (‘there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake’), Origen, one of the Fathers of the Church, castrated himself.

210 

Assassinated While Urinating

(8 April) The emperor Caracalla was assassinated while urinating at the side of a road in Mesopotamia on his way to make war against the Parthians.

218 

Drowned in Rose Petals 

Elagabalus became emperor of Rome, and outraged Roman society by instituting a new religion with himself as high priest. He further offended traditionalists when he married a Vestal Virgin. According to the contemporary (and hostile) historian Dio Cassius, Elagabalus was wont to:

frequent the most notorious brothels, driving out the prostitutes and taking that role himself. Finally, he turned over a room in the palace for his indecencies, and here he would stand nude at the door, as harlots do, and shake the curtain which hung from gold rings, while in a soft melting voice he solicited passers-by.

Dio Cassius also records that the emperor had intended to cut off his genitals, but settled for circumcision. Even his ambitious grandmother began to worry about his eccentric behaviour, and on 11 March 222 arranged for him and his mother to be assassinated in the imperial privy. Among the stories told about Elagabalus after he was dead was that he disposed of the guests at one of his banquets by smothering them with tons of rose petals falling from above.

circa 250 

Two Breasts on a Platter 


For following the Christian faith, and rejecting the advances of a Roman prefect, St Agatha of Sicily was placed by the authorities in a brothel run by a madam called Aphrodisia, but all attempts on her virtue proved unsuccessful. She was then tortured on the rack, suffered the lash and had her sides torn with hooks. Subsequently her breasts were cut off, although these were miraculously restored. She finally expired after being dragged naked over hot coals. In Christian iconography she is often depicted carrying her amputated breasts on a plate. Agatha is the patron saint of wet nurses, bell-founders (echoing the shape of her breasts) and those suffering from breast cancer.

336 

A Fatal Evacuation of the Bowels 

The theologian Arius, deemed a heretic by the Council of Nicaea, met a spectacular end in Constantinople, as described by the historian Socrates Scholasticus (fl.5th century):

As he approached the place called Constantine’s Forum, where the column of porphyry is erected, a terror arising from the remorse of conscience seized Arius, and with the terror a violent relaxation of the bowels: he therefore enquired whether there was a convenient place near, and being directed to the back of Constantine’s Forum, he hastened thither. Soon after a faintness came over him, and together with the evacuations his bowels protruded, followed by a copious haemorrhage, and the descent of the smaller intestines: moreover portions of his spleen and liver were brought off in the effusion of blood, so that he almost immediately died.

582 

Blood Bath – Part I 

It was said that it rained blood over Paris. In all likelihood the raindrops carried red dust from the Sahara – a common enough phenomenon in north-west Europe.

circa 585 

Blood Bath – Part II 

Near Vannes in France, a pond full of fish was reported to have turned into blood, which for days provided sustenance for flocks of birds and stray dogs.

613 

Torn Apart by Wild Horses 

Queen Brunhilda of Austrasia, hated for her cruelty and avarice, was eventually overthrown, at the age of 70. The Liber Historiae Francorum details her fate: ‘King Clotaire ordered that she be lifted on to a camel and led through the entire army. Then she was tied to the feet of wild horses and torn apart limb from limb. Finally she died. Her grave was the fire. Her bones were burnt.’

844 

Pope Pig-Face

Sergius II was elected to the papacy. According to the 15th-century curator of the Vatican Library, Bartolomeo Platina, Sergius’s original name meant ‘Hog’s-mouth’.

circa 850 

The Origin of Coffee 

An Arabian goatherd called Kaldi noticed that his flock became particularly perky when they fed on the berries of a certain bush. Thus was the property of the coffee bean first discovered – at least according to tradition.

896 

Gluttonous Moles in Ireland 

A shower of mole-like creatures fell on Ireland, and proceeded to devour everything in sight.

931 

The Cucumber King 

Theinhko, king of Burma, was killed by an angry farmer after he had eaten his cucumbers without asking. The farmer then took over the throne as King Nyanng-u Sawrahan, known as ‘the Cucumber King’.

circa 968 

Future King Defecates at Own Baptism

In the Anglo-Saxon period, the holy water in baptismal fonts was not changed unless an infant defecated in it. Urination was, apparently, not a problem. According to one tradition, at his baptism circa 968, the future king of England, Ethelred the Unready, eased his infant bowels in the holy water. Dunstan, the archbishop of Canterbury presiding over the ceremony, declared that this portent foretold the overthrow of the English monarchy. In 1013, Ethelred was forced off the throne by Sweyn Forkbeard, at the head of a Viking invasion.

1086 

Comet Kills Cats 

The chroniclers report that the passage of a comet proved fatal to all the cats of Westphalia.

circa 1110 

The Foreskin of Jesus 

Among the gifts sent by the Byzantine emperor Alexius I Comnenus to Henry I of England was a scrap of what was said to be the prepuce of Christ.

1203 

The Castration of Prince Arthur 

Presumed date of death of Arthur of Brittany, nephew of King John and his rival for the throne. It was widely thought that John was responsible for his murder. Arthur’s jailer, Hubert de Burgh, later said that the youth, aged 15 or 16, was castrated by agents of the king and died of shock – but later withdrew this allegation.

1226 

Disregarding Doctor’s Orders 

As Louis VIII of France lay dying, his physicians sought to remedy his sickness by placing in his bed a beautiful young woman, who, when he awoke, offered the king her favours. But the king would have none of it. ‘I prefer to die,’ he said, ‘rather than to save my life by a mortal sin.’

1259 

Mass Flagellation

The first recorded outbreak of mass flagellation occurred in Perugia, Italy, where processions of thousands of penitents marched through the city thrashing themselves to the accompaniment of hymns. Anybody who failed to join in was thought to be in league with the Devil, and those more moderate priests who expressed reservations about the goings-on were killed, together with many Jews. The Flagellant movement subsequently spread to other parts of Italy and elsewhere in Europe, and was particularly strong at the time of the Black Death in the mid-14th century.

1269

Dining with One’s Husband’s Heart 

On the death of John Baliol (father of the Scottish king), his widow Dervoguilla had his heart embalmed and placed in an ivory and silver casket, which she would place on the table while she ate her meals, calling it her ‘sweet silent companion’. When she herself was buried in 1289, in New Abbey in Galloway, she had the casket placed over her own heart, and the site of her burial for ever after became known as Dolce Cor or Sweetheart Abbey.


