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UK Google has a fascinating article about the history of the black population of the UK. Check it out. Seacole was a saint. She was.
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Oct 25, 2016 18:28
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Alhazred posted:They probably did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Kellner#The_war_years Well that's going on my reading list. Didn't even know about that.
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Oct 25, 2016 18:45
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TapTheForwardAssist posted:The 1841 book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds has a whole chapter called " Popular Follies of Great Cities". It's basically just a short summary of all the contemporary stupid fads and catch-phrases the author was familiar with in London: This guy's entries on current memes 100% remind me of the New York Times Style Section attempting to understand hipsters. Yeah, he's a contemporary, but he's not part of the in-group and his explanations aren't really complete. Just because HE doesn't know what started "quoz" or "there she goes with her eye out" doesn't mean it literally sprang out of nowhere with no meaning at all -- even the most nonsensical memes on tumblr still came from somewhere and originally had a point. The fact that such knowledge of the background of memes is both ephemeral and also pointless (like, there's not really any NEED for anyone to know why "with his eye out" was a thing) is what I find neat/funny The popularity of rabbit knights riding snails in full tourney gear as a subject for medieval marginalia probably also had an origin which is now lost to time
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Oct 25, 2016 18:52
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InediblePenguin posted:The popularity of rabbit knights riding snails in full tourney gear as a subject for medieval marginalia probably also had an origin which is now lost to time That actually probably comes from monks taking Exodus 20:4 rather literally: "You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below." Thus making images of real things was forbidden, so they made up fantastical cartoon creatures to illustrate their manuscripts - most of which would have been recognizable as representing real characters to the people at the time.
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Oct 25, 2016 19:10
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Yes, but 1) there's not a single thing in Exodus 20:4 that says "thou shalt make an image which is specifically a rabbit dressed as a knight riding a snail in tourney gear," and that motif is really really common, and I'm sure they had a reason for it and we do not know the specifics of that reason, do you feel me here, and also 2) many of the exact same manuscripts that feature such drolleries also feature humans drawn to look like humans -- your posited explanation doesn't actually bear out. I'd guess maybe there was a line in a bestiary at one point that suggested rabbit knights and that's how it caught on, but my point is that we'll actually never know unless time travel becomes real so we can go ask them, and that's kind of cool in itself e: vv exactly InediblePenguin has a new favorite as of 19:37 on Oct 25, 2016 |
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Oct 25, 2016 19:25
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Oct 25, 2016 19:35
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Deteriorata posted:That actually probably comes from monks taking Exodus 20:4 rather literally: "You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below." Medieval illustrations are full of real people and things, what the heck is this
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Oct 25, 2016 19:38
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CoolCab posted:It's also worth noting that the attempted coup wasn't so much "wow! Hitler's doing the holocaust better stop him to save all the undesirables" for a bunch of reasons (including the timelines not matching up at all), it was because he was losing the war...badly. When the nazis were winning the same generals were, to various degrees of enthusiasm, willing participants in the holocaust. Rommel's really really not a good example for trying to prove that there were a bunch of officers who weren't neck deep in nazi stuff. His reputation kind of turns on people not asking questions like "were there Jews in North Africa other than ones in allied armies?" and "Hey isn't his reputation based in part on a book by David loving Irving?". https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4tuviz/is_it_true_that_erwin_rommel_was_kind_to_his/
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Oct 25, 2016 19:59
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HEY GAL posted:????? Something I read by someone that I thought was knowledgeable. Maybe it's bullshit.
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Oct 25, 2016 20:08
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SeanBeansShako posted:UK Google has a fascinating article about the history of the black population of the UK. Check it out. Hey I cross-posted this in D&D's black feminism thread, where any and all history relating to black women would be much appreciated. Come tell us about Seacole!
