Fun Facts: Laws and Customs
"It usually takes 100 years to make a law, and then, after it's done its work, it usually takes 100 years to be rid of it."
—Henry Ward Beecher
The oldest recorded death sentence is found in the Amherst
papyri, a list of state trials of ancient Egypt, dating to 1500 B.C.
A teenaged male, convicted of "magic", was sentenced to kill himself
by either poison or stabbing.
Oxford University once had rules forbidding
students from bringing bows and arrows to class.
Marco Polo reported a strict sense of justice in India. If a man would
not pay his debt, the creditor would draw a circle around the debtor.
If the debtor should try to step out of the circle, he would be liable
to punishment by death.
Ben Jonson, the brilliant English dramatist and poet (1572–1637),
was working as an actor and playwright in 1598 when he killed another
actor in a duel. He was tried, and successfully defended himself by
claiming the right of clergy, namely, that he could read the Bible in
Latin, and was punished only by branding and a short prison sentence.
When a Chinese bystander ashore was killed accidentally by a cannon
salvo of greeting from an England ship, during the early days (1830s)
of the China-Western trade, the England were forced to turn over to
China the hapless gunner, who was promptly strangled. (Strangling was
thought by the Chinese to be a less severe punishment than other
forms of execution, because the body would not be permanently
From 1836 to 1895, the Red Flag Act in England required that any
self-propelled vehicle be preceded by a man carrying a red flag by
day and a red lantern by night. This regulation essentially limited the speed
of such vehicles to that of a person and inhibited the development of
self-propelled vehicles such as automobiles.
In 1853 Illinois passed a law requiring any black entering the
state and staying more than ten days to pay a fine of $50. If he could
not pay, he could be sold into slavery for a period commensurate
with the fine.
In 1850, the state of Michigan's consitution read,
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, unless for the punishment
of crime, shall ever be tolerated in this state,"
inadvertently legalizing slavery
as an appropriate punishment for crime. It was not until 1963 when the
comma was shifted from its position after servitude to a position after
slavery, outlawing slavery as punishment for crime.
On June 6, 1872, the U.S. Congress passed a bill exempting from duty,
among other things, "fruit plants, tropical and semi-tropical". However,
it was inadvertently printed as
"fruit, plants tropical and semi-tropical". This misplaced
comma cost the U.S. government $1,000,000 before a new session of
Congress was able to rectify the error.
The United States Refuse Act of 1899 is a long-ignored federal statute.
It prohibits all industrial discharge into bodies of water.
In the U.S. state of Illinois, it is illegal to hunt bullfrogs with a firearm.
Witchcraft was not legalised in Great Britain until 1951.
The last person in Great Britain to be convicted under the Witchcraft Act
was Jane Rebecca Yorke, who was convicted in September 1944. She received
a lenient sentence and a fine.
In Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, it is illegal to eat ice cream on
Bank Street on a Sunday.
In Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.A., it is illegal to catch mice without a
In 1666, a law was passed in England requiring all corpses to be
buried in a wool shroud, thereby extorting support for Britain's
flagging wool industry, especially since the Black Death was
devastating England at the time. The act was finally repealed 148
years later, in 1814.
In 1971, in order to show how easy it is to pass so-called "special bills",
representative Tom Moore, Jr. introduced a bill in the Texas (U.S.A.) House of
Representatives, which was subsequently passed unanimously, commending Boston
mass murderer Albert De Salvo, who was known as "the Boston Strangler".
The bill stated that De Salvo's "dedication and devotion to his work has
enabled the weak and lonely throughout the nation to achieve a new degree of
concern for their future", and that he was "officially recognized by the state
of Massachusetts for his noted activities and unconventional techniques involving
population control and applied psychology".
Duelling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered
The following curious law was enacted during the reign of Richard I., for the
government of those going by sea to the Holy Land: "He who kills a man on
shipboard, shall be bound to the dead body and thrown into the sea; if the man
is killed on shore, the slayer shall be bound to the dead body and buried with
it. He who shall draw his knife to strike another, or who shall have drawn
blood from him, to lose his hand; if he shall have only struck with the palm
of the hand, without drawing blood, he shall be thrice ducked in the sea."
In York, England, it is still legal to kill a Scotsman if he is
carrying a bow and arrow and is within the city walls after dark,
except on Sundays.
In the U.S. state of Maine, it is illegal to deface a milk carton.