In the old days, playing music that contained augmented 4th chords in any key
was avoided because it was thought to invoke the Devil.
Anacletus II, who was elected Pope in 1130, was the great grandson of Baruch, a
successful Jewish businessman who had served as an adviser, financier, and
steward to Pope Benedict IX.
There’s a temple in Sri Lanka dedicated to a tooth of the Buddha.
The Seven Deadly Sins are represented by the characters in Gilligan’s
Island: Gilligan, sloth; the Skipper, anger; Mr. Howell, greed; Mrs.
Howell, gluttony; Ginger, lust; the Professor, pride; and Mary Ann, envy.
Some saints in the Middle Ages were dirty because they thought it would bring
them closer to God. St. Anthony never washed his feet; St. Abraham never washed
his hands or feet for 50 years; St. Sylvia never washed any part of her body
except her fingertips.
The Aetherius Society believes that Jesus is alive and well on the planet
Venus.
William Blake, Winston Churchill, and John Lennon were all ordained druids.
The origin of the modern-day confessional box comes from the Middle Ages.
Before then, prostitutes who visited priests to confess their sins were often
sexually assaulted.
The Fijiian god Matawaloo has eight stomachs and is always eating.
The dunce cap of schoolhouse fame originates from a paper cone that was placed
on the heads of accused witches during the Middle Ages. When Joan of Arc was
martyred, she was wearing one of them.
Buddhism is the fastest growing religion in Ireland.
David Koresh once submitted bass drum logo designs to David Seven, drummer for
the Los Angeles band Radio Free Europe. Cult second-in-command honcho Steve
Schneider tried to lure the band into the Branch Davidian cult with promises of
free recording time, equipment, and an all-expenses-paid vacation to Waco.
According to an old tradition, men carry women over the threshold to protect
them from being pos-sessed by evil spirits that hang around in doorways.
Belief in the existence of vacuums used to be punishable by death under church
law.
The “live long and prosper” sign by Star Trek’s Mr. Spock is actually the sign
that Jewish priests (Cohenim) used while saying certain prayers.
In 1654, Bishop Ussher of Ireland, having analyzed all the begats in Genesis,
concluded that the planet Earth had been created at 9am on October 26, 4004
B.C., a Thursday.
St. Cassian was a schoolmaster whose pupils stabbed him to death with their
pens.
St. Jerome, who was responsible for translating the Bible into Latin, taught
that the irregular surface of the earth was evidence of God’s anger with human
sin. He also taught that fossils were the remains of the flood, a belief that
went uncontested for years.
By one account, there were originally 399,920,004 angels in heaven. However,
since one-third joined Lucifer and were then cast into hell, that means that
only 266,613,336 are left.
There is no mention of Adam and Eve eating an apple in the Bible. According to one statistician, the chances for oil that would light a lamp for
one night to last eight nights — the basis for the Jewish holiday of Chanukah
— would be one in 3,000.
Legend has it that after he was beheaded, St. Dennis, the patron saint of
Paris, France, carried his head around and walked for quite some distance
before finally setting it down.
Domesticated cats are never mentioned in the Bible. Dogs are mentioned 14
times, lions 55 times.
According to one amateur theologian, when St. Lawrence was being martyred upon
a hot gridiron, he reputedly said, “Turn me over. I’m done on this side.”
The ancient Celts believed that rivers were the urine of goddesses. Many
European rivers (Seine, Severn, Danube, etc.) were named after these urinating
Celtic deities.
There are dinosaurs in the Bible.
Pliny believed that the souls of the dead resided in beans.
— R.U.
Steinberg
This article appears in December 27 • 1996 and December 27 • 1996 (Cover).