Ancient History, Probably

History is full of facts. These questions are full of something else.

551. Did cave people have a favourite cave?

Everyone had a favourite cave, plus a holiday cave they only visited once a year. The holiday cave had a lake view and a nice echo. Real early humans often returned to the same caves and rock shelters for generations, leaving behind tools, fire pits and paintings of horses, bison and handprints on the walls. Some of those paintings are more than 40,000 years old. That's the world's oldest home decorating. A cave with good paintings, a dry floor and no bears was prime real estate. A cave with a bear in it was a cave with a bear in it, and you'd just leave.

552. How did people tell time before clocks?

Sundials, water clocks and roosters. The rooster was the least accurate and the loudest. Roosters crow at dawn, sure, but also at noon, at 3 p.m. and whenever they feel like expressing themselves. Sundials worked well until it got cloudy, and then everyone was late for everything. Water clocks dripped water from one bowl to another at a steady rate. Some ancient Greek courts used them to time speeches, so lawyers had to talk fast before the water ran out. Candle clocks had marks along the side and burned down hour by hour. You could also tell time by your stomach. Your stomach always knows when it's lunch.

553. Did dinosaurs and people ever meet?

No. The big dinosaurs died out about 66 million years before the first humans showed up. Birds are dinosaurs, though, so technically every pigeon is one. That means every time a pigeon steals your sandwich, you're being robbed by a tiny T. rex relative. Chickens are surprisingly close cousins of ancient meat-eating dinosaurs, which explains the look in their eyes. Geese are also dinosaurs, which explains everything else. Movies love showing cave people fighting dinosaurs, but the gap between them is so big that T. rex lived closer in time to us than to the Stegosaurus. Dinosaurs had their own ancient history.

554. Were the pyramids giant storage units?

They were tombs for pharaohs. So yes, extremely fancy storage with a strict no-visitors policy. Pharaohs were buried with everything they might need in the afterlife: furniture, jewellery, food, games, chariots and sometimes even mummified pets. King Tut's tomb contained over 5,000 objects, including underwear. The Great Pyramid was the tallest human-made structure on Earth for nearly 4,000 years. It was built without cranes, trucks or power tools, by thousands of skilled workers fuelled by bread and beer. Modern storage units can't compete. They don't even have a gift shop.

555. What did people use before toilet paper?

Leaves, moss, shells and, in ancient Rome, a shared sponge on a stick. Let's leave it there. Other options through history included snow, corn cobs, smooth stones, handfuls of hay and, after newspapers became common, newspapers. Some old farmhouses kept catalogues in the outhouse, which provided reading material and supplies at the same time. Toilet paper as we know it only became widely sold in the late 1800s, and early versions reportedly had splinters. So the next time the roll runs out (see question 458), be grateful. You could be holding a corn cob. Your ancestors were tough people.

556. Did knights get itchy in their armour?

Constantly, and they couldn't scratch. That explains a lot about knights. A full suit of plate armour weighed about 20 to 30 kilograms, and underneath it, knights wore thick padded clothing to stop the metal from rubbing. In summer, this was like wearing a sleeping bag inside an oven. Getting in and out of armour took time and usually a helper called a squire. If a knight got an itch on his nose, the squire would have to scratch it through the visor with a stick. Being a squire was a glamorous job. Mostly it was scratching. And polishing. And scratching.

557. Who invented the wheel, and did they get a patent?

Nobody knows who did it, about 5,500 years ago. No patent. Imagine the royalties. Every car, bike, skateboard, office chair and shopping cart (see question 444) would owe that person a tiny fee. They'd be the richest person in history. The surprising thing is that the wheel came quite late; people were making pottery, farming and brewing beer long before anyone rolled anything. One of the oldest known wheels was found in a marsh in Slovenia. Some of the first wheels may have been used for pottery, not carts. The inventor probably just wanted to make bowls faster.

