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| Displaying 3rd Century BC Anecdotes: 204 Found |
Fighting Words!
During the Civil War, Henry Ward Beecher traveled to England in order to solicit...
M-C-R-C-N? (long)
In 1495, Dr Rodrigo Gonzalez de Puebla was sent to London by Ferdinand and Isabe...
Revolutionary Concept
At the height of the Industrial Revolution (in the nineteenth-century), child la...
Hooch Hotel
While serving as police commissioner of New York, Teddy Roosevelt attempted to p...
Witchever?
William Mansfield once presided over a case of apparent witchcraft involving an ...
Napoleon: Just Deserts?
After his ill-fated invasion of Russia in 1812, Napoleon, alarmed by unrest at h...
Merlin Magic?
"The first roller skates were perfected more than two centuries ago by Joseph Me...
Room for Improvement?
Edith Wharton first attempted a novel at the tender age of eleven: "'Oh, how do ...
Geo-Politics
In 1832, a volcanic island surfaced near Mount Etna, 30 kilometres off the coast...
Jewish Crusader
While lunching at the Algonquin Hotel one afternoon, George S. Kaufman was subje...
Venus in Chains
One day in 1907, the Australian actress and star swimmer Annette Kellerman ("The...
Rochefort
The socialist journalist Rochefort's tumultuous life was marked by a series of d...
Bishop Wrong?
"A bishop [in the late 19th Century] pronounced from his pulpit and in the perio...
Missing Maeterlinck?
Despite its lack of modern amenities, the Belgian writer Maurice Maeterlinck onc...
Battle Cry?
In August, 1704, news was brought to Louis XIV of the French army's brutal defea...
Wales
In 632 A.D. Caedwalla, King of Gwynedd (north Wales), went to war against King E...
Prince of Wales
After the death in 1282 of Prince Llewelyn ah Gruffydd, leader of the Welsh resi...
Gregorian Calendar (long)
Because the actual solar year (the time required for the earth to complete an or...
Jamaican Eclipse
While anchored off Jamaica in 1504, Christopher Columbus found himself in dire s...
Appeal to Vanity
"A traffic problem existed in the narrow, twisted streets of Paris even in the p...
Abel Tasman: Terra Australi...
In 1642, the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman sailed south from the East Indies in sea...
Dumplings
Ferdinand suffered from such severe bouts of insanity that, during his reign, af...
When in Rome?
During the July Revolution in 1830, Alexandre Dumas joined a mob in the process ...
John James Audubon & the Pa...
The famed ornithologist and artist John James Audubon once described seeing a co...
Disturbing the Peace
One day in 1797, James Hetherington was arrested and charged with appearing "on ...
Drake Disappears
"Drake's most famous exploit, the 'singeing of the king of Spain's beard [in 158...
Nuthin’ a’tall
The following snippet of conversation is recorded on a plaque marking Abraham Li...
Guillotine
"Ironically, the guillotine, which became the most notable symbol of the excesse...
Arrival of Cinema
In 1895, Auguste Lumiere and his brother Louis made cinematic history by giving ...
Syria's Condition?
In 1799, Napoleon's troops, traveling through the desert on route to Syria, made...
Louis Philippe
Talleyrand was openly contemptuous of the manner in which Louis Philippe handled...
Eighteenth Century Vegas
Even nuns and clerics were not immune from the Las Vegas-like madness of eightee...
Blind Determination
During the battle of Copenhagen in 1801, admiral Horatio Nelson's forces were bo...
Albigensian Crusade
During the Albigensian Crusade in 1209, a French army under the guidance of Pope...
Smart Girl
"One of Mary Livermore's favorite stories was about the time she and five other ...
Trafalgar
While preparing for the battle of Trafalgar, Admiral Nelson, aboard HMS ...
Dissolute Czar
Though Czar Nicholas II faithfully wrote in his diary every day, the entries usu...
Pope Innocent?
Pope Innocent VIII, famed (and chastized by Savonarola) for his worldliness, onc...
