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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reply_of_the_Zaporozhian_Cossacks
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Mar 18, 2016 17:42
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Alhazred posted:When emperor Hirohito released the speech where he said that Japan had surrendered it was the first time that the majority of the population had heard his voice. Also many of the listeners had no idea what he was saying since his Court Japanese was so different from the modern everyday language
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Mar 21, 2016 08:32
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Not even that long, Bismarck was sacked in 1890 and poo poo hit the fan 24 years later (though there were a number of diplomatic crises the years before that almost led to an earlier outbreak of the war, the Tangier Crisis of 1905 comes to mind for example)
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Mar 21, 2016 22:22
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Alberic II had an uncle, a cousin, a nephew and a son who all became popes. Dude probably wondered what he was doing wrong e: wait no, Sergius III wasn't actually his uncle but just someone his mom banged on the side? Then John XI wasn't his cousin but his half-brother instead, even better System Metternich has a new favorite as of 23:21 on Mar 22, 2016 |
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Mar 22, 2016 23:18
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Carbon dioxide posted:Being exiled from the Roman Empire as an aristocrat doesn't sound much fun. Where do you go? Into the wilderness? Live with some barbarian tribe? Ovid was exiled to what is today the Black Sea coast of Romania and loving hated it there, even though the city where he lived wasn't exactly small as Roman cities in this remote region went. Seneca was exiled to Elba (I think, I'm on mobile right now and can't look it up) on the other hand, which wasn't too far away from Rome. I think the worst part of the punishment was actually in being cut off from what was happening and not in a decrease in standard of life, as to a city Roman Rome was probably the only part of the empire that really mattered
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Mar 30, 2016 00:14
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nimby posted:Makes you wonder why Romans went into politics. So much plotting, intrigue and mass murder of entire families. Besides Roman politics being the most dangerous game, being involved in politics and furthering the public good (or at least pretend to do so) was one of the very few lines of work which were seen as befitting a Patrician besides possessing large tracts of land in the countryside for agriculture, which was still best left to your employees and slaves though. Other jobs were seen as crass(us hahaha  ) and the line of public work was that established as the standard for young noblemen to first prove themselves and then advance through the hierarchy that it even had a name of its own (cursus honorum iirc)This is a pattern found throughout history, btw. People were supposed to stay within their station, certain clothes, acts, jobs or even manners of speech were (and often still are) seen as proper to a certain group of people and improper to others.
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Mar 31, 2016 20:03
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In 1973, Keith Moon (drummer of The Who) passed out on stage after downing a massive amount of horse tranquilisers and chasing it with a bottle or two of brandy ( ). When reviving him backstage with a cold shower didn't work, Pete Townsend had no better idea left than to ask the audience whether anybody could play the drums. Scott Halpin, a 19-year old boy who could play the drums but hadn't actually done so for a year, was at the concert together with a friend of his, who promptly started yelling at the security that his buddy could do it. The concert's promoter Bill Graham asked Halpin if he could do it, Halpin answered with "yes" and, to the surprise of the band and the cheer of the audience, put him onstage. Halpin was given a shot of Moon's leftover brandy for the nerves and then played three songs with Townsend giving him instructions. Halpin afterwards got a tour jacket and a promise of 1,000$ for his troubles - the former was promptly stolen, the latter never materialised. Halpin died in 2008 of a brain tumor.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3O-N8MZ9ilk Video of Moon passing out and Halpin getting onstage (look at the description for timestamps) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5B92DK5zoH8 Halpin performing "Naked Eye", the last number of the concert and the most complex of the three songs he was drumming for. Kid did pretty well, all things considered.
