In pre-Meiji restoration Japan, why did a Samurai shave his head before battle?
Answer: To indicate he was ready to die.
Source: The Emergence of Modern Japan by Janet E Hunter; General Historical Texts
On This Day
1793 – Nicolas Jean Hugon de Bassville, journalist and representative of Revolutionary France, is lynched by a mob in Rome
1833 – President Andrew Jackson writes to Vice President Martin Van Buren expressing his opposition to South Carolina’s defiance of federal authority in the Nullification Crisis.
1849 – The Colony of Vancouver Island is established.
1893 – The Independent Labour Party of the United Kingdom holds its first meeting.
More at: History
HistoryWow’s Quick Shot Videos
A short, sharp hit of history in video format. Acclaimed Irish playwright and novelist Oscar Wilde was the toast of London society in the 1890s until things came decidedly unstuck through an association with a young British aristocrat, Lord Alfred Douglas, known as ‘Bosie’.
The source for this HistoryWow video is: Oscar and Bosie - A Fatal Passion by Trevor Fisher; General Historical Texts.
More Quick Shot Videos on HistoryWow's YouTube Channel: 
Who Am I?
- I was born in France in the middle of the 19th century.
- I was employed by a Russian grand duke.
- I was chef du cuisine to the general staff of the Rhine Army during the Franco-Prussian War.
- Famous hotelier Cesare Ritz persuaded me to work for him.
- I invented Bombe Nero and Flaming Ice and am regarded as one of history’s greatest in my field.
Last week’s answer:
Frederick V, known as the ‘Winter King’
More at: History
HistoryWow’s Highlighted Historical Quotation
“Being an artist means not reckoning and counting, but ripening like the tree that does not force its sap and stands confident in the storms of spring without the fear that after them may come no summer. It does come. But it comes only to the patient.”
Ranier Maria Rilke (1875-1926), German poetSource: Letters to a Young Poet by Ranier Maria Rilke
More at: History
HistoryWow’s Featured Historical Figure of Note
Cypselus (655-623 BCE)Greek ruler. Tyrant of Corinth, he was the earliest of a series of self-made rulers who emerged in many Greek cities in the 7th and 6th century BCE. He seized power against the narrow oligarchy of the Bacchiads and founded the Cypselid dynasty.
More at: History
