Curious Facts

Everything below is in the book — each fact links straight to the page it comes from.

The Godolphin Arabian, founder of the English thoroughbred, was pulling a water cart in Paris. The little brown horse — "he only stood about fifteen hands" — was reportedly sent as a present to Louis XIV, then stolen, and "he is said to have been stolen and taken to Paris, where he did the humblest possible duty in a water cart." An Englishman, Mr. Coke, bought him for £3; by report the horse later "pined away and died of remorse after accidentally killing his favourite cat," thereafter attacking every cat he met. Read it in the book →
At Tutbury the bull was soaped, docked and had its nose blown full of pepper before the minstrels chased it. By the custom of the manor, the bailiff provided a bull with the tips of its horns sawn off, "his body smeared all over with soap, and his nose blown full of beaten pepper." If a minstrel could cut off a piece of its skin before it crossed into Derbyshire, it became "the King of Music's bull"; the Duke of Devonshire abolished the whole ceremony in 1778, "respecting rather civility than antiquity." Read it in the book →
The first polo match in England was chiefly remarkable for the players' swearing. When the 10th Hussars met the 9th Lancers, the Hussars won by three goals to two, but "it was admitted by all who were looking on that it was more remarkable for the strength of the language used by the players than for anything else." Read it in the book →
A monk crossing the Great St Bernard in 1188 could not write home because his ink had frozen solid. John de Bremble of Christ Church, Canterbury, apologised: "lo! I found my ink-bottle filled with a dry mass of ice; my fingers, too, refused to write, my beard was stiff with frost, and my breath congealed into a long icicle." He prayed only to be restored to his brethren "that I may tell them that they come not into this place of torment." Read it in the book →
The oldest yacht club's rules capped the admiral's wine at two dozen bottles — unless judges were present. The Water Club of Cork Harbour, on a permanent footing by 1720, resolved "that no admiral presume to bring more than two dozen of wine to his treat, for it has always been deemed a breach of the ancient rules and constitutions of the club, except when my Lords the Judges are invited." The wording proves the club already had "ancient rules" before 1720. Read it in the book →
A private yachtsman built a brig in 1833 and beat the entire Royal Navy experimental squadron. Lord Belfast took the length of the most despised class of naval vessel — the 10-gun brigs, "commonly known as 'bathing machines'" — and "declared that he could construct a brig that would outsail any vessel in the Royal Navy." His "Water Witch," fully stored, gunned and crewed, beat the squadron off Cork "in a way hardly to be credited." Read it in the book →
A 1517 match-winner was ridden bareback and trained on white wine. In a match early on a May morning between the Duke of Suffolk and the Seigneur Nicolle Dex, owners riding: "The Frenchman won, riding without a saddle, his horse having been trained on a copious diet of white wine." Read it in the book →
After the Conquest the law told you which hawk your rank entitled you to. "The strictest regulations were made as to the class of hawk which each man in his rank or degree might keep": "The Eagle and the Vulture for an Emperor. The Gerfalcon and Tiercel of the Gerfalcon for a King. The Falcon gentle and Tiercel gentle for a Prince." In the Bayeux tapestry Harold embarks for Normandy with a hawk on his fist. Read it in the book →
A snipe's ear sits below its eye, not behind it. "A remarkable peculiarity in both woodcock and snipe is the position of the ear, which is placed below and not behind the eye, as in other birds." The eye is set so far back and high that the brain is "curiously tilted over," apparently so the bird can glimpse its surroundings even while boring its bill into the ground. Read it in the book →
Zermatt kept a chapel to stop the mountain demons coming down the valley. Alpine folk held that snowfields and rock peaks housed demons and the spirits of the damned, dwelling "even to-day amongst the crags of the Matterhorn," and "to keep them from invading the Zermatt Valley there still stands the Chapel of the Black Lake, which they dare not pass," visited annually for mass "to renew the power of the charm." Pilate, meanwhile, was believed buried in a pond atop Pilatus, with devils dancing round it. Read it in the book →
Pliny described Thracians and wild hawks hunting in partnership and splitting the bag. Men beat the woods and reeds, the hawks struck the flushed birds down, "and on the other side the hawkers and fowlers, when they have caught the fowl, divide the booty with the hawks," releasing birds again for the hawks to take for themselves. The hawks even signalled by "their manner of cry and flying together" that there was good game abroad. Read it in the book →
"Eclipse first and the rest nowhere" was a technical statement, not a boast. A horse is "nowhere" in racing language "if he is more than 240 yards behind when the winner passes the post" — which Bellario and Tortoise reportedly were after only two miles. The book firmly rejects the legend that Eclipse ran a mile in a minute: "no horse has ever galloped a mile in a minute and a half." Read it in the book →
Croquet's ancestry is known only because someone found the old malls and balls in a ruined house. Pall-Mall, "the favourite sport of Charles II. and his courtiers," vanished so completely that "it is mainly due to the accidental discovery in a ruined house of the malls and balls which were then used" that the pedigree can be traced. Its course was hard-beaten earth "dressed with powdered cockle-shells," with "two high arches of iron" in place of six hoops — and the game returned to England not from France but from Ireland. Read it in the book →
A Cesarewitch favourite was so lazy his jockey was warned never to stop riding. The Cob — whose dam, The Roe, "was twenty-four years old when he was born" — was thought unbeatable in 1886, but "'If you drop your hands on him he will stop directly,' his rider was told again and again by both the Duke and his trainer." The Cob led the field a rare gallop and had practically won. Read it in the book →