558. Did ancient Romans have fast food?

Yes. Pompeii had dozens of street-food counters. People have always wanted a quick snack after work. These counters were called thermopolia, and they had big clay pots set into stone counters, filled with hot stews, sausages, lentils and wine. Archaeologists found one with colourful paintings of ducks and a rooster on the front, like an ancient menu board. Many poorer Romans lived in apartments without kitchens, so they ate out almost every day. Some Romans considered street food a bit trashy. The rest of Rome ignored them and kept eating. Fast food has always had its critics.

559. Why does nobody smile in old portraits?

Sitting for a painted portrait could take hours. Try smiling for four hours; you'd look serious too. Early photographs also took a long time to expose, so people had to hold perfectly still, sometimes with hidden braces holding their heads in place. Smiling was also considered silly back then, the sort of thing drunks and fools did in paintings. Bad teeth didn't help. So people looked serious, dignified and slightly constipated. Today we smile for every photo, sometimes with peace signs and duck faces. Future historians will think we were all very, very happy. Or very weird (see question 600).

560. Did Vikings really wear horned helmets?

No. That look came from 1800s costume designers. Real helmets were plain, and horns would have caught on every doorway. A costume designer for an opera in Germany gave the Vikings horns in 1876 to make them look dramatic, and the idea spread everywhere: cartoons, sports teams and Halloween costumes. Real Vikings were farmers, traders and explorers as much as raiders, and they combed their hair, washed regularly and travelled as far as North America, landing in Newfoundland around the year 1000. They were also sticklers for grooming. Archaeologists find more Viking combs than Viking swords.

561. What did people do for fun before the internet?

They told stories, played games and stared into the fire. The fire was the first screen. People also sang songs, played cards, danced, read books aloud, went on long walks and visited neighbours just to see what they were up to. Victorian families did puzzles, played charades and held parlour games with names like "Snapdragon," in which you grabbed raisins out of a bowl of burning brandy. Yes, that was a real game. People were very bored, and the internet was a long way off. Anything was entertainment. Even watching paint dry, which, before television, was considered a pleasant evening.

562. How did they move the giant stones at Stonehenge?

Probably sledges, ropes, rollers and a lot of people shouting "lift on three." Some of the smaller stones, called bluestones, came from Wales, about 225 kilometres away, which is a long way to drag a rock that weighs as much as a car. The biggest stones weigh around 25 tonnes. Experiments have shown that a team of people can move a heavy stone surprisingly quickly on a wooden sledge sliding over greased timbers. Nobody knows for sure what Stonehenge was for. Calendar? Temple? Party spot? Probably all three. Ancient people took their parties seriously.

563. Did ancient Egyptians have pets?

Yes, and cats were especially beloved. Cats have never let anyone forget it. Cats kept mice and snakes away from the grain, and they became so respected that Egyptians honoured a cat goddess named Bastet. Harming a cat was a serious crime. When a family cat died, some households reportedly shaved their eyebrows in mourning. Cats were sometimes mummified, and archaeologists have found entire cemeteries of cat mummies. Egyptians also kept dogs, monkeys, birds and even the occasional lion. But cats remember being worshipped. That's why your cat looks at you like that. It's waiting for the eyebrows.

564. Did people in the Middle Ages avoid water and drink

only ale?

They drank plenty of water too. The "nobody drank water" story is mostly a myth. Medieval towns had wells, fountains and rivers, and people knew which water was clean and which was not. They did drink a lot of weak ale, called "small beer," which had very little alcohol and was considered a nutritious drink, kind of like bread you could sip. Even children drank it. Monks brewed it, families brewed it and everyone had opinions about it. The idea that everyone in the Middle Ages was tipsy all day is fun but wrong. They were mostly just busy and tired.

