The common guinea pig was first domesticated in about 2000 BC by the people living in the Andes mountains, as a food source. To this day, they continue to be a major part of the diet in Peru and Bolivia, where they are an important source of protein and a mainstay of Andean folk medicine. Peruvians consume an estimated 65 million Guinea pigs each year, and the animal is so entrenched in the culture that one famous painting of the Last Supper in the main cathedral in Cusco, Peru shows Christ and the twelve disciples dining on guinea pig.

With very few exceptions (a few copper hatchets and spear heads in the Great Lakes region), the peoples of the Americas and the Pacific remained at the Neolithic level of technology, with no metal making ability, up until the time of European contact.

The 1883 eruption of Krakatoa ejected more than six cubic miles of rock, ash, and pumice into the atmosphere, and generated the loudest sound ever historically reported the cataclysmic explosion was distinctly heard as far away as Perth in Australia (approx. 3100 km/1900 mi), and the island of Rodrigues near Mauritius (approx. 4800 km/3000 mi). Atmospheric shock waves reverberated around the world seven times and were felt for five days. Waves from the tsunamis were recorded as far away as the English Channel.

In Fascist Italy under the regime of Benito Mussolini, political dissidents were force-fed large quantities of castor oil by Fascist paramilitary groups. Victims of this treatment would experience severe diarrhea and dehydration, often resulting in death. Sometimes when the blackshirts wished to make sure that the victim would die rather than simply be badly disabled, they would mix gasoline with the castor oil. It is said that Mussolini's power was backed by "the bludgeon and castor oil."

During the reign of the Roman emperor Nero, sausages were associated with the Lupercalia festival. The early Catholic Church outlawed the Lupercalia Festival and made eating sausage a sin. For this reason, the Roman emperor Constantine banned the eating of sausages.