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Crow Jane posted:Related to this, sort of, I remember reading that decorative buttons on jacket sleeves originated with Napoleon, who got tired of seeing soldiers wipe their grubby noses and mouths on their sleeves. Since men's fashion has always been pretty heavily influenced by the military, it just kind of caught on for everyone, and is still standard to this day. Not true. Buttons have been on men's sleeves since before the Renaissance.
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Nov 6, 2015 07:48
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The ancient Greeks tended to name things for what they gave to man. Therefore, the ancient Greek word for ivory is elepanhantine. The animal is named for its ivory. Sadly, that may ultimately prove its undoing.
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Nov 8, 2015 10:40
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Alhazred posted:Five famous royal mistresses: You missed the best of all: Madame de Maintenon (1635-1719) Her life reads like a romance novel. Born in poverty, she used her wit, education and looks to move up in society by making herself useful to powerful people. Eventually she became governess of Louis XIV's bastard children. She also became his mistress at some point. When the Queen suddenly died, Louis married her in secret. The marriage was hidden from everyone; even Louis' brother only found out about it by surprising them in bed. She lived as the uncrowned Queen of France until Louis' death in 1715, then retired to a convent. She's been the subject of several books, but the only movie about her is a French TV one.
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Dec 8, 2015 15:39
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Mr Havafap posted:Aw c'mon thread, don't die.. In January, the starving population ate everything in the city it could, including zoo animals.
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Dec 15, 2015 13:55
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Yet another history thread has gone down that golden road of re-fighting WWI/WWII. RIP Thread, we hardly knew ye.
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Dec 25, 2015 09:33
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Hogge Wild posted:If we count absolute monarchs as dictators the gooniest one was Charles XII of Sweden. He was a highly intelligent and belligerent celibate autist who hosed things up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_XII_of_Sweden His skull has been examined several times, hoping to determine if he was killed by an enemy shot or was murdered by his own men.
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Dec 28, 2015 09:49
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TWIST FIST posted:Oh, huh. Arsenic is a good preservative. Exhuming his body would tell us if it was really stomach cancer, arsenic, or murder. There was a theory he was actually shot in the stomach, and that it was only announced he'd died from cancer. Arsenic, coupled with the embalming of the time, would tell us much. His tomb is in a building known as Les Invalides. Created by Louis XIV, it was a combination of hospital, home, and training center of injured veterans. Recovered men learned trades if they had no training before, or were now no longer able to pursue their profession. They learned all sorts of trades, from basic manufacturing to complex studies like law or theology. Ironically, a place dedicated to healing and helping veterans is now a war museum and Napoleanic shrine.
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Dec 28, 2015 10:05
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Virtually all British princes have the name "Arthur" buried somewhere in their list of names. Prince William, for instance, is William Arthur Philip Louis. However, not a single prince with the first name of Arthur has ever lived to take the throne.
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Jan 4, 2016 09:04
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Ichabod Sexbeast posted:That's because Marlowe didn't write any of his won plays - he was too busy writing Shakespeare's! So who wrote Marlowe's, you ask? Well, Shakespeare had a lot of time on his hands... The "Shakespeare didn't write Shakespeare" garbage started in the 19th C, when literary critics were dumbfounded that the son of a marginal glover in 16th C Avon could create poetry too difficult for most literary critics of their own day.
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Jan 6, 2016 17:26
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steinrokkan posted:Even nowadays people have trouble figuring out if their food is involved in deforestation, soil erosion or over-fishing in remote regions, how were buyers in antiquity supposed to know if some farmers God knows where were over-grazing their pastures / ruining their soil with unsustainable farming methods. People can be pretty provincial, not knowing or caring what's happening a few miles away. They aren't thinking that they're maybe killing the last auroch or miniver; they're just thinking what it will get them. Plants are especially tricky, because they require specific soil types, water, etc. We really haven't domesticated all that many foodstuffs, and there are many plants that require such controlled environments that they can never be domesticated. Consider Sequoias, which need a very specific climate to thrive. They can be planted elsewhere, but won't necessarily survive. A high-minded forester who transferred a bunch of seedlings to 1890s Wisconsin in hope of spreading them across country would probably find himself with an expensive field of sticks.
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Jan 16, 2016 12:29
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Tasteful Dickpic posted:Nah, it was the Lorax. I talk to the trees, but they don't listen to me.
