|
The royal palace in Hawaii had electric lighting four years before the White House and more than a decade before Buckingham Palace. The Hawaiian king Kalakaua spent a lot of his reign traveling the world - he was the first head of state to circumnavigate the world, and the first foreign leader to meet with a Japanese emperor. On his world tour, he met Thomas Edison and saw a demonstration of electric lightbulbs, and was so impressed he made it a priority to have them installed when the palace was next renovated.
|
#
¿
Nov 14, 2015 11:36
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 17:46 |
|
|
Humboldt Squid posted:In Jefferson's case it was more not having a sense of deep time mixed with pride. He found mastodon fossils at montecello and hoped to find living examples to disprove the idea that new world animals were just "degraded" versions of old word animals Specifically, he was involved in a decades-long argument with the French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, who'd argued that the American climate caused the long term physical and mental degradation of animals and people that migrated there. Apparently, Leclerc believed the Americas only received enough sunlight to sustain 'cold men and feeble animals'. Leclerc, it should be noted, never visited the Americas, but didn't see that as any reason not to pass judgement on the entire hemisphere as innately inferior. Needless to say, Jefferson wasn't going to take that lying down, and thus developed something of an obsession with showing the world that America could too support powerful animals. His first attempt was something of a failure - he attempted to send a stuffed moose across the Atlantic to show those eggheads in France what a big American animal looked like, but the antlers apparently went missing in transit, and the rest of the specimen didn't arrive in particularly good shape. Not to let that stop him, Jefferson then decided to focus on the biggest American animal he knew of, and started collecting mammoth bones, and advised Louis and Clark to keep an eye out for them in the west. He also set up a 'Bone Committee' dedicated to trying to get a complete skeleton of a mammoth, and kept his various specimens in the White House while president, making assembling them something of a hobby.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 16, 2016 08:35
|
|
|
xthetenth posted:I've heard at least one story of one of these guys basically responding with "Oh god please don't do that to me". Yeah, that'd be poor Gordian I, Emperor number 2 in the Year of the Six Emperors. (Not to be confused with the earlier Year of the Four Emperors or the Year of the Five Emperors.) Gordian was an elderly senator who'd made it to the top of his career and become governor of the province of Africa (modern Tunisia and Libya.) Unfortunately, he didn't exactly get that quiet retirement. The emperor at the time was Maximinus Thrax, a general who'd become emperor after his soldiers murdered his predecessor. Obviously, he wasn't exactly the most popular leader, and three years into his reign, several rebellions broke out against him. The rebels in Africa named Gordian as their leader. According to Gibbon, Gordian begged the rebels to leave him alone and tried to convince them he was too old, but in the end was forced to agree. Probably he realized he was a dead man either way - Maximinus wasn't going to forget about him even if he had convinced the rebels to leave him alone. He named his son, Gordian II, as co-emperor - dude was in his late seventies and knew he wasn't going to be around much longer - and sent a message to the senate letting them know what the hell was going on. Unfortunately, his son died in battle less than a month later against Maximinus' loyalists, and poor old Gordian took his own life when he heard the news. Meanwhile, back in Rome, the senate's in a bit of a panic. They'd recognized Gordian and Gordian as Emperor and thrown their support behind the rebellion against Maximinus, and can't really gracefully back out now just because their emperors are dead. They decide the only solution is more emperors! Enter Pupienus and Balbinus, emperors 4 and 5 of the year! Now, we don't know much about either of these guys, but they were both senators on the committee that was coordinating the war against Maximinus. The senate picks them as the new emperors, and they get to work dealing with Emperor number 1, who's still marching back to Rome with an army at his back and a grudge against pretty much everyone at this point. Problem is, the people of Rome at this point are wondering "Who the hell are Pupienus and Balbinus, and why are they suddenly co-emperors? Can the senate really pick two of their own to rule?" In the end, P&B have to compromise, and name Gordian's grandson, Gordian III as yet another emperor, bringing the total to three emperors in Rome, one rival emperor, and two dead. In the end, things are resolved in a typically Roman way. Maximinus's army get sick of besieging Rome, and when supplies start to run short, kill him and his son and accept P. B. and G. as emperors. Unfortunately, in the meantime, Pupienus and Balbinus have had a falling out, become paranoid that each is trying to kill the other, leading to wacky sit-com hi-jinks as they set up camp at opposite ends of the imperial palace. Eventually the Praetorian Guard get sick of them both and have them killed, leaving the thirteen year old Gordian III as last emperor standing. Gordian III will last less than six years before dying himself in battle against the Persians, and, needless to say, none of this did anything to improve the stability of the empire. Did I mention that though this is the 'Year' of six emperors, all of this, from Gordian I's rise to power until P&B's murders, was barely four months?