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May 4, 2016 13:21
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AgentF posted:Spain? Though to be fair both of these flags were adopted during the late 19th century when Confederate nostalgia was running high, so that may indeed be an allusion both to their respective Spanish heritage and their membership in the CSA. Also lol at the 1861 flag of Alabama: Obverse:  Reverse: 
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Jul 4, 2016 13:18
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Fact: The HRE reached its peak in the years 1648-1806, when a sort of "Cold War" between Catholics and Protestants dominated every single facet of life and made an already complicated situation hilariously complex by adding a ton of denominational arguments and hosed-up compromises to the mix. The Catholic south experienced a cultural boom with the Baroque that had been unprecedented before in Germany (and which probably still is) while the Protestant north slowly entered the Enlightenment, producing or at least attracting such great thinkers like Lessing, Kant, Herder and Voltaire. The HRE was threatened in the west by the French and by the Ottomans in the East, while the conflict between Catholic and southern Austria, home of the Imperial Hapsburg family, and an emerging Protestant Prussia to the north would regularly lead to conflicts and even wars throughout the 18th century... and yet the Empire was an amazing "system of peace" especially for its smallest member states, which would otherwise have been gobbled up mercilessly by their more powerful neighbours. The Imperial judiciary was slow with some trials taking several centuries before being finally concluded, but it worked, and even more than that: "Recent research also brought to light that, especially in the 18th century, the rulings of the court anticipated in many ways the constitutional establishment of civil liberties in Germany. For instance, the inviolability of one's housing or freedom of trade were legally introduced in the Empire by rulings of the court. At the end of the 18th century some contemporaries even compared the Imperial Chamber Court to the National Assembly in Revolutionary France." (Wikipedia) The HRE was utterly incompatible with modern notions of "nationality" and "states", but it represented a fascinating alternative that's seen by many as a possible model for supranational organisations like the EU and I'm legit sad that it had to go. And here're some more interesting HRE facts:
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Jul 20, 2016 08:31
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Angry Salami posted:Oh, it was worse than that - in addition to the Free Imperial Cities and Villages, there were also Imperial Knights - that is to say, individual knights who answered directly to the Emperor, and thus possessed the same privileges of "Imperial Immediacy" as any other state within the Empire. So basically in addition to that clusterfuck of a map people have posted, you'd also have a few hundred dudes who could claim their house as a separate territory, and ignore the taxes, laws and religious policy of any other prince of the Empire, because, hey, they're a state in their own right. It wasn't as bad as that, Imperial Knights normally had a small territory of their own. Towards the end of the Empire there were about 350 knights with maybe 450,000 peoplke living in their territories altogether. Another fun thing: Imperial prelates! Those were in most cases the abbots of important monasteries who had been granted imperial immediacy by the Emperor. They ruled not only over their respective convents, but also about a number of territories wildy varying in size. In today's Bavarian district of Swabia alone there were nine of them, ranging in their possessions from 28 to 266 sqkm with 1000-10,000 people living in them, with an additional two Imperial abbeys whose abbots enjoyed the privilege of being "Imperial Princes" instead, which meant that they had a vote of their own in the Imperial Diet instead of just being a part of a larger group of prelates in the Diet. Oh, and two other monasteries in the area had special privileges as well: the abbey of Edelstetten was formally part of the Imperial Knights, and the abbess of the Lindau convent claimed the title of an Imperial Princess for herself (which the Imperial chancellery denied). Those prelatures are especially interesting, because more than a dozen of them were led by women who got to have a say in Imperial politics via that route too. And don't get me started about the prince-bishoprics, they're a story of their own again. Did I mention that the archbishop of Mainz for example saw his military mainly as something that would add some colour to his ceremonies? The comparatively small archbishopric (350,000 inhabitants) had six generals, and being a soldier there was so unpopular that the ranks had to be filled with cripples 
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Jul 20, 2016 22:42
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In Germany they were affectionaly known as "coffin nails"
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Jul 26, 2016 15:56
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FELD1 posted:I love how this reads like a strange Craigslist ad. It starts out with a kind of weird, but not wholly unreasonably request, and then just fully derails into an anti-social rant about how much he hates everyone he meets. These sorts of first-hand documents always serve as a reminder to me that people have really always been the same throughout history. It's like that archive of collected graffiti from Pompeii that reads like a Youtube comments page. That's a bit nitpicky I'll admit, but that old adage of "people have always been the same" is only partially true - things like, I dunno, fart jokes or an unhealthy fixation on sex are (probably) truly timeless, but in many other points you wouldn't even have to go that far back to find that most people see the world and interact with it through a significantly different lens than you do. The guy writing this would have had seen the world in a way that to our modern sensibilities would be in equal parts horrifying, amusing and utterly absurd (this also goes the other way, of course).
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Jul 26, 2016 20:39
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Introduction to the Science of Ceremony of the Great Lords, by Julius Bernhard von Rohr (1733), p. 19 posted:It is a strange thing that the Kings of Spain are bound in this regard and are at much less liberty than their subjects, insofar as they, following the introduction of those courtly rules more than a century ago, are to go to bed at 10pm in the summer and 9pm in the winter. Historians tell us the following: when King Charles II's first wife Marie Louise arrived in Madrid and did not want to follow those rules, saying instead that the best time to go to bed was when you felt like it, it happened often that her ladies-in-waiting started to undress her even while she was still having dinner, and without asking first. Some started to undo her hair, others crept underneath the table and removed her skirt, and then she was brought to bed with such speed that sometimes she didn't realise it until it was too late.* If you can read 18th-century German and are interested in the highly complex proceedings and rituals of Baroque European courts, then this book is well worth a read. As far as I can see (I've only begun reading it myself) it's unfortunately very Protestant-centric, though - Catholic courts tended to be, if anything, even more complex and ritualistic than their Protestant counterparts. * the proper translation would be "she didn't even know what hit her", but I felt that this would be too informal
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Aug 5, 2016 19:09
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Translator chat: in the original it says "daß sie manchmahl nicht gewust, wie ihr geschehen wäre". The closest translation I could think of that would convey that meaning was "did not know what hit her", but this didn't fit stylistically into the rest of the paragraph, I felt. Generally speaking you're right of course, early modern dudes and gals didn't necessarily bother too much with "proper" language Another one from the book (the very next paragraph, in fact): quote:Some princely spouses sleep together in one chamber, while others sleep in separate beds and even chambers, and with many ceremonies the princely husbands have to ask for permission to be able to spend the night together with their wifes. In Spain the king is said to enter thus: he doesn't wear slippers but shoes, as well as a black coat instead of a nightgown (for both nightgown and slippers are uncommon there). His broquet or shield* hangs down from his left arm, as well as a bottle tied to his wrist which is not for drink, but instead for another nightly service. In his left hand he is carrying a small lantern, and in the right a large rapier. After thus arming himself, he may enter the queen's chamber. Whether these ceremonies, of which Herr Lünig writes in his great study on ceremonies and which he might have taken from an old travelogue, are still followed nowadays, I doubt very much. *NB: I have no idea what that's supposed to be. Are they talking about a real soldier's shield?
