Q&A
Did you know?
NAME SHAMING
When Iranian king Khosrow I captured the city of Antioch in AD 540, he had the population moved to a new city called Weh Antiok Khosrow, which translates as ‘Better than Antioch, Khosrow built this’.
STONY FACED
Judges in 12th-century China wore spectacles with lenses of dark quartz. It is said that the eyewear enabled them to hide their reactions from the people brought before them in court.
BABY BOOM
During his life, the renowned English philosopher Thomas Hobbes claimed that he had been born prematurely as a result of his mother’s fear at the sailing of the Spanish Armada in 1588.
COME AGAIN
Captain Sir Mansfield Smith-Cumming, first chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service, devised a rather disgusting option for invisible ink for his agents: semen. “Every man his own stylo,” was his motto.