Why is spades the king of cards

A game called Ganjifa involved colourful disks with various figures drawn on them. There were some kings, which were ranked higher than knights. In fact, king card is probably the oldest one in playing cards, so it had a lot of time to evolve and change. Long time ago kings in European cards were sitting, but in 15 th century standing Kings were drawn in Spain. French used Spanish design for quite some time, but then at the end of 15 th century they invented their own.

British used French cards — they were importing them from Rouen. However, in 17 th century import of playing cards was banned. Regardless, there was enough time for the French design to spread across the British world, which was dominant back in the day. This is why today we are still using the traditional French design, although different countries have some different features. For example, in Russian playing cards, all kings have moustache and no one is killing themselves.

If you take a look at the king of hearts of playing cards, you may notice that he is quite unique. He is the only one without a moustache. In 15 th century French manufacturers assigned actual historical figures to each of the king card. King of hearts became Charles the Great, who most likely had moustache.

In fact, the drawing had moustache too at first — they disappeared over time due to manufacturing imperfections. This is how the king of hearts evolved over time. Image credit: various via Wikimedia. For the purpose of mass production, the earliest cards were printed using woodblocks. Disfiguring occurred over the centuries as unskilled block makers distorted the original designs, resulting in hands, symbols of office and other attributes losing their meaning.

Among the many distortions that took effect, the King of Hearts not only lost his moustache, but the axe he was originally holding became a sword.

Ice-cream headache is caused by "crossed wiring" or "convergence" in the sensory system of the head. Cold liquids, solids or gases passing over the palate and pharynx stimulate cold receptors there and these send nerve messages to the brain. In the brain, some of these incoming messages inadvertently junction with brain cells that also receive signals from parts of the head that help process the sensation of headache.

This fools the brain cells - and hence the ice-cream eater - into thinking a headache is occurring. Ice-cream headache is much more common and intense in people who have an underlying headache disorder such as migraine. This suggests that both ice-cream headache and migraine are at least partly the result of "wiring defects" or an oversensitive sensory alarm system.

However, American soldiers started throwing these cards around and leaving them on the bodies of dead enemies. This practice became so common that boxes of aces of spades were ordered just for these purposes alone. Image credit: Sgt. Karen Sampson via Wikimedia. Cards were used during the Iraq War in as well. However, these cards were special — they were decorated with pictures of leaders of Iraqi regime. Of course, the ace of spades was dedicated to the president Saddam Hussein.

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