Читать книгу Hatches, Matches and Despatches - Jenny Paschall - Страница 8

THERE are 75 million volunteer workers on the China Family Planning Association.

A 1983 study showed that half of all pregnancies are mistakes.

ONE of the earliest methods of contraception, found on Egyptian papyrus dating from approximately 1850 BC, was a mixture of honey, soda, crocodile excrement, and some kind of gum, inserted into the vagina. It is uncertain whether it was supposed to kill sperm, or just destroy the man’s urge to proceed!

THE first contraceptive diaphragms were citrus rinds.

JULIUS Caesar was so worried about the falling population of Rome, that he offered rewards to Romans for producing numerous children. Conversely, he punished childless women, by forbidding them to ride in carriages or wear jewellery.

UNTIL the beginning of the twentieth century, it was customary for a Muslim peasant woman in Upper Egypt to terminate an unwanted pregnancy by lying face down between railway tracks until a train came and passed over her. Conversely, women who had difficulty conceiving would lie on their backs in the belief that as the train passed over them, they would be impregnated. Trains were also thought to represent fertility in India, where women trying to conceive would rush to the tracks as a train approached. As the train rushed past, they would lift their skirts in the hope of being made pregnant.

LOVE may be blind, but it’s not heat resistant. The lowest number of babies are born in April and May because temperatures in July and August are too hot for romance. The peak months for births are August and September. In heat wave years, the birth rate drops even more dramatically than the average April and May figures.

THE human female is the only animal capable of constant sexual arousal and is physically capable of making love every day of her adult life.

CASANOVA, one of the world’s greatest lovers, boasted that England was the most sexually wild country. He also claimed he preferred to use British condoms.

DAN Patrick, general manager of Houston radio station KSEV, broadcast his regular morning talk show while undergoing a vasectomy.

When the show’s producer said ‘Cut!’ – he really meant it!

IN the Yanomamo tribe, who live in Brazilian rain forests, a woman could kill her female babies until she gave birth to a son. Once she had borne a son, she could kill any further unwanted children.

IF music be the food of love … then why not try the singing condom? Invented by Hungarian Ferenc Kovacs, it begins to play immediately the condom is unrolled. The discerning user can choose one of two tunes: ‘You Sweet Little Dumbbell’, or ‘Arise Ye Worker’.