Say Nothing posted:

hard counter posted:

I've read that 50% would have been the expected contemporary rate with a skilled 'physician' but I can't recall my source at the moment - odds weren't great in any case.

Surgical castration using methods that can described as a single stroke makes perfect sense though. In a time before anesthesia surgeons felt that taking too long to operate was a form of barbaric cruelty since the patient would be aware of every little cut and movement (not to mention the medical implications of the patient going into shock) and medical practitioners were encouraged to work as quickly as possible. Working fast also limited exposure to pathogens and the like. There's that factoid lately floating around on the net of the surgery with a 300% mortality rate. In his haste to perform a speedy amputation a surgeon sliced into his assistant's fingers, leading his death, the death of the patient from the botched amputation and the death of someone nearby via heart attack/horror. That surgeon wasn't particularly incompetent either, to the contrary, he was very good by the standards of the time.

cash crab posted:

I can't stop laughing about how jewy his eyes look.

Doffen posted:

The attack delayed the Germans taking Oslo for about 24 hours, allowing the royal family and the government to flee the city, and also provided the bank of Norway with enough time to transport nearly 50 tons of gold out of the Nazi's reach.

Tiny Brontosaurus posted:

I learned reading Bill Bryson's excellent At Home: A Short History of Private Life that good black paint wasn't available until the late industrial age. All those period pictures with Victorians walking around in front of black-painted iron railings? All wrong! Might as well have cavemen riding dinosaurs in the background.

Tiny Brontosaurus posted:

Yeah! Racist.

Tiny Brontosaurus posted:

Lol yes let me just defend myself to you, Cumslut1895. Here in the PYF Historical Fun Fact thread.

Infyrno posted:

Username/post

Say Nothing posted:

According to the author, Kentaro Miura, Guts from Berserk wasn't inspired by Götz.

Hogge Wild posted:

medieval conscripts are a myth

Zero One posted:

Without potatoes Matt Damon would have died on Mars.

Wheat Loaf posted:

Re: counter-factuals: I'm sure there must be some folks in this thread who will find this amusing.

PMush Perfect posted:

Considering racism and slavery were a key part of the discussion...

RenegadeStyle1 posted:

Yeah but they probably had some weak poo poo.

Grand Prize Winner posted:

I thought the entire thing was completely apocryphal. Even losing 150 men to blue on blue crime speaks to remarkable incompetence.

Wheat Loaf posted:

I went to look up the French president who died while getting blown by his mistress and found his Wikipedia page (shorter than expected, considering that I imagine the President of France would have been quite important in world politics in the 1890s, but there's probably not the sources in English): Félix Faure.

It included this amusing factoid:

Grand Prize Winner posted:

i'm just kind of imagining a different world where Sol Invictus or the Mithra cult won


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