Brawnfire posted:

My guess would be company cooks for their unit.

Modern Drunkard posted:

If there is anything left to be said regarding George Washington and his presidency it’s this: while in office he spent over seven percent of his sizable income on alcohol.

Fish of hemp posted:

If I ever get a change to time travel I would travel to a victorian London. To get a feeling how that place would have smelled.

Booming industry, coal heating, animals living among people, people who don't ready access to running water and bathing, no washing machines.

It must have been sort of miasma we can't even imagine today.

Moldless Bread posted:

I can see the logic behind dueling, though. It enforces the social etiquette by making someone directly responsible for their claims. If you catch someone spreading lies about you, you're socially sanctioned to attack them for it.
Presumably, if you publicly speak out against someone, you only do it if the matter is important enough to be worth potentially dying for.

How it shakes out in reality is a different matter, of course...

Ghost Leviathan posted:

It turns out nearly everything the British say about the French is probably projection.

Sulla Faex posted:

I think this page has been linked before, it definitely seems quite familiar, but for more details on napoleonic battlefield cleanup:

https://shannonselin.com/2016/07/napoleonic-battlefield-cleanup/

WITCHCRAFT posted:

The first quote in there really got to me. "It's a train wreck but you can't look away" seems like one of those universal human truths. Usually it's like "haha, that 13th century schoolkid made doodles just like me, some things never change!" or the Pompeii graffiti that would be right at home in a modern bathroom stall. This one seems just as universal, but it is hideously grim and morbid.

"The ground between the wood and the Russian batteries, about a quarter of a mile, was a sheet of naked human bodies, which friends and foes had during the night mutually stripped, although numbers of these bodies still retained consciousness of their situation. It was a sight that the eye loathed, but from which it could not remove."

Sometimes, it's really cool when a piece history puts your mind right there when it happened. Sometimes, you really wish it hadn't.

The Republic, Book 4 posted:

The story is, that Leontius, the son of Aglaion, coming up one day from the Piraeus, under the north wall on the outside, observed some dead bodies lying on the ground at the place of execution. He felt a desire to see them, and also a dread and abhorrence of them; for a time he struggled and covered his eyes, but at length the desire got the better of him; and forcing them open, he ran up to the dead bodies, saying, Look, ye wretches, take your fill of the fair sight!

Comstar posted:

I thought that's one of the definition traits of every "Empire". Taking resources from the outer area's to the Imperial core and forcing the outer area's to give and grow the resources for them. What's an empire that hasn't done that?

Biplane posted:

In Norway we call it "calling for the moose/elk" because you sound like a horned up moose when throwing up

Samovar posted:

Better than the 'Adolph Fredrick' tradition.

Samovar posted:

FÖR SENT!

3D Megadoodoo posted:

I think you mean recount, not recant?

TheFluff posted:

https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?noseen=1&threadid=3872282&pagenumber=22&perpage=40#post489549773

thanks for the batsignal

Alhazred posted:

Cause of death for roman emperors:
20 died of natural causes.
23 was assassinated.
9 died in battle.
8 was probably assassinated.
5 committed suicide.
1 died in captivity.

girl dick energy posted:

The "See also" has some real winners, including the surprisingly long list of inventors killed by their own inventions.

3D Megadoodoo posted:

No they don't? They don't ever need to sell to anyone. It's normal to die before you've sold a single home.

Roald Amundsen posted:

Adventure is just bad planning.

3D Megadoodoo posted:

Vaikka Medjedin märinä
Voi värisyttää välillä
Käy Kuninkaiden Laaksoon
Käy Kuninkaiden Laaksoon

ChubbyChecker posted:

what is an "elvis"?

Gaius Marius posted:

It goes even farther than that. The Nio statues outside Buddhist temples in Japan and China are derived from Hercules statuary.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nio

quote:

The name law

protects surnames already in use

aims to separate first names from surnames

aims to separate female and male names

aims to direct parents to choose proper and fitting first names with the best interest of the child in mind [basically this means that the name can be something novel, but must follow some social or religious precedent, has to sound Finnish if the parents are Finnish, and has to be something a child can be expected to be able to live with]

demands that a new surname follows Finnish naming practice in form and ortography

places both members of a married couple in equal standing when choosing a surname

demands that siblings are given the same surname

demands, that a child receives their surname according to the same principles, whether born in or outside legal marriage

3D Megadoodoo posted:

"How aboat a nice bag of beaver anus, eh?"

Azhais posted:

Bell's New Weekly Messenger, April 30, 1837, p. 6-7 posted:

A DEARLY-BOUGHT KISS

Caroline Newton was indicted for assaulting Thomoas Saverland and biting off his nose. The complainant, whose face bore incontestible evidence of the severe injury inflicted, the fleshy part of the left nostril being completely gone, stated that on the day after Christmas Day he was in a tap-room where were defendant and her sister. The sister laughingly observed that she had left her young man down at Birmingham, and had promised him no man should kiss her while absent. Complainant regarded this observation as a challenge, especially it being holiday time, and caught hold of her and kissed her. She took it in good part as joke, but defendant became angry, and desired she might have as little of that kind of fun as he pleased. Complainant told her if she was angry he would kiss her also and tried to do it. A scuffle ensued, and they both fell to the ground. After they got up complainant went and stood by the fire, and the defendant followed and struck at him. He again closed with her and tried to kiss her, and in the scuffle he was heard to cry out, She has got my nose in her mouth.” When they parted he was bleeding profusely from the nose, and a portion of it, which defendant had bitten off, she was seen to spit out of her mouth upon the ground. The defendant, a fat, middle-aged woman, treated the matter with great levity, and said he had no business to kiss her sister, or attempt to kiss her, in a public house; they were not such kind of people.

If she wanted to be kissed, she had a husband to kiss her, and he was a much handsomer man than defendant ever was, even before he lost his nose. The Chairman told the jury that it mattered little which way their verdict went. If they found her guilty the court would not fine her more than 1s., as the prosecutor had brought the punishment on himself. The jury, without hesitation, acquitted her. The Chairman told the prosecutor he was sorry for the loss of his nose, but if he would play with cats, he must expect to get scratched. Turning to the jury, the Chairman afterwards said, "Gentlemen, my opinion is that if a man attempts to kiss a woman against her will, she has a right to bite his nose off if she has a fancy for so doing."-"And eat it too," added a learned gentleman at the bar. The case caused much laughter to all except the poor complainant.

quote:

Jimmy Carter knew how to get an audience to pay attention. In a speech given during the US President’s 1977 visit to Poland, he appeared to express sexual desire for the then-Communist country. Or that’s what his interpreter said, anyway. It turned out Carter had said he wanted to learn about the Polish people’s ‘desires for the future’.

Earning a place in history, his interpreter also turned “I left the United States this morning” into “I left the United States, never to return”; according to Time magazine, even the innocent statement that Carter was happy to be in Poland became the claim that “he was happy to grasp at Poland's private parts”.

Unsurprisingly, the President used a different interpreter when he gave a toast at a state banquet later in the same trip – but his woes didn’t end there. After delivering his first line, Carter paused, to be met with silence. After another line, he was again followed by silence. The new interpreter, who couldn’t understand the President’s English, had decided his best policy was to keep quiet. By the time Carter’s trip ended, he had become the punchline for many a Polish joke.

FreudianSlippers posted: