Most women want to get married in a posh frock, but hundreds of years ago, many couldn’t afford it.
Villagers would sometimes have a whip-round to buy a barrel of beer, which would then be sold at a profit to help fund the frock. The beer was called, bride-ale, and the posh frock was called a bride-ale gown.
Sometimes wedding musicians would play as they pulled around the village on a cart. Occasionally a few people would hitch a ride. This was known as jumping on the bandwagon.
Occasionally some of these revellers would partake of a little too much bride ale, and the alcohol induced result would often be referred to as falling off the wagon.
I’d been told that falling off the wagon was something to do with prisoners being given a last drink while being taken up to being executed at Tyburn. But your explanation makes more sense.
Ah, but have you considered the Thames tidal effects on gravitational pull, as well as the change in air density with temperature, both of which will affect the effects of the drag coefficients, as will the mass of the bloke. A big bloke will be affected more by Newton’s Third Law of Motion than a small lightweight man, and therefore the former will fall faster than the latter.
Then of course there are the effects of downdrafts and updrafts, both of which will aid or hinder the rate of fall. This is especially important when the updrafts cause by the hot air emanating from our parliamentary debating chambers are taken into consideration that must easily slow the fall of a bloke in a tweed suit such that it will indeed take him nine and a half seconds from the top of Big Ben to the ground.
I have no idea if Mister Sellers had been drinking on an empty stomach, or are you referring to our politicians? If so, then they probably were under the effects of alcohol when they produced hot air, but I doubt it was caused by drinking on an empty stomach. I am quite sure the stomachs of our MPs have never suffered from being empty, whether from expenses funded from the public purse, or of food from the publicly funded HoP restaurants, or more booze from the HoP subsidised bars.
I think I’ve read the same book.After the ceremony male guests would cover their bare bottoms with honey and stick them out of the pub windows to distract the others while the happy couple consummated their marriage in the lounge bar.
Fact: Sudan has more pyramids than any country in the world
Not only does Sudan have more pyramids than Egypt, but the numbers aren’t even close. While 138 pyramids have been discovered in Egypt, Sudan boasts around 255.
Fact: There are parts of Africa in all four hemispheres
For people whose education was largely focused on the Western world, it may be surprising to find out exactly how huge the continent of Africa is. For instance, it spans all four hemispheres and covers nearly 12 million square miles.
Fact: The cornea is one of only two parts of the human body without blood vessels
The cornea is the clear part of the eye that covers the pupil and other parts of the eye. Cartilage and the cornea are the only types tissue in the human body that do not contain blood vessels, according to scientists at the Harvard Department of Ophthalmology’s Schepens Eye Research Institute.
In fact, one Texas man was hospitalized when a bullet he shot at an armadillo ricocheted off the animal and hit him in the jaw. That’s a totally true animal tidbit.