565. What's the oldest joke ever written down?

One of the oldest, from ancient Sumer nearly 4,000 years ago, is a bathroom joke. Human humour has not evolved since. It involves a young woman and a very rude noise, and it was written on a clay tablet so that people could enjoy it for millennia. Ancient Egyptians had jokes about pharaohs; ancient Romans had a whole joke book called the Philogelos, or "Laughter Lover," full of jokes about grumpy people, dumb scholars and bad breath. Some of them still work today. Jokes are basically the oldest form of internet content, just written in clay instead of typed on a phone.

566. Who decided a week has seven days?

The ancient Babylonians, probably based on the moon's phases. Monday was not their fault. The moon cycles through four phases in about 28 days, which splits nicely into four seven-day chunks. The Babylonians also counted seven visible moving objects in the sky: the sun, the moon and five planets. In English, many weekday names come from gods: Thursday is Thor's day, Wednesday is Woden's day and Saturday is Saturn's day. Some countries have experimented with five- and 10-day weeks, which everybody hated. People like seven. It's a good number. It gives you two days for the weekend and five days to complain.

567. Did pirates really say "arr"?

Mostly that's from movies. Real pirates probably only said it when they stubbed a toe, like the rest of us. The famous pirate accent came from a 1950 movie version of Treasure Island, in which the actor playing Long John Silver used his English West Country accent and rolled his R's dramatically. Everyone loved it, and it stuck. Real pirates came from all over the world and spoke many languages. They also had written rules, voted on decisions and offered injury compensation, which was surprisingly fair for people who stole ships. September 19 is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Arr.

568. How did people wake up on time before alarm clocks?

In some towns, "knocker-uppers" were paid to tap on bedroom windows with long sticks. That was a real job. Some used pea-shooters to fire dried peas at windows. They'd keep tapping until the person showed up at the window to prove they were awake. This raises an obvious question: who woke up the knocker-upper? Some say they just stayed up all night. Others said they had their own alarm system: a knocker-upper's knocker-upper. Before them, people relied on roosters (see question 552), church bells, sunlight and drinking lots of water before bed so their bladder would wake them. That last one still works.

569. Was medieval food really that bad?

The rich ate spiced meats and pies. Everyone else ate a lot of pottage, a stew some families kept bubbling for days. They'd add whatever they had, like peas, beans, cabbage, onions and the occasional bit of bacon, and just keep the pot going. That's where the nursery rhyme "pease porridge hot, pease porridge in the pot, nine days old" comes from. The rich ate peacocks, swans and pies with live birds inside that flew out when cut open, as entertainment. It's true. Medieval feasts were chaos. Some cooks also made meat look like animals, or sculpted castles out of sugar. Dinner was a show.

570. Did castles have bathrooms?

They had garderobes: a little room with a hole that dropped toward the moat. Never swim in a castle moat. The word "garderobe" also meant a wardrobe, because people hung their clothes in there; the smell supposedly kept moths away. Some garderobes stuck out from the castle wall, so everything fell straight down the outside. This was also a security risk. During one siege, attackers supposedly climbed up through a garderobe chute to get inside, which is the bravest and most disgusting military strategy in history. The castle was captured. The attackers needed a bath.

571. Who was the first person brave enough to eat a lobster?

Someone very brave and very hungry. In colonial North America, lobster was so plentiful it was considered cheap food. Lobsters washed up on beaches in piles. They were fed to prisoners, servants and farm animals, and were sometimes used as fertilizer. Some workers supposedly complained about being fed lobster too often. Then railways began serving lobster to travellers who didn't know it was "poor people food," and they loved it. Now it's one of the fanciest dishes in the world. Somewhere, a colonial prisoner is laughing. The crab in this book has opinions about all this but would rather not discuss it.

572. Did ancient people chew gum?

Yes. People chewed birch tar thousands of years ago, and some ancient wads have been found with tooth marks still in them. One piece of birch tar from Denmark, about 5,700 years old, contained enough DNA for scientists to work out what the chewer looked like: blue eyes, dark hair and dark skin. They even found traces of her last meal, which was duck and hazelnuts. That means ancient people stuck their gum somewhere, just like modern people do under desks. Thousands of years later, scientists picked it up and studied it. Be careful where you leave your gum. History is watching.

