On this Day – 9th March 1562

On the 9th of March 1562, kissing in public was banned – the penalty was death. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find out how many people were punished!

That was not the first time that public kissing had been prohibited. The Emperor Tiberius banned kissing in public ceremonies in the hope that it would prevent the spread of herpes. In 1439, Henry VI banned kissing to stop the spread of plague and pestilence. More recently in 2004,  Indonesia passed laws that banned not only public nudity, erotic dancing, and “sex parties”, but also punished public kissing with up to five years in prison.

According to one article, people in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, are not permitted to kiss strangers and women in Hartford, Connecticut, are not legally allowed to lock lips with their husbands on Sundays.  And according to Indiana law, it is illegal for men who have a mustache to “habitually kiss human beings”.

Some utterly useless bits of  information – I don’t vouch for their accuracy!

The average person will spend an estimated 20,160 min kissing in their lifetime.

A one minute kiss burns 26 calories.

Kissing helps reduce tooth decay because the extra saliva helps clean out your mouth.

On Valentine’s Day 2004, 5,122 Philippine coupes gathered together at midnight and locked lips. This kissathon beat the previous world record of 4,445 couples set in January in Chile.

On September 15, 1990, Alfred Wolfram from New Brighton kissed 8001 people in just 8 hours, over sixteen people a minute, at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival.

The longest on-screen kiss was the 3 minutes, 5 second liplock between Jane Wyman and Regis Tommey in “You’re in the Army Now.”  However, on Valentine’s Day 2004, an Italian couple made their way into the record books with a 31-hour 18-minute Valentine kiss. The couple beat the previous record by 18 minutes and 33 seconds – apparently the man had to receive oxygen afterwards!

On April 5, 1999: Karmit Tsubera and Dror Orpaz kissed for a record 30 hours and 45 minutes to win a kissing contest in Rubin Square, Tel Aviv, Israel .

It’s one of the most famous kisses in movie history – Rhett Butler kisses Scarlett – but according to Hollywood insiders, Clark Gable’s halitosis on the set was so bad, Vivian Leigh didn’t want to kiss him at all!

19 thoughts on “On this Day – 9th March 1562”

  3. A “31-hour 18-minute Valentine kiss” can’t have been very exciting. For participants or observers!

  4. Nym, is oral osculation over-rated at least for the kissed and the watching millions? isn’t it the source of so much ENVY?

  5. Dancing was against the law on a Sunday in the Orange Free State pre ’94 (where? think Bloemfontein)

    The old joke goes something like this;

    “Are you two dancing?”

    “No sir, we are having sex standing up!”
    🙂

  9. I have written a script that is under consideration by a major studio as I type. It is a remake of ‘Gone with the Wind’ with a cookery slant, here is a small example; RHETT BUTLER…’Frankly my dear I don’t give a flan’.

  10. OMG you remind me of the joke about the guy in the restaurant who kept pestering the waitress for a quickie…

    Eventually she reported him to the manager who went over to remonstrate with the customer for making lewd suggestions to his staff.

    The guy said “Look, mate, all I want to do is eat!”

    He pointed to the main course menu where it read “Quiche.”

  13. “Kissing helps reduce tooth decay because the extra saliva helps clean out your mouth”

    Don’t you just hate the materialists?

    I couldn’t brush my teeth this morning, could you help me dear?

    Yuk!

  15. Janus:

    Now Gordon Brown has something to use his recycled banana skins for!

  17. Janh1, a fella goes into a cake shop. ‘The wife says I have to but one of them gattucks.’ ‘Pardon?’ ‘Gattucks,’ pointing to one such. ‘Oh, you mean gateaux, sir?’ ‘Do I? Sounds like a load of bolleaux to me.’

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