The itching time came up yesterday, probably referring to Francoism, while I was prancing around in a new wig for purposes that will shortly be revealed. DCVB says “l’any de la picor” refers to distant times, and proverbologist Víctor Pàmies cites Joan Amades’s hypothesis that it comes from the Year of Fleas and Famine, 1471,…
Cf. one of the tales from the Decameron which made me laugh most as child, that of the hermit Rustico who teaches the virgin Alibech how to put the Devil back into Hell.
On this day in 1466, one Juan Sort, aged 70, was beheaded for the misappropriation of public funds. Millet is said by the auditors to have stolen around 30 million and has fessed to around 10%, but has not been anywhere near a prison, and indeed seems to think that by looking old and grey…
George Sandford has left a fascinating comment on this post, which deals with an amusing 19th century literary-historical hoax–purported correspondence between Ferdinand the Catholic and an esoteric global selection of fellow-monarchs. George is family of the alleged editor, Brother Antonio the Goth, and thus of the Christian clan kidnapped by the Moors when they invaded…
Dido and Hengist are remembered as early heroes of isoperimetry for having solved the challenge of maximising the area of a land grant made to them by stringing together strips of oxhide and using the resulting closed superthong to trace, respectively, a semi-circle at Carthage and a full circle at Kaercorrei. What was news to…
Guy of Warwick is the original of the soldier-saint Guillem de Varoic in Tirant lo blanc, as Wikipedia surely soon will say. I almost drowned near where he fought the giant Colbrand as a consequence of too much water without and cider within. I hope Xavi will be wary of him.
