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

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

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canyoneer posted:

Tycho Brahe, famous Danish astronomer, died in the aftermath of rupturing his bladder after drinking too much at a meal (as it would have been impolite for him to get up). He either died from infection or from the huge dose of mercury that he took to treat it. Bonus fun fact: he was an astronomer in the pre-telescope era, and his observations were accurate enough for Johannes Kepler to use when he did the math to discover the three laws of planetary motion. He also had a pet elk, who sadly died when he drank too much beer and fell down the stairs.

Don't forget he also had a psychic dwarf jester (named Jeppe), who lived under one of his tables, and would only pop out in the middle of parties when everyone was properly drunk to make prophetic pronouncements!

E: Source: https://besslovejoy.wordpress.com/2010/11/17/187/

Tias has a new favorite as of 08:17 on Nov 6, 2015

# ¿ Nov 5, 2015 22:11

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 14:54

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

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ArchangeI posted:

What? No, it was a suicide, because she hated (loathed) life.

Yeah, livslede would be more akin to "sick of living" in modern English.

# ¿ Nov 9, 2015 18:27

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

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Not touching Liondebate with a ten foot stick, but

rock rock posted:

Also lovely drawings of lions just indicates to me that artists don't see many lions.

has a funny story to it. When european kings were gifted lions and wanted to stuff them, taxidermists were hosed because they didn't know what a lion was supposed to look like. GIS poorly taxidermied lion if you dare.

# ¿ Nov 10, 2015 15:57

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

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I really enjoy some of the more mythical Scandinavian stuff, is it okay if I post it here?

Also, Beaton is the best!

Somebody has a new favorite as of 16:53 on Mar 22, 2016

# ¿ Nov 18, 2015 14:15

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

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Sweevo posted:

The oldest recorded joke is a fart joke from 1900BC.

"unknown is the wife who does not fart when she gets up from her husbands lap" :3:

# ¿ Nov 28, 2015 14:11

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

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Those pube-britches are a loving masterstroke.

# ¿ Dec 5, 2015 14:42

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

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Tasteful Dickpic posted:

So he was a Dane is what you're telling me.

I will axe you! :denmark:

RC and Moon Pie posted:

Not a fun fact really, but a historical oddity. While browsing WIkipedia for information on the Cadeby mining disaster, I stumbled upon the 1858 Bradford sweets poisoning.

Candymaker sends buddy to buy cheaper sugar alternative. He accidentally buys arsenic. No one notices. A candymaker and the seller immediately become sick but fail to notice a connection other than that their candy looks weird. It's sold cheap. 21 people die.

I'm sorry if this was mentioned already, but candy has historically racked up a fair share of kills:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Molasses_Flood

# ¿ Dec 27, 2015 14:44

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

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Mans posted:

Not only was Stalin good with kids, he was also good with mankind.

Try a bit harder, will you? The dude literally left his kid to die in a prison camp, and his wife shot herself in the head after he humiliated her repeatedly in front of guests.

# ¿ Jan 1, 2016 12:39

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

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Baracula posted:

how about you stick to oi music and leave politics to the grown ups? Heh

How about you stick to the subject instead of embarassing yourself?

# ¿ Jan 1, 2016 13:07

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

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Dalris Othaine posted:

Speaking of Charlemagne, he's basically the reason that Ecclesiastical Latin exists.

Dude was Emperor (or whatever, let's not quibble) and really getting into this whole "Christianity" thing. Holidays, divine rights, life everlasting? Great! But he was incredibly concerned that if people were pronouncing the old Latin prayers wrong, then God wouldn't be able to understand them, and everyone would go to Hell or whatever current dogma said would happen. So he established schools and such to teach the proper way to read and write Latin, so everyone (and ideally himself) could get in on that.

The twist?

Charlemagne couldn't read Latin.

You can probably imagine how well that went.

And for a fun fact that's much less likely to have been accidentally made up by me () the Pope has his own Twitter account @Pontifex. He tweets in English and Latin.

Said twitter produced one of the funniest ice burns on dumb islamophobes ever recently:

# ¿ Jan 3, 2016 11:35

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

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Alhazred posted:

The varangian guard was also called "the emperor's winesacks" because of they had a habit of getting shitfaced drunk. Speaking of Hagia Sophia, there's been found several runic inscriptions on the walls.

If by 'runic inscriptions' you mean drunk-rear end graffiti, yes :haw:

I went and saw them a couple of years ago!

Sure, they were in the runic alphabet, but basically say "Halfdan was here".

# ¿ Jan 23, 2016 16:42

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

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Snapchat A Titty posted:

It's rarely deliberate. I think I read that during the Indian Wars, they put a bounty on killing buffalo, just to gently caress with the native americans. Somehow they didn't manage to kill all buffalo, which is kinda weird, but good.

But anyway, usually extinctions aren't premeditated. They just happen. As someone else said a couple pages ago, they aren't trying to shoot the last one, they just want that one.

Well, even if the goal was not to drive them extinct, it's a horrible loving crime :smith:

# ¿ Jan 25, 2016 08:24

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

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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

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

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Doubt that diagram is real, though.

# ¿ Feb 12, 2016 15:12

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

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BravestOfTheLamps posted:

Looking forward to his concept album.

Did it not come out in 2010? Lee is dead, so he certainly isn't working on it now.

# ¿ Feb 24, 2016 08:13

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

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ToxicSlurpee posted:

Pretty sure a lot of contemporary paganism in the western world is just plain descended from Wicca, which is literally a made up religion that a guy fabricated in the 1950's. He claimed he was talking to people who had been practicing magic in secret but that turned out to be bullshit.If memory serves it was 100% provably bullshit.

