26Christmas
Christmas was banned in Boston between 1659 and 1681.
27. With the invention of the pendulum clock in 1656, a Dutch physicist named Christiaan Huygens increased the best accuracy of clocks from 15 minutes deviation a day to around 15 seconds a day.
28. In the 1650s, an African man named Anthony Johnson won a court case that let him keep another African named John Casor, as his slave instead of ending his indentured servitude. This meant that the first legally recognized owner of a permanent slave in America was an African man.
29. In 1648, a military drummer in French Canada was sentenced to death for being homosexual. He was pardoned on the condition that he became the colony’s first permanent executioner.
30. A man named Jeronimus Cornelisz survived a shipwreck in 1628 and transformed into a murderous dictator over the remaining survivors. He and his henchmen killed over 100 men, women, and children over a 2 month period while being stranded. Ultimately he was overcome by a group loyal to the ship's captain and was executed.
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31Wine
In 1625, English officers called off an invasion of Spain after their soldiers stopped off at a local winery and got hammered.
32. In 1621, the Dutch hired Japanese mercenaries to murder 40 inhabitants of Bandaneira Island in Indonesia, which was a lucrative source of nutmeg. Of the 12,000-15,000 residents, all but 1,000 were killed or forced to leave the island as the Dutch created a nutmeg monopoly.
33. Zildjian, the cymbal maker, is one of the oldest companies in the world. Founded in 1618, it's just under 400-year-old. Zildjian means "Bell Maker," a name given to the Alchemist hired by the Ottoman Sultan to create noise-makers for war. The manufacturing process remains a family secret to this day.
34. Since 1617, breaches of etiquette at Oxford University have been punished by making the offender drink up to four pints of beer in one go.
35. There is an old English anecdote claiming that the name ‘Sirloin steak’ is derived from an occasion when King James I of England while being entertained at Hoghton Tower in 1617, was so impressed by the quality of his steak that he knighted the loin of beef, which was referred to thereafter as “Sirloin.”
