Genealogy Chat

John History is certainly not boring but these stories are just that… stories. Ten minutes on Google found the following: Tomatoes were considered poisonous when first encountered by European explorers. This incorrect thought, no doubt, was most likely because of their relation to the deadly nightshade plant (a botanical category that includes potatoes and eggplant, which were also at one point considered poisonous). And also some early sceptics are said to have mistakenly consumed the leaves of the plant instead of the fruit. If this is true the tomato's early reputation would have been appropriate because the plant's leaves and stem truly are toxic and would most definitely make a person ill. http://www.cheftalk.*com/content/display.cfm?articleid=95&type=article "Trench mouth" is a painful form of gingivitis.2 The term originated in World War I, when soldiers spending extended time in the trenches suffered the effects of stress, exposure and limited hygienic options. http://historymedren.about.*com/library/weekly/aa042202k.htm “Wake” derives from the ancient Irish tradition of watching over the dead through the night. It comes from a Celtic custom originating well before the supposed advent of lead cups and has nothing to do with waiting to see if someone would awaken from a near-lethal dose of lead poisoning. http://www.wordskit.*com/language/legends/wake.shtml The "graveyard shift is an evocative term for the night shift between about midnight and eight in the morning, when - no matter how often you've worked it - your skin is clammy, there's sand behind your eyeballs, and the world is creepily silent, like the graveyard. The phrase dates only from the early years of the twentieth century." http://www.libraryspot.*com/know/graveyard.htm The www is a wonderful resource but we have to be careful to be sure that any “facts” we dig up are true and not the figment of someones imagination… Just like genealogy really. Bob

Brilliant John. Keep them coming. Really brightened my morning. Lesson 1 is on page 4 -just printed them up for my family. Jackie

Sorry about that in 'lesson 1' I did that, just forgot to do in my excitement lol. How you do it is by putting a small message in the first box and then adding a reply with your main message. Anyone seen Robert Ferguson's death yet? Cheers, John

John, I'm interested, how do you format paragraphs please?

Thanks John, very interesting. Would it be possible to make your future lessons a "reply" so as to make the paragraphs format correctly. My 36 years are starting to catch up on me and a large block of text is sometimes hard to read late at night. TVM.

Very good reading and like everyone else says much more interesting the way you do it! Any chance of part one again?

John, Humouros, very interesting and amazing, what more can one say. You forgot the one about "eaves dropping" keep them coming Shirleyxx

Hi John Thank you for your lesson!!! I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. Sandra in Ontario, Canada

Absolutely fascinating - have just sent them to all by friends acknowledging your authorship. Keep it up it'll make teaching my kids history a lot more interesting than "they did it like this in my day"!!!!!!!!!!!!!

John, These history lessons are brilliant! I`m printing themoff for my daughter, who is really into history at the moment, but tends to prefer the more "obscure" facts. I bet no-one elses essay on Henry VIII included how many shirts he had when he died! She`s only nine bless her! Rebecca

Here’s the scary bit Those with money had lead-based pewter plates. Unfortunately, food with a high acid content caused some of the lead to leak onto the food, causing lead poisoning and death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous. Most people didn't have pewter plates, but had "trenchers", a piece of wood with the middle scooped out like a bowl. Often trenchers were made from stale bread that was so old and hard that they could be used for quite some time. Trenchers were never washed and a lot of times worms and mould got into the wood and old bread. After eating from wormy, mouldy trenchers, one would get "trench mouth." 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 "upper crust." Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would sometimes knock them 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 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 realised they had been burying people alive. So they thought 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 whoever said that History was boring?!