Great Plague
In 1664, Czar Dmitri was allegedly told that a comet seen over Russia portended ...
Pointed Question?
Christopher Columbus once attended an elaborate banquet, held in his honor by th...
Planck
At the age of seventeen, Max Planck sought out the head of his university physic...
Colonialism & Barbarism
"Today, it is also hard to look at [the famous explorer Sir Henry Morton Stanley...
Hanging Tough
During the signing of the first draft of the American Declaration of Independenc...
Must-Have Accessory
In August 2002, royal photographer Patrick Lichfield placed a curious advertisem...
Glorious Analogy
During the Glorious Revolution of 1688, Lord Halifax was among the first to take...
Yakov
Though many Red Army soldiers were captured by the Nazis during World War II, Jo...
Victorian Democracy
In 1892, the Liberals under William Gladstone won the British general election b...
French Invasion
Metternich once approvingly remarked that Lord John Dudley was the only Englishm...
Cardinal Red
One day while he was busy at work on some frescoes in the papal apartments in th...
Wrath of God
At age 15, Eleanor of Aquitaine married Louis VII, King of France. Her subsequen...
Victorian Standards
As Prince, Edward's love affairs and extravagant lifestyle often offended his mo...
Guess Who?
Lucrezia Borgia was married for a third time in 1502. Her new husband, Alfonso d...
Slave to Mercy
Following the Union victory in the Civil War, Jefferson Davis was captured by Un...
Lost Maharbals
In 216 BC, Hannibal won one of the finest tactical battles in military history a...
Foam and Froth
On September 26th, 1830, Colonel Robert Gibbon Johnson stood on the steps of the...
Christina
After she had abdicated the Swedish throne, Christina, traveling south to Innsbr...
God help Us?
Following the parliamentarians' victory over Charles I during the English Civil ...
Pants on Fyre?
18th Century African explorers were not noted for respecting the rights of indig...
Ultramarine
Perugino was once commissioned to paint several frescoes (long since lost) in a ...
Private Peter
At the end of the seventeenth century, Russian czar Peter the Great harbored man...
Nosy Subject
"Arise Evans had a fungous nose, and said, it was revealed to him, that the king...
Daguerrotorture
Why are subjects never seen smiling in the earliest photographs? Even decades af...
Bird Brain?
"Invited to dine with Leonard and Virginia Woolf at their Sussex home Dame Ethel...
Tight Situation
One day in 1828, famed circus bareback rider Nelson Hower and his fellow "Buckle...
Pacific Ocean?
In 1520, while trying to find a western route to the Moluccas, Ferdinand Magella...
Steely Response
Following Lenin's death, Joseph Stalin unceremoniously eliminated his military a...
Joyful News
In 1577, shortly after the introduction of tobacco from the New World, a Spanish...
Perfect Agreement
Charles V spent much of his reign engaged in warfare and diplomacy defending his...
American Tyrany
When the Philippines was transferred from Spain (on April 11th, 1899) following ...
Dark Continent?
Thomas Edison's invention of the light bulb was not universally well-received. I...
Poco Loco?
Presidential life in Jefferson's day was remarkably relaxed. Jefferson, speaking...
Bottom Heavy
In the late 19th Century, it became fashionable to leave the bottom button of a ...
Philip the Fair?
After the Knights Templar were defeated by the Muslims and expelled from the Hol...
Sun King
Francois Mansart was walking with Louis XIV in the sun one day when the king, pe...
Est! Est! Est!
"In the year 1110 Bishop Fugger set out from his German diocese for Rome to atte...
Revisionist History
In February 1933, an American politician sitting in an open car in Miami was fir...
Balloon Flight
"On June 4, 1783 at the market square of a French village of Annonay, not far fr...
Enormous Moron?
One day in 1829, during his tenure as governor of New York, Martin Van Buren wro...
Crecy King
At the height of the battle of Crecy, Edward III was told by a messenger that Ed...
Mi Fa Mi
Johannes Kepler inherited incredibly accurate astronomical records from his ment...
Jenkins's Ear
In 1738, Captain Robert Jenkins displayed an ear pickled in brine
before a Parl...
