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While the pyramids were being built in Egypt, some woolly mammoths were still alive on Wrangel Island.
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Aug 13, 2017 17:15
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Wheat Loaf posted:While the pyramids were being built in Egypt, some woolly mammoths were still alive on Wrangel Island. The population on the island was also so small they ended up with a bunch of genetic problems, including blonde fur. A lot of giant/interesting species lasted for a long way into recorded history. Giant (although more like pig-sized than elephant-sized) ground sloths remained in the Caribbean until around 2700 BC, New Zealand's giant bird based ecosystem was around until the Maori showed up around 1250 AD, and Madagascar had a lot more big animals (including gorilla-sized lemurs) until humans arrived 350 BC-500 AD, and elephant birds possibly survived on the island into the 17th century AD. One of the things I find interesting about historical biodiversity is that it kind of confuses one of the arguments about the limitations on developing societies in the Americas, that they were limited by a lack of large, domesticatable animal species, where Africa and Eurasia had horses, cattle, pigs, camels, etc. Horses and camels actually come from north America and were present when humans first arrived on the continent, but for whatever reason(s), they went extinct there rather than sticking around and being domesticated.
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Aug 13, 2017 20:41
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Red Bones posted:The population on the island was also so small they ended up with a bunch of genetic problems, including blonde fur. Do you know of any interesting links detailing these? I've never heard of them before and I'd like to
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Aug 13, 2017 22:38
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Red Bones posted:A lot of giant/interesting species lasted for a long way into recorded history. Giant (although more like pig-sized than elephant-sized) ground sloths remained in the Caribbean until around 2700 BC, New Zealand's giant bird based ecosystem was around until the Maori showed up around 1250 AD, and Madagascar had a lot more big animals (including gorilla-sized lemurs) until humans arrived 350 BC-500 AD, and elephant birds possibly survived on the island into the 17th century AD. New Zealand is even weirder than this - there are only three native species of land mammal (and they're all bats), so insects evolved to fill the same niches that mammals would in the rest of the world. Wetas are basically mice.  I'm constantly disappointed that we don't get to see moas or Haast's eagles any longer too.
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Aug 13, 2017 23:03
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Avocados and a bunch of other plants of the Americas evolved in a symbiotic relationship with giant sloths, mammoths, and other large creatures. Humans killed the sloths, but it turns out that we also like to eat avocados.
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Aug 13, 2017 23:05
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Captain_Person posted:New Zealand is even weirder than this - there are only three native species of land mammal (and they're all bats), so insects evolved to fill the same niches that mammals would in the rest of the world. Wetas are basically mice. What did the sheep eating parrots do before the introduction of large mammals?
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Aug 13, 2017 23:11
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Plants, beetles and other birds. They'd break open shearwater nests to feed on the chicks. There are even reports of them going after horses. Kea are vicious.
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Aug 13, 2017 23:16
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Aesop Poprock posted:Do you know of any interesting links detailing these? I've never heard of them before and I'd like to I mostly read about this stuff on wikipedia. With Madagascar, there's a nice article on the extinct lemur species, including Archaeoindris, the gorilla-esque lemur. There's also an article on ground sloths that covers the Caribbean species. If you're interested in reading about extinct animals more generally, I'd really recommend a site called Earth Archives, which publishes a lot of good natural science and natural history articles and always commissions nice illustrations to go along with them.
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Aug 13, 2017 23:48
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Another historical coincidence which isn't funny at all is that the first McDonald's and Auschwitz opened within a week of each other.
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Aug 13, 2017 23:57
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Captain_Person posted:I'm constantly disappointed that we don't get to see moas or Haast's eagles any longer too. Are you sure you'd want to live in a country with 12-foot tall, 500lb Emus and Eagles that are big enough to hunt them?
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Aug 14, 2017 01:02
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Wheat Loaf posted:While the pyramids were being built in Egypt, some woolly mammoths were still alive on Wrangell Island. Hey I live there! I wonder if there are any bones around.
