Napoleon’s Buttons summary

There was a time in medieval Europe when pepper was so expensive that a mere pound of the stuff could buy the freedom of a serf from a nobleman’s estate. In fact, there were many spices so highly valued that they fuelled exploration and led to wars, but none was more sought after than nutmeg.

For instance, this simple spice brought about a conflict that resulted in the Dutch ceding their colony, New Amsterdam on Manhattan, to the English in exchange for the Spice Island of Run.

Looking at an orange, you probably wouldn’t expect it to impact the way the earth’s exploration took place. But citrus did just that.

The invention of larger sailing vessels that could endure the open seas, meant that ships no longer needed to sail along the coast. In exchange for this greater freedom to roam, the ships’ crews would be forced to rely on preserved food. Within six weeks of leaving port, many of them would begin to suffer from scurvy - a disease caused by a lack of vitamin C.

Did you know that rubber was first extracted from plants in Latin America as early as 1600 BC? At the time, it was used to make balls for games, as well as other items like hats and boots.

Upon reaching the Americas, European explorers soon became enchanted with this material, using it to make golf balls. But rubber’s natural form wasn’t durable or flexible enough for mainstream applications, and to make it so would require human ingenuity.

Looking at an old painting, one thing becomes abundantly clear: people used to wear some seriously colorful clothes. In fact, dyes have been used to tint garments for thousands of years.

For instance, the Aztecs used to harvest carmine beetles to make crimson, while the Greeks produced indigo dye from huge shellfish harvests. However, there were problems with lots of these natural dyes.

As antiseptics and antibiotics became more widely available in the twentieth century, a greater percentage of children survived childbirth. This positive change gradually led women to seek effective forms of birth control more urgently than ever.

After all, until “the pill” was developed, women had no effective means of birth control. Up until that point, oral contraceptives had been used by women throughout history, but most were highly suspect. Among the most shocking examples were snake and spider eggs, or a seventh-century Chinese remedy that involved frying mercury in oil.

While witches have gotten a bad rap historically, in medieval times, they were often healers who provided herbal remedies and lucky charms. So why do we think of them so differently in the present?

Well, they had a reputation for other things too, like flying off to a demonic orgy known as sabbat.

Did you know that the word “malaria” comes from the Italian for “bad air”? For centuries, people thought this blood-borne parasite carried by mosquitos was actually caused by noxious mists emanating from marshlands.

But while they may have been mistaken as to its origins, people knew that malaria was a serious killer, probably one of the biggest of all time. Even today, it affects 300 to 500 million people annually.