Interesting fact of the day...

[Birchesheadpotter]

An interesting innovation of the Assyrians was the use of mass terror. Their armies would literally kill everything in sight if there was any resistance when they invaded an area. The word quickly got around, and before long all it took was the approach of an Assyrian army for their enemies to surrender.

Those pesky Assyrians

[PotteringThrough]

There are over 200 different species of blackberries in the UK

[Pretty Little Boother]

I think it was those Assyrians who also used to use prisoners as the first "attack wave", who were being blackmailed with their families' lives at ransom. They were forced to behead themselves before the real soldiers' attack, in order to show the enemy what a bunch of mental bastards they really were.

[vestanpance]

The phrase "take the piss" came from the ship's captains of London.

During the Industrial Revolution, one of the best ways to retain both strength and condition of the cotton and wool fibres was to soak them in urine during the refining process. Due to a shortage of available urine, barrels were set up in the street of all the major cities and pubgoers were encouraged to relieve themselves to help the textile industry. Once these barrels were full they were transfered from Tyburn Docks up to Liverpool.

As you might imagine, this was not considered a pleasant job and as such merchants would claim that they were transporting wine instead of urine. Once it was established that they were lying, they were accused of "taking the piss" and the phrase passed into the English language as a result.

[robdog]

The word gullible doesnt appear in the dictionary.

If you dont believe me go and check

[Arthurdollar]

´castle is 39 miles from a lot of places....Now thats interesting