The newest Sports Illustrated sez that supporters of the Hartlepool football side, in the northeast of England, are campaigning for the team’s mascot as mayor of Hartlepool. Seems it’s a monkey named H’Angus, and that Hartlepudlians are nicknamed “Monkey Hangers”.
Apparently there was an incident a couple of hundred years ago when they hanged a monkey for being a French spy. So, I sez to myself, “Self, WTF? A French spy??? How drunk would one have to be to think that seriously enough to execute poor little Bonzo? Did he have a natty tailored suit and a cigarette case with a poison gas dispenser and a microfilm compartment or something?”
Can any of you friendly Brits fill in some details? Much obliged.
This raises the more interesting question: How does one hang a monkey?
They probably don’t weigh enough for the drop to snap their necks, and they’re probably strong enough that they could pull the rope off if you just left them hanging.
I would guess that a large component of medieval prosecutions and executions of animals stemmed at least partially from a similar desire for “entertainment”.
IIRC, the monkey washed up on shore after a ship sank in the Channel. The locals who found it didn’t know what or who it was, assumed the worse, tried and hanged the bugger.
It seems that, in the early days of Rome, the Gauls invaded. The dogs who were supposed to be guarding the city stayed asleep, but the geese sacred to Juno got upset when they saw the Gallic army, making such a loud noise that they woke the Romans, who beat the Gauls.
So, every year, the Romans had a holiday where a procession would carry geese, who the crowd would honor, and hang several dogs, who would then be carried on poles for the crowd to mock for their treachery.
Well, yeah, I could have just Googled it and not troubled the Dopers, but what fun is that?
So they thought the monkey was French because it couldn’t speak English? I’ve heard blokes from the north of England that I could swear weren’t speaking English, either.
In Uglich they Flogged a church Bell and had it exiled to Siberia!
IIRC the bell is the one that was rung to rally the town to catch the murderers of Demitri (son of Ivan the terrible)
The bell has since been returned to .
Here is a Cruise tour webpage that mentions it in brief. (Read under the Uglich Paragraph)
Oh the picture at the top of the Webpage is Uglich and the Church that the bell resides is the building on the left. http://www.eurocruises.com/packhomov-main.html
You’re thinking of chimps, Mangetout. I think the figure is more like 99% for chimps. Chimps are not monkeys. There are lots of types of monkeys, some closely related to humans and some not so closely related.