Novgorod
When Svyatopolk, the Grand Prince of Kiev, demanded that Novgorod welcome his so...
Madness of King Charles
For his assistance to Cromwell in the English Civil War, Thomas Blood was awarde...
Bloody Waste
George Washington died in 1799 after losing about two and a half litres of blood...
Verdi! Verdi!
While Verdi was cheered by Italian patriots at every performance, their applause...
Wonderful Spectacle
Though America's founding fathers appreciated France's spiritual support of thei...
Rossbach
At the battle of Rossbach in 1757, Frederick the Great's Prussian army vanquishe...
The Mystery of Benjamin Bat...
In 1809, Sir Benjamin Bathurst, Britain's ambassador to the court of the Austro-...
Have Gun Will Travel?
In 1884, when the British garrison at Khartoum, Egypt was under siege, a $15,000...
Conquistador
In 1518, Hernando Cortes asked the Spanish governor to sponsor an expedition to ...
Surgeon-Extraordinary?
19th Century surgeons hardly envisioned the progress which would be made by thei...
Newton's Apple
At the age of 23, while relaxing on his mother's farm one day, Isaac Newton, by ...
Prisoner of Ahlden
When the Elector of Hanover became England's George I in 1714, his wife did not ...
Bah!
While still in his twenties, Augustus Keppel was enlisted to appeal to the dey o...
Backward Victorians
J. W. Cunningham, the local vicar, once objected to Frances Trollope's daughters...
Franco-Prussian War
Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck tricked the French into the Franco-Prussia...
English Reformation
"Henry VIII wanted the Pope to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, so he ...
Wages of War
Thomas Carlyle, famed for his view that justice and progress were best secured, ...
Christopher Columbus: Capta...
In 1492, after using Ptolemy's 1,350-year-old estimates of the Earth's circumfer...
The Wheel
During the nineteenth century, dogs were often put to work in restaurant kitchen...
Roasting Spit
Henry Bergh, a wealthy American dilettante, took up the canine cause and, in 186...
Incommunicado
In times past the affairs of state were often undertaken at a more leisurely pac...
Demagogue
Such was the fervor and popularity of the 18th Century English preacher George W...
God & McKinley
In 1898, President William McKinley ordered a fleet of six warships to Manila Ba...
Peace For Our Time
On September 30th, 1938, British prime minister Neville Chamberlain returned fro...
False Alarm
Although his fossil-hunting forays often led him into lands populated by hostile...
Quacks
The turn of the 20th Century marked the height of oddball treatments for neurast...
Age of Reason
In 1758, the French philosopher Claude Adrien Helvetius (one of the Encyclopedis...
18th Century Dentistry
Dentistry in eighteenth-century Paris was so horribly barbaric that, one day aft...
Heretics of Ireland (long)
"Although he later reverted to Catholicism, under Henry VIII and Edward VI, Harr...
Hilbert & Noether
Because she was a woman, the gifted mathematician Emmy Noether found her career ...
Masked Ball
Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera (Masked Ball) was inspired by the assassinat...
Bismarck's Africa
Even at the height of British, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch colonialism...
Physiognomist
A student of physiognomy, the temperamental captain of the Beagle, Robert...
Loss of China
"[During World War II, Madame Chiang Kai-shek] addressed the American Congress, ...
Dr. James Barry
James Barry, a British army surgeon famed for his pioneering sanitary reforms, e...
Lydia Pinkham: Positive Cure
"In 1793, Congress passed patent legislation that permitted manufacturers to pro...
Spoken from the Heart
"'Twas Sir Everard Digby's ill fate to suffer in the Powder plott [the plot to b...
Dodgy Defense
Ben Jonson was known for his fiery temper. "There is no arguing with Johnson," O...
Anne Boleyn: Getting Ahead
On May 19, 1533, Henry VIII, desperate for a male heir, had Anne Boleyn accused ...
Stilling Feet?
One day in the late 1740s, the naturalist Benjamin Stillingfleet was invited by ...
