All Our Yesterdays - History

1 ANSWERS

1. Brett
   

   The steroids if ancient Rome were dried boar’s dung. Chariot racers often took a drink made from the dung before major events.
   
   During the First World War, the punishment for homosexuality in the French army was execution.
   
   In the days of old, any Japanese person who tried to leave the country, was summarily executed. As a further barrier to defection, a decree issued in Japan in the 1630s banned the building of any large sea-worthy ships.
   
   Members of the SS had their blood types tattooed on their armpits.
   
   The tiny Pyrenean state of Andorra found itself fighting two world wars at the same time. Due to an oversight at the end of the First World War, Andorra’s name was omitted from the Treaty of Versailles, meaning that the 11-man national army was still technically at war with Germany. When the Second World War broke out in 1939, it was too much of a strain on the Andorran resources. So the country hastily signed a private treaty with Germany, finally concluding the First World War.
   
   February 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full moon.
   
   A golden razor removed from Tutankhamen’s tomb over 3000 years after his death was still sharp enough for use.
   
   In ancient Greece an “idiot” was a private citizen or layman.
   
   Louis XIX was King of France from breakfast until tea-time on 2 August 1830, at which point he abdicated.
   
   The punishment for men who committed adultery in ancient Greece was to have a root vegetable inserted where the sun doesn’t shine.
   
   Roman Emperor Caligula was so upset by the death of his sister Drusila that he imposed a year of mourning. During this time, everyone in the empire was forbidden to dine with his family, laugh or take a bath. The penalty for transgression was death.
   
   The armistice which ended the First World War was typed back to front. The French clerk who was taking the dictation accidentally out some of the carbon papers in the wrong way round.
   
   The Chinese were using aluminium to make things as early as AD300. Western civilisation didn’t rediscover the metal until 1827.
   
   Many men who acted as guards along the Great Wall of China in the Middle Ages spent their whole lives there. They were born there, raised there, they married there, died there, and were even buried within the wall.
   
   Under an old Chinese law, anyone who revealed how to make silk was liable to death by torture.
   
   The first country to abolish capital punishment was Austria, in 1787.
   
   Barbers used to combine shaving and haircutting with bloodletting and pulling teeth, The white stripes on the red background of a barber’s pole represent the bandages used in bloodletting.
   
   Every day more money is printed for Monopoly than for the US Treasury.
   
   Christmas didn’t become a national holiday in the US until 1890.
   
   Although Ohio is listed as the 17th state in the US, it is technically number 47. Until 7 August 1953, Congress forgot to vote of formal resolution to admit Ohio to the Union.
   
   The United States gets through enough water in one day for every American to take 64 baths. The average water consumption for the rest of the world is only a third of the US.
   
   The Boston Nation, a newspaper published in Ohio during the mid-19th century, had pages which were 7½ft long and 5½ft wide. It needed two people to hold it aloft for reading.
   
   97 per cent of all paper money in the United States contains traces of cocaine.
   
   While the Hiroshima atomic bomb was being prepared in New Mexico, applicants for menial jobs at the plant didn’t get the job if they could read. This was because the Us authorities didn’t want staff reading secret papers or discarded litter.
   
   Only two people signed the Declaration independence on 4 July 1776 – John Hancock and Charles Thomson. The majority of the other members of Congress signed on 2 August, although the final signature wasn’t added for another five years.
   
   100,000 cubic ft of water pours over Niagara Falls every second.
   
   The amount of junk mail that Americans receive in a day could produce enough energy to heat a quarter of a million homes.
   
   There are 1,525,000,000 miles of telephone wire strung across the US. There are more phones in New York City than there are in the whole of Spain.
   
   Over 26 billion dollars in ransom money has been pain out in the US over the past 20 years.
   
   The highest point in Pennsylvania is lower than the lowest point in Colorado.
   There are 17 miles of corridor in the Pentagon.

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