5

In order to celebrate Knowledge Guild’s 5th anniversary we are going to take a closer look at the number 5. Do not worry, it is not as dull as it sounds.

• The number of people killed by sharks since records began is equal to just five per cent of the number of toilet-related injuries in the USA in 1996.
• In the 18th century, 75% of all children died before they were five years old. 90% of children born in workhouses died before they were five years old.
• As a trick, the writer Arthur Conan Doyle once sent a letter to five friends that read, “We are discovered. Flee immediately.” One of his friends disappeared and Doyle never saw him again.
• An enzyme found in pineapples called “Bromelain” destroys fingerprints. It was used as a plotline in an episode of Hawaii Five-O. This enzyme can also get rid of mouth ulcers.
• Chelmsford was capital of England for five days in 1381 during the Peasants Revolt.
• The Punjabi for the number “5” is “4”.
• The most dangerous sport for American women is cheerleading. In 2002, 22,900 children between five and eighteen years of age went to hospital for cheerleading related injuries.
• Charles Darwin is one of only five people who are not royal to be buried in Westminster Abbey.
• Smoking takes five years off your health expectancy on average. However, as a man, removing your testicles adds thirteen years onto it.
• The Hebrew for the number “5” is pronounced “Hey”.
• The average height of an Eskimo is 5’4″ and the average life expectancy is 39. If you put five Eskimos in car, every Eskimo in the world could fit into the Los Angeles International Airport car park.
• The best thing to do with an old Christmas tree is to contact your local zoo and see if they want to give it to their animals for food. In Germany people often feed Christmas trees to elephants, which can eat five of them for lunch. In Dresden Zoo they also give Christmas trees to giraffes, rhinos, camels, deer and sheep.
• In Alexandre Dumas’ novel La Dem Aux Camelias, the main heroine, Marguerite Gautier, wears a white camellia for 25 days of month when she is available for sex, and a red one for five days when she is not available because she is having her period. The novel caused scandal in 19th century France when it was published and the flowers popularity grew.
• The five appendages on most starfish exhibit pentamerism.
• Only five people died in the Great Fire of London.
• India has no speed limits and every car in the country within five years will be involved in a fatal road accident. The UK has the largest number of car thefts in the world.
• Five pound notes are made out of a mixture of cotton and linen. Wooden paper is too fragile.
• There are only five places in America which have an apostrophe in them which are Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts; Ike’s Point, New Jersey; John E’s Pond, Rhode Island; Carlos Elmer’s Joshua View, Arizona; and Clark’s Mountain, Oregon.
• In the British Army, you can tell which branch of the Brigade of Guards a soldier is in by the gaps between the buttons. If they are evenly spaced, they are in the Grenadiers Guards. Pairs mean they are Coldstream Guards, threes are Scottish Guards, fours are Irish Guards, and fives are Welsh Guards.
• The ideal way to kiss a Frenchman depends on what region of France you are in. Two kisses are normal in central and southern France and four in northern France. However, in Corsica it can be as many as five kisses. In Belgium and the Netherlands, three kisses is the usual amount.
• Anchovies are now mainly used for feed salmon in fish farms. For every salmon, five kilograms of anchovies are killed. Therefore, salmon farming is not really sustainable.
• Each country in the world has their own idea of how many portions of fruit and veg you should eat every day. The reason it is five in Britain is because doctors are of the belief that you cannot persuade the public to eat more than that. In Japan they recommend eating nine portions of fruit and veg, in Denmark it is six, in France it is ten.
• A Fitzroy is a bastard child of a royal. Charles II had five Fitzroys from his mistress Barbara Palmer.

See other: Anniversaries

A ‘Politically Correct’ Christmas

The story about a council attempting to avoid offence by renaming Christmas ‘Winterval’ continues to do the rounds despite it not being true. Eleven years ago, Birmingham ran a promotional campaign for businesses in the city that lasted the whole of the period from November to the end of January. The campaign was called ‘Winterval’. They have never used the word to describe Christmas and there was no PC aspect to the way they did use the word. It’s non-news, and it’s really old non-news.

Benjamin Franklin nearly killed himself in 1750 trying to electrocute a turkey for Christmas dinner.

The alleged ‘War on Christmas’ is a recurring theme in the press, but in a nation with decorated trees in every home, Father Christmas everywhere, carols and Christmas songs playing non-stop on the radio and in shops, and Christmas an official national holiday that has now grown to consume the last three months of the year, it seems clear that Christmas has never been less threatened than it is at present. Surveys show that 95% of businesses hang Christmas decorations in their premises.

The Man Who Invented Christmas

Charles Dickens is largely responsible for the way we celebrate Christmas today; before the publication of A Christmas Carol in 1843 Christmas seemed to be dying out in Britain. The old-style 12-day Christmas had been observed in the large households that typified agrarian England; urbanised industrial revolution period households had less use for them.

The world’s largest gathering of Santa Clauses in Newtown, Wales, in 2004 ended in a mass brawl.

Southey, Walter Scott, and Washington Irving all lamented the demise of Christmas in their time. Dickens kicked off a nostalgia boom for the family Christmas by publishing Christmas Specials of the various periodicals for which he wrote, and created the Christmas book trade with A Christmas Carol. Amongst the traditions associated with Dickens is the ‘White Christmas’. These have always been intermittent at best in southern England, but there happened to be snow every Christmas of the first eight years of Dickens’ life, and they’re a consistent feature of his stories.