1290 

Medieval Manners 

Fra Bonvicino da Riva published a courtesy book in which he advised diners – who then customarily ate with their fingers from a shared bowl – not to poke their fingers in their ears while eating, let alone scratch ‘at any foul part’. A century later another writer suggested that if ‘you cannot help scratching, then courteously take a portion of your dress and scratch with that’.

1329 

Following Another’s Heart 


(7 June) On his death Robert the Bruce, king of Scotland, asked his old friend and ally Sir James Douglas to take his heart on crusade to the Holy Land, in fulfilment of a vow that Bruce had been unable to keep in life. Douglas obliged, and on his way through Spain assisted the king of Castile in his fight against the Moors. Finding himself hopelessly surrounded in battle, Douglas flung the Bruce’s heart in its casket into the fray and charged after, being rapidly overwhelmed. After the battle both the body of Douglas and the Bruce’s heart were recovered, and returned to Scotland for burial.

1336 

A Curb on Banqueting

The Sumptuary Act of Edward III forbade any person to eat more than two courses in one meal. The act made it clear that soup was to be considered as a full course, and not just a sauce. The following year Edward banned the wearing of fur by any man or woman, even the king.

1351 

Houses Made of Salt

During his crossing of the Sahara en route to Mali, the Arab traveller Ibn Battuta arrived at the salt mine at Taghaza, where even the houses and mosque were built of salt.

1357 

Abstention from Food and Drink Gains Pardon 

(25 April) Cecilia de Rygeway survived 40 days in Nottingham jail – where she was being held for the murder of her husband – without apparently taking any food or drink. So impressed was King Edward III that he gave her a pardon.

1386 

Murderous Swine 

A sow in Normandy was executed for the murder of an infant. For its execution, it was dressed up in human clothes.

1392 

A King Made of Glass 

(July) Charles VI of France suffered his first bout of madness while marching with his army. Believing he was about to be betrayed to his enemies, he set about him with his sword, killing at least one knight before his chamberlain and some soldiers could wrestle him to the ground. In later episodes Charles suffered the delusion that he was made of glass, and was likely to shatter into a thousand pieces.

1424

The General’s Drumskin

(11 October) As he lay dying, the Czech Hussite general, Jan Zizka, ordered that his skin be turned into a war drum, so that he could still lead his men after death. The drum continued to be beaten at times of national emergency, such as the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War in 1618.

1445 

Henry the Unsexed 

(23 April) Henry VI of England married Margaret of Anjou. It seems that his confessor advised Henry, for the sake of his soul, to abstain from sexual intercourse with his beautiful wife whenever possible. It was not until eight years after their marriage that Margaret bore their first child.

circa 1460 

On the Irresistibility of Human Flesh 

A family in Angus were arrested and burnt for cannibalism, with only the youngest daughter, about a year old, being spared. She was taken to Dundee where she was fostered until she grew to womanhood, when she was condemned and burnt for the same crime as the rest of her family. The historian Lindsay of Pitscottie reported that on the scaffold she told the crowd that ‘If ye had experience of eating men and women’s flesh, ye would think it so delicious that ye would never forbear it again.’

1467

Wine Freezes in Flemish Winter

It was such a severe winter in Flanders that wine had to be hacked up with an axe before it could be distributed to the troops stationed there.

circa 1470

A Porcine Organ

The abbot of Baigne invented a novel kind of musical instrument to amuse Louis XI of France. He assembled a number of pigs of different ages, placed them in a pavilion, and devised a kind of organ in which, when a particular key on a keyboard was pressed, a small spike would prod a particular pig, which would utter a cry of a particular pitch, depending on its size and age. According to one account, the abbot ‘made ’em cry in such time and consort as highly delighted the king and all his company’.

1473

The Milk of Human Hatred

Attacking the neighbouring Aztec city of Tlatelolco, the army of Axayactl of Tenochtitlán was surprised to be met by an army of naked women, who sought to distract their enemies by spraying them with milk from their breasts. However, this ruse did not save Tlatelolco, which was sacked, and many of its people rounded up and sacrificed.

1474

Henry the Impotent 

(11 December) Death of King Henry IV of Castile, called Henry the Impotent because, after a promising start, his reign degenerated into chaos.

1474

The Cock that Laid an Egg

At Basle, a cock was brought to trial for the crime of having laid an egg. Such an egg, argued the prosecution, was of inestimable value to sorcerers, and thus the cock must have made a compact with the Devil. The defence argued that there was no record of the Devil ever entering into a contract with a mere brute, and that the laying of the egg was an involuntary act, and quite without malicious intent. This argument was to no avail, and the court judged that the cock was a sorcerer or demon in disguise, and condemned both it and the egg to be burnt at the stake.

circa 1480

Ode to the Pubic Hair

The Welsh poet Gwerful Mechain wrote her ‘Ode to the Pubic Hair’ (‘Cywydd y Cedor’), in which she upbraids male poets for celebrating so many parts of a woman’s body, but not the vagina. ‘Let songs about the quim circulate,’ she adjures her readers. As to the pubic hair: ‘Lovely bush, God save it’.

1497

Rubbing Urine into the Gums

(25 December) Vasco da Gama sailed past an unknown land on the east coast of southern Africa, to which he gave the name Natal – Portuguese for ‘Christmas’. So far from home, his crew were beginning to suffer from scurvy, for which they embarked on the then-standard treatment: trimming dead matter from their swollen gums with a knife, and rubbing the wound with urine.

1517

Sumptuary Laws re Feasting

An English law set out the number of courses different ranks were permitted to eat during one meal. Thus cardinals were allowed nine, dukes and bishops seven, and so on, while those without a title but with an annual income of between £40 and £100 could ask for no more than three.

1511

Butcher Blamed for Bad Bacon

A butcher who had been caught selling diseased and stinking bacon was paraded through the City of London with two sides of bacon tied to his person, two fletches of bacon borne before him, and a sign on his head proclaiming his crime, while pans were bashed to draw attention to his iniquities.

1520

Emperor Hog

The feckless Chinese emperor Zhu Houzhao, who took the name Zhengde, prohibited the raising of hogs, as the Chinese name for them was too similar to his family name of Zhu.

