System of medieval land management. A hide was a land-holding considered sufficient to support a family; a hundred consisted of a hundred hides; and a shire was originally a subdivision of a county.
Hides, hundreds, and shires
Fact of the Day
In the 1330s a number of English knights went to war with France with eye patches covering an eye, having made a chivalrous pledge to their ladies that they wouldn't open one of their eyes until victory was achieved. Most of them died as a result.
Quote of the Day
"And if I am to estimate the penalty justly, I say that maintenance in the Prytaneum is the just return.
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~ Plato reporting Socrates' suggestion for punishment
On This Day
1846 Scottish surgeon Robert Liston was the first European to use anaesthesia during an amputation. He could amputate a leg in two and a half minutes.
1898 Scientists Pierre and Marie Curie discovered the radioactive element radium.
1937 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs', the world's first full-length animated film, premiered in the USA
1946 A tsunami caused by an undersea earthquake killed at least 1,362 and left thousands homeless in Japan.
1967 Louis Washkansky, the first man to undergo a heart transplant, died in Cape Town, South Africa, 18 days after his operation.
1988 Pan Am Flight 103 exploded as it was flying over Lockerbie, Scotland. All 243 passengers and 16 crew, and 11 residents of Lockerbie were killed