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Oct 25, 2016 20:12
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InediblePenguin posted:This guy's entries on current memes 100% remind me of the New York Times Style Section attempting to understand hipsters. Yeah, he's a contemporary, but he's not part of the in-group and his explanations aren't really complete. Just because HE doesn't know what started "quoz" or "there she goes with her eye out" doesn't mean it literally sprang out of nowhere with no meaning at all -- even the most nonsensical memes on tumblr still came from somewhere and originally had a point. The fact that such knowledge of the background of memes is both ephemeral and also pointless (like, there's not really any NEED for anyone to know why "with his eye out" was a thing) is what I find neat/funny The phrase 'there's nothing new under the sun' comes to mind whenever I read about late 18th century memes and catchphrases. I feel like all the Internet's really achieved is a much faster cultural discourse, where catchphrases and stupid memes that were in the vogue only last a few years before they're regulated to the realm of nostalgia. 'Quoz' had good 40 years before it was regulated to the realm of quaint poo poo Londoners used to say.
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Oct 25, 2016 20:59
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SeanBeansShako posted:UK Google has a fascinating article about the history of the black population of the UK. Check it out. I watched Extra Credits series on her exploits in Crimea. Pretty fascinating woman who I'd never heard about due to not being named Florence Nightingale.
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Oct 25, 2016 21:03
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Glad to see this thread is bustling again. To veer a bit from the nazi/ww2 talk, here's the oldest documented joke. Probably already posted here but w/equote:The oldest recorded joke—a lowbrow Sumerian quip stating "Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap"—dates back to 1900 BC, barely eking out a pharaoh wisecrack from Ancient Egypt by a solid three centuries. But hey here's some more ww2 stuff anyways! The German Military operation on land in North America...installing this weather station https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Station_Kurt More ww2 weather station stuff http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/secret-nazi-military-base-russian-scientists-alexandra-land-a7373401.html https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_weather_war Nostalgia4Dogges has a new favorite as of 21:14 on Oct 25, 2016 |
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Oct 25, 2016 21:04
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:Hey I cross-posted this in D&D's black feminism thread, where any and all history relating to black women would be much appreciated. Come tell us about Seacole! I'm flattered now but I know as much as the article in the URL, my big book covering the Crimean War is still on hold due to a backlog. But she got a statue in her honour this year in the UK!
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Oct 25, 2016 21:18
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quote:The oldest recorded joke—a lowbrow Sumerian quip stating "Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap"—dates back to 1900 BC, barely eking out a pharaoh wisecrack from Ancient Egypt by a solid three centuries. This is a queef joke, right?
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Oct 25, 2016 22:14
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I think it's just "even young pretty women fart, gross lol"
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Oct 25, 2016 22:24
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Who knows what it was. That joke could be told a lot of ways honestly and unfortunately writing can't convey emphasis, double entendres, etc very well. Especially when dealing with a loose translation of a poorly understood language with no one left alive to clarify if, say, sitting in a lap was a ye olde euphemism for loving back then.
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Oct 25, 2016 23:20
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xthetenth posted:Rommel's really really not a good example for trying to prove that there were a bunch of officers who weren't neck deep in nazi stuff. His reputation kind of turns on people not asking questions like "were there Jews in North Africa other than ones in allied armies?" and "Hey isn't his reputation based in part on a book by David loving Irving?". Rommel was head bodyguard to Hitler at the outbreak of the war. A good man in his position would have shot Hitler in the back.
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Oct 25, 2016 23:31
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quote:in the the early morning hours of Nov. 15, 1953, an amateur astronomer in Oklahoma photographed what he believed to be a massive, white-hot fireball of vaporized rock rising from the center of the Moon's face. If his theory was right, Dr. Leon Stuart would be the first and only human in history to witness and document the impact of an asteroid-sized body impacting the Moon's scarred exterior. NASA found the crater in 2003 http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=66
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Oct 26, 2016 01:05
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HEY GAL posted:????? I thought the knight riding snails thing was monks blowing off steam about snails eating vegetables in their gardens. Then again, I got that from tumblr so who knows how accurate that is. As for other weird rear end poo poo drawn in manuscripts, no clue.
