A codpiece (from the Middle English cod, meaning scrotum) was an important article of men’s clothing for about two hundred years from 1400 to 1600 and were was still worn in Shakespeare’s time (1564 -1616). The codpiece did not just appear overnight:; it evolved. In the late Middle Ages, when …
One of the very earliest sexual psychologists was a fellow called Magnus Hirschfeld (1868 – 1935) who, until Hitler shut down his world renowned institute in Berlin, studied all manner of sexual oddities. In his book ,Sexual Pathology (1932), he describes an evening at a Parisian night club.: To prove …
In Thailand, between 1973 and 1980, there was curious outbreak of penile amputations by women. Fidelity is held in high esteem over there and it appeared that Thai wives took to punishing their philandering husbands by getting them drunk and then, while they slept in a drunken stupor, the wives …
Classic French onion soup is said to have been created by the dethroned King Stanislaw I of Poland, father-in-law of Louis XV, who had time on his hands during his necessarily prolonged sojourn at his daughter’s court. (Stanislaw is also noted for traveling across Europe disguised as a coachman and …
Even though most asparagus found in shops are green, it is also available in white. White asparagus is simply green asparagus, buried. Popular in some less interesting parts of Europe for its smooth buttery taste, white asparagus is created by mounding sandy soil over the beds to shield the growing …
It seems that we should blame a priapistic French merchant for this. This naughty little Frenchman misinterpreted the Moorish word for tomato, Pomi di Moro as Pomme d`armour,the love apple. What with the tomatoes saucy reputation as an aphrodisiac, the name stuck. There is another theory that the “love apple” …