Czechs eat fried and breaded carp with potato salad or plum sauce for Christmas.

In the Early Middle Ages, the big festival was Epiphany, but Christmas was the key day during most of the later Middle Ages. Oliver Cromwell’s mob regarded it as a decadent holiday, and its celebration was banned outright in 1644 – even Mass was forbidden, as well as mince pies and holly, and shops were required to stay open. These laws were repealed in 1660. But even in 1849, the headmaster of the Quaker-run Bootham School postponed breaking up until after December 25 and declared that he would rather have no holidays at all than call the period ‘Christmas holidays’.

On Santa Claus and God

Calvin: This whole Santa Claus thing just doesn’t make sense. Why all the secrecy? Why all the mystery? If the guy exists why doesn’t he ever show himself and prove it? And if he doesn’t exist what’s the meaning of all this?

Hobbes: I dunno. Isn’t this a religious holiday?

Calvin: Yeah, but actually, I’ve got the same questions about God.

― Bill Watterson

Christmas At The Ministry

‘Humphrey: I wonder if I might crave your momentary indulgence in order to discharge a by-no-means disagreeable obligation which has, over the years, become more or less established practice within government circles as we approach the terminal period of the calendar year, of course, not financial. In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, Week Fifty-One and submit to you, with all appropriate deference, for your consideration at a convenient juncture, a sincere and sanguine expectation – indeed confidence, indeed one might go so far as to say hope – that the aforementioned period may be, at the end of the day, when all relevant factors have been taken into consideration, susceptible of being deemed to be such as to merit a final verdict of having been by no means unsatisfactory in its overall outcome and, in the final analysis, to give grounds for being judged, on mature reflection, to have been conducive to generating a degree of gratification which will be seen in retrospect to have been significantly higher than the general average.

Hacker: What’s he talking about?

Bernard: Well minister, I think Sir Humphrey wanted to crave your momentary indulgence in order to discharge a by-no-means disagreeable obligation…

Hacker: Alright, alright Bernard. Humphrey…

Humphrey: At the end of the day, when all things…

Hacker: Humphrey…

Humphrey: Minister?

Hacker: Are you saying Happy Christmas?

Humphrey: Yes minister.’

– Jay. A., Lynn. J. (December 27, 1982) Christmas At The Ministry as part of “The Funny Side Of Christmas” on BBC 1

Cause Célèbre‏

A cause célèbre (French for ‘famous cause’) is an incident or legal case that excites widespread interest or controversy.

“The Supreme Court has ruled that they cannot have a nativity scene in Washington, D.C. This wasn’t for any religious reasons. They couldn’t find three wise men and a virgin.” – Jay Leno

Blood On The Rooftops

Dark and grey, an English film, the Wednesday play
We always watch the Queen on Christmas Day
Won’t you stay?

Though your eyes see shipwrecked sailors you’re still dry
The outlook’s fine though Wales might have some rain
Saved again.

Let’s skip the news boy (I’ll go and make some tea)
Arabs and Jews boy (too much for me)
They get me confused boy (puts me off to sleep)
And the thing I hate, oh Lord!
Is staying up late, to watch some debate, on some nation’s fate.

Hypnotized by Batman, Tarzan, still surprised!
You’ve won the West in time to be our guest
Name your prize!

Drop of wine, a glass of beer dear what’s the time?
The grime on the Tyne is mine all mine all mine
Five past nine.

Blood on the rooftops, Venice in the spring
The Streets of San Francisco, a word from Peking
The trouble was started, by a young Errol Flynn
Better in my day, oh Lord!
For when we got bored, we’d have a world war, happy but poor
So let’s skip the news boy – I’ll go and make some tea
Blood on the rooftops – too much for me
When old Mother Goose stops, and they’re out for twenty three
Then the rain at Lords stopped play
Seems Helen of Troy has found a new face again.

– Steve Hackett, Phil Collins

See other: Admin’s Choice Posts

How To Be a Medieval Minstrel

‘One thirteenth-century poem defines a true minstrel as one  who can ‘speak and rhyme well, be witty, know the story of Troy, balance apples on the point of knives, juggle, jump through hoops, play the citole, mandora, harp, fiddle, and psaltery.’ He is further advised, for good measure, to learn the arts of imitating birds, putting performing asses and dogs through their paces and operating marionettes. […]

And the entertainment demanded by the early medieval monarchs was reassuringly downmarket. For example, Henry II’s favourite minstrel was Roland Le Pettour. The king rewarded him with 30 acres of land for his masterwork, described as a leap, a whistle and a fart’. Roland’s great musical talent, it seems, was that he could fart tunes. The land was solemnly passed down from father to son for many generations, on the condition that the incumbent turn up at court each Christmas Day to perform the leap, the whistle and the fart!

Another act that was apparently popular with English royalty was a version of putting your head in a lion’s mouth, although this one involved a minstrel who spread honey on his member and then brought in a performing bear. What happened next isn’t actually explained, but whatever it was probably doesn’t figure in Winnie-the-Pooh.’

– Jones. T., Ereira. A. 2004. Terry Jones’ Medieval Lives London, Great Britain: BBC Books (2005) p. 42-43

See other: Hall of Fame Posts