Holy Land?
In the eighteenth century the small kingdom of Sardinia suffered under the burde...
Drugstore Cowboy
One day in the mid-17th Century, Dutch medic Franciscus de la Boe Sylvius distil...
Low Profession
"Active intellectually, [El Greco] pressed for official recognition of painting ...
Leary traveler?
While traveling through southern Italy in 1847, Edward Lear was overtaken by the...
Playboy of the Western World
The debut production of The Playboy of the Western World - John Synge's t...
Margaret Sanger
In 1917, Margaret Sanger founded her first birth-control clinic. The result? She...
Passage to India
When Hernando Cortez, the celebrated New World explorer, returned to Spain, he w...
Dom Perignon
One day in 1688, blind cellarmaster Dom Perignon inadvertently discovered champa...
God's Wounds!
In 1629, when the English Parliament produced a document censuring the policies ...
Venus of Urbino
Although his wife was unattractive and growing old, The Duke of Urbino agreed to...
Breezy Ruler?
When a breeze blew several documents onto the floor during a meeting with his mi...
Revolutionary Thought
Despite their outspoken protests against royal corruption and inefficiency, Jean...
Minuit
On May 4th, 1626, the aptly-named Peter Minuit succeeded Willem Verhulst as the ...
Royal Loyalty
In December 1792, with his king (Louis XVI) facing trial by the Revolutionary Co...
Only Men
Though the French defeated the Russians at Borodino in 1812, both sides suffered...
Fence-Sitter?
Talleyrand's precise role behind the scenes during the July Revolution which bro...
Shajar-al-Durr
When the Egyptian Sultan died during the siege of Cairo, his wife, Shajar-al-Dur...
Angot's Revenge
Jean Angot (1480-1551) was a peaceful French merchant and shipbuilder - until tw...
American Dream
Samuel Slater, born near Manchester in 1768, began working in a mill at the age ...
World's Shortest War
On August 27th, 1896, a British battle fleet delivered Said Khalid, the pretende...
Lucifer Burbank?
At the turn of the 20th century, Luther Burbank published a seed catalogue descr...
Captain Morgan
Sir Henry Morgan was a sea captain who sailed the Spanish Main in search of plun...
Raj
British officials in the Indian Raj were frequently tempted by the many opportun...
Columbian Exchange
Isabella and Ferdinand, who expected Columbus to return from his explorations ab...
Arranged Marriage
In his Utopia, Sir Thomas More recommended that, in order to avoid subseq...
Wise Guy
Alfonso the Wise was famed for his patronage of the arts and sciences, for his r...
Three Kingdoms
"After his father's execution (1649) Charles attempted to regain the throne by f...
Sand Creek Massacre
For years relations between Cheyenne Indians and white Americans followed an ugl...
John Byng
When John Byng was court-martialed and brought before the firing squad (for fail...
Austerlitz
Napoleon's victory at Austerlitz (in December, 1805) over the combined forces of...
French Revolt?
On July 14, 1789, at the start of the French Revolution, an angry mob led by Geo...
1588
On July 19, 1588, Sir Francis Drake and several other English commanders were pl...
Charge of the Light Brigade
Despite being fired upon from all sides, the charge of the Light Brigade - the d...
Trust but Verify
While preparing to cross a river to attack the enemy one day, Oliver Cromwell st...
Flanders Mare
Henry VIII's powerful minister, Thomas Cromwell, endeavoring to strengthen Engla...
Half-Assed Excuse
In 1795, with the death of Louis XVII, Louis XVIII became nominal king but was p...
Sojourn
Sojourner Truth was one of the first blacks to test the streetcar anti-discrimin...
Second Thought
Rene Descartes once began work on a book about the universe in which he endorsed...
Damn
In 1886, the Scottish writer Robert Bontine Conninghame Graham won a seat in the...
Toilet Training
"[The pediatrician and childcare expert] Luther Emmett Holt seems to have introd...
Bang On
One evening during the Anglo-Dutch wars, Isaac Newton entered the hall at Trinit...
Martin Van Buren: Invasion ...