1534

The Restoration of Men’s Privy Parts

Around this time bishop John ‘Bilious’ Bale, a reforming cleric, preached against the cult of St Walstan, whose well at Bawburgh near Norwich was a place of pilgrimage for farmers and agricultural labourers who sought a blessing on themselves and on their animals, particularly as regards fertility. Bale damned St Walstan as a disguised version of the Roman god Priapus (he of the impressively erect penis), and claimed that both men and beasts ‘which had lost their Prevy Parts’, if they visited the shrine, ‘had newe Members restored to them, by this Walstane’. Rather than ridding East Anglia of this superstition, however, Bale’s preaching had the opposite effect, as hordes flocked to the miraculous well.

1535

Pickling One’s Father’s Head in Spices

(August) A month after the execution of her father, Sir Thomas More, Margaret Roper passed in a boat under London Bridge, where his head was stuck on a pole. According to the 17th-century biographer and gossip John Aubrey, she cried, ‘That head has lain many a time in my lap, would to God it would fall into my lap as I pass under!’ Her prayer, according to Aubrey, was answered – although it is likely that she had in fact bribed the bridge-keeper to throw it down to her, rather than into the river, as was the usual custom. By whatever means she obtained it, she was brought before the council and briefly imprisoned for having her father’s head in her possession, and during her trial she asserted that her father’s head ‘should not be food for fishes’. When she died in 1544, her father’s head – which she had pickled in spices – was placed in her coffin.

1536

The Witch with Three Breasts

(19 May) Henry VIII’s second wife, Anne Boleyn, was beheaded, having been accused of adultery, incest and witchcraft. In support of this last charge, it is said that she not only had 11 fingers but also three breasts – although the third ‘nipple’, supposedly used for suckling the Devil, was actually a mole on her neck.

1536

Holy Duck’s Blood

(Christmas Eve) Hailes Abbey in Gloucestershire was dissolved when the abbot and monks surrendered to Henry VIII’s commissioners. The commissioners had declared that the abbey’s famous relic, a phial of the Holy Blood – a great draw for pilgrims – in fact contained the blood of a duck, regularly refreshed.

1539

Having One’s Cake …

(7 December) Martin Luther and seven other doctors of divinity wrote a reply to Philip, Landgrave of Hesse, who had asked whether it would be possible to maintain two wives. He had tired of his original wife, Catherine of Saxony, but he wished to maintain her in public as his official consort; however, he now wished to have his relationship with his mistress, Marguerite de Staal, regularized by the Church. The good doctors concluded as follows:

If your highness is thoroughly determined to marry a second wife, we are of opinion that it ought to be done secretly … There is no opposition or real scandal to be dreaded here, for it is no unusual thing for princes to maintain mistresses … and even though the people in general were scandalized, the most enlightened of the community would doubt the truth of the story, whilst prudent persons would always prefer this moderate course of procedure to adultery and other brutal actions.

Philip duly proceeded with the second marriage on 4 March 1540, the contract including the following:

His Highness declares his intention of marrying Marguerite de Staal, notwithstanding that the princess, his consort, is still alive; and in order to prevent this proceeding being imputed to inconstancy or whim, to avoid scandal, and preserve the honour of the said Marguerite and the reputation of her family, he here swears before God, and on his soul and conscience, that he neither takes her to wife through levity or caprice, nor from any contempt of law or superiors, but because he is compelled to this step by certain necessities so important and inevitable of health and conscience, that it is impossible for him to preserve his existence and live according to the law of God, unless he espouse a second wife in addition to the consort whom he already possesses.

1574

Smoking Good for Your Health

The distinguished Spanish physician Nicolas Monardes published a work (translated into English in 1596 as Joyfull Newes out of the New-found Worlde) in which he hailed the medical properties of tobacco, ensuring that the plant became a household remedy in
western Europe for more than two centuries. Monardes’ views were reinforced by Johann Neander in 1626, in his Tabacologia.

1582

Angel Suggests Free Love

Dr John Dee, the mathematician, astrologer and hermetic philosopher, began to employ a man called Edward Kelley as an intermediary through whom he could contact the angels. In this way the angels dictated several books to Dee, for the service of humanity. The two men subsequently toured Central Europe, but Dee broke off their association in 1587 shortly after the Angel Uriel told Kelley that the two men should share their wives.

1592

The Devil’s Drink


Pope Clement VII, resisting those who would have him condemn coffee as the ‘bitter invention of Satan’ owing to its Arab/Muslim origins, supposedly declared, ‘This Devil’s drink is so good, we should cheat the Devil by baptizing it.’

1601

On the Therapeutic Uses of Human Fat

Beginning of the three-year siege of Ostend, one of the bloodiest episodes in the Eighty Years’ War. During the siege Dutch physicians would slip out of the city at night to strip the fat from the Spanish dead, and apply it to the wounds of their own men, in the belief that it was an effective salve. Between them, two surgeons, Moerbeke and Courtmans, amputated more than 1700 arms and legs during the siege. In the final phases, as the Spanish closed in, the Dutch, short of earth, used dead bodies to shore up the ramparts.

1607

The Grave Fart

Sir Henry Ludlow, MP for Wiltshire, said ‘no’ to a message brought from the House of Lords by the Serjeant by loudly breaking wind. The episode is referred to by Ben Jonson in his ‘Epithalamion for Mr Jerome Watson’:
And sure, it was the Intent
Of the grave Fart, late let in Parliament,
Had it been seconded, and not in Fume Vanished away …

1614

Bathing in the Blood of Virgins

Death of the Hungarian noblewoman, Countess Elizabeth Báthory, while imprisoned in solitary confinement. She had been accused of the torture and murder of numerous young women, but the truth of this allegation has been swamped in legend, and it is possible that she was the innocent victim of a political frame-up. It is known, however, that she treated her own servants harshly, meting out brutal punishments if they infringed a rule. Among the numerous embellishments to her legend is that she bathed in the blood of virgins to attain eternal youth. The countess has been the inspiration for many later vampire tales.

1626

A Setback in the Onward March of Frozen Food

(9 April) Death of the philosopher, statesman and essayist Francis Bacon as a result of having contracted a chill while carrying out a scientific experiment involving stuffing a dead chicken with snow to see whether it would retard putrefaction.

