Everyday PR

As reflected in my first post on this topic, reading expands your vocabulary and gives you new insights, among countless other benefits. I discovered the following from recent reads including Mere Christianity, The Zookeepers Wife and Holding Her Head High.  CAUTION: I  read mostly history and non-fiction.

Who knew flamingos had ankles?

• Flamingos look like they have backward facing knees, but those are actually their ankles. Their knees are higher and hidden by feathers.
• In the 1400s, anyone who harmed beehives were condemned to death as bees were revered as God’s servants providing honey for the table and candles for churches.
• A 2006 DNA study track Ashkenazi Jews (92% of the world’s Jews in 1931) back to four women who migrated from the Near East to Italy in the second and third centuries.
• According to legend, when Saint John was beheaded, his head rolled into a patch of plants, giving the herb superstitious powers/belief to ward off evil, hence St. John’s Wort.
• Lice caused the death of more soldiers from Napoleon’s army and the American Civil War than death from the battlefields.
• On April 19,1943, the first day of Passover, Heinrich Himmler vowed to kill the remaining Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto as a birthday gift to Adolf Hitler.
• Penicillin was discovered in 1941 from a moldy canteloupe in Peoria, IL.
• Polish folklore says that if a pregnant woman craves sweets, she’s having a girl; if she’s craving something sour, she’s having a boy.
• A Burmese man invented a hopping stick for his daughter to use to jump over puddles on the way to school. His daughter’s name was Pogo.
• Living in pre-Civil War days, slave Harriet Jacobs was born a victim, but she died a victor.
• Hillary Clinton was not the first women nominated to be President. The first woman was 53-year-old Belva Lockwood nominated in 1884 for the Office of the President of the United States on the Equal Rights Party ticket.
• Constantine (the first Christian ruler of Rome and namesake to Constantinople) was born to Helena, an impoverished single woman.  At 80 years old, she became the first person to go on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where she is credited with discovering Golgotha, the site of Christ’s crucifiction. 
• Rachel Lavein Fawcett, a young, intelligent 16-year-old widow living on the island of St. Croix, is the mother of Alexander Hamilton, a great founding father of America, one of this country’s first lawyers and loyal confidante to George Washington.

What have you learned from reading lately?