Wedding

A wedding is a ceremony during which two people become married. It is usually between a man (the bridegroom) and a woman (the bride). In some places, same-sex weddings are legal. Traditionally, the wedding is held at the bride's church, temple, synagogue or other religious centre, or the home of her parents is the site of her wedding.

Roman Catholic white wedding (Philippines) By Judgefloro

WEDDINGS IN HISTORY

Bridal veils began in ancient Greece and Rome where a veil was said to protect against evil spirits.

In 29AD Jesus attended a wedding at Cana in Galilee and turned water into wine. Weddings in Jesus' day were week-long festivals. Banquets would be prepared for many guests, and the week would be spent celebrating the life of the married couple. Often the whole town was invited and everybody would come-it was considered an insult to refuse an invitation to a wedding. To accommodate many people, careful planning was needed. To run out of wine was more than embarrassing; it broke the strong unwritten laws of hospitality.

Ireland held Tailteann mass marriages where couples were allowed to wed and be married for a year to see if they were fit for each other. They could divorce by proceeding to the so called "separation hills" without leaving a mark on their reputation. This was legal until the 13th century.

A ring has been included in wedding ceremonies since the 12th century. Pope Innocent III ordained that marriages had to take place in church and that a wedding ring should be exchanged during the service.

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King Richard II of England married Anne of Bohemia in Westminster Abbey on January 20, 1382. The king had to pawn the Crown Jewels to pay for the wedding.

The first association of diamonds with weddings comes from an account of a Hapsburg emperor giving a diamond engagement ring to his wife in 1477.

The wedding of King Henry VII of England and Elizabeth of York on January 18, 1486 saw the first recorded use of fireworks in Britain.

The best man is the chief assistant to the groom at a wedding and (along with the maid of honour) The Phrase "best man" is of Scottish origin, and recalls the days when a bridegroom simply abducted the woman he wanted as a bride. To help him in that task the groom enlisted a cadre of friends in case the bride needed to be kidnapped from disapproving parents. The toughest and bravest of these groomsmen was the best man.

The 'best' man's role was also to beat back angry relatives as they burst into the ceremony-allegedly the reason why the bride stands on the left of the groom and the best man. If things got nasty, they could draw their swords with their right hands.

The earliest surviving written use of the term best man comes from 1782, observing that "best man and best maid" in the Scottish dialect are equivalent to "bride-man and bride-maid" in England.

Felix Mendelssohn wrote "The Wedding March" in 1843 as part of his suite of incidental music for a production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. It was used as the backdrop for the climactic wedding scene in the play.

"The Wedding March" was played at the marriage of Queen Victoria's eldest daughter, Victoria, and Friedrich of Prussia on January 25, 1858, after which it became a popular wedding recessional.

In 1922 the American Episcopal church voted to excise the words "to obey" from its wedding service's marriage vows.

The wedding of Jacqueline and John F. Kennedy took place on September 12, 1953, at St Mary's Church, in Newport, Rhode Island. It was considered the social event of the season with an estimated 800 guests at the ceremony and 1000 at the lavish reception that followed at Hammersmith Farm.

Senator John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy on their wedding day

A worldwide television audience of over 700 million people watched the wedding of Lady Diana Spencer and Prince Charles on July 29, 1982. The ceremony took place at St Paul's Cathedral in London. The wedding vows had only one omission. Diana was the first royal bride not to promise to obey.

RECORDS

The tallest couple on record was married in 1871 when 7'5"  Anna Hanen Swan married 7'2" Martin Van Buren Bates.

103-year-old Harry Stevens married 84-year-old Thelma Lucas at the Caravilla Retirement Home in Wisconsin on December 3, 1984. Harry was the oldest bridegroom in history.

The oldest bride in history is Minnie Munro, who was 102 years old when she married Dudley Reid, who was 83 years old, in Point Clare, New South Wales, Australia on May 31, 1991. The couple had been friends for many years, and they decided to tie the knot after Reid's wife died. The wedding was a small ceremony, with only close friends and family in attendance. Munro wore a white dress, and Reid wore a suit. The couple exchanged vows, and they were pronounced husband and wife. After the wedding, the couple went on a honeymoon to Hawaii. They lived together for the rest of their lives, and they died within a few months of each other in 2002.

The largest wedding reception was in India with a banquet for more than 150,000 guests. It was held on September 7, 1995 when former Tamil Nadu chief minister and movie star Jayalalitha Jayaram hosted a reception banquet at her foster son's wedding in the 20 hectare (50 acre) grounds in Madras, India. The wedding is reported to have cost over 750 million rupees (US$23,299,162).

On May 23, 1988, Fleming Koch and Nina Tolgard, a Danish couple, made history by participating in the earliest documented underwater wedding ceremony. The remarkable event took place in Mauritius, where the couple, adorned in scuba diving gear, exchanged vows in the presence of a local priest and a select group of close friends and family. As they declared their love for each other, vibrant coral reefs and a multitude of colorful fish served as witnesses to their unique and memorable union.

In 2001, 34 couples from 22 countries got married simultaneously while 32.8ft (10m) underwater in Thailand, setting a world record. Every couple received waterproof wedding certificates — before taking off their oxygen tank mouthpieces to kiss.

The largest underwater wedding took place when 303 divers attended the marriage of Ewa Staronska and Pawel Burkowski at a flooded open mine pit at Jaworzno, Poland, in 2011. The bride, groom and priest — a licensed diver — used sign language and waterproof placards throughout the service.

FUN WEDDING FACTS

A woman in Torquay, England, spent £10,000 to repeat her daughter's wedding on November 26, 1988 because she didn't like the video first time around.

