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Honi soit qui mal y pense is the motto of the English chivalric Order of the Garter. Its literal translation from Old French is “Shame be to him who thinks evil of it”, or more strictly: “Let he who thinks ill there be shamed.”
This statement supposedly originated when King Edward…
Victor of Aveyron (also The Wild Boy of Aveyron) was a feral child who apparently lived his entire childhood naked and alone in the woods before being found wandering the woods near Saint-Sernin-sur-Rance, France, in 1797. He was captured, but soon escaped, after being displayed in…
During a party in Weimar in the winter of 1785, Goethe had a late-night conversation on his theory of primary colours with the South American revolutionary Francisco de Miranda. This conversation inspired Miranda, as he later recounted, in his designing the yellow, blue and red flag of Gran Colombia, from which the present national flags of Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador are derived.
Colonel-in-Chief Sir Nils Olav is a King Penguin living in Edinburgh Zoo, Scotland. He is the mascot and Colonel-in-Chief of the Norwegian King’s Guard. Nils was visited by the Norwegian King’s Guard on the 15 August 2008 and awarded a knighthood.
Nils Olav was given the rank of…
Wojtek (1942–1963; Polish pronunciation: [ˈvɔjtɛk]) was a Syrian brown bear cub found in Iran and adopted by soldiers of the 22nd Artillery Supply Company of the Polish II Corps. During the Battle of Monte Cassino, Wojtek helped move ammunition. The name “Wojtek” or “Wojciech” is an old…
A timeline of members of the band Squeeze over the past 35 some-odd years. Note that, during a period in 1990 or 1991, the band featured “Additional Keyboards” but not regular keyboards.
“In 1917, an orangutan escaped from a nearby ménagerie, entered the [Élysée Palace] and was said to have tried to haul the wife of President Raymond Poincaré into a tree only to be foiled by Élysée guards. President Paul Deschanel, who resigned in 1920 because of mental illness, was said to have been so impressed by the orangutan’s feat that, to the alarm of his guests, he took to jumping into trees during state receptions.”
Edward Topsell (c. 1572 – 1625) was an English cleric and author best remembered for his bestiary.
Topsell, repeating ancient legends, assigns exotic attributes to actual animals. He writes, for example, that:
- Weasels give birth through their ears.
- Lemmings graze in the clouds.
- Elephants worship the sun and the moon and become pregnant by chewing on mandrake.
- Apes are terrified of snails.