573. How did sailors know where they were going?

Stars, the sun, compasses and confidence. When all else failed, they kept going until they bumped into land. Polynesian navigators crossed thousands of kilometres of open Pacific Ocean using the stars, ocean swells, cloud shapes and the flight paths of birds, with no instruments at all. That's one of the greatest feats in human history. European sailors used tools like the astrolabe and sextant, plus a method called "dead reckoning," which means guessing based on speed, direction and time. Despite the name, it worked most of the time. Christopher Columbus famously thought he'd reached Asia. He was off by an entire ocean.

574. Did people in history get bored?

Constantly. That's why they invented knitting, chess and gossip. Medieval monks got so bored copying books that they doodled in the margins: knights fighting snails, rabbits riding dogs and cats doing strange things. Scribes also wrote little complaints in the corners, like "my hand is cold," "this ink is bad" and "finally, it's getting dark." Ancient Romans carved graffiti on walls, like "Gaius was here" and rude comments about their neighbours. Boredom built civilization. Without it, nobody would have invented games, songs or this book. Thank boredom. Then go do something.

575. Was there ever a year without a summer?

Yes: 1816, after a huge volcanic eruption cooled the planet. Parts of North America got snow in June. People complained loudly. The volcano was Mount Tambora in Indonesia, which erupted in 1815 and threw so much ash into the sky that it dimmed the sun around the world. Crops failed, food prices soared and people huddled indoors. A group of writers stuck inside a villa in Switzerland that summer held a ghost-story contest, and one of them, Mary Shelley, came up with Frankenstein. So the year without a summer gave us one of the most famous monsters ever. Boredom wins again (see question 574).

576. How old is the oldest tree?

Some bristlecone pines are over 4,800 years old. They were already growing when the Great Pyramid went up. They live high in the mountains of California and Nevada, in cold, dry, windy places where almost nothing else grows. They grow so slowly that a branch can take centuries to thicken. Their exact location is kept secret to protect them from souvenir hunters. In 1964, a student studying tree rings accidentally cut down one of the oldest trees ever recorded, which was nearly 5,000 years old. He felt terrible. Everyone felt terrible. The tree had survived the Bronze Age, the Roman Empire and the Middle Ages, and lost to a graduate student.

577. Did ancient Romans use concrete?

Yes, and some of it has lasted 2,000 years. Our sidewalks crack in five. The Pantheon in Rome has a giant concrete dome that is still the largest unreinforced concrete dome in the world, nearly 2,000 years after it was built. Roman concrete used volcanic ash, and scientists recently discovered that it contains tiny lumps of lime that can actually heal cracks when water seeps in. It's self-repairing concrete. Roman sea walls got stronger over time in salt water, while modern concrete crumbles. Engineers are now studying Roman recipes. The Romans would be extremely smug about this. They were smug about everything.

578. Who invented the sandwich?

The name comes from an 18th-century earl who reportedly wanted a meal he could eat without leaving his card game. People had surely put things in bread before, but he got the credit. He was John Montagu, the Fourth Earl of Sandwich, and he was apparently so busy gambling (or working, depending on which story you believe) that he asked for meat between two slices of bread. His friends began ordering "the same as Sandwich," and the name stuck. The Hawaiian islands were once named the Sandwich Islands after him too. If he'd been called the Earl of Grumbleton, we'd all be eating grumbletons for lunch.

579. Did ancient people have toothbrushes?

Early ones were chew sticks, twigs with frayed ends. Your dentist would still like a word about flossing. The bristle toothbrush appeared in China around the 1400s, made with hog hairs attached to bone or bamboo handles. In England in 1780, a man named William Addis made a toothbrush while in prison, using a bone from his dinner and bristles he got from a guard. After he got out, he started a toothbrush company that still exists today. Ancient people also used toothpastes made of crushed eggshells, ox hooves, ashes and myrrh. Minty fresh was not an option yet. Hoofy fresh was.

