Roman Baths

As Roman civilization advanced, so did bathing. The first of the famous Roman baths, supplied with water from their aqueducts, was built about 312 BC The baths were luxurious, and bathing became very popular.

Most of ancient Rome’s inhabitants visited a public bathhouse daily. The city had close to 900, including one that could cater for 1,500 bathers at a time. 

Public baths were an essential feature of Roman towns both for hygiene (only wealthiest houses had private baths) and as social centers. Frequently built soon after forum. Bathers progressed from changing room to cold room (frigidarium), to warm room, (tepidarium), to hot room (caldarium), to open pores, then back in reverse order to close them again, ending with immersion in cold plunge bath. Warm and hot rooms had underfloor heating (hypocaust) with hot air channeled from furnaces. Men and women usually bathed separately.

The Emperor Hadrian introduced bath houses to Britain in the early second century and encouraged  the locals to dip their toes. However on seeing the behavior of those using the Huggin Hill baths in Londinium he banned mixed bathing throughout the Roman empire.

Roman Bath House (Bath, England) www.joyofmuseums.com

Roman baths were much more than public places to bathe. They were also social centers where families and friends came to gather together and eat snack food and drink. The Roman philosopher Seneca wrote of the noisy "cake sellers, the sausage man and confectioner" who each peddle food to hungry bath patrons.

In Roman law, balnearii were criminals who stole clothes from public baths.

Sources The Cambridge Historical Encyclopedia of Great Britain and Ireland

Bath

Greek scientist and mathematician Archimedes discovered the Archimedian principle when he stepped into his bath and found the displaced water overflowing. This made him excited as he realized the weight of water displaced by an object equals the amount of buoyancy it gets. Thus an object’s volume could be accurately measured by being submerged in water! Unable to contain his excitement, Archimedes leapt out of the bathtub and yelled, “Eureka, Eureka!” as he ran through the streets of Syracuse.

The Archimedian principle has practical uses. It can be used to measure the density of an object, and hence whether or not it is made of gold.

International Bath Day is observed every year on June 14. The day was chosen as Archimedes' discovery occurred precisely one week before the beginning of summer. In ancient Greece, Summer began (and still does today) on June 21st. The week before is June 14th, and this was the date set.

Wikipedia

According to records of payment made to King John of England (1166-1216)'s bath attendant, William Aquarius, the king bathed on average about once every three weeks, which cost a considerable sum of 5d to 6d each, suggesting an elaborate and ceremonial affair. Although this may seem barbaric by modern standards, it was civilized compared to monks who were expected to bathe three times a year, with the right not to bathe at all if they so chose.

Frederick II (1194 – 1250), the Holy Roman Emperor was the first European of this era to take a daily bath.

Isabella I  of Castille (1451-1504) had two baths in her life. One when she was born and one on the eve of her wedding to Ferdinand II of Aragon.

In the 1500s baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, Then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children. Last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it. Hence the saying, "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water!"

Henry VIII created the Great Garden at Whitehall Palace in the mid-1540s. It had a screen installed to ensure that passers by would not see the King of England in his bathtub.

In the 16th century, people believed water opened the pores and allowed dangerous diseases into the body, so they never took baths.

By the late 16th century, the European aristocracy were beginning to use soap for washing the body. However as having a bath was still not a regular occurrence the use of soap for ablutions is still fairly rare, especially for the common folk who couldn't afford it.

Queen Elizabeth I of England (1533–1603) had a bath every three months whether she needed it or not according to a courtier. This was against the advice of her physician.

The French king Louis XIV (1638 – 1715) had his first bath when he was christened, He only took two more baths over the rest of his life, both under protest. 

In the Victorian era, people used rocking bathtubs--literally, tubs of water that could be sloshed back and forth--to recreate the feel of the ocean in their homes. 

There were over 25,000 Chinese working on the American railroads. They bathed and changed their clothes between meals. The Americans at this time only bathed once or twice a year.

700 third class passengers on The Titanic all had to share two bathtubs. One for men and one for women. 

William Howard Taft (1857 – 1930), the obese 27th President of the United States, had a bathtub that could hold four people installed in the White House because he couldn't fit into the present one.

World War II codebreaker Dilly Knox used to solve coded enemy messages in the bathtub. He  persuaded his superiors to have a bathtub installed in his office in the cryptanalysis section of the British Admiralty.

Until the post-war era homes in Japan had no baths - people went to communal baths instead. Below is Sento bathing scene. Japanese woman bathing in a wooden tub (woodcut by Torii Kiyomitsu, late 18th century)[

A crystal bathtub is carved from a single block of the purest white rock crystal, quarried in the Amazon region of Brazil is said to be the most expensive in the world at £530,000.

