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Chamale posted:The speech being the reason for his death is a myth, he probably died after moving in to the White House because its water supply was badly contaminated with human feces. Yeah. It's not often remembered but Washington and the District of Columbia in general was a swampy malarial hellhole until after the Civil War.
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Jul 1, 2016 00:40
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xthetenth posted:How did that change? It hasn't, not altogether at least. But really it was the same sorts of things that were done elsewhere. Improved sewage systems (London had similar problems that required a massive public works project to solve), better sanitation, draining the swamps where the Tidal Pool is now, and lots of other things. Washington wasn't actually a really major city before the Civil War (at least in the sense of being a major population center) because it was still only a few decades old. It wasn't a natural city at all, it was deliberately built to be the nation's capital. Vincent Van Goatse has a new favorite as of 00:53 on Jul 1, 2016 |
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Jul 1, 2016 00:48
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Crow Jane posted:DC is still a putrid swamp in the summer, though. Dear God is it ever.
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Jul 1, 2016 00:53
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A Fancy 400 lbs posted:But isn't that when Congress is on break? Washington being built in malarial swamps with a summer atmosphere that's like living inside of a boiling kettle is why Congress goes into recess during the summer in the first place. And yes, I know 
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Jul 1, 2016 00:57
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Crow Jane posted:I live in Baltimore, and I dated a guy who lived in DC a few years ago. Broke up with him in late spring, in part because I couldn't stand the idea of having to visit in the summer. He wouldn't have blamed you for it. I've lived in Arlington and Norfolk so I understand completely.
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Jul 1, 2016 01:01
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Phyzzle posted:And Western Europe's term comes from the Sanskrit word naranj, a produce of Arabic traders first bringing them from India. Which is odd, because it's "portugal" in Arabic. "Zürj" sounds suspiciously like a brand name for an Eastern European energy drink. System Metternich posted:I know that that's from QI, but I would still be very suspicious about it. You should be very suspicious of it because it's from QI, the show too stupid to understand how the Moon works. Vincent Van Goatse has a new favorite as of 10:07 on Jan 24, 2017 |
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Jan 24, 2017 10:00
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AlphaKretin posted:People refer to John Lennon's death as an assassination, so That's because Baby Boomers are terrible.
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Feb 5, 2017 15:21
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skasion posted:This is a way bigger scale than anything in Lord of the Rings. The Battle of the Hornburg is about 2000 men of Rohan vs maybe 10000 Uruk-hai and some number of Dunlendings. Battle of the Pelennor is about 3-4k soldiers defending the city plus 6000 cavalry under Theoden and a small force under Aragorn vs some tens of thousands of the Morgul-host. Battle of the Morannon is 6000-ish soldiers under Aragorn outnumbered (but it's not clear by how much) by the Mordor-armies. We're talking pretty modestly sized forces here, as you might expect given the general lack of central government authority, road networks, or indeed any development or habitation at all over large areas of land in Middle-earth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iO5-ic0Ug4
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Feb 16, 2017 03:20
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Keru posted:This isn't so much a historical fact, but it is funny and a bit related: when the movie Them! was released in Sweden back in the day, the swedish translation of the title was mistakenly translated as "Spindlarna" which does not, in fact, mean "Them!". If you've not guessed it yet, "Spindlarna" means "The Spiders". Depending on what the posters looked like this might've inadvertently turned the reveal that the monsters where giant ants into a genuine surprise.
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Feb 20, 2017 06:23
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Jobbo_Fett posted:There no such aircraft called the "Heinkel Spatz". He means the He 162, which was generally called the Salamander but Heinkel's official name for it was the Spatz.
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Mar 5, 2017 21:59
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Solice Kirsk posted:Simple enough fix, we just need to shave our heads and rub rose water and verbena into our scalps and noses. Wait, do you not?
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Jul 2, 2017 14:54
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It's worth pointing out that Britain and Japan were allies at the time of this incident, and Britain's shipbuilding industry was the leading source of warships for minor navies (including Japan), so the idea of a sneak attack by Japanese torpedo boats in the North Sea isn't quite as psychotic as it sounds.
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Jul 4, 2017 15:48
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Krankenstyle posted:I thought it was cheaper to just artillery the poo poo out of everything, cause it sure seemed they did that a lot. Artillery is only cheap if it's already on site.
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Jan 27, 2018 09:28
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FreudianSlippers posted:I like how the denizens of the besieged city are "Christians" and the Mongol forces who are probably from half a dozen different religions some of whom might be Nestorian Christians are just 'Tatars'. It's a quote from a contemporary source. They weren't big on ethnology back in the 1300s.
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Oct 31, 2020 21:10
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Honestly I think any discussion of that subject should end with the Pope hitting the participants over the head with his ferula.
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Dec 18, 2020 09:06
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Yeah, color photos of black and white television studio sets are always wild because of how they had to use wildly different colors to get the right effect in monochrome. Some of the early color film processes were just as tricky to film, look up Cinecolor some time.