580. Did the Romans wear socks?

Yes. Romans in chilly Britain wore woollen socks, possibly with sandals. Socks with sandals are older than you think. A letter found at Vindolanda, a Roman fort near Hadrian's Wall, mentions a soldier being sent socks and underpants from home, which means even Roman soldiers got care packages from their mums. Archaeologists have also found a child's sock from ancient Egypt, knitted with a split toe so it could be worn with sandals. Socks with sandals have been around for nearly 2,000 years and have been criticized for every single one of them. They refuse to die. They are eternal.

581. Why are old buildings so fancy?

Nobody was in a hurry. Some cathedrals took hundreds of years to finish. Cologne Cathedral in Germany was started in 1248 and finished in 1880, more than 600 years later. The Sagrada Família in Barcelona has been under construction since 1882 and is still being finished. Builders back then added gargoyles, carved saints, stained-glass windows and tiny hidden details that nobody could see from the ground, just because they felt like it. Some stonemasons carved their own faces into hidden corners. Today, a building is mostly glass boxes and beige walls. Ancient builders would be disappointed. Where are the gargoyles?

582. Did people keep pets other than cats and dogs?

Some medieval nobles kept monkeys, parrots and even lions. Imagine walking that. The Tower of London had a royal zoo for about 600 years, called the Royal Menagerie, with lions, bears, elephants and a polar bear that was allowed to fish in the River Thames on a long chain. Visitors could reportedly get in free if they brought a cat or dog to feed to the lions. That's horrifying. The menagerie closed in the 1830s, and the animals moved to London Zoo. Medieval people also kept ferrets, which they used for hunting rabbits, and hedgehogs, which they used for being adorable.

583. When did people start saying "hello"?

Fairly recently. The word caught on in the late 1800s, helped along by the telephone. Thomas Edison pushed "hello" as the standard telephone greeting, while Alexander Graham Bell preferred "ahoy," like a sailor. Imagine if Bell had won, and we'd all answered the phone like pirates (see question 567). Before "hello," people said "good day," "good morrow" or "how do you do," which was not a question you were supposed to answer. Earlier versions like "hallo" and "hullo" were used to call attention or show surprise. Today, "hello" is one of the most widely recognized words on Earth.

584. Did ancient Greeks think the Earth was flat?

Educated Greeks knew it was round. One even measured its size pretty accurately around 240 BC using shadows and a lot of patience. His name was Eratosthenes, and he noticed that at noon on a certain day, the sun shone straight down a well in one city, while in another city it cast a shadow. By measuring the angle of the shadow and the distance between the cities, he calculated Earth's circumference with impressive accuracy, using only sticks, shadows and math. The myth that medieval people all thought the Earth was flat is mostly false too. People knew it was round. They just had no idea how big Asia was (see question 573).

585. How did people brush their hair before combs?

Combs are ancient, some carved from bone more than 5,000 years ago. Before that: fingers and hope. Combs have been made from wood, ivory, tortoiseshell and seashells, and they were often decorated with animals and patterns. Vikings were especially fond of combs (see question 560). Ancient Egyptians had combs with fine teeth on one side for removing lice, which was a big problem. Some historians think early humans used fish bones or dried thistles to comb their hair, which sounds painful. The hairbrush came much later. Bed head, however, has existed since the first human woke up in a cave.

586. Did kids in history have toys?

Dolls, balls, spinning tops and even yo-yos go back thousands of years. Kids always find a way to play. Ancient Egyptian children had wooden toy animals with moving jaws, ancient Greek kids played with yo-yos made of terracotta and Roman kids played with marbles made of nuts. Medieval kids had toy knights, hobby horses and little wooden swords. Archaeologists have found a 4,000-year-old toy pull-along animal on wheels. Kids also played with sticks, rocks and mud, which are still the best toys ever made. Every parent who buys an expensive toy knows the kid will play with the box instead.