1626

The Piece of Cod Which Passeth All Understanding

(23 June) A codfish was cut open at the market in Cambridge and found to contain a book wrapped up in sailcloth. When unwrapped from its slimy covering, the volume turned out to be a theological work by John Frith, who was burnt at the stake in 1533 for his adherence to the reformed religion. An eyewitness of sorts, a Mr Mead, wrote to Sir M. Stuteville as follows:

I saw all with mine own eyes, the fish, the maw, the piece of sail-cloth, the book, and observed all I have written; only I saw not the opening of the fish, which not many did, being upon the fish-woman’s stall in the market, who first cut off his head, to which the maw hanging, and seeming much stuffed with somewhat, it was searched, and all found as aforesaid. He that had had his nose as near as I yester morning, would have been persuaded there was no imposture here without witness. The fish came from Lynn.

1626

The Adventures of Lord Minimus

At a banquet for Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria, the duke of Buckingham served up Jeffrey Hudson, an 18-inch dwarf, in a pie, from which he burst dressed in a suit of armour. Hudson – aged only seven – was presented as a gift to Henrietta Maria, becoming known as ‘Lord Minimus’ or ‘The Queen’s Dwarf’, and was painted with her by Van Dyck (the painting shows that, unusually for a dwarf, he had the proportions of a full-size adult). Hudson eventually tired of his mascot role, and in 1644, while exiled with the queen in France, challenged her master of horse, William Crofts, to a duel, after the latter had made some disparaging remark about his size. They fought with pistols on horseback, and Hudson shot Crofts dead. He was expelled from the court, and shortly afterwards was captured by Barbary pirates, spending 25 years as a slave in North Africa, until ransomed. Returning to England, he lived out the rest of his days in poverty. He died around 1682.

1630

The Glutton of Kent

Jeremy Taylor, a Thames waterman known as ‘the Water Poet’, gave the following account of Nicholas Wood, a glutton of Kent:

Once … he ate as much as would have served and sufficed thirty men, so that his belly was like to turn bankrupt and break, but that the serving-man turned him to the fire, and anointed his paunch with grease and butter, to make it stretch and hold; and afterwards, being laid in bed, he slept eight hours.

1640

On the Dangers of Alcohol and Tobacco

(9 February) Death of the Ottoman sultan, Murad IV, from alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver. It was an ironic end for a ruler who had banned the use of both alcohol and tobacco, on pain of death, and who had been wont to roam the streets of Constantinople at night incognito, sword in hand, running through any person he found disobeying his ban. When he caught the royal gardener and his wife enjoying a smoke, he had their legs cut off, and let them bleed to death as they were pushed through the streets of the city on a wheelbarrow.

1641

The Pig-Faced Woman

Publication in London of A Certain Relation of the Hog-faced Gentlewoman, which describes a Dutchwoman named Tanakin Skinker born at Wirkham, on the Rhine, in 1618. Miss Skinker had ‘all the limbs and lineaments of her body well-featured and proportioned, only her face, which is the ornament and beauty of all the rest, has the nose of a hog or swine, which is not only a stain and blemish, but a deformed ugliness, making all the rest loathsome, contemptible and odious to all that look upon her’. She was incapable of uttering any other noise than ‘the hoggish Dutch, ough, ough! or the French, owee, owee!’ The anonymous author wrote that £40,000 were on offer to any man who would marry her, and at the time of writing she was said to be somewhere in London, looking for a husband.

A similar rumour circulated in London in 1815, although this time the wealthy pig-faced woman in search of a mate hailed from Ireland, and ate from a silver trough. A more tangible pig-faced lady, by the name of Miss Stevens, was exhibited at the 1838 Hyde Park Fair. Miss Stevens proved, disappointingly, to be a bear with its face shaved to the skin.

1655

‘Bad Wine is Sudden Death’

Death at the age of 82 of Sir Theodore Mayerne, noted bon viveur, cookery writer (he created the City of London Pie, involving marrow bones and sparrows) and physician to four kings: Henry IV of France, and to James I, Charles I and the future Charles II of England. On his deathbed Mayerne attributed his demise to the bad wine he had drunk in an inn on the Strand: ‘Good wine is slow poison,’ he said. ‘I have drunk it all my lifetime, and it has not killed me yet; but bad wine is sudden death.’

1675

Coffee and Scandal

The government issued a proclamation for the suppression of all coffee houses in England, on the grounds that they were hotbeds of political dissent, rumour-mongering and libels against the king’s ministers. The coffee merchants raised a petition, and the government relented, on condition that the owners of the coffee houses ‘should prevent all scandalous papers, books, and libels from being read in them; and hinder every person from declaring, uttering, or divulging all manner of false and scandalous reports against government, or the ministers thereof’. As this proved quite impossible to enforce, the government’s proscription was deemed laughable, and generally ignored.

1676

The Marchioness and the Poisoned Biscuits

(17 July) Execution by beheading of the marchioness of Brinvilliers, who, in collaboration with her lover and a servant, had poisoned her father and two brothers, in order to obtain a large inheritance. Prior to these crimes, the marchioness had tried out her methods on the poor of Paris, to whom she gave poisoned biscuits.

1692

The Most Drunken Synod

Peter the Great established the Most Drunken Synod, a drinking club that parodied the rituals of the Russian Orthodox Church. In his diary, J.G. Korb, the Austrian Secretary of Legation in St Petersburg,

They were a sham patriarch and a complete set of clergy dedicated to Bacchus … He that bore the assumed honours on the Patriarch was conspicuous in the vestments proper to a bishop … Cupid and Venus were the insignia on his crosier, lest there should be any mistake about what flock he was pastor of. The remaining rout of Bacchanalians came after him, some carrying great bowls of wine, others mead, others again beer and brandy, that last joy of heated Bacchus.

Peter had an inordinate appetite for buffoonery, particularly if it involved some element of cruelty. Voltaire, in his History of the Russian Empire under Peter the Great, tells us how the Tsar conceived the idea of marrying Zotov, his 84-year-old jester – and the Patriarch of the Drunken Synod – to a widow of a similar age:

The guests were invited by four stammerers;some decrepit old men escorted the bride; while four of the fattest men in Russia served as runners. The band was on a cart drawn by bears goaded with steel points, which, by their roaring, provided a bass worthy of the tunes being played on the wagon. The bride and groom were blessed in the cathedral by a blind and deaf priest wearing spectacles. The procession, the wedding ceremony, the nuptial feast, the disrobing of the bridal couple, and the ritual of putting them to bed were all equally appropriate to the buffoonery of the entertainment.