Vincent Van Goatse has a new favorite as of 02:15 on Dec 31, 2020 |
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Dec 31, 2020 02:13
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Deteriorata posted:That's basically how the Saxons took over England, as well. The Britons didn't have any standing army of their own and the Romans took the army, the armor, and most of the skilled tradesmen with them when they left. The Anglo-Saxon takeover of Britannia was way more complicated than this, but it's hard to know definitively because we have about four or five primary sources. Also the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle's version is mostly Wessex propaganda. sullat posted:This is surprisingly common; the Visigoths hired the Muslim armies into Spain in order to fight in a succession dispute. And then they just... stayed... There is no historical evidence for this. Nobody hired the Muslim armies that invaded Spain.
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Feb 21, 2021 20:26
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CharlestheHammer posted:The only Muslim army that was hired was the governor of Sicily appealed to the North Africans to fight the Roman Emperor. Well, you'd know wouldn't you?
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Feb 21, 2021 21:54
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oscarthewilde posted:but isn’t it incredibly reductive to describe Disney commercializing Greek myth as just another reinterpretation? Yes, it is.
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May 9, 2022 22:02
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Platystemon posted:The Rape of Persephone is actually where the modern definition of “rape” comes from. Actually the "Rape of Persephone" is also an example of the older meaning of the term. The story hinges on Hades' abduction of Persephone to the underworld.
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May 10, 2022 01:06
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Soul Dentist posted:That sounds exactly like what Platystemon was saying He implied the modern definition came from the story of Persephone. Not the older definition that means "abduction".
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May 10, 2022 02:50
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Platystemon posted:People misunderstood which aspect of the story the verb related to, in the title of the myth and in certain other fossilized uses such as the Rape of the Sabine women. Yes it does. Your previous post was kinda ambiguously worded.
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May 10, 2022 05:47
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BrigadierSensible posted:Since we are talking about names. Tell me you're from an ex-Empire country without telling me etc.
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May 13, 2022 05:33
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I love taking the train from San Diego to Los Angeles. It's about three hours and, more importantly, you don't have to drive in LA traffic.
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Nov 29, 2022 14:18
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My grandfathers both flew bombers in the Army Air Force.
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Mar 20, 2023 16:24
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jazzyjay posted:Holy poo poo a 7' long submarine made of fibreglass for $6.98? Is this how oceangate got its start? It actually looks a bit safer than anything from Oceangate.
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Jul 19, 2023 05:35
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Milo and POTUS posted:makes widows cry did NOT understand the assignemtn Depends whose widows they were, really.
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Sep 6, 2023 04:18
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Comstar posted:I was today year old when I found out that apparently no one knows what the p stands for in pH. It stands for potential. pH comes from the phrase "potential of hydrogen".
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Oct 2, 2023 10:12
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ThisIsJohnWayne posted:Machine Cannons came to the spitfire and the hurricanes later, being orders of magnitude more betterer all things being equal, as it took an amount of work to get things equal Which is why the main American fighters, with a couple exceptions, stuck with .50 caliber machine guns throughout the war. The British used the .303 caliber round for almost everything from rifles to aircraft machine guns, which, while it simplified ammunition manufacturing, left their fighters needing six or eight guns to do the job that the early American fighters did with four. Vincent Van Goatse has a new favorite as of 09:13 on Dec 28, 2023 |
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Dec 28, 2023 09:11
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Samovar posted:Certainly, and you are not being or sounding like a dick in the slightest. And what was her source for this?
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Jan 18, 2024 10:34
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I posted this in ADTRW but this thread deserves to see them too. My fellow goons, let me present A History of the World in Poorly-Done Manga Portraits.                   All your favorites are here: Uwu Cleopatra, a dozen or so Brian Blessed characters, Henry David Lincoln, Song Dynasty Groyper, Gendo Marat, Robert Z'Hitler, and many more! Vincent Van Goatse has a new favorite as of 13:41 on Feb 13, 2024 |
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Feb 13, 2024 13:38
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NoiseAnnoys posted:phoenix wright rear end lookin archduke franz ferdinand motherfucker. That's meant to be Kaiser Wilhelm (although he looks more like Hitler than Hitler himself does). Franz Ferdinand is the tiny figure in the car.
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Feb 13, 2024 13:46
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:This is the greatest piece of art I have ever seen It is pretty good, isn't it? I'm now slightly obsessed with trying to figure out who some of those dudes are supposed to be. Like the goober underneath Napoleon. I think it's supposed to be Marshal Ney but I just don't know. You got any clue about that one?
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Feb 13, 2024 15:59
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Deteriorata posted:The list had to be adapted at some point, as I'm sure point #4 was even tougher before the Spanish introduced horses to North America. Technically nobody has been eligible since the original North American horse species went extinct 12,000 odd years ago.
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Mar 15, 2024 10:09
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Arsenic Lupin posted:I'm much more impressed by "how are the Shawnee riding elk?' They didn't. They just called these new horse things elk because that's the most similar-looking animal they knew about.
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Mar 16, 2024 07:23
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My family name is a Americanized mutation of a common French surname, but we didn't need no Ellis Islanders to gently caress it up. Instead they lived on the frontier in the 1700s and couldn't spell good.
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Mar 29, 2024 03:15
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