The first world war wasn’t the first world war

For reasons that not even Czechs can explain, in the past they developed a habit of throwing their rulers out of windows. It started in the early 15^th century, but it was in Prague in 1618 that the word ‘defenestration’ entered the English language. The word derives from the Latin word for window, fenestra. 

A year earlier the dying and childless Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor, Mathias, named Ferdinand as his successor. Ferdinand II, a Jesuit educated zealot, immediately begun to row back on guaranteed protestant freedoms in Prague (Bohemia). On 23 May 1618, a group of angry protestant noblemen led a mob across the Charles Bridge and upward to Hradcany Castle. There they found Count Jaroslav Bořita of Martinice and Slawata von Chlum. Mathias had left them there to manage Bohemia after he moved his court from Prague to Vienna six years earlier. 

The mob grabbed hold of Martinice and flung him headfirst out of the window as he yelled, ‘Jesus Maria help!’ Slawata, more resistant, hung on to the windowsill until sword hilts bashed his fingers.