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Aug 14, 2017 02:00
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Platystemon posted:Avocados and a bunch of other plants of the Americas evolved in a symbiotic relationship with giant sloths, mammoths, and other large creatures. i bet those were delicious sloths too imagine coming upon a wonderland over a landbridge where delicious slow things chill out in guac trees Olaf The Stout posted:Hey I live there! I wonder if there are any bones around. you should put together an expedition Former DILF has a new favorite as of 02:21 on Aug 14, 2017 |
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Aug 14, 2017 02:18
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Powaqoatse posted:supposedly if youre an old wise danish woman & you feed the cat with like 50/50 milk & viper venom, i think cats are supposed to be good luck fingerpori_viperless_milk_comic.png
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Aug 14, 2017 02:22
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Olaf The Stout posted:Hey I live there! I wonder if there are any bones around. I think by now they have taken all the bones out of the pyramids.
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Aug 14, 2017 02:33
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Say Nothing posted:Are you sure you'd want to live in a country with 12-foot tall, 500lb Emus and Eagles that are big enough to hunt them? I would pay good money to eat a Moa.
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Aug 14, 2017 04:37
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cptn_dr posted:I would pay good money to eat a Moa. I think some scientists did try to eat mammoth once, but it tasted about as good as you'd expect defrosted ten thousand year old meat to. Maybe when they finish cloning a new one they can put some sort of restaurant chain together.
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Aug 14, 2017 08:05
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Wheat Loaf posted:Another historical coincidence which isn't funny at all is that the first McDonald's and Auschwitz opened within a week of each other. Arbeit macht fries
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Aug 14, 2017 08:08
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Red Bones posted:I think some scientists did try to eat mammoth once, but it tasted about as good as you'd expect defrosted ten thousand year old meat to. Maybe when they finish cloning a new one they can put some sort of restaurant chain together. Wouldn't it pretty much taste a lot like elephant?
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Aug 14, 2017 08:13
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Olaf The Stout posted:Hey I live there! I wonder if there are any bones around. You should do an A/T about being a polar bear! (Wrangel, not Wrangell  )
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Aug 14, 2017 08:38
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System Metternich posted:You should do an A/T about being a polar bear! .... disappointing, totally thought it was a spelling error.
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Aug 14, 2017 09:07
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Say Nothing posted:Or, for something a little more horrifying, you can try some Mellified Man.
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Aug 14, 2017 09:17
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:Arbeit macht fries 
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Aug 14, 2017 09:20
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Red Bones posted:I think some scientists did try to eat mammoth once, but it tasted about as good as you'd expect defrosted ten thousand year old meat to. Maybe when they finish cloning a new one they can put some sort of restaurant chain together. "Scientists" (most often helpers and russians) eat mammoth every year up in Siberia, supposedly ita gamey but totally edible.
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Aug 14, 2017 09:38
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A Köpenickiade is a German word that describes a person fraudulently assuming authority, mostly by donning a (stolen) uniform and bossing other people around. The word came into being after a very famous case of just that (see below) in 1906. It's sort of emblematic for the Prussian/German cultural attitude of obedience and militarism of the time, since it didn't happen just once. Mugshot and description of Friedrich Wilhelm Voigt, 1906 The first and also most famous case of a Köpenickiade is its namesake: Friedrich Wilhelm Voigt was born in Tilsit, East Prussia (today the Russian town of Sowetsk) in 1849 as the son of a poor cobbler. As early as 14 he started to get involved in petty crimes before he tried to follow into his father's footsteps and become a cobbler himself, making the rounds through East and West Prussia, Pomerania and Brandenburg during his waltz. Throughout the following years, he was convicted four times of theft and twice of forgery, spending a lot of time in prison. His criminal career culminated in him trying to burgle a courthouse in the Prussian province of Posen, which landed him a 15 year jail sentence. After being released in 1906, he first got a good and honest job in Wismar, but had to leave soon afterwards when the government of Mecklenburg got wind of his criminal record and declared him persona non grata for all its territories. Voigt then went to Berlin and moved in with his sister, but the government of Berlin issued a similar edict which made it