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That Abraham Lincoln is making me very uncomfortable. And is that guy beside Hindenburg supposed to be Ludendorff?
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Feb 13, 2024 13:49
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teen witch posted:81 percent Roman Catholic population? You don’t say. The Swiss are 81% Catholic?! I thought they were all psycho Calvinists?
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Feb 13, 2024 14:01
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So, Simon Bolivar. El Libertador. A man of his age, one of the 'great men of history' and... as one could imagine... of a certain attitude towards relationships and women. As in, he had a number of affairs (although, there was a bit of... integrity to it? His wife of six months died early in his life, and he swore never to marry again) but, I am not writing about Simon, I'm using him as context for one of the people he was in a relationship with, i.e. Manuela Sáenz Now, Manuela was a woman of distinction - a recognized sharpshooter and at one time, heading off a would-be-kill squad from Bolivar by herself and a sword. But the reason I wanted to mention her is that when they first met in Quito, she was quickly besotted... but unfortunately married at the time, to a British merchant. Nevertheless, she decided to follow her passion instead of social expectations and left her husband (not by divorce (although what church in South America would go through with that, so that is understandable)) with a nuclear-strike 'dear John' letter: quote:I do not live by social rules, invented only to torment. So leave me alone. . . . We will marry again when we are in heaven but not on earth. . . . You are boring, like your nation. . . . I will never return to you. I mean, there's breaking up with someone, and then there's salting the earth!
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Feb 17, 2024 11:50
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Onto another 'rubbing it in' piece of history; the CIA is notorious for trying a number of times to kill Fidel Castro, but possibly the most humiliating failure was when they attempted to recruit Marita Lorenz, an ex-lover of Castro, to poison him. Now, Marita had been treated pretty goddamn awfully by Castro, so the CIA thought she could be reliable (or they were drugging each other into drooling insensibility with MKUltra, who could say), so she was given poison pills to drop into a drink when she was to meet Castro again, face-to-face. Castro, however, was slightly suspicious of her coming out of the blue, so was on guard when she met him. He managed to get her to admit that she was there to kill him and then, in a move that would make Ian Fleming go 'no, that's too ridiculous, no-one would believe that this would happen to Bond', she confessed that she loved him still, threw down the poisons and made passionate love to him. He then went on to preform his scheduled speech later that day, while she returned to the CIA to report mission failure. I mean, it's one thing when your agents fail. It's another thing when they fail THAT spectacularly.
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Feb 18, 2024 10:40
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Alhazred posted:In 1673 a convent in the italina city Reggio burned down. The church investigated it and it turns out that the responsible was Giovanna Monsolino and her sister Anna. they were fed up with being nuns and held a vote about weather or not they should burn it down. As it turns out the majority agreed with the sisters and set the convent on fire. What was the next thing they were planning to do? Arrest a man for enjoying a succulent, Cathay meal?
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Feb 19, 2024 18:32
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Was his response something along the lines of him giving up his position and critiquing the institutions that established this authority? ...or did he somehow managed to rationalize him keeping his power and not letting this rampant death toll effect him?
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Feb 21, 2024 13:03
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So, here's a couple of historical cases that hopefully won't have people enacting Godwin on me - related in that they resulted in British legal code changing, and that they both involved cases of mistaken identity. The first, and saddest, has to involve Adolf Beck. Born in Norway in the 1840s, Beck led a rather unorthodox life, involving going back-and-forth between Europe and South America, doing all sorts of jobs and the like. But by 1885, he was in England, and in poverty due to a poor investment. Despite his poor financial conditions, he tried to maintain appearances, and dressed slightly better than one would expect. Then, in 1895, his journey into Hell began. He was accosted in the street by a woman who accused him of swindling her out of her jewelry. Having nothing to do with this, he brushed her off but, was forced to deal with the police when the lady in question demanded his arrest. Said he was a man who called himself 'Lord Willoughby', who borrowed jewelry from her on pretense of having their measurements recorded so as to get better jewelry and leaving bad cheques as collateral. The police checked their records, and found complaints from a number of women about a man who went by the name Lord Willoughby, who used a similar method of fraud. Beck was placed in a lineup in front of these victims, and was identified by them as the swindler, Lord Willoughby. Beck was promptly charged, with punitives