Only Peter laughed at some of his japes. When his former wife, Eudoxia, supposedly confined to a nunnery, took a lover, a certain Stepan Glebov, Peter had the unfortunate man impaled. The episode is referred to in Dostoevsky’s The Idiot: ‘He was fifteen hours on the stake in the frost, in a fur coat, and died bearing no ill-will towards any man.’ The fur coat was a touch added by Peter, to ensure that Glebov’s sufferings were not prematurely ended by the extreme cold of the Russian winter.

1700

City Mob Whips Women as if Horses

(October) A mob assembled in the City of London, lined up on both sides of the road and whipped every woman who passed by. Should a woman be accompanied by her husband, he was forced to ride on her back, while the mob whipped his unfortunate mount.

1714

The Personal Hygiene of King George

(18 September) George I arrived in London to take the throne of Great Britain. A great lover of horses, women and food, he brought with him 18 cooks – but only one washerwoman.

1720

Four Pints of Gin and an early Grave

(February) In Spitalfields, London, a sailor entered a pub completely sober, and within two hours, having downed four pints of gin, was dead.

1730

Sow-Gelder Attempts to Spay Wife

(22 August) The London Journal reported that a sow-gelder in Somerset had been brought to court for attempting to spay his wife. The assault followed a session in the local public house with other married men, all of whom complained of the fecundity of their spouses, and the concomitant expense thereof. The sow-gelder determined to see whether his professional skills might resolve the problem by assaying an would reject them. Hopkins also employed ‘prickers’, who would probe the suspect’s skins with knives or needles for ‘the Devil’s mark’, an area devoid of feeling and which would not bleed if pierced. Tradition has it that some villagers, having grown suspicious of Hopkins’s claims, subjected him to his own water test. He failed, and was promptly hanged.

1746

The Etiquette of the Scaffold

(18 August) As the two Jacobite rebels, the earl of Kilmarnock and Lord Balmerino, faced execution on Tower Hill for their part in the ’45 Rising, the former volunteered to defy precedence and allow Balmerino, a peer of inferior rank, to meet his fate first. However, the sheriffs objected to this disregard for the etiquette of the scaffold, and insisted that the senior peer take precedence on the block.

1747

On the Cooking of Eggs

Publication of The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy by Hannah Glasse, who derided the decadent French for using six pounds of butter to cook a dozen eggs, when anybody who understands cooking knows ‘that half a pound is full enough’.

1748

Anglo-French Relations – Regarding the Roast Beef of Old England

William Hogarth, the English artist, was arrested in France as he sketched the gate of Calais, and charged with being a spy. The governor of the town informed him that had not peace negotiations then been underway between their two countries, he ‘should have been under the disagreeable necessity of hanging Mr Hogarth on the ramparts’. As it was, the painter was put under armed guard and placed on a ship back to England. Hogarth’s revenge took the form of a painting of the Gate of Calais, titled Oh, The Roast Beef of Old England, in which a side of beef is carried into the port for the consumption of English tourists, while various feeble and emaciated Frenchmen look on. This work was exhibited in the Louvre in 2006.

1748

The Roast Butter of Old England

Publication of The Art of Cookery, by ‘A Lady’. The book includes a recipe on ‘How to Roast a Pound of Butter’.

1751

A Diet of Water

(November) Christina Michelot, a young French girl, became ill with a fever, and survived on nothing but water for nearly four years, until July 1755 – as attested by a number of physicians.

1752

On the Benefits of Tar Water


George Berkeley, bishop of Cloyne and founder of the esse est percipi school of philosophy, published Further Thoughts on Tar Water, a substance he held to be a universal panacea if consumed in adequate quantities. A contemporary wag penned the following quatrain in homage to the great man:

Who dare deride what pious Cloyne has done?

The Church shall rise and vindicate her son;

She tells us all her bishops shepherds are,

And shepherds heal their rotten sheep with tar.

1756

A Game of Chicken

During the French and Indian Wars, the American officer Israel Putnam was challenged to a duel by a British officer. Putnam told his opponent that he was not much of a pistol man, but suggested that they each sit on a keg of gunpowder attached to a burning fuse. Honour obliged the Briton to agree, but as the fuses burned shorter and shorter he eventually leapt up and fled. Only later did Putnam reveal that the kegs were filled not with gunpowder but with onions.

1763

Broiled Like a Chicken in a Mine Shaft

(8 November) A young man came to an unpleasant end near Glasgow when, in the dark, he fell into a deep pit of water. As this pit was above a coal shaft that had been on fire for some years, the water was boiling ‘like a cauldron’. He was not found until morning, when the flesh fell off his bones, like a broiled chicken.

1767

The Human Ox

(1 October) The Annual Register reported: We have the following extraordinary account from Wimbourne, in Dorsetshire. A few days ago died here Roger Gill, shoemaker, and one of our singing-men, aged about sixty-seven, remarkable for chewing his meat or cud twice over, as an ox, sheep, or cow. He seldom made any breakfast in his latter days; he generally dined about twelve or one o’clock, ate pretty heartily and quickly, without much chewing or mastication. He never drank with his dinner, but afterwards about a pint of such malt liquor as he could get; but no sort of spirituous liquor in any shape, except a little punch, but never cared for that. He usually began his second chewing about a quarter or half an hour, sometimes later, after dinner; when every morsel came up successively, sweeter and sweeter to the taste. Some-times a morsel would prove offensive and crude, in which case he spat it out. The chewing continued usually about an hour or more, and some-times would leave him a little while, in which case he would be sick at stomach, troubled with the heartburn, and foul breath. Smoking tobacco would sometimes stop his chewing, but was never attended with any ill consequences. But on the 10th of June last, the faculty entirely left him, and the poor man remained in great tortures till the time of his death.

1769

A Recipe for Albatross

Joseph Banks, chief scientist on Captain Cook’s first voyage, noted down his recipe for cooking albatross: ‘The way of dressing them is thus: skin them overnight and soak their carcases in salt water till morn, then parboil them and throw away the water, then stew them well with very little water and when sufficiently tender serve them up with a savoury sauce.’ Although he shot a number of albatrosses, Banks, unlike Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, suffered no ill fortune as a consequence: he returned from the voyage a celebrity, pursued a successful scientific career, and was for many years president of the Royal Society.

