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

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SneezeOfTheDecade: Feb 6, 2011; gettin' covid all
over your posts

Present posted:

I like words. Like the word "laconic."

From Wikipedia :

A laconic phrase or laconism is a concise or terse statement, especially a blunt and elliptical rejoinder.
It is named after Laconia, the region of Greece including the city of Sparta, whose inhabitants had a reputation for verbal austerity and were famous for their blunt and often pithy remarks.

My favorite example of a laconic phrase is:
After invading southern Greece and receiving the submission of other key city-states, Philip II of Macedon sent a message to Sparta: "If I invade Laconia you will be destroyed, never to rise again." The Spartan ephors replied with a single word: "If." Subsequently neither Philip nor his son Alexander the Great attempted to capture the city.

I love Laconian terseness. My favorite response is from Herodotus, describing how the Samians came to Sparta for aid. The Samians spent a full day describing their predicament, at which point the Spartans said they'd gotten bored and forgotten what the Samians had said. The Samians came back the next day with a sack, and said "Our sack needs grain". The Spartans said "we can see the sack; you could have just said "needs grain."

(But the Samians got the aid.)

# ? Feb 5, 2016 03:42

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# ? May 12, 2024 08:34

Tiggum: Oct 24, 2007; Your life and your quest end here.

Present posted:

Another word is "decimate."

From Wikipedia:
Decimation (Latin: decimatio; decem = "ten") was a form of military discipline used by senior commanders in the Roman Army to punish units or large groups guilty of capital offences, such as mutiny or desertion. The word decimation is derived from Latin meaning "removal of a tenth". The procedure was a pragmatic, yet vicious, attempt to balance the need to punish serious offences with the practicalities of dealing with a large group of offenders. A cohort (roughly 480 soldiers) selected for punishment by decimation was divided into groups of ten; each group drew lots (sortition), and the soldier on whom the lot fell was executed by his nine comrades, often by stoning or clubbing. The remaining soldiers were often given rations of barley instead of wheat (the latter being the standard soldier's diet) for a few days, and required to camp outside the fortified security of the marching camp. Because the punishment fell by lot, all soldiers in a group sentenced to decimation were potentially liable for execution, regardless of individual degrees of fault, rank or distinction.

Now we use that word to describe where dots go when writing numbers

No we don't? "Decimal" obviously comes from the same root ("decem" meaning ten) but "decimate" has nothing to do with decimal points. :confused:

# ? Feb 5, 2016 04:00

Byzantine: Sep 1, 2007

Present posted:

My favorite example of a laconic phrase is:
After invading southern Greece and receiving the submission of other key city-states, Philip II of Macedon sent a message to Sparta: "If I invade Laconia you will be destroyed, never to rise again." The Spartan ephors replied with a single word: "If." Subsequently neither Philip nor his son Alexander the Great attempted to capture the city.

The scene in 300 where the Persian messengers arrive and demand "earth and water" to show Sparta's submission to the Empire actually happened (albeit for the first Persian invasion of Greece under Darius). The Spartan response was "get it yourself" before throwing the messengers down a well.

# ? Feb 5, 2016 04:25

Tacky-Ass Rococco: Sep 7, 2010; by R. Guyovich

Byzantine posted:

The scene in 300 where the Persian messengers arrive and demand "earth and water" to show Sparta's submission to the Empire actually happened (albeit for the first Persian invasion of Greece under Darius). The Spartan response was "get it yourself" before throwing the messengers down a well.

Literally all the best lines in 300 are taken from Herodotus. And they left some great lines out.

# ? Feb 5, 2016 04:32

mostlygray: Nov 1, 2012; BURY ME AS I LIVED, A FREE MAN ON THE CLUTCH

BuddyChrist posted:

I've love his videos but haven't read too much from him, can you recommend a good memoir/autobiography?

