In nineteenth century French Canada, a shortage of currency led to what being used as a form of currency?
Answer: Playing cards. Issued first by a French general to pay his troops, the cards were cut into four and signed by an Intendent.
Source: The Cambridge History of the British Empire: Volume IV by Henry Dodwell
1693 – A powerful earthquake destroys parts of Sicily and Malta.
1787 – William Herschel discovers Titania and Oberon, two moons of Uranus.
1879 – The Anglo-Zulu War begins. The British will suffer a major defeat at the Battle of Isandlwana on 22 January.
1922 – 14 year old Canadian Leonard Thompson becomes the first person to be injected with insulin.
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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’.
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Last week’s answer:
Frederick V, known as the ‘Winter King’
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“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 poet
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.
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