Karen Hill

That would be Spartacus and his gang. A deserter from the Roman army, Spartacus was sold as a slave and trained as a gladiator. He escaped in 73 B.C. and gathered an army of 70,000 runaway slaves on Mount Vesuvius. They defeated five Roman armies and escaped to Cisalpine Gaul, where Spartacus intended to disband … Read more

No, the gladiola didn’t get its name from “gladiator”, but both the warrior and the plant got their names from gladius, Latin for “sword.” If you look at a gladiola and squint your eyes a bit, you can sort of see that the leaves surrounding the flower stalk look like green swords. And no, the … Read more

During the Civil War, the submarine the H. L. Hunley (named after its financier, Horace Hunley) was (sort of) successfully used in battle. Although it sank the Union’s Housatonic in shallow water by ramming bombs up against the sides of the battleship, in the process it sank itself as well. Five lives were lost on … Read more

This slang word “greenbacks” for Union money came from the mouths of American Civil War soldiers—or, as they called each other, graybacks and yankees. A slue of slang terms originated from these guys, many of them still in use today. Take for instance breadbasket (stomach), Chief cook and bottle washer (someone in charge who can … Read more

There is evidence that nomadic tribes of warrior women existed in Asia Minor, as Greek accounts have suggested, but it’s clear that not everything in these tales was based in fact. In tombs unearthed in the region (and other regions, it might be noted) both men and women were buried with weapons. This suggested that … Read more

The word “arena” was passed down to us from the ancient Romans. To sop up the endlessly flowing blood, the staging area of an ancient Roman arena was made of wood but covered with sand. “Sand” is harena in Latin, from which the word “arena” was spawned. Underneath the wood and harena was a dark, … Read more

Blood sports became so popular in Rome that the Colosseum was built specially for that purpose. The Colosseum had seating for about 50,000 people. The ringside seats were reserved for the emperor, senators, and other bigwigs. People of progressively lower status sat farther away, proportionate to their rank. Women and foreigners were seated in the … Read more

Well, think of the job description for a Roman Gladiator: “Fight and be killed for the amusement of others.” Consider the oath when you signed up where you agreed to be “burned with fire, shackled with chains, whipped with rods and killed with steel.” Would you choose to apply for a job like this? To … Read more

Actually, it was a matter of honor that the animal fighters, called bestiarii, were considered below true gladiators in rank. However, neither is to be confused with the condemned criminals, who were thrown defenseless into the midst of hungry animals to be because they were torn to pieces for sport. Actually, a bestiarum had a … Read more

There were about 4,000 Japanese Kamikaze pilots in World War II. Not all piloted planes—some were the drivers inside “smart bombs,” torpedoes, and small, explosive-filled boats. Others volunteered to wear bombs on their bodies and throw themselves under the wheels of tanks. Despite their best intentions, some kamikazes did survive.

The last Japanese soldier from World War II surrendered in 1974. Somebody neglected to tell Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda that the war had ended. He stayed at his post on Lubang Island in the Philippines, and held out for 30 more years. When he finally was coaxed out by his long-retired commanding officer and learned the … Read more

The Australian Aborigines didn’t get their boomerangs to return to them if they hit something while hunting. As you would suspect, if a returning boomerang actually makes contact with something, its flight is cut short and it won’t return to the thrower. Here’s a quick primer on boomerangs: Boomerangs are simply a curved version of … Read more

Kamikaze means “divine wind” in Japanese. The term was coined in 1281, referring to typhoons that wiped out a Mongol invasion fleet before it could arrive on Japan’s shores. In the same way, the kamikaze hoped that their suicide missions would stop the Allies as they approached Japan.

