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cash crab posted:These two made me laugh like crazy, thank you.  Thanks to generations of inbreeding (mostly cousin-cousin and uncle-niece marriages), Charles II of Spain was more inbred than he would have been had his parents simply been brother and sister. When I first heard this I found a copy of his family tree and worked it out. Philip and Joanna of Castile are his greatx5 grandparents, greatx4 grandparents, and greatx3 grandparents, and ALL of his great-grandparents were descended from them. Further his sister Margaret Theresa was just as inbred, but was beautiful and cultured, with at least normal intelligence. She was painted by Velasquez throughout her childhood so that her intended husband Leopold I could see what she looked like. Leopold I was her uncle and cousin. Fortunately their only surviving child married someone other than a relative. A sootikin (or sooterkin) was/is an accumulation of dirt, soot, sweat, dead sloughed-off skin cells, and menstrual and vaginal discharge that would build up in the crotches of women who didn't wear underwear (common before 1800) and then fall out, giving rise to the belief that they were small animals that some women were capable of giving birth to. Martin van Buren was both the only US president who did not have English as his first language (he grew up in an old New York Dutch family) and the only one who was not in some way related to the English royal family. Santa Claus is actually derived from the Dutch Sinterklaas, the feast of Saint Nicholas, a tall, solemn bishop who gave children gifts and treats on December 5. The Dutch brought Sinterklaas with them to New Netherland/New York. In the early 1800s Washington Irving mentioned Sinterklaas in some of his writing, which apparently led to the poem "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" which introduced Santa Claus in his familiar bowl-full-of-jelly form to the United States. Henry Hudson, the first European known to have sailed the Hudson River in 1609 and for whom the Hudson River and Hudson Bay were named, was actually an arctic explorer. He had tried to find the Northeast Passage, a break in the ice north of Russia that would allow quick access to Asia. The only reason he abandoned his attempts to find it and went west was because he found out that there was a large saltwater passage through North America- courtesy of a letter from his friend, Captain John Smith of Virginia.Oh, are we not doing the thing anymore? gently caress.
trickybiscuits has a new favorite as of 03:34 on Nov 5, 2015 |
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Nov 5, 2015 03:30
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cash crab posted:
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Nov 5, 2015 03:51
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THIS WAS NOT FUN
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I did not know I was opening such a can of worms with my "fact." XMNN posted:There's only one way to resolve this. More fun facts: Two aristocratic sisters in seventeenth-century France fought a duel. The younger sister killed the older one. With a sling. Citation Prince Rupert of the Rhine, nephew of Charles I of Egland (beheaded by Parliamentarians) and cousin of Charles II (who retook the throne after Cromwell died) fought in the English Civil War and on the continent. He conducted scientific experiments, studied philosophy and mathematics, and had a skill for breaking codes. He also had a white poodle named Boye who was a celebrity in his own right. According to Parliamentarian propaganda. Boye was Prince Rupert's familiar and had many powers of his own, such as telling the future, invulnerability to poison, and catching bullets that were fired at Prince Rupert in his mouth. Boye sat next to (and sometimes in) the King's chair at meals and was unofficially declared a Sergeant Major General. He eventually was shot and killed in battle. A good dog, apart from all the witchcraft.
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Nov 7, 2015 08:11
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XMNN posted:I was going to say extensive scientific experimentation, but I suppose that might also work. MizPiz posted:It can be argued that black/white racial tensions in America are directly caused by the Virginia Slave Code of 1705, which was a response to Bacon's Rebellion in 1676. The rebellion itself came about for reasons ranging from the people living on the frontier feeling neglected by the Virginia Company, the colony's administrative body, to Nathan Bacon holding a grudge over personal slights committed by William Berkley, then the Governor of Virginia. Motivations aside, the rebellion was significant because it featured white indentured servants and black slaves, who made up the bulk of Bacon's "army", fighting together against their masters. Though the indentured servants were slaves only temporarily, they were treated almost exactly the same as the permanent slaves. This inevitably led to the indentured servants and slaves seeing themselves as comrades against the gentry and private land owners. To prevent future alliances between the white lower class and black slaves, the House of Burgesses, then Virginia's legislative assembly, passed a series of laws that legally "elevated" the indentured servants by taking away the rights of all black people under the Virginia Company's rule, whether they were slaves or "free men". In another case, Stuyvesant's predecessor, Willem Keift, freed some slaves and granted them land. I was so frustrated when I heard that because it makes it more difficult to continue hating Keift, the worst director general EVER, who treated the Lenape-speaking tribes around Manhattan so appallingly that they stopped fighting amongst themselves and attacked the Dutch. Then I found out that the land Keift granted the freed slaves was outside New Amsterdam's defensive wall (the site of New York's Wall Street), so they were really put there to be another layer between the Indians and the Dutch whites. He also armed the West India Company's slaves, not enough to make them dangerous to their masters, but enough to make the Indians see blacks as being on the same side as whites. So I can keep hating Keift and saying that the only decent thing he ever did was to help out Father Isaac Jogues after the Dutch had ransomed Jogues from the Mohawks. Willem Keift was an rear end in a top hat. NY's Crailo State Historic Site has an exhibit on slavery and the Dutch, there's lots of interesting info there. A totally unrelated fact: director Werner Herzog filmed his most famous movie, Fitzcarraldo, in Peru during a period of political unrest. He managed to get permission to finish the movie by getting a shooting permit signed by the Peruvian president, from the capital city of Lima. It was completely forged. Source: An Evening with Werner Herzog at about 41:38. But watch the whole video because Herzog has amazing stories. Fitzcarraldo itself was based on a real story, so maybe watch that too.
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Nov 9, 2015 00:50
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I looked up "sooterkin" and "sootikin" both and apologize sincerely- I was wrong. "Sootikin" isn't a word and "sooterkin" is from a Dutch term. I'm sorry. It was just so horrible that I really wanted it to be true. Here are some less awful facts: Orange carrots are a relatively recent development, probably dating to the late 17th or early 18th century. Before that carrots were red, white, purple, or yellow. Source Orange carrots became more popular because they are sweeter than these other breeds. The Dutch more or less invented the stock market, as well as the first economic boom and bust in 1637. The object of this economic bubble? Tulips, which had been brought into Europe from Constantinople. Source And another interesting fact about the Dutch: because so many Dutch trade ships were funded by multiple people, decisions onboard the ship were made with the agreement of several crew members representing different interests. Decisions on land were also made with the agreement of investors and representatives. This was so widespread and taken for granted that democratic government began to take shape in the Netherlands long before it did in most other parts of the modern world- especially in the later sixteenth century, when several provinces of the Netherlands formed a confederacy with an overarching representative government. This was the beginning of the Dutch Republic. (Source: this book I'm helping my friend re-copy-edit because some dumbass sent the wrong text file to the printer's, dammit!)
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Nov 14, 2015 04:41
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Red Bones posted:My personal favourite, a ten year old boy walking through a cave, the walls lit by the burning torch in his hand as a large dog keeps pace beside him, twenty-six thousand years ago. BlueDiablo posted:And depending on who you ask, he killed so many people that the average temperature of the Earth dropped a few degrees.
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Nov 15, 2015 05:32
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RC and Moon Pie posted:Blazing Saddles was the first film to have a fart scene.
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Dec 3, 2015 07:21
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