In 1838, representatives from several Southern states met in Cleveland and openl...
Smells Like Victory?
In 1812, in the path of Napoleon's advancing army, the Russians abandoned the ci...
Billy Tipton
Until his death in 1989, Billy Tipton was a popular jazz musician in Washington....
Hulagu & the Caliph
"On January 29, 1258, Hulagu’s forces took up a position on the eastern outskirt...
Damn Yankees
After the Civil War, Joseph Wheeler, a former Confederate general, commanded six...
Mother of Invention
Because he (and his domineering mother, Catherine de Medicis) believed that mone...
Treatyse of Fysshynge
The first fishing book ever printed in the English language, "A Treatyse of Fyss...
Leo X
"As Leo was a smiling sybarite infected with the popular neopagan culture of his...
Turbulent Priest
In 1162, Henry II, hoping to bring church and state under his control, appointed...
Slavery & the Bill of Rights
In 1781, a black woman who had been a slave in Great Barrington, Massachusetts f...
Adonis of Loveliness
For a comment about the unpopular Prince Regent (later George IV) which appeared...
Nollet
During the 18th century wealthy Parisians became infatuated with experimental sc...
Dressing Down
When Napoleon was serving as first consul, he took issue with the transparent ga...
Conquistador's Weapon
Francisco Pizarro, a nearly illiterate Spanish conquistador, conquered the grand...
Catch-22
The coronation of William of Orange (after the flight of James II in 1689) was i...
Royal Society
But for Charles Babbage's failure to raise adequate funding to build his "analyt...
Monosyllables
Leonhard Euler was once invited by Frederick the Great to join his Academy in Be...
Stiff Upper Lip
As a child Queen Victoria was trained to keep her chin up - literally. A prickly...
Bloodletting
"Until only a few generations ago, the prevailing conception of illness was that...
Robespierre
As an idealistic young man, Maximilien Robespierre was so opposed to the death p...
Battle on the Nile
Having pursued the enemy fleet around the Mediterranean for several weeks, Horat...
Life on the Moon?
In 1835, the New York Sun printed a week-long series of articles (by Rich...
Chemical Weapons
During the Crimean War (1853-56), the famed chemist and physicist Michael Farada...
Cromwell's Bauble
Although Oliver Cromwell initially sought a reconciliation with Charles I, he ev...
Encyclopedie
Despite Madame de Pompadour's protests and patronage, religious factions in Loui...
First Screen Kiss
In 1896, May Irwin and John C. Rice appeared in William Heise's silent screen cl...
Square-Toed Shoes
Toward the end of the 15th century, Charles VIII of France popularized men's sho...
HP Pricing
In 1938, Willian Hewlett and David Packard developed an audio oscillator which g...
Physician on the Roof
A hot-tempered eccentric, the English physician William Harvey did much of his t...
The Laws
Louis XV once asked Francois Quesnay (his former physician) what he would do if ...
Bicycle History
One day in the 1830s, Kirkpatrick Macmillan, a blacksmith from Dumfries, Scotlan...
Levi's Jeans
"In 1850, 21-year old Levi Strauss traveled from New York to San Francisco. A pe...
Engels
One day when he was just six years old, Friedrich Engels, the son of a prosperou...
Coffee History
Coffee, introduced into Europe by Arabic traders, was considered by many Roman C...
Dark Figure
According to legend, in the wee hours on the night after the execution of Charle...
Rippingood Yarn
"Rembrandt is not to be compared in the painting of character," John Hunt once d...
Martyrs
After their show trial for heresy in 1555, Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley (the...
Meteorite
One day Thomas Jefferson was apprised of reports that something had fallen from ...
Fool's Gold
While experimenting with urine one day in 1669, Hennig Brand discovered a novel ...
Church around the Corner
When George Holland died (in 1870), his family intended to hold the funeral at a...
Thoughts on Education
While many of John Locke's political ideas (the right to revolt for self-governa...
Seven Years' War
Though Frederick the Great eventually won the Seven Years' War (1756–1763), he f...
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