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Aug 6, 2016 10:25
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Jastiger posted:I'm pretty sure those stones are nothing. That is normal weathering of the stones in that area from rain, sea salt, and heat cycles. Natural rock formation, nothing to get worked up over. Thanks for the translation, but why would anybody write this on random stones in runish?
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Aug 8, 2016 18:03
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Oh poo poo, has this thread turned historical too now? Let's remedy that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GduCExxB0vw This is ridiculously cool and looks to me suspiciously like magic, technical explanations notwithstanding
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Sep 23, 2016 07:17
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Greatbacon posted:Is there an article that mentions how they obtain the 3d-volume scan of the scroll? Like is that something that a CAT scan can do? This is the paper written by the research team in question. I haven't read it yet, but I'd imagine that technical details can be found in there
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Sep 23, 2016 16:10
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Ancient Roman and 17th century Ottoman coins were just found in a medieval Japanese castle
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Sep 27, 2016 19:35
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Felix Salten, the Austrian author who gave us Bambi also anonymously published a story in 1906 titled Josefine Mutzenbacher, a pseudo-autobiographical novel purportedly by a Viennese prostitute in which the narrator recounts in great detail how she first started having and loving sex at 5 years old. With her brother  aside from being written incest CP, it's also a fascinating look into life as the child of poor workers at the fringes of Viennese society in around 1900, though that prooobably wasn't what Salten had in mind when he wrote it.
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Oct 9, 2016 11:41
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Snapchat A Titty posted:e: He even changes "font" for the word item (meaning "also" or "likewise") in the block of text at the top That's because Danish at the time used the same cursive handwriting as German did, which was different from the rest of Europe. Words from Romance languages (mostly Latin at the time) were commonly written in Latin letters (i.e. those which we use today) as well. It was the same in printing (at least in German, though if Danish used the Fraktur font for print as well, then they probably did so too)
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Oct 22, 2016 22:36
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Chichevache posted:Are you saying that the wiki link has examples demonstrating that the common folks knew about the Holocaust, or are you arguing that Friedrich Kellner is supposed to be an example of a common German citizen at the time? I once did an effort post about this in the D&D maps thread, let me crosspost it real quick: System Metternich posted:The German Wikipedia has a fairly in-depth article about how much the average German knew about what was going on.
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Oct 25, 2016 10:33
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Vienna still is full of the palaces (Palais), mostly of various powerful noble families within the Hapsburg monarchy - just look at this exhaustive list. Most of these don't belong to their original owners anymore, many of them being claimed by the Republic of Austria after 1918 instead. Especially in the 18th, but also during much of the 19th century, these palaces were the centres of Vienna's social life and also a major job generator. In the late 18th century, the five major houses (Liechtenstein, Esterházy, Schwarzenberg, Dietrichstein and Lobkowitz) had expenses of 300,000-700,000 guilders per year, mostly for representation, but also for maintaining the often vast and pompus palaces as well as for charity. An additional seven minor, but still princely houses had expenses between 80,000 and 150,000 guilders, whereas a large number of merely comital families "only" could afford between 50,000 and 80,000 each year for such purposes. For comparison: even high-ranking and especially meritorious public officials couldn't hope to make more than maybe 6,000 per year. In 1789, one pound of beef cost around seven kreuzers (60 kreuzer to a guilder), a pound of butter 27 kreuzers and a pound of bacon 32. One of the largest of those palaces was the Palais Schwarzenberg on Kärntner Straße, right across the Capuchin church where even today the dead of the Hapsburgs are laid to rest (the palace itself was torn down in 1894 and mustn't be mixed up with another palace of the same name in Vienna's 3rd district). The enormous effort put into representation can be seen by looking at the personnel numbers: in ~1800, the lady of the house commanded one or two personal maids, one valet, a laundress, two parlour maids, an extra maid, a "Hausmensch" (probably a maid-of-all-work), three runners and three servants, while the lord had one secretary, valet, chamber lackey, hunter, runner and personal hussar each as well as two servants. Part of the general personnel were the "household masters" (=chief butlers), two chambermaids, a porter or doorkeeper, a personal cook, a "Bratmeister", a large number of bus boys, kitchen helps, kitchen maids and so on, as well as a confectioner and one cook who did nothing but pies. In the stable you had the equerry, one horse trainer, two coachmen, two postillions, two vanguard riders, two stablemen, four horse grooms etc. In the palace there were three different locations for people to eat: the "Herrschaftstisch" for the Schwarzenberg family and their guests; the "Offizierstisch" for high-ranking servants of theirs and the "Gesindetisch" for everybody else. This was just one of many of such palaces in Vienna, mind you - and even all this pomp and effort was nothing compared to the Imperial Palace, whose servants and their families constituted a full tenth (!) of the city's population in 1675. During the 18th century this enormous percentage decreased though, due to the rapid growth of the city as well as additional noble palaces springing up like mushrooms. Yet a large part of Vienna was directly in the employ of a comparatively small number of noble families, who pumped ludicrous amounts of money each year into the local economy.  Liveried porter at the entrance to Palais Schwarzenberg, 1890