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Jan 16, 2016 12:30
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A White Guy posted:I hate to say just how wrong this is. We have strong archeological evidence about just how much land changes when humanity began to spread out. It's less about extinction-level events and more about just how man's influencing of Nature has radically changed ecosystems. Even the Native Americans, who Europeans romanticized into this 'noble savage', tremendously altered the landscape of North America before the Europeans showed up. In many areas of the continent, the prevalence of many species (such as California's iconic oak woodlands) is due largely to historical burning by Native Americans. The monstrous bison herds that used to roam the plains of middle America? We're very certain that a large part of their prevalence was due to Native American meddling, both through burning and through culling of the herd (by killing the sickest and weakest bison). For a good example of 'noble savages who live in perfect harmony with the world', look no further than Easter Island/Rapa Nui.
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Jan 22, 2016 08:21
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Say Nothing posted:Fun fact: Thrax was supposedly 8'6" tall. Maximinus Thrax is a seriously metal name.  It sounds like it should belong to a Nazgul or dragon lord or something.
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Jan 26, 2016 20:34
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Funzo posted:Finally, a subject I know about! Real knight's swords--actually all European ones--are amazingly lightweight. How light? 2-3 pounds/1-1.3 kilos. A good swordsmith can create a weapon that works so well with your shoulder and arm that it simply feels like an extension of yourself. If the sword is too heavy, you'll tire out too quickly. If it doesn't really fit you, you'll put more work into it than you would if it was properly balanced for you and tire, though not quite as fast.
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Feb 29, 2016 08:43
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hard counter posted:Only a wiki source, but this was the particular maker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulfberht_swords in the documentary iirc. You mean the Ingelrii swords? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingelrii
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Feb 29, 2016 08:45
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Sucrose posted:They'd literally beat children in school in Wales if caught speaking Welsh. Same thing, but worse, happened in those infamous Indian boarding schools in the US and Canada. Corporal punishment in schools in that era was ubiquitous, and children were beaten until they became terrified of speaking their native languages. The opposite is true today for Indian schools. Sherman Indian High School in Riverside, CA, teaches the students native crafts and instructs them in their languages. Kids like it because it's a boarding school that gets them out of their often violent, tragic homes on the Rez. To become Miss Sherman IHS, girls have to make and wear traditional clothes and perform one of their rituals or tasks.
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Mar 3, 2016 07:07
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Doccers posted:Mainly because until very recently, we couldn't. We only really "Discovered" the secret of Roman cement in the mid 1980's by accident when building a dam that just happened to use a Fly ash filler and new placement techniques, and didn't really solidify what we'd done until 2013. Let's face it: We're gonna find Roman ruins on Mars.
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Mar 16, 2016 07:08
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Nth Doctor posted:I just realized that Charles II's first wife, Marie Louise of Orleans... was also a descendant of Joanna and Phillip I of Castile. Her great grandparents on her father's side were Philip III of Spain and Margaret of Austria, making her and Charles II first cousins once removed. Marie-Louise was the niece of Louis XIV. She didn't want to go, but naturally had no choice. Her life there was a living Hell. Her French-speaking parrot was strangled, her maids tortured, her every move watched by people who hated her for being French. When there were no children, her life went from bad to worse. She collapsed one day, with stomach pain, giving her love to the king before she passed. She was 26. The French court assumed she'd been poisoned; doctors seem to have claimed 'appendicitis'. Wikipedia sugarcoats her time as queen, but here it is anyway. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Louise_of_Orl%C3%A9ans_(1662%E2%80%931689)
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Mar 29, 2016 09:13
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Who's the greatest racehorse of all time? Secretariat? Man o' War? The Australian superhorse Phar Lap? Nope. It's Eclipse. Eclipse was an undefeated 18th century superstar, so thoroughly dominating the track that he was forced into retirement when no one would run against him. He frequently won by margins of 10-20 furlongs. A furlong, for those who are not into racing, is 1/8 mile/201.1m. These were tough, grueling races set at 3 miles and more. The cry from the track as he galloped home was usually "Eclipse first, the rest--nowhere!" Where he really made an impact was in breeding. It's estimated that 95% of all modern thoroughbreds are descended from him. He also passed on something else: the so-called 'X Factor'. This shows up in outstanding, fast horses who completely dominate their racing contemporaries. The surest sign of this can only be found after death. Horses who have the X Factor have enormous hearts, usually 40% or more larger than normal. Eclipse had this, as did Man o'war, Secretariat, and yes, Phar Lap. Phar Lap's great heart can be seen at the National Museum of Australia. Eclipse's skeleton is at the Royal Veterinary College. One other odd fact: All of these great horses were bright red chestnuts, a color that people deliberately bred away from because they were considered too 'flighty' to make good mounts.
