Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges into History
Page 9
4. UMBRELLA
a. It was patterned after the Alaskan “umbriak,” a round canoe.
b. From the Latin “umbra,” which means “shade.’
c. For Londoner Ed Umbrell, its inventor.
5. PAJAMAS
a. Their Central American town of origin, Pajama (near Panama.)
b. The Farsi “pae” for “leg,” and “jamah” meaning “garment” because they started out as pants.
c. It was developed and marketed by flannel baron Sanjib Pajima.
6. GLOVE
a. From the Anglo-Saxon “glof,” meaning the palm of the hand.
b. Named after Sir Gloveston, a knight of the Round Table.
c. The oldest pair came from King Tut’s Gluvrii Chamber.
7. TROUSERS
a. The Gaelic “trews” for “leg covers.”
b. Leather garments first seen on Nordic fishermen, on River Trow.
c. After French prelate Henri Trouseur, who wore them under his robe.
8. SHOE
a. From the practice of hurling footwear at undesirable critters while yelling “shoo!”
b. The Anglo-Saxon “sceo,” pluralized to “schewis,” meaning “to cover.”
c. It was popularized by Japanese leather merchant Shu’ Ze.
Magellan was not the first person to sail around the world. He was killed partway through.
1-c. The ancient Greeks wore them first; they were made of a light leather and called “sykhos.” Roman soldiers used them as boot liners and wore them to Britain, where the name “soccus” was clipped to “socks.”
2-c. Heir to the tobacco fortune, Pierre Lorillard IV, a blueblood New Yorker set the fashion world on its collective ear in 1886. His family commissioned and wore the first of the future prom rentals to the Autumn Ball at his exclusive country club in the village Tuxedo Park.
3-c. John Stetson worked in his family’s Philadelphia hat business as a boy. He traveled out west in the 1860s to improve his health. When he returned to Philly, he started making hats that were suited to the needs of the Western cowboy. The hats soon became the most popular cowboy headgear in the west. Buffalo Bill, General George Custer, Annie Oakley, and Calamity Jane all wore ‘em.
4-b. In 1750s London, a British merchant named John Hanway popularized the umbrella. Before that, anything more than a casual attempt to avoid the rain was considered unmanly; the humble umbrella was for women to escape the sun.
5-b. From late in the sixteenth century, both men and women wore nightgowns (true!) Two hundred years later, as women’s nightgowns got filmier, men’s got shorter, and turned into nightshirts. The loose pants called “pajamas” were worn on the bottom. The two didn’t match, of course. But eventually they did, and—voila!—the pajamas that we know today.
6-a. Men have been wearing gloves for 10,000 years. Women didn’t get in on the digital fun until 1550, when France’s Catherine de Medici stunned the fashion world with hers: lavishly embroidered and richly jeweled.
7-a. Anyone can wear the pants in your family, but only men can wear trousers; when women wear them, they’re “slacks” (from Latin, “laxus,” for “loose.”)
8-b. Egyptian sandals of woven papyrus were the first footwear, worn as early as 2000 B.C. Greeks fashioned fitted footwear from leather by 600 B.C., followed by the Romans who added rights and lefts around 200 B.C. But our word for shoe comes from the Anglo-Saxons.
Saint Augustine, Jamestown, and Quebec City were all founded before Plymouth.
THE CODE OF HAMMURABI
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Hammurabi was the king of Babylon, a city synonymous with decadence and moral depravity—a sort of Sodom and Gomorrah all rolled into one. We thought it was our duty to look into it. For purely historical reasons, of course.
LAYING DOWN THE LAW
Sometime around 1780 B.C., King Hammurabi of Babylon decided to have his favorite 281 laws carved into an eight-foot-high stone column. At the top, the royal artists carved a picture of the great king on his throne. Below that is the text, which begins with a rambling message from Hammurabi, in which he calls himself “the exalted prince” and vows to “destroy the wicked and the evil-doers.” On the rest of the column is carved a list of laws, from #1 to #282, called the Code of Hammurabi. It’s believed that the code was displayed in a conspicuous place, probably the town square or something. This way, it’s assumed, nobody had an excuse for breaking the law.
The laws are arranged in orderly groups: a cluster of laws governing slaves here, laws concerning marriage and inheritance there. And so on. Some of the laws you already know about: an eye for an eye, for instance. It’s specified in Law #196 this way: “If a man put out the eye of another man, his eye shall be put out.” Pretty basic. A tooth for a tooth is covered under law #200. There’s no mention of prison. The only alternatives were fines, a death sentence, or, as in the case of the eye and tooth mentioned above, the occasional “pound of flesh.”
LET THE PUNISHMENT FIT THE CRIMINAL
Crimes and their punishment had a direct correlation to social status. Unless the crime was serious, the higher you were on the social ladder, the less severely you were punished. The poor slobs clustered around the bottom of the ladder paid dearly—often with their lives. Law #8 is a perfect example. It covers the theft of livestock. Say someone steals a goat. If the goat “belonged to a god,” i.e., was stolen from a temple—the tippy-top of the social scale—the thief had to pay 30 times the worth of the goat. If the goat belonged to a “free man”—someone a step up from a regular citizen—the thief had to pay less, just 10 times the amount. If the thief was too poor to pay the fine, he was put to death.