What do you care what other people think.
http://www.amazon.com/What-Care-Other-People-Think/dp/0393320928/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

# ? Feb 5, 2016 04:56

ADudeWhoAbides: Mar 30, 2010

Present posted:

I like words. Like the word "laconic."

From Wikipedia :

A laconic phrase or laconism is a concise or terse statement, especially a blunt and elliptical rejoinder.
It is named after Laconia, the region of Greece including the city of Sparta, whose inhabitants had a reputation for verbal austerity and were famous for their blunt and often pithy remarks.

My favorite example of a laconic phrase is:
After invading southern Greece and receiving the submission of other key city-states, Philip II of Macedon sent a message to Sparta: "If I invade Laconia you will be destroyed, never to rise again." The Spartan ephors replied with a single word: "If." Subsequently neither Philip nor his son Alexander the Great attempted to capture the city.

Owned that fukboi hard.

This is a really cool story, but the sad truth for the Spartans was, they just weren't a threat by then. Attacking them was literally a waste of time for Philip II, and Alexander didn't need them at all. While checking my facts on this I came across maybe the best comeback I've seen in ancient Greece:

quote:

It simply wasn't worth the time for Phillip or Alexander to conquer the Spartans- they held very little territory and were on the decline. In fact, after Alexander began conquering Persia, he sent back trophies to Athens inscribed with "This was taken by all the brave Greeks- except the Spartans," (or something like that) as the Spartans were the only Greeks to refuse to follow Alexander.

# ? Feb 5, 2016 19:23

xthetenth: Dec 30, 2012; Mario wasn't sure if this Jeb guy was a good influence on Yoshi.

I can't help but think of Spartans torn between getting mad and saying the last bit is unnecessary and detracts from the burn.

# ? Feb 5, 2016 19:30

Aesop Poprock: Oct 21, 2008; Grimey Drawer

Tiggum posted:

No we don't? "Decimal" obviously comes from the same root ("decem" meaning ten) but "decimate" has nothing to do with decimal points.

I've said it before, as much as I like this thread, the majority of it is historical myth as opposed to actual fact. Generally if there's a story of "this word originated from this" or "this thing was named after this" it's going to be a tall tale or guess

# ? Feb 5, 2016 20:31

Solice Kirsk: Jun 1, 2004; .

Aesop Poprock posted:

I've said it before, as much as I like this thread, the majority of it is historical myth as opposed to actual fact. Generally if there's a story of "this word originated from this" or "this thing was named after this" it's going to be a tall tale or guess

Considering that was always the intent of the thread and the first OP was:

cash crab posted:

RULES:

1) You do not need to include a source, but if someone calls you on a post, you will need to provide one.

2) Wikipedia is an acceptable source! This is not a thesis paper. However, Wikipedia is banned in academic circles for a reason, so if someone can contest you, you lose... points? You lose points.

FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT

I will start:

After the end of his presidency, Ronald Reagan revealed a long-standing fantasy of cramming Mikhail Gorbachev into a helicopter for the express purpose of flying him around America, pointing at things Reagan thought were neat.

Speaking of presidents, Ulysses S. Grant was a never-nude; he used to brag that no one had seen him naked in years, save for his wife, since West Point.

I'd say this thread is doing exactly what it set out to do.

# ? Feb 5, 2016 22:20

Son of Thunderbeast: Sep 21, 2002

Some things are a bit more clear-cut though, like etymology

# ? Feb 5, 2016 22:27

Arc Hammer: Mar 4, 2013; Got any deathsticks?

Barring the atomic bombings, the Battle of Borodino on September 7th, 1812, was the single bloodiest day in all of military history, and possibly human history.

# ? Feb 7, 2016 07:22

syscall girl: Nov 7, 2009; by FactsAreUseless; Fun Shoe

Arcsquad12 posted:

Barring the atomic bombings, the Battle of Borodino on September 7th, 1812, was the single bloodiest day in all of military history, and possibly human history.

