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What are some interesting flukes and coincidences that have occurred throughout history?
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Jul 30, 2015 06:58
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Kanine posted:What are some interesting flukes and coincidences that have occurred throughout history? AH, a real AH, was born in AH.
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Jul 30, 2015 07:21
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Frostwerks posted:AH, a real AH, was born in AH, and believed in AH
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Jul 30, 2015 07:24
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Koesj posted:GAL, HEY and Rodrigo Diaz eds., Remove Balls to Fire Blanks. Pleasant Hill: Something Awful Dot Com, 201X. Goon's Uplifting Primer To The Thirty Years War And The Taiping Rebellion
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Jul 30, 2015 13:26
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Random fact from a biography of a Victorian Admiral #78920: Sir Arthur Wilson, VC didn't much care for sushi.
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Jul 30, 2015 15:09
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my dad posted:Of course every participant could plausibly view themselves as simple peace lovers who had been left with no other options. Being able to plausibly view yourself as a simple peace lover who had been left with no other options is as simple as covering your ears and shouting "Lalala I can't hear you!" when someone complains. Recent examples: American invasion of Iraq and Russian invasion of Ukraine. What's the scoop on how Serbia handled the Balkan War lands?
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Jul 30, 2015 15:18
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:Random fact from a biography of a Victorian Admiral #78920: Sir Arthur Wilson, VC didn't much care for sushi.
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Jul 30, 2015 15:58
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ArchangeI posted:Goon's Uplifting Primer To The Thirty Years War And The Taiping Rebellion 'Spergin about : Military History Stories told by the SomethingAwful forum Goons (A 'Spergin about Book) e: Scratch that, the book is called "'Spergling Rush: Long form posts on Military History" (A SomethingAwful.com book) Nebakenezzer fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Jul 30, 2015 |
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Jul 30, 2015 16:26
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General Zuo Zongtang did not actually invent that chicken dish, though.
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Jul 30, 2015 16:27
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I thought it was (supposedly) named after Cao Cao. (Who also didn't obviously but you get what I mean.)
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Jul 30, 2015 16:45
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Xiahou Dun posted:I thought it was (supposedly) named after Cao Cao. Supposedly it was named after Zuo by American immigrants from Hunan as a regional pride thing. There's a documentary about it just released on Netflix that I haven't got around to watching yet.
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Jul 30, 2015 16:48
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Huh. But Cao even has a story with a chicken... O well. No matter what it wasn't made by a general, that we know.
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Jul 30, 2015 17:07
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Raenir Salazar posted:What's the scoop on how Serbia handled the Balkan War lands? It's complicated, and I know fairly little beyond having a general basic idea of what happened (the poster Salty Jesus is a much better person to answer this question, but he doesn't post in this thread), and I could be misremembering details, so don't take my words for granted. First, for context, a bit of relevant history: The First Balkan War happens, the Ottomans are utterly defeated and finally get kicked out of (most of) the Balkans (which was generally taken as a good thing by most of the population in the areas involved), and the Balkan League starts figuring out who gets what (which didn't exactly turn out well for some of the population in the areas involved). Bulgaria decides that it was unfairly treated, and declares war on the rest of the Balkan League, resulting in the dogpile called the Second Balkan War with Romanians and Ottomans deciding to jump in on the bandwagon. You can read up on both on Wikipedia, the articles are OK-ish, though every time I check them some part gets a major rewrite about who exactly was the worstest worst baddie in the universe. Somewhat related, one of the big problems with the situation in the Balkans is that there was no time for a "Now what?" before WW1 happened, and that war was a fuckup to clusterfuck all other fuckups. I'll focus on the situation in Macedonia, since this is what I'm ignorant of the least. Macedonians had the problem of not being able to free themselves of the Ottomans on their own, and ending up being the target of expansion for Serbia, Bulgaria, and Greece. This is a problem, because the Greeks couldn't accept the idea of there being Slavs in