Mussolini’s Rituals

‘Mussolini thought the Italians needed to be hardened, and he launched what he called an anti-bourgeois campaign. And among the things he banned, or tried to ban, anyway, was people shouldn’t shake hands, they should give the Roman salute, you know, raising their arm and their hand up in the air. […]

[A] man named Achille Starace, was kind of his circus master, who kept coming up with these ideas of rituals, mass rituals and other kinds of rites that he thought would make the Italians ever more devoted to their duce, which is the kind of Latiny term of leader that the Italians used to refer to Mussolini.

In fact, Mussolini required being referred to as DUCE, D-U-C-E,[1] it’s spelled, and it had to be written in capitals in the newspapers by the 1930s. It couldn’t just be written in the normal way.’

– Kertzer, D. (April 24, 2015) ‘Pope And Mussolini’ Tells The ‘Secret History’ Of Fascism And The Church. NPR.

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[1] duce; ‘leader’ from Latin duco, meaning ‘I lead’. E.g. Il DUCE ha sempre ragione; ‘the leader is always right’.

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At the 2016 Republican National Convention, it was illegal to bring a tennis ball to the convention centre in Cleveland, Ohio, but not a gun.

Two of the villages in the Champagne region of France are called Dizzy and Bouzy.

“T. Eliot, top bard, notes putrid tang emanating, is sad. I’d assign it a name: Gnat dirt upset on drab pot toilet” is a palindrome.

Steve Eichel protested against ‘pseudo-credentialing’ by acquiring a PhD in psychology from a mail-order university for his cat Zoe Katze.

In 13th century Italy, the Catholic Church forbade people wearing the colour blue.

See other: Quite Interesting Facts

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Eskimos use refrigerators to stop their food from freezing.

Boots fitted with springs were forbidden by the original Queensberry Rules for boxing.

In 2014, a single parking space in London was sold for £400,000.

There is a Canadian skeleton racer called Dave Greszczyszyn.

Paris and Rome have only each other as sister city, following the motto “Only Paris is worthy of Rome; only Rome is worthy of Paris.”

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All human sperm rotate their tails anticlockwise when swimming.

The Pink Fairy is a type of armadillo. The Green Fairy is a nickname for absinthe.

Tyrannosaurus rex (65 million years ago) is closer in time to us than to Diplodocus (150 million years ago).

Trinity College, Cambridge, has won more Nobel Prizes than the whole of Italy.

The constitution of the state of Texas allows employers to discriminate against atheists.

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Ideal Female Bodies (ii)

Italian Renaissance (c. 1400 – 1700)

Renaissance Italy was an extremely Catholic, patriarchal society. Women were meant to embody virtue and were often separated from men both in public and at home. A woman’s value was linked to her relationship with men, whether it was God, her father, or her husband.

The quality of both a wife’s behaviour and looks were thought to reflect her husband’s status. Beauty in Renaissance Italy meant a rounded body, including full hips and large breasts. Pale skin, strawberry blonde hair, and high foreheads were all thought of as the height of physical beauty.

“Choose neither a woman nor linen by candlelight.” ― Italian Proverb

Victorian England (c. 1837 – 1901)

The Victorian era of England lasted the length of Queen Victoria’s reign. She was the most influential figure of the era, a young queen who became a young wife and mother. Domesticity, family, and motherhood were highly valued in Victorian society, because these values were embodied by Queen Victoria herself.

The style of the time reflected women’s motherly position in society. Women wore corsets to cinch their waists as tightly as possible, creating an hourglass figure. These corsets physically restrained women’s range of motion, flaunting their separation from physical labour. Women also wore their hair long as a symbol of femininity.

“She wore tight corsets to give her a teeny waist – I helped her lace them up – but they had the effect of causing her to faint. Mom called it the vapors and said it was a sign of her high breeding and delicate nature. I thought it was a sign that the corset made it hard to breathe.” ― Jeannette Walls, Half Broke Horses

See other: Ideal Female Body Types Throughout History

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In 1933, Mussolini met 93 mothers at the Palazzo Venezia who had produced over 1300 children – an average of 13 each.

The largest vein of gold ever discovered is in Antarctica, but international law prohibits mining on the continent.

It is held that Plato had five wives and a lifelong male companion.

Ants can survive in a microwave: they are small enough to dodge the rays.

The Italian town of Viganella gets no direct sunlight for about seven weeks each winter.  In order to solve this problem, in 2006, a computer controlled mirror was installed which is approximately 25 feet by 15 feet.  The mirror is controlled such  that it reflects sunlight into the town’s main city square during the day time.

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The Great Council of Venice declared prostitution to be “absolutely indispensable to the world” in 1358, and government-funded brothels were established in major Italian cities throughout the 14th and 15th centuries.

The British Crown Jewels are not insured.

A government laboratory in Beijing uses electric eels to predict the time and location of earthquakes. In 2005, its accuracy rate was 89 percent.

Argentina’s capital Buenos Aires means “Good air”.

The Han Chinese are an ethnic group native to East Asia. They constitute approximately 20% of the entire global human population, making it the largest ethnic group in the world.

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The sun’s core is so hot that a piece of it the size of a pinhead would give off enough heat to kill a person 160 kilometres away.

As a child, writer and comedian Stephen Fry owned a mouse called Snowball.

According to the Qur’an, Satan himself was left-handed.

The English chemist Sir Humphry Davy was so famous in his lifetime that he once received a letter from Italy addressed simply SIR OMFRE DEVI / LONDRA.

In Latin, ignoring a difference in pronunciation, anus either means ‘anus’ or ‘old woman’.

See other: Quite Interesting Facts