I'm not familiar with this but I feel like the Golden Horde had a more gruesome kill count. Lacking in nuclear weapons as they were.

# ? Feb 7, 2016 07:36

Spoeank: Jul 16, 2003; That's a nice set of 11 dynasty points there, it would be a shame if 3 rings were to happen with it

Arcsquad12 posted:

Barring the atomic bombings, the Battle of Borodino on September 7th, 1812, was the single bloodiest day in all of military history, and possibly human history.

A quarter of a million people died from the 2004 tsunami.

Also there's the firebombing of Tokyo.

# ? Feb 7, 2016 07:50

Alhazred: Feb 16, 2011

syscall girl posted:

I'm not familiar with this but I feel like the Golden Horde had a more gruesome kill count. Lacking in nuclear weapons as they were.

Genghis Khan and his army managed to kill 1.25 million people during the conquest of Khwarezmia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_conquest_of_Khwarezmia

# ? Feb 7, 2016 12:34

Arc Hammer: Mar 4, 2013; Got any deathsticks?

syscall girl posted:

I'm not familiar with this but I feel like the Golden Horde had a more gruesome kill count. Lacking in nuclear weapons as they were.

Spoeank posted:

A quarter of a million people died from the 2004 tsunami.

Also there's the firebombing of Tokyo.

Single Day, not multiple.

# ? Feb 7, 2016 14:57

Coucho Marx: Mar 2, 2009; kick back and relax

It's a few pages back, but the castrati discussion reminded me of the existence of Michael Maniaci, who's about as close to a castrati singer as you can get in modern times without maiming someone.

It's all in the Wikipedia article, but to summarize: Maniaci went through puberty normally, but for some reason (i.e. not related to hormones) his larynx went through very little change, leaving him with a very young-sounding voice. This is of course a very rare occurrence, and for it to happen in someone who was already a skilled vocalist is ludicrously long odds. Here's a short video of him singing, along with interviews of him and experts talking about his voice.

# ? Feb 7, 2016 16:14

A Festivus Miracle: Dec 19, 2012; I have come to discourse on the profound inequities of the American political system.

Proportion-wise, the Black Death was unbelievably dead, something like 1/3rd of the Asia and Europe's population was killed by it. However, the most deadly pandemic to ever occur by pure body count, (for which we have a somewhat reliable body count), was the Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918, which killed only 1/30th of the world's population.

# ? Feb 7, 2016 17:58

Spoeank: Jul 16, 2003; That's a nice set of 11 dynasty points there, it would be a shame if 3 rings were to happen with it

Arcsquad12 posted:

Single Day, not multiple.

Edit: nm

# ? Feb 7, 2016 18:59

RagnarokAngel: Oct 5, 2006; Black Magic Extraordinaire

Spoeank posted:

So because the Tokyo firebombing took place overnight it's disqualified.

Those are neat semantics.

Well
A. The Tokyo firebombing was multiple attacks, not just one.
B. People died over periods of days of weeks from burns and other nastiness, rather than in one big apocalyptic death count.

# ? Feb 7, 2016 19:01

Spoeank: Jul 16, 2003; That's a nice set of 11 dynasty points there, it would be a shame if 3 rings were to happen with it

RagnarokAngel posted:

Well
A. The Tokyo firebombing was multiple attacks, not just one.
B. People died over periods of days of weeks from burns and other nastiness, rather than in one big apocalyptic death count.

Hence my edit. I was being dumb and hoped nobody saw :ssh:

# ? Feb 7, 2016 19:03

Arc Hammer: Mar 4, 2013; Got any deathsticks?

Spoeank posted:

Hence my edit. I was being dumb and hoped nobody saw

I was at work, so I didn't. I just thought it was neat. Looking on Wikipedia, Gwynne Dyer apparently described the casualties at Borodino as a fully loaded Boeing 747 crashing with no survivors, every five minutes for eight hours.