Despite Christians making up only 1.5% of the population of Japan, the majority of Japanese people are married in a Christian ceremony. By contrast, the traditional Shinto ceremony makes up only 1 in 6 Japanese weddings.

 In South Korea, the number of guests at a wedding is so important that "fake guest" agencies exist.

The global wedding industry was worth $300 billion as of 2016. The United States wedding industry alone was estimated to be worth $60 billion as of the same year. In the United States, the wedding industry employs over one million people throughout 600,000 businesses, and grows 2% each year.

The average number of guests that attend a wedding in the United States is 189.

Here is a list of songs often played at weddings.

Here is a list of songs that describe a wedding.

Source NASB Life Application Study Bible, Second Edition, The Book of Answers by Barbara Berliner, March Hares and Monkeys' Uncles by Harry Oliver.

Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day is an annual celebration of romantic love. On February 14 each year lovers exchange Valentine's cards, flowers, chocolates, or just a nice gift.

HISTORY

The Roman Emperor Claudius Gothicus (May 10, 214 – January 270), decided to abolish the institution of marriage for many, as he felt that husbands did not make good soldiers. Claudius tried to enforce the new law with the utmost rigor.  Valentine of Terni, who had become bishop of Interamna, considered such a policy against the spirit of God and of human nature and was secretly marrying Christians. His "crime" was discovered and while on a temporary stay in Rome Bishop Valentine was arrested, imprisoned, and brutally clubbed to death on February 14, 269.

Bishop Valentine had prayed for the restoration of a young girl's sight, and she was cured. Shortly before his death he wrote the girl a farewell message signed "From your Valentine."

Reconstruction. Oil painting by Leonhard Beck, around 1510)

St. Valentine's Day was set as February 14th by Pope Gelasius I in 494. He included Saint Valentine among all those "... whose names are justly reverenced among men, but whose acts are known only to God."

The idea of a mid-February romantic celebration may have been inspired by the Roman fertility festival of Lupercalia on February 15. The festival which originated in pre-Christian Rome, honoured Lupercalia, the god of sheep and shepherds. That wasn't very romantic, however, and Lupercalia was later replaced by Februata June, a festival where young people chose the person they would marry.

In the Middle Ages, young men and women drew names from a bowl to see who their valentines would be. They would wear these names on their sleeves for one week. To wear your heart on your sleeve now means that it is easy for other people to know how you are feeling.

A traditional tale says, the type of man a woman would marry can be told by the bird she first saw on Valentine's Day.

Geoffrey Chaucer, who is more known as the writer of The Canterbury Tales. also wrote other things, such as a 700 line poem in 1382 called the Parliament of Foules, written in honor of the first anniversary of King Richard II of England and Anne of Bohemia's engagement. Chaucer mentioned, in his “Parliament of Foules” a belief that February 14 was the date birds choose their mate. This poem is generally considered to include the first explicit Valentine's Day / love connection.

The world’s first Valentine message is believed to have been sent by Margery Brews of Norfolk, to her fiancé John Paston in 1477. She addressed it to "my right wellbelovyd voluntyne".

An English Victorian era Valentine card located in the Museum of London

Anne of Burgundy was the first woman to receive a diamond engagement ring. It was given to her by Maximilian I of Germany in 1477. Previously only men wore diamonds, as a symbol of their courage and virility. However after Archduke Maximilian of Austria gave a diamond ring to Mary of Burgundy, diamonds have been the gem of choice for men who wanted to melt a woman's heart.

In 1537, England's King Henry VII officially declared February 14 the holiday of St. Valentine's Day.

Cadbury's created the first heart-shaped chocolate box. Richard Cadbury came up with the idea for St. Valentine’s Day, in 1861.

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The Catholic church dropped St Valentine's feast from the General Roman Calendar in 1969, leaving his liturgical celebration to local calendars.

Thailand issued the world’s first rose-scented postage stamps in February 2002 for Valentine’s Day.

A Pakistan high court  banned Valentine's Day celebrations across the country in 2017, since the holiday is not a part of Muslim tradition.

VALENTINE'S DAY FUN FACTS

St. Valentine was not only the patron saint of love and marriage, but also of beekeepers, epilepsy and plague.

In Finland, Valentine's Day is called Ystävänpäivä, which means Friend's Day and focuses on remembering friends.

Black Day is the South Korean anti-Valentine's Day, where singles dress in black and gather together to eat dark colored food. Jajangmyeon, a savory black bean sauce over noodles, is the preferred dish for those resenting Valentine's to commiserate over.

In China, a holiday called Qi Xi is also called "Chinese Valentine's Day", especially by younger people. Qi Xi is traditionally held on the 7th day of the 7th month of the lunar calendar.

Valentine's Day in Japan is a day when girls buy chocolates and other gifts for boys they like. A month later, on March 14th, is called White Day. On that day, the boys will buy gifts to give back to the girls who bought them gifts on Valentine's Day.

Valentine’s Day is the second most popular day for sending cards, beaten only by Christmas.

3% of all pet owners around the world give Valentines gifts to their pet.

Worldwide, over 50 million roses are given for Valentine's Day each year.

15% of U.S. women send themselves flowers on Valentine's Day.

220,000 is the average number of wedding proposals on Valentine's Day each year.

Over $1 billion worth of chocolate is purchased for Valentine's Day in the U.S.

Sources Daily Express, Latintimes

Proposal (marriage)

In ancient Greece, tossing an apple to a girl signified a proposal of marriage. Catching it meant she accepted.