In Japan, baths, known as of 'ofuro' are deep, short and made of wood. People wash before entering one, as bathing is seen as a leisure activity. 

The inventor of the ATM, John Shepherd-Barron, was lying in the bath when the idea of a cash dispenser occurred to him.

The world’s oldest animal, Jonathan the Seychelles giant tortoise who lives on the island of Saint Helena, was given his first ever bath in 2016.  A loofah and soft brushes were used to protect his shell.

Virginia law forbids bathtubs in the house; tubs must be kept in the yard.

Bubbles from a bubble bath thermally insulate the surface of the water, keeping the bath warm for a longer period of time.

If everyone in the world took a daily bath, our entire supply of fresh water would be get dirty in a single day.

Bat

Bats are the second largest order of mammals (after the rodents), representing about one fifth of all classified mammal species worldwide, with about 1,240 bat species divided into two suborders.

There are two main groups of bats: megabats, which eat fruit, and microbats, which mainly eat insects.

BEHAVIOR

Bats are nocturnal, and those native to temperate countries hibernate in winter.

Bats can hang upside down without getting dizzy because they don't have enough mass for gravity to mess up their circulatory systems.

Bats groom themselves for an hour a day, rubbing their wings with oil from glands on their faces

Bats like to eat moths, so tiger moths produce ultrasonic clicking sounds that jam a bat's sonar.

Bats can eat up to 1,200 mosquitos an hour and may eat 3,000 insects (their body weight) nightly.

Bats in the US eat so many insects that they save farmers an estimated $22.9 billion every year on pesticides.

Without bats there would be no tequila. It’s made from the agave plant, which is pollinated by bats.

Vampire bats need two tablespoons of blood a day.

Bats are one of just a few animals, besides humans, dolphins and monkeys, that communicate directly to other individuals of their species.

Bats alter their calls to specifically address other individuals, instead of just making broad communication sounds. 

The bulldog bat squeaks at 137dB. It is about 30dB louder than a rock music concert.

ANATOMY

Bats are the only mammal that can fly.

Common fruit bat (Rousettus aegyptiacus) flying

Brazilian free-tailed bats reach speeds of up to 100 miles an hour in little bursts—faster than any other bird or bat previously recorded.

The leg bones of a bat are so thin that no species of bat (apart from the vampire bat) can walk or run.

Many microbats have poor sight and orientation and hunt their prey principally by echolocation. They have relatively large ears and many have nose-leaves, fleshy appendages around the nose and mouth, that probably help in sending or receiving the signals, which are squeaks pitched so high as to be inaudible to the human ear.

Larger bats have good eyesight and only use echolocation at night because it's too dark to see. In fact, some bigger bats can see three times better than humans.

RECORDS

Bats produce the largest offspring relative to their size of any animal. A pipistrelle bat weighing just 8 gram (0.28 oz)may give birth to a 2 gram (0.07 oz) baby, a quarter of its bodyweight.

The world's smallest mammal is the bumblebee bat of Thailand, weighing roughly two skittles.

The largest bat is the giant golden-crowned flying fox which has a wingspan of up to 5ft 7in (170 cms).

FUN BAT FACTS

Bats always turn left when exiting a cave.

According to scientists, vampire bat saliva is the best known medicine for keeping blood from clotting.

The flying fox is not a fox – it is a bat.

Bats are implicated in the emergence of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in China, since they serve as natural hosts for coronaviruses, several from a single cave in Yunnan, one of which developed into the SARS virus.

Bats do good work, they keep pests away and they’re also pollinators, which is why they get their own day. April 17th is National Bat Appreciation Day.

The terms “bats” and “batty”, to mean crazy, were first heard in the early 20th century. They came from the slightly earlier “bats in the belfry”, which was first heard in 1880s America

One of Johann Strauss II's most famous works was the opera Die Fledermaus, which means “the bat”.

Sources Daily Express, Greatfacts.com, Hutchinson Encyclopedia © RM 2012. Helicon Publishing is division of RM.

Bastille

The Bastille was a fortress in Paris, which played an important role in the internal conflicts of France. For most of its history was used as a state prison by the French kings. 

It was built about 1370 as part of the fortifications on the east wall of Paris. Its purpose was to defend eastern Paris from an attack by the British during the Hundred Years War.

Below is a historical reconstruction showing the moat below the walls of Paris (left), the Bastille and the Porte Saint-Antoine (right) in 1420.

From 1417, it became a prison for holding opponents of the kings of France.

After Paris had been captured by the forces of Henry V in 1420, the English used the Bastille as a prison. It remained under the control of the English until 1436.

During the 17th century the Bastille was used primarily for housing political prisoners, and from the time of the French statesman Cardinal Richelieu it came to symbolize the injustice of arbitrary rule. Citizens of every class and profession, if for any reason deemed obnoxious to the royal court, were arrested by secret warrants known as lettres-de-cachet and imprisoned indefinitely in the Bastille without accusation or trial. 

