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.
Yes, Typhoid Mary’s name was Mary Mallon (1870-1938). She was an institutional and household cook who spread the disease from house to house in the New York City area in the early twentieth century.
Yes. Guinness was head of the company that published the book when it was created by Sir Hugh Beaver, Norris McWhirter, and Ross McWhirter in September 1954. The first Guinness was published in August 1955.
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.
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.
At least three leaders have died while having sex: Attila the Hun (c. 406-453), French president Felix Faure (1841-1899), and Pope Leo VIII (d. 965). Catherine the Great did not.
The dog, memorialized in a bas-relief in New York’s Central Park and celebrated in dozens of Johnny Carson’s skits, actually existed and was a hero in his day. Balto led a dog-sled expedition through 600 miles of Arctic terrain to deliver an antitoxin needed to save the residents of Nome, Alaska, during a 1925 diphtheria…