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Apr 5, 2016 01:34
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Mr Havafap posted:I don't? A Marriage Bann is a proclamation to the church parish or community at large. Usually they are proclaimed or published in a church newsletter a couple of times before the actual wedding. The idea is to allow someone to present a legal or canonical objection to the marriage. Things like, the groom already has five wives in different villages, the bride doesn't want to get married, the groom isn't the right sect and hasn't consented to the wedding, the bride is really a nun who ran away with the cute gardener, there's a question about the mental state of one of the parties. My late MIL raised the mental question to prevent our marriage, taking it all the way to the bishop. Fortunately Father Joe, my parish priest, liked discussing history with me so he could vouch for my sanity and clear me for marriage.
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May 23, 2016 08:20
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Here's something interesting: The world's oldest dam. http://www.hydriaproject.net/en/egypt-sadd-al-kafara-dam/relevance9 It was built at the same time as the Giza pyramids, ie 2600-2800BC. It was some 111 m wide and 14m high. The website has a great animation about the building and subsequent collapse of the dam.
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May 23, 2016 08:23
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dobbymoodge posted:You can't drop that kind of info without linking to the Ask/Tell thread about it. It raises so many more questions than it helps to answer. There's an Ask/tell thread about getting married in the Catholic Church?
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May 30, 2016 09:06
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Canemacar posted:Churchill was probably history's most quotable man after Mark Twain. I suspect a certain Mr Shakespeare owns that position.
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Jun 13, 2016 09:14
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Just a few miles from the battle of Little Big Horn, scientists were digging up dinosaurs. They traded peacefully with Indians, even hiring them on as scouts for bones.
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Jun 29, 2016 06:12
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Everyone knows the California Gold Rush started in 1848 at Sutter's Mill. This was the first discovery of gold in California, Nope. It was first found in the area known as Castaic in the 1820s, when miners panned out some gold. Rumors about gold in Alta California persisted through the 1830s. But what really set things in motion was the discovery at what is now called "The Oak of the Golden Dream". In 1842, Francisco Lopez was herding cattle when he and his companions stopped for a break. As he slept under the tree, Lopez dreamt he was floating on a river of gold. When he awoke, he went to dig some wild onions at the base of a sycamore. Clinging to the roots were gold nuggets. Lopez brought them to be assayed, and eventually learned they were .926 pure, worth $19/oz. Lopez wasn't stupid. Since it was on his niece's ranchero, he knew he had a solid claim. So he petitioned the governor for the right to mine the gold. The petition was granted, and Lopez went to work. Placerita Canyon eventually yielded some 125 pounds of gold, most of which went to Mexico. Today the oak is lovingly tended in its own park near Santa Clarita, some 50 miles northeast of LA. It's not too far from another California gold rush--the placerita canyon oil fields. http://www.scvhistory.com/scvhistory/signal/coins/worden-coinage1005.htm
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Jul 3, 2016 14:21
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Christmas Present posted:I can't remember the context so this may be apocryphal, but I remember learning that in skirmishes with early German jet aircraft, Allied planes would make great use of their ability to actually be able to fly slowly, an ability the Nazis' air-hungry jet engines didn't have. The Nazi jet fighter, the Messerschmidt 262, didn't see active service until 1944. The Heinkel Spatz, the other jet fighter, saw only very limited service at the end of the war. Kennel posted:There's several instances of fighter pilots taking out enemy aircraft by destroying their tail with propeller after running out of ammo. Some WWI pilots claimed you could do this. The speed of the planes make it right on the edge of possible, but unlikely. It really isn't something you want to try, even as a desperation move. With no parachute, you'd be committing suicide. By WWII the planes were far too fast to attempt this. Basically, you don't want your plane hitting another plane midair, no matter how cool it looks in the movies.