587. Was the Middle Ages actually in the middle?

It's in the middle of ancient and modern times. The people living there just called it "now." Nobody in the year 1200 woke up and said "ah, another beautiful day in the Middle Ages." The name was invented later, by people who considered themselves modern and thought the previous thousand years were boring. They were wrong. The Middle Ages gave us universities, eyeglasses, mechanical clocks, castles and Gothic cathedrals. In a thousand years, people may call our time "the Early Internet Ages" or "the Plastic Era." They'll think we were primitive. They'll be right about the plastic.

588. Did ancient people wear makeup?

Yes. Ancient Egyptians wore mineral eyeliner, partly for style and partly to cut the sun's glare. Men and women both wore it. The eyeliner was called kohl, and some types contained lead, which turns out to have mild germ-fighting effects but is still not recommended. Ancient Romans used chalk to lighten their skin and crushed berries for blush. In the 1700s, European aristocrats wore white face makeup, tall powdered wigs and little velvet "beauty spots" shaped like stars and moons. Some of their makeup contained lead and mercury. Many beauty trends in history were literally to die for. Please don't revive them.

589. How did people keep food cold before fridges?

Cellars, snow, salt and ice houses. People cut ice from frozen lakes in winter and packed it in sawdust to last all summer. In the 1800s, ice became a massive business. A man in Boston, known as the Ice King, shipped New England lake ice to the Caribbean and even India, and much of it made it there without melting. People had "iceboxes," wooden cabinets lined with tin, and an iceman delivered a fresh block every few days. Kids would follow the ice wagon, begging for chips of ice on hot days. Today, people still call fridges "iceboxes." Mostly grandparents.

590. Did students in ancient times have homework?

Yes, on clay or wax tablets. Some ancient practice tablets still have the mistakes on them. Clay is unforgiving. In ancient Mesopotamia, students copied the same sentences over and over, and teachers wrote corrections next to them. Some students wrote little complaints about their teachers, which archaeologists found 4,000 years later. One tablet tells the story of a student who was beaten for bad handwriting, talking in class and leaving without permission. He later invited his teacher home for dinner and gave him gifts to win him over. It worked. Bribing the teacher with dinner is an ancient tradition. We don't recommend it.

591. Were people in the past much shorter?

In some eras, a bit, mostly due to diet. But the idea that all suits of armour are tiny is largely a myth. Many surviving suits were made for teenage princes or for display, which is why museum armour often looks small. Studies of skeletons show that average heights rose and fell throughout history, depending on food supply, disease and wealth. Napoleon is famous for being short, but he was actually about average height for his time; British cartoonists just loved drawing him tiny. Today, the Netherlands has some of the tallest people on Earth, possibly because of cheese. We'd like to think it's the cheese.

592. Who invented the first calendar?

Several ancient cultures, including the Egyptians, Babylonians and Maya. Everyone wanted to know when the weekend was. Egyptians based theirs on the yearly flooding of the Nile, with 365 days. The Maya had several calendars running at once, including one famous "Long Count" calendar that ended a cycle in 2012, which made people think the world would end. It didn't. Julius Caesar fixed the Roman calendar and added leap years, but it was still slightly off, so in 1582, Pope Gregory skipped 10 days to catch up. People went to bed on October 4 and woke up on October 15. Imagine missing your birthday that way.

593. Did kings have to do chores?

No. They had people for that. They did have to wear heavy crowns, which is a chore for your neck. King Henry VIII had a servant whose job title was "Groom of the Stool," responsible for helping the king in the bathroom. This was considered an honour, and the Groom became one of the most powerful people in court, since he got private time with the king. Kings had servants to dress them, feed them and even taste their food for poison. Some royal crowns weigh over two kilograms. Try wearing that while waving at crowds for hours. Being royal was mostly neck exercises.

