FreudianSlippers posted:

The current Swedish royal family is descendant from a French general and friend of Napoleon that the aged childless king adopted despite the Frenchman in question being both lowborn (or at least of very very minor nobility can't quite remember which) and completely unrelated to the king.

Edgar Allen Ho posted:

Far as I'm concerned, the Bernadotte tattoo is firmly in I Want To Believe territory. If we can't lol at royalty what have we even got them for?

He had the tat, Elizabeth II is currently being Weekend at Bernie'd, and yes, Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna was getting plowed by Rasputin's enormous dick on the regular.

Also Versailles was full of piss and poo poo. That one is true for sure. Noble Sirs and Madams just poopin and peeing in the staircases like animals.

FishBulbia posted:

drat imperialists just drawing lines on maps without consulting the local penguin population

there is still a tim hortons further north than this, so Canada obv has the best claim

https://www.google.com/maps/place/C...4!4d-62.3461246

Saladman posted:

I've thought about buying the new horribly named Xbox whateverthefuck exclusively for the new MS Flight Simulator, even though I don't really like flight sims, just because it looks so impressive.

Google Streetview is great and it's amazing how many more regions get added every year. Being able to go back and forth in time is also incredible, when available. It also makes me wonder at how completely Luddite Germany is. Like do Germans not like being able to check out in advance where they are going? I find it incredibly useful for travelling. Luxembourg and Austria also relatively recently overcame their fear of street view maps, so hopefully Germany will too. (And Liechtenstein too apparently, lol.)

E: I also find it incredibly useful for figuring out bike routes that I can do with minimal probability of being killed.

steinrokkan posted:

What year is it from?

Milo and POTUS posted:

Wow Scotland seems even more obscure than sweden when it comes to european countries that ended up parts of the US

a pipe smoking dog posted:

The occupation areas following the second Treaty of Paris?

FreudianSlippers posted:

Cartographer said "No momo".

BonHair posted:

At least in comparison to the USA. Their growth is pretty impressive, and that's the most important capitalist metric after all. They haven't perfected the system, but they're at least working long term and not blowing everything on stupid things.

Saladman posted:

Yeah that "facilities that are not shared" seems like a stupid metric though. Like student dormitories everywhere in the world would then count as "not basic sanitation"? I mean, I've been to one dorm where that was probably indeed the case, but most of the dorms I've lived in / visited have been perfectly clean despite shared bathroom facilities between dozens of people.

Shared drop toilets can be quite clean? I've been to quite a few rural villages in Africa that had perfectly clean drop toilets shared between a couple dozen or more households, usually with concrete floors that someone cleans. All but one of them have been cleaner than the average European highway reststop bathroom.

making GBS threads in the middle of the fields, or streets (hi India), sounds like a much bigger sanitation issue than a neighborhood toilet.

I mean they can be filthy as gently caress for sure, like this shared bathroom in France, on the highway near Metz. It was so filthy I went and pissed outside in the bushes, but I'm pretty sure highway rest stops are exponentially grosser than any small rural African village's shared drop toilet.

Platystemon posted:

Map with decreased ‘C’ level.

FreudianSlippers posted:

Abba Kovner had some good ideas.

i say swears online posted:

ethnic cleansing sure is a can of worms, isn't it thread

SlothfulCobra posted:

Being wet all the time sure makes the place conductive I guess.

steinrokkan posted:

No wonder Islas Malvinas are so hotly contested, being a true source of power

TinTower posted:

Not included: Cabot Cove, Maine, which has a murder rate three times higher than the Virgin Islands.

SlothfulCobra posted:

Check out this sweet fantasy map.



Bonus map.

FreudianSlippers posted:

Mormonism is basically just a scam that went way too far.

Blut posted:

They did, extensively:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti_Western

ultrafilter posted:

Why is Italy's population so heavily concentrated on the coasts?

Kamrat posted:

Italy's inner region is pretty mountainous

Guavanaut posted:

Pre 1871 is mostly just like "I stuck some letters on a wine press and now the Pope is mad", increasingly larger tubas, and the Easter Bunny.

Cable Guy posted:

Velcro is an interesting one in that regard... few years back the PR dept at the Velcro company put out a release saying that the product was "hook and loop fastening tape" or something and that they'd like people to call it that instead of diluting their brand name....

...until people pointed out that the inventor had called it Velcro and that the company was named after the product.

hashtag_things_i_learned_from_QI

i say swears online posted:

I thought Lviv was the EU capital?

FreudianSlippers posted:

The only morally justifiable form of government is a hetmanate.

SlothfulCobra posted:

One of the original ideas for the constitution was that the first runner up for president should be vice president, which they discarded pretty quickly, but it would certainly be an interesting dynamic for the occasions when the VP was actually relevant.

George Washington specifically hated the idea of parties and only begrudgingly declared himself as being for one side when Hamilton and Jefferson were setting up their polarized sides, but George Washington is kind of weirdly unique in world history as being a big powerful and widely respected political leader who really just wanted to retire to live with his horrible teeth instead of clinging to power to the last.

Guavanaut posted:

FreudianSlippers posted:

The one in northern Denmark is a big artillery battery and underground bunker complex the Germans built in WW2 so they could shoot anything entering the Baltic. In practice it became a place that well connected Germans could have their sons sent to get as far away from the action as possible. It's now a museum.





I'm guessing the dot directly across from it in Norway is its twin base.

Does that count as a castle?