1770

The Advent of the Macaroni

A new species of dandy arrived on the London scene – the macaroni (so called because they met at the Macaroni Club, where the dish in question was always served). They wore tight-cut clothes and tiny cocked hats, carried staffs adorned with long tassels, and bore on the backs of their heads great knots of artificial hair. A contemporary versifier wrote:

Each tries the other to outvie,

With foretops mounting to the sky,

And some you oft with tails may spy,

As thick as any pony:

Insipid gait, affected sneer,

With side-curls high above the ear,

That each may more the ass appear

Or shew the macaroni.

Another contemporary writer opined of the species: ‘His hat, like his understanding, is very little … He has generally an abundant quantity of hair, and well he may, for his head produces nothing else … ’

1773

A Recipe for Cucumbers

Dr Johnson offered his recipe for cucumbers: ‘They should be well sliced, and dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out, as good for nothing.’

1776

The Part Played by Cheese in the Founding of the United States

The Americans chose as their national motto ‘E pluribus unum’ (Latin, ‘Out of many, one’). The phrase came from a poem attributed to Virgil, and referred to a recipe involving cheese, garlic and herbs.

1787

Dining with Rats

Death of Susanna Kennedy, countess of Eglintoune, one of many among the upper classes to have preferred animals to her fellow human beings. Her particular weakness was for rats, dozens of whom she would daily invite to share her table.

1787

Maggoty Soup

(27 November) The poet William Cowper wrote to Lady Hesketh describing how a beggar had rejected a bowl of vermicelli soup on the grounds that he was not so hungry that he would ‘eat broth with maggots in it’.

1788

Barrels of Lard Provide Relief

(8 December) Death of the great French admiral Pierre André de Suffren de Saint Tropez, who saw to the amatory needs of his sailors by providing them with three lard-filled barrels, each with a hole of a different diameter, labelled, respectively, ‘Grandmère’, ‘Fille’ and ‘Nymphette’.

1790

Barry Bested by Bullock the Butcher

Richard Barry, earl of Barrymore, was one the rakes in the Prince of Wales’s circle at Brighton. A great gambling man, he unwisely accepted a bet from a fat butcher called Bullock that he could not beat him in a 100-yard race, if Bullock were given a 35-yard start and the choice of course. Although Barry was a fit young man, Bullock had chosen to race down Black Lion Lane in Brighton, one of the narrowest streets in Britain – in places no more than 100 cm (40 in) wide. When the gun went off, Barry quickly caught up with the rotund butcher – but it proved quite impossible to pass him, and Bullock won the bet.

1794

Warm Trout and Cow Dung

Death of Daniel Dancer, the notorious miser, who was wont to roam the countryside collecting cow dung, which he turned into a hiding place for his money. On one occasion his neighbour, Lady Tempest, presented him with some trout. Dancer was too mean to light a fire to cook them, so warmed up the fish by sitting on them.

1799

Earth-Eating Tribes in South America

Alexander von Humboldt set out upon his travels in Venezuela and Brazil, during which he came upon a man who claimed to breastfeed his children, a tribe that ate earth, and another whose favourite dish was palm of human hand.

1808

Lamp Fuel Taken for Finest Gin

(25 September) Death of Richard Porson, classical scholar and professor of Greek at Cambridge. Porson, a noted eccentric, cared little for his state of dress, and was on more than one occasion refused entrance by the servants when he called on his friends. He was also over-fond of the bottle – his contemporary Horn Tooke said he would rather drink ink than nothing at all, and on one occasion, at his friend Hoppner’s house, in want of a tipple, he uncovered a hidden bottle and drank its contents, declaring it to be the finest gin he had had in years. It turned out to be spirits of wine for the lamp.

1811

Bride Bathed in Whisky

The poet Percy Bysshe Shelley eloped with Harriet Westbrook. The night they arrived at their lodgings in Edinburgh, the landlord knocked on the door and insisted that it was an old Scottish custom that new brides should be washed by the wedding guests in whisky. Shelley took this impudence amiss, and ushered the fellow out at pistol point.

1819

The First Chocolate Bar

The first ever bars of chocolate were made by the Swiss confectioner François-Louis Cailler.

1822

On the Dangers of Hot-Buttered Toast

(12 August) Lord Castlereagh, the British foreign secretary, killed himself by cutting the carotid artery in his throat. His contemporary, the painter Benjamin Haydon, blamed the suicide on Castlereagh’s consumption of hot-buttered toast, which, he asserted, caused a fatal rush of blood to the head.

1827

On the Evils of Tea

(8 January) The Manchester Guardian condemned tea drinking: The tea itself, perhaps, if taken moderately, is an innocent thing. But to take into the stomach, morning and evening, several cups of a very hot liquid – so hot that the drinkers are obliged to sip it, in order to get it down without scalding their throats – is a practice replete with mischief. The stomach is in consequence much relaxed, and the digestive power sadly weakened, to the great promotion of nervous and other never-ending complaints … and even the heart becomes cold and selfish.

1832

Dining on Roast Infant

Alexandre Dumas visited the Alps, and ate what he thought was roast infant, but which turned out to be marmot. He also attended a trial at which two live bears were summoned as witnesses.

1833

An Imaginary Helpmeet

(6 March) Death of John William Ward, 1st earl of Dudley, Tory politician and Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in 1827–8. A studious man, and something of a recluse, Dudley was notoriously absent-minded. On one occasion, having being invited out to dinner, he apologized to the company for the poor food, explaining that his cook was not well. He was a lifelong bachelor, although in his later years he invented a wife, and spoke of her fondly. When he died, having been certified insane, his titles became extinct.

1837

A Custard Without Eggs

Alfred Bird invented custard powder. As his wife was allergic to eggs, his powder did without them.

1839

Slaughter Forbidden in Streets of London

The Metropolitan Police Act made it illegal to slaughter cattle in the streets of London, unless the slaughtered animal had previously been run over by the slaughterer. The act also banned children from sliding on snow or ice, setting off fireworks or ringing doorbells ‘without lawful excuse’.

1840

Good Manners

An authority on etiquette offered the following advice: ‘Ladies may wipe their lips on the tablecloth, but not blow their noses on it.’

1847

Invention of the Ring Doughnut


The ring doughnut was invented by accident, when a baker’s apprentice called Hanson Gregory pushed out the soggy, uncooked centre of a conventional doughnut that he had just pulled out of the deep fryer.

1848

I Am the Emperor, and I Want Dumplings!

