5 Parts of Life We’re Stuck With Because the King Ordered It

5 Round Knives

Take a look at a basic table knife, the kind you might use for spreading peanut butter in a sandwich. There will be one straight edge, which is blunt and is seemingly good for nothing, and there will be a curved edge, which is also blunt but which you’re supposed to use for spreading. The curved edge might have notches, which somewhat resemble a serrated edge, but they still don’t leave the knife sharp. These notches leave little streaks in whatever you dip the knife into. 

The next time you spread something, try this instead: Use the knife’s straight edge. You will find to your surprise that it’s much easier to put that mayo on the bread this way. And now that you think about it, of course it is, because the surface of the slice is straight, not curved. When describing the knife before, we deliberately called it a “table knife” rather than a “butter knife” (though these knives sometimes are called butter knives) because a proper butter knife actually has only straight edges.

Now you might we wondering just what the goal of the curved edge is then. The reason a knife isn’t rectangular is so the two edges can form a point, since points are good for stabbing. And the lower edge is supposed to be sharp, since sharpness is good for cutting. Plenty of knives, such as steak knives and hunting knives, are both sharp and pointy. 

But in 1669, King Louis XIV of France banned pointed knives. He wanted to crack down on knife violence, so all knives became dull. At the dinner table, knives retained a curve, in imitation of pointy knives, but it serves no purpose. 

Today, you’re obviously no longer beholden to Louis’ ban, which is why you can eat with a steak knife instead of a table knife if you want. But the convention of the curved knife remains, even though this design is totally pointless.

4 Actresses

In the 16th century, in Britain, female parts onstage were all played by male actors. You probably learned this in school when studying Shakespeare, and this led to such strange situations as a male actor playing a female character who pretends to be a male character who then impersonates a female character. 

In 1662, King Charles II offered a new proclamation related to the theater. He was ordering theaters reopened after a hiatus, and he said they could only operate if they cut the dirty parts out of their plays. More surprisingly, he said, “We do likewise permit and give leave that all the women’s parts to be acted in either of the said two companies for the time to come may be performed by women.”

It’s possible that he said this because he thought men cross-dressing was turning people gay. There’s another possible reason. Earlier, he’d shown up at a play, and the performance started late because the actors playing women were taking too long shaving their faces. 

3 Unbuttoned Suits

The tuxedo wasn’t always considered supremely formal attire. Formalwear for men instead meant a coat with tails. It was King Edward VII who saw the American invention of a lounge jacket without tails and favored it, because he found tails inconvenient. 

King Bertie was therefore responsible for the sort of coats men wore, and he was also responsible for how they wore them. He said men should leave the top button in their coats undone, because buttoning them all the way looked “common.” We don’t entirely understand his reasoning there, but we do understand why he kept the bottom button of his waistcoat undone. It was because his stomach was too big to comfortably keep that fastened, and other people now followed his example.

Note that other types of coats had other reasons for buttoning them one way or the other. If you wore a coat while riding a horse, you had to keep that lowest button undone, and that led to the convention of leaving open the lowest button in suits. But when it came to waistcoats, we have nothing but Bertie’s belly to blame. 

2 The King’s Road

If you find yourself going over the Frankford Avenue Bridge in Philadelphia, you might be interested to know that’s you’re driving on what was once a 1,300-mile road, whose construction was ordered by King Charles. 

That’s Charles II, not Charles III — which makes some sense, since Charles III has no power to order anything in America. But Charles II is still a bit surprising. If you’ve been paying attention while reading this article, you’ll know that he ascended the throne in 1660, over a century before the United States existed. 

The path that road took from Boston to Charleston looks a fair bit like I-95 does today. Many sections of it are still around today as well, including a large stretch in New Jersey. The road was called the King’s Highway. 

If it sounds inappropriate to call roads highways 300 years before the Highway Act created the interstate highway system, that’s because you’ve forgotten the true meaning of highways. Originally, highways were just main roads, where you could be robbed by highwaymen.

1 The Hawaiian Flag

Hawaii’s flag dates back to around 1812. Records are a little shaky about exactly what went into its design. But some sources say that King Kamehameha designed it to combine elements from the British and American flags. The design matches up with that idea, since it’s got a box in one corner and stripes like the American flag, but it also has the Union Jack. 

With the U.S. and U.K. at war, it might have seemed wise to stay as neutral as possible, as there was no telling just which country would eventually send businessmen to overthrow the kingdom. The odd part is that this remained Hawaii’s flag when it became a state and is also still the flag today.

Why? Are there people in Hawaii today who feel some allegiance to the Union Jack, enough to reserve a spot for it on a U.S. state flag? Can we get a petition to change that? Maybe we can replace it with a flag of a ukulele. Or a hula dancer. 

Or how about the Hawaii state fish, which is the humuhumunukunukuapua`a? It’s okay — they don’t need to spell it out, since they can just use a picture of it. That’s the power of symbols.

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