According to Suetonius, emperor Caligula banned anyone mentioning goats in his presence, because he looked like one.
Fact of the Day
Quote of the Day
"A French bastard arriving with armed banditti and establishing himself the King of England against the consent of the natives is in plain terms a very paltry rascally original and certainly has no divinity in it.
"
~ Thomas Paine, 1776
On This Day
1227 Genghis Khan, founder of the Mongol Empire and responsible for perhaps 40 million deaths, died.
1510 Henry VII's two most hated - and most efficient - servants, Edmund Dudley and Richard Empson, were executed on the orders of Henry VIII in what was possibly his first act of judicial murder.
1590 The Roanoke colony was found mysteriously deserted, with the word 'CROATOAN' carved on the pallisade.
1783 A huge fiery meteor was seen in the sky over the east coast of Scotland and England, before moving over the Continent. Some reports have it that the meteor finally disappeared over northern Italy.
1939 The Nazis set up the Reich Committee to assess whether each newborn child with a disability should be 'euthanised'.