In 1288 Queen Margaret of Scotland made a ruling that on Leap Year Day a woman could propose marriage to the man of her choice. She also stated that any man who refused a proposal on leap year must pay a fine or buy the woman 12 pairs of gloves.

The use of the name Great Britain was officially used for the first time 1474 when a marriage proposal between Edward IV of England's daughter, Cecily, and James IV of Scotland was written.

A woodcut depicting a "one-knee proposal", Germany, 1815

As a monarch, Queen Victoria had to propose to Prince Albert.

In 1936 Miss Daphne Kearley became the first British flight attendant, working on Air Dispatch’s luxury service between Croydon, England and Le Bourget in France. She received 299 proposals of marriage in her first ten months in the job.

220,000 is the average number of wedding proposals on Valentine's Day each year.

Marriage

HISTORY

In ancient Sparta, men who were unmarried by the time they were 30 forfeited the right to vote.

The Romans thought it unlucky to get married in May. According to the poet Ovid, "bad girls wed in May".

In ancient Rome, senators were forbidden to marry the daughter of an actor or actress.

Claudius II banned marriage for young Roman men because he believed single men made better soldiers.

In the marriage ceremony of the ancient Incas, the couple was considered officially wed when they took off their sandals and handed them to each other.

Augustine of Hippo declared that the purpose of marriage was procreation.

In the 1500's most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May and they still smelled reasonably good in the following month. However, since they were starting to be a tad smelly, brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.

When John Laydon and Anna Burras married together in late 1608 in Jamestown, Virginia, it was the first ever Christian marriage in the American colonies. Anne Burras was the maid to Mrs. Thomas Forrest. She arrived in Jamestown aged 14, on September 30, 1608 on the Mary and Margaret, the ship bringing the Second Supply to the colony. Their daughter Virginia Laydon was the first child of English colonists to be born in the Jamestown colony.

Between childbirth, communicable disease, and natural disaster, the average marriage in colonial America lasted under 12 years.

Peter I of Russia issued a decree on January 31, 1714 allowing young men to get married only after they had completed their studies.

In Georgian Britain marriage unions were often arranged by parents who had no heir and were looking for their daughter to marry well. Single London women would often head for the Assembly Rooms, where they could parade in front of a host of eligible bachelors.

Until 1912, if a woman in the UK committed a crime in her husband's presence, he was legally considered to have coerced her into doing it.

In 1938 the state of New York passed a law requiring medical tests for marriage license applicants, the first US state to do so.

The United States Supreme Court declared in the 1967 Loving v. Virginia case that all U.S. state laws which prohibit interracial marriage are unconstitutional.

Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko became on August 10, 2003 the first person to marry in space. He married Ekaterina Dmitrieva, who was in Texas, while he was 240 miles over New Zealand, on the International Space Station.

Cosmonaut Yuri Ivanovich Malenchenko

FUN MARRIAGE FACTS

Research has shown that men who are smaller at birth are significantly less likely to get married.

If you're 16 and older, there's a 20% chance that you've already met the person you'll one day marry.

The original phrase "tying the knot" came from Swiss royalty using symbolic pretzels at wedding ceremonies.

Wedding rings are worn on the fourth finger of the left hand because the Romans believed that a nerve led directly from there to the heart.

A bride in China traditionally wears the color red.

Polygamy is still rife in parts of Africa. In Senegal, for example, nearly 47 percent of marriages are multiple.

The largest number of monogamous marriages is held by Glynn Wolfe, an American Baptist minister who resided in Blythe, California, Wolfe married 29 different times, although one of his marriages was annulled.  

Some sources, including discussions on Reddit and biographical accounts, mention 31 ceremonies or relationships, but Guinness counts 29 marriages for the official record.

Wolfe died on June 10, 1997 in a Redlands, California nursing home of heart disease at the age of 88. His body went unclaimed, and he was eventually buried in Blythe. Wolfe's first marriage was in 1927, and his last was in 1996. 

Wolfe's final marriage was to Linda Taylor, who holds the Guinness World Record for the most-married woman (23 times). The marriage was a publicity stunt, and a week after the wedding, Taylor went back to her hometown in Indiana, but she kept her married name. She died single in 2010.

Wolfe died a month and a half before his 89th birthday. When Wolfe passed away, none of the women he married and only one of his 19-odd children attended the funeral.

It is estimated that as many as 80% of the marriages in human history have been between first or second cousins.

10.4% of the world’s population is either in a marriage/relationship with their second cousin or closer relative or is the result of such a union.

It is legal to marry your first cousin in California and New York... but not in Kentucky, Louisiana, or Mississippi.

About 70% of Asian women are in their first marriage, versus 54% white women, 53% Hispanic women, and 37% black women.

Britain’s shortest marriage  is said to be the four days Tammy Driver, 21, and Nicky Pearce, 29, were together before a violent row at their home near Aberdare, South Wales, led to him being jailed.

The longest marriage ever recorded is that of David Jacob Hiller and Sarah Davy Hiller, who were married for 88 years 349 days, as of April 8, 1898, when Mrs. Hiller passed away. They were married in 1810 in North Carolina, USA. The couple had 10 children and 54 grandchildren. They were both devout Christians and active members of their church. They were also known for their strong work ethic and their commitment to each other. David Hiller was a farmer and Sarah Hiller was a homemaker. 

Another North Carolina hold the record for the longest 20th century marriage. North Carolina couple Zelmyra and Herbert Fisher were married on May 13, 1924, and stayed together 86 years and 290 days until Herbert passed away in 2011 at the age of 105. Zelmyra passed away two years later, also at the age of 105.