next to impossible for him to find and keep work. But Voigt had a plan: throughout the spring and summer of 1906, he had scoured the secondhand dealers of the city, collecting and assembling all the various parts of a Prussian army captain's uniform in the process (you can see his uniform here). When he had had the full uniform together, Voigt walked up to a random platoon of guard soldiers and ordered them to follow him, invoking a vague and non-existent decree by the Kaiser himself. Voigt and "his" soldiers then took the tram to the city of Köpenick near Berlin (which is now a part of Berlin proper), explaining to the soldiers that he hadn't been successful in requisitioning cars. He gave the troops some money for dinner and beer, enjoyed a nice cognac himself, and finally gave the order to occupy the city hall of Köpenick where he had heard during his last prison stay that two million marks were supposed to be stored there. Voigt and his troops surrounded the entire building, blocked all exits and arrested the mayor. Local policemen were ordered by him to secure the town, and the treasurer was commanded to count all the money stored in the city vaults and give it to him (contrary to Voigt's hopes it was only 3557 marks). Afterwards he gave the soldiers the order to occupy the city hall for at least half an hour longer, sent the mayor and his deputy to Berlin, packed the money and left. At the Köpenick train station he enjoyed another beer before taking the train to Berlin himself.  Voigt leaving prison in 1908 Ten days later Voigt was arrested during breakfast; a former jailmate had squealed on him. He was sentenced to another four years of jail, but received a pardon by Kaiser Wilhelm II in early 1908. The public reception was massive: both German liberals and the foreign press found the whole incident both absolutely hilarious and deeply concerning, as apparently all it needed to make a Prussian jump was an old uniform. Voigt himself had become famous and tried to monetarise his fame, giving speeches and doing tours. The authorities disliked the mockery that was always present when he was around and recounted his story, and Voigt was constantly a victim of official discrimination and even arrests. In 1910, he decided to leave Germany for good and settled in Luxemburg instead, where he worked as a waiter and cobbler and even managed to become somewhat wealthy due to his ongoing fame. The German Reich continued to hound him, though; after the beginning of World War 1 and the invasion of Luxemburg by German troops, Voigt was arrested and interrogated again and his wealth vanished during the war. Voigt died in 1922 in Luxemburg. According to legend his funeral procession encountered a platoon of French soldiers on their way, who enquired about the deceased and, upon hearing that the "Captain of Köpenick" was buried (and believing that he had been a real captain), gave him military honours for his burial. *** Another famous case of a Köpenickiade happened only a couple years later in Strasbourg, which back then was the capital of Alsace-Lorraine and under German military occupation. In 1913, a young soldier named August Wolter (who had had a previous history of being mentally unwell) donned a postman's uniform and delivered a forged telegram to the governour of Strasbourg, General Wilhelm von und zu Egloffstein; in it, a surprise visit by the Kaiser was announced for noon. Upon hearing this, Egloffstein immediately ordered all soldiers and officers both in the city and in the surrounding barracks to line up in their best uniforms in front of Strasbourg's imperial residence. 18,000 soldiers altogether waited for hours in the midday sun, together with thousands of curious onlookers and even some celebrities like the Kaiser's son Prince Joachim of Prussia who studied in Strasbourg. Only when the evening approached did somebody think of actually asking why the Kaiser didn't come (he turned out to be in Königsberg, a good 1,000km away from Strasbourg). Egloffstein immediately resigned, and Wolter was interred in an asylum.  Wolter's fake telegram. It reads: "The entire garrison is immediately to be notified; I shall arrive by car at the main parade ground at 12 o'clock. Wilhelm IR" *** The most horrifying of all Köpenickiades would be the case of Willi Herold in 1945. Herold was born in 1925's Saxony as the son of a roofer. Although he liked the Nazi pomp and chic of uniforms, parades and flags, he was thrown out of the Hitler Youth in 1936 because he'd rather play "Cowboys and Indians" instead of participating at the official events. After finishing school in 1940, he became an apprentice chimney sweep and finally was drafted into the Wehrmacht as a paratrooper in 1943. In 1944, he fought at the Italian front (he was a participant of the Battle of Monte Cassino). After the German defeat there his unit was moved to the western front to fight against the Western allies in the Netherlands. In early April of 1945, Herold lost contact to his unit near the border town of Gronau and wandered around aimlessly somewhere behind the front, when he suddenly stumbled on a battered and abandoned military car next to the road, in which he found the brand new uniform of an air force captain, even adorned with an Iron Cross. Herold donned the uniform and continued on his way where he met a soldier who reported to the 19 year old "captain" Herold that he had lost his unit. Herold ordered him to tag along and assembled even more lost soldiers on his way. By April 11, Herold arrived at the concentration camp of Aschendorfermoor where mostly German political prisoners were held.  