I’ve had to read a few old German documents for personal genealogical research and good god, the handwritten words were hard to make out. Spent like 20 minutes just trying to read the phrase “ein und funfzig” (51, as in 1851). Someone else who’d read those documents completely misread them and listed his birthyear 20 years later than it should be, implying he was a 13 year old boy when he married a 30-something year old woman.
I feel like I heard somewhere that French inches were longer than English inches and that Napoleon was actually a little taller than average. Not gonna bother trying to find what youtube video I might have heard that from, though.