Who had the most number of wives in history?
Mongkut of Siam, the king in The King and I, had 9,000 wives and concubines.
King Solomon, by contrast, had only 700.
Astaire’s feet, insured for $650,000, were at the top of this list. Grable’s legs were insured for only $250,000, Durante’s nose for $140,000.
A Hobson’s choice is a situation that forces a person to accept whatever is offered or go without. The phrase was inspired by sixteenth-century entrepreneur Thomas Hobson, who hired out horses in strict rotation at Cambridge University. There was no choosing by the customer, it was strictly Hobson’s choice.
Constantine XI, who ruled from 1448 to 1453, was the last Byzantine emperor. He died fighting the Turks in the battle for Constantinople, which ended in the fall of the nearly 1,100-year-old Byzantine Empire.
Queen Victoria, who reigned from 1837 to 1901, was the grand daughter of the King George III, who lost the American colonies. This makes Elizabeth II, Queen of England since 1952, George’s great-great-great-great grand daughter.
Yes. John Bardeen (b. 1908) won two Nobel Prizes in physics. In 1956, he and W.B.S. Shockley and W. H. Brattain were awarded the prize for the invention of the transistor. In 1972, he and L. N. Cooper and J. R. Schrieffer were awarded the prize for developing the BCS theory, which uses physics to…
Yes, King George III really went insane. The English king (1738-1820) probably suffered from an inherited blood disorder called porphyria, which affects the nervous system. In 1788, he became violently insane and had to be put in a straitjacket. He recovered but eventually suffered a relapse. After 1811, his son, the future George IV, served…