You’re working under the modern assumption that helmets were worn by Japanese Kamikaze pilots to prevent death and injury. But helmets wouldn’t do much in a plane crash, anyway. They were there for warmth, to hold the two-way radio for communication, and to protect your head from minor bangs that can occur from a sudden … Read more

Strange, but true: They have been described as being somewhat psychologically typical of Japanese youths at the time. A recurring theme in Japanese literature is that suicide of young people is a touchingly beautiful thing, like cherry blossoms falling before wilting, etc. Another theme was that it was honorable for soldiers to die for the … Read more

These days, only special time travel will provide a chance of becoming a samurai warrior. The samurai began as a class of warriors in feudal Japan and stayed in power through the 17th century. But even if you could transport back to the days of the samurai, chances are you wouldn’t have measured up. Few … Read more

Much like a western European chivalrous code of ethics, the Japanese samurai had a code of their own, which was orally transmitted from generation to generation. It was a code that evolved from a combination of strict military code, Zen Buddhism, Shintoism, and Confucianism. It was written down in the 17th century as Way of … Read more

A samurai is a warrior, protector, and leader. A Ninja is someone who practices ninjutsu. Ninjutsu is covert activities, or if literally translated from the Japanese, “the art of stealing in.” Ninjutsu came about from Japanese mystics during the rise of the samurai. It didn’t exclude combat, but fighting was only a small part of … Read more

Minamoto no Yoritomo was the leader of Japan during the medieval ages. In the late 1100s, he was the leader of the Minamoto clan. He set up Japan’s very first warrior government, or shogunate, and was much lauded for uniting the country. As a result of this unification, Japan saw the birth of a long … Read more

The Norse heaven for slain warriors was called Valhalla, meaning, literally, “hall of the slain.” In Old Norse mythology, brave warriors killed in battle were brought to Valhalla by Valkyries, special death maidens. During an average day in the afterlife, dead warriors fought battles, and their wounds from a hard day of fighting were miraculously … Read more

Indeed, a battle-axe was different from a regular wood-chopping axe in medieval times. The battle-axe had a shorter handle. When chopping wood, a long handle is necessary for a wide swing. In battle, and in dealing with flesh, a short blow yields more accuracy and damage.

From the 13th to the 16th centuries, the long bow, a bow longer than the four-foot regular bow, was the official weapon of the British army. It could fire off 10 to 12 arrows a minute and was almost as powerful as the crossbow. Be assured, it won many a war during those days and … Read more

Women did serve in the Buffalo Soldier regiment, but not legally. However, there was a woman named Cathay Williams—a former slave from Independence, Missouri—who secretly served as soldier William Cathay for two years during the Civil War. When she fell ill in 1868, she was discovered and discharged. She later opened a boarding house in … Read more

A battle-axe is certainly a better weapon than a guy with a joust on a horse. Why? Because a joust isn’t a weapon in and of itself; it’s a specific type of competition at a medieval tournament. Two armored knights would mount horses and face one another, each holding a lance. They would then charge … Read more

Native Americans gave the troops the name, probably because they hadn’t seen many African Americans and thought the soldiers’ short, dark, curly hair resembled the mane of the buffalo. The name was thought to be a sign of respect because the buffalo was an important animal to the Indians. The name originated with the Cheyenne … Read more

The Buffalo Soldiers were the ninth and tenth cavalries of the United States Army, which, in those segregated times, were made up entirely of African Americans. The first peacetime all-black regiments in the regular U.S. Army, they were first formed in 1866 and sent to the West to fight Indians, protect settlers, capture outlaws, and … Read more

The Zulu perform an intricate ritual before going to battle. The regiment, which is up to 1,000 warriors, congregate in the cattle kraal (the area blocked off for cattle near or within the village area) and jump around, miming their moves in battle. This is done in full war regalia, which can include headdresses of … Read more

Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders did not exist for very long, except in American legend. Teddy Roosevelt, anxious for a war with Spain, resigned as Secretary of the Navy and was authorized to put together a thousand-man volunteer cavalry force. Roosevelt was a Harvard boy, and so most of his early recruits were of similar ivy-league … Read more

The Zulu defeated the British in the Battle of Isandhlwana in 1879 by out-generaling them, so to speak. In other words, they had an intricate plan, drawing the British closer and closer while they quietly surrounded them. They then sent waves of warriors rushing straight into the British lines, heedless of British guns, cannons, and … Read more

