07 February 2018

Pirates' earrings

"Seamen proudly sported earrings as a mark of their travels and voyages. Earrings were given to young sailors to commemorate their first crossing of the equator, or when they rounded the treacherous waters of Cape Horn, the southernmost tip of South America... earrings made of silver or gold were worth enough to pay for a sailor's funeral if his body washed ashore. Some seamen even engraved the name of their home port on the inside of the earring so that their bodies could be sent to their families for a proper burial... wearing hoop earrings did serve one truly beneficial purpose for living sailors. "Pirates, especially those who fired the ships' cannons during close combat with the enemy, dangled wads of wax from their earrings to use as earplugs," Doug Lennox writes in "Now You Know Big Book of Answers.""
I would bet a dollar to a doughnut that if someone found a pirate's body washed ashore with a gold earring, that gold wouldn't be applied to funeral expenses.

Via Neatorama.

4 comments:

  1. These days the doughnut might be worth more than the dollar. :(

    Lurker111

    ReplyDelete
  2. reminds me of my favorite joke
    'what do pirates pay for earings?"
    "About a buck an ear!"
    Ha, thats a killer! Courtesy of Garrison Keillor I think.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Prairie Home Companion used to have an annual silly-joke-telling session full of knock-knocks etc. I was recurrently frustrated because I heard them in the car while driving and couldn't write them down (in the era before smart phones with recording capability). But I did find these from the program (shorthand versions) on my computer:

      Fly goes into cow's ear, out with milk "in one ear, out the udder"

      Mrs. Erickson sees Leif not listed on community roster asks "Have you taken Leif off your census?"

      Asked if he wants super sex, man says "I'll have the soup."

      Otters come from otter space

      Ant confused about family lineage because all its uncles were aunts/ants

      Difference between joist and girder - joist wrote Ulysses, girder wrote Faust

      A Norwegian car is a fjord

      What does a fish say when it bumps into a concrete wall? "Dam!"

      Why shouldn't you fly with Peter Pan - you'll never never land

      Delete
  3. Pirates wore eye patches to have good "night vision". When they boarded a vessel and made their way below decks, it was dark there. The uncovered eye, having been exposed to sunlight, would not see much in the darkness. They would take off the eye patch, and with that eye, accustomed to darkness, they could see well enough to make their way around. Supposedly so...

    ReplyDelete

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