10 of my favourite little known historical facts, part 3

Here I am, back again to help you get through the Easter revision with a third lot of amazing factoids. Turn your world upside down

• In the 1870s, there was a surge of books using the word ‘pokemon’. In the Cornish dialect, pokemon meant ‘clumsy’. In the mid 19^th century,  Cornish glossaries and dictionaries were written in order to preserve the language, all of which contained the word ‘pokemon’

• Chiune Sugihara was a Japanese diplomat in Lithuania who is estimated to have saved 6000 lives. He would write thousands of unlawful travel visas which allowed Jews to escape persecution from the Nazis. Witnesses claim that even as he was evacuated, he continued writing visas and threw from the train 

• Just Julie d’Aubigny. All of her life 

• In a private cemetery in Arkansas, a woman single-handedly buried and gave funerals to more than 40 gay men during the height of the AIDS epidemic when their families wouldn’t claim their bodies 

• During the Great Irish Famine, the Native American Choctaw people raised $170 (about $71 000 today) in aid to send to the Irish.  A sculpture of nine eagle feathers was installed in Bailic Park, Co Cork, to thank them

• Doctors thought that bicycles would cause women to have insatiable sex drives, leading to lesbianism 

• European historians thought that paintings of Ancient Egyptian hair were actually depicting hats and crowns, as they could not understand the afro hair styles. However, the Afar people, who still live on the horn of Africa today, wear their hair in the same way as it was shown in the ancient paintings 

• Lawns were originally status symbols of the French monarchy – they showed that a person could afford land without needing to use if for agriculture, rent, or income

• Soaps containing acid to lighten the skin have been heavily marketed towards coloured people throughout history. They can still be easily bought now

• For over 1,500 years, people who argued in Glencoe, Scotland, were sent to Discussion Island with cheese and whiskey until they sorted out their problems 

Part 1

Part 2

Plus, the fundamentals of working through the Christmas holidays apply to Easter as well, so check out this post which might help get you motivated to revise!