PYF Historical Fun Fact: (USER LOSETH POSTYNG PRIVILYGES FOR FOUR AND TWENTY HOURS)

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MisterBibs: Jul 17, 2010; dolla dolla
bill y'all; Fun Shoe

EorayMel posted:

Publius Vedius Pollio was a friend of Roman emperor Augustus and loved fish. He loved them so much that he had a big pool full of moray eels and lampreys trained to eat slaves who were thrown in there. One time, he was dining with Augustus, and a slave cracked a cup and Publius ordered the slave to be thrown to the eels. Augustus got pissed at Publius and spared the slave's life and smashed the rest of his cups and goblets in front of him. When Publius died, he was considered "a man who in general had done nothing deserving of remembrance, as he was sprung from freedmen, belonged to the knights, and had performed no brilliant deeds; but he had become very famous for his wealth and for his cruelty, so that he has even gained a place in history."

Augustus also had the dude's precious pool filled in. When Pollio died, Augustus inherited the guy's estate, and had the place full-on demolished.

# ¿ Nov 4, 2015 20:59

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 03:34

MisterBibs: Jul 17, 2010; dolla dolla
bill y'all; Fun Shoe

Not ancient history*, but according to this post and some googling, I learned that there was a non-gameplay reason why the character Johnny Cage doesn't appear in Mortal Kombat 3: the actor/Guy Who Was Photographed As Cage appeared in a competitor's fighting game ad, pretty much as Johnny Cage.

* It counts as history to me, dammit. I wondered that as a kid.

# ¿ Nov 8, 2015 22:06

MisterBibs: Jul 17, 2010; dolla dolla
bill y'all; Fun Shoe

BlueDiablo posted:

And also he killed the last Caliph of Baghdad by rolling him into a carpet and trampling him with horses.

Ooh, ooh, I have a Fun Fact: this sort of death was considered a respectful one, since it didn't spill the holy/royal man's blood like a sword would.

Edit: the last Caliph was a dumbass:

quote:

The Caliph had been deluded by promises from his Vizier that the Mongols could be driven off literally by the women of the city throwing stones at them, and did the worst of all things: nothing. He neither raised an army to defend Baghdad nor did he attempt to negotiate with Hulagu. Instead he sent weak threats to the Mongol warlord.

DO NOT TAUNT THE MONGOLS

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# ¿ Nov 13, 2015 20:01

MisterBibs: Jul 17, 2010; dolla dolla
bill y'all; Fun Shoe

Boardroom Jimmy posted:

He also once had an attack of malaria so severe that he ended up in a raving delirium and inadvertently offended the Duke of Mantua

I'd say you get a pass on offending someone (even a Duke) if you're so sick you're literally delirious.

# ¿ Feb 3, 2016 20:53

MisterBibs: Jul 17, 2010; dolla dolla
bill y'all; Fun Shoe

Bit of a crosspost from something I asked in the Funny Pictures thread; a request if I'm remembering right or not. I tried doing some googling, and all I got were gifs and "who would win" forum discussions.

MisterBibs posted:

With regards to Katana Talk, aren't they generally lovely weapons unless made really well? I vaguely recall reading that the whole folded-a-billion-times thing, and the swords general design itself, were based on Japan not having the materials to make stuff like European broad/longswords.

# ¿ Feb 27, 2016 03:53

MisterBibs: Jul 17, 2010; dolla dolla
bill y'all; Fun Shoe

ToxicSlurpee posted:

If memory serves the quality of the katana depended on the particular folding technique used; some of them were hard to do properly but it also wasn't exactly magical samurai ingenuity; it was a practical concern. Iron was hard to come by in Japan at the time and their smelting techniques didn't produce consistent results when they made steel. Using the hardest steel and nothing else produced a lovely sword but if you layered multiple hardnesses or carbon contents over each other you could get a razor sharp edge and a tougher blade.