being added on the assumption that he was actually a 'John Smith' who had been arrested and imprisoned for five years... for swindling women out of their jewelry using bad cheques under the name Lord Willoughby. After his release, Smith disappeared, and it was given that Beck and Smith were the one and the same, especially since Beck was formally identified as Smith by one of the officers who had arrested 'John Smith' at Beck's hearing. So he went to trial. Now, the defense rested on the basic argument that Beck had letters of his time in South America, at the time that 'John Smith' was about defrauding women in the U.K. If the handwriting expert compared handwriting from this current situation in '94-95 to the Smith case of '77 and claimed they were the same, they could bring about witnesses stating that Beck was in South America at that time. So in a case of 'witch-ducking' logic, the prosecutor got the expert to state that the handwriting samples given by Beck in '94-95 were in a disguised hand. Yes, the fact that the handwriting DIDN'T match, reasoned the prosecutor, meant that Smith and Beck were one and the same. And so, Beck was imprisoned. And remained in prison for six years, despite the case being revisited in 1898, and it being revealed that Smith was circumcized, while Beck was not. This was still not deemed sufficient evidence, in light of the eyewitness identification. Beck was paroled in 1901 for good behaviour... ...then in 1904, a woman complained to police that a distinguished looking gentleman, 'accidently' bumped into her and, in the midst of being charmingly apologetic, stole her jewelry. The cop assigned to the case knew about Beck's 'criminal' history and set a trap, whereby he had the woman publicly accuse Beck of defrauding her. Beck responded (understandably, by now) by fleeing the scene, which was taken as evidence of guilt. He was again brought to trial and, with the help of five eyewitnesses, was found guilty once more. However, the judge postponed sentencing, having doubts about the case. Meanwhile, in a jail cell elsewhere, a man was being currently held for trying to pawn some rings he had managed to swindle from some ladies. A policeman, familiar with Beck's case in the past and in the present, decided to investigate and found a man who, despite being slightly older than Beck, met the physical description given of Beck in official records. He was brought to the attention of Scotland Yard. Three of the eyewitnesses in the most recent case identified the NEW man as the man who had victimized them. Other women involved in the older case were brought forward identifying this new man as the ACTUAL criminal (as well as John Smith's landlord) and the prisoner confessed - he was actually John Smith, and had been living free all the time in which Beck had been imprisoned. Beck was released from custody and given compensation of around half a million quid in today's money (not that it helped much, he died five years later, riddled with illness), and in the resulting public furor, this meant that eyewitness accounts in British law were no longer given the value in prosecution as they once had. *** The second case, which is much more amusing and shorter, involves the lamentable UK politician John Stonehouse. Now, Stonehouse was a Labour politician during the 60s and 70s and his career isn't of much importance (including him acting as a spy for Czechoslovakia) until his economics problems in 1974 forced him to act desperately. His plan? To fake his own death. He went to Miami, took off his clothes, and went into the ocean, in order to give the idea that he drowned and was lost at sea. While obituaries were being written, he was off to his new life in Australia. He began transferring what money he had to the banks in his new home, but him acting suspiciously, and using a number of aliases while doing so, brought the attention of the police upon him. One day, after coming home from a financial trip in Denmark, he was nabbed by the cops and accused of having a false identity, and that he was ACTUALLY... Lord Lucan, of homicide infamy. Thankfully, he was identified as Stonewall, and extradited to the UK. And, this is harder for me to check on-line, but apparently because he took so long in his closing remarks, the law changed so as to provide a limit to how long a person is permitted to give closing statements in their defence.
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Feb 23, 2024 10:39
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More an etymological tidbit as opposed to purely historical, but it's well-known that a lot of insults about a person's intelligence, e.g. moron, fool, dullard, etc. originally refer to people with developmental disabilities (if that is the correct term). Yet possibly the most used insult, idiot, while it has been used for that purpose, did not originally mean it. It came from the Greek idiotes, meaning a private person (derived from idios = own/private). Hence the word idiosyncratic. How did it make this leap? Apparently during the time of the democratisation of Athens. Cause when you had people (well, free men, anyway) who refused to interact with this new form of 'public'-run government, a special term of derision was applied to them, which quickly became associated with said people being ignorant of their duties and of their society.
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Mar 4, 2024 14:59
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The Dutch have some pretty off the wall political happenings, what with this horse situation and the time a mayor was literally ripped limb from limb and cannibalized by his constituents.
