by Cary McNeal
FACT 378 In 1817, a woman speaking a strange tongue arrived in England, claiming to be Princess Caraboo from the island of Javasu. After gaining significant fame, she was exposed as a cobbler’s daughter from Devonshire, not royalty and not from Javasu.
FACT 379 Internet scams are among the top five industries in Nigeria.
FACT 380 Many of the “walk” buttons in New York City do not actually trigger a walk light. Light changes are controlled by computers, and the buttons are a placebo. I don’t care; I’m gonna keep pushing them ten or twelve times because it feels good.
FACT 381 In 1725, Professor Dr. Johann Beringer of the University of Würzburg thought he had made an incredible discovery when he found strange fossils with runes and shapes during an archaeological dig. His colleagues later admitted to planting the fake stones to trick Beringer.
FACT 382 Famous con man Frank Abagnale escaped from a Georgia prison by convincing guards he was an undercover agent from the U.S. Bureau of Prisons. The guards said they had known all along who he was and released him promptly.
FACT 383 Frank Abagnale eluded authorities a second time by impersonating a government agent. When his hotel was surrounded by the FBI, he walked out and claimed he was also FBI, then left the scene unhindered.
FACT 384 German magazine Stern announced in 1983 that it had received Adolf Hitler’s personal diaries. The diaries, which included mundane entries such as “Eva says I have bad breath,” were authenticated by a handwriting expert but later exposed as a hoax.
FACT 385 The medical study proposing a link between autism and vaccines was exposed as fraudulent in 2004, with the data cherry-picked, altered, and misrepresented. Investigators found that the doctor who published the study was on the payroll of a group that had filed a lawsuit against the manufacturers of the vaccine in question.
FACT 386 In 1989, two scientists reported that they had discovered cold fusion, a solution to all the world’s energy needs. When other scientists couldn’t replicate their findings, the claim was exposed as a fraud.
FACT 387 The Cardiff Giant hoax, one of the most famous in American history, began in 1869 when workers digging a well in Cardiff, New York, thought they discovered a ten-foot-tall petrified man. The “man” turned out to be a stone carving created and buried as a gag.
FACT 388 George Hull, the man behind the Cardiff Giant hoax, did it to mock local clergymen who insisted that giants once walked the earth because the Bible said so.
FACT 389 In 1912, an amateur archaeologist discovered the Piltdown Man, considered the earliest settler of England. Forty years later, the discovery was found to be a fake: the jaw of the skull was from an orangutan.
FACT 390 Olympic gold medalist Stella Walsh was considered one of the fastest female athletes of her time—until her death, when she was discovered to have a penis.
FACT 391 After American Fred Lorz won the marathon at the 1904 Olympics well ahead of everyone else, it was discovered he had hitched a ride in a stranger’s car for eleven miles of the race. What, that’s not allowed?
FACT 392 Bernie Madoff’s massive Ponzi scheme netted $65 billion. After his conviction, Madoff’s home and other property was sold to pay restitution to his victims.
FACT 393 The Securities and Exchange Commission was tipped off repeatedly about Bernie Madoff by a financial analyst who had figured out what Madoff was doing.
FACT 394 Monroe Beachy is called the “Amish Bernie Madoff” for stealing around $16.8 million from investors, most of them from Amish communities.
FACT 395 The Albanian Revolution of 1997 began as a protest over the collapse of a government-reported pyramid scheme that cost hundreds of thousands of citizens their life savings.
FACT 396 The Ponzi scheme is named for Charles Ponzi, a swindler who got rich using pyramid schemes and other illegal methods in 1920s Boston.
FACT 397 Lou Pearlman, creator of the boy band groups Backstreet Boys and ’N Sync, is currently in jail for stealing $300 million from investors and banks via a Ponzi scheme. He should’ve already been in jail for creating the Backstreet Boys and ’N Sync.
I HAVE ONE CHILD; that is enough. I love her, but I understand the desire to prevent pregnancy. But if you think people are serious about birth control now, wait until you read about some of the crazy crap they tried in ye olden tymes to avoid getting knocked up. I know they didn’t have the Pill back then, but you have to wonder about anyone so desperate not to conceive that she would stuff her cooch with crocodile poop.
FACT 398 To prevent pregnancy, Indonesian Bataks insert bamboo or the sharp part of a leaf into a woman’s vagina.
FACT 399 Early condoms were made of fish bladders, animal intestines, and linen soaked with chemicals to prevent disease.
FACT 400 The “pull-out” birth control method has been around since the Old Testament, when Onan “spills his seed on the ground” before getting busy with his new wife so that she wouldn’t become pregnant.
FACT 401 Greek physician Soranus suggested that women could avoid pregnancy by squatting and forcing themselves to sneeze after coitus. No word on what he recommended for a sore anus.
FACT 402 Women have historically used many different materials as pessaries (cervix blockers), ranging from grass to rice tissue paper to sea sponges.
FACT 403 Egyptian women used crocodile dung as a spermicide.