One of the reasons they were different had to do with how different warfare was in Japan when compared to, say, Europe. Europe was basically drowning in coal and iron so "let's make steel EVERYTHING" wasn't a stretch. Japan was quite different so they didn't have plated armor or huge mail coats like European war had. If memory serves armor in Japan was mostly made of bamboo and leather; nobles could afford most of a metal breastplate, a steel helmet, and some scaled/lammelar armor but basically never a full suit of metal. They also wore lighter armor compared to Europe. The construction of a katana was done the way it was because fighting was quicker in Japan. Whoever managed to strike first usually won and you were expected to make your first strike a death blow. A katana wasn't expected to be used more than a few times.

Samurai were also...kind of odd in Japanese war. Like Europe most of the actual fighting was done by peasants with pointy stick weapons. Samurai were expected to seek each other out in combat and, if they bothered to interact with common soldiers, did it from horseback with pole weapons. Fighting with a katana was an exceptional thing; the idea that they were war-winning swords is a weird romantic ideal people came up with later.

Samurai being super honorable nobles was also mostly bullshit. These were a caste of dudes above everybody else that were prone to murdering peasants just because they felt like it. Kind of a tangent and not a fun fact, though. Well it's fun to use to piss off weeaboos.

Actually that does make me think of a fun fact about Japanese warfare. There were a few guys that went down in time because they were, in fact, super duper honorable. At one point there were salt and rice boycotts against a particular region intended to gently caress them up. This caused food problems for more than just the soldiery. Uesugi Kenshin arranged secret gifts and supplies to the area, later saying "wars are to be won with swords and spears, not with rice and salt" while setting a precedent among Japanese war that lasted for a while. This was also a huge deal because some of the people affected by the blockade were followers of his rival at the time, Takeda Shingen. He instructed that food supplies should be sold to merchants that would go to the area and that they were forbidden from excessive profiteering; the price should be standard. He wrote Shingen and said stuff to the effect of "your people are suffering and others are doing this on purpose. This poo poo ain't cool, have some supplies. There are no ulterior motives; this is not your peoples' fault and they shouldn't be punished."

Alkydere posted:

The katana was a perfect piece of art. A true master's statement making a truly...mediocre sword out of utter crap steel.

Katanas are an excellent design of sword for cutting through soft tissues: i.e. the human body, and will absolutely shatter if they hit anything harder than bone or leather. And even then if you hold one wrong, you actually have to use a surprisingly limp wrist when hitting things or they tend to break even when hitting the mats of bamboo they use during training and exhibitions to keep the damned thing from shattering. You can't use them as a bludgeon like anyone else's swords.

Katanas are masterpieces of swordsmithing and true testament to the craftsman's ability and skill to make a weapon at least that good in a land with poo poo-all for iron (and what they had was utter crap), and relatively poor metal working skills due to the lack of material to practice with. As weapons they are over-romanticized utter crap that only really worked in the iron vacuum that is the Japanese islands.

In a "who would win" matchup, in unarmored combat between true masters who the gently caress would know since the fighting style required for a delicate snowflake katana and anything else would be so different it might as well be two amateurs swinging at each other. The moment the other guy starts wearing chainmail, a curraise, or just blocks the katana with his own blade (seriously, a South American 'sword' that's flat wood bat with obsidian shards in it to give it an edge would likely be too hard for a katana) the balance of power would shift dramatically away from the katana-user as it's only a matter of blows before that blade snaps like a twig.

Thank you guys so much! It kinda annoyed me that the folks in that thread thought I was trolling or something, I really didn't know and I wanted to. And now I do :unsmith:

# ¿ Feb 27, 2016 07:45

MisterBibs: Jul 17, 2010; dolla dolla
bill y'all; Fun Shoe

goose fleet posted:

What the gently caress is going on in this image

Man discovers this One Weird Trick to stop enemies from hitting them with a giant sword.

Heteros hate him.

e: I'm legitimately curious what the artist was trying to depict. Some dude just crashing into the other guy's torso in order to knock him down? It's so... deliberate.