594. Were there traffic jams in ancient Rome?

Yes. Things got so bad that a Roman law banned most wagons from the city in the daytime. So they drove at night instead, which meant the city was full of rattling carts, braying donkeys and shouting drivers until dawn. The Roman poet Juvenal complained that nobody in Rome could sleep because of the noise, and that wealthy people could only nap in their own litters as they were carried through the streets. Romans also invented one-way streets and stepping stones across roads. Rome had traffic jams, noise complaints and parking problems. Rome was basically Toronto with togas.

595. How did people light rooms before electricity?

Candles, oil lamps and fireplaces. Everything smelled like smoke and everybody went to bed early. Cheap candles were made from tallow, which is animal fat, and they smelled like burning bacon. Expensive candles were made from beeswax and smelled lovely, so only rich people's houses smelled nice. Whale oil was popular for lamps in the 1800s, which was terrible for whales. Before electric light, many people slept in two shifts, waking up for an hour or so in the middle of the night to read, pray, chat or visit neighbours. Then they'd go back to sleep. It was called "first sleep" and "second sleep." Very civilized.

596. Did ancient people believe in ghosts?

Many did. Some ancient writers even complained about haunted houses. Ghost stories are one of humanity's oldest hobbies. The Roman writer Pliny the Younger told a story about a philosopher who rented a cheap house in Athens because it was haunted by an old man rattling chains. The philosopher followed the ghost to a spot in the courtyard, where human bones were found buried. They gave the bones a proper burial, and the haunting stopped. That story is nearly 2,000 years old and could be a modern horror movie. Ghosts have barely updated their style. Still rattling chains. Still moaning.

597. What's the oldest known recipe?

Some of the oldest are on Babylonian clay tablets about 3,700 years old, mostly for stews. Ancient people also loved a stew. The tablets list ingredients like lamb, leeks, garlic, onions and blood, with almost no measurements or cooking times. Instructions are as vague as "add water, add fat, add salt as you like." Some scholars have cooked them, and they reportedly taste pretty good. Ancient Romans left behind a cookbook too, called Apicius, featuring flamingo, dormouse and a fish sauce called garum made of fermented fish guts. It was the ketchup of Rome. It smelled terrible. Everyone loved it.

598. Was there a time before birthdays?

For most of history, ordinary people rarely tracked the exact day. No cake, no candles, no singing. Dark times. Ancient Egyptians celebrated the "birthday" of a pharaoh, but that was the day he became a god-king, not the day he was born. Romans celebrated birthdays of important men, and of temples. Many people instead celebrated their "name day," the feast day of the saint they were named after. Birthday cakes as we know them came from Germany, and "Happy Birthday to You" was adapted from a song written for a kindergarten in the 1890s. Now everyone in the world sings it, off-key, at the same pace.

599. Who decided we should shake hands?

One popular theory is that it showed you weren't holding a weapon. Now it shows you washed your hands, hopefully. Some think the shake was to dislodge daggers hidden up sleeves, which is why the shake goes up and down. Ancient Greek art shows soldiers shaking hands, and an Assyrian carving from the 800s BC shows two kings doing it. The handshake has many styles: the limp fish, the bone crusher, the two-hander and the one that goes on too long while both people try to figure out how to stop. Some people bow, fist-bump or nod. Geese simply hiss. It's quite clear.

600. Will future people think we were weird?

Definitely. They'll find this book and wonder why so many of our questions involved geese. They'll also wonder why we put pineapple on pizza, wore pyjama pants to the store, spent hours watching videos of other people unwrapping things and paid for water in bottles. Archaeologists will dig up our junk drawers (see question 453) and write long papers about the significance of twist ties. They'll find our phones and think we worshipped small glowing rectangles, which, to be fair, we kind of do. And somewhere in the year 3000, a student will hold up this book and ask, "Were they okay?" We were not. But we had fun.