Seventy thousand casualties at minimum in one day. The only thing that comes close to that was July 1st 1916 at the Somme.

# ? Feb 7, 2016 23:44

A Fancy 400 lbs: Jul 24, 2008

If we're going for multiday deaths, Smallpox wins every time. Just in the last hundred years before it was eliminated by vaccines, it beat out war. Not one specific war, or even all wars in those 100 years, but every war in human history combined. It was around for ~10k years even before that, so war has some catching up to do.

# ? Feb 8, 2016 00:36

Chamale: Jul 11, 2010; I'm helping!

Arcsquad12 posted:

I was at work, so I didn't. I just thought it was neat. Looking on Wikipedia, Gwynne Dyer apparently described the casualties at Borodino as a fully loaded Boeing 747 crashing with no survivors, every five minutes for eight hours.

Seventy thousand casualties at minimum in one day. The only thing that comes close to that was July 1st 1916 at the Somme.

If we count disease outbreaks, Spanish Flu killed an average of 100,000 people every day for a year between August 1918 and July 1919.

# ? Feb 8, 2016 01:04

xthetenth: Dec 30, 2012; Mario wasn't sure if this Jeb guy was a good influence on Yoshi.

A Fancy 400 lbs posted:

If we're going for multiday deaths, Smallpox wins every time. Just in the last hundred years before it was eliminated by vaccines, it beat out war. Not one specific war, or even all wars in those 100 years, but every war in human history combined. It was around for ~10k years even before that, so war has some catching up to do.

And then there's the Americas.

# ? Feb 8, 2016 06:00

Carthag Tuek: Oct 15, 2005; Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
sl�gt skal f�lge sl�gters gang

The priest in �kirkeby on the Danish island of Bornholm enumerated the deaths from the black plague in 1653�4.

4895 people had died. In 1658 there's supposed to have been around 8000 people, so more than a third of the population died. Not in one day, but a pretty intense proportion.

Left page, right column:
https://www.sa.dk/ao-soegesider/billedviser?bsid=159152#159152,26756803

# ? Feb 8, 2016 06:21

Jaramin: Oct 20, 2010

And that was 300 years after the peak of the plague's death toll.

# ? Feb 8, 2016 06:51

Alhazred: Feb 16, 2011

The oldest purse that we know off was made in Leipzig between 2500 and 2200 bc. It was decorated with dog teeth.

# ? Feb 8, 2016 17:45

Tias: May 25, 2008; Pictured: the patron saint of internet political arguments (probably)

This avatar made possible by a gift from the Religionthread Posters Relief Fund

Snapchat A Titty posted:

The priest in �kirkeby on the Danish island of Bornholm enumerated the deaths from the black plague in 1653�4.

4895 people had died. In 1658 there's supposed to have been around 8000 people, so more than a third of the population died. Not in one day, but a pretty intense proportion.

Left page, right column:
https://www.sa.dk/ao-soegesider/billedviser?bsid=159152#159152,26756803

Not quite ancient history, but there's a Hungarian black metal band named Bornholm because of the islands association in those parts with disease and death. I don't know if it's correct or not, but I was told they didn't even know that it was an island, not a mythical disease, when they picked the name :iamafag:

# ? Feb 9, 2016 10:22

Molentik: Apr 30, 2013

A Fancy 400 lbs posted:

If we're going for multiday deaths, Smallpox wins every time. Just in the last hundred years before it was eliminated by vaccines, it beat out war. Not one specific war, or even all wars in those 100 years, but every war in human history combined. It was around for ~10k years even before that, so war has some catching up to do.

Doesn't malaria have a higher total, like probably billions?

# ? Feb 11, 2016 11:21

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Molentik posted:

Doesn't malaria have a higher total, like probably billions?

I thought malaria usually doesn't directly kill you (though it can). If billions of people had died of malaria in recent history, even if they were poor people in the global south, I imagine there would have been somewhat more urgency regarding its treatment.