Miranda Stuart posed as a man to become a British medical officer in Canada.
OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!
There were plenty of other opportunities for the average Babylonian to be sentenced to death. Here’s a list of crimes that called for capital punishment. You would be put to death for:
• Accusing someone of a crime without proof
• Falsely accusing someone of a crime
• Stealing the property of a temple or a court
• Receiving the stolen property of a temple or a court
• Stealing a slave
• Helping a slave escape
• Hiding a slave
• Breaking and entering
• Committing a robbery
• Allowing conspirators to meet in your tavern
• Violating a virgin who is promised in marriage to another
Even an innocent bystander could be included in the death sentence. Take Law #229, for example, which states that a house builder will be put to death if the house he built falls in and kills the owner. The next law, #230, adds a nuance: “If it kill the son of the owner, the son of that builder shall be put to death.”
WHICH WAY DID THEY GO?
In most cases, the exact manner of death is left to the imagination, but in some cases it’s well-defined. For example:
• If a wife and her lover have their mates (her husband and the other man’s wife) murdered, “both of them shall be impaled.”
• If a robbery is committed during a fire, the criminal will be thrown into that “self-same fire.” Which doesn’t leave much time for a trial.
• If you’re a priestess and you own or enter a tavern, you’ll be burned to death.
Lady Jane Grey was England’s first queen in nearly 400 years, but lasted just nine days.
MINOR OFFENSES
You could have your hands cut off:
• If you’re a surgeon who kills someone during surgery
• If you hit your father
• If you steal corn or plants from a farm owner you work for
You could have your ear cut off:
• If you’re a slave who says to his master, “You are not my master.”
TRY AND PROVE IT!
Apparently the Babylonians had no idea there was such a thing as swimming. If a crime could
n’t be proven, the accused would be thrown into the water. If she (and it was usually a she) floated, she was innocent. If she didn’t, she drowned.
You would be thrown into the water:
• If your husband accused you of being unfaithful, but couldn’t catch you in the act
• If you quarreled with your husband for no reason, then left him or neglected him
Then there were the occasions when you wouldn’t be given the option of trying to stay afloat. For instance, you would be tied up and thrown into the water:
• If your husband surprised you with another man. Or if you were the other man with the wife when the husband surprised her.
Perhaps by now you’re thinking, ho-hum, what’s so decadent? The Babylonians didn’t do anything we don’t do every day in our society. We were beginning to think the same thing, until we came across a mention of the goddess Ishtar, a.k.a. “The Great Whore of Babylon.”
THEY DON’T CALL IT BABYLON FOR NOTHING
Ishtar was the goddess of war and sexual love, and the most powerful goddess in the Mesopotamian religion. If you wanted to be part of her cult (and everyone did) you had to participate.
Every female citizen was expected to go at least once in her life to the temple of Ishtar and offer herself to any male worshipper who paid the required contribution. There was no shame attached to being one of Ishtar’s prostitutes, in fact, it was considered a sacred means of attaining divine union between man and goddess. Oh, yeah. The English writer Sir James Frazer, in The Golden Bough, mentions the girls who didn’t make the cut:
The sacred precinct (Ishtar’s temple) was crowded with women waiting to observe the custom. Some of them had to wait there for years.
We assume they were the less attractive of Ishtar’s temporary prostitutes. Poor wallflowers, waiting all their lives in the temple for some poor schmo to ask them for a date.
England’s George I was German and could barely speak English.
HOW WE KNOW ALL THIS
In A.D. 1901, a team of archeologists led by a French scholar found the fairly well-preserved column we call the Code of Hammurabi in Persia. Besides its importance as a historical curiosity, we think it’s given us a pretty good look into the customs and mores of ancient Mesopotamia. You can see it for yourself the next time you’re in Paris, where it’s on display at the Louvre Museum. Just saunter over to it and impress your friends with everything you know about the Code of Hammurabi. Including the fact that there is no Law #13. The Babylonians were as superstitious as we are.
THE EVIL KIMONO
Modern man has little respect for evil spirits. But as Japanese legend tells it, a priest in Tokyo was able to tell when they were present. In February 1867, the priest knew he had to remove evil spirits from a kimono that he believed to be cursed. Three teenaged girls had owned the innocent-looking garment, and all three had fallen ill and died. As the fathers of the young victims watched, the priest solemnly set a torch to the kimono. But just as the cloth caught fire, a fierce wind came up. The evil wind swept the flames out of control until they ignited the wooden dwellings of the city. Before it was extinguished, the infamous “long-sleeved kimono” fire killed more than 100,000 people and left three-quarters of Tokyo burned to the ground.
After William the Conqueror died, someone stole every bone in his body but his thighbone.
A HAIR PIECE
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Shaved, snipped, or braided, hair has gone through a bewildering variety of fashions throughout history. Here are some of the high points in hair fashions for men.