In parts of Australia only married elders were permitted to eat emu flesh. The writer records that among the Aboriginal people's "curious laws was one, strictly adhered to, that only married elders might eat emu's flesh, doubtless a primitive method of preservation." It was also believed, "though wrongly," that the emu — which trusts to its keen sight — was deaf. Read it in the book →
The last recorded bull-baitings had to be helped along with beer and gin. The abandonment of Queen Caroline's trial was celebrated with a baiting at Aylesbury in 1820, and George III's jubilee with one at Windsor; "so late as 1828 there was a baiting at Oakley, for which the bull was dosed with beer and gin 'to promote a little excitement in him.'" At Wokingham the poor resented suppression so much that they broke into the pens and staged informal baitings for years. Read it in the book →
A greyhound admired less for his coursing than for playing leapfrog with his owner. Barrator never won at Waterloo, but his master's command of him drew the crowds: at a word he would lie down and ignore a hare passing close by, "or he would play at leapfrog with his master, or he would fly at and worry a man." Read it in the book →
In a town bull-running the sole rule was no iron on the bull-clubs. Shops shut and business stopped for the day, and "the only rule of the game seems to have been that there must be no iron on the bull-clubs." Then, in Butcher's phrase, "hivie, shivie, tag and rag, men, women, and children of all sorts and sizes, with all the dogs in the town, promiscuously run after him" — including, to the chronicler's shame, senators and matrons. Read it in the book →
Henry VIII's jockeys rode in black satin caps and were paid 24s. 8d. for a win. The Privy Purse accounts show racing establishment wages: "A Royal jockey received a gratuity of 24s. 8d. for winning, in addition to his 2s. per week and 5d. a day for board wages," plus "a gratuity of 18s. 4d. to the trainer and to the 'boye that ranne the Barbary horse.'" Their riding kit was doublets of burgess satin with "Ryding cappes of blac satin and lyned with black vellute for the King's grace." Read it in the book →
Yachtsmen once experimented for the Navy — until warships got too uncomfortable to own. No private gentleman could afford to experiment in battleships, and "the discomforts of life on board torpedo boats and 'destroyers' are such as to deter any sane man from building one for his own use." The Royal Yacht Squadron's last formal manoeuvre was the 1887 Jubilee sail-past at Osborne, ending with the commodore's signal "Steam full speed ahead." Read it in the book →
Mountaineering was defended in 1911 on the grounds that gold would one day be mined in the Karakoram. Answering the charge that climbing was useless, the writer argues high regions may yet "prove to possess economical importance": "It is more than probable that gold will some day be found at high altitudes in the Karakoram Mountains. When it is found it will be worked." The climber's craft, he notes, "did not exist in the year 1850." Read it in the book →
Ceylon crocodiles were caught with a dead dog and a sharpened toggle. A stick sharpened at both ends is tied at its centre to a dozen strands of twine leading to a rope: "The bait is a dead dog, in the body of which the wooden stake is completely hidden." The lines are set in infested tanks and inspected until one vanishes, after which the crocodile is tracked to its landing place, found held fast by the toggle in the undergrowth. Read it in the book →
One of coursing's great foundation bitches was bought from a tramp. "About the same time appeared Mr. Sharpe's Monarch, whose dam was bought from a tramp." The book concludes that "the bitch must have shown great quality, and the purchaser must have been a rare good judge, for her son has left his mark on the stud-book to the present day." Read it in the book →
An early greyhound stud-book collapsed because owners would not share their pedigrees. Breeders were so jealous of their blood that Thacker excused his errors by saying "he would not venture on the impertinence of writing to the owners for information." The book was discontinued, leaving a gap of about ten years. The author adds that "the want of communication and the jealousy of rival breeders helped the great law of the survival of the fittest." Read it in the book →
The rackets champion of the world was, for eight years, a Parsee from Bombay. Gilbert Browne "was beaten in 1903 by Jamsetji, of Bombay, a Parsee, who came over in 1911 to defend his title against C. Williams, professional at Harrow" — and lost it. Of all the champions since 1820, only one amateur, Sir William Hart-Dyke, ever held the title. Read it in the book →
Croquet was hailed as "the tree of life," then became a national joke. The 1860s craze was so complete that it "inspired Capt. Reid to declare that the game had become 'the national pastime,' and was 'to be cherished as the tree of life'!" After 1875 "it became a laughing stock, and the butt of much clumsy jesting." Read it in the book →
A seventeenth-century match ruined so many gentlemen that Parliament capped recoverable gambling debts at £10. Before Old Merlin's famous Newmarket match, "the South country gentlemen observed to those of the North that they would bet them gold whilst they had it, and then they might sell their land." The sequel: "Several gentlemen having entirely ruined their fortunes, a law was passed by Parliament against the recovery of any debt exceeding £10." Read it in the book →
A chapel was built on an 11,600-foot Alpine peak in 1358. Occasional "curious" persons visited summits long before mountaineering existed: "Trajan climbed Etna to see the sunrise. In the eleventh century an attempt was made to reach the top of the Roche Melon (11,600 feet) near Susa, and it was actually climbed and a chapel built on the peak in 1358." Read it in the book →
Early polo matches began with both teams galloping at the ball from opposite goal lines. "Each side started at a signal from behind their goal line, the ball being placed in the centre of the ground. Very amusing indeed were the incidents that arose through this rule." As the game grew faster this "dangerous practice" was dropped; the first balls used were india-rubber and tennis balls, and cantering was the fastest pace ever indulged in. Read it in the book →
One yacht was so fast that her whole racing class simply gave up. "'Clara' won seventeen matches the first year she came out," and by 1885 it was thought hopeless to enter any existing twenty-tonner against her; there was "practically no racing," she was sold to America, and the twenty-ton class "became temporarily extinct" until 1888. Read it in the book →