Usefully Useless

Ancient Egyptians wore eye make-up made from the bodies of crushed beetles.

Before she was famous, Whoopi Goldberg worked as a bricklayer, a bank teller and a make-up artist in a funeral parlour.

Lipstick was made from finely ground, semi-precious stone in ancient Mesopotamia, and the ancient Egyptians mixed algae with iodine. Modern, shimmer-look lipstick may contain the silvery fish scales from herrings.

The word ‘cosmetics’ comes from the Latin word cosmetae, which referred to skilled female slaves who adorned their Roman mistresses with cultus, another Latin word referring to make-up, perfume and jewellery.

Modern-day mascara was invented by T. L. Williams in 1913. Williams worked as a chemist in New York and wanted to help his sister Mabel look more beautiful in order to attract a good man. He concocted a mixture of coal dust and Vaseline, and applied it to his willing sister’s eyelashes. Williams felt his invention a success, as his sister was soon married. The chemist went on to found Maybelline – the name is said to be a combination of Vaseline and his sister’s name.

Roman Britons mixed a potion of tin oxide, starch and animal fat and plastered it on their faces as an early form of foundation.

DANCING MANIA IS a phenomenon that reared its bizarre head largely between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries, when thousands of people might be observed dancing together uncontrollably to the point of collapse. Dancing mania finds its origin in the word choreomania, from the Greek choros (dance) and mania (madness), and has often been put down to religious fervour. One of the first major outbreaks occurred in 1374, with incidents being reported in England, Germany and the Netherlands. In July 1518, one of the most extreme examples of the ‘dancing plague’ kicked off when Strasbourg resident Frau Troffea began dancing in the street. Still at it four days later, she had amassed a following of 33 fellow ravers. Within a month this number had swelled to 400. Participants were observed to jump around, scream, make animal noises, brandish wooden sticks and even have sex with each other. Many of the dancers collapsed from exhaustion and heart attack, and a number of people died. Treatments included isolation, exorcism, prayers and the playing of calming music, but it was all observers could do just to allow people to dance themselves out. Theories abound about the possible causes of the condition, but the most prominent is that victims may have been suffering from ergot poisoning – damp conditions during floods in the Middle Ages meant the fungus (which causes hallucinations) grew plentifully. Encephalitis, epilepsy and typhus have also been suggested as triggers, but ultimately the whole affair remains rather a mystery.