Herold at 18 years, shortly after being drafted in 1943 Shortly before Herold and his men arrived at Aschendorfermoor, about 150 prisoners had attempted to escape. Herold, who presented himself to the camp authorities as carrying a "secret order by the Führer himself", thereby assuming authority just like that, consulted the mayor and the local head of the NSDAP and decided that the almost-escapees must be executed. During the early evening hours of April 12, Herold and his men murdered 98 prisoners with anti-aircraft guns, machine guns and grenades. He also ordered additional troops to scour the countryside, looking for additional escaped prisoners and immediately killing them. When no more were to be found, he directed his murderous rampage towards everybody else: first he tortured and killed foreign prisoners, than deserters and when allied troops approached, he finally murdered five Dutch "spies" and a German farmer who had hoisted a white flag himself. All in all, he left 162 dead in his wake. Herold fled eastward and got arrested by German military police on April 28. Before the military tribunal could proclaim a sentence on him, however, Hitler committed suicide and the last remnants of German military command crumbled away. Herold was set free and ordered to fight during Operation Werewolf against the Allies, but booked it instead and waited for the war to end.  The British chief prosecutor T.X.H. Pantchett (left) and Willi Herold (second from the right) on February 1, 1946, during a visit to the crime scene at Aschendorfermoor during which Herold's victims were exhumed and reinterred at a memorial cemetery nearby On May 23, Herold reappeared again in Wilhelmshaven, where he was caught by British marines stealing a loaf of bread. Somehow the British authorities had gotten wind of his real identity and arrested him for crimes against humanity. Herold and five of his fellow murderers were executed by guillotine in Wolfenbüttel prison on November 14, 1946. *** Now while these cases are all indicative of the very unhealthy relationship many Germans had during the late 19th/early 20th century towards military and authority in general, I'm sure there are many comparable incidents from all over world history. I can only think of that one guy calling a burger joint in the US a couple of years ago, pretending to be a cop and ordering some poor minimum wage worker to undress via phone. Do you know of other Köpenickiade examples? System Metternich has a new favorite as of 12:41 on Aug 14, 2017 |
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Aug 14, 2017 12:31
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I was thinking of a guy who impersonated a FEMA coordinator and ordered around locals for a few days. Google turns up several incidents.
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Aug 14, 2017 13:36
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Inescapable Duck posted:Wouldn't it pretty much taste a lot like elephant? Actually, what does elephant taste like?
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Aug 14, 2017 13:55
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Shai-Hulud posted:Actually, what does elephant taste like? Since they're both pachyderms, I'm gonna go with "like rhino."
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Aug 14, 2017 14:05
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PMush Perfect posted:That's loving hardcore. And can you imagine how expensive it must have been to do? Honey wasn't cheap. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qBA5-PZgqY
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Aug 14, 2017 15:44
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Let's pretend for a moment that Vikings and native Americans don't exist. Ok? Moving on. Columbus didn't discover America. Especially not North America. Ol' Columbo never even stepped foot in North America proper. You probably heard that he looked at an Orange and thought about how it was round and realized the earth is round and then argued with everyone (everyone was a flatearther) but he convinced them otherwise (take that, pope!). This is a fairy tale. He wouldn't have had an orange. Oranges came from Asia, and the trade route to Asia was cut off when the Turks conquered Constantinople in 1452, that's why the Europeans were looking for a shortcut to Asia in the first place. Also, nobody was flatearthers; the ancient Greeks had calculated that the earth was round and everybody believed them. They just thought the voyage was too far to survive. And he wasn't some genius who came up with this idea to explore westward into the Atlantic; the Portuguese had been doing that for 70 years before his voyage. They discovered and settled the Azores in the early 1400's and kept on going. One guy related to the Azores named João Vaz Corte-Real sailed west and ended up in a place he called the Land of Cod. He described it as an island in about the same location as Newfoundland, in 1473. There's not much information about this (probably because the Portuguese didn't want other people to know where they were getting all this cod) and whatever was written was probably destroyed in the great Earthquake of Lisbon in the 1700's.  