Cristofor Columb

Columbus’s real achievement was managing to cross the ocean successfully in both directions. Though an accomplished enough mariner, he was not terribly good at a great deal else, especially geography, the skill that would seem most vital in an explorer. It would be hard to name any figure in history who has achieved more lasting fame with less competence. He spent large parts of eight years bouncing around Caribbean islands and coastal South America convinced that he was in the heart of the Orient and that Japan and China were at the edge of every sunset. He never worked out that Cuba is an island and never once set foot on, or even suspected the existence of, the land mass to the north that everyone thinks he discovered: the United States. He filled his holds with valueless iron pyrite thinking it was gold and with what he confidently believed to be cinnamon and pepper. The first was actually a worthless tree bark and the second were not true peppers but chilli peppers – excellent when you have grasped the general idea of them, but a little eye-wateringly astonishing on first hearty chomp.

Bill Bryson, At Home: A Short History of Private Life, 2010

Dacă un cartof poate produce vitamina C

Vitamins are curious things. It is odd, to begin with, that we cannot produce them ourselves when we are so very dependent on them for our well-being. If a potato can produce Vitamin C, why can’t we? Within the animal kingdom only humans and guinea pigs are unable to synthesize Vitamin C in their own bodies.

Bill Bryson, At Home: A Short History of Private Life, 2010

Despre cuțitul pentru pește

At one point, a single manufacturer offered no fewer than 146 different types of flatware for the table. Curiously, one of the few survivors from this culinary onslaught is one that is most difficult to understand: the fish knife. No one has ever identified a single advantage conferred by its odd scalloped shape or worked out the original thinking behind it. There isn’t a single kind of fish that it cuts better or bones more delicately than a conventional knife does.

Bill Bryson, At Home: A Short History of Private Life, 2010

Despre toalete

Perhaps no word in English has undergone more transformations in its lifetime than ‘toilet’. Originally, in about 1540, it was a kind of cloth, a diminutive form of ‘toile’, a word still used to describe a type of linen. Then it became a cloth for use on dressing tables. Then it became the items on the dressing table (whence ‘toiletries’). Then it became the dressing table itself, then the act of dressing, then the act of receiving visitors while dressing, then the dressing room itself, then any kind of private room near a bedroom, then a room used lavatorially, and finally the lavatory itself.

Bill Bryson, At Home: A Short History of Private Life, 2010

Zahăr

The British had always loved sugar, so much so that when they first got access to it, about the time of Henry VIII, they put it on almost everything – on eggs, meat, and into their wine. They scooped it on to potatoes, sprinkled it over greens, ate it straight off the spoon if they could afford to. Even though sugar was very expensive, people consumed it till their teeth turned black, and if their teeth didn’t turn black naturally they blackened them artificially to show how wealthy and marvellously self-indulgent they were.

Bill Bryson, At Home: A Short History of Private Life, 2010

Dressing impractically

Dressing impractically is a way of showing that one doesn’t have to do physical work. Throughout history, and across many cultures, this has generally been far more important than comfort.

Bill Bryson, At Home: A Short History of Private Life, 2010

Valoarea unui pat

For much of history a bed was, for most homeowners, the most valuable thing they owned. In William Shakespeare’s day, for instance, a decent canopied bed cost £5, half the annual salary of a typical schoolmaster. Because they were such treasured items, the best bed was often kept downstairs, sometimes in the living room, where it could be better shown off to visitors or seen through an open window by passers-by. Generally, such beds were notionally reserved for really important visitors, but in practice were hardly used, a fact that adds some perspective to the famous clause in Shakespeare’s will in which he left his second-best bed to his wife, Anne. This has often been construed as an insult, when in fact the second-best bed was almost certainly the marital one and therefore the one with the most tender associations.

Bill Bryson, At Home: A Short History of Private Life, 2010

La teatru

Another factor that materially influenced dining times was theatre hours. In Shakespeare’s day performances began about two o’clock, which kept them conveniently out of the way of mealtimes, but that was dictated largely by the need for daylight in open-air arenas like the Globe. Once plays moved indoors, starting times tended to get later and later and theatre-goers found it necessary to adjust their dining times accordingly – though this was done with a certain reluctance and even resentment. Eventually, unable or unwilling to modify their personal habits any further, the beau monde stopped trying to get to the theatre for the first act and took to sending a servant to hold their seats for them till they had finished dining. Generally they would show up – noisy, drunk and disinclined to focus – for the later acts. For a generation or so it was usual for a theatrical company to perform the first half of a play to an auditorium full of dozing servants who had no attachment to the proceedings and to perform the second half to a crowd of ill-mannered inebriates who had no idea what was going on.

Bill Bryson, At Home: A Short History of Private Life, 2010

Improbable founders

It would be hard to imagine two more improbable founders for a movement as ascetic as Communism. While earnestly desiring the downfall of capitalism, Engels made himself rich and comfortable from all its benefits. He kept a stable of fine horses, rode to hounds at weekends, enjoyed the best wines, maintained a mistress, hobnobbed with the elite of Manchester at the fashionable Albert Club – in short, did everything one would expect of a successful member of the gentry. Marx, meanwhile, constantly denounced the bourgeoisie but lived as bourgeois a life as he could manage, sending his daughters to private schools and boasting at every opportunity of his wife’s aristocratic background.

Bill Bryson, At Home: A Short History of Private Life, 2010

Aceiași

So sedentism meant poorer diets, more illness, lots of toothache and gum disease, and earlier deaths. What is truly extraordinary is that these are all still factors in our lives today. Out of the thirty thousand types of edible plant thought to exist on earth, just eleven – corn, rice, wheat, potatoes, cassava, sorghum, millet, beans, barley, rye and oats – account for 93 per cent of all that humans eat, and every one of them was first cultivated by our Neolithic ancestors. Exactly the same is true of husbandry. The animals we raise for food today are not eaten because they are notably delectable or nutritious or a pleasure to be around, but because they were the ones first domesticated in the stone age.

Bill Bryson, At Home: A Short History of Private Life, 2010