11 September: Make Your Bed Day

Today is Make Your Bed Day – so here are some facts about beds and bedding.

1. Up until the time of the Crusades, mattresses weren’t very comfortable in the western world. They’d be stuffed with straw and dried vegetables like peas. Meanwhile, in the Middle East, people were sleeping on cushions and the crusaders discovered how to get a comfortable night. The word mattress comes from the Arab word Matrah, the word they used for their sleeping cushions which in turn came from the word taraha, which literally translates to “throw.”
2. A mattress gets heavier over time as there will be a build up of dust mites, sweat, and dead skin cells. In fact, in the course of ten years, a mattress can double in weight.
3. In olden times, whole families and even their guests and servants would share one large bed, and even staying in an inn often meant sharing a bed with a complete stranger. According to one story, when Benjamin Franklin and John Adams shared a bed in New Brunswick in 1776. They didn’t get much sleep at first because they were too busy arguing about whether the window should be open or closed. According to Adams, Franklin won the argument and the window was left open, whereupon he began expounding his theory about fresh air at night being good for you which bored Adams so much that he then dozed off. In 16^th century England, a Hertfordshire inn had a bed for eight people or more. It was 3 meters (10 ft) wide and known as the Great Bed of Ware. It was something of a tourist attraction and people who slept in it sometimes carved their names on the frame. It was even famous enough to be mentioned in one of Shakespeare’s plays (Twelfth Night).
4. Talking of Shakespeare, he famously left his “second best bed” to his wife in his will, which to our 21^st century ears sounds a bit insulting. In Shakespeare’s day, however, beds were valuable items and even status symbols. They’d be shown off by placing them near windows so passers by could see what a lovely bed they had, and provision would frequently made in wills as to who got the bed. While we may not know who got Shakespeare’s first best bed (one of his children, perhaps?) the second best bed was no doubt quite valuable too, and what’s more, was likely to have been the bed the couple slept in and would have had a good deal of sentimental value.
5. At that time, too, pillows were generally held to be only for sissies. Elizabethan chaplain and writer William Harrison even went so far as to write that real men would never use one and should be satisfied with “a good round log under their heads”. Pillows, he wrote, were “meet only for women in childbirth”.
6. While today we see beds as exclusively for sleeping and nookie, people in olden times used their beds for much more. The Greeks and Romans ate meals in bed. They’d recline on their beds and pick what they wanted to eat from the table. The word “recline” actually comes from the Greek word for bed. Kings, such as Louis XIV of France and King Charles II of England would conduct political meetings from their beds. It was a sign of royal favour if you were allowed into the king’s bedroom to watch him wake up and perform his intimate daily routines.
7. It was the Victorians who introduced the idea that each family member should have their own room, especially the children, because, according to the health experts of the time, there was a danger that the adults would suck out their children’s energy overnight. Iron bed frames, rather than wooden ones, came into fashion at the same time, as they were easier to keep clean and didn’t provide a home for lice.
8. Water beds were popular in the 1970s but they have been around for much longer than that. Since around 3600 BCE, to be exact. The water bed was invented by the Persians who filled goatskins with water for royalty to sleep on. In relatively modern times, Neil Arnott invented a waterbed in 1873, to use in hospitals to prevent bed sores. They even went on sale to the public for a while but the materials used to make them were in short supply so it didn’t really take off until the 1960s when vinyl was invented.
9. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the biggest bed ever built was made in the Netherlands in May 2011. It measured 53 ft. 11 in. wide by 86 ft. 11 in. long. The most expensive is the Baldacchino Supreme bed, which is hand crafted from chestnut, Ash and cherry wood as well as 24-carat solid Gold, and it’s possible to get a customised headboard with that, implanted with diamonds and other precious stones. Want one? It’ll set you back $6.3 million.
10. The expression “sleep tight” comes from early beds which were made of wood and had fibres strung across the middle. The fibres would slacken over time and need to be tightened periodically.

Killing Me Softly

Sebastian Garrett is an assassin. It wasn’t his first choice of vocation, but nonetheless, he’s good at it, and can be relied upon to get the job done. He’s on top of his game.

Until he is contracted to kill Princess Helena of Galorvia. She is not just any princess. Sebastian doesn’t bargain on his intended victim being a super-heroine who gives as good as she gets. Only his own genetic variant power saves him from becoming the victim, instead of Helena. 

Fate has another surprise in store. Sebastian was not expecting to fall in love with her.

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