Page 12 - History Facts

When Spartans got married, a bridesmaid would kidnap her, shave her hair and dress her as a man!

When it came to marriage, the Spartans had some very interesting customs. One particularly odd one was associated with the wedding night. The bride would be "captured" by a bridesmaid.

The bridesmaid would then shave the bride's hair and dress her in a man's cloak and sandals. She would then lay on the mattress in the dark until her groom came to find her. The husband would continue to visit his new wife in secret for some time after the marriage. Some experts say this "abduction" tradition was to ward off the evil eye and that shaving her head signified her transition into a new life.

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Spartans used slaves as anti-drinking PSAs!

The Spartan society thrived in part because they had slaves to do a lot of the hard work for them. While true Spartan males would spend their time being educated and training in combat, slaves would do things like farm for food, serve in houses and even nurse people back to health.

The Spartans treated the Helots (as the slaves were known) really brutally and oppressively to prevent uprisings. One of the things they would do to keep them down was to force them to get debilitatingly drunk and make fools of themselves in public.

This served a dual purpose, as Spartans also used these displays of drunkenness to show young people how an adult Spartan should behave, as self-control was a desired trait in Sparta.

Read more about the ways Helots were mistreated at the source. For example, if that drunk humiliation sounded bad, it’s not even close: Spartans were allowed to kill Helots who were too smart or too fit.

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On LIFE’s first issue, they featured the birth of George Story. Years later, Story died a month after LIFE shut down!

Life magazine is one of the most famous and recognizable magazines of the 20th century. It began in 1936 to promote and analyze world events. The first edition was titled “Life Begins” and featured an actual baby named George Story. Editors of the magazine planned to follow Story’s life throughout the years, which they were successful with.

Story became a journalist, married, and had children, all of which were covered by Life through sporadic articles. Unfortunately the magazine suffered throughout the years and nearly failed several times. By 2000 they finally announced their closure, and the strangest thing happened.

Ironically, as the magazine came to an end, so did the life of George Story who died of heart failure on April 4, 2000 just a month after the announcement of the magazine’s closure. The last issue of Life was titled “A Life Ends” and featured Story’s story and how it went hand in hand with the life of Life magazine.

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During WWII, 5 people ended up in a lifeboat with no food, water, oars or mast after their ship sunk. They survived a typhoon and a 300 mile journey and made it home alive

In the beginning of WWII, Japan found itself capturing many more prisoners of war than they anticipated. They built a number of ships to transport these POWs, known as Hell ships. One of them, the Arisan Maru, was hit and sunk by a US submarine.

After the Arisan Maru sank, five of its passengers made it into a lifeboat. They had survived the sinking but they had no food, water or way to move the boat. A number of amazing occurrences fixed all of this. First, a keg of water floated by. Then the mast to the lifeboat came along in the water. Finally, they plucked a box from the ocean that contained the sail and rope.

While they were making a rudder for the boat, they found a stash of food hidden in an inner compartment in the boat. With these new supplies, they were able to sail 300 miles through a typhoon to China. The one civilian passenger happened to know celestial navigation, which allowed them to orient themselves.

When they made it to China, they were fed, clothed and guided by friendly natives, who took them to a US airbase in the hearland. They eventually made it back home 8 months before the war ended.

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Persians invented freezers over 2400 years ago. They could even create ice throughout the long, hot summers in the desert

By 400 BC, Persian engineers had figured out how to store ice in the middle of the desert. Pretty good for ancient engineers. These "yakhchals" were located above ground. They were domed and made of heat-resistant material. This kept them cold year-round.

Ice from nearby mountains was brought in during the winter and stored there. These structures were occasionally used for storing food as well. The 60-foot conic buildings would have a massive insulation on te outside and a massive subterranean structures that would keep water cool.

The Yakhchals were so good that they allowed for cooling even during the hottest times of the year. In fact, they even had trenches on the outside that allowed for water to refreeze during the cold desert nights. This allowed them to work year round!

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