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Oct 26, 2016 10:49
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Kassad posted:Was that literally a guy in charge of making sausages? Bratmeister = literally “roast master“, so all sorts of roasted meat e: sadly I've lost my digital copy of Csendes/Opll's Wien. Geschichte einer Stadt or I would look it up now, but come to think of it the number of Viennese who were craftsmen or merchants must have been surprisingly small, seeing as a huge amount of people was employed either by the court, by the various noble houses, by the city itself (as clerks, guardsmen or whatever) or by the Church. Considering the latter, I've got numbers for St Peter's in the middle of the city which was administered to by a confraternity. This confraternity employed at least four people directly (two announcers, one sacristan, one building supervisor), while for the liturgical services in the church in the year 1779 we know of at least 45 priests and (sub-)deacons (as well as a large number of other clergy who occasionally worked at St Peter's because their head organisation, e.g. their monastery, had a contract with the confraternity) working there as well as twelve musicians, which adds up to 61 people working at this church alone. A 1770 description of Vienna counts 113 churches and chapels in the city and its suburbs, of which each of them would have employed a number of sacristans and clergy, while the number of confraternities isn't entirely clear, but probably was in the ballpark of 100-150; many of these weren't as large as the one at St Peter's, but nevertheless many would have had their own personnel as well. In addition we know of 570 licensed "Messleser" in 1782, i.e. priests without any regular income who kept themselves above water by offering to read Mass for whoever paid them - the number of unlicensed ones probably was at least as high, if not even larger. In 1723 there were 31 monasteries in the city with 1,476 monks and nuns between them. When you put all that together and consider that in the 18th century the city's population rose from ~113,000 in 1700 to ~250,000 in 1794 this means that a significant portion of the population was in the employ of the church as well, either as laypeople or as clergy (for 1723 for example, the members of religious orders alone would make up about 0,67%, and the number of diocesan clergy was way higher and steadily rose as well, with the bishop ordaining 111 new priests in 1708 alone with additional clergy arriving from all over the monarchy to try their luck in Vienna). Sorry for rambling, but man, I'm surprising myself here on just how many people were employed by the nobility and the Church in baroque Vienna
System Metternich has a new favorite as of 13:28 on Oct 26, 2016 |
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Oct 26, 2016 11:25
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Buckets posted:What if Hitler poo poo his pants Why do you think are they called the brownshirts
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Oct 26, 2016 23:38
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Vaginal Vagrant posted:System Metternich do you know why beef was so drat cheap in Venice? Or was that supposed to be 70 moon dollars not 7? Do you mean Vienna? But yeah, it's 7 kreuzer, contrary to common belief meat was surprisingly affordable throughout most of the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Era, at least in the cities. In Vienna it was especially cheap though, seeing as it lies right on the western edge of the Pannonian Basin, where mostly Hungarian herdsmen and farmers reared massive amounts of cattlee: you also have to consider that until quite recently virtually every part of a slaughtered animal was consumed or used in some way. Hardly anybody still eats innards, or eyes, or brains anymore; instead most pieces of meat you can buy nowadays are what used to be called Bürgermeisterstück (mayor's piece) in German, i.e. the best part of the animal which was reserved for especially highly esteemed guests or the highest feast days System Metternich has a new favorite as of 10:42 on Oct 27, 2016 |
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Oct 27, 2016 10:24
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The young Hitler was a great admirer of Alfred Roller (1864-1935), a highly renowned painter and chief set designer at the Court Opera in Vienna. By coincidence Magdalena Hanisch, his family's landlady in Linz, had a friend who was acquainted with Roller.Magdalena Hanisch to Johanna Motloch, February 4th, 1908 posted:The son of one of my tenants wants to become a painter, studies in Vienna since autumn and wanted to get into the Academy of Fine Arts there, but wasn't accepted [...] He is a sincere and ambitious young man, 19 years old [that's wrong btw, Hitler hadn't turned 19 yet], more mature than others of his age, nice and solid, from a perfectly respectable family. The mother has died of breast cancer before Christmas when she was only 46 years old; she was the widow of an officer at the local customs office. I was very fond of the woman; she lived next to me on the first floor. Her sister and daughter, who still goes to high school, still live there. The family is called Hitler; the son, for whom I ask, is called Adolf Hitler [...] By coincidence we were talking about art and artists, and he mentioned that Professor Roller was very highly esteemed amongst other artists not only in Vienna, but all over the world, and that he himself greatly admired him too. Hitler had no idea that the name "Roller" was known to me, and when I said to him that I used to know a brother of Roller's and asked whether it would be useful for him to receive a letter of recommendation for Roller, his eyes began to shine; he turned deep red and said that this would make him the happiest man alive [...] I would really like to help this young man; he has nobody who could help him; he arrived in Vienna a stranger and alone and had to do everything all by himself. He is determined to learn something useful! As far as I got to know him yet, he won't idle around, as he has this goal in mind. I hope, you won't ask for someone unworthy! Maybe you'll do a good deed. After Motloch had written to Roller: Reply by Alfred