The Peersian Empire reached its greatest extent under Darius I, who
seized the throne in 522 BC. It stretched about 4000km (2500 miles) from
the River Indus in resent-day Pakistan to what is now Benghazi in Libya
in the west, and from the Arabian Sea in the south to the Caucasus and
Macedonia in the north. This, the first of the so-called "World Empires"
covered about 5,000,000 square Km (almost 2,000,000 square miles) and had
a population of 10,000,000.
The Persian Kings had many wives, and even more concubines, kept in a
harem guarded by eunuchs. After Cyrus subdued Babylonia in 539 bc the
province had to supply already castrated boys each year to learn their
trade as eunuchs.
Probably none of the kings had more wives and concubines than Xerxes I,
who reigned from 486 to 465 BC and who appears as the amorous King
Ahasuerus (The Hebrew version of his name) in the Old Testament book of
Esther. It was said that his harem had as many women in it as there were
days in the year.
The wearing of bikinis goes back at least to Roman times. Girls wearing
similar two-piece costumes are portrayed on a Roman mosaic which was
found in the ruins of a villa near Piazza Armerina in Sicily. The fashion
spread as far north as Britain. A leather bikini, made by the Romans in
the late 1st century AD was found in a well in London.
Amazonian Indians invented rubber boots many centuries before the Duke of
Wellington was born. They dipped their feet and legs in latex, the raw
liquid of the rubber tree. The latex formed a tough extra skin, or boot,
that prote4cted them from insect bites and thorns.
Augustus the Strong, the Elecator of Sacony who was elected King of
Poland in 1697, is believed to have fathered more than 300 children.
Nevertheless when he died, there was no difficulty about choosing his
successor, as only one of his sons was legitimate.
King Mithridates VI of Pontus in Asia Minor made himself so immune to
poison that he was unable to poison himself when he wanted to.
The King spent his life taking small doses of poison in order to build up
a resistance to it because he was frightened of being assassinated.
He was so successful that, when he tried to commit suicide in 63 BC in
order to avoid his imminent capture by the Romans, the poison he took had
no effect. In the end he gave up and ordered a slave to kill him with a
sword.
There now, are you not glad you read that lot LOL.
Mercury.
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