In Shakespeare's time, mattresses were secured on bed frames by ropes. When you pulled on the ropes the mattress tightened, making the bed firmer to sleep on. That's where the phrase, "goodnight, sleep tight" came from!

The "rule of the thumb" is derived from an old English law that stated that you couldn't beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.

It was the accepted practice in Babylon 4000 years ago that for a month after the wedding, the bride's father would supply his son-in-law with all the mead he could drink. Mead is a honey beer, and because their calendar was lunar based, this period was called the "honeymoon."

In ancient England a person could not have sex unless you had the consent of the King(unless you were in the Royal Family). When anyone wanted to have a baby, they got consent of the King & he gave them a placard that they hung
on their door while they were having sex. The placard had F.U.C.K. (Fornication Under Consent of King) on it. Now you know where that came from.

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Fornication

Sexual intercourse between partners who are not married to each other.
Word History: The word fornication had a lowly beginning suitable to what has long been the low moral status of the act to which it refers. The Latin word fornix, the ancestor of fornication, is derived, meant �a vault, an arch.� The term also referred to a vaulted cellar or similar place where prostitutes plied their trade. This sense of fornix in Late Latin yielded the verb fornicr, �to commit fornication�, �whoredom, fornication.� Our word is first recorded in Middle English about 1303.

1. Unlawful sexual intercourse on the part of an unmarried person; the act of such illicit sexual intercourse between a man and a woman as does not by law amount to adultery.

Note: In England, the offense, though cognizable in the ecclesiastical courts, was not at common law subject to secular prosecution. In the United States it is indictable in some States at common law, in others only by statute. --Whartyon.

2. (Script.) (a) Adultery. (b) Incest. (c) Idolatry.

voluntary sexual intercourse between persons not married to each other 2: extramarital sex that willfully and maliciously interferes with marriage relations; "adultery is often cited as grounds for divorce"

in every form of it was sternly condemned by the Mosaic law (Lev. 21:9; 19:29;
Deut. 22:20, 21, 23-29; 23:18; Ex. 22:16). (See ADULTERY.) But this word is
more frequently used in a symbolical than in its ordinary sense. It frequently
means a forsaking of God or a following after idols (Isa. 1:2; Jer. 2:20; Ezek.
16; Hos. 1:2; 2:1-5; Jer. 3:8,9).