Roller to Johanna Motloch, February 6th, 1908 posted:My dear lady, I gladly comply with your request. The young Hitler can come and bring his works along, that I may see what he can do. I want to give him the best advice I can. He will be able to meet me daily in my office at the opera, entrance Kärntnerstraße, between half past twelve and half past six. If I shouldn't be in the office at the moment, the servant will be able to reach me by telephone. On rare occasions I won't be in the building. When Hitler has bad luck like this, he shouldn't be dismayed, but just come again the next day. Motloch wrote about Roller's reply to Hanisch Magdalena Hanisch to Johanna Motloch, February 8th, 1908 posted:You would have been well rewarded for your effort when you had seen the happy face of this young man, when I called to him and told him that you had been so gracious as to recommend him to Director Roller. I gave your card to him and let him read Director Roller's letter. You should have seen the boy! Slowly, word for word, as if he wanted to memorise all of it, he quietly read the letter. Saying many thanks, he gave the letter back to me. He asked me if he could directly write to you, to thank you; I told him yes! [...] Although there still has been no word by his legal guardian [Hitler was orphaned by then, and before 1919 the age of majority in Austria was 24], Hitler decided that he doesn't want to wait anymore and will go to Vienna next week. His guardian is a simple innkeep, an honest man, but I think that he may be a bit thick. He doesn't live here [in Linz], but in Leonding. The boy has to do everything which normally would be the responsibility of the guardian. [...] When you should meet Director Roller again, tell him my thanks for his graciousness, that he wants to receive young Hitler and advise him regardless of his heavy workload. Not every young man gets to be that lucky, Hitler will appreciate it! Two days later: Adolf Hitler to Johanna Motloch, February 10th, 1908 (various spelling errors not translated) posted:My dear lady! By this letter I want you, esteemed lady, to receive my profound thanks for your efforts to get me into touch with the great master of stage art, Professor Roller. It probably was a bit brazen of me to call on you like that, even though you had to do it for a complete stranger. All the more I want to thank you for your efforts, which resulted in such a great success, as well as for the card [by Roller], which you so graciously forwarded to me. I will make the best use of this possibility at once. Again my heartfelt thanks. Yours sincerely, Adolf Hitler On February 12th, Hitler went to Vienna by train to present himself to Roller. What happened then? Account by Eduard Frauenfeld, gauleiter of Vienna (1940) posted:With Roller's letter in hand, Hitler went to the opera building when courage left him and he turned back. After struggling with his own shyness he returned, made it as far as to the staircase and left again. A third attempt failed as well. Someone asked the shy youngster what he was looking for. Under some excuse [Hitler] fled the building. To find a way out of his permanent excitement, he destroyed the letter. Hitler met Roller again in 1934, when he invited him to the chancellery in Berlin and told "with great mirth" the story of young Hitler not mustering the courage to enter great Professor Roller's office. If Hitler hadn't been that shy as a teenager, this world would potentially look very much different.
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Oct 27, 2016 20:18
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Vaginal Vagrant posted:Haha oops yeah I was a bit light headed when I wrote that. So why the relatively high price of bacon? Cost of salt or the pork itself? I'm not sure, but I would think that it could be due to those reasons: * Pigs weren't normally held in stables back then like nowadays; instead, they were simply driven into the woods and left to fend for themselves. This restricted the possibility to breed them in larger numbers to those areas with large enough oak forests around (pigs loving love acorns). To the east of Vienna there are large plains that were heavily used by agriculture, and while the forests to the west have lots of oaks they are also pretty mountaineous, so I don't know how suitable they would be to keep up the pig supply to Vienna * Pigs were a lot smaller back then with a weight of maybe 50-60kg and a height of ~70cm at the withers, so they simply didn't offer a lot of suitable meat for bacon * The fatty cuts of a pig weren't always used for bacon; instead, pig fat was commonly used as grease or soap or for making light e: and yeah, what Greatbacon ( ) said. I actually have no idea about how much effort goes into producing bacon nowadayse2: it's interesting to note that from at least the early Middle Ages on (possibly even Antiquity), the manner of rearing pigs hardly changed at all for more than a thousand years. Only the introduction of the potato (which only really took off in Europe from the late 18th century onwards) made large-scale stabling of pigs possible System Metternich has a new favorite as of 21:47 on Oct 27, 2016 |
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Oct 27, 2016 21:36
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Snapchat A Titty posted:The 1930s really was a time for "strong men" to rise to power. It doesn't seem unreasonable that another would have taken his place, especially in Weimar Germany. That's true, but it's a characteristic of dictatorships that their specific nature is strongly dependent on the ruling strongman in question. The Third Reich wasn't possible without Hitler trying to assert his own ideas of what a German state should be like. If it hadn't been Hitler, but, say, Ludendorff as Chancellor (not that this would have been all that likely, seeing that Ludendorff crashed and burned when he tried to be elected president in 1925, but let's just use him as an example), then his government would have acted very differently from Hitler's (Ludendorff was rabidly anti-Catholic, for once). And while it's appealing to see Weimar as a failed state from the get-go, current research says that at least in latter half of the 1920s things weren't looking as bad and might have as well worked out! If the stock market crash of 1929 hadn't been, then Weimar might still have lived. Even afterwards the failure of democracy was likely, but not inevitable. Things rarely are in history.