Who says guys aren’t into fashion? Their sideburns and dreadlocks have gone through as many changes as feminine hemlines. Geography and historical time period clue you in to the way hairs sit atop a guy’s head. A crew cut would have been as laughable to the fashionable hunks of the Sun King’s court as their powdered wigs are to us, today.
LOOK MUMMY, NO HAIR!
The ancient Egyptians removed all body hair by shaving, tweezing, or “waxing” it off with a paste made of honey and turpentine. Archaeologists found jeweled wigs in lots of tombs. Those fancy, long beards worn by the Pharaohs were glued-on fakes as well.
HEY, SHORTY!
In the time of Saint Paul, cropped hair was the style, especially after Paul called long hair, “a shame unto a man.” In the mid-12th century, King Louis VII of France followed Paul’s advice and cut off his long hair. Unfortunately, his queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, took one look at Louis’ shorn head and flew the coop, taking her vast land-holdings with her.
WIGGING OUT
Short hair was the rage for a century or two. Around the time of the Renaissance, cool dudes supplemented the hair God gave them with wigs. Louis XIII of France was the trendsetter. Doomed to male pattern baldness at a relatively young age, the king hid his skimpy hairs under a wig. Louis XIII passed both his baldness and his wig preference along to Louis XIV. (You could say Louis gave his hair to his heir.) Actually, Louis XIV, the Sun King, was so disgusted by his baldness that only his barber saw his naked head. To prevent anyone from glimpsing his royal pate, Louis made servants pass him his wig through his closed bed curtains before he would leave his bed.
England’s Queen Anne became so heavy that she needed to be moved with pulleys.
WHEN FASHION WAS IN FLOUR
During the reign of the Sun King, men, women, and even children all wore large white wigs. “Everyone wants to be so old as to appear wise,” commented a lady-in-waiting. The wealthy built closets for their headgear. In the 1700s, British soldiers got a weekly pound of flour—just so they could powder their wigs.
AU NATURAL
The French Revolution put an end to powdered wigs. Who wanted their hair to look like a king’s if that king was about to lose his hair. . .and his head? The Brits also cooled the hot wig trend by enacting a 1795 tax of one guinea on wig powder. After the tax was passed, blokes who wore powdered wigs were called “Guinea Pigs.” Soon, Lord Byron became the new model for males, with long, tax-free, natural locks.
HAIR TO DIE FOR
Meanwhile, men of the American colonies suffered through their own hair fashions. The Puritans in the 1600s championed short bowl cuts. They were laughed at as “Roundheads.” (Actually, those Puritans were pretty square.)
But by 1776, and the American Revolution, longer hair was back in vogue. Men wanted to look like that gorgeous hunk. . . Ben Franklin. Franklin was the U.S. diplomat to France. He tried to wear a wig to his court appearance, but it didn’t fit. He showed up with his long hair covered by a simple beaver cap, and high society decided that his natural appearance befitted a revolutionary warrior. (Guess they thought old Ben had hair to die for.) Today Americans celebrate Ben’s straggly locks on the hundred-dollar bill—though not every American guy wants long green hair.
“Money is the root of all evil.” —The Apostle Paul
Perhaps the most misquoted passage of scripture actually says, “The love of money is the root of all evil.” Thus Paul was focusing not on the possession of wealth but rather the heart condition that goes along with it.
Winston Churchill’s mother was American and his father was a famous political failure.
POLES APART
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Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen hadn’t wanted to go to the South Pole in the first place, but that’s the way the iceberg crumbles.
In 1909, when Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen found out that Robert Peary had reached the North Pole, he was crushed. He’d wanted to get there first. Because he was a true explorer, he wasn’t about to sit around feeling sorry for himself. He’d already been the first man to sail through the Northwest Passage. He immediately switched his focus to the other end of the world. He’d be the first man to reach the South Pole.
GOIN’ SOUTH
He only told his brother where he and his crew were headed. The Norwegian Antarctic Expedition, consisting of the 39-year-old Captain Amundsen and four compatriots, sailed south from Norway in June 19
10. They established a base camp, and by October they were ready. They set out from their winter quarters with 52 dogs and four sleds loaded with food and equipment. Traveling at a pace of 15 miles per day, the five Norwegians soon came to appreciate just what a frozen waste they’d chosen to take on. On the coldest day, the temperature dropped to a staggering negative 140 degrees Fahrenheit.
RALLY ‘ROUND THE FLAG, BOYS
By December 8, they reached the spot where, in 1909, Englishman Ernest Shackleton had given up in an earlier attempt to reach the Pole. The journey had taken the Norwegians 10,000 feet up into a mountain stretch, an area that Amundsen named for the queen of Norway, the Queen Maud Mountains. When they finally reached the Pole on December 14, the five exhausted explorers gathered around their national flag and, with frostbitten hands, grabbed hold of the flag and planted it in the snow.
GREAT SCOTT!
But the Amundsen team wasn’t alone out there. They had some competition, in the person of English explorer Captain Robert Falcon Scott, who was heading up the British Antarctic Terra Nova Expedition. It was Scott’s second Antarctic expedition. But he’d established his base camp 60 miles behind Amundsen’s; the added distance allowed Amundsen to beat Scott by over a month.