History fact #1
The Hundred Years' War between England and France did not last a hundred years. It began in 1337 and did not finally end until 1453, so it ran for 116 years. It wasn't one long battle, either. Fighting came and went, with long stretches of peace in between. In that time a family could see children born, grow up and grow old with the same quarrel still hanging over the land. The people who lived through it never called it the Hundred Years' War at all. That name came along in the 19th century, long after the last army had gone home. What do you think it was like to grow up in a place where war and peace kept trading places for a lifetime?
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History fact #2
In 1803, American negotiators in Paris could spend up to $10 million, and all they were sent to buy was the port of New Orleans and the Floridas. Instead they came home owning about 828,000 square miles of land west of the Mississippi River, for $15 million. France had suddenly offered all of Louisiana, there was no fast way to ask Washington, and they said yes. That's land larger than Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal combined. I love that the biggest land deal in American history began as a trip to buy one city. Have you ever set out for one small thing and come home with something far bigger?
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History fact #3
Modena's town hall in northern Italy still keeps an ordinary wooden bucket, the Secchia rapita, or Stolen Bucket, as a reminder of the city's 1325 victory over Bologna at Zappolino. The bucket is said to have been taken from a well in Bologna. It has no material value, but to Modena it is a treasured symbol of its long rivalry with its neighbor. For centuries it was kept inside the city's Ghirlandina tower. Today it sits in a small decorated room in the town hall. The story also inspired Alessandro Tassoni's comic poem of the same name. With Halloween a few days away, plenty of buckets will soon be making the rounds, but few will be kept as carefully as this one. What everyday object would you pick to stand for your hometown?
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History fact #4
In the summer of 1518, when hundreds of people in Strasbourg could not stop dancing, city officials set aside guild halls for them and hired pipe and drum players to keep them going. It started in July with one woman dancing alone on her street. Within a month, about 400 people had joined her. The officials believed the dancers just needed to dance it out, so they gave them room and music. That probably made things worse. Historians still argue about what caused it, which makes it a good strange story for the week before Halloween. What do you think was really going on in Strasbourg that summer?
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