FACT 404 The German word for the birth control pill is, conveniently, antibabypille.
FACT 405 Baboons eat plums as a natural form of birth control: the fruit has chemicals that work similar to progesterone, one of the active ingredients in birth control pills.
FACT 406 In ancient Greece an herb called silphion became so popular as a natural oral contraceptive that the plant was extinct by 100 C.E.
FACT 407 In 1873, the U.S. government passed the Comstock Laws, which made it illegal to sell contraception. Stopcock Laws would have been a better name.
FACT 408 In the early twentieth century, feminine hygiene products was a widely used euphemism for contraception.
FACT 409 The first family planning clinic was opened in 1916 but was shut down ten days later—due to poor planning.
FACT 410 Lysol was commonly used as contraception before modern birth control was developed. Women suffered burns, and the method did not prevent pregnancy.
FACT 411 Early Egyptians used tampons made of wool dipped in honey and acacia to prevent pregnancy. Fermented acacia contains an ingredient used in modern spermicides.
FACT 412 Famous lover Casanova reported that women used lemon halves as cervical caps to prevent pregnancy.
FACT 413 Women in the Middle Ages were advised to use talismans to ward off pregnancy; one suggestion was to hang weasel testicles from their thighs.
FACT 414 Hippocrates suggested that women eat the seeds of the wild carrot (also called Queen Anne’s lace) to prevent pregnancy. Modern studies suggest this is actually an effective contraceptive.
FACT 415 In the Greek myth of Persephone, the young goddess is forced to live in the underworld for half a year after eating pomegranate seeds; the seeds were also used as a contraceptive in ancient Greece.
FACT 416 Early Japanese condoms were made of turtle shell and covered only the glans (head) of the penis. That doesn’t sound painful at all.
FACT 417 Condoms were first associated with prostitutes, and people gave them euphemistic nicknames: the English called them French letters, and the French called them capotes anglaises (British overcoats).
ABSOLUTE POWER CORRUPTS ABSOLUTELY. Especially if you were an inbred nut job in the first place. That said, it wouldn’t be horrible to have unlimited money, unlimited power, and unlimited freedom to do whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted, and to whomever you wanted
to do it. Sure, sooner or later your subjects would get tired of your crap and kill you, but you would have some seriously good times before it all went south.
FACT 418 Roman Emperor Gaius Caesar (37–41), also known as Caligula, or “Little Boot,” was a cruel and mercurial leader who found torture and executions entertaining.
FACT 419 Caligula often forced parents to watch their sons being killed.
FACT 420 As a teenager, Caligula is believed to have committed incest with his sister Drusilla.
FACT 421 Caligula was assassinated in 41 C.E. by a group of his closest advisers, who stabbed him thirty times. His wife and daughter were also murdered.
FACT 422 So roundly hated was Caligula that after his death, the senate ordered the destruction of all statues of him.
FACT 423 Roman Emperor Nero (54–68) was a sadistic, sexually depraved lunatic who took his mother as a lover, then had her killed when she tried to control him.
FACT 424 Later in his reign, the emperor was unforgiving of perceived disloyalty or criticism. He had an army commander executed for speaking against him at a party.
FACT 425 Nero tried to strangle his first wife, Octavia, then had her executed after she divorced him.
FACT 426 Two weeks after divorcing Octavia, Nero married Poppaea Sabina, the widow of a Roman knight whom Nero had ordered to be killed.
FACT 427 During a quarrel with a pregnant Poppaea, Nero kicked her to death.
FACT 428 When Roman emperor Claudius’s daughter Antonia refused to become Nero’s next wife, she was charged with rebellion and executed.
FACT 429 One of Nero’s “wives” was an adolescent boy whom the emperor had ordered to be castrated.
FACT 430 Many Romans suspected that Nero started the great fire of Rome in 64 C.E. to make room for a new villa he was planning to build. The emperor blamed the Christians, which became a starting point for their persecution and torture in Rome.
FACT 431 Nero wasn’t all bad: he banished mimes in Rome.
FACT 432 Ancient historian John of Ephesus recounts that Emperor Justin II of Byzantine (who ruled from 565 to 574) heard voices in his head and, to escape them, would scream and hide under his bed or order his servants to play organ music throughout the palace.
FACT 433 The only thing that abated Justin’s crazy behavior was a makeshift throne on wheels built by his servants, who would push the emperor up and down palace halls.
FACT 434 King Charles VI of France (1368–1422) had iron rods inserted into his clothing because he was convinced he was made of glass and would break.
FACT 435 In 1392, Charles killed four of his own men during a manic episode after a page startled him by dropping a lance. At least he didn’t overreact.
FACT 436 Charles would go months without bathing and often prowled the corridors of his palace, howling like a wild animal.
FACT 437 After her husband died in 1506, Queen Juana of Spain (a.k.a. Joanna of Castille) was so heartbroken that she kept his coffin with her at all times so she could gaze at his rotting remains.
