The Seed of the One who Roars on High

1. Someone who lives near my parents is a professional fireworks display man, and he arranged for the village to get a cheap, late, display composed of all the fireworks which had failed to go off in the displays he'd already done for Guy Fawkes' night. Presumably unexploded fireworks are a perk/hazard of the job. My mother seemed to think this quite reasonable, but wouldn't it be tremendously dangerous? The fireworks factory in the nearest small town exploded a couple of years ago. It was amazingly lucky that no one was killed; the caretaker broke his leg, I think, and lots of people were bruised from being blown off their feet, and that was it. The explosion was more than usually dramatic and could be seen for some miles.

2. I visited Bologna university last summer to see the friend with whom I will be working when I go out there next year. Her department is in a fifteenth-century palazzo, just up the hill from an amazing complex of early medieval churches. She showed me the loos, which are divided not into two but three: men's, ladies', and professors'.

3. Anglo-Saxon charters are sometimes great. When King Athelstan decided to give Wootton Bassett to the church of Malmesbury he started like this:
The insolent fortune of this deceiving age, not worthy of love because of the milky whiteness of unfading lilies but hateful because of the bitterness steeped in gall of corruption that is to be lamented, bitingly tears to pieces the sons of stinking flesh in the vale of tears by raving wildly with its poisonous jaws, which, although it may be attractive to the unfortunate by its pleasing manner, yet shamelessly is it declining downwards to the depths of Acherontic Cocytus [i.e., Hell], unless the Seed of the One Who Roars on High [i.e., Jesus, the Son of God] should assist. And so, because that ruined thing [i.e., fortune] is going mortally into decay through its failing, one must hasten with the utmost effort to the pleasant fields of indescribable happiness, where the angelic tongues of hymn-singing jubilation and the scents of verdant roses flowing with honey of incalculable sweetness are captured by the good and blessed nostrils and the sweetnesses of musical instruments heard by the ears.
In case you care, here is the Latin:
Fortuna fallentis seculi procax, non lacteo inmarcessibilium liliorum candore amabilis, sed fellita eiulande corruptionis amaritudine odibilis, fetentis filios ualle in lacrimarum carnis rictibus debachando uenenosis mordaciter dilaceret. Que quamuis arridendo sit infelicibus attractabilis Acherontici tamen ad yma Cociti ni satus alti subueniat boantis, impudenter est decursibus, et ideo ipsa ruinosa deficiendo tanaliter dilabitur, summopere festinandum est ad amena indicibilis leticie arua, ubi angelica ymnidice iubilationis organa mellifluaque uernantium rosarum odoramina a bonis beatisque naribus inestimabiliter dulcia capiuntur, sineque calce auribus cliuipparum suauia audiuntur.
Go King Athelstan! One of England's greatest kings. One of his others has a great anathema clause which sentences the infringer to being beaten about the head by devils with frying pans.