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Jul 23, 2016 10:23
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A White Guy posted:Subsistence economies work in a different way than capitalist ones, and villages (with some exceptions, like the HRE) primarily functioned as subsistence economies. The goal in a subsistence economy is to survive, and increase your moral economy with your neighbors. So, say your neighbors have a bad harvest and you pitch them grain, so that in the future, you can go down the road and ask your neighbors for help because that one time you did the same thing. They were more 'agrarian' than 'subsistence'. When you're dealing with the pre-Industrial world, comparing valuation is like comparing apples to fish. It changed drastically over time and place, but we can compare them to themselves according to what they said about it. The very poorest, serfs, were essentially slaves bound to the land. Freemen owned their house and some of their land; the produce of some of that land was given to the local power that be. A tenth went to the Church (tithe). When serfdom was abolished in much of Europe, the very poorest now were those who had no animals and had to spin, weave and make their own clothing, thus the term 'homespun'. It was a term of derision, not warmth like it is today. There was a middle class, though they didn't call it that. Merchants, traders, guildsmen could be very wealthy, wealthier even than the local PTB. This is why we see 'sumptuary laws', fining people for dressing above their station. While technically peasants, they were a far cry from the average goat farmer. They might be called city or town folk to distinguish them from the general laborer, or by their trade to show they were skilled, literate and probably fairly well-off. Remember that 'La Gioncada'--the Mona Lisa--is a portrait of a merchant's wife.
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Aug 6, 2016 06:46
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System Metternich posted:Oh poo poo, has this thread turned historical too now? Let's remedy that: They must apply this at Herculaneum, where there's an entire Roman library waiting to be read.
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Sep 23, 2016 08:26
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Snapchat A Titty posted:Pretty cool they reconstructed it though. There's a standing Roman aqueduct in Segovia, Spain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqueduct_of_Segovia They take pretty good care of it. It brought the city water until well into the 19th C.
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Oct 2, 2016 11:56
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Snapchat A Titty posted:Came across this at the archives the other day. It's a 1526 legal document, I guess the ink was poisonous to whatever was eating the paper? Maybe contained lead? More likely it wasn't stored properly. Most paper contains acids of some kind. If they're kept in acid free (archival) paper,. they are OK. This was probably put in a box, book or chest that contained the right chemicals to eat the paper. Stabilizing and de-acidifying paper is a real art. Major museums usually have an expert who can do it.
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Oct 22, 2016 11:45
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It's 1667, and the most popular medical method is bleeding, where blood is drained from the patient. In spite of this, people survived. But when a patient lost too much blood, what could you do? The idea of transfusing blood was current, discussed by both French and English doctors. English tests showed that dog-to-dog transfusion worked. But what about people? The French doctor Jean-Baptiste Denys wanted to try. Human-to-human was out of the question--the donor invariably died. So a different donor was needed, one whose death would cause no problems for anyone. After considering a few different animals, Denys settled on a sheep. Now all he needed was a patient. He soon found one--a 15 year old who, ironically, had been so heavily bled by his own doctor that he needed more blood. Denys hooked the boy to a lamb and stood back. The boy lived. For the next 11 years, doctors practiced transfusing blood. However, the results were so unpredictable, and so often fatal, that the prestigious Paris Society of Physicians banned it. It wouldn't be until 1795 that a Philadelphia doctor, Philp Syng Physick, would perform the first human -to-human transfusion.
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Oct 27, 2016 01:46
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:I have heard this story too! I think it's the guy who painted a bunch of english ladies with bulbous eggy heads. I think it's at least documented that Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette's husband, had never seen female genitalia before marrying her and found it horrifying. His name was John Ruskin. He was one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelites. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ruskin
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Nov 1, 2016 06:47
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Tasteful Dickpic posted:It may not be how the disgusting 3D females look like, but my perfect waifu will have an egg-shaped head and no pubic hair! Roman men shaped their pubic hair into neat curls. This was thought to be purely artistic convention, until it was seen on some of the bodies at Pompeii.
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Nov 1, 2016 11:26
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In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it was popularly believed that a young bride's first pregnancy was much shorter than subsequent ones. At the same time, 17th C French sex and medical manuals were amazingly frank and correct about many things. They not only knew where the clitoris was, but what it was for. They described it as a 'male member in miniature'. Stimulation was needed for proper 'fulfillment' of the woman, and an orgasm was necessary for conception to occur. In a world with a horrendous child mortality rate, one where your only hope for security in your old age was your family, contraception was not something to be desired.