Britain's longest marriage was between Karam and Katari Chand, of Bradford, who tied the knot in India in 1925 during the British Raj. They moved to England 40 years later and stayed together for 91 years until the death of Karam Chand, at the age of 110 on September 30, 2016.

Under French law it is possible, with permission from the President, to marry a dead person as long as you can prove they intended to marry you.

Source Mail On Sunday

Kissing

The word 'kiss' is from the old English 'cyssan' which probably comes from proto-Germanic expression 'kussijanan or kuss' which is understood to be based on the sound that kissing makes.

HISTORY

The oldest evidence of a kissing-type behaviour comes from Hindu Vedic Sanskrit texts from over 3,500 years ago. Kissing was described as inhaling each other's soul.

The ancient Romans distinguished three types of kiss: osculum (a peck-on-the-cheek), basium (an amorous kiss) and saviolum (a full-blooded snog).

Roman Emperor Tiberius banned kissing, believing it caused the spread of a fungal disease called mentagra (inflamed hair follicles).

Using an 'x' for a kiss dates back to the Middle Ages. The illiterate would sign documents with a cross to symbolize Christ, then kiss it to confirm their devotion.  

The English of medieval times kissed as much and, unlike many of their contemporaries on the continent. The Dutch humanist, Erasmus, noted delightfully how he was greeted by his English hostesses with a lip locking kiss.

Kissing was banned in England on July 16, 1439 to stop the spread of pestilence and disease. It was remarkable that the Parliament of King Henry VI of England should issue a proclamation banning kissing, centuries before the understanding of the concepts of hygiene and germs.

Kissing in public was banned in Naples on March 9, 1562. The law was part of a broader effort by the city's rulers to promote public decency and morality, and it was enforced with strict penalties, including the threat of death.

The ban on public kissing was not unique to England or Naples; in fact, similar laws were passed in many other cities throughout Europe in the centuries that followed. These laws were often rooted in concerns about the spread of disease, as well as a desire to maintain social order and decorum.

Romeo and Juliet in a painting by Sir Frank Dicksee.

According to seventeenth century conventions, when kissing under the mistletoe, you kiss, then pick a berry off the mistletoe, then kiss again and pull another berry, and continue until all the berries are gone.

The inhabitants of Mangaia island in the South Pacific had never heard of kissing until the English arrived in the 1700s.

'Air-kiss' was first seen as a noun in 1887 but not recorded as a verb until 1975.

The first screen kiss was between May Irwin and John Rice in the 1896 short movie The Kiss. The film was around 18 seconds long, and depicted a re-enactment of the kiss between May Irwin and John Rice from the final scene of the stage musical, The Widow Jones. Denounced as obscene, it caused many to rail against decadence in the new medium of silent film.

There is a popular urban myth that the French banned kissing at railway stations on April 5, 1910 as they claimed it delayed train departures. The origins of this myth can be traced back to a humorous article published in Le Figaro on April 1, 1910, which claimed that the government was planning to ban kissing in public as a way to improve efficiency and punctuality in public transport. The article was clearly meant as an April Fool's Day joke, but it was later taken out of context and reported as fact by some media outlets.

Filming the 1950 musical The Toast of New Orleans, Mario Lanza kept trying to french kiss Kathryn Grayson which was made even worse by his garlic breath. Costume designer Helen Rose sewed brass into Grayson's gloves, so that anytime Lanza tried to kiss her, she hit him with the brass-filled glove.

The first interracial kiss on American TV took place on between Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) and Lt.Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) on the 1968 "Plato's Stepchildren" episode of Star Trek.

The need to kiss does not have a physical explanation. It is still unknown why humans find pleasure in exchanging saliva.

RECORDS

The most anyone has paid for a kiss at a charity auction is $50,000 (£39,000) with actress Sharon Stone in 2003.

On July 5-6, 2005 a couple in London broke the record for the longest kiss when they kept their lips locked for 31 hours, 30 minutes and 30 seconds. (They kissed without taking break for food or water and were later hospitalized for dehydration).

Their record was broken by Ekkachai and Laksana Tiranarat of Thailand at an event in Pattaya, Thailand, on February 12-14 2013. They set a new landmark for the world's longest kiss by smooching for 58 hours 35 minutes 58 seconds.

The world record for most kisses in a minute by a couple is 258, achieved by Californians Paul Fremeau and Alina Evans in 2012, who switched from kissing on the lips to the forehead because it was quicker.

The world record  for most kisses in a minute by one person to different people was achieved by Germany's Florian Silbereisen. He planted 117 kisses in 60 seconds on the live TV program Das Winterfest der Volksmusik.

The longest kiss in a movie is in Andy Warhol's Kiss. Rufus Collins and Naomi Levine smooched for the entire 50 minutes of the film.

The record for most kisses in a movie is 127 by Lionel Barrymore in the 1926 film Don Juan. The recipients were Mary Astor and Estelle Taylor. The movie holds the record for the biggest total of kisses — 191 over 110 minutes

TYPES

The science and study of kissing is called 'philematology.'

90% of people kiss although kissing customs vary across the world, according to anthropologists.

Scholars do not know if the act of kissing is instinctual or learned. Some cultures in Africa and Asia do not seem to practice it, although it is hard to say if they have never seen or heard about it.

The Oxford English Dictionary lists 52 different words meaning a kiss or kissing. These range from 'baisemain' (a kiss on the hand) to 'exosculation' (a hearty kiss).

Thirty-three percent of people open their eyes while kissing.