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Oct 28, 2016 15:29
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Hell, just look at the poo poo Nestlé or Coca Cola are doing right now, I suppose their managers also don't go "Excellent, all according to plan" whenever they gently caress up some third world country some more, it's just that they want to/have to maximise profits and minimise expenses  afaik Bayer didn't acto "consciously" though throughout the whole HIV blood products debacle, but instead didn't use a heat treatment on parts of the blood it was using to render the viruses inactive for a variety of reasons (not enough blood plasma to keep up supply of the treated product, doctors initially preferring the old stuff and offical agencies taking their time with authorising the new products). They knew that some of their medicine might (!) be contaminated, but financial and other reasons made it impractical to "sanitise" it beforehand to be sure. I don't know if that's better or worse than consciously selling HIV-contaminated products
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Oct 28, 2016 17:22
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Alhazred posted:The last person to be killed in WWI was Henry Gunther. He was killed at 10:59 a.m., one minute before the armistice was to take effect at 11 a.m. He was a bit of a dumbass too, his death was entirely avoidable. After writing a letter home about how miserable conditions at the front war was intercepted by the censor, after which Gunther was demoted from sergeant to private. He took his demotion hard: Wikipedia posted:Gunther's squad approached a roadblock of two German machine guns in the village of Chaumont-devant-Damvillers near Meuse, in Lorraine. Gunther got up, against the orders of his close friend and now sergeant, Ernest Powell, and charged with his bayonet. The German soldiers, already aware of the Armistice that would take effect in one minute, tried to wave Gunther off. He kept going and fired "a shot or two". When he got too close to the machine guns, he was shot in a short burst of automatic fire and killed instantly. The writer James M. Cain, then a reporter for the local daily newspaper, The Sun, interviewed Gunther's comrades afterward and wrote that "Gunther brooded a great deal over his recent reduction in rank, and became obsessed with a determination to make good before his officers and fellow soldiers." He was one of 11,000 casualties on the last day of the war, which was way more than on your average day. The German negotiators asked the French for an immediate ceasefire even before signing the armistice at 5am, but good ol' Maréchal Foch really wanted to end the war at exactly 11 o'clock on 11/11, so thousands of people died so that he could have his wish. The first two soldiers killed in World War I died one day before the war even began officially: at the Skirmish at Joncherey, a German patrol illegally entered France and started some poo poo with a group of French sentries, which cost both their commander Albert Mayer and Jules-André Peugeot, a teacher who had been doing his compulsory military service, their lives. Mayer died first, having been shot in the stomach and the head; Peugeot was hit in the shoulder and made is way back to his post, where he died some 37 minutes later.