MisterBibs has a new favorite as of 23:31 on Feb 27, 2016

# ¿ Feb 27, 2016 23:22

MisterBibs: Jul 17, 2010; dolla dolla
bill y'all; Fun Shoe

Khazar-khum posted:

Let's face it: We're gonna find Romans ~~ruins~~ on Mars.

"There was other life, here. They were annoying."

# ¿ Mar 16, 2016 21:59

MisterBibs: Jul 17, 2010; dolla dolla
bill y'all; Fun Shoe

Alhazred posted:

How To Make Mice (a recipe from 1620):
1. Put a pair of dirty underwear in a jar with a handful of grain.
2. Wait 21 days.
3. Your jar should now be full of mice.

Wasn't this because, in that era, they thought life randomly sprouted from things? Like, they'd leave a pitcher of water out, flies would grow out of it (flies lay eggs, right?), and even learned scientists would be "yup, the water birthed those flies!"

# ¿ Apr 5, 2016 18:54

MisterBibs: Jul 17, 2010; dolla dolla
bill y'all; Fun Shoe

According to the historical-walk video I watched on the treadmill today, the French cut the lift cables to the Eiffel Tower during WW2 at one point, just so Hitler couldn't get to the top of said tower himself. If he wanted to, he'd have to climb the thing himself.

# ¿ Apr 28, 2016 06:11

MisterBibs: Jul 17, 2010; dolla dolla
bill y'all; Fun Shoe

Mr. Belpit posted:

I imagine such an agreement would have, at best, merely staved off war between the two a little longer. They deffo wouldn't have acted like buddies or helped each other out in any meaningful way. Hitler was mad hell-bent on smashing the USSR and kinda staked a lot on that.

Some of my favorite books are What If? and What If? 2, and most of the counterfactuals about Germany winning (or similar) had nearly identical boilerplates about how, fundamentally, this or that would never happen because Hitler was so dedicated to certain actions that he'd never ever choose the alternatives.

# ¿ May 2, 2016 03:51

MisterBibs: Jul 17, 2010; dolla dolla
bill y'all; Fun Shoe

Not as much a student of history as much as I'd like, but it always blows my mind when I read about how lovely the Nazis were about... well, practically everything. There's this weird dichotomy to thinking about them: evil incarnate, but stupid ad poo poo at the same time.

# ¿ May 3, 2016 04:40

MisterBibs: Jul 17, 2010; dolla dolla
bill y'all; Fun Shoe

Request (or, more specifically, a request to see if this actually happened or if the story I read was apocryphal:

I recall reading a story about some feudalism-era (I think?) painter who, as was the style at the time, drew women in their "ideal" state: plump and hairless. Did a ton of them. When he got married, however, he freaked out on his wedding night because he was suddenly faced with an actual woman who wasn't plump and had hair down there. As this half-remembered story goes, he immediately flees the scene, gets a divorce, and becomes a monk/priest/whatever for the rest of his life.

I've tried googling this off and on for a long time to no avail, so I'm inclined to think it's bullshit, but it almost kinda makes sense.

# ¿ Oct 31, 2016 19:32

MisterBibs: Jul 17, 2010; dolla dolla
bill y'all; Fun Shoe

RagnarokZ posted:

Potatoes generally have a higher yield per square meter, are more resistant to the weather and are generally just easier to manage than corn.

Also, you can essentially live of only potatoes and water, without anything else, not a nice way to live, but you'll survive, just.

Potatoes are awesome.

Also, if your medieval/feudal lord demands your taxes in corn/wheat/whatever, you can worry a whole lot less that you'll run out of food after his slice of the pie is accounted for. Especially if your crop had a bad year, or he decides to be a dick and increase his slice of your harvest, it's OK because nobody wants those nightshades!

(source: one of the What If? books had a story on how potatoes drastically influenced history and historians shudder to think how things would be different if they weren't a thing)

MisterBibs has a new favorite as of 00:39 on Feb 13, 2017

# ¿ Feb 13, 2017 00:36

MisterBibs: Jul 17, 2010; dolla dolla
bill y'all; Fun Shoe

Nessus posted:

I thought it was more that you could store the taters in the ground where they would be harder to locate, unless you really wanted to go digging up a guy's field.

