Around 1890 nearly 20 tonnes of mummified cats were shipped to England as fertiliser.
They came from a vast cat cemetery near Beni Hasan in Egypt: tens of thousands of sacred animals ended up on fields.
More amazing facts
- 1887 · 1888 The pneumatic tyre was invented by a vet for his son's tricycle.
- 1887 Queen Victoria went to Buffalo Bill's Wild West show.
- 1888 · 1896 · 1901 Alfred Nobel read his own obituary eight years before he died.
- 1888 · 1997 A woman who met Van Gogh lived into the internet age. Jeanne Calment recalled the painter visiting her uncle's shop in Arles in 1888; she died in 1997 aged 122, the longest confirmed human life.
- 1889 The Eiffel Tower opened in spring 1889, and in June van Gogh painted The Starry Night at the Saint-Rémy asylum.
- 1889 Nintendo is as old as the Eiffel Tower: it was founded in Kyoto on 23 September 1889 to make hanafuda playing cards, the same year the tower opened.