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Oct 28, 2016 18:46
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TapTheForwardAssist posted:Though you have to balance that out with the hundreds of thousands of Germans living in territories that Germany was giving up, Konigsberg, Danzig, Sudetenland, etc. There was mass-movement of ethnic Germans back to the smaller borders of Germany, whether self-deporting to avoid the Red Army, or driven out by vengeful locals. Make that 12-14 million, the scale of the expulsion (which in many cases was carefully organised and executed by Czechoslovak/Polish/whatever authorities and not just driven by a spontaneous desire for vengeance, see the “Benes decrees“ for instance, which had been drafted as early as the years 1940-45 by Czechoslovakia's government-in-exile) really was massive. It wasn't just Germans, too; other ethnic groups who were forced to leave their homes after WW2 were e.g. Hungarians from Czechoslovakia, Italians from Istria or Poles from today's Ukraine and Belarus. I once was at a lecture given in my hometown about local reception and assimilation of the refugees (mostly Sudeten Germans) after the war. At one point, the lecturer asked for everybody who was a refugee themselves or is descended from one to raise their hand. Out of an audience of maybe 200 people I'd say that a good half did so, if not more (me included, my grandpa was from northern Bohemia). At such a lecture the audience is self-selecting to a certain degree, of course, but nevertheless I wouldn't be surprised if at least a third or so of Germany's population nowadays is descended from refugees
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Oct 29, 2016 08:03
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CoolCab posted:Death matches happened: we have evidence of them in the form of advertising, but that same advertising proves it was an exceptional event. Romans had the same fascination with fights "to the death" and less laws against it then we do, but a gladiator was very expensive: if they were a slave they were virtually guaranteed to be an physically suitable slave, they required training, an excellent diet and medical care that was unmatched until the 1800s. A fight to the death had to recoup that cost somehow, so they were the rare and top billed spectacles that got butts in seats. A fight to the death was also a matter of execution, though (damnatio ad ferrum). Those condemned were obviously less trained, but their death was still quite the spectacle for the audience, even though educated men like Seneca often scoffed at that: Seneca to Lucilius, Letter 7 posted:By chance I attended a mid-day exhibition, expecting some fun, wit, and relaxation, – an exhibition at which men's eyes have respite from the slaughter of their fellow-men. But it was quite the reverse. The previous combats were the essence of compassion [i.e. those of "professional" gladiators, whereas the condemned commonly fought during the luncheon intervals]; but now all the trifling is put aside and it is pure murder. The men have no defensive armour. They are exposed to blows at all points, and no one ever strikes in vain. Many persons prefer this programme to the usual pairs and to the bouts "by request." Of course they do; there is no helmet or shield to deflect the weapon. What is the need of defensive armour, or of skill? All these mean delaying death. In the morning they throw men to the lions and the bears; at noon, they throw them to the spectators. The spectators demand that the slayer shall face the man who is to slay him in his turn; and they always reserve the latest conqueror for another butchering. The outcome of every fight is death, and the means are fire and sword. This sort of thing goes on while the arena is empty. You may retort: "But he was a highway robber; he killed a man!" And what of it? Granted that, as a murderer, he deserved this punishment, what crime have you committed, poor fellow, that you should deserve to sit and see this show? In the morning they cried "Kill him! Lash him! Burn him! Why does he meet the sword in so cowardly a way? Why does he strike so feebly? Why doesn't he die game? Whip him to meet his wounds! Let them receive blow for blow, with chests bare and exposed to the stroke!" And when the games stop for the intermission, they announce: "A little throatcutting in the meantime, so that there may still be something going on!" Winning in those execution deathmatches didn't mean getting of free though, because (as Seneca writes) the winner was just sent into the next battle. When all others were dead, the last man standing was executed. There was also the punishment of damnatio ad gladium which meant sending the condemned into a hopeless fight against a trained gladiator, or of course the damnatio ad bestias, which meant throwing them to the lions (or bears, or elephants...). Re: the "professional" gladiator's lifespan, they still died a lot, though. Wikipedia posted:The average gladiator lifespan was short; few survived more than 10 matches or lived past the age of 30. One (Felix) is known to have lived to 45 and one retired gladiator lived to 90. George Ville calculated an average age at death at 27 for gladiators (based on headstone evidence), with mortality "among all who entered the arena" around the 1st century AD at 19/100. A rise in the risk of death for losers, from 1/5 to 1/4 between the early and later Imperial periods, seems to suggest missio was granted less often. Marcus Junkelmann disputes Ville's calculation for average age at death; the majority would have received no headstone, and would have died early in their careers, at 18–25 years of age. Historians Keith Hopkins and Mary Beard tentatively estimate a total of 400 arenas throughout the Roman Empire at its greatest extent, with a combined total of 8,000 deaths per annum from all causes, including execution, combat and accident.
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Oct 29, 2016 14:54
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Rutibex posted:
That could well be, but as someone elso posted: we simply don't know for sure. I've seen the theory that thumbs up was "leave the earth" (i.e. "die"), whereas thumbs down could be seen as "stay on the earth". Maybe they even pointed their thumbs at their own neck or breast instead, symbolising the death blow which was traditionally aimed at the heart or neck? We only know for certain what they traditionally yelled: "mitte!" or "missum!" for "Let him go!", and "iugula!" for "Slit his throat!"
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Oct 29, 2016 15:23
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That's super interesting, can you recommend some literature about it? 