It's possible; it's been a while since I read the book.

# ¿ Feb 14, 2017 20:11

MisterBibs: Jul 17, 2010; dolla dolla
bill y'all; Fun Shoe

I think I still have that book, somewhere. S'awesome.

# ¿ Jul 13, 2017 18:42

MisterBibs: Jul 17, 2010; dolla dolla
bill y'all; Fun Shoe

Kinda the opposite of historical facts, but I was trying to research how folks in Europe started drinking (and being able to tolerate) milk and other dairy products, when humans conventionally only process milki as babies, and it turns out we only have theories as to how it wound up happening so fast, in evolutionary terms.

The guy interviewed for that article posits that famine-level events forced people in European countries to drink milk and eat more dairy out of sheer desperation, and those who didn't poo poo their brains out and/or die from doing that survived over those who didn't. But as the guy points out, it's just a theory, and ultimately we'll never entirely know how ~30% of the world's population evolved something in 20,000 years.

# ¿ Jan 15, 2018 08:48

MisterBibs: Jul 17, 2010; dolla dolla
bill y'all; Fun Shoe

Alan Hale (dude who played Skipper on Gilligan's Island) broke his arm on set once and didn't tell anyone (including Sherwood Schwartz) about it until the second season after-party, three or four weeks later. He had done all the stunts, all the being pelted with coconuts, all the carrying of Bob Denver, without telling anyone.

His reason for not saying anything? "Why go through all that trouble? We only had a couple of shows left."

Read Inside Gilligan's Island, it's pretty good.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2018 20:36

MisterBibs: Jul 17, 2010; dolla dolla
bill y'all; Fun Shoe

The guy who (allegedly) invented the sandwich got demolished by an actor.

quote:

In a famous exchange with the actor Samuel Foote, Sandwich declared, "Foote, I have often wondered what catastrophe would bring you to your end; but I think, that you must either die of the pox, or the halter." "My lord", replied Foote instantaneously, "that will depend upon one of two contingencies; -- whether I embrace your lordship's mistress, or your lordship's principles."

# ¿ Feb 27, 2018 04:01

MisterBibs: Jul 17, 2010; dolla dolla
bill y'all; Fun Shoe

The seige of Tyre, where Alexander The Great had a goddamn road built to take an island city is well known, but thanks to the meme thread, I looked up some details and Jesus wept it's like they wanted a dude who was really good at conquering good and offended:

quote:

Alexander knew of a temple to Melqart, whom he identified with Heracles, within the new city walls and informed the inhabitants that they would be spared if he were allowed to make a sacrifice in the temple (the old port had been abandoned and the Tyrians were now living on an offshore island a kilometre from the mainland). The defenders refused to allow this and suggested he use the temple on the mainland, saying that they would not let Persians or Macedonians within their new city. A second attempt at negotiation resulted in Alexander's representatives being killed and then thrown from the walls into the sea. Alexander was enraged at the Tyrian defiance and ordered the siege to commence.

Do not taunt Alexander The Great, what the gently caress is wrong with you?

# ¿ Mar 4, 2018 05:13

MisterBibs: Jul 17, 2010; dolla dolla
bill y'all; Fun Shoe

I can't be arsed to confirm it, but evidently he married a Jewish woman, who was able to curb some of his racist/anti-semetic views with the classic "Hey, you realize I'm the one you come home to after saying that poo poo" technique.

# ¿ May 23, 2019 04:09

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 03:34

MisterBibs: Jul 17, 2010; dolla dolla
bill y'all; Fun Shoe

3D Megadoodoo posted:

There was also the question of taxes.

I recall reading something (one of the What If? books about historical counter-factuals), and the writer made a compelling case that Rome was generally fine with cults and different religions, because basically whatever. The minute you stopped sending your coin to Rome, though? You had a problem.

(also sorry this was posted three days ago, forgive the necro for replying to it)

# ¿ Sep 27, 2020 09:32

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