Bizarre History (14 page)

Louis XIV reigned France from 1643–1715. At the height of his powers in the early 1700s, the diminutive Louis wore high heels to make himself appear taller. Soon, it was all the rage, and all the aristocracy was wearing them. Louis’s heels were often up to five inches high, and as the royal court made theirs bigger, so did he. Soon everyone was tottering around until Louis decreed that no one else’s heels could be bigger than his.

Foot binding was utilized in China for around a thousand years to emulate fashionable tiny feet. It involved breaking the arch and then wrapping the foot, resulting in an approximately three-inch foot from toe to heal, as well as a lifelong disability. By the nineteenth century, nearly 100 percent of upper-class women had bound feet. It was outlawed by the Communist party in 1949.

France loved Benjamin Franklin’s lightning rod so much that a Parisian designer in the 1770s began making hats with lightning rods attached to them—complete with grounding wire.

The ancient Egyptians and Romans used cosmetics containing mercury and lead.

It was fashionable during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries for women to have pale white skin and red rouged cheeks. They achieved the pale look with white lead, which caused skin eruptions. They then covered up the eruptions with more lead. Lady Mary Coventry, a famous London society hostess, died at the age of twenty-seven of lead poisoning. In the early twentieth century, women used arsenic to give their skin a luminous glow and the deadly nightshade to brighten their eyes and enlarge their pupils.

Eighteenth-century Europe saw the advent of gigantic wigs decorated with all sorts of things: stuffed birds, fruit, sculptures, and more. These wigs often attracted bugs, mice, and other critters. The highlight was most probably Marie Antoinette’s giant, four-foot high ship wig.

Corsets have been used for hundreds of years. In the 1550s, Catherine de Medici, wife of King Henry II of France, ordered her ladies in waiting to keep their waists extremely thin. They used corsets made of steel, wood, or ivory to keep their queen happy. According to many historians, the whole myth of women as the weaker sex was due to the fact that their corsets were restricting their lung capacity. So when excited, unable to breathe adequately, they fainted. Lungs weren’t the only body parts affected by waist-reducing corsets. The stomach, bladder, ribs, and more were all compressed—causing great discomfort and poor health.

The Padaung tribe of Burma (Myanmar) and Thailand view long necks as beautiful. Beginning at age five, a brass coil is added to a girl’s neck. Over the years, the coil is replaced with longer ones, as it slowly pushes the collarbone down and compresses the rib cage. This gives the illusion of the giraffe neck that’s been all the rage there for hundreds of years.

In March 1657, a Japanese priest cremated a cursed kimono that had been owned by three girls—all who died before wearing it. Instead of releasing the evil spirit in the kimono, however, strong winds blew the kimono to the floor and the house caught on fire. And before you could say “Don’t play with fire,” the “Long-Sleeved Kimono Fire” destroyed 75 percent of the city of Edo (now Tokyo), and more than one hundred thousand residents perished.

Yes, Virginia, there was a real Dracula, but he was much, much worse than a vampire. Vlad Drakulya III, Prince of Wallachia (a region in what is now southern Romania) ruled on and off from 1448–1476. If listing his attributes, “nice” wouldn’t crack the top thousand. Cruel, sick, and murderous? Getting warmer.

We have to remember that times were different then, and rulers needed to be tenacious in order to hold on to what was theirs. After ruling for a mere two months in 1448, Vlad was overthrown. He returned in 1456, killing the man who had taken his place. At this point, Vlad realized he needed to make some changes. Crime was rampant, his castle nearly in ruins, and political intrigue was everywhere. One of his first steps was to enslave the boyars (local aristocracy) who had opposed him and force them to rebuild his castle. The ones who didn’t die from exhaustion were killed. For his fight against crime, he devised some simple deterrents. If you were caught stealing, you had the skin of your feet removed and then your feet were sprinkled with salt. Goats licked the salt off. One story reports that Vlad was so confident that his punishments worked that he placed a golden cup in the central square of Tirgoviste … where it remained untouched for years.

Vlad also enjoyed burning or boiling people, hammering nails into heads, and cutting off limbs; however, his preferred method of torture was impalement. Vlad the Impaler would attach each of his victim’s legs to a horse, place the tip of a sharpened stake where the sun don’t shine, and say, “Giddyap!” He would impale thousands of people at a time and arrange the stakes in geometric patterns around one of his cities. One of the most famous woodcuts of Vlad shows him feasting with dozens of impaled victims in the background.

Vlad also thought it important that everyone contribute to the welfare of the kingdom. So one day he invited all the vagrants, beggars, and cripples of the land to a great feast. After the meal and a short speech from Vlad, he had the hall boarded up and set on fire. That’s one way to eradicate poverty …

SIDE NOTE:
In Romania, he is considered one of its greatest leaders, and in 2006, Vlad the Impaler was voted one of the “100 Greatest Romanians.”