The first occurrences of various events…

…according to authoritative history

Contents:
•The first time someone yelled “look behind you” as a trick: ca. A.D. 1000.
•The first time someone got a wedgie: A.D. 96.
•The first time someone swapped urine to fool a drug test: 1176.
•The first time someone compared “shy” poop to a turtle’s head: 1573.
•The first time someone cheated by copying and pasting another’s work: 1200.
•The first time someone fretted about trees falling in forests making sounds etc.: C8 BC?

•The first time someone yelled “look behind you” as a trick: ca. A.D. 1000.
Various ancient Celtic warriors employed the “look behind you” gambit, but I believe Cúchulainn did it first (which is why he is the greatest of Celtic warriors). If you can’t defeat someone in single combat, just get her to turn her back on you; never fails!

Aife challenged Cúchulainn to single combat. Cúchulainn went up to Scáthach and asked her what Aife held most dear above all else.

“The things she holds most dear,” Scáthach said, “are her two horses, her chariot and her charioteer.”

Cúchulainn met and fought Aife on the rope of feats. Aife smashed Cúchulainn's weapon. All she left him was a part of his sword no bigger than a fist.

“Look! Oh, look!” Cúchulainn said. “Aife’s charioteer and her two horses and the chariot have fallen into the valley! They are all dead.”

Aife looked round and Cúchulainn leaped at her and seized her by the two breasts. He took her on his back like a sack, and brought her back to his own army.

(From the Tochmarc Emire. Translation by Thomas Kinsella.)

Weird Books part 1

•The first time someone got a wedgie: A.D. 96.
The Roman poet Martial wrote several poems that would be contenders for the title: filthiest text in the western canon. But he was in a comparatively family-friendly mood when he described this, history’s first wedgie, which ( I said comparatively family friendly) he likens to sodomy. The Symplegades, a.k.a. Cyanean rocks, are those famous clashing rocks that Jason and the Argonauts had to sail between—for Martial, they are a mere simile for butt cheeks.

Whenever you get up out of your chair
(I often have been noticing it now),
your wretched tunic sodomizes you.
And when you go and try to pluck it out
—now straining with your right hand, now your left—
you only work it out with groans and tears,
so crushed is it between the Syplegad-
ianic rocks of your great fundament,
so trapped between the rocks Cyanean
of your excessive buttocks…

(From Martial’s epigrams (XI.xcix). Translation by John W. Halifax.)

•The first time someone swapped urine to fool a drug test: 1176.
Empress Fenice of Byzantium falls in love with her own nephew, which is especially bad because her husband is 1. still alive and 2. the emperor. So Fenice contrives to fake a terminal illness, assuming that after her (pretend) death, she’ll be able to slip away and marry said nephew. Suspicious doctors threaten to ruin the plan—after all, they can tell if Fenice is not actually sick unto death. So Fenice swaps her urine with a dying woman’s urine and insists the doctors test this…

And her nurse stays near her, who with very wondrous craft sought secretly through all the town, so that no one knew it, until she found a woman sick of a mortal sickness without cure. In order the better to carry out the deception, she went often to visit her and promised her that she would cure her of her ill, and each day she would bring a glass to see her water, till she saw that medicine would no longer be able to aid her and that she would die that very day. She has brought this water and has kept it straitly until the emperor rose. Now she goes before him and says to him: “If you will, sire, send for all your leeches, for my lady, who is suffering from a sore sickness, has passed water and wishes that the leeches see it, but that they come not in her presence.” The leeches came into the hall; they see the water very bad and pale, and each says what seems to him the truth, till they all agree together that never will she recover…

(From Chrétien de Troyes’s Cligès (ll. 5705–5729). Translation by L.J. Gardiner.)

•The first time someone compared “shy” poop to a turtle’s head: 1573.
Just one of the many complaints Eugenio de Salazar had about his voyage sailing from Spain to Mexico.

To relieve yourself, it is necessary to hang out over the sea…many times the turd that has begun to emerge, for fear of falling into the sea, retires and returns inside like the head of a tortoise…

(From Eugenio de Salazar’s letters. Translation by Carla Rahn Phillips.)

•The first time someone cheated by copying and pasting another’s work: 1200.
It happened like this: Rúmí [Greek] and Chíní [Chinese] artists are vying to see who can produce the most beautiful painting, each working on opposite walls in secret from the other—and yet, when the barrier between the artists is removed, they are shown to have painted the exact same painting. Quite a conundrum! but Balínás (a.k.a. Apollonius of Tyana) solves the riddle: Instead of painting anything, the Chinese artist merely polished the wall in front of him until it gleamed like a mirror, reflecting the Greek painting and making it appear to be his own work. (Warning: The following translation is almost unreadable.)

In this corner,—the Rúmí should practise his handicraft ;
In that corner,—the Chíní paint his picture.

They should not view each other’s decoration (the painting of the picture),
Until the time of claim should come to an end.

When they should he disengaged from that work,
The veil should be cast down (removed) from the midst.

They (the spectators) will consider which of the two forms (pictures)
Is the most beautiful,—when it becomes finished.

In secret, the workers sate
In that two-fold arch like the double arch (of the eye-brows).

In a little while, they finished the work;
They cast up the veil from those two forms.

Of the two arzhangs (the two bepainted wall-surfaces), the form was one ;
Both as to drawing and as to colour,—no difference.

At that work (of exact) similarity, the beholder remained astonished;
Was altogether dejected at the wonder.

Saying:—“How have these two form-fashioners (the painters) made
“The painting of the two arzhangs (the two bepainted wall-surfaces) in one way?”

* * *

When the sage (Balínás) beheld those two idol-houses (the painted walls),
To the sage that (similarity of) painting appeared strange.

He summoned truthfulness, and so hastened (in thought)
That he found out the end of the thread (the concealed state) of that picture.

He ordered,—so that the people of Rúm hastened;
(And) placed again a veil between the two pictures.

When that veil intervened between the two walls.
One was desponding (obscure), and the other was gleaming.

The delineations of the Rúmí departed not from water (lustre) and colour;
Blight (obscurity) fell upon the mirror (the polished wall-surface) of the Chíní.

When the wall of the men of Chín became void of decoration,
At that matter the monarch was astonied.

He again drew away the veil from between;
Verily, the first appearance appeared.

He knew that that enkindled arch
Had by polishing acquired the delineation of the picture.

At that time when they prepared the work,
They cast up the veil in the middle.

The Rúmí was firm as to painting;
The Chíní made (decorated the wall of) the house by polishing.

[From the the Sikandar náma,e bara of Nizami Ganjavi (LIII §§14–23, 27–35). Insane, unreadable translation by H. Wilberforce Clarke.]

•The first time someone fretted about trees falling in forests making sounds etc.: C8 BC?

Will a lion roar in the forest, when he hath no prey?

[Amos 3:4a.]

•Maybe that last one is a stretch. Earlier attestations welcomed! You can learn much more about Apollonius of Tyana in my book Apprentice Academy: Sorcerers; much more about Cúchulainn’s penchant for cheating in my upcoming book Apprentice Academy: Knights.