h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Wenceslas Square is in Prague. Anyone know anything about how the carol came about?

No, but apparently the guy was anything but good. Bit of a nasty boy really. Good at defenestrations though (see my previous entry).

Where might I find this previous entry in the Guide? What is a defenestrations

Hmmm. Good question. What indeed was my previous entry? What was going through my head when I typed in the phrase "See my previous entry"? Possibly I was hungry or something!

Anyway, defenestration refers to throwing people out of a window. It was a pretty common method of execution in Prague back over the last couple of hundred years.

CR

Wenceslas Square in Prague was named after Wenceslas the Saint - patron saint of kingdom of Bohemia - today's Czech republic.

The Good king Wenceslas from Christmas carrol refers to Bohemian king Wenceslas II - father of English Good Queen Ann.

Hope it will help a little.

Hans

By the way, the guy who is talking about defenestrations have his historical wires crossed a bit. He is talking about Wenceslas IV, last one of that name. And act of defenestration was not common way of execution, far from it, it happened onle twice, once in 14th century and second time in 17th century. In both cases it was a case of "palace revolution" when two oposing sides of nobles (parliament?) got onto each other throats. Also, in both cases there were no mortalities, a few broken legs and black eyes.

Hans