Anyway, his son, Gaspar Corte-Real, followed in his father's footsteps and ended up in the same place: quote:He reached Greenland, believing it to be east Asia, but chose not to land. He set out on a second voyage to Greenland in 1501, with his brother Miguel Corte-Real and three caravels. Encountering frozen sea, they changed course to the south and reached land, believed to be Labrador and Newfoundland. There they captured 57 native men, who would later be sold as slaves. Gaspar then sent his brother and two ships back to Portugal before continuing southwards. Nothing more was heard of Gaspar Corte-Real after 1501. His brother Miguel attempted to find him in 1502, but he too never returned. So what happened to Gaspar and Miguel? The leading theory is that they hosed up and died at sea. There is another possibility, that Gaspar settled there, and Miguel found him and decided to stay too. There is even some evidence that supports this. There is a bizarre rock in Massachusetts called the Dighton Rock, covered in rock carvings.  The carvings weren't white like that, someone just added paint to some of the markings, but a lot has faded. Here's another interpretation:  And another:  There have been a lot of interpretations of it. One says: quote:Delabarre stated that the markings were abbreviated Latin, and the message, translated into English, read as follows: I, Miguel Cortereal, 1511. In this place, by the will of God, I became a chief of the Indians. Samuel Eliot Morison dismissed this evidence in his 1971 book The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages. (I have a copy of that book, the guy dismisses everything, often without any real reason.)  Compare to this rock carving made by the Portuguese explorer Diago Cao in Africa in 1485:  And the theory goes that Corte Real wrote on the stone, and after he died, the Indians started doing the same, so over time it was covered in all kinds of markings. What really happened to them? Who knows. Anyway Columbus was a hack, possibly an ex-con, and known genocidal rear end in a top hat, and heard about land to the west from sources such as cod Fishermen in Bristol, and from Azorean sources. He even wrote in his diary that he had heard of two brown skinned people in a canoe washing up on the island of Flores in the Azores, and that was one of his reasons for suspecting there was land to the west. He likely knew of the voyage of Corte-Real the elder, and may have even seen a map, and it seems likely that North America was discovered by the Portuguese in 1473. twoday has a new favorite as of 01:34 on Aug 15, 2017 |
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Aug 15, 2017 01:01
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Apples, Butter, Charlie, Duff, Edward, Freddy, George, Harry, Ink, Johnnie, King, London, Monkey, Nuts, Orange, Pudding, Queenie, Robert, Sugar, Tommie, Uncle, Vinegar, Willie, Xerxes, Yellow, Zebra See if you can guess it Royal Navy phonetic alphabet, WWI Jaguars! has a new favorite as of 08:48 on Aug 24, 2017 |
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Aug 24, 2017 08:41
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Monkey Nuts
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Aug 24, 2017 08:47
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It’s better than NATO’s or the LAPD’s.
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Aug 24, 2017 08:48
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Wouldn't xerxes sound like a z?
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Aug 24, 2017 08:52
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Automatic Retard posted:Wouldn't xerxes sound like a z? Is there any English word with an initial x that doesn't sound like a z?
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Aug 24, 2017 09:13
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Hargrimm posted:Is there any common English word with an initial x that doesn't sound like a z?
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Aug 24, 2017 09:14
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Hargrimm posted:Is there any English word with an initial x that doesn't sound like a z? Xavier
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Aug 24, 2017 09:16
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Queenie Uncle Edward Edward Nuts e: Sugar Harry Ink Edward London Duff
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Aug 24, 2017 13:16
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Jaguars! posted:Apples, Butter, Charlie, Duff, Edward, Freddy, George, Harry, Ink, Johnnie, King, London, Monkey, Nuts, Orange, Pudding, Queenie, Robert, Sugar, Tommie, Uncle, Vinegar, Willie, Xerxes, Yellow, Zebra I was expecting Ace, Biscuits, Chips, Ello, Fish, Governor, Hiya, Jolly, Mate, Roger, Tea, Uni, Yanks and Zed the rest can stay as is (although Luvvly-jubbly instead of London sounds better)
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Aug 24, 2017 13:44
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frankenfreak posted:Queenie Uncle Edward 
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Aug 24, 2017 14:01
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Am currently reading about the Restoration and Charles II's drinking buddies sound fun:quote:"In the summer of 1663 Sir Charles Sedley appeared naked on the balcony of the Cock Inn in Bow Street where, according to Samuel Pepys, he proceeded to enact ‘all the postures of lust and buggery that could be imagined, and abusing of scripture’. He delivered a mock sermon in which he declared that ‘he hath to sell such a powder as should make all the cunts in town run after him’. After the recital ‘he took a glass of wine and washed his prick in it and then drank it off; and then took another, and drank the king’s health’. He then took down his breeches and proceeded to ‘excrementize’." Charles II paid his bail.
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Aug 24, 2017 14:22
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