# ? Feb 11, 2016 11:58

ToxicSlurpee: Nov 5, 2003; -=SEND HELP=-; Pillbug

Nessus posted:

I thought malaria usually doesn't directly kill you (though it can). If billions of people had died of malaria in recent history, even if they were poor people in the global south, I imagine there would have been somewhat more urgency regarding its treatment.

Yeah malaria isn't all that deadly. There are over 200 million cases a year but it kills less than a million people right now. It's also caused by a parasite rather than a virus so it's easier to treat without vaccines. Given that it's spread by mosquitoes it's also not a horrifyingly virulent death plague like smallpox.

# ? Feb 11, 2016 12:52

Rigged Death Trap: Feb 13, 2012; BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

Molentik posted:

Doesn't malaria have a higher total, like probably billions?

Malaria depends on its environment.
Smallpox doesnt.

# ? Feb 11, 2016 12:52

Vindolanda: Feb 13, 2012; It's just like him too, y'know?

ToxicSlurpee posted:

Yeah malaria isn't all that deadly. There are over 200 million cases a year but it kills less than a million people right now. It's also caused by a parasite rather than a virus so it's easier to treat without vaccines. Given that it's spread by mosquitoes it's also not a horrifyingly virulent death plague like smallpox.

And you can treat syphilis with it! Just give your patient malaria, wrap them in blankets and let them heat up to the point of near death. This kills the syph, and then you treat the malaria with G&Ts on the verandah.

# ? Feb 11, 2016 15:40

A Festivus Miracle: Dec 19, 2012; I have come to discourse on the profound inequities of the American political system.

You can also catch malaria again and again and again(like STDs). Some types of Malaria (of which there are a wide variety apparently) even have cyclical reinfection cycles. A guy I know at my school got malaria while doing charity work in Niger, and he's in the throes of another infection. From what he posts on Facebook, it sounds like a really lovely time.

However, malaria usually kills the young, the old, and the already sick. If you get malaria a few times, your body builds up a sort of immunity to it that makes subsequent malarial infections far less frequent.

# ? Feb 11, 2016 17:04

A Festivus Miracle: Dec 19, 2012; I have come to discourse on the profound inequities of the American political system.

This mummified corpse is Charles XII, who famously shouted "Don't be afraid!" before taking a bullet straight to the dome.

# ? Feb 11, 2016 17:08

Hogge Wild: Aug 21, 2012; by FactsAreUseless; Pillbug

A White Guy posted:

This mummified corpse is Charles XII, who famously shouted "Don't be afraid!" before taking a bullet straight to the dome.

or a button

# ? Feb 11, 2016 17:23

Pick: Jul 19, 2009; Nap Ghost

Folk like to say (even in the book I pulled this from, Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence ) that "homosexuality" doesn't apply to people in the past, but there are behaviors attested which appear pretty explicitly romantically homosexual.

# ? Feb 11, 2016 17:48

Free Market Mambo: Jul 26, 2010; by Lowtax

Dyer gay, so what?

# ? Feb 11, 2016 20:39

joshtothemaxx: Nov 17, 2008; I will have a whole army of zombies! A zombie Marine Corps, a zombie Navy Corps, zombie Space Cadets...

Just the word "homosexuality" itself is a modern psychological term. That brings with it a ton of extra baggage. Yeah, some people in the past had exclusive same-sex romantic relationships. Some people only banged people of the same sex. The whole concept of romantic friendship in nineteenth century America pretty clearly shows that same sex romantic affection without intercourse was one pretty normal.

That doesn't make what they were doing "homosexuality."

# ? Feb 12, 2016 01:42

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# ? May 12, 2024 08:34

Pick: Jul 19, 2009; Nap Ghost

Would marriage rituals between men and women during those periods not be considered "heterosexual" then?

# ? Feb 12, 2016 02:13

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