For over 400 years spectacles had no arms: people held them, pinched them on the nose or tied them on with ribbons.
Side-pieces resting on the ears appeared only around 1727, from the London optician Edward Scarlett.
More amazing facts
- 1300 · 1303 Dante booked a place in Hell for a living pope.
- 1300 · 1944 Coins of the Kilwa Sultanate in East Africa were found in Australia.
- 1300 · 1910 On finding a bronze head at Ife in 1910, the German ethnologist Leo Frobenius decided it was a relic of Atlantis.
- 1300 Medieval people did drink water; beer was not a forced substitute for 'unsafe' water.
- 1307 Friday the 13th is not unlucky because of the Templars.
- 1311 · 1324 Mansa Musa said he came to the throne because his predecessor sailed off into the Atlantic.