Lady Godiva's Room

I like learning new things. I also like learning that there's something I need to learn that I'd never even considered before. I just came across a passing reference to Lady Godiva somewhere, and it suddenly struck me that the sum total of my knowledge of the story of Lady Godiva was that she rode a horse naked through a town.

For some reason, I'd never felt any need to know anything about her beyond that, until tonight. And what do you know? The town was Coventry, the date was 1057 (much earlier than I'd thought it would be), and the reason for the nudity seems to have been to display her commitment to the arts and celebrate the beauty of God's creations, and in the process win a bet with her husband in order to make him abolish taxes in the city. And a later addition to the story provides the origin of the phrase 'peeping tom'.

I'm sure everybody reading this knows all about it already. That my shocking ignorance has never been exposed in everyday conversation is just sheer coincidence. Still, it makes me wonder what other common knowledge is missing from my brain's filing system. Come to think of it, what's the story about King Alfred burning the cakes? Those five words sum up everything I know about the legend. Good thing we live in the internet age...