MISCELLANEOUS FACTS

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Arthur Boyt (1938 – 1923), a retired biologist from Cornwall, ate roadkill for more than 50 years. He was also the author of several roadkill recipe books. Calling himself a “freegan”, he declared a badger sandwich a favourite.

Journalists rang him regularly to ask what he had had for Christmas lunch, answers included beached sperm whale casserole with brussel sprouts, and his 2015 Christmas dish of dolphin, which he sauteed live on air on a radio show. This caused a controversy in that the dolphin was the property of the British Crown. He responded that it was not illegal to dispose of a dead dolphin body and that he had simply disposed of it via his mouth.

He also liked dog, the best being Labrador, but if he found a dog body with a collar, he tried to reunite it with the owner.

He once served his unsuspecting sister cat and only told her afterwards. At her son’s wedding she tried to beat him up.

He would really have had a feast on the roadkill available on the highway to Canberra.

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Hippocrates (c 460 – 370 BC), known today as the “Father of Medicine”, was of the opinion that eating dogs was likely to cause indigestion but boiled puppies were tasty meals for invalids.

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The earliest archaeological evidence of soup dates back to 6,000 BC and was hippopotamus soup.

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BTW:

What’s the difference between a Hippo and a Zippo?

One is heavy, the other is a little lighter.

(Boom, boom, tsshh)

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Caramel was created in about 1,000 AD by Arabs mixing sugar and water to create a crystallised liquid. It was not used as a food item but as a beauty product, by women to remove hair from their legs.

It was not until about 1860, when milk and cream were mixed in with sugar and water to create the caramels we know today.

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It has been theorised that Shakespeare may have had syphilis, explaining his obsessive interest in “the pox”, his clinically exact knowledge of it, the final poems of the sonnets and the misogyny and revulsion from sex prominent in his writings in what been termed his tragic period. It is also supported by contemporary gossip. Not only was he notoriously promiscuous, he was also part of a love triangle in which all three parties contracted venereal disease.

It has also been hypothesised that Shakespeare received treatment for syphilis, the treatment being mercury vapour, which left those treated with several problems, especially tremors. The saying was “A night with Venus, a lifetime with Mercury.” This supports Shakespeare’s late-life decrease in artistic production, social withdrawal and hair loss. It would also explain the decline in his handwriting. His final signatures show a marked tremor.

Shakespeare's six surviving signatures, all from legal documents.

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William Stark was a Senior Second Officer aboard the Queen Mary. He was asked to prepare gin and lime drinks for the Captain and two other officers but couldn’t find the gin in the Captain’s cabin so asked a steward to assist. The steward located a gin bottle but was not aware that it contained toxic tetrachloride, used to clean furniture. Stark used it to make the drinks and drank his in one gulp. He commented that the gin was “funny”. Declining to have his stomach pumped as not being that big a deal, he died shortly after of tetrachloride poisoning. His ghost is said to haunt the RMS Queen Mary.

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Former US President Richard Nixon (1913 – 1994) had an irrational, excessive fear of hospitals, once stating “If I go into the hospital I’ll never come out alive.” The condition is known as nosocomephobia and it caused Nixon to refuse hospital treatment for a blood clot in 1974.

In 1994 he suffered a severe stroke as a result of a blood clot which had travelled to his brain. He died 3 days later in hospital.

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Ritchie Valens (1941 – 1959), noted for hits La Bamba and Donna, was a student aged 15 when a plane collided mid-air with an Air Force plane and crashed into his school yard. 8 people died and 78 were injured. Valens was not at school that day in that he was attending his grandfather’s funeral but it nonetheless caused recurring nightmares and a fear of flying, known as aviophobia.

On February 3, 1959 – “The Day the Music Died” – he flew the one and only time. The plane crashed in Iowa in bad weather, also taking the lives of Buddy Holly, J P ‘The Big Bopper’ Richardson and pilot Roger Peterson. Valens was 17.

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In 1987, Canadian Kenneth Parks drove 20 kilometres to Pickering Ontario to the home of his in-laws. Entering with a key they had previously given him, he used a tyre iron to bludgeon his mother in law to death. He unsuccessfully then attempted to choke his father in law to death. Covered in blood, he drove to a police station and said “I think I have just killed two people.”

His defence, supported by neurological reports, was that he was sleepwalking at the time, a condition in the category known as automatism, hence he was not criminally liable. He maintained that he fell asleep on the couch in his own home, that he woke up in his in laws’ house and had no knowledge of how he had gotten there or what had happened.

The jury agreed and he was acquitted.

His wife must have been very forgiving, he went on to have 6 children.

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Guy Fawkes (1570 – 1606), one of the 8 1606 Gunpowder Plotters intending to blow up the British House of Lords. Charged with high treason, all were sentenced to be hung, drawn and quartered and their body parts put on display. Standing on the scaffold with the hangman’s rope around his neck, he cheated his executioners by jumping from the scaffold, breaking his neck. His body was nonetheless drawn and quartered, and the parts put on public display.

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Speaking of hangings . . .

William Brodie (1741 – 1788), often known as Deacon Brodie, was a Scottish cabinetmaker, deacon of a trades guild and Edinburgh city councillor. He was also a secret burglar, partly for the thrill, partly to fund his gambling and the rest to support 2 mistresses and 5 secret children. He used his daytime work to obtain information about the security systems of his customers and to make wax impressions of heir keys.

Brodie was also an amateur inventor and is credited as being involved in designing an improved gallows and means of execution by hanging. Until that time, persons to be hanged were pushed from a high platform and strangled to death. Brodie helped perfect the trapdoor-and-lever system that became the standard gallows.

Brodie was apprehended and sentenced to death for his crimes. On the gallows he asked if he could inspect the apparatus. Pronouncing it satisfactory, he was dropped to his death by his own device.

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This one's for you Steve (who hates the Star Wars films but gave me a birthday card the plays the Star Wars theme when it is opened) . . . 

Alec Guinness played Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi in the 1977 Star Wars film but hated it, describing it as “banal” and “mumbo jumbo". He threw away Star Wars-related fan mail unopened and in his autobiography recalled that he was approached by a small boy who said that he had seen the film a hundred times. Guinness said that he would give him an autograph if he promised not to watch it again. The boy burst into tears.

Guinness also said that it was his idea to have Obi-Wan killed off, to make his part shorter.

Ironically the film made him rich, he was the only actor to get a cut of the profits.

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In 1931 Nazi chief Heinrich Himmler (1900 – 1945) asked fellow Nazi Hugo Boss (1885 – 1948), shown above, to design his soldiers a uniform that would inspire fear in men and “success with girls”. The result was a black uniform with a black hat sporting a silver skull. 

By 1938 the Boss label was working exclusively for the Nazis and military machine, producing uniforms for the SA, the SS, Hitler Youth, the postal service, the national railroad and Wehrmacht, using 140 Polish and 40 French slave labour persons.

After World War II, the denazification process saw Boss initially labelled as an "activist, supporter and beneficiary" of Nazism, which resulted in a heavy fine, also stripping him of his voting rights and capacity to run a business. This initial ruling was appealed, and Boss was re-labelled as a Mitläufer ("fellow traveller"), a category with a less severe punishment. Nevertheless, the effects of the ban led to Boss's son-in-law, Eugen Holy, taking over both the ownership and the running of the company.