A Ban on Kissing? Say it ain't so!

Well, actually it was in England beginning on July 16, 1439, and there was a good reason for it.

In 1439, Europe saw the first cases of a disease that stunned the world. You might feel completely fine now and be dead 24 hours later. High fevers wracked the afflicted, hacking coughs, even huge blackened boils in the armpit or groin. Soon, so many people in Europe were sick that this disease was referred to as the Great Pestilence. Today, we remember it as the Black Death.

Medical care at the time was laughable; the germ theory hadn't been proposed yet. People didn't understand the concept that the organisms causing this horrific disease actually lived in the rats that were all over the place. Fleas would first bite the rats and then bite humans, transferring the plague germs over. Humanity was facing the beginning of a pandemic of unimaginable proportions and all they could do was wait and pray.

When the first plague cases broke out in England in July 1439, King Henry VI decided to be proactive. In a decree sweeping the country, he banned all kissing until plague season had passed. His reasoning? If your lips were kept chaste, the "small specks" of plague would not spread.

Did it work? Not really. About 30% of England's population died of the Black Death that year despite Henry's anti-kissing stance. But I guess it's safe to say the cases of mono dropped dramatically!