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Oct 26, 2016 01:31
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Nostalgia4Dicks posted:NASA found the crater in 2003 This is really cool
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Oct 26, 2016 01:58
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value-brand cereal posted:As for other weird rear end poo poo drawn in manuscripts, no clue. imagine if they had the stussy s back then
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Oct 26, 2016 02:04
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Nostalgia4Dicks posted:NASA found the crater in 2003 I recalled that apparently some monks had witnessed an impact in the 12th century, but apparently that's been discounted more recently. Interesting.
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Oct 26, 2016 02:24
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twoday posted:So this article was recently published about the obscure historical fun fact which I have become obsessed with. Great artwork too! This ended up on the bottom of the last page, but the article has neat stuff on the history of New York. Recommended reading.
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Oct 26, 2016 07:54
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Apparently that moon meteor thing was debunked http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/lunar-flash-doesnt-pan-out/ But here's some pics of the Apollo site on the moon http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/news/apollo-sites.html
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Oct 26, 2016 10:41
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Vienna still is full of the palaces (Palais), mostly of various powerful noble families within the Hapsburg monarchy - just look at this exhaustive list. Most of these don't belong to their original owners anymore, many of them being claimed by the Republic of Austria after 1918 instead. Especially in the 18th, but also during much of the 19th century, these palaces were the centres of Vienna's social life and also a major job generator. In the late 18th century, the five major houses (Liechtenstein, Esterházy, Schwarzenberg, Dietrichstein and Lobkowitz) had expenses of 300,000-700,000 guilders per year, mostly for representation, but also for maintaining the often vast and pompus palaces as well as for charity. An additional seven minor, but still princely houses had expenses between 80,000 and 150,000 guilders, whereas a large number of merely comital families "only" could afford between 50,000 and 80,000 each year for such purposes. For comparison: even high-ranking and especially meritorious public officials couldn't hope to make more than maybe 6,000 per year. In 1789, one pound of beef cost around seven kreuzers (60 kreuzer to a guilder), a pound of butter 27 kreuzers and a pound of bacon 32. One of the largest of those palaces was the Palais Schwarzenberg on Kärntner Straße, right across the Capuchin church where even today the dead of the Hapsburgs are laid to rest (the palace itself was torn down in 1894 and mustn't be mixed up with another palace of the same name in Vienna's 3rd district). The enormous effort put into representation can be seen by looking at the personnel numbers: in ~1800, the lady of the house commanded one or two personal maids, one valet, a laundress, two parlour maids, an extra maid, a "Hausmensch" (probably a maid-of-all-work), three runners and three servants, while the lord had one secretary, valet, chamber lackey, hunter, runner and personal hussar each as well as two servants. Part of the general personnel were the "household masters" (=chief butlers), two chambermaids, a porter or doorkeeper, a personal cook, a "Bratmeister", a large number of bus boys, kitchen helps, kitchen maids and so on, as well as a confectioner and one cook who did nothing but pies. In the stable you had the equerry, one horse trainer, two coachmen, two postillions, two vanguard riders, two stablemen, four horse grooms etc. In the palace there were three different locations for people to eat: the "Herrschaftstisch" for the Schwarzenberg family and their guests; the "Offizierstisch" for high-ranking servants of theirs and the "Gesindetisch" for everybody else. This was just one of many of such palaces in Vienna, mind you - and even all this pomp and effort was nothing compared to the Imperial Palace, whose servants and their families constituted a full tenth (!) of the city's population in 1675. During the 18th century this enormous percentage decreased though, due to the rapid growth of the city as well as additional noble palaces springing up like mushrooms. Yet a large part of Vienna was directly in the employ of a comparatively small number of noble families, who pumped ludicrous amounts of money each year into the local economy.  Liveried porter at the entrance to Palais Schwarzenberg, 1890
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Oct 26, 2016 10:49
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System Metternich posted:a "Bratmeister" Was that literally a guy in charge of making sausages?
