Maniacal Miscellaneous Mixture Quiz

Answer: Wood engraving

These newspapers - and many books of the period - were illustrated using a technique called wood engraving. This involved carving the end grain of a very hard wood, usually boxwood, to produce a raised image. Wood engraving offered many advantages when it came to printing these newspapers. For one, the wooden blocks could be inserted alongside movable type in the printing presses; secondly, it did not require a great deal of pressure to reproduce a detailed wood engraving. But the most important feature for a mass produced newspaper was durability. Believe it or not, a wood engraving could produce many more impressions without loss of detail than a steel engraving! Since these newspapers were printed in editions numbering into the hundreds of thousands, they needed a medium whose plates would last a long time.

During the US Civil War, large newspapers like "Harper's Weekly" had artists that followed the army. They would draw sketches of a battle on the spot, and dispatch them by the fastest means possible to their newspaper's headquarters. There, another artist would transfer the sketch onto a block of whitewashed wood. The block would then be sawed into as many as 16 sections, with each section assigned to a different engraver. The finished sections would then be reassembled in a frame. Using this method, they could produce full page illustrations of important events in a matter of days. If you look closely at the pictures, you can sometimes see lines where the sections were joined together.

Answer: John XII

Gregory, Leo, and Nicholas are remembered as devout and pious men; each was canonized following his death. John XII - well, not so much. There have been so many ineffective, crazy, greedy, sinful, and downright evil popes that to be in the running for the honor of "worst pope ever" is quite an achievement, but almost everyone agrees that Pope John XII is definitely a contender.

John's birth name was Octavianus, and he was the son of Alberic II, an Italian warlord who styled himself "King of Rome". In 954, Alberic called together all the noblemen of Rome, and all the high-ranking Church officials, and made them swear that when the reigning pope, Agapetus II, died, they would elect his son to take his place. And a year later, that's what happened. The fact that the new pope was only 17 or 18 years old did not seem to bother anyone.

Now, many wild and flaming youths, when they are placed in a position of great responsibility, settle down and take their new duties seriously. Henry V of England is a good example. But this was not so with John. His favorite pastimes prior to becoming pope were drinking, hunting, gambling, and - how does one put it delicately? - chasing women. And these were still his favorite activities afterwards. The German Emperor Otto I wrote to him: "Everyone, clergy as well as laity, accuses you, Holiness, of homicide, perjury, sacrilege, incest with your relatives, including two of your sisters, and with having, like a pagan, invoked Jupiter, Venus and other demons".

Rome in the Middle Ages was a broadminded place, but John XII's excesses were a bit much even for those easy-going times. He was eventually driven out, and a new pope elected in his place, but he came back a few months later, killed a number of his enemies (supposedly castrating them first), and soon returned to his hobbies with unabated enthusiasm.

There's no telling how long this might have gone on, but in May 964 John XII passed away. There are two versions of how he died. One says he suffered a stroke while committing adultery with the wife of a nobleman. The other says that the husband of the lady in question came home unexpectedly, and finding the couple in a compromising position, either bashed in John's skull with a hammer or threw him out of a window.

Answer: 135

The ancient Romans didn't get weekends off, and most had no health insurance, but they didn't fare too badly when it came to holidays. By 165 AD, there were 135 public holidays - days on which the government shut down and no commercial business was to be transacted. Even slaves usually got these days off.

At least 93 of these days were observed with public celebrations and government-sponsored feasts and games for the mob. The holidays included festivals in honor of the gods, emperors' birthdays, and days that were just considered plain unlucky.

There were some people, of course, who did have to work on holidays - gladiators, wine-sellers, prostitutes, and the like. Let's hope they got paid time-and-a-half. By the way, the edict didn't work. By 350 AD, the number of public holidays had increased to 177.

