Title: 10 Common Things People Believed Were Invented By The Devil - Listverse
Headings: 10 Common Things People Believed Were Invented By The Devil
10 Common Things People Believed Were Invented By The Devil
10 Forks
9 Musical Instruments
8 Socialism
7 Smoking
6 The Telephone
5 Dice
4 The Smurfs
3 The Cross
2 Soccer
1 Theater

Content: Their societies were informed by gelassenheit, a sense of belonging and separation from the outside world driven by dress, language, tradition, nonverbal communication, and a moral code. New forms of communication were perceived as a threat to face-to-face communication, which enforced the social order. One Mennonite reported an elder gravely warning, “There goes the devil’s wires .” Ethiopian journalist Paulos Gno Gno wrote about the introduction of the telephone at the court of the Emperor Menelik: The first telephone was installed in Menelik’s palace in 1889 and the news of the displeasure among many clergymen who resented the new technology finally reached the Emperor’s ears. Eight representatives of the clergy approached the throne of Menelik and appealed to the Emperor that the telephone in the palace was in fact the work of SeyTan —the Devil and that it should be removed from the palace and destroyed in public. Menelik then informed the delegates that their concern was “legitimate” and he will get back to them the next day. Subsequently, he called up his nobility and the Patriarch and bitterly complained that the clergy is interfering in his vision of growth for his country by claiming that the telephone technology is the work of the Devil. He went [on] to say that the priests are bent on sabotaging his work and are—in the process—forcing him to even consider abandoning the Orthodox faith just to distance himself from the backward clergy. Upon hearing such a shocking declaration from the Emperor, the nobility and the Patriarch rushed to assure the Emperor that they will calm down the priests and begged him to stay with the Orthodox faith.