glorious ancestral Greek homeland (the entire area around Salonika and a big chunk of Lacedaemon was mostly Slavic and forcibly assimilated into Greek, which the Macedonians were aware of and didn't exactly look forward to seeing it happen to them), while Serbs and Bulgarians considered Macedonians their own offshoots with a speech impediment. (For the record, Macedonian language is neither Bulgarian nor Serbo-Croatian. Sadly, it wasn't until the Communists came to power that their language actually got recognized) This is further complicated by the fact that a large number of people in Macedonia did consider themselves Serbs or Bulgarians, but by no means all of them. This resulted in a mixed reception of the conquering armies. In other areas, there were problems with the Muslim population. Some Muslims were eager to be a part of Serbia, (I posted about a Muslim Romani musician who was awarded for bravery by the Serbian army in the FBW, though to my eternal shame, the post was done in the style of a Cracked article) while others... weren't. Also, additional problems arose with Albanians, but that's a whole 'nother story. With that context in mind, let's address Serbian fuckups, and why and how they happened. When the military coup ended the Obrenović dynasty in 1903, Petar Karađorđević was elected to take the throne and returned from exile. While he had a hands off approach to ruling the country, mostly content with drafting a liberal constitution and letting the parliament rule (resulting in somewhat of a golden age for democracy in Serbia, with political freedoms of the populace being quite high for that era, doubly so for a small poor country like Serbia), he was fully aware that he owed his position to the army, not to mention that he was an old soldier (he was a veteran of the Franco-Prussian war and the Herzegovina uprising - when he joined the front lines in WW1, he wasn't just making a show) and therefore paid a lot of attention to the opinions of the officers and the general quality of the army, which significantly boosted the army's influence in the country. The good consequence of this is that Serbia was capable of militarily punching waaaay above its weight. The bad consequence of this is that the army itself had the political weight of being able to do whatever it liked in the conquered territories. And armies tend to solve problems by shooting them. Again, I'll focus on Macedonia. When faced by not being greeted as liberators quite as much as they hoped for, the army started rooting out insurgents and "insurgents", shutting down Macedonian and Bulgarian political and cultural societies, enforcing nationality, stuff like that. There were also quite a few cases of Bulgarian teachers and priests being replaced by Serbian ones, and Serbian (or Serbo-Croatian, or whatever you want to call it) language being enforced. Nowhere near the scale of similar atrocities committed by Bulgarians in WW1, but still, several thousand people were killed during all of this, many more were harassed and persecuted, and none of it makes its way to our history books. France is somewhat an accomplice in this - while they were opponents of the Balkan Wars starting, they were more than happy to help cover up anything that made their allies look bad, and therefore many of their journalists presented a very 'clean' picture of what was going on. There was a major political current in Serbia that went  Stop doing that, we can sort this poo poo out by by letting them vote, for gently caress's sake, but to our shame, it didn't carry the day. If WW1 didn't start when it did, there probably would have been some sort of damage control and a transition to a more tolerant approach, but that's a mere whatif. Not only did this military "pacification" hurt the relations with the people in the area (because, you know, atrocities), it was a quite a blow to the Yugoslav movement. It was getting quite strong in the Western Balkans, and there was a large number of people who starting were seeing Serbia as the core of a new South Slavic state free from Austria-Hungary - but there were also quite a few more who wanted to be free from AH, but rather skeptical of Serbia's intentions. As you can imagine, Serbian actions after the Balkan Wars strengthened this skepticism. And gave a seed from which Austrian propagandists could work to weave a narrative of Serbs being evil masterminds behind everything bad that happened in the area since forever. You know that saying "Won the battle, lost the war"? Well, this was a case of "Won the war, lost the peace"
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Jul 30, 2015 18:32
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100 Years Ago Zee Germans let some flamethrowers rip at Hooge, and the recent British gains are entirely cancelled out. Thousands are dying to move the front line a hundred yards or so in either direction. Herbert Sulzbach is off on the train to France, and it's time for a detailed look at the plans for an August offensive at Gallipoli, beginning with the diversion at Cape Helles. Where they're suffering from a serious command vacuum, and things are getting rather out of hand. Oh boy.
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Jul 30, 2015 18:55
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my dad posted:It's complicated. Thanks for that.  Poor Macedonia. 