The old expression and exclamation “hurrah!” is from an old Norse warrior word “Huzzah!” which meant “On to paradise!” The use of the word in its current form has its origins around the Victorian era as evident in literary works by Shakespeare. More recent usage in its current spelling include the phrase “the last Hurrah”, … Read more

Raphael was an Italian painter of the Renaissance period in the Late Middle Ages and did indeed have a last name. His given name at birth was Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino. Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance, Raphael was admired for his perfection, and was one of the great masters of that period. … Read more

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle cartoon’s artists, Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, say the difference in spelling for the character Michaelangelo was a mistake. When they created the comic book series, computer spellcheckers weren’t widely available. The turtle ended up with an extra “a” in his name purely by accident. It should be noted that … Read more

It is possible, but doubtful that the Arabian Nights stories was told to save a king’s young wife from execution. Also known as “One Thousand and One Nights”, which was the original Arabic name, it is a collection of Middle Eastern and South Asian folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age. The … Read more

Some accounts say the Harlem Renaissance took place from about 1925 to 1935 and centered around New York City, but the movement had actually begun many years before it was discovered by the rest of the world. During this decade following World War I, Rhodes scholar Alain Locke defined the movement of cultural enlightenment and … Read more

Ian Fleming wrote the book Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. The movie, which was also called Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, was a 1968 feature film based on the book. You may know Ian Fleming better by his other writings, however. He was the author who introduced the world to Bond. James Bond.

No, composer Salieri didn’t really try to swindle Mozart out of the Requiem. As the screenwriter for the movie Amadeus Peter Shaffer puts it, “It’s a fantasia based on fact. It is not a screen biography of Mozart and was never intended to be.” Antonio Salieri was a contemporary of Mozart and admired his work … Read more

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his wife, Constanze Weber, despite their money troubles, were a loving couple up until his early death at age 35. The playful pair kept Constanze in a perpetual state of pregnancy. They had a total of six children in their eight-and-a-half year marriage, only two of which survived: their second child, … Read more

It wasn’t until Beethoven’s twenties that he began to lose his hearing in any significant way, and by that time he had already studied with the likes of Joseph Haydn and Mozart. He gave his first solo concert in his late twenties. However, by the time he reached his early thirties his hearing was gone, … Read more

Some say there was indeed a real Romeo and Juliet that the Shakespeare play was based on, but after so many years and so many tellings and retellings, it’s impossible to verify. What we do know is that Shakespeare based his play on an old Italian tale that was possibly based on real events. The … Read more

William Shakespeare definitely smoked some tobacco in a pipe, as did most men in 16th-century Elizabethan England. And recent excavations of his Stratford-upon-Avon home have uncovered that he may have smoked a little more than tobacco. Residues in pipes found there contained trace amounts of cocaine and marijuana. However, what this means is hotly debated, … Read more

Manfred von Richthofen, also known as The Red Baron, was credited with shooting down 80 aircraft during World War I. However, skill and luck finally failed the 25-year-old pilot in 1918. While dogfighting with a Canadian pilot over Allied territory, the Red Baron was fatally hit by Australian gunners on the ground below. The Australians … Read more

There are a couple of theories of origin for the term Molotov Cocktail, but the Molotov name probably comes from Stalin’s premier and foreign minister, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov It was while he was minister of defense that Russians started the policy of using petrol bombs as an anti-tank weapon so that in any situation, they … Read more

Thirteen people were killed, eight jailed, one hanged in the war between the Hatfields and the McCoys. The Hatfield-McCoy feud between 1878 and 1891 is a permanent staple of American folklore that has become a metaphor for bitterly feuding rival families and parties.