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Oct 26, 2016 11:08
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Kassad posted:Was that literally a guy in charge of making sausages? Bratmeister = literally “roast master“, so all sorts of roasted meat e: sadly I've lost my digital copy of Csendes/Opll's Wien. Geschichte einer Stadt or I would look it up now, but come to think of it the number of Viennese who were craftsmen or merchants must have been surprisingly small, seeing as a huge amount of people was employed either by the court, by the various noble houses, by the city itself (as clerks, guardsmen or whatever) or by the Church. Considering the latter, I've got numbers for St Peter's in the middle of the city which was administered to by a confraternity. This confraternity employed at least four people directly (two announcers, one sacristan, one building supervisor), while for the liturgical services in the church in the year 1779 we know of at least 45 priests and (sub-)deacons (as well as a large number of other clergy who occasionally worked at St Peter's because their head organisation, e.g. their monastery, had a contract with the confraternity) working there as well as twelve musicians, which adds up to 61 people working at this church alone. A 1770 description of Vienna counts 113 churches and chapels in the city and its suburbs, of which each of them would have employed a number of sacristans and clergy, while the number of confraternities isn't entirely clear, but probably was in the ballpark of 100-150; many of these weren't as large as the one at St Peter's, but nevertheless many would have had their own personnel as well. In addition we know of 570 licensed "Messleser" in 1782, i.e. priests without any regular income who kept themselves above water by offering to read Mass for whoever paid them - the number of unlicensed ones probably was at least as high, if not even larger. In 1723 there were 31 monasteries in the city with 1,476 monks and nuns between them. When you put all that together and consider that in the 18th century the city's population rose from ~113,000 in 1700 to ~250,000 in 1794 this means that a significant portion of the population was in the employ of the church as well, either as laypeople or as clergy (for 1723 for example, the members of religious orders alone would make up about 0,67%, and the number of diocesan clergy was way higher and steadily rose as well, with the bishop ordaining 111 new priests in 1708 alone with additional clergy arriving from all over the monarchy to try their luck in Vienna). Sorry for rambling, but man, I'm surprising myself here on just how many people were employed by the nobility and the Church in baroque Vienna 
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Oct 26, 2016 11:25
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Platystemon posted:Rommel was head bodyguard to Hitler at the outbreak of the war. A good man in his position would have shot Hitler in the back. I read or heard someone say that Hitler was actually a good thing for the Allies. His incompetence played a huge part in Germany loosing the war, and had he been replaced by someone competent, things might have gone very different. I have no sources or anything, but it sounds plausible to me. I am sure someone else might have some more input on this.
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Oct 26, 2016 13:14
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Dunno-Lars posted:I read or heard someone say that Hitler was actually a good thing for the Allies. His incompetence played a huge part in Germany loosing the war, and had he been replaced by someone competent, things might have gone very different. I have no sources or anything, but it sounds plausible to me. I am sure someone else might have some more input on this. In late 1944, the Allies certainly thought so—that’s why they shelved the Operation Foxley plan to assassinate him. I think that in general Hitler’s incompetence is overstated, but whether or not time travelers should aim to assassinate Hitler, Rommel can hardly be the anti‐Hitler when he was literally guarding the man’s back at the critical moment.
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Oct 26, 2016 13:42
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Everything I've heard suggests that Hitler was a charismatic leader, but stress and terrible administration decisions pretty much sapped any strategic competence he might have had by the end of the war. It's terrible that he was able to assume power at all, but it's also impossible to say what would have happened with different leadership. That entire event is just too large and too complicated to make sweeping predictions about, although I'd like to think that lessons we can learn are that 1) austerity measures breed resentment and aren't very effective at rebuilding a power into a friendly trading partner and 2) allowing fascist authoritarians to come to power generally doesn't work out very well for anyone involved. PYF Hitler fact: It's pretty well-known nowadays, but Hitler was also an artist, and if he hadn't come from a hosed-up background and rose to be a hosed-up historical figure, we'd probably only know him in art history footnotes about his completely unexciting landscapes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paintings_by_Adolf_Hitler You can see even in just the two or three examples present that Hitler was an extremely competent artist (and cited realistic detail as his fascination in art), but surprisingly unimaginative. According to the article, he was outright told to pursue architecture, since he painted structures in exacting technical detail but paid little mind to anything else. Given how often PYF Historical Fun Fact ends up orbiting the world wars, has anyone seriously considered just making a separate thread for them, or would that be diluting things too much?