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Jul 30, 2015 18:58
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Raenir Salazar posted:Thanks for that. Mind you, it's not just the Macedonians that had poo poo happening to them, but I really don't know enough about the situation in other relevant areas to dare post about it.
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Jul 30, 2015 19:00
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Kanine posted:What are some interesting flukes and coincidences that have occurred throughout history? The last two founding fathers of the U.S., Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, both died on the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Can you be more specific about what you mean? Something like Columbus finding out about the New World is a fluke because he sucked at math and thought the Earth was small enough to sail west to Japan from Spain.
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Jul 30, 2015 19:15
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Xiahou Dun posted:Huh. Refresh my memory on the chicken story. The only culinary episode I remember from rot3k is Liu Bei and Cao Cao both high fiving a guy who cooked his wife.
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Jul 30, 2015 19:32
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P-Mack posted:Refresh my memory on the chicken story. The only culinary episode I remember from rot3k is Liu Bei and Cao Cao both high fiving a guy who cooked his wife. He killed his uncle and a bunch of servants because he overheard them talking about the best way to cut a throat and he thought they meant him. Turned out they were making him a special dinner! Boy, was his face red. Also, he was embarrassed.
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Jul 30, 2015 19:43
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What are the best video depictions of pre-knights cavalry? Could be from a movie, a game, a simulation, whatever. P.S. I came from civ thread, so the derail at least produced something. Tom Clancy is Dead fucked around with this message at 21:56 on Jul 30, 2015 |
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Jul 30, 2015 19:58
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I've finally come to the end of history... I've been reading this thread for weeks... I've got a bunch of questions, but while I formulate them, what's anyone think of this: http://imgur.com/gallery/xmF9P re: Vikings?  Christianity seems to have a lot to answer for, the death of bathing not least among them...
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Jul 30, 2015 21:40
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HEY GAL posted:with him and Wallenstein's beer opinions, we can get a military leader takeout menu going Here's what Admiral Prince Louis of Battenberg would eat for breakfast, as recalled by another flag officer: "he began on porridge then fish, then eggs and bacon or a meat dish, then a large plate of cold ham, then hot muffins or crumpets and then a lot of toast, butter and jam and finish on fruit. His meal would have fed an Officers' mess."
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Jul 30, 2015 21:45
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I suppose when you're a military leader, there's nobody around to tell you to eat your vegetables.
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Jul 30, 2015 21:55
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:I suppose when you're a military leader, there's nobody around to tell you to eat your vegetables. Who eats vegetables at breakfast?
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Jul 30, 2015 22:11
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:Here's what Admiral Prince Louis of Battenberg would eat for breakfast, as recalled by another flag officer: "he began on porridge then fish, then eggs and bacon or a meat dish, then a large plate of cold ham, then hot muffins or crumpets and then a lot of toast, butter and jam and finish on fruit. His meal would have fed an Officers' mess." How do you eat like that and still have time to do all your admiral-ling? For that matter, was this a special breakfast for when he had to receive people on land, or did he eat like that while actually on a ship?!
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Jul 30, 2015 22:19
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Davin Valkri posted:How do you eat like that and still have time to do all your admiral-ling? For that matter, was this a special breakfast for when he had to receive people on land, or did he eat like that while actually on a ship?! If he did eat like that at sea I can only assume a small fleet of victuallers followed his boat.
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Jul 30, 2015 22:24
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my dad posted:Mind you, it's not just the Macedonians that had poo poo happening to them, but I really don't know enough about the situation in other relevant areas to dare post about it. I'm reading The Sleepwalkers now, and "had poo poo happening to them" seems to accurately describe everyone in the Balkans who wasn't Serbia or Bulgaria, and even they had Austria-Hungary and Russia looming over their shoulders. Much of Serbia really, really wanted a Greater Serbia that would include all Serbs (whether the people in question considered themselves Serbs or not and whether they wanted to be a part of Greater Serbia or not were both considered irrelevant questions), Bulgaria kind of wanted a similar Greater Bulgaria, and of the great powers Italy wanted an independent Albania (without regard for who in the Balkans wanted to be part of an Albania or who wanted to give up the appropriate territory), the Ottomans were weak, Austria-Hungary was internally confused and isolated by Italy doing whatever it wanted without regard for its ostensible allies and Germany largely disregarding the Balkans, and Russia was waffling and uncertain about its direction in the region. It was a giant loving mess, which is Balkans.txt
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Jul 30, 2015 22:31
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:Who eats vegetables at breakfast? Do you know what hash browns are made from? The answer may shock you!