Answer: It's probably living in your eyelashes right now

Demodex is a genus of tiny parasitic mites; although there are many species, the ones most often found in humans are Demodex folliculorum and Demodex brevis. The name "Demodex" is derived from the Greek, and means "fat worm," because even though they are classified as arachnids, they look like tiny worms under the microscope.

These little creatures like living in hair follicles and sebaceous glands, especially the eyelashes and eyebrows. They are too small to see with the naked eye, and usually don't cause many problems for their hosts. They emerge from the follicles at night to mate. Almost everyone has them. Even though they are essentially harmless, it's a bit creepy to realize that every night when you go to sleep, thousands of these creatures may be mating on your face!

Answer: A recipe for salad

The phrase "E pluribus unum" was lifted from Virgil's poem, "Moretum," and describes the making of a salad composed of garlic, parsley, rue, and onions, seasoned with cheese, salt, coriander, and vinegar, and sprinkled with olive oil. It is not the official motto of the United States; that would be "In God We Trust," by an act of Congress in 1956.

In 1994, Vice-President Al Gore, in a speech to the Institute of World Affairs, praising the virtues of diversity, defined it as "out of one, many," which leads one to question the benefits of a Harvard education.

Answer: Women wearing makeup

Not only makeup, but other female embellishments as well. The proposed law read, in part, "Be it resolved that all women, of whatever age, rank, profession, or degree; whether virgin maids or widows; that shall after the passing of this Act, impose upon and betray into matrimony any of His Majesty's male subjects, by scents, paints, cosmetics, washes, artificial teeth, false hair, Spanish wool, iron stays, hoops, high-heeled shoes, or bolstered hips, shall incur the penalty of the laws now in force against witchcraft, sorcery, and such like misdemeanours, and that the marriage, upon conviction, shall stand null and void."

It does not appear that this proposal ever actually became law, which was probably a good thing, or the institution of marriage might have been threatened. Come to think of it, the survival of the human race might have been threatened. Parliament did pass a law against celebrating Christmas, but that was much earlier, and it was repealed in 1681.

Answer: He had only 14 different great-great-great grandparents

Charles II, who was King of Spain from 1665 -1700, is often trotted out as the poster child of royal inbreeding. Most of us, if we were interested in tracing our family trees back a few generations, would find that we had 32 different great-great-great grandparents, give or take a few; Charles had only 14. His family tree looks more like a maze, with uncles marrying nieces, aunts marrying nephews, first cousins marrying each other, etc. He was actually more inbred than the child of an incestuous relationship between a brother and sister; that child would have 16 different great-great-great grandparents.

Well, this turned out about as well as you might expect. Charles did not learn to talk until he was four years old, and could not walk until he was eight. He had a massive lower jaw, and such a bad overbite that he could not chew his food and found it difficult to speak. He also had a huge tongue that protruded from his mouth and caused him to drool. His health was poor and he was prone to seizures. And while may not actually have been feeble-minded, it was recognized early in his life that he wasn't the brightest bulb on the tree, so no attempt was made to educate him.

When he was 18, Charles was married to Marie Louise of Orléans, a niece of Louis XIV, who was (as near as I can figure) only his second cousin once removed. The couple got along better than might have been expected, but Charles' inbreeding had also apparently left him impotent, or nearly so. Queen Marie told the French ambassador that "she was really not a virgin any longer, but that as far as she could figure things, she believed she would never have children." After ten years of marriage, she died.

Charles was next paired up with Maria Anna of Neuburg, another, but more distant, cousin. This marriage also remained childless. Charles managed to stay alive much longer than anyone considered possible, dying a few days before his 39th birthday on November 1, 1700. His death, coupled with his inability to produce an heir, plunged all of Europe into the War of the Spanish Succession.