|
|
#
¿
Jan 25, 2016 13:19
|
|
|
FreudianSlippers posted:Most of them settled in the Ottoman empire where they had to pay a special tax, like all non-Muslims, but were protected under the law from persecution. The Ottomans even had a military regiment in the fifteenth century, the "Sons of Moses", comprised of Jews expelled from Christian kingdoms who fought for the Sultan during the Ottoman's Balkan invasions.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 3, 2016 05:48
|
|
|
SeanBeansShako posted:Shaka's rise, creation of the Zulu Kingdom as a military power and brief reign was before Napoleon's rise to power and outlived Napoleonic France under Napoleon for two more decades. Coincidentally, Napoleon's grandnephew, Eugene Bonaparte (styled Napoleon IV by Bonapartists) would end up dying at the hands of Zulus during the Anglo-Zulu war.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 2, 2016 14:06
|
|
|
System Metternich 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.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 20, 2016 09:09
|
|
|
Wheat Loaf posted:I heard once that the CIA also authorised a scheme to make Castro's beard fall out because they hoped it would make him look less distinguished. They also had a plan to dose him with LSD before a speech.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 26, 2016 14:39
|
|
|
Wheat Loaf posted:Reading the Wikipedia page on people who disappeared mysteriously, it's clear there's two kinds of disappearances: there's people who were kidnapped, or murdered and their remains never recovered, and those are very tragic examples; the other kind is stuff like this man: One example is Romulus Augustus, popularly considered the last Roman Emperor in the west. He was overthrown by the German warlord Odacer, but according to several histories, Odacer spared him and let him go into exile in southern Italy. After that... we have an ambiguous letter thirty years later that may refer to him, but that's all. No idea when he died, where he died, or what he did with the rest of his life. Constantine XI, last Emperor in the east also met an ambiguous fate. He almost certainly died during the fall of Constantinople, but nobody witnessed it, and no body was ever recovered. You would think that keeping track of the Roman Emperor would not be such a challenge...
|
|
#
¿
Dec 9, 2016 13:51
|
|
|
FreudianSlippers posted:The Queen is still Duke of Normandy. Even though it's centuries since the English had any lands there. Technically, the Channel Islands were part of the Duchy of Normandy, and remain under British rule - that's why they're legally Crown Dependencies, not part of the United Kingdom.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 11, 2016 06:41
|
|
|
Safety Biscuits posted:Regarding Phantom Time/New Chronology, the idea that people were multiplying and distorting an accurate history isn't, actually, impossible (although yes these two are insane and stupid.) One historian has concluded that Khmer chronicles written circa 1800 describe the time after the fall of Angkor, about 1430-1580, but it's basically totally fictional. The historians felt they had to write something, but didn't have any traditions about this period and were imitating Thai culture. There's also the case of Pope John XX - to wit, there wasn't one, even though there's a Pope John XXI. Basically, medieval records listed Pope John XIV twice, listing both the period he was in power and the period of his reign he spent imprisoned by one of his rivals. A few centuries later, people got confused, thought the second listing was referring to another Pope John, and so Pope John XXI skipped XX to 'correct' the numbering. There's also the case of would-be Pope Stephen II, who died three days after being elected, before he could be officially consecrated. It's thus an issue of debate as to whether he should be counted as a Pope, and there's still a lack of consensus over the numbering of later Stephens. It's pretty easy for little errors to take root in official histories over time, especially in eras with poor or inconsistent records.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 22, 2017 06:52
|
|
|
No, no, that's totally true. That's why all of Germany's other allies were also excluded from NATO, it was just completely unacceptable for the west to work with Italy, West Germany or Spain in the post-war years...
|
|
#
¿
Jun 10, 2017 09:30
|
|
|
System Metternich posted:Both sides blaring music and propaganda speeches at each other in Berlin during an increasingly escalating battle of who had the biggest loudspeakers I believe the same thing happens today along the Korean DMZ.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 6, 2018 04:08
|
|
|
Platystemon posted:But The Prophet, P.B.U.H., loved cats and once cut off the sleeve of his robe so as not to disturb a slumbering kitty. One of Muhammad's companions was so well known for his love of cats that his nickname was 'Abu Hurayrah', 'the father of kittens'. His actual name is subject to dispute... so a fair number of the hadith (accounts) of the Prophet's words and actions are essentially attributed to "You know, that guy with all the cats!"