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Jul 30, 2015 22:40
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chitoryu12 posted:Do you know what hash browns are made from? The potato: Considered the premier vegetable of technology workers.
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Jul 30, 2015 22:42
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Dr. Jamming posted:Christianity seems to have a lot to answer for, the death of bathing not least among them... Pretty sure the lack of bathing has nothing to do with Christianity, and everything to do with the Plague.
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Jul 30, 2015 22:57
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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chitoryu12 posted:Do you know what hash browns are made from? Potatoes don't count. They pretty much have the status of an honorary meat. Vincent Van Goatse fucked around with this message at 00:00 on Jul 31, 2015 |
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Jul 30, 2015 23:58
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PittTheElder posted:Pretty sure the lack of bathing has nothing to do with Christianity, and everything to do with the Plague. Please explain more; I've always heard that the church discouraged it under the banner of promoting humility and due to the indecency associated with Roman baths. Bathing was apparently a sign of vanity, to say nothing of bathhouse "encounters".
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Jul 31, 2015 00:10
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 "Potatoes don't count. They pretty much have the status of an honorary meat."
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Jul 31, 2015 00:12
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Trin Tragula posted:
Should have used this photo:  Also, dude was German so don't tell me he didn't believe it.
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Jul 31, 2015 00:24
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Trin Tragula posted:
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Jul 31, 2015 00:34
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Ok, so I just finished A.F. Lindley's memoir/history/polemic about his time with the Taiping. It's got a lot of interesting stuff and many of his arguments and analyses are very similar to what historians a hundred years later would write. He also has a very detailed description of a battle he took part in which is greatly helpful. Chinese sources generally didn't have a cultural tradition of military history writing for its own sake, so they wouldn't bother telling you about exactly how many men were on each wing, what time of day the cavalry advanced, etc., since that kind of detail is generally irrelevant to the other imperial officials they would be writing to. He also has some weird romanization system that is definitely not Wade-Giles. Li Xiucheng's beautiful daughter, he tells us, is named "Cum Ho."
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Jul 31, 2015 01:13
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Cythereal posted:I'm reading The Sleepwalkers now, and "had poo poo happening to them" seems to accurately describe everyone in the Balkans who wasn't Serbia or Bulgaria, and even they had Austria-Hungary and Russia looming over their shoulders. Much of Serbia really, really wanted a Greater Serbia that would include all Serbs (whether the people in question considered themselves Serbs or not and whether they wanted to be a part of Greater Serbia or not were both considered irrelevant questions), Bulgaria kind of wanted a similar Greater Bulgaria, and of the great powers Italy wanted an independent Albania (without regard for who in the Balkans wanted to be part of an Albania or who wanted to give up the appropriate territory), the Ottomans were weak, Austria-Hungary was internally confused and isolated by Italy doing whatever it wanted without regard for its ostensible allies and Germany largely disregarding the Balkans, and Russia was waffling and uncertain about its direction in the region. Honestly, every place that was a playground of major European powers in such a measure (I'm willing to include the Ottomans in there) ended up being the same kind of a giant loving mess. Just look at post-colonial Africa and Latin America. Russia wasn't uncertain about its direction in the region. It wanted control of the Dardanelles, by any means necessary, and if possible, having Serbia and Bulgaria as allies. When any of them got in the way of Dardanelles ambitions, it was discarded - though the public sentiment in Russia occasionally managed to get in the way of that. Speaking of Serbia and Bulgaria, one of the dumbest wars in the Balkans (also one of the biggest triumphs of Austro-Hungarian diplomacy), and one of the reasons for the horrible state of affairs later on, was the Serbo-Bulgarian war. Serbia and Bulgaria had very close relations during their struggles for independence, and