Britain taxed soap for nearly a century and a half.
The duty began in 1712, soap boilers’ pans were locked up at night, and only in 1853 did Gladstone abolish it, to the delight of doctors campaigning for hygiene.
More amazing facts
- 1709 The brutal winter of 1709, the 'Great Frost', struck all of Europe and wore down Charles XII's Swedish army before Poltava.
- 1709 · 1718 The pirate republic in the Bahamas was ended by the man who rescued the real Robinson Crusoe.
- 1712 Sweden once had a 30 February.
- 1712 In the row over who invented calculus, Newton secretly wrote the verdict himself.
- 1712 · 1769 James Watt did not invent the steam engine: Newcomen engines had been pumping mines since 1712.
- 1714 · 1773 The longitude problem that baffled astronomers was solved by a self-taught carpenter.