More Trivia

As I said in the first post, I am going to the US of A in January and this has got me paying very close attention to my actions whenever I cross the road because I'm convinced I'm going to be in the country for about ten minutes before I get hit by a car driving on the WRONG SIDE OF THE ROAD!!

For all of you out there who just went, "well we think YOU drive on the wrong side of the road, and please stop shouting at us" I have to say that I'm not basing this on personal preference but on historical fact.  Let us take a trip back, back, all the way to before there were things like internal combustion engines - this meant people had to use other means of transport, such as carts, horses and peasants.  Now while peasants and carts didn't mind which side you mounted and dismounted from, horses were, and apparently are, a little more finicky.

I can't say with any great certainty as to the truth of this, seeing as I live in a time well after the invention of the aforementioned internal combustion engine, so I have no need to mount and/or dismount a horse, from either side, but I am reliably informed that all horses are mounted from the left side, this is because most horses are left handed (hoofed) and they prefer this method.  All equipment is apparently designed with this in mind.

So because horses are mounted from the left side, it was very quickly understood that riding on the left side of the road meant that a horse could pull up on the side of the road and the rider could get off in safety without being run down by all the other horses on the road.  This theory is still applied, albeit in an altered fashion, to modern cars - in countries where cars drive on the right side of the road the driver is on the left side of the car and the passenger is on the right, making it safe for passengers who don't have the benefit of mirrors and the like when deciding whether or not to open their doors, in countries where cars drive on the correct left side of the road, this is reversed.

This is less of a problem with cars than horses, because cars can be designed either way, but why did this split happen in the first place?

It is all because of the French.  Not all of the French, mainly just Napoleon, really.  Napoleon was annoyed with the English because at the time he was Emperor of something like the entirety of Europe and the English told him, "No thanks, we're all good here with the system of monarchy that has been working for us since, you know, we've existed."

In retaliation for this snub, Napoleon decreed that overnight all roads would run in opposite directions, to distinguish the noble Europeans from the barbaric English.  This caused quite a lot of confusion and probably, although I have no evidence to back this up, much injury to both horses and riders.

When America decided it didn't want to be associated with England anymore they decided that the European road system, devised by a guy who ended his days exiled and alone, was the one to go with.  This apparently seemed like a good idea at the time.

So next time you're thinking about which side of the road you drive on, remember that the reason there is the divide at all is because a bully was petulant that someone stood up to him so he changed it from the left to the right side.

That's probably enough trivia for today now, thanks for reading my word vomit to the very end.

Why you want me on your trivia team

So I was talking on the phone to a friend earlier today and unexpectedly and the conversation turned, I'm not entirely sure how, to Mahatma Gandhi.  I happened to mention that today is the anniversary of the execution of Nathuram Godse, the man who shot him at point blank range as he was on his way to a prayer meeting.

This was of little interest to my friend and also of little interest, though he humoured me through it, was that when Nathuram was sentenced to death among those who protested were the first Prime Minister of India, who in large part owed his position to the work of Gandhi, and Gandhi's own two sons.  This may sound strange, but it was because the death penalty was something the Mahatma was staunchly opposed to, but it lead to a rather unusual situation whereby those closest to the deceased were asking for the killer's life to be spared while others pushed for his death.

I finished explaining how this situation (despite the terrible crime, the effect it must have had on those involved and its long term repercussions for India and Pakistan) is interesting to me because of the irony of the children of a man who was killed in a political assassination asking for the death penalty to be stayed because it goes against the victim's political ideals.  The response from my friend was something along the lines of "you know you think about these things far too much, and you're weird" which made me think I should probably record it here (which makes this the first time I've posted about thinking about the blog in real life).

The other thing he said was "you are full of these strange facts, next time I'm at one of those pub quiz trivia nights I want you on my team!"  Which is fine, just don't expect me to be any help whatsoever in the sports round.

Still, I guess I can't be too weird, I had to look up the spelling of Nathuram Godse.