According to The History Channel (or so they say)

[Spatech_tuo]

 The next time you are washing your hands and  complain because the water temperature isn't just how you like it, think about how things used to be.

 Here are some facts about the 1500s: These are  interesting...
 
 Most people got married in June because they took  their yearly bath in May, and still smelled pretty good by June. However, they were beginning to smell
  so brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.
 
During the  Victorian age, people would only change a baby's diaper every four days.
 
 Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water.
 The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then  the women and finally the children. Last of all the  babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it. Hence the saying,  Don't throw the baby out with the bath water."
 
 Houses had thatched roofs--thick straw-piled high,  with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other  small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof. When  it rained, it became slippery and sometimes the animals would fall off the roof. Hence the saying  "It's raining cats and dogs. There was nothing to  stop things from falling into the house.
 
 This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs  and other droppings could mess up your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a she et  hung over the top afforded some protection. That's  how canopy beds came into existence.
 
 The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something  other than dirt. Hence the saying "dirt poor".
 
 The wealthy had the slate floors that would get  slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on the floor to help keep their footing.
 As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until  when you opened the door it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entranceway. Hence the saying a "thresh hold."
  
 In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a  big kettle that always hung over the fire. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot.
 They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much  meat.
 They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving  leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day.
 Sometimes a stew had the food in it that had been there for quite a while. Hence the rhyme, "Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old.
 
 Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them  feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a  sign of wealth that a man could "bring home the  bacon." They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and "chew the fat."
 
 Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food  with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning death
  This happened most often with tomatoes, so for  about the next 400 years, tomatoes were considered poisonous.
 
 Bread was divided according to status. Workers got  the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or "upper-crust."
 
 Lead cups were used to drink ale or whiskey. The  combination would sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road  would take them for dead and prepare them for  burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around  and eat and drink and wait to see if they woke up.
 Hence the custom of holding a "wake.".
 
 England is old and small and the local folks started  running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a  bone-house" and reuse the grave. When reopening  these coffins, about 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they  realized they had been burying people alive. So they  would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the  coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would sit out in the graveyard all night (the "graveyard shift") to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be "saved by the bell" or was considered a "dead ringer."
 
 And that's the truth... Now, whoever said that  History was boring!

[drewstar]

Interesting, but (almost) completey made up.  

http://www.snopes.com/language/phrases/1500.htm

[imp etc]

I love these . . .

Here are two more I heard from WW1

Third on a match is considered bad luck - in the battlefields, if you kept a match lit long enough to light a smoke for three people, the enemy would have a chance to aim at you accurately.

It's said that when a farmer's son was killed, the government would pay off the mortgage on the farm to compensate the family for the loss of the soldier's work. Thus the expression "he bought the farm."

[Spatech_tuo]

Interesting, but (almost) completey made up.  

http://www.snopes.com/language/phrases/1500.htm

LOL, I just sent a snopes link to someone else Friday who had some story about "origins/facts" of margarine but I didn't bother to look this one up since it had so many seemingly unrelated items. Snopes is a great site.

[dkersten]

Here is an interesting one, that I heard I think on Paul Harvey.. cant remember..

I dont know the years at all, but it was Rome, around the time things were falling apart.. The rich romans had the aquaducts and used lead pipe to pipe the water into the houses.. The lead was poisoning them and also causing birth defects, which lead to the ruling classes of Rome to die much younger than the peasant classes (I know they werent peasants, but the lower classes), and the next generations of ruling classes got dumber and dumber from birth defects, which ultimately contributed to the Roman empire falling..

[Chas]

Interesting, but (almost) completey made up.  

http://www.snopes.com/language/phrases/1500.htm

I have toured Anne Hatheway's home, and Snopes is right. As usual.

During the tour of the house, many of the items on the list were mentioned - upper crust, Threshold and a few others.