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Friday 6 January 2012

Bachelor

The word 'bachelor' is from Old French bachelier, "knight bachelor", a young squire in training. The Old French term crossed into English around 1300. The Old French term crossed into English around 1300, referring to one belonging to the lowest stage of knighthood. The sense of "unmarried man" dates to 1385.

In 1695 the English parliament passed a law to tax all bachelors over the age of 25. It was primarily used as a revenue raising mechanism for war on France and as a means of ensuring that proper records were kept by Anglican church officials. The tax was found ineffective and abolished in 1706.

The state of Missouri imposed a $1 Single Man Tax (bachelor tax) on unmarried people between 21 and 50 in 1820. The law was presumably enacted to encourage more men to marry.

Argentina imposed a tax on unmarried men in 1903 that included an exemption for single men who had proposed to a woman for marriage but were rejected. Women then started proposals rejection businesses where they would charge to turn down proposals from bachelors seeking to evade the tax.
   
Mussolini imposed a tax on bachelors in Italy in 1926.

"Herbivore Men" of Japan are men who have basically given up on marriage and love. They often can’t afford it, and they don’t want to work to death to raise a family, instead they have hobbies or anime or the internet to fill up their time.

In South Korea, there is a day called Black Day (April 14), where single people eat noodles to lament their loneliness. This is in opposition to Valentine's Day and White Day, the days for couples.


Famous life-long bachelors include Ludwig Van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, Leonardo Da Vinci, George Gershwin, George Frideric Handel, Isaac Newton, Friedrich Nietzsche, Maurice Ravel, Adam Smith, Vincent Van Gogh and Antonio Vivaldi.
                                                                                        

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