“LIBATIONS”….Is the practice of pouring out alcohol in memory of those who have “passed on”…..it was common in ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome…. “Pouring one out for the homies” is a custom for over 3,000 years…..and is mentioned in the Bible, the Iliad…..and The Odyssey.
THE VARANGIAN GUARD…..From the 10th to the 14th century…..the most trusted protectors of the Byzantine emperors were not Romans…..they were Vikings…..man, I told you Vikings were serious….remember a few years ago I told you they found of the northern travelers in Sicily?…..anyway,….these elite warriors came from Scandinavia, Kievan Rus…..and later Angelo-Saxon England….and traveled thousands of miles to serve the richest empire of the medieval world…..the emperors chose them for one reason……absolute loyalty…..unlike the local soldiers…..the Varangians had no families, political allies…..and no nobel connections inside Constantinople…..their only loyalty was to the emperor who paid them…..they were famous for wielding massive two-handed battle axes…..weapons that could shatter shields, armor and bone.
MAN, THIS IS SO COLD-BLOODED…..The tyrant Phalaris of Sicily wanted a new method of execution….so a sculptor named Perillos built him the “Brazen Bull”…..it was a hollowed bronze statue of a bull…..the victim was locked inside….and a fire was lit underneath…..as the victim roasted alive, a system of tubes in the bull’s throat converted their screams into the sound of a bull bellowing…..Perillos was so impressed by the device that he asked Perillos to demonstrate it…..when Perillos climbed inside….Phalaris locked the door and lit the fire…..making the inventor the first victim of his own creation…..that’s cold man…..cold!
ON JANUARY 13th, 1915……A massive earthquake struck the Avezzano region in central Italy….the devastation was total….in the town of Avezzano itself….10,719 people lived there before the quake…..after the quake, only 1,000 were left alive…..96% of the population was crushed in seconds as the stone buildings collapsed…..it happened during World War I….so the Italian army was already stretched thin….making rescue efforts a nightmare….and this remains one of the deadliest earthquakes in European history.
THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA…..Cost millions of lives and centuries of labor to stop invaders….but one day when the Manchu army (Qing Dynasty)…..invaded in 1644….they didn’t climb over or break the wall….they simply bribed the guarder agent Wu Sangui to open the gates…..rendering the massive fortification useless.
IN THE 1630’s…..The Netherlands experienced “Tulip Mania”….it was the first economic bubble in recorded history….people became obsessed with the rare tulip bulbs….specifically the striped ones…..at the peak of this madness, a single “Semper Augustus” bulb sold for the price of a luxury canal house in Amsterdam….people sold their land and life savings just to buy flowers…..then in 1637, the market crashed overnight….the bulbs became worthless….leaving thousands of people bankrupt and holding nothing but dead flowers.
IN 700 BCE…..Wealth in Etruscan, Italy meant smiling with a mouth full of dead people’s teeth….skilled goldsmiths pioneered the first dental bridges…..by drilling holes in scavenged human or ox teeth….and binding them with pure gold wire to replace missing incisors…..while these $10,000 ancient prosthetics prevented facial collapse….they were fragile luxury items used mostly for appearances….proving that for the ancient elite…..vanity always outlived the body itself.
THE MANCHINEEL TREE…..found in Florida and the Caribbean….holds the world record for “World Most Dangerous Tree”….its fruit called the “Little Apple of Death” can close your throat shut…..but the sap is the real horror…..it is so toxic that you can stand under the tree during a rainstorm…..the water dripping off the leaves become acidic enough to burn your skin off….cars parked under it have their paint stripped away.
WHY IS THE BLUETOOTH SYMBOL A WEIRD B?….It’s actually a combination of two ancient Viking runes….H and B….they stand for Harald Bluetooth…..a 10th century Viking king famous for uniting Denmark and Norway….in the 1900’s engineers needed a name for a new wireless technology that would unite different devices like photos and computers….they chose the king who united Scandinavia…..his nickname came from a death tooth that looked dark blue.
IN 1532…..Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro captured the Incan Emperor Atahualpa…..to buy his freedom Atahualpa made an incredible offer….he would fill the room he was imprisoned in with gold….as high as he could reach…..and two more rooms with silver….Pizarro agreed….the Incan people stripped their temples and delivered 24 tons of gold and silver….it was the largest ransom in history….Pizarro took the gold….declared it wasn’t enough…..and executed Atahualpa anyway.
IN 1980….an airman at a missile silo in Damascus, Arkansas…..dropped a heave socket wrench…it fell 70 feet, bounced and punctured the fuel tank….of a Titan nuclear missile….the silo filled with explosive fuel vapor….hours later the missile exploded….blowing the 740-ton concrete door off the silo and launching the 9-megatom nuclear warhead into the woods nearby….it was the most powerful weapon in the US-arsenal….600 time stronger than Hiroshima….miraculously, the warhead didn’t detonate….if it had….the state of Arkansas would’ve been wiped off the map.
DURING PROHIBITION IN THE 1020’s…..people wouldn’t stop drinking….they stole industrial alcohol used for fuel to make moonshine…..frustrated, the US government ordered chemists to add lethal poisons…..like kerosene, gasoline and formaldehyde to industrial alcohol stocks….to “scare” people into sobriety…..it didn’t work…..people drank anyway…..by the time prohibition ended in 1933…..an estimate 10,000 American citizens had died from drinking government-poisoned booze.