Reading this thread made me look up what the “First Defenestration of Prague” was about. It was about religious protests between the Hussites and the Catholics in Bohemia (modern day Czech Republic) in 1419 (almost 600 years ago). The Hussites were frustrated with the Catholic church’s corruption and inequality. The Hussites were marching toward the New Town Hall in Prague when a rock was thrown out of the Hall at the leader of the group. Immediately the group went from an irritated parade to an irate mob and stormed the building, throwing several town officials out the upper window to their death. The King of Bohemia supposedly died from shock of hearing the news. The defenestration sparked the start of the Hussite Wars, which concluded in 1436.
Interestingly, it was the Second Defenestration of Prague in 1618 that caused the term “defenestration” to be coined. (Similar to how the term “World War” wasn’t really used until WWII.)
Also note that “defenestration” doesn’t actually require a person to die from being tossed out of a window, merely to be tossed out of a window. I found out that Abraham Lincoln and some other Illinois legislators in 1840 self-defenestrated (or autodefenestrated) to prevent a vote from taking place on a certain matter. It was a first-story window and his political opponents joked that he was so tall that he didn’t even have to jump down. His tactic didn’t work, though; the other party simply marked Lincoln and his comrades as “present” and proceeded with the vote as scheduled.