There was already a great deal of tension between the two families about big issues and small, including some conflicting loyalties in America’s Civil War. The families involved in the feud descended from Ephraim Hatfield and William McCoy. The feud started when Asa Harmon McCoy was murdered on January 7, 1865. The despise for Harmon … Read more

That’s a really heartwarming ending to the story of the Hatfield-McCoy feud, but a complete myth, nonetheless. True, there had been a Romeo-a-Juliet-style romance between two of the young-uns, but their romance lasted only long enough to start a pregnancy before the fickle young Hatfield boy took up with his girlfriend’s cousin and wisely moved … Read more

No. In the Red Baron’s native Germany he was called Der Rote Kameliegger, meaning “The Red Battle Flyer.” Why the “Red”? Before effective anti-aircraft guns made camouflage a necessity, pilots tended to paint their planes bright colors as a way of identifying each other. Von Richthofen favored red. These colorful planes looked so brightly festive … Read more

Some things never change. Even after publishing Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman, one of America’s greatest poets couldn’t survive on a poet’s royalties. He worked as a low-level Washington bureaucrat, as a clerk in the Indian Department. He often saw his big boss, Abraham Lincoln, walking up the streets of Washington, D.C. Whitman was a … Read more

Quite a few folks survived Custer’s Last Stand in The Great Sioux War of 1876. All of them were Native Americans, however. There was one survivor from Custer’s party, an Indian translator. However, the American government got its revenge—they used his defeat as an excuse to indiscriminately wipe out tribes in the area.

When Crazy Horse left the Indian reservation without permission to take his wife to see her parents, he was arrested by U.S. soldiers. When he realized the soldiers were going to lock him up in a guardhouse, he struggled against the officers holding his arms. A soldier then ran him through with a bayonet.

Believe it or not, some argue Henry David Thoreau never really lived out in the “wilds” at all when he wrote the book Walden. As proof, they say that at no time did he ever reside more than two miles from his mother and sister’s house in Concord. Thoreau’s house was situated so that he … Read more

I’m assuming you’ve heard amazing statistics on this or you wouldn’t be asking. What you’ve heard is probably true, or close to it. Robert Louis Stevenson, reportedly suffering from tuberculosis and on a six-day cocaine binge, wrote the classic Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in a frenzy. His wife commented that it seemed unbelievable a … Read more

Although this was true in European theatre in Shakespeare’s time, the reverse was true in Japan—at least in the beginning. Perhaps that was because the art form was invented by a woman. Kabuki first came about in the spring of 1603 in Kyoto. Women, led by a shrine maiden named Okuni, dressed up in elaborate … Read more

Yes, Mark Twain said “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics” in his autobiography. But he didn’t invent the phrase, he was simply borrowing it. The man responsible for the witticism (or truism, as the case may be) is Benjamin Disraeli, British author and politician. To his credit, Twain rightly attributes … Read more

Nope, the Bible doesn’t say “God helps those who help themselves” because the verse doesn’t exist. It wasn’t Moses, David, Peter, Paul, or Mary. Instead, it was that fable-telling fiend (who may or may not have really existed), Aesop. In Aesop’s tale of “Hercules and the Wagoner,” a man’s wagon gets stuck in a muddy … Read more

You clearly didn’t have older brothers when you were growing up. Virginia Woolf got the nickname “The Goat” when she was child. There are no specific references as to why the name, but it may have been because of her temperament. Regardless, the name itself was said to have been meant affectionately. It was a … Read more

Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso didn’t “paint everything in sight,” but he was a prolific painter in many senses of the word. He produced over 15,000 paintings in his lifetime—working on three or more canvases a day—and he also painted … Read more

Charles Dickens working career was a little eclectic, and it started when he was quite young. At the age of 12, his father was in debtors’ prison, and Charles was removed from school by his parents and sent away to work in a shoe polish factory called Warren’s Shoeblacking Factory and Warehouse. His experiences there … Read more

Kamasutra means “guidebook” (sutra) to “sensual pleasure” (kama), and most historians believe the Kama Sutra was translated into Sanskrit by a fellow named Malianaga Vatsyayana somewhere between the third and fifth centuries A.D. Vatsyayana broke it down into an easy-to-digest step-by-step guidebook so that the basics could be followed and remembered by readers (it would, … Read more

