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Did You Know. People used to use urine to tan animal skins, so families used to all pee in a pot & then once a day it was taken & Sold to the tannery.......if you had to do this to survive you were "Piss Poor"
But worse than that were the really poor folk who couldn't even afford to buy a pot......they "didn't have a pot to piss in" & were the lowest of the low
The next time you are washing your hands and complain because the water temperature isn't just how you like it, think about how things used to be.
Here are some facts about the 1500s:
Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, and they still smelled pretty good by June.. However, since they were starting to smell . ...... . Brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting Married.
Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children. Last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it.. Hence the saying, "Don't throw the baby out with the Bath water!"
Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof... Hence the saying "It's raining cats and dogs."
There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could mess up your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That's how canopy beds came into existence.
The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt. Hence the saying, "Dirt poor." The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until, when you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entrance-way. Hence: a thresh hold.
In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire.. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while. Hence the rhyme: Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old. Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man could, "bring home the bacon." They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and chew the fat.
Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.
Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the upper crust.
Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would Sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial.. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of holding a wake.
England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive... So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift.) to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be, saved by the bell or was considered a dead ringer.
And that's the truth....Now, whoever said History was boring?

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When baseball greats Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig went on tour in baseball-crazy Japan in 1934, some fans wondered why a third-string catcher named Moe Berg was included.
Although he played with five major-league teams from 1923 to 1939, he was a very mediocre ball player. But Moe was regarded as the brainiest ballplayer of all time. In fact Casey Stengel once said: "That is the strangest man ever to play baseball".
When all the baseball stars went to Japan, Moe Berg went with them and many people wondered why he went with "the team"
Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth
The answer was simple: Moe Berg was a United States spy, working undercover with
the Office of Strategic Services (predecessor of today's CIA).
Moe spoke 15 languages - including Japanese. And he had two loves: baseball and spying.
In Tokyo, garbed in a kimono, Berg took flowers to the daughter of an American diplomat being treated in St. Luke's Hospital - the tallest building in the Japanese capital.
He never delivered the flowers. The ball-player ascended to the hospital roof and filmed key features: the harbor, military installations, railway yards, etc.
Eight years later, General Jimmy Doolittle studied Berg's films in planning his spectacular raid on Tokyo..
His father disapproved and never once watched his son play.
In Barringer High School, Moe learned Latin, Greek and French. Moe read at least 10 newspapers everyday.
He graduated magna cum laude from Princeton - having added Spanish,
Italian, German and Sanskrit to his linguistic quiver.
During further studies at the Sorbonne, in Paris, and Columbia Law School, he
picked up Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Indian, Arabic, Portuguese and Hungarian - 15 languages in all, plus some regional dialects.
While playing baseball for Princeton University, Moe Berg would describe plays in Latin or Sanskrit.
Tito's
partisans
During World War II, Moe was parachuted into Yugoslavia
to assess the value to the war effort of the two groups of partisans there. He reported back that Marshall Tito's forces were widely supported by the people and Winston Churchill ordered all-out support for the Yugoslav underground fighter, rather than Mihajlovic's Serbians.
The parachute jump at age 41undoubtedly was a challenge. But there was more to come in that same year. Berg penetrated German-held Norway, met with members of the underground and located a secret
heavy-water plant - part of the Nazis' effort to build an atomic bomb.
His information guided the Royal Air Force in a bombing raid to destroy that plant.
The R.A.F. destroys the Norwegian heavy water plant targeted by Moe Berg.
There still remained the question of how far had the
Nazis progressed in the race to build the first Atomic bomb. If the Nazis
were successful, they would win the war. Berg (under the code name "Remus") was
sent to Switzerland to hear leading German physicist Werner Heisenberg, a Nobel Laureate, lecture and determine if the Nazis were close to building an A-bomb. Moe managed to slip past the SS guards at the auditorium, posing as a Swiss graduate student. The spy carried
in his pocket a pistol and a cyanide pill.
If the German indicated the Nazis were close to building a weapon, Berg was to shoot him - and then swallow the cyanide pill. Moe, sitting in the front row, determined that the Germans
were nowhere near their goal, so he complimented Heisenberg on his speech and walked
him back to his hotel.
Werner Heisenberg
-
he blocked the Nazis from acquiring an atomic bomb.
Moe Berg's report was distributed to Britain's Prime Minister Winston
Churchill, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and key figures in the team
developing the Atomic Bomb. Roosevelt responded: "Give my regards to the catcher.”
Most of Germany's leading physicists had been Jewish and had fled the Nazis mainly to Britain and the United States. After the war, Moe Berg was awarded the Medal of Freedom - America 's highest honor for a civilian in wartime. But Berg refused to accept it because he couldn't tell people about his exploits.
After his death, his sister accepted the Medal. It now hangs in the Baseball Hall of Fame, in Cooperstown.
Presidential Medal of Freedom: the highest award given to civilians during wartime.
Moe Berg's baseball card is the only card on display at the CIA Headquarters in Washington, DC.
So now you know!

i learn something new everyday .

Little German lesson ,Did you know Santa's reindeer Donner and Blitzen mean thunder and lightning ? The word flock in German is flake so if you get your Christmas tree flocked it gets flaked (snow) . The song O Tannenbaum O Tannenbaum is translated O Christmas Tree O Christmas tree but a Tannenbaum is a Fir tree a Christmas tree is a Weihnachtsbaum . In the song Silent night Stillenacht Jesus is described as having curly hair.

Drink water from the spring where horses drink. The horse will never drink bad water. Lay your bed where the cat sleeps. Eat the fruit that has been touched by a worm. Boldly pick the mushroom on which the insects sit. Plant the tree where the mole digs. Build your house where the snake sits to warm itself. Dig your fountain where the birds hide from heat. Go to sleep and wake up at the same time with the birds – you will reap all of the days golden grains. Eat more green – you will have strong legs and a resistant heart, like the beings of the forest. Swim often and you will feel on earth like the fish in the water. Look at the sky as often as possible and your thoughts will become light and clear. Be quiet a lot, speak little – and silence will come in your heart, and your spirit will be calm and full of peace.”
- Unknown

Grandpa really knew his stuff.

In England, it is not uncommon to see "wavy" brick walls. Interestingly, the design uses fewer bricks than a straight wall. A straight wall that is just one brick thick is not sturdy enough to stand alone & can be easily toppled, so they generally have a thickness of at least two or more layers of bricks, & are also reinforced at regular intervals with vertical posts serving as buttresses. But a wavy "one-brick" wall stands just fine on its own due to the arch support provided by its shape, which combines both wall & buttress. Such a structure is called a "crinkle crankle wall" "the Old English version of "zig zag."

crinkle crankle,sounds like a breakfast cereal.

Keep it clean folks.

sun over beach

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