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Oct 26, 2016 15:42
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I don't mind the occassional ww2 fact but pages of Hitler discussions are boring as hell. Might as well watch The History Channel for that.
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Oct 26, 2016 15:55
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Snapchat A Titty posted:I don't mind the occassional ww2 fact but pages of Hitler discussions are boring as hell. Might as well watch The History Channel for that. Seconded. Whoever who said "Wehraboo" nailed it.
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Oct 26, 2016 18:36
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Shady Amish Terror posted:PYF Hitler fact: It's pretty well-known nowadays, but Hitler was also an artist, and if he hadn't come from a hosed-up background and rose to be a hosed-up historical figure, we'd probably only know him in art history footnotes about his completely unexciting landscapes. You can not mention this without posting Hitlers Disney fan art:   
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Oct 26, 2016 18:44
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Hitler, like all world leaders of his day, was also on a metric fuckton of drugs. He was on doses of drugs that the most hardened TCC junky would think was a bad idea, I think at one point he was taking amphetamines, cocaine, opiates, barbiturates, mercury applications, and several doses of a bunch of drugs he didn't need but took anyways because he was terrified of becoming sick. Like, no poo poo that dude made some terrible military decisions, he was basically on a 24/7 drug binge from 42-45, the dude probably committed suicide because the other option of detox would have been horrendous.
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Oct 26, 2016 19:03
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Not to mention that throwing massive amounts of resources and manpower into rounding up, imprisoning, and murdering millions of civilians in the middle of a war is a very dumb move. Also quite rude.
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Oct 26, 2016 19:29
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FreudianSlippers posted:Not to mention that throwing massive amounts of resources and manpower into rounding up, imprisoning, and murdering millions of civilians in the middle of a war is a very dumb move. Also quite rude. The camps were a net economic benefit to the regime. Most of the work camps were purpose build for companies that needed lots of workers. Massive amounts of slave labor, and they obviously confiscated all of their property. The hard work in the death camps was mostly done by Jewish prisoners held at gunpoint by a few SS officers.
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Oct 26, 2016 19:58
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Eden was on bennies when he hosed Britain out of her imperial status by precipitating the Suez Crisis. Ike forced the shameful retreat of Israel, France and Britain from the recently occupied Egyptian territories by threatening dire economic consequences, thus setting the balance of strength in the West post WW2 and putting Old Blighty in her place.
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Oct 26, 2016 20:09
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Rutibex posted:The camps were a net economic benefit to the regime. Maybe in one sense. In another sense a lot of historians, at least the kind that engage in silly what-if speculation and write in less rigorous media, hold that a possible nazi path to victory would involve integrating conquered peoples (actually liberating them) instead of antagonizing them since like half the territory they captured was living under one tyrant or another and initially welcomed a regime change, even to a nazi one. All nazi antagonism accomplished, remembering it wasn't just restricted to jews, was getting cheap labor in exchange for inciting blocks of people, people that'd either form partisan groups that'd later tie up forces in garrison duty or hardening people on the other side who might've considered surrender if the terms for doing so weren't literally worse than dying in battle. In any case it's pretty hard to weigh the benefits of work over more abstract things, like the human reaction to extreme prejudice.
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Oct 26, 2016 20:44
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Could you please make another thread for this poo poo.
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Oct 26, 2016 21:39
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