Washington Crossing the Delaware was painted by Emanuel Leutze in 1851, a German-born painter, living at the time in Germany. The river you see in the picture is actually a stand in for the Delaware. It’s the Rhine. It’s sort of fitting, actually. When Washington crossed the icy Delaware in the cold of winter on … Read more

Nero didn’t literally play a fiddle, they didn’t have fiddles or even violins in ancient Rome. They did, however, have lyres. Nero played and composed on one regularly. He didn’t consider himself a mere politician but a richly talented artist and musician as well. When fire swept through Rome in 64 A.D , many believed … Read more

In English, the book if Adolf Hitler’s book Mein Kampf is titled My Struggle. Combined with elements of autobiography and Hitler’s political ideology, Volume 1 of the book was published in 1925 and Volume 2 in 1926. Work on the book began when he was imprisoned for political crimes after his failed revolution in Munich … Read more

Well, maybe in some of the movie cowboys they wore heels to make them look taller. The real-life cowboys, however, wore them for two reasons: to keep their feet from slipping out of the stirrups and to put some extra distance between their feet and the muck when walking through fields full of cattle excrement … Read more

The ten-gallon hat can hold about three quarts of water. So, how did it get its name, you may well ask? Some say it was just a cowboy exaggeration about the size of the hat, but those who claim to know say that it’s because the hat was advertised as being big enough for 10 … Read more

Cowboys in the American Old West were called cowpokes or cowpunchers because poke and punch is what they literally did to cattle that balked at going up the ramps leading to railcars and packing plants. Cattle prods were used to help move cattle to where they wanted. Back then, they didn’t have electric cattle prods … Read more

Both mustangs and Texas longhorns ran wild through the plains of California and Nevada when the first settlers moved west. It was just a matter of catching and domesticating them. Neither animal, though, was indigenous to the Americas-they were descended from animals that had been brought over to Mexico by Spaniards in the 1500s. Over … Read more

In the middle of the 1800s, before the U.S. got wired with telegraph, you’d send a piece of mail from the East Coast to the West and not expect it to get there for months. A simple mail exchange of “Here’s the contract; do we have a deal?” could require a half year or more … Read more

It was a dangerous job, as indicated by the newspaper ads that recruited riders: “Wanted: Young, skinny, wiry fellows. Not over 18. Must be expert riders. Willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred.” Surprisingly, though, the 183 riders, aged 11 through the mid-40s, despite the ad, survived pretty well. Only one was killed by Indians, … Read more

Some goods were carried across country, but it was an expensive and overly difficult task, coming across mountainous regions and prairie terrain. The easier, although far more distant, route west was by sea. Almost all goods, including those used to start work on the transcontinental railroad, were shipped around Cape Horn and across thousands of … Read more

No, slaves did not work on the U.S. transcontinental railroad when it was built in the 1860s. By the time work began in the 1860s, the Civil War was already raging and slavery was on its way out. Instead, two work crews began laying track from the two ends of the railroad line, and they … Read more

No the Native American Indian word “how” did not mean hello, but good guess. You’re not far off from what it’s come to mean for most American movie watchers. “How,” or something sounding similar, came from the language of the Sioux tribe. The word was used at the beginning of their sentences in the same … Read more

Gunmen in the Wild West did do the quick-draw shoot-out duel nearly as often as in the movies. In fact, there isn’t a single documented case of it ever happening like the movies portray it. The whole quick-draw myth came from early dime novels. When Wyatt Earp was asked about quick-draw shoot-outs in the 1920s, … Read more

Living in an American Wild West town was not as dangerous as you’d think. As a matter of fact, the modern-day cliche of using the Wild West as a metaphor for the dangers of big cities does a grave disservice to the olden days. Take wild, wild Dodge City. Its absolutely worst year for violence … Read more

During the 1870s, Palisades, Nevada, got a reputation as one tough little town because train passengers on rest stops there often witnessed stagecoach robberies, shoot-outs, and even Indian attacks. In reality, though, it was all a big joke. A conductor had once mentioned to a Palisades resident that his passengers were disappointed that the Wild … Read more

Covered wagon trains in the old West could travel one to two miles per hour, or the equivalent of a toddler’s walking speed. They could go about a hundred miles in a seven-day week of travel, but many devout people refused to travel on Sunday, slowing them down even further.