|
|
#
¿
Mar 22, 2018 08:12
|
|
|
Meanwhile, Charles de Talleyrand managed to stay on as foreign minister all the way through the Revolution, the Directorate, Napoleon, the Restoration, and the 1830 Revolution. Dude had an insane talent for switching sides just at the right time to end up on the winning side.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 29, 2018 09:56
|
|
|
Red Bones posted:There's a very large (iirc) Assyrian or Babylonian frieze in the Bristol Museum of these big winged human figures with script carved over them, and the script is carved to not cover up the wings of the figures apart from one, where the script just goes straight over the wings. It always makes me laugh thinking about some stonemason 3,000 years ago leaving his apprentice to do the last carving while he goes to lunch, and then coming back to find out the kid hosed it up and that there's no time to redo it. Ankor Wat was converted from a Hindu temple to a Buddhist one during the twelfth century, and there are sections with hundreds of little images of Vishnu that have been re-carved into Buddhas. And it really amused me that the ones in the middle of the walls are done really well; you'd never know they were every anything else. But then there's the ones in the corners and high up, that aren't really the focus, that are really half-assed, and in some places there's still a few Vishnus that weren't replaced at all. You can just imagine some Khmer artisan growing increasingly sick of the work and just wanting to get it done, and thinking to themselves "The main ones are done, in a hundred years, who's going to care if I slack off on these other ones?"
|
|
#
¿
Jun 12, 2019 08:30
|
|
|
There were also the Ghilman who were a similar class of slave-soldiers, first employed by the Abassid Caliphs, and ended up being a major factor in their decline after they started playing politics and becoming kingmakers in Samara. They would later be employed rather more successfully by the Persians, who were generally able to prevent them from achieving political power. I'm not sure if there are any examples of this sort of elite military slave caste existing outside of the Islamic world.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 23, 2020 10:10
|
|
|
Alhazred posted:One king that definitely needed a personal guard was king Zog of Albania. He became king in 1928 and by the end of his reign he had survived 600 bloodfeuds and 55 assassination attempts. At one point he even drew out his own gun and fired back at his would-be assassins. Sounds like he got along fine without a personal guard. 
|
|
#
¿
Mar 27, 2020 01:25
|
|
|
So were the kings of Poland and, later, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. One early modern Polish Chancellor defined the state as "A republic under the presidency of the King". The noble population in Poland was high enough that at times, more than 10% of the population were eligible to vote for the king and sit in the parliament - not bad for a pre-modern state. There are also a few records of nobles complaining that records weren't being kept properly and basically anyone who put a little effort into it could claim to be a noble and there wasn't a lot that could be done about it... It did start to fall apart when the parliament went from requiring majority votes to requiring unanimous votes, and any dickhead with a grudge - or in the pay of a foreign power - could hold up legislation and budgets.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 24, 2020 13:50
|
|
|
Milo and POTUS posted:This is an extremely common archetype btw. I think Fred Barbarossa is the same. I have no clue if it's a European thing, a greater PIE myth or just plain universal among all people or what but there are definitely a bunch of them There's a few of them outside of Europe - in Peru, there's a legend that the head of the last Inca king was taken to safety after the Spanish executed him, and that he will return once he regrows his body. There's also the Shi'a Muslim belief that the last Imam is still alive but concealed from the world, and will return at the end of days to bring justice to the world.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 24, 2020 15:19
|
|
|
The heir to House Habsburg is a race car driver, so at least he provides some entertainment value.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 10, 2020 18:20
|
|
|
Chamale posted:(The Romans only salted the earth around Carthage symbolically, right?) There’s no evidence they did it even symbolically - no classical sources mention it, the oldest known reference to salting Carthage is medieval.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 12, 2020 17:44
|
|
|
Sobatchja Morda posted:To contribute to this thread, the existence of Dutch Brazil always fascinates me. For context, the Dutch never made any real efforts to claim a part of South America outside of this. ...Surinam?
|
|
#
¿
Sep 1, 2020 09:27
|
|
|
canyoneer posted:Handshake meme with the Irish, French, Scottish, and Americans Hating the English is something that can bring the whole world together.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 14, 2020 07:13
|
|
|
Sucrose posted:We usually think of it as a bad thing, but I wonder if morbid fascination with death and especially violent death comes at least in part from a basic impulse to identify threats. Supposedly even crows will gather around and show a fascination with dead crows, and animal researchers theorize that they do this in order to observe how the other crow died and learn to avoid it. So would you say they conduct a... murder investigation? 
|
|
#
¿
Feb 1, 2021 12:05
|
|
|
I mean, it's not like there's a particularly good taxonomic definition of fish either.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 15, 2021 16:14
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 17:46 |
|
|
Australia has the city of Townsville. It's not technically a tautology, being named after its founder, Robert Towns, but it doesn't stop it sounding stupid.
|
|
#
¿
May 17, 2022 13:38
|
|