It is interesting to note that Charles had a sister, Margarita Teresa, who fared a lot better in the genetic lottery than poor Charles. From her surviving portraits, she looks more or less normal. The Hapsburgs, being what they were, married her off to Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I, who, in addition to being her husband, was her maternal uncle and paternal cousin. They had four children, only one of whom, Maria Antonia, survived childhood. Margarita Teresa died at the age of 21, and Maria Antonia at 23. Maria Antonia had one child who survived her, but he died of a seizure in 1699. So, with the death of Charles II in 1700, the Spanish Hapsburgs had managed to interbreed themselves out of existence.

Answer: To avoid confusion about the year

Although this might look confusing, dates were written like this to avoid confusion. Here's why.

Most countries celebrated New Year's Day on January 1 . But in England the year didn't officially start until March 25, the Feast of the Annunciation, or "Lady Day," as they called it. This practice dated back to a 6th century monk named Dionysius Exiguus, who started the whole "Anno Domini" business. He was the guy who decided that the year should start on March 25. Most countries changed the beginning of the year to January 1 when they adopted the Gregorian calendar in the 16th century. But England continued to use the Julian calendar, and to use March 25 as the first day of the new year.

Now suppose you were living in England, and writing to someone in Scotland, which had changed the beginning of the year to January 1 in 1600. Were you using the Scottish or English calender? There would be no question about the date when your letter was received, but what if a letter or a document had to be retrieved 20 or 25 years later? By writing the date as March 2, 1637/38, you knew this was March 2, 1638 by most countries' reckoning. So what looks confusing to us was actually a system to avoid confusion, when a day between January 1 and March 24 was involved.

This was an incredibly stupid way of doing things, which may explain why it lasted so long. England didn't get around to adopting the Gregorian calendar and changing New Year's Day to January 1 until 1752. By then, their calendar was 11 days out of date, so they had September 2, 1752 followed by September 14, 1752. This upset a lot of people who paid their bills and taxes by the month, because they were paying for 30 days when only 19 had actually passed.

Answer: Alexandrite

Described as "emerald by day, ruby by night," this very rare gemstone is actually a variety of chrysoberyl. What gives it its unique color-change properties is tiny amounts of chromium present as an impurity. Alexandrite was originally discovered in the Ural Mountains of Russia in 1834, and was named for future Czar Alexander II.

Alexandrite is one of the rarest of all naturally-occurring gemstones, and stones of over a few carats very rare indeed. The most prized alexandrites change from a bright green in sunlight to a vivid red under incandescent light; lesser quality stones change from a bluish-green to a reddish-purple. Other color change combinations are also known. Alexandrite is a very prized gemstone, but never became commercially popular because supplies are so limited. Most alexandrites used in jewelry are synthetic stones created in a laboratory, or synthetic color-change sapphires and spinels which mimic alexandrite's characteristics. Alexandrite is sometimes used as a birthstone for the month of June.

Answer: It did not include the word "cents"

It was actually a very attractive design. The obverse showed a portrait of Liberty facing left, surrounded by 13 stars, and the date. The reverse carried the legends "United States of America" and "E pluribus Unum" around a large letter "V" within a wreath. The "V" was the Roman numeral for five, the coin's denomination, five cents. But it didn't say "cents" anywhere on the coin, and that's where the trouble began.

A young man named Josh Tatum, who also happened to be a deaf-mute, noticed that the coin was exactly the same size as the $5 gold coins that were in circulation at the time. He had about a thousand of of the new coins gold-plated. He would go into a store, point to an item costing five cents, a cigar, for example, and lay one of his gold-plated nickels on the counter. More often than not, he received his purchase AND $4.95 in change.

Eventually he was caught, arrested, and brought to trial. But no one could figure out what to charge him with. There was no law on the books that made it illegal to gold-plate coins. He could not be found guilty of deception, because being a deaf-mute, he had never asked for anything; the storekeepers had deceived themselves. Tatum testified he thought the change he received was a gift. So he got off.

When the story reached the the officials at the mint in Philadelphia, they ordered that production of the new coin be stopped immediately. The design was hastily modified to include the word "CENTS" in large letters below the "V." Production of the modified coins began on June 26, 1883.