In 1858, while playing for the All-England 11, English cricketer HH Stephenson took three consecutive wickets in a match against Hallam in Sheffield. As was customary at the time, fans had a collection for Stephenson and then bought him a hat to honour his unique feat. The 'hat-trick' as it became known, was soon adopted by many other sports.
It might seem like just a saying, but if you count papyrus, there's an actual 'oldest trick in the book'. The 18th-16th century BCE Westcar Papyrus tells the story of King Cheops (of Great Pyramid fame) calling for the magician Dedi. Dedi 'pulls the heads off' a goose, a duck, and an ox and restores them to life - a magic trick that is still performed today.
On August 4, 1945, a group of Soviet schoolchildren presented a replica of the US Great Seal to US Ambassador W. Averell Harriman as a 'gesture of friendship' to the USSR's World War II ally. It was a great opportunity for the Soviets to plant a listening device in the ambassador's Moscow office - and that's exactly what they did. It took seven years until the bug was discovered.
In December 2009, hospitals in the USA noticed a sharp increase in people presenting with salmonella poisoning. Curiously, the vast majority of new cases were in girls under 10 years old. However, it didn't take long for epidemiologists to make the connection. It was just after the release of the Disney movie, 'The Princess and the Frog'.
Ever wondered why we call people with ginger locks ‘redheads’, when their hair is clearly orange? That’s because English didn’t distinguish between red and orange until the 1540s, and we’d been using the word ‘redhead’ since the mid-1200s. So what came first, the colour or the fruit? The fruit arrived in England in the 1300s (via Italy), but it took over 200 years for orange to become both a colour and a fruit.
It's hardly surprising that if you become a Roman Emperor at the age of 15, your sense of humour may be a little juvenile. Back in 218 AD, Syrian Emperor Varius Avitus Bassianus, also known as Heliogabalus, invented the first known whoopie cushion from animal bladders. Hilarious. He was assassinated by the time he was 18.