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Mar 12, 2024 13:05
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Skios posted:De Morbis Artificum Diatriba, besides being the name for my Marxist black metal band’s first EP, is a book by Italian physician Bernardino Ramazzini. First published in Venice in 1700 and given a second edition in 1713, Dissertation on Workers’ Diseases is the first text in western medicine that deals with the subject of occupational health and safety. He was the first doctor to teach that physicians should ask patients for their occupation as part of a standard intake. That's pretty neat!
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Mar 13, 2024 18:04
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Sounds like those members of Congress were in denial.
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Mar 21, 2024 15:49
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NoiseAnnoys posted:patronymics are common in a lot of cultures, ashkenazi Jewish culture included, and those often did get weirdly processed by the American immigration system. It was for that whole patronym pattern that for years I thought the name Rothschild was Roths-child, i.e. child of Roth, instead of what it actually is Roth-schild, i.e. Red shield.
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Mar 29, 2024 06:41
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I am astounded that this story hasn't been told in this thread, 'cause I could have sworn I had first heard it here, but I checked the search history and saw nothing of his name, so here goes - the misadventures of the unsung hero of the Finnish nation and pioneer of drug culture, Aimo Allan Koivunen. Now, Aimo's story begins in WW2, but not during the Winter War, but the Continuation War between Finland and the USSR in '44. Now, on a mission, his squad was attacked by the Red Army, and were forced to retreat under exhausting conditions. So exhausting, in fact, that Aimo required chemical stimulation. And in those days, such stimulation for Finnish soldiery took the shape of good ol' methamphetamines. So, he tried to take the allocated daily amount for one man from the squad's rations. But, it still being bitterly cold, and him already half-dead from exhaustion, he decided to swallow directly from the bottle as opposed to tapping the pills out first, and so ended up taking thirty pills at once. This is where the fun begins. The next thing Aimo recalls is it being a day later, with no spare supplies and his squad nowhere to be found. He subsisted in the wilderness on pine buds and a bird that he managed to spear with one of his ski poles and ate raw. One night, he managed to find shelter in an abandoned hut, and thought it would be good to warm up with a fire. But he was in such an unhinged state, he forgot to use the fireplace, and so ended up burning the shelter down. He also apparently encountered an enemy patrol, but was either so wired, or the enemy so dumbfounded about encountering a human equivalent of a neutrino, he managed to escape unharmed. During this whole state, he was later determined to have ski'd approximately 250 miles in the wilderness over about two weeks. He then managed to trigger a landmine. And survived. But this injured him enough that he was out for a week until he was found by the Finnish army and taken to a hospital. His resting BPM was measured at 200. But thankfully he managed to survive the war, in fact he lived a nice, long life dying in '89. And I think it is safe to say, the incident had no major lasting effects on him. Samovar has a new favorite as of 18:56 on Mar 29, 2024 |
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Mar 29, 2024 18:54
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'Pimp of an infidel' is a pretty strong insult. And one I would throw around if I were in a similar situation.
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Apr 18, 2024 11:57
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Oh, the lips EXPRESS envy for other things. They aren't, in themselves, objects of envy.
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Apr 19, 2024 07:03
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In today's 'horrifying European history', I present to you the Ypres tradition of the Kattenstoet, or festival of cats. 'How can this be horrifying?' I hear you ask 'a festival of cats sounds absolutely charming!' well, just you wait. For you see, this is not a celebration of cats, more a... Celebration of how Ypres used to TREAT cats. Namely, they used to throw them to their deaths from a belfry for... Some reason?! People have supposed it is because they have been linked to witchcraft, others proposed they were thrown to their death after the yearly selling of clothes because... The people of Ypres are cat-killing scum?! Anyways, the modern day festival pays homage to his practice by flinging stuffed animals from the high buildings to children below, instead of being humiliated and disgusted that such a monstrous thing was part of their city's history.
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May 5, 2024 09:53
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The Canary Islands.
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May 9, 2024 13:07
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Literal 'let's smash these two things together in our lab and see what happens' mad science. Except it worked.
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May 10, 2024 06:41
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While white dresses at a wedding in Europe (and places colonized by European powers) were a thing for a long while, they did not have the monopoly that they have nowadays. The person who apparently popularized the idea that wedding dresses MUST be white was none other than (drumroll please...) Queen Victoria. Before then it was whatever really took one's fancy, but with how media worked, plus luvvie culture, white dresses at a wedding was what was considered proper ever since. Samovar has a new favorite as of 06:32 on May 12, 2024 |
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May 12, 2024 06:30
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