History Trivia thread anyone?

[Mr. McD]

Only three men in history have been immortalized by having their names enter the English language as verbs. The first was Irishman, Captain Boycott, whose name entered the language in the 1860s. Another was Louis Pasteur and the third William Banting,


Boy·cott
‘boi-"kät
Function: transitive verb
to engage in a concerted refusal to have dealings with (as a store, business, or organization) usually to express disapproval or to force acceptance of certain conditions

Captain Charles Boycott was a former English army officer who served as the agent for an absentee landlord in Ireland in the second half of the 19th century. He was very harsh, refusing to lower rents in hard times and dispossessing tenant farmers who couldn't pay. In 1880 the tenants, encouraged by the Irish Land League, retaliated: they organized a campaign to isolate Captain Boycott, encouraging the local people to refuse to have any dealings with him or his family. Charles Parnell of the Irish Land League said that those who refused to lower rents or who took the farms of people who had been evicted should be treated like "the lepers of old." Boycott and his family found themselves without servants or farmhands and without mail delivery or service in stores. Their own crops failed, and they eventually fled back to England.


Pasteurize; Pasteurization
'pAS-chuh-rize, pAS-tuh-rize
Function: transitive verb
to subject to pasteurization

To kill bacteria by heating milk or other liquids to moderately high temperatures for a short period of time. Milk must be heated to at least 145°F for not less than 30 minutes or at least 161°F for 15 seconds, and then rapidly cooled to 40°F or lower. The process was discovered by the famous French scientist Louis Pasteur while he was researching the cause of beer and wine spoilage. Although pasteurization is used in beer processing and for some wines and fruit juices, the major beneficiary is milk. Pasteurization kills the bacteria in milk that were once responsible for transmitting diseases such as typhoid fever, tuberculosis, scarlet fever, polio and dysentery. LACTIC ACID bacteria, which cause milk to sour, are not destroyed by pasteurization. Neither is the food value of milk greatly diminished by the process.


Bant
'bant
Function: intransitive verb
to practice banting : to diet


Strictly speaking, not any old diet, but a Victorian precursor of the fashionable Atkins high-protein diet. Few people know it was anticipated by William Banting, in Victorian times a London cabinet maker and undertaker to royalty (his firm buried Prince Albert, for example, and years later his sons organised the funeral of Queen Victoria). Banting was overweight, but neither diet nor exercise helped him. Finally he consulted a doctor, who told him to cut out carbohydrates from his diet. This was so successful that Mr Banting published a booklet in 1864, A Letter on Corpulence Addressed to the Public, extolling its virtues, which sold some 60,000 copies (he made no money from this, not wanting to profit from sufferers; he gave early printings away and the income from later editions was donated to medical charities).

[MrScorpio]

1. Honorable mention: Borked

http://www.writerswrite.com/cgi-bin/wwblog.pl?wblog=11100401

[DustMolecule]

2. Imagine that.....not wanting to profit from those who suffer

From your last paragraph:

...Finally he consulted a doctor, who told him to cut out carbohydrates from his diet. This was so successful that Mr Banting published a booklet in 1864, A Letter on Corpulence Addressed to the Public, extolling its virtues, which sold some 60,000 copies (he made no money from this, not wanting to profit from sufferers; he gave early printings away and the income from later editions was donated to medical charities).

btw, thanks for the trivia :-)

[mcscajun]

3. Here's a fourth: Thomas Bowdler

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bowdler

Verb: bowdlerize
censoring by arbitrary deletion of "objectionable" material from a work of literature to "purify" it, rather than banning the work outright.

Thomas Bowdler (July 11, 1754 – February 24, 1825), an English physician, has become (in)famous as the editor of a children's edition of William Shakespeare, the Family Shakespeare, in which he "endeavoured to remove every thing that could give just offence to the religious and virtuous mind." For example, the death of Ophelia in Hamlet was euphemized into an accidental drowning rather than the deliberate suicide implied by Shakespeare.

[boneygrey]

4. This is not a name that became a verb but

one that is not flattering. "Your name is Mudd" is a reference to the Dr. Mudd who treated John Wilkes Booth after he assassinated Lincoln.

[Squeech]

5. General Hooker

My understanding is that he marched a bunch of troops around Mexico but studiously avoided fighting. Knowing that there was repeat business to be had, prostitutes followed his forces around-- because of which, ladies of the evening are nowadays known as "hookers."

And then there's the legendary Thomas Crapper, alleged inventor of the flush toilet.

Okay, not verbs. My bad.