*howl* i was looking through old mails for su-lin's fadiman definitions and i found yisheng's list of "things we learnt from history 5" instead.

[erratum: after su-lin wrote and complained some of these were from nat, mindy and herself i have put in brackets where source person identifiable. *shake head* such a credit grabber]

• philip 2 had an amorous affair with his illegitimate son, don carlos
  
• luther liked singing and dancing with pretty peasant girls (a common failing among the clergy it seems)
  
• zwingli was killed by a 6-year old boy with a big catapult under a pear tree
  
• the defenestration of prague was unsuccessful because the 2 defenestrated envoys landed in a heap of refuse outside the hradschin palace, hence breaking their fall.
  
• during the reign of philip 4, the spanish crown was so strapped for cash that it taxed the purchase of cowbells, beer barrels, jalapeno peppers and petticoats
  
• Catherine de Medici was no more mourned than a dead goat.
  
• Mazarin wasn't respected because he promenaded on the arms of his astonishingly beautiful nieces. (su-lin)
  
• Richelieu was so sickly they had to regularly knock holes in walls to let his litter through.
  
• Philip lived in the escurial with his papers, his paintings and his father's remains.
  
• Suleiman's favourite colour: Green (well well, how did i know this was from su-lin?)
  
• Louis XIV liked to have sex twice a night when both he and Madame Maintenance were 70. with all the windows open.
  
• Richelieu liked cats. (su-lin)
  
• Louis XIII had an anal fixation because he had things rammed up his ass when he was a kid.
  
• Marie de Medici fell into the moat as she was trying a Rapunzel like escape from imprisonment as she was too heavy. (Fay, Mona, get the hint?) The guards mistook her for a prostitue escaping from the back door due to the untimely return of a wife and so did not recognise her and let her go after shovelling banana skins and other diverse garbage onto her head. (attributed to nat)
  
• Richelieu's sister couldn't sit down because she thought her backside was made of glass. (mindy)
  
• When Henry VIII died, his body exploded.
  
• The Augustinian monks (Luther's order) shaved the top of their heads (leaving a ring of hair just above the ears) because they believed that hair was an obstruction to divine inspiration coming from above.
  
  
  Incomprehensible names:
  
  
• Jan Van Oldenbarveveldt (Dutch statesman during the revolt)
  
• Trautmannsdorff (HRE Ferd. III's plenipotentiary at Westphalia)
  
• Selim the Sot (Suleiman's son)
  
• Compagnie de la nacelle de saint-pierre fleur-delysee (French company founded by Richelieu that claimed the whole world as its market, but failed; Aaron Maniam never fails to mention this company name in his Richelieu essays)
  
• Ulrich Zwingli (Swiss Reformer)
  
• Battle of Malplaquet 1710 (turning pt in the Spanish war of succession)
  
• Battle of Zusmarshausen 1648 (final defeat for the imperialists in TYW)
  
• Battle of Alcazarquivir 1578 (Death of Port. King Sebastian)