What was unusual about the birth, on November 2, 1755, of the 15th child of the formidable Empress Maria-Theresa of Austria? (The child, a daughter, was the ill-fated Marie Antoinette, of later French Revolution fame.)
Answer: She gave birth to the child in an armchair at the Hofburg Palace, and then returned to her examination of state papers which the labor pains had briefly interrupted. A remarkable woman on all fronts, Maria Theresa was to deliver her sixteenth and final child, a boy, the following year.
Source: The French Revolution by Christopher Herbert