FACT 438 A new theory suggests that a condition called McLeod syndrome could have been responsible for the mental and physical deterioration of King Henry VIII (who ruled from 1509 to 1547) later in his life. Older men are at risk from this disease, which has symptoms that include heart disease, movement disorders, and major psychological conditions such as paranoia and dementia.
FACT 439 The same theory suggests that Henry VIII had a rare blood type called Kell positive, which could have contributed to the frequent miscarriages of his many wives.
FACT 440 Born in 1530, Czar Ivan IV, a.k.a. Ivan the Terrible, was a sensitive and intelligent boy who tortured small animals for sport. OK, maybe not so sensitive.
FACT 441 Ivan was an unpopular leader who seized private lands to give to his supporters and caused major disruptions in the Russian economy and culture.
FACT 442 Ivan created the Oprichniki, the first official secret Russian police force. Dressed in black astride black horses, the Oprichniki existed more to crush dissent than to keep the peace.
FACT 443 After the death of his first wife in 1560, Ivan became even more brutal, destroying the major families of nobility in the region whom he had long suspected of being involved in his mother’s murder.
FACT 444 Ivan’s other misdeeds included beating his pregnant daughter-in-law badly enough to cause a miscarriage; murdering his son; and blinding the architect of St. Basil’s Cathedral.
FACT 445 Laughing, smiling, or whispering within earshot of the slightly paranoid King Erik XIV of Sweden (who ruled from 1560 to 1568) often earned people a charge of treason and a death sentence.
FACT 446 King Erik was certain for a time that he was his own brother. In 1568, his real brother replaced him as king after advisers deemed Erik too unstable to rule.
FACT 447 Erik was fed poisoned pea soup and killed in 1577.
FACT 448 Known for his “vacant gaze,” Czar Fyodor I of Russia (who ruled from 1584 to 1598), son of Ivan the Terrible, left ruling the kingdom up to his brother-in-law, Boris Godunov. Instead, he wandered throughout the country, determined to ring all of the church bells in Russia.
FACT 449 In 1626, German princess Maria Eleonora of Brandenburg, desperate to give her husband a male heir, seemed to lose her mind after the birth of a daughter instead. Calling the child a “monster,” Maria tried to kill the baby on many occasions, often “accidentally” dropping her or shoving her down the stairs.
FACT 450 One of the most notorious of the Ottoman sultans, Ibrahim I (who ruled from 1640 to 1648) was known as Ibrahim the Mad due to his frequent nervous attacks and general mental instability.
FACT 451 In one fit of madness, Ibrahim had his entire harem of 280 concubines drowned in the Bosphorus. Sometimes you just have to start fresh, you know?
FACT 452 Midway through his reign (1760–1820), King George III began to show signs of insanity, including acute agitation, temper outbursts, and profane verbal tirades that went on for hours until the king would foam at the mouth. Or, as it’s called at my house, “homework time.”
FACT 453 When George became too combative, he was put in a straitjacket or tied to his bed.
FACT 454 King George, says author Michael Farquhar, “gave orders to people who did not exist. He composed letters to foreign courts on imaginary causes, and lavished honors on all who approached him, even the lowliest servant.”
FACT 455 During one dinner, George suddenly attacked his eldest son, pulling him out of his chair and throwing him against the wall.
FACT 456 According to Michael Farquhar, “Historians now believe that King George’s strange behavior was caused by a rare hereditary blood disorder called porphyria. Symptoms of the condition include many exhibited by George, such as severe abdominal pain, weakness of limbs, discolored urine, rambling speech, hallucinations, hysteria, paranoia, and schizophrenia.”
FACT 457 King Christian VII of Denmark (who ruled from 1766 to 1808) was known for throwing food at dinner guests and would sometimes slap people in the face in the middle of a conversation for no reason.
FACT 458 Christian developed such a chronic masturbation habit that court physicians worried it would stunt his growth or render him infertile.
FACT 459 Queen Maria I of Portugal (who ruled from 1777 to 1816) had a religious fanaticism that led her to believe she was going to hell. She also claimed to have seen her deceased father’s burnt corpse being tortured by demons.
FACT 460 Princess Alexandra Amelie of Bavaria (1826–1875) believed she had swallowed a glass piano as a child. She also had an obsession with cleanliness and would wear only white clothing.
FACT 461 Ferdinand I of Austria (who ruled from 1835
to 1848) reportedly spoke only one sentence in his life: “I am the Emperor, and I want dumplings.” As a result of inbreeding—his parents were double first cousins—Ferdinand was epileptic, encephalitic, and practically mute.
FACT 462 After his cabinet accused him of insanity, Bavaria’s “Märchenkönig” (fairy-tale king) Ludwig II (who ruled from 1864 to 1886) was placed in custody. The following day, Ludwig disappeared. Hours later, his lifeless body was found floating in a lake. The circumstances of his death remain a mystery to this day.
FACT 463 Engaged but never married, Ludwig’s diary entries suggest that he struggled with his sexual orientation throughout his adult life.