Serbia provided a great deal of help to Bulgarian revolutionaries. When the Timok Rebellion happened in Serbia in 1883 (the reason for it was King Milan's removal of opposition members from the parliament, and the thing that sparked it was confiscation of weapons from the populace in the name of transitioning from a militia based army to a professional one), and was brutally crushed by the royal army, most of the rebels fled to Bulgaria - most notably their leader Nikola Pašić (he had a bunch of relatives there). He'll eventually become the most influential politician in Serbian history, but his role in this situation is fairly limited, other than annoying King Milan by the very fact that he was still alive. Two years later, Bulgaria finally managed to unify its independent and its still-under-Ottoman-control parts, becoming the largest Balkan state. Austria-Hungary was greatly opposed to this, and used its influence in Serbia (extremely strong at the time due to the so called "Secret Convention" between King Milan and AH. Long story short, it made Serbia a de-facto puppet of Austria-Hungary, and forbade it from leading independent foreign policy and trade, while guaranteeing the Obrenović dynasty and its interests full protection by the Empire, and support for Milan's recognition as King of Serbia) to push Milan to declare war on Bulgaria. He didn't really need much convincing, since he was eager to get his hands on the Timok rebels, and smacking down Bulgaria was a plus. The war was a disaster. Bulgarians were quite eager to protect their nation, Milan wanted to be a hero and took personal control of the army instead of letting his large number of competent and experienced generals and officers do their drat jobs, had to leave a large garrison at home because he was an autocratic shithead and a revolt was likely, and the soldiers weren't big fans of shooting people whose cause they were cheering for not too long ago. Also, because why not, the army brought brand new longer ranged and faster firing rifles, but didn't bring nearly enough bullets. Bulgaria claimed complete victory, but the war ended as a stalemate because AH threatened to join in on Serbian side if a white peace wasn't signed. All the trust and respect that existed between Serbia and Bulgaria before? POOF. Gone. Cue bloody bickering for a loooong time.  King Milan and his son Aleksandar, the dude who got killed in the 1903 coup. As a bit of trivia, Milan is remembered in Serbian history as a hedonistic autocrat with a rude sense of humor and overinflated sense of his own worth, far outclassed intellectually by his wife Natalia who he cheated on constantly. (with a long list of women that includes Winston Churchill's mother. Thankfully, the timing of it makes it unlikely for Winnie to be his lovechild) I'd wish to explain another thing people tend to ignore in their analysis of the situation in the Balkans, or lump it in with something else (usually the Greater Serbia thing, despite being a rejection of it) - the Yugoslav idea and its variants. But I'm too tired to give a detailed explanation. Long story short: A lot of educated people in the Balkans, especially among Serbs, Croats, and Slovenians, took a look at the incredible intermingling of various ethnic groups in the region that shared a lot of common culture despite their differences, realized that an attempt to form separate nation states would end up being a disaster for a lot of people since there was absolutely no way to draw borders that make sense, and decided that the only way to solve the situation was to reject classic nationalism in the name of something greater - the scope of the unified nation project varied from something as small as a Croatia-Slovenia, or a federation of Serbo-Croatian speaking areas, and went all the way up to having not just Yugoslavia, but Bulgaria, Albania, and Greece in a single large Balkan nation, whatever it might be called. It was rather influential in shaping the history of the Balkans. my dad fucked around with this message at 02:24 on Jul 31, 2015 |
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Jul 31, 2015 02:20
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P-Mack posted:He also has some weird romanization system that is definitely not Wade-Giles. Li Xiucheng's beautiful daughter, he tells us, is named "Cum Ho." Chinese Romanisation systems are probably a big part of why hardly anybody outside China knows any Chinese history. Pinyin is a train wreck.
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Jul 31, 2015 02:49
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my dad posted:all the way up to having not just Yugoslavia, but Bulgaria, Albania, and Greece in a single large Balkan nation, whatever it might be called. 
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Jul 31, 2015 02:53
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Megaslavia.
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Jul 31, 2015 02:59
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