The ‘Tool of the Devil’? Found in every home at one time. However, before around 1500, the tool was uncommon in Europe. Most ate with their hands and only used knives to cut and spoons for liquids. Medieval tables didn’t have a clue about forks.
Around the 15th century in Venice that all changed. Thanks to the connection to the Byzantines and the East, Venetians began using forks before anyone else. The earliest European forks were mainly used to held meat in place when cutting with just 2 tines.
Eventually the Italians carried the fork to other parts of Europe. Catherine de’ Medici, Queen of France, introduced the use of the fork to her country. French aristocrats initially scoffed and declared that God gave men hands to eat. Fork use was foolish and immoral. It was the Devil’s tool. The nobility, unable to properly manipulate the fork, moaned and grumbled. Half the food fell off on the journey from plate to mouth.
Even Queen Elizabeth eventually went back to eating by hand because she was unable to achieve success with the new contraption. She considered “spearing an uncouth action.”
Eventually the 2 tines gave way to 3 and 4 tines. And aristocrats finally learned how to eat with a fork. King Charles I declared in the 1630’s “It is decent to use a fork!”
Where is Waldo? Well, where is Punt? Long, long ago in the land of Punt. No not a fairy tale. There really was a Land of Punt. Just nobody really knows where it was. It is known that Punt was an ancient African civilization that flourished around the time the building of the pyramids. Ancient Egyptians believed that Punt was even wealthier than their lands.
Egyptians called Punt the “Land of the Gods” because it was known for gold, ebony, and exotic animals. For centuries Egyptians sent trading caravans to Punt to bring back luxury items.
But no one knows where it was. Where was the rich civilization that impressed ancient Egyptians so much? To this day scholars disagree on where Punt was located. Based on Egyptian records, Punt was to the south, but there’s a lot of Africa south of Egypt.
Through time, one theory claimed Punt was on the Arabian Peninsula. Another claimed it might have been in the Levant north of Egypt. Recent research points to someplace else. In 2010 researchers recovered a mummified baboon that the rulers of Punt gifted to an Egyptian pharaoh. They discovered that the baboon’s DNA most closely matched living baboons from modern-day Ethiopia and Eritrea. So the search for Punt continues. They are trying to focus on East Africa and the land around the Red Sea.
We all know about the ‘Gold Rush’. Right? We think about the hills of California and Alaska’s Klondike Gold Rush in the Yukon. Closer to home we visualize the placer gold deposits in Montana, which some say were richer than anywhere else on Earth.
All right and good, BUT the first gold rush in U.S. history happened in a little ole creek down in North Carolina in the early 1800’s. The story starts with 12-year-old – Conrad Reed. One day he found this strange rock while playing in the creek next to his home. So he hauled the 17-pound strange rock home and used it as a doorstop.
A few years later the Reeds took the rock to a local jeweler. Instantly the jeweler identified the rock as pure gold. Conning the family, the jeweler bought the gold for a trivial sum. Reed soon learned of the con and went back to the creek on his property to find more gold. There he found an even larger chunk – a 28-pound door stop.
The gold rush began. Local farmers scoured the land for gold until they stripped the creeks clean. North Carolina’s gold rush couldn’t compete with California’s, but it sent millions of dollars of gold to the new federal mint. So much for that door stop.
The Olympics have changed through the years. Different sports have come and gone. Some rather unusual. Strangest might be the tug-of-war that premiered in the Paris 1900 Olympics. Each country fielded a team of 5 or 6 to pull their way to an Olympic medal.
Most countries formed their teams with athletes already competing in other events. Unfortunately, the U.S. had to withdraw because 3 members had to compete in the hammer throw at the same time. But they came back from the St. Louis 1904 Olympics with a Gold, silver, and bronze medal.
By 1908, the tug-of-war teams grew in size to 8 members. Host Great Britain won the medals that year with the Liverpool Police and city of London Police teams on the podium.
The Liverpool team sparked controversy when teams complained they rigged the game. Apparently, they “were wearing enormous shoes, so heavy in fact that it was only with great effort that they could lift their feet from the ground.”
The last Olympic tug-of-war competitions took place in 1920 when Great Britain again won gold. Wonder how heavy those shoes were? After that it was decided to cut back on the number of events and the tug-of-war was cut.