About two-thirds of people always tip their head to the right when they kiss. Some scientists speculate this preference starts in the womb.

Most people think the Eskimo Kiss is just rubbing noses, but it's actually an 11-step procedure which includes pressing your nose into your partner's cheek and inhaling while making a smacking noise, without kissing, to the side of your partner's lips. What they're doing is inhaling the scent of their partner.

Bretons traditionally kiss each other only once on the cheek, unlike their more effusive compatriots in the rest of France who opt for two, three or four pecks.

BIOLOGY AND HEALTH BENEFITS

Kissing predominately uses one muscle called the orbicularis oris, which is responsible for puckering one's lips while kissing.

It is said that the French kiss involves all the muscles in the face while a 'pucker kiss' entails only two.

Kissing is good for teeth. The anticipation of a kiss increases the flow of saliva to the mouth, giving the teeth a plaque-dispersing wash.

Passionately kissing for one minute burns 26 calories.

According to a Chinese newspaper article, published in Beijing in 1992, a kiss takes three minutes off your life because it speeds up and increases the pressure on your heart. Another paper responded, stating that kissing could prolong your life, was beneficial to your teeth and excellent for slimmers, burning off three calories per smooch.

A kiss can be ten times more effective than morphine in reducing pain, as it's thought that it activates the body's natural pain killers.

The act of kissing releases oxytocin in the brain - A hormone that strengthens the emotional bond between two people.

FUN KISSING FACTS

The study of kissing started some time in the nineteenth century and is called Philematology.

William Cane, author of the book The Art of Kissing, surveyed over 100,000 people and found that 96% of women preferred kisses on their necks the most.

The average age for a first kiss is 15.

41% of people experienced their first kiss between the ages of 13-15.

On average, we spend 340 hours or just over 14 days of our lives kissing.

Two out of three people tilt their heads to the right when kissing.

After Disney released Princess and the Frog, over 50 children were hospitalized with salmonella from kissing frogs.

Sources Fantastic Facts by John May, Daily Express, International Business Times, Daily Mail

Honeymoon

Four thousand years ago in Babylonia, the bride's father would give his son-in-law all the mead he could drink. Mead is a honey beer, and since the Babylonian calendar was lunar, this period was called the "honey month." Today it's called a "honeymoon."

In the Old Testament, a newly married couple was encouraged to spend a year-long honeymoon at the homes of their families. "For one year he (a recently married man) is to be free to stay at home and bring happiness to the wife he has married." Deuteronomy 24:5.

In 1812  the scientist Sir Humphry Davy married a wealthy Scottish widow, Jane Apreece , three days after being knighted. She disapproved of science especially after her husband took a chemical chest on their honeymoon.

English artist John Constable first started painting the sea on his honeymoon in Dorset.

The debt-laden Fyodor Dostoyevsky married Anna Grigorieva Snitkina on February 15, 1867 in Trinity Cathedral, Saint Petersburg. The 7,000 rubles Dostoyevsky had earned from the recently published Crime and Punishment did not cover their debts, forcing Anna to sell her valuables. On April 14, 1867 they began a delayed honeymoon in Germany with the money gained from the sale.

Thomas Hardy and Emma Gifford married on September 17, 1874 at St Peter's Church, Paddington, London. The Hardys went on honeymoon to Dartington Hall, in the west country, Queen's Road, in Brighton, then sailed to Dieppe and travelled by train to Rouen and Paris.

The 60-year-old George Eliot married the 40 year-old American banker George Cross at St Georges, Hanover Square, London. Cross jumped out of the window of their hotel bedroom into Venice's Grand Canal on their honeymoon, but survived.

Root Beer began as an herbal tea made of various roots, berries, and herbs for cough and mouth sores. It was created by pharmacist Charles E. Hires on his honeymoon.

There were 13 newly-wed couples celebrating their honeymoon on the Titanic.

Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald were married in New York's St. Patrick's Cathedral. They honeymooned at the Biltmore Hotel in New York until asked to leave because of their behaviour.

Queen Elizabeth II was given her first corgi as an 18th-birthday gift in 1944. The then-princess named the dog Susan and adored her pet corgi so much that she took her on honeymoon.

During their honeymoon, John Lennon and Yoko Ono held their first Bed-In for Peace at the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel between March 25- 31 1969.

The world’s longest honeymoon, taken by Mike and Anne Howard, from New York clocked up six continents, 33 countries and 302 places. It took 675 days.

Homosexuality

Claudius, the fourth emperor of the Roman Empire was the only one of the first 15 emperors to not like men or boys. He only took women as his lovers.

Several Emperors were in same-sex unions, with Nero the first to have married a man. He wore a veil to wed former slave Pythagoras, and acted as husband to Sporus, a male lookalike of his dead wife Poppaea Sabrina.

Same-sex marriage was outlawed by Roman Emperor Constantius II in AD 342.

Oddly, no term existed for "homosexuality" in ancient Greece - there were only a variety of expressions referring to specific homosexual roles. Experts find this baffling, as the old Greek culture regarded male love in the highest regard.

The first documented same-sex marriage was between two men. The Catholic Church allowed its first same-sex marriage when Pedro Díaz and Muño Vandilaz wed in the Galician municipality of Rairiz de Veiga in Spain on April 16, 1061. They were married by a priest at a small chapel.

Canada's first-ever criminal trial for the crime of homosexuality took place in September 1648, when a military drummer stationed at the French garrison in Ville-Marie, New France was sentenced to the galleys for sodomy by the local Sulpician priests. After an intervention by the Jesuits in Quebec City, the drummer's sentence was commuted on the condition that he accept the position of New France's first permanent executioner.