During the upheavals in Vienna, the feeble-minded emperor Ferdinand I of Austria, watching the revolutionaries march past the palace, supposedly asked, ‘Are they allowed to do that?’ He abdicated shortly afterwards. On an earlier occasion, when advised that he should not eat dumplings because his digestive system could not cope, he said, ‘Ich bin der Kaiser und will Knödel!’ (‘I am the emperor, and I want dumplings!’)

1848

Widow McCormick’s Cabbage Patch

(29 July) The Irish contribution to the year of revolutions across Europe comprised a brief skirmish near Kilkenny between a hundred Young Ireland rebels and half that number of men from the Royal Irish Constabulary. The abortive revolt was for ever after known by the piece of ground upon which it was fought – Widow McCormick’s Cabbage Patch.

1850

Rum Ration Slashed

The Royal Navy reduced its daily rum allowance from one-quarter to one-eighth of a pint.

1851

Provisions for an Alpine Ascent

 Murray’s guidebook to the Alps averred, regarding those who had climbed Mont Blanc, ‘It is a somewhat remarkable fact that a large proportion of those who have made this ascent have been persons of unsound mind.’ That same year the showman Albert Smith climbed the mountain with three Oxford undergraduates, each man being accompanied, as local regulations dictated, by four guides. Such a large party required the services of some 20 porters to carry the provisions, comprising:
60 bottles of vin ordinaire
6 packets of sugar
6 bottles of Bordeaux
4 packets of prunes
10 bottles of St George
4 packets of raisins
15 bottles of St Jean
2 packets of salt
3 bottles of Cognac
4 wax candles
1 bottle of syrup of raspberries
6 lemons
6 bottles of lemonade
4 legs of mutton
2 bottles of champagne
6 pieces of veal
20 loaves
1 piece of beef
10 small cheese
11 large fowls
6 packets of chocolate
35 small fowls

In contrast, when Professor John Tyndall, who suffered from chronic indigestion and insomnia, made the first ascent of another Alpine giant, the Weisshorn, in August 1861, he survived on a diet of 12 meat lozenges, and undertook the climb after 48 hours without sleep.

1854

Cannibalism in the High Arctic

The Scottish explorer John Rae, while travelling in Arctic Canada, learnt from the Inuit something of the fate of the expedition of Sir John Franklin, which had set sail to find a way through the North-west Passage in 1847 but had not been heard of since. The evidence strongly suggested that Franklin’s men had resorted to cannibalism, and for this reason, when Rae returned to London, the authorities suppressed his story, and Rae himself was shunned by the Establishment. In the 1990s, examination of the bodies of some of the lost expedition revealed cut marks on the bones consistent with the flesh having been trimmed off with a knife.

1859

The Pig War

(15 June) Lyman Cutler, an American settler on San Juan Island, a territory in the Pacific north-west claimed by both the USA and Britain, shot a pig belonging to Charles Griffin, an employee of the Hudson Bay Company, and almost precipitated a war. Prior to the shooting (the only fatality of the so-called Pig War), it is said that Cutler had yelled at Griffin, ‘Keep your pigs out of my potatoes,’ to which Griffin had replied, ‘Keep your potatoes out of my pigs!’ Griffin demanded $100 compensation, but was refused, and when the British authorities threatened to arrest Cutler, the American settlers on the island called for military protection. Both sides sent contingents of troops to San Juan, and the situation began to escalate, although Admiral Baynes of the Royal Navy refused the order of the governor of Vancouver Island to engage the enemy, opining that ‘a squabble about a pig’ was not justification enough for a war between two great nations. Eventually, it was agreed that both sides should maintain a military presence on the island, and in 1872 a commission of arbitration under Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany allocated the territory to the USA. Nevertheless, park rangers still fly the Union Jack above the ‘British Camp’ at the north end of San Juan Island.

1865

Cows on the White House Lawn

(15 April) Andrew Johnson became president on the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. After the former vice-president moved into the White House, his daughter, who ran the household, installed two Jersey cows on the lawns to keep the family in milk and butter.

1867

Cannibals Eat Missionary

A missionary to Fiji, the Revd Thomas Baker, was cooked and eaten, having offended the chief by removing a comb from the headman’s hair. In 2003 the chief’s descendant issued an apology to the Baker family.

1871

Roast Cat and Carpaccio of Spaniel

During the Prussian siege of Paris, the starving inhabitants were wont to resort to such dishes as donkey steak, rat salami, carpaccio of spaniel, roast cat, and kittens served in an onion ragout.

1879

Biscuits not Bullets

(22 January) As the Zulus attacked at the Battle of Isandlwana the British redcoats turned to their ammunition boxes, only to find they were filled with biscuits, not bullets. Out of a force of 1400 men, fewer than 100 survived the Zulu onslaught.

1881

Man-Eating Trees in Madagascar

The traveller Carl Liche published an eyewitness account of the sacrifice of a young woman of the Mkodo tribe of Madagascar to a man-eating tree, which, ‘as if instinct with demoniac intelligence, fastened upon her in sudden coils round and round her neck and arms … here trickled down the stalk of the tree great streams of the viscid honey-like fluid, mingled horribly with the blood and oozing viscera of the victim … May I never see such a sight again.’ However, it later transpired that not only was the man-eating tree a hoax, so were the Mkodo tribe and Carl Liche himself. It is possible that the tall tale was inspired by the island’s agy tree, which has stinging hairs reportedly many times more painful than a nettle.

1882

Mass Fish Death (Spring)

The surface of an area of sea some 480 km (300 miles) in extent off the east coast of America was covered with the corpses of an estimated 1400 million fish. It was thought that the fish might have been killed by an incursion of a cold-water current following severe storms.

1889

Bovril, Food of the Master Race


Formation of the Bovril Company. The beef extract had its origins in Johnston’s Fluid Beef, supplied to Napoleon III’s armies in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1 by a Scottish grocer called John Lawson Johnston. The name Bovril was a combination of ‘bovine’ and ‘vril’, the latter word deriving from Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s 1870 science-fiction novel Vril: The Power of the Coming Race, in which vril was a fluid that gave superhuman powers to a subterranean master race (many readers believed the story was true; see 1938). In 2004 Bovril denied its name and became vegetarian, replacing beef stock with yeast mix in the wake of the ban on the export of British beef, but in 2006 it was announced that beef stock would once again be the main ingredient.

1908

On the Therapeutic Value of Bovine Flatulence

Death of Helena, Comtesse de Noailles. She was a firm believer in the therapeutic value of methane, and kept a herd of cows in her garden so that the vapours resulting from their flatulence could permeate the house. Her other eccentricities included sleeping with a bag of dead squirrels wrapped round her head.