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Oct 31, 2016 08:55
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Decrepus posted:They don't put pubes on sculptures. They did so in Rocky Horror Picture Show 
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Nov 1, 2016 11:29
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The "Years of Lead" from about 1968 to 1982 were a wild time in Italy, during which your most popular conspiracy theories like various secret services committing false flag terror attacks as well as a Masonic lodge literally forming a secret cabal within the Italian elite that conspired to overthrow the government, not to forget various left-wing and right-wing extremist groups running wild as well, often with clandestine support by the Soviets and the Americans too
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Nov 5, 2016 14:48
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queserasera posted:Weren't codpieces also used as purses? I remember reading about that somewhere. Maybe pickpockets were less inclined to grab your money if it meant grabbing your junk too. Or maybe the purse-owners were counting on exactly that 
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Nov 5, 2016 15:03
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hackbunny posted:The conspiracies were all, 100% real. The theories only attempt to fill in the blanks Turns out I forgot a "became real" in my horrible run-off sentence  The 70s were a wild time in Europe, basically. On a political, more visibile level you've got a time of détente, what with Brandt's Eastern Policy in Germany, Nixon's visits to Moscow and Beijing etc, while on the other hand you've got terrorist groups running rampant in Europe and the Middle East, the Vietnam War entering its last and nastiest phase what with Nixon bombing and invading Cambodia, various other proxy conflicts and wars springing up all over the globe etc. One of my secret wishes is for a GTA-style game set in 1974's West Berlin. Radicalised students, US and Soviet spies, creepy Stasi agents, literal Nazis prominently running around, the first big wave of immigration into Western Germany and all of that set to the awesome music of the time in a city split in two by a yooge wall that also functioned as a literal frontline in the Cold War. It would be great 
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Nov 5, 2016 19:27
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The Jaynes theory is an interesting concept that's certainly generated a lot of discussion back in its day, but there is a very good reason why virtually no current research in psychology or anthropology even mentions him. Most of his theory is based on a very select sampling of Ancient Greek and Middle Eastern sources, and again on the admittedly pretty foreign (to modern eyes) writing style of the Iliad as the core of his thesis. There are several problems, for example that neurology never came up with any evidence for his bicameralism theory, or that he ignores the Gilgamesh Epic which is older than the Iliad and has clearly introspective passages, or how such a biological/cultural change could have affected all of humanity within an astonishingly short timespan of maybe a thousand years (not even to mention how it could have bridged oceans to reach Native Americans, Aborigines or Pacific Islanders). He also claims that this change came to be with the advent of agriculture and permanent settlements. If this was the case, shouldn't modern hunter-gatherer communities still show such a bicameral mind? Afaik Jaynes never acknowledged this problem, though his cult-like followers over at julianjaynes.com certainly addressed it:quote:They have limited inner mental life (and experience frequent auditory hallucinations) but they can be just as animated as non-human primates are. Bicameral people were non-conscious but intelligent, had basic language, and were probably more social than modern conscious people in the sense that they would have typically lived and worked surrounded by others. They would be able to express first tier (non-conscious) emotions such as fear, shame, and anger, but not second-tier (conscious) emotions such as anxiety, guilt, and hatred. which sounds preeeetty racist to me, as well as the eventual and natural conclusion of Jaynes' theory. Nevertheless it's a very interesting book and a good read. The whole book is freely available online when you want to give it a look. Fake edit: when you want to see just how foreign the culture and worldview of other societies can be (and how your own sensibilities and convictions can't necessarily be taken for granted), just look at how early modern Europeans viewed honour (history) or how an isolated tribe in 1950s Western Africa interpreted Shakespeare through the lens of its own culture (anthropology). The latter is absolutely a pro read, by the way real edit: Rutibex posted:Human memory is fallible when you are trying to remember what you ate two weeks ago for lunch. It is not fallible when you are reciting an epic poem that you spent years of your life memorizing. Seriously, keepers of oral histories are actually extremely accurate and precise, don't dismiss them so easily! The human brain is great at memory tricks. It's long been known by anthropologists and historians that the average ability of people to memorise stuff is inversely proportional to the average literacy. The memories of illiterate medieval peasants would probably have blown our minds. System Metternich has a new favorite as of 14:20 on Nov 6, 2016 |
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Nov 6, 2016 14:14
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Zesty Mordant posted:James Burke's TV series The Day the Universe Changed touches on some of these human memory intrigues. There's a small reenacted scene of a town trial where the judge asks a peasant how old he is, he says "Uh like 45 or so I think, I was born in a harsh winter my mother told me" and the old bearded judge recalls 46 years ago there was a particularly bad winter so yeah, you're 46. That kind of thing was probably how much business got done before written records were established. Amongst the refugees that came to Germany last year there are many whose official birthday is January 1st, because they themselves couldn't say for certain, and any documentation has been lost, if it even existed in the first place. January 1st is the go-to birth date German authorities assign to them in this case. When your culture doesn't place any value in celebrating birthdays and written records are spotty or non-existent, this information tends to get discarded and lost. e: there is a ton of fascinating stuff concerning oral tradition that could be posted itt, and I know only about a tiny sample of it. One interesting example on how it works can be found among the Gonja people in Ghana. Around 1900 British records document oral tradition amongst the Gonja at the time speaking of seven sons of the founder of the Gonja state, which explained the division of said state into seven districts. Sixty years later the myths of the Gonja were documented again, but by then because sue to administrative changes only five districts were left, and so the myths spoke of the founder king's five sons. The part of the past which didn't immediately concern the present had simply been forgotten. This is why oral tradition can be tricky: while sometimes it can be unbelievably ancient (there are folk myths of the First People in Canada that probably stem from encounters with a giant sloth that went extinct 10,000 years ago), it is only conserved if it is useful in the present (explanatory or else) and it may well have been repeatedly adapted to suit the needs and interests of those who told and retold it through the centuries/millennia, as well as seemingly unimportant details getting lost, later myths and stories merging with them, poetic interpolations to make it sound better and so on. There is a peer-reviewed journal that concerns itself exclusively with this topic, and it's open access!
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Nov 6, 2016 21:11
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