France was the first Western European country to decriminalize homosexuality in 1791 during the French Revolution. The man who presented it, politician Louis-Michel le Peletier, stated that only "true crimes" ought to be punished, and not "superstition."

James Pratt (1805–1835), also known as John Pratt, and John Smith (1795-1835) were two Londoners who were the last two people to be executed for sodomy in England. Pratt and Smith had been arrested in August 1835 after being observed having sex in the room of another man, William Bonill.

Pratt and Smith were hanged in front of Newgate Prison on the morning of November 27, 1835. The crowd of spectators was described in a newspaper report as larger than usual, as it was the first execution to have taken place at Newgate in nearly two years.

San Francisco’s gay culture was rooted in the gold rush, when the city’s population was 95% men. The unbalanced gender ratio made things such as cross-dressing and same-sex dancing commonplace.

In the 19th Century 'gay' still mainly meant what it has always meant, so they used the word 'Uranian' for homosexuals.

According to several linguists, the word "homosexual" was not coined until 1869 by the Hungarian physician Karoly Maria Benkert.

The world's first gay magazine, Der Eigene, was launched in 1896 in Germany by Adolf Brand.

The Scientific Humanitarian Committee,  the first Gay organization in world history, was established in Berlin in 1897 by Magnus Hirschfeld.

Theodora "Theo" Anna Sprüngli better known under the pseudonym Anna Rüling, was a German journalist. One of the first modern European women to come out as homosexual, she has been described as "the first known lesbian activist". Rüling's speech on October 8, 1904, "What Interest does the Women's Movement have in Solving the Homosexual Problem?" was the first political speech to address the problems faced by lesbians. She gave the talk at the annual meeting of the Scientific Humanitarian Committee at the Prinz Albrecht Hotel in Berlin.

Anna Ruling 1910 photograph Wikipedia Commons

In 1922, under Vladimir Lenin the Soviet became one of the first countries in Europe to decriminalize homosexuality.

Friendship and Freedom, first published in 1924, was the first gay-interest periodical in the United States.

The first openly gay actor was Billy Haines. In the 1920s, Haines was a silent film star with movies like The Midnight Express, Little Annie Rooney, and Navy Blues. In 1933, Haines, who was under contract with MGM, was told to marry a woman by MGM. He refused and never acted again.

In 1933 Stalin criminalized male homosexuality in the Soviet Union but left lesbianism untouched.

The persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany is considered to be the most severe persecution of LGBT people in history. Between 1933 and 1945, an estimated 100,000 men were arrested as homosexuals, Most of these men served time in regular prisons, and around 5,500 were imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps. The death rate of these prisoners has been estimated at 60 percent, a higher rate than those of other prisoner groups. 

Ernst Röhm was a prominent member of the Nazi Party and played a key role in the early years of the Nazi movement. He was a close friend and ally of Adolf Hitler, and he was instrumental in building up the Nazi's paramilitary organization, the Sturmabteilung (SA). However, Röhm's homosexuality was an open secret within the Nazi Party, and it caused tension and conflict within the organization. 

In 1934, Hitler used the Night of the Long Knives, a purge of the SA and other potential threats to his leadership, as an opportunity to eliminate Röhm and other high-ranking members of the SA who he saw as a threat to his power. Röhm was arrested and executed without trial, along with dozens of other SA members and political opponents of the Nazi Party.

In the 20th century, the phrase "He never married" was a euphemism used by British obituary writers to imply that the deceased man in question was homosexual.

By 1967, homosexuals were hi-jacking the word "gay", which has been used in some quarters since the 1930s to describe them. The Gay Liberation Front used such slogans as "Say it loud, we're gay and we're proud."

On the evening of October 20. 1953, the famous Shakespearean actor John Gielgud was arrested in Chelsea, London for cruising in a public lavatory. The New Statesman and The Observer, two periodicals with a left-wing slant, urged the legalization of private homosexual acts between consenting adults within a few days of Gielgud's bust. Thus, the arrest of John Gielgud could be seen as the start of a gradual thaw in attitudes in the UK that led to the 1967 overturn of laws criminalizing homosexuality during Harold Wilson 's prime-ministry.

Gielgud as Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing, 1959

In response to a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969 at the Stonewall Inn in New York City, groups of gay and transgender people began to riot. The Stonewall riots are widely considered to be the single most important event leading to the gay liberation movement and the modern fight for LGBT rights in the United States.

On December 15, 1973, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) voted 13-0 to remove homosexuality from the second edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-II). This landmark vote marked a significant turning point in the history of mental health and LGBTQ rights, as it officially acknowledged that homosexuality is not a mental illness.

Prior to this decision, homosexuality had been listed as a mental disorder in the DSM-I, published in 1952. This classification was based on the prevailing views of the time, which often pathologized same-sex attraction and behavior. However, as scientific understanding of human sexuality evolved, so did the APA's stance on homosexuality.

On September 8, 1975 US Tech Sergeant Leonard Matlovich, a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War, appeared in his Air Force uniform on the cover of Time magazine with the headline "I Am A Homosexual". He was given a general discharge, which was later upgraded to honorable. Matlovich was the first gay service member to purposely out himself to the military to fight their ban on gays, and perhaps the best-known gay man in America in the 1970s next to Harvey Milk.

Wikipedia Commons

The rainbow flag, a symbol of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) pride and LGBT social movements was first flown in the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade on June 25, 1978.