Other parts of contemporary paganism are based on concepts that ancient religions had rather than direct lines from them. Other parts are...well, literally crazy people just being crazy and believing they're wizards that talk to faeries.

In the case of ancient druids their histories and religions were generally passed down orally. There just weren't written records so once the Romans started to kick their faces in there was little chance of it surviving. If memory serves druids were generally also leaders of various types, which got them targeted something fierce. When they died their histories died with them.

Yeah, no.

Wicca was conceived in the fifties, but can claim a direct lineage to hermetic magic orders (one of which Gardner was a member of) as well as greek mysteries, and some of their workings are the exact same as animist shamans have used for thousands of years.

I get that you may not like new age thought (a lot of pagans don't either, fyi), but don't present your speculation as certainty :p

# ¿ Mar 1, 2016 08:20

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Sucrose posted:

Didn't a lot of the formation of Wicca rest on the theory that various people accused of witchcraft in earlier eras were really secret pagans passing down their knowledge from the old days? Which is complete BS.

A lot of secret orders said that they were founded in cooperation with a "mysterious crone" who had the true lineage of real G witchery, but this missing link never materialized.

All I'm saying is that that there were hermetic orders older than the fifties, and that Gardner used a lot of what he learned there when founding Wicca.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2016 11:27

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

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ToxicSlurpee posted:

Yeah a great deal of it rests on people managing to practice a religion completely in secret for over a thousand years which never, ever changed once. The claims the guy makes about its foundings are utterly absurd.

A lot of Wicca is based on the theories of one Margaret Murray. A lot of it hinges on witch trials not being bullshit which they frequently were and also witch trials and witch burning being very common, which they weren't. It also hinges on witch trials being entirely truthful which, again, they often weren't. There just isn't evidence existing at all that witchy pagan religions were even practiced let alone persecuted. People that studied witch trials for a living went "yeah this is bullshit" and before too long completely tore the argument to shreds. A big snag is the assumption that witch trials were a perpetual threat to witchcraft for its entire existence. Centuries where witch trials happened at all were an exception rather than a rule in the history of Christianity.

Given that Wicca argues that this is literally its origin story doesn't speak well of the religion. Even the things that can't be proven false are also impossible to prove true. It is possible, though improbable, that witch cults did exist in secret though again very little evidence has been found of such things. More importantly if they were hidden, small, and had been actively hunted it was very unlikely they would be unchanged for 1,000 to 2,000 years. Religions as a whole are prone to changing, schisming, and reorganizing all the drat time. There is absolutely no way that ancient traditions were preserved exactly the way they were for that long.

No religion does, though, which I why I don't think it speaks particularly ill of Wicca as a religion. What are they doing that christianity or buddhism isn't?

While Gardners claims to have been taught by an "original witch" are clearly bullshit, he didn't invent the religion or it's practices.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2016 12:46

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

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ToxicSlurpee posted:

Buddhism and Christianity have provable historic precedent as do other religions.

Wicca does not. In fact what precedent Wicca claims to have is proven to be bullshit.

This doesn't invalidate Wicca as it is practiced now; the problem is that claiming as fact something that has been proven to be nonsense is stupid. It can claim to be modern paganism. Fine, whatever, it is. It cannot claim to be an ancient religion that can trace its roots back 3,000 years.

No, some of Wiccas claims are demonstratably false, others are not. If you want to say Gardners techniques are made up from whole cloth, you have to disregard the existence of the Golden Dawn and Ordo Templi Orientis, where, you know, he learned them.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2016 12:56

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e X posted:

No, you see, he didn't invent all that bullshit, he stole all that bullshit.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2016 17:00

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Gabriel Pope posted:

The fact that Wicca can trace its inspirations to so many disparate sources makes it in many ways less authentic, not more. It cannot simultaneously be a syncretic system and an ancient historical tradition. Moreover, Gardner himself acknowledged that a lot of the traditions of "witchcraft" were lost and many of the practices he was teaching were indeed made up as a good-faith approximation.

The sad fact is that a lot of Celtic culture went extinct by the early modern era and a lot of what we think of as Celtic culture was invented around the 19th century in an attempt to fill in the blanks.

The point that I (and wiccans AFAIK) was trying to make, is that Wicca IS a syncretic system, with practices that incorporate both hermetic esotericism (way older than the fifties) and revivalist mother earth/father sky worship (which at least tries to reconstitute something much, much older).

# ¿ Mar 1, 2016 17:13

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

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Geniasis posted:

So are you backing off of your claim that it can claim "direct lineage" to ancient tradition?

That depends on what you thought I claimed. All I'm saying is that it is directly influenced by hermeticism, which goes back many hundreds of years and is in turn influenced by greek mysticism, gnosticism and animist techniques.

Tiny Brontosaurus posted:

See! So smug! You're the spherically fat harry-potter-kin here, Megyyyn with three Ys and also it's in ye olde timey script or you're spelling it wrong, DAD, so the burden of proof is on you. I bet you're exactly this insufferable about people with Wrong Opinions about Dr. Who

Were you dropped on your head as a kid a lot, or did you do it to yourself because you liked the feeling? :frogout:

# ¿ Mar 1, 2016 21:27

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 14:54

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

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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:

When you write words down on the internet other people can read them, smugwitch:

Yes? Are you done being a loving idiot now that you can re-read what I wrote?

Geniasis posted:

To be fair, that post might just be claiming that the direct lineage is to that specific hermetic order from the 19th century, which could be true and is also not really an impressive claim.

"I claim direct lineage to something within the last century!"

This is what I meant, so slow your roll.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2016 21:49

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