Mid 19th facts
While investigating facts about Mid 19th, I found out little known, but curios details like:
The Can-Can was originally considered scandalous as it became popular in the mid-19th century because many women of that time wore pantalettes, which had an open crotch, meaning that a high kick could be unintentionally revealing
In the mid 19th century, Chicago was in desperate need of a sewage system, but instead of digging down to install the sewers, they raised the entire city up 4 feet.
In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across. Here are 47 of the best facts about Mid 19th I managed to collect.
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Originally, the classic banker's lamp had a green shade to lessen one's eyestrain due to early incandescent lights. The green eye visor commonly worn by accountants, telegraphers, and copy editors in the late-19th and mid-20th century were worn for similar reasons.
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High heels were originally worn by men as a signal of status. Women started wearing heels as a way of trying to appropriate masculine power. Being rational (practical footwear), everyone quit wearing heels altogether. It emerged again for women during mid 19th century from pornography.
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From the late 18th to mid-19th century, it was considered bad for women to read novels based on the belief that women were not "able to differentiate between fiction and life."
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The paternoster or "Our Father": an elevator with no doors that never stops moving. Invented in the late 19th century and popular because they can carry more passengers—its construction was halted in the mid-1970s due to safety concerns. There are about 300 left, mostly found in Germany.
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In the mid-19th century, Buzzards Bay's port of New Bedford, Massachusetts was the most successful whaling port in the world.
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Charles Lindbergh was ordered to report to Brooks Field on March 19th, 1924 to begin training for the United States Army Air Service. He graduated top of his class 8 days after a serious mid-air collision that forced him to bail out of the aircraft. Only 18 of the original 104 cadets graduated.
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In the mid-19th century, a bishop sent a finger-bone and some teeth to a convent in Rome. The package was marked for express delivery (in expedito) but the nuns thought that 'Expedite' was the name of the person whose bones were in the package. St Expedite is still worshipped in Catalonia today.
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Dueling scars were seen as a badge of honor among upper class Germans through the mid-19th and 20th century. It was seen as ideal and a way of showing courage to be able to stand and take the blow
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The bloodiest civil war in human history was fought in the mid 19th Century in China. One side was led by a man who claimed to be the brother of Jesus Christ, Hong Xiuquan Jesus. An estimated 20 to 30 million people died, with most deaths associated with plague and famine.
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Australia has their own version of the Yeti/Sasquatch known as the Bunyip. It is a large mythical creature from Aboriginal mythology, said to lurk in swamps, billabongs, creeks, riverbeds, and waterholes. Europeans recorded written accounts of bunyips in the early and mid-19th Century.
What is true about mid 19th?
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From the late 18th centuty to the mid 19th century there was a "machine" known as the mechanical turk that claimed to be an automated chess machine until it was exposed in the early 19th century as an elaborate hoax with the machine containing an actually skilled chess player
Before the mid-19th century dentures were commonly made with teeth pulled from the mouths of dead soldiers - source
The Selk'nam, the indigenous people of the Tierra del Fuego archipelago. In the mid-19th century, cattle breeders and fortune seekers hunted down and killed thousands of Selk'nam, reducing their numbers from 4000 to about 100 by the 1930's. - source
Scurvy killed more than two million sailors between the time of Columbus’s transatlantic voyage and the rise of steam engines in the mid-19th century. The problem was so common that shipowners and governments assumed a 50% death rate from scurvy for their sailors on any major voyage.
Before the mid-19th century, lobster was seen as a food for indentured servants, prisoners, and those in poverty. Lobster was mainly used as fertilizer or bait. - source
About the Indian “Pundits”- undercover agents who mapped countries in South Asia, such as Tibet and Nepal, for the British Empire in the mid-19th century, as they were banned from them. The pundits used a 100-bead rosary to count steps and a prayer wheel to store secret messages.
During the early 19th to mid 20th century city officials in Boston, Massachusetts would ban anything they found "objectionable". Many distributors started to want their works to be banned in Boston, as it gave them more appeal elsewhere.
In the mid-1800s women began to seek support from others to pass legislation that would give them the right to vote.
In the mid-19th century, the British Empire traded with China, exchanging opium against tea.
Until the mid-19th century, British royal funerals were poorly organized. This changed during the reign of Queen Victoria, who was obsessed with death, when she started planning her own funeral in 1875, 26 years before she died
Shrunken heads served as a valuable trading commodity between the Maori natives of New Zealand and European Traders from the early- to mid-19th century.