The first Gay Rights March on Washington, D.C., the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights took place on October 14, 1979. It demanded "an end to all social, economic, judicial, and legal oppression of lesbian and gay people", and drew approx 100,000 gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, transgender people, and straight allies.

Homosexuality was still classified as an illness in Sweden in 1979. Swedes protested by calling in sick to work, claiming they felt gay,

Denmark was the first country to legalize civil unions between same-sex couples. Introduced by the Danes on October 1, 1989, the world's first legal modern same-sex civil union was called "registered partnership".

More than 100 homosexual couples were married in America's first mass civil ceremony for same-sex partners, held in San Francisco in 1996.

In 1998, voters in Maine repealed a gay rights law passed the previous year, becoming the first US state to abandon such a law.

Same-sex marriage became legal in the Netherlands in 2001, the first country to allow it.

On November 18, 2003, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health that denying marriage rights to same-sex couples violated the Massachusetts Constitution. Massachusetts became the first United States jurisdiction to license and recognize same-sex marriages beginning May 17, 2004 after Chief Justice Margaret Marshall wrote the majority opinion in the court ruling. Gay and lesbian couples began filling out applications for marriages licenses from 12:01am.

In February and March 2004, city officials in San Francisco issued marriage licenses to about 4000 same-sex couples before being ordered to stop by the California Supreme Court.

The first cabinet of Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir was formed in Iceland on February 1, 2009, making her the country's first female prime minister and the world's first openly gay head of government of the modern era. Sigurðardóttir joined in a civil union with Jónína Leósdóttir (born 1954), an author and playwright, in 2002. In 2010, when same-sex marriage was legalised in Iceland, Jóhanna and Jónína changed their civil union into a marriage.

Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir in 2009. By Johannes Jansson/norden.org, CC BY 2.5 dk, $3

The repeal of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT) policy, which prohibited openly gay and lesbian individuals from serving in the U.S. military, was signed into law by President Barack Obama on December 22, 2010. However, the actual repeal took effect on September 20, 2011. 

NBA player Jason Collins became the first active player of the four major men's professional sports leagues in North America to publicly come out as gay in 2014.

The first same-sex marriages in England and Wales were performed on March 29, 2014.

A same-sex marriage in Islington, London on 29 March 2014, By Tom Morris - Wikipedia Commons

Ireland became the first country to legalize same-sex marriage by constitutional referendum on May 22, 2015.

The Domestic Partnerships Act 2018 made Bermuda the first national territory in the world to recriminalise same-sex marriage.

Despite homosexuality being punishable by death, Iranian LGBT activists celebrate IranPride Day by secretly photographing themselves holding rainbow flags in Tehran and other cities.

Homosexual men have significantly higher testosterone levels than heterosexuals.

In the United States, 3.6% of adults consider themselves gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender.

The modern use of gay comes from "gaycat," a slang term among hobos meaning a boy who accompanies an older, more experienced tramp, with the implication of sexual favors being exchanged for protection.

Only two of the Village People were gay (cowboy Dave Forrest and Native Indian Felipe Rose). The rest of the group pretended because they were marketed towards the LGBT community.

Source Dictionary of Phrase & Fable by Nigel Rees 

Flirting

New York authorities made flirting in public illegal in 1902.

When a woman is speaking to a man she finds attractive, she naturally speaks in a higher pitch.

Family

The word 'family' derives from the Latin ‘famulus’, meaning ‘a servant’.

When Julius Caesar landed in Britain he reported that wives were being shared between groups of ten or twelve men, especially between fathers and sons, but the offspring of these unions were counted as the children with whom a particular woman cohabited first.

Until the late 17th century, ‘family’ included not only relatives but also the servants of a household.

The father with the most children is thought to be Ismail Ibn Sharif, an Alaouite sultan who fathered 888 children with hundreds of wives and concubines in the late seventeenth century.

The phrase blood is thinker than water, a phrase that promotes family ties over friendships, originally meant the opposite. The full phrase is “The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.” Meaning blood shed in battle bonds soldiers more strongly than genetics.

The first recorded use of the phrase “family size” in retailing was in 1882.

The world's youngest parents were 8 and 9 and lived in China in 1910.

King Saud of Saudi Arabia (1902-1969) had multiple wives and 115 children.

Spain had a guardianship system until 1985, which granted men near-total control over their wives and daughters. Women needed their guardian's consent to open a bank account, work, or drive, and men could legally kill their female wards for having extramarital sex.

Ziona Chana (July 20, 1945-June 13, 2021) of Baktawng village, Mizoram, India was the leader of the "Chana" sect, which allows polygamy. He lived in a 100-room four storey mansion with his jumbo sized family, which consisted of 39 wives, 94 children, 14-daughters-in-laws and 33 grandchildren, setting the world record for the "world's largest existing family."

60 years old Japanese truck driver found out he was accidentally switched at birth in 1953 at San Ikukai Hospital in Tokyo. His biological parents are wealthy and the infant who took his place grew up to be the head of a real estate company. Meanwhile he was raised by a poor single mother in a tiny, one-room apartment where the sole “luxury” was a radio. He studied at night school while toiling in a factory, and finally became a truck driver.

Indian farm hand Ramajit Raghav claimed in 2012 that he was the oldest person to father a child at the age of 96. What's more, he had done it for the second time in a gap of less than two years, having been blessed with his first child in November 2010.

The most generations alive in a single family ever recorded is officially seven. This remarkable feat occurred in the Bunge family of Wisconsin, USA, on January 21, 1989 when Ryan Bunge was born. 

His great-great-great-great-grandmother, Augusta Bunge was aged 109 years 97 days on the birth of her great-great-great-great grandson.