1911

Against the Advancement of the Sons of Pork Butchers

(29 March) A public schoolboy from Kensington wrote to the Guardian to decry the award of scholarships for poor children to attend secondary schools (there was no universal free education provision until after the 1944 Education Act). ‘Is it not more probable,’ the youth argued, ‘that the sons of gentlemen will be levelled down rather than the sons of Pork Butchers levelled up by continual daily contact. The lessons of the gutter are more easily learnt than the traditions of caste. The fact that by keeping particular secondary and Public Schools a reserve for a particular class keeps the higher walks of life in the professions and public services a preserve for the same class, is surely a great argument in its favour. The lower classes never were a Governing class and why should the master sit side by side with the servant?’

1914

On the Profligacy of Failing to Eat One’s Enemies

As Europe combusted into all-out war, the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski was carrying out fieldwork in Papua:
I once talked to an old cannibal who, hearing of the Great War raging in Europe, was most curious to know how we Europeans managed to eat such huge quantities of human flesh. When I told him the Europeans did not eat their slain foes he looked at me with shocked horror and asked what sort of barbarians we were, to kill without any real object.

1914

On the Excellence of Elysium Soap

(10 September) The German raider Emden captured the British merchantman Indus in the Indian Ocean. All it had on board was ballast and soap, but the latter was much appreciated by the crew, who had run out of supplies. On 25 September the following advertisement appeared in The Empire, a Calcutta newspaper:

There is no doubt that the German cruiser Emden had knowledge that the Indus was carrying 150 cases of North-West Soap Company’s celebrated ELYSIUM Soap, and hence the pursuit. The men on the Emden and their clothes are now clean and sweet, thanks to ELYSIUM Soap. Try it!

1918

Condemned Men Encouraged to Smoke

The medical officer at Birmingham prison recommended that condemned men be supplied ‘with at least a dozen cigarettes daily’.

1921

Cooking with Horse Dung

(October) Reporting on the famine in Russia – which cost 3 million lives – Arthur Ransome found an old woman so desperate for food that she was reduced to cooking horse dung in a broken saucepan.

1934

Some Books on Poultry

Publication of The Art of Faking Exhibition Poultry by George Ryley Scott, author of The Truth About Poultry.

1940

Grass as a Source of Human Nutrition

(2 May) A Mr J.R.B. Branson wrote to The Times to recommend the nutritional benefits to humans of grass mowings. He had, he said, eaten them regularly for over three years, and off many lawns, and was presently enjoying the cuttings from a golf green on Mitcham Common.

1941

Soil Served Up as Custard


(August) The Germans began to besiege Leningrad. The Soviets managed to hold out until they were relieved in January 1944, but over a million of the inhabitants died from bombing, cold, and, above all, famine. So hungry were they that factory workers ate the grease from their machines, and drank engine oil from tins. When a sugar warehouse was burnt to the ground, helpings of the earth beneath it, into which the molten sugar had seeped, were served up as ‘candy’ or ‘custard’. Eventually things got so bad that even the graves of the newly dead were disturbed, as the desperate dug up and ate the corpses.

1943

Sliced Bread Banned

(18 January) The US government banned the sale of sliced bread until the end of hostilities.

1947

Legislation Regarding Nuts

The British government enacted legislation setting up a scheme to plant vast quantities of groundnuts (peanuts) in the East African colony of Tanganyika. Among the provision of the act was the following: In the Nuts (unground) (other than ground-nuts)Order, the expression nuts shall have reference to such nuts, other than ground-nuts, as would but for this amending Order not qualify as nuts (unground) (other than ground-nuts) by reason of their being nuts (unground).

Such clarity was perhaps a herald of things to come. The scheme was a complete failure, owing to lack of leadership and the unsuitability of both climate and terrain, and the entire investment of £49 million was lost.

1949

The Artichoke Queen

The career of Marilyn Monroe began to look up when she became the official Artichoke Queen of California.

1957

A Bumper Spaghetti Harvest

(1 April) BBC TV’s heavyweight current affairs programme, Panorama, carried a report on the bumper spaghetti harvest in Ticino, Switzerland, accompanied by film of spaghetti being gathered from spaghetti trees. The report was presented by Richard Dimbleby, then the epitome of broadcasting probity, and was thus widely believed, despite the date.

1985

Undrinkable Plonk

A bottle of 1787 Château Lafite went at auction for £105,000. Although quite undrinkable, the wine had come from the cellar of Thomas Jefferson, one of the
founding fathers of the USA. Meanwhile, Austria’s wine industry was rocked by a scandal when it was revealed that some of the country’s biggest producers had been adulterating their bottles with antifreeze.

1992

Chewing Gum Banned

Singapore banned the importation, sale or possession of chewing gum.

2001

The Rotenburg Cannibal

(March) Having advertised on the internet, the German cannibal Armin Meiwes was delighted to welcome into his home Bernd Jürgen Armando Brandes, a manager at Siemens AG, who had responded to Meiwes’s appeal for a willing victim. Brandes initially asked Meiwes to bite off his penis so that they could eat it together, but this proved impractical, so Meiwes used a knife. Brandes found that his penis was too chewy to eat raw, so Meiwes sautéed it with garlic and seasoning. He then dosed his victim with quantities of alcohol and pain killers before dispatching and butchering him, storing the parts in his freezer for later consumption. Meiwes videotaped the whole procedure. At his first trial Meiwes was found guilty of manslaughter given that his victim had voluntarily gone to his death, and Meiwes was sentenced to only eight and a half years, but at a retrial in 2006 he was found guilty of murder and sent to prison for life.

2002

The World’s Most Expensive Whisky


(4 December) A bottle of 62-year-old Dalmore whisky was sold for £25,877.50. In 2006 the marmalade makers Duerrs celebrated their 125th anniversary by creating a 1 kg jar including edible gold leaf, vintage champagne and £3450 worth of Dalmore 62.

2003

Protest at ‘Fart Tax’

Farmers in New Zealand blocked the streets of Wellington to protest against the government’s ‘fart tax’ – a per capita tax on sheep and cattle imposed because of the amount of methane they pump into the atmosphere, thus contributing to global warming.


Excerpts from "History Without the Boring Bits" by Ian Crofton, Quercus Editions, London, 2007. Compilated and illustrated by Leopoldo Costa.







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