A dogie is what they used to call a motherless calf. Stray calves or those that have lost their mothers at too young an age are still called dogies, actually. Often the term is colloquially used to refer to all bovine in a herd. The origin of the word “dogie” is unknown, but may stem … Read more

The average speed of a cattle drive in the old West was not that much faster than a wagon train. Fifteen miles in a day was pretty typical as the cowboys moved the dogies toward a railroad stop where the cattle could be shipped for slaughter in eastern slaughterhouses. Until the railroad lines reached the … Read more

The fastest way to get across the plains was by stagecoach. Traveling day and night, you could rip through about 100 miles per day, an average of a little more than four miles an hour.

Judge Roy Bean liked to call himself “the law west of the Pecos.” He presided over his jurisdiction from his combination court and barroom in Langtry, Texas. An article in Smithsonian Magazine characterized his unschooled judging as “unfettered by legalities and governed by simple greed, prejudice, and rough-handed common sense.” When he discovered that a … Read more

Calamity Jane was a woman who lived on the Western Frontier in the late 1800s. She was a controversial character for a number of reasons, including the fact that she dressed in men’s clothes. She was known to loudly boast of her stint as a Pony Express rider and about serving under General Custer. Some … Read more

Calamity Jane was born Martha Jane Canary. She added “Burke” to that and went by “Martha” or “M. Burke” during her marriage to a man named Clinton Burke, but she dropped it after abandoning him. Her nickname, “Calamity Jane,” before and after her marriage was her name of choice. By 1902 she lived down to … Read more

Annie Oakley was a stage name, as was the “Annie,” too. Her real name was Phoebe Moses, and she was born in Darke County, Ohio. Another stage name she used in advertisements was “Little Sure Shot.” The famous Native American chief Sitting Bull gave the name to her, after being wowed at her marksmanship. As … Read more

A group of American pioneers dubbed it Death Valley in 1849 after they were seriously misrouted there on their way to California’s Gold Country. As they finally escaped the valley, one of the women turned around and shouted, “Goodbye, Death Valley!” The name stuck. Despite the name, though, only one of their members actually died … Read more

It was a desperate situation in the Donner Party. Trying to get to California, 90 people left too late, gambled on the weather holding, and lost. They were trapped in the Sierra Nevada by winter snows. Separated into several groups, stuck from November until April, they began eating their dead when the food ran out. … Read more

You’re thinking of Alferd Packer, and much of the story is a popular myth. Here’s the true story: In 1873, Alferd Packer and five other residents of Colorado went prospecting. They got lost in a snowstorm and their provisions ran out. When authorities came upon the scene months later, the five others had been killed, … Read more

The kindly author of The Wizard of Oz wrote two editorials on the subject when he was editor of the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer. Here is the core of one of them: “The Pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extermination of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries we had … Read more

Colonel John Chivington of the U.S. Army was a commander of the local fort, and it was Chivington whom the delegation of Indians came to, trying to arrange a peace treaty. Carrying an American flag, 28 men and 105 women and children believed that they had reached a sympathetic ear. They were wrong. While the … Read more

Contrary to popular myth, it was not a Native American custom but a colonial one first. Scalping on the American continent was first instituted by the Dutch colonial government around New York when they actually set a bounty for killing Indians. They came up with the idea of requiring a scalp as concrete evidence of … Read more

You’d think from the movies that the Indians were a constant threat to wagon trains crossing the plains. In reality, during the time between 1840 and 1860, when many of the worst hostilities took place, your chances of dying of sickness on the wagon trains was much higher than dying from a Native American attack. … Read more