The definition of a ‘family’ used by the British Office for National Statistics is “a married, civil partnered or cohabiting couple with or without children, or a lone parent with at least one child”

While you inherit DNA from both parents, you end up using your father's DNA more — genetically, you are more like your dad than your mom..

Forty-seven per cent of families with dependent children have only one child.

The average age in the UK at which a man becomes a father for the first time is 32.

Source Daily Express

Engagement

If an Ancient Egyptian gentleman offered a lady a sip of his beer they were betrothed.

In 1939 the South-African based De Beers Consolidated Mines launched a campaign to promote further the tradition of diamond engagement rings. The N.W. Ayer agency of Chicago came up with the line “A diamond is forever.”

Octavio Guillen and Adriana Martinez were married in Mexico City in 1969 at the age of 82 after a world record engagement of 67 years.

Source Dictionary of Phrase & Fable Nigel Rees

Divorce

Divorce was recognized in Rome in 234 BC.

Turkish law stated in the 15th century that it was legal for a woman to divorce her husband if he does not provide her with the daily quota of coffee.

In the 318 years between 1539 and 1857, there were only 317 divorces, in England.

Wife selling at inns, markets or fairs was a way of ending an unhappy marriage in England when divorce was a practical impossibility for all but the very wealthiest. The earliest definite case is recorded by London tailor Henry Machyn, November, 24, 1553. Before marriage laws were reformed in 1857, ‘selling’ a spouse was technically legal.

In 1820, a husband in Canterbury, England auctioned his wife at the local cattle market for 25p (five shillings). 

Between 1840 and 1880, there were 55 cases recorded in Britain of men selling their wives to end an unsatisfactory marriage. Cases of wife selling were still reported in the early 20th century. .

In the late 1800s, you could buy legal divorce papers from a vending machine in Corinne, Utah, for $2.50.

American socialite Wallis Simpson was granted a divorce from her second husband on October 27, 1936, allowing her to marry Edward VIII, triggering his abdication.

Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson on their Mediterranean holiday, 1936

In 1955 the Queen’s sister, Princess Margaret called off plans to marry divorced Group Captain Peter Townsend after consulting the Archbishop of Canterbury. She decided decided not to proceed because she was "mindful of the Church’s teaching that Christian marriage is indissoluble."

A distraught Shah of Iran went on television and radio on March 21, 1958 to announce that he was divorcing his wife of seven years, Queen Soraya, because she was unable to supply an heir to the so-called ‘Peacock Throne’. The Queen, known as Princess Soraya, later moved to Paris and became an actress.

Shah lighting cigarette for his wife Soraya

In the 1960s, getting a divorce in Mexico was easier, faster, and less expensive than in most US states. Mexican divorces did not require spouses to be present at a hearing, so a number of Americans took advantage of the "fast-track" process available there frequently sending a lawyer to represent them. Celebrities who obtained a Mexican divorce included Johnny Carson, Katharine Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe.

The first divorce in Ireland’s history was granted on January 17, 1997, a year after residents of the Roman Catholic country held a referendum on changing the law.

In 1980 Harry Bidwen of Brighton divorced his wife at the age of 101, having waited until all their children were dead.

Neil Diamond was forced to pay $150 million to former wife Marcia Murphey in their 1995 divorce settlement. This broke the record for  the most expensive divorce in history.

Glynn ‘Scotty’ Wolfe (1908-1997), a former Baptist minister who resided in Blythe, California holds the record for the most monogamous marriages having been divorced 28 times. His shortest marriage lasted 19 days, and his longest lasted seven years. His youngest wife, Daisy, was just 14.

Scotty Wolfe's last wife, Linda Essex, is the most divorced woman (23 times) and they married as a stunt for a TV documentary.

Robert Johnson, the co-founder of BET and America’s first African-American billionaire, paid out a massive $400 million to his wife Sheila in a 2002 divorce. The massive settlement was decided by Judge William Newman, Jr., who three years later married Johnson's ex-wife

When basketball star Michael Jordan’s 17-year-old marriage to Juanita ended in 2006, it became the most expensive settlement ever costing him nearly £168 million.

In 2007, a Bosnian couple divorced after discovering both had an online affair with each other under fake names.

In Egypt, around 17,000 divorce cases in 2018 cited the puzzle game Candy Crush as the cause of divorce.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos's divorce from MacKenzie Bezos was announced on April 4, 2019 after 25 years of marriage. It was at the time the most expensive divorces in legal history with MacKenzie Bezos getting $35 billion dollars.

The title of most expensive divorce goes to Bill and Melinda Gates' divorce finalized in 2021. While the exact amount isn't public, estimates place Melinda Gates' settlement at a staggering $76 billion.  

Ronald Reagan is the only US president to have been divorced.

There is an inverse correlation between the amount of money spent on a wedding, and how long the marriage lasts. The more people spend on the ceremony, the more likely the couple will get divorced.

Worldwide, approximately 6% of divorced couples remarry the same person.

Children from divorced families dies five years earlier on average.

A man can divorce his wife in Islam simply by saying 'Talaq' ('I divorce you') three times to his wife.

Divorce is legal in every nation in the world except in the Philippines and in Vatican City. The rule does not apply to Muslims in the Philippines.

The US state of Florida does not allow married couples to divorce while one of the partners is pregnant.

The popular honeymoon destination of the Maldives has the highest divorce rate in the world at 10.2 per 1,000 population in 2016.

Here is a list of songs about marital problems or divorce

Source Daily Mail, Songfacts.com