31 Facts About Incidents That Happened Before Common Era (B.C.)

After the battle of Carrhae in 53 B.C., the Parthians took the Roman commander Marcus Licinius Crassus and allegedly poured molten gold down his throat because of his renowned greed.

27. Around 1800 B.C., a king named Erra-imittī in Mesopotamia appointed a palace worker king named Enlil-bâni for a short period of time to avoid a disaster that he was told was coming by an oracle. Near the end of the time, Erra-imittī died while eating soup and Enlil-bâni ruled for 24 years.

28. Draco, an Athenian law-maker in 620 B.C., was smothered to death by gifts of cloaks and hats showered upon him by appreciative citizens.

29. The earliest recorded epidemic dates back to the Peloponnesian War of 430 B.C. The ancient Greek historian Thucydides described the symptoms of a disease believed to be typhoid fever. It was known as the Great Athenian Plague and it killed about 100,000 people or two-thirds of the population there.

30. In 89 B.C., Roman soldiers had reportedly captured a satyr while at war in Greece. When they brought it to their general Sulla for interrogation, it is said to have only spoke in something like a cross between the neighing of a horse and the bleating of a goat.

The world’s oldest recorded joke which has been traced back to 1900 B.C. was “Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband’s lap.”