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segunda-feira, 18 de abril de 2011

Curiosities of the years 1600 to 1700 - Part 1

1) The roofs of the houses had no ceilings and wooden beams were the best places for animals - dogs, cats, rats and beetles warmth. When it rained, the gutters forced the animals to jump to the ground. Thus, our expression "It’s raining knife" has its English equivalent in "it's raining cats and dogs”. 2)Those with money had plates of tin. Certain types of food oxidized the material, causing many people died poisoned. Let us remember that the hygienic habits of the time were bad . Tomatoes, being acids, were considered for a long time, poisonous. The tin cups were used for drinking beer or whiskey. This combination sometimes left the individual "on the ground" (a kind of narcolepsy-induced by mixing alcohol with oxide tin). Someone passing by the street might think he was dead, therefore retrieved the body and prepared the funeral. The body was then placed on the kitchen table for a few days and the family stood around in waking, eating, drinking and waiting to see if they would wake the dead or not. Then came the funeral, which is the vigil beside the coffin. England is a small country, where there was not always room to bury all the dead. Then the coffins were opened, the bones removed, placed in ossuaries, and the grave was used for another corpse. Sometimes, when they opened the coffins, they realized that there were scratches on covers, inside, indicating that the died, in fact, had been buried alive. Thus the idea that, when closing the coffin, to tie a strip on the wrist of the deceased, pass it through a hole made in the coffin and tie it to a bell. After the funeral, someone was on duty next to the tomb for a few days. If the person wakes up, the movement of his arm would make the bell ring. And he would be "saved by the bell " or "saved by gong, "a term used by us until today.