The author of Mary Had a Little Lamb, Sarah Josepha Hale, is most responsible for the creation of Thanksgiving as a national holiday.
100 Mind-Blowing Mary Facts
The original Star-Spangled Banner was sewn on the floor of a brewery in Baltimore in 1813 by Mary Pickersgill and her daughter.
Frankenstein’s Creature is a vegetarian. Both Victor Frankenstein and the Creature are fictional characters in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. In the classic novel, Creature says, “My food is not that of man; I do not destroy the lamb and the kid to glut my appetite; acorns and berries afford me sufficient nourishment.” This is one of the interesting facts you should share with your vegetarian friends!
Frankenstein is a vegetarian. Turns out, this figure always seen along with Dracula and ghosts isn’t as scary as you think. Victor Frankenstein’s Creature is – in fact – a vegetarian. In the Mary Shelley novel Frankenstein, the Creature says: “My food is not that of man; I do not destroy the lamb and the kid to glut my appetite; acorns and berries afford me sufficient nourishment.”
Mary and James are the most popular names around the world. Between the years 1917 to 2016, over 5 million baby boys were named James. On the other hand, over 3.5 million baby girls were named Mary.
Mary Shelley allegedly lost her virginity on her mother’s grave. It is widely believed that the author of Frankenstein did the devil’s tango with her would-be husband, Percy Shelley, on her mother’s final resting place. Does it get any more gothic than that?
Mary Stuart became Queen of Scotland when she was only six days old.
There’s a mountain in Greece that women are prohibited from visiting. It’s not just the mountain, but an entire peninsula called Mount Athos. You see, Mount Athos has been home to a collection of monasteries since at least the 4th Century AD. For more than a thousand years, if not longer, the presence of women has been banned not just from the monasteries but from the whole peninsula. Mount Athos is an autonomous region of Greece controlled by the Greek Orthodox Church. According to the Church, the Virgin Mary blessed the peninsula and made it her holy garden, so no other women were allowed to be there. Other than wild animals and a few cats, the animals there are also all male.
Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein when she was 18, during a ghost story competition while staying in Switzerland with writers Percy Shelley (her lover) and Lord Byron.
The Halifax Gibbet. The Halifax Gibbet was a Yorkshire invention and was essentially a large axe attached to a wooden block, 200 years ahead of the guillotine’s adoption in Revolutionary France. The town of Halifax adopted it to punish even lowly crimes like petty theft, and it remained in use until the mid-17th century. It inspired another device – the maiden – first used in Scotland during Mary Queen of Scots‘ reign.
A Welsh town has the longest name in Europe: Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch is the longest town name in Europe and one of the longest town names in the world. Often road signs in Wales are written in both Welsh and English, the translation of Llanfairpwll (the more manageable version) is ‘St. Mary’s Church in the hollow of white hazel, near a rapid whirlpool, and the Church of St. Tysilio near the red cave.
During the 1800s, the name Mary was so popular that nearly half of the female population was named Mary.
Europe’s Longest Town Name Belongs to a Welsh Town: Among the longest town names in the world, Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch is the longest name of a town in Europe. The more palatable translation of Llanfairpwll, which is frequently printed in both Welsh and English, is “St. Mary’s Church in the hollow of white hazel, near a rapid whirlpool, and the Church of St. Tysilio near the red cave”. This one should fit as the top 10 interesting facts about the UK, right?