In 1716 the Enlightenment writer Voltaire wrote a satirical poem about the Duke of Orleans that resulted in a nearly year-long imprisonment at the Bastille. 

The address of the Bastille in the late 18th century was No 232, rue Saint-Antoine, Paris.

By 1789, 5,279 prisoners had passed through the gates of The Bastille.

At the outbreak of the French Revolution, the Bastille was attacked and captured by a mob assisted by royal troops. The object of the storming was mainly to seize the large ammunition supplies held at the Bastille.

An eye witness painting of the siege of the Bastille by Claude Chola

The event was largely symbolic: Although the Bastille was big enough for 50 prisoners, it housed only seven elderly prisoners at the time. According to records, the prisoners when it was stormed were four convicted forgers, two “lunatics” and a "deviant” aristocrat.

One of the lunatics was an elderly white-bearded Anglo-Irish man named de Whyte de Malleville who variously believed that he was either St. Louis, Julius Caesar, or God. Despite being mentally ill, he was paraded through the streets, where he waved happily to the crowds.

The aristocrat was Comte Hubert de Solages, who had been imprisoned on the request of his family for committing incest with his sister.

One freed prisoner is said to have refused to go until he had finished his roast pheasant dinner.

Ninety-eight attackers and one defender died in the fighting. The Bastille’s governor, Bernard-René de Launay, was killed by the crowd and his head displayed around Paris on a spike.

When King Louis XVI was told of the storming of the Bastille, he is said to have asked: "Is it a revolt?" only to be told, "No Sire, it is a revolution".

Two days later the destruction of the stronghold was begun amid great public rejoicings. 

When the Bastille was demolished, a developer made a fortune selling off pieces as souvenirs.

After the storming of the Bastille, its main key was given to the Marquis de Lafayette who later gave it to George Washington. It can still be seen at Washington mansion at Mount Vernon.

The site is now an open square, called the Place de la Bastille. 

Bastille Day is a national holiday in France, celebrated annually on July 14. It has been celebrated since 1790 and became a French national holiday in 1880.

A massive solar flare on July 14, 2000, is known as the “Bastille Day event”.

The English pop rock band Bastille takes its name from the fact that July 14 is the birthday of lead singer/songwriter Dan Smith.

Sources Daily Express, Funk & Wagnalls © Copyright 1997-1998 Versaware Technologies Inc. All rights reserved.

Bassoon

The Bassoon is a double-reed woodwind instrument in C. It is the bass of the oboe family and lowest sounding of the four main orchestral woodwinds (the other three are flute, clarinet and oboe).

The bassoon along with other double-reed instruments produce sound when two slender blades of cane pinch together rapidly, thus interrupting the wind stream passing between them into the resonator.

RSNO bassoon players at Clickimin Leisure Centre, Lerwick

Its direct ancestor is the dulcian, a hairpin-shaped instrument with a long, folded bore and a single key; developed in the first half of the 16th century, it remained in use until the 17th century.

The design of the modern bassoon owes a great deal to German composer Carl Almenräder (1786-1846), who, assisted by the German acoustics researcher Gottfried Weber developed the 17-key bassoon whose range spanned four octaves.

The bassoon doubles back on itself in a conical tube about 7.5 ft (2.29 meters) long and has a rich, deep tone.

The bassoon concert repertoire extends from the early Baroque via Antonio Vivaldi, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Paul Dukas, to Karlheinz Stockhausen.

Until the late 19th century, the woodwind section of a concert orchestra consisted of two oboes, two flutes, two bassoons, and two clarinets; the two members of each pair played different musical parts. 

They are capable of dignified solos at high register, a famous example for bassoon being the eerie opening solo of Igor Stravinsky's ballet The Rite of Spring (1913).

Several 1960s pop music hits feature the bassoon, including "The Tears of a Clown" by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, "Jennifer Juniper" by Donovan, "59th Street Bridge Song" by Harpers Bizarre, and the one underlying The New Vaudeville Band's "Winchester Cathedral".

Sources Wikipedia, Funk & Wagnalls Encyclopedia, Hutchinson Encyclopedia © RM 2012. Helicon Publishing is division of RM.
 

Basset Hound

The Basset Hound originates from France in the late 16th century. It may have descended from some now extinct breed of French hunting dog such as the Basset d'Artois.

The first mention of a "basset" dog appeared in La Venerie, an illustrated hunting text written by Jacques du Fouilloux in 1585. The dogs in Fouilloux’s text were used to hunt foxes and badgers.

The name Basset is derived from the French word bas, meaning "low", with the attenuating suffix -et, together meaning "rather low".

