Re: spam and debian-curiosa [ot]
On Wed, Jan 23, 2002 at 02:33:14PM -0000, Reagan Blundell wrote:
> > Stolen from http://www.amphicars.com/acleft.htm
> > Why do the English (and sometimes even the Scottish and the Welsh!)
> > drive on the left but in many other countries, including most of Europe,
> > they drive on the right ?
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > Reasons to travel on the right are less clear but the generally accepted
Recently I went on an historical pub walk of London. The tour guide
informed us that the keep-to-the-right rule came about a long long time ago,
when there was some sort of invasion (I can't remember who it was now (it
was a pub crawl after all! And I'm not much of a historian), but iirc it
was in the 2 or 3 hundreds CE[1]). Anyway, the ruler of this mass invasion
had all his men learn to (sword) fight left handed, and forced the
keep-to-the-right rule since he thought this would give him an advantage
over anyone trying to take parts of his empire. The conqueror in question
didn't make it to either the UK or to the reaches of Scandanavia where they
remained lefties for centuries, with Sweden finally switching over earlier
this century (iirc).
Japan keep to the left (and correct me if I'm wrong please) because of a
similar story with the Samouri and their swords.
I think it's amuzing that in almost all places it's now recommended to walk
on the opposite side to what was once customary in order to be aware of the
oncoming traffic that has taken over the streets from the pedestrians.
Pete
[1] Common Era (aka AD)
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