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Nov 4, 2016 16:31
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Powaqoatse posted:I dunno that it was popular knowledge that women had shorter pregnancies with their first born children, but there's no doubt that the first birth was usually 7-8 months after the marriage. I've heard of people making the "amusing observation" that first pregnancies are shorter, but not any actual text on it. Uni lecture, sadly enough. But there's enough sly references to 'early arrivals' in letters from the time that it may have been a popular way of preserving the girl's honor. Not his, of course.
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Nov 6, 2016 10:34
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Primi Visconti was an Italian soothsayer, fortune-teller, and all around mystic. In 1673 he made his way to Paris, where he hoped to get in with the Royal court. A friend introduced him to Louis XIV while the king was strolling around the garden. Louis, who was in a playful mood, said, "All right, Visconti, tell me what's happening in 15 minutes, or I'll have your head." Visconti replied, "Sire, 15 minutes from now I'll still have my head." Louis broke out laughing; he loved quick wits and people who weren't afraid to use them around him. From that point onward, Visconti was a fixture at his court.
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Nov 7, 2016 21:28
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steinrokkan posted:I don't think it would be possible to ride a horse like that without something to hold you up there. Riding aside will really work you out, yes. I showed sidesaddle for years. Once you learn how to properly balance and sit, you're fine. I had mine rebuilt from a relic from 1880s Oklahoma "Indian Territory" model. It had a single horn, the upper one, which most people will tell you is dangerous. I was a dumb kid and didn't know any better, so I was OK. Adults who knew what they were doing were panicked by the idea. Years later a horse trainer friend had trouble with it, even though she'd trained world champions. I kept and rode with mine in costume classes for years, until it was stolen, probably by my junkie ex-niece. Stole my silver -trimmed Western show saddle, coin collection, and some tools, too, the bitch.
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Nov 26, 2016 08:54
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learnincurve posted:The main industry is in Ireland, the UK and France (but I don't know how their industry works). You have your hardy outdoor cobs, those are bred for hacking, and specifically for meat. These horses might never be in a stable. Then you have your pretty dainty clippy cloppy horses for racing or showing and whatnot. 99% of them end up at the knackers yard and then on to the food chain no matter how expensive and pure-bred they are because, have you ever had to try and dispose of a dead horse? Last time it cost $350 to the renderers who handle dead animals, and $100 to the county just because. In some places you can bury them, but in most of So Cal that's not allowed. I knew where a few have been buried, but the law's changed since then. Special racehorses may be buried intact, but if they're going to bury them it's usually just the head, heart & hooves that go into the ground. Yes, there's places that cremate them, and you get an enormous urn that's going to be one helluva conversation piece for years to come.
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Nov 26, 2016 12:16
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Let's step away from the table for a moment, shall we? When Elizabethan theatres are excavated, they usually find the shattered remains of ceramic boxes. The boxes had an opening like a piggy bank, but there was no way to get the coins out. What the theatre managers did was wait until the performance ended, then go into a back room with the principal parties and smash the box. The coins would be counted and properly divvied up. The name of that little room has survived to this day. It's called--box office.
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Nov 27, 2016 12:03
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Wheat Loaf posted:Scorched earth goes all the way back to the end of the Punic Wars, when the Romans sowed the fields in Carthage with salt after they defeated them. Pharaoh Horemheb, who took the throne a few years after Tutankhamun's death, ordered the destruction of all temples dedicated to the Aten, the sole god whose prominence was created by Tutankhamen's father, Pharaoh Akhenaten. He also ordered the destruction of Akhetaten, Akhenaten's new capitol city. Blocks from the Aten temple at Thebes were used to stuff the interior of walls for other temples. Recycling cut stone was the norm. Some of these resurfaced during excavations in the 1960s. The blocks, called talatat because of their size, were photographed and entered into a database. To this day they have been recreating, photographically, the temple they once decorated. The city was not so lucky, or rather none of the recycled stone has been found. It was mostly of mud brick, though, so once the protective roof was gone the buildings would be vulnerable. Still, it's clear from excavations and ongoing work that the city, now known as Amarna, was pretty thoroughly destroyed. As this was ca 1320 BC, it's clear the idea of leveling a city is, yes, very old indeed.
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Dec 4, 2016 11:33
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