Basset type hounds achieved noticeable public cultural popularity during the reign of Emperor Napoleon III (r. 1852-1870). French bassets were being imported into England at least as early as the 1870s.

In the early days of television, Elvis Presley famously sang "Hound Dog" to a basset hound named Sherlock on The Steve Allen Show on July 1, 1956.

Walt Disney's Droopy, who starred in 24 theatrical cartoons between 1943 and 1958, is a basset hound. The breed also featured in The Princess and The Frog  and The Great Mouse Detective.

Because of their short stubby legs and thick bodies, basset hounds have trouble swimming.

It is believed that the short legs were originally the result of a congenital bone disease.

                               
Basset hounds have over 220 million smell receptors, and the portion of their brains tied to sense of smell is 40 times that of a human's.

Their sense of smell for tracking is second only to that of the bloodhound.

As a basset hound trots across the ground, its large floppy ears help bring smells directly to its face, while its dewlap (the loose skin underneath its chin) helps trap them.

Median longevity of basset hounds in the United Kingdom is about 11.4 years, which is a typical median longevity for purebred dogs and for breeds similar in size to basset hounds.

Sources Wikipedia, Mentalfloss

Basketball Player

Wataru "Wat" Misaka  was a 5 ft 7 in (1.70 m) point guard of Japanese descent. He played three games for the New York Knicks during the 1947–1948 season becoming the first non-white player and the first player of Asian descent to play in the National Basketball Association (NBA). It was the same year Jackie Robinson broke the racial barrier in baseball.

Wilt Chamberlain set the single-game scoring record in the National Basketball Association by scoring 100 points for the Philadelphia Warriors in a 169–147 win over the New York Knicks on March 2, 1962.

By Source, Fair use, Wikipedia Commons

Wilt Chamberlain never fouled out of a game - a feat that he was very proud of.

Penny Ann Early became the first woman to play major professional basketball, when she came on during a time out for the Kentucky Colonels in an ABA game against the Los Angeles Stars on November 27, 1968. (At just 5'3" and 112 pounds, she was also the smallest pro basketball player ever.) Early achieved another notable first that same year: she was the first female jockey.

When Moses Malone was drafted by the ABA's Utah Stars in 1974, he the first basketball player to go directly from high school to a professional American team.

Eric Money is the only player to score for both teams in an NBA game. The game between the New Jersey Nets and Philadelphia 76ers was started on November 8, 1978 but the outcome was protested by the Nets. It was ordered to be replayed on March 23, 1979 starting at the 3rd quarter. In between the original and replayed games, Money was traded to the 76ers. He ended up scoring in the same game for both teams.

Chris Ford is credited with scoring the NBA's first three-point shot for the Boston Celtics on October 12, 1979 in a game against the Houston Rockets at Boston Garden.

Nancy Lieberman-Cline became the first woman to play in a men’s pro basketball league, when she signed in Massachusetts with the Springfield Fame of the USBL in 1979.

The term 24-7, referring to someone who is constantly on the job, was first used in 1983 by Sports Illustrated magazine. It referred to U.S. basketball player Jerry Reynolds, who was described as "good, 24 hours a day, seven days of the week."

In 1984 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar became the all-time NBA regular season scoring leader when he broke Wilt Chamberlain's record of 31,419 career points. By the time he retired in 1989, Abdul-Jabbar had scored 38,387 career points.

LeBron James, the Los Angeles Lakers star, broke Abdul-Jabbar's record on February 7, 2023 when he  scored his 38,388th career point in a game against the Oklahoma City Thunder. After James broke the record, the NBA stopped the game for an on-court ceremony where Abdul-Jabbar and James embraced

When Kareem Abdul-Jabbar signed a two-year contract with the Los Angeles Lakers for $5 million in 1987, it made him the highest paid player in any sport.

Pearl Jam's first album, 10, was named in tribute of basketball player Mookie Blaylock whose number is 10.

After beginning his 20th season with the Los Angeles Lakers in 2015–16, Kobe Bryant set an NBA record for the most seasons with the same team,

Keith Allison Flickr: Kobe Bryant

James Harden became the first NBA player to score more than 50 points while also having 15 rebounds and 15 assists on December 31, 2016. In total he achieved 53 points, 17 assists and 16 rebounds in Houston Rockets' 129–122 win over the New York Knicks.

Dennis Rodman's height was only 5'6 as a high school freshman and he never made the varsity basketball team. He decided to give basketball another chance when he hit another growth spurt after graduating high school and working as a janitor. He grew to be 6 feet 7 inches.

The average height of an NBA basketball player is 6 foot 7 inches.

1 in 6 Americans over seven feet tall are professional basketball players.

LeBron James and Michael Jordan are the only basketball players to have won an Olympic Gold medal, regular season MVP, and NBA Finals MVP all in the same season.