Drunk Nerds posted:

Obama is related to the English royal family?

Alhazred posted:

Ancient Egypt had at least three female heads of state. Modern America has so far had none.

Silmarildur posted:

Didn't Cherokee also not have an alphabet until a single dude sat down in like 1850 and came up with one? Sort of like Korean or Cyrillic but I don't remember if the guy was a political figure or anything.

SeanBeansShako posted:

If you want to hurt yourself internally, read people debating history in video game forums. Go on. Do it. It is a good pain.

FuhrerHat posted:

And that's why it's called Istanbul.

steinrokkan posted:

Heh, this fucker conquered half of Europe and established the political divisions of the continent for the better part of a millennium... What a retard!

During classical antiquity the Chinese imported asbestos cloth from Europe as the most luxurious miracle, a cloth that could be washed by being thrown into fire. They also believed sea silk (thread made from mollusc filaments) was made out of wool of either furry fish or "sea sheep". Sounds like the Chinese were also not so bright, huh?

A White Guy posted:

The reason why many of the agricultural disasters that befell the Later Roman Empire occurred was because the system had been engineered in such a way as to force those people to continue to use practices that destroyed their farmlands. I love me some historical analogue and this kind of cycle of enforced stupidity is a major factor in the destruction of more than a few empires. It's rarely that the farmers are doing the ~bad thing~ accidentally, and its often because their overlords are forcing them do the ~bad thing~ as a way to increase his own narrow self-interest. Inevitably, this leads to Really Bad Things along the line (usually with some sort of trigger, like war or a drought), and then violent social upheaval.

Eschers Basement posted:

The story presented in Bland Ambition is that Andrew Johnson was undergoing a bout of malaria (Washington was still mostly a swamp at that point), and wasn't well enough to be inaugurated, but many official were terrified of what might happen if something happened to Lincoln and there was no clear line of succession. So Hannibal Hamlin, the outgoing Vice-President, was sent to rouse Johnson and fill him with enough bourbon to get him through the ceremony. Hamlin, no fan of Johnson and somewhat pissed that Lincoln had dropped him from the ticket, may well have pushed Johnson into drinking beyond his limit as a form of revenge.


ETA:


A week before he was shot, Lincoln was in Monroe, MD. A week before he was shot, JFK was in...

ToxicSlurpee posted:

"If you want somebody to believe something tell them that Benjamin Franklin said it." - Benjamin Franklin

Lord Lambeth posted:

This is the only state that has the Confederate flag on it's state flag so maybe this isn't surprising.

Byzantine posted:

Carbon dioxide posted:

What's that enclave near the south-east of the Dutch Republic?

Rutibex posted:

It amazes me to this day that the world lets us hold on to all of this land. Canada has twice the land mass of the Roman Empire as its height. I mean honestly, if anyone wanted to take it we couldn't stop them

Samovar posted:

Werewolf!

Tasteful Dickpic posted:

It's basically The Saboteur.

Alhazred posted:

Americans really lives in glasshouses when it comes to the topic of disgusting food:

duTrieux. posted:

oh poo poo, i use nivea hand cream!

Take the plunge! Okay! posted:

America isn't real. All the media supposedly coming from America is faked in Europe to maintain the illusion. People that think they've traveled there are just drugged on Iceland and implanted with false memories. There are huge hangars near Reykjavik full of dozing tourists waiting to return home to Europe or wherever. Paid posters claim to be Americans in forums like these, but I can see through that crap.

Mr. Belpit posted:

I like the implication that we all know what a "hyper war" even is.

Hogge Wild posted:

no, maize is

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.

EX250 Type R posted:

CCR being the band from southern California that talked about cotton fields and bayous despite the front man never having been to the south

zoux posted:

Funny that their call letters are only a G away from being the most liberal TV station ever.

What was the other station?

quote:

RKO General lost the license in 1981 after General Tire admitted to a litany of corporate misconduct – which among other things, included the admission that General Tire had committed financial fraud over illegal political contributions and bribes – as part of a settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. However, in the FCC hearings, RKO General had withheld evidence of General Tire's misconduct, and had also failed to disclose evidence of accounting errors on its own part.

Wheat Loaf posted:

Puritan names were the best (or "best"). Names like "Faithful" are a bit odd but you can see people having them. "Search-the-Scriptures" is a much more unusual name, but it's one some people had.

"Praise-God Barebone" was an MP in the 17th century. His relatives included "Damned Barebone", "Fear-God Barebone", "Jesus-Christ-came-into-the-world-to-save Barebone" and "If-Christ-had-not-died-for-thee-thou-hadst-been-damned Barebone" (who went by "Nicholas").

During the American Civil War, there was a Confederate general who was literally named "States Rights Gist".

frankenfreak posted:

Sugar
Harry
Ink
Edward
London
Duff

value-brand cereal posted:

Imagine a post-fight battlefield and you had to wander around chopping off sweaty greasy man dicks because your God King demands it. I think I'd quit.

value-brand cereal posted:

I don't have one but I'll pour one out for my poor ol dick anyways! Poor peenie weenie :C Unless they have lady warriors?

That drat Satyr posted:

actual advertisement for the book saying SEE HOW SAD YOUR KID WILL BE WITHOUT THIS!

ToxicSlurpee posted:

Pretty much everything that exists is doomed anyway. It isn't a matter of if something gets destroyed so much as when.

Edgar Allen Ho posted:

my van gogh misspelling reminds me that I misspelled my fuckin' username

fun fact: it should be allan ho

Alhazred posted:

When scientists analyzed bones from nubians that were buried between 250 a.d. and 500 a.d. they discovered that they were saturated with tetracycline which is an antibiotic. It turned out that the beer they drank was contaminated with a soil bacteria called streptomyces to brew beer, this bacteria produces tetracycline. Because they drank antibiotic beer the nubians were therefor less likely to get infected.

Admiral Bosch posted:

I googled that James Graham poem to find out more about the author, but when you google the phrase "Make no mistake: he is dead. He does not sleep." you get a bunch of edgy veteran-themed shirts that say "make no mistake, the beast inside is sleeping, not dead."

Alhazred posted:

Someone really loved mustard and cigars.

Carbon dioxide posted:

The first syllable of Gouda rhymes with cow.