When George Washington called for volunteers for the Continental Army in 1782, 23-year-old Deborah Sampson dressed as a man and enlisted in the 4th Massachusetts Regiment, giving the name Robert Shurtleff.
She served for 17 months, eating and sleeping with the troops and fighting in several battles in New York -- she received a sword wound to the head and a bullet in the thigh which removed herself with a penknife.
A doctor discovered her identity when she was hospitalized with fever in summer 1783, but he kept her secret and she was discharged honorably shortly after the Treaty of Paris was signed in September. The government awarded her a pension for her service and extended one to her husband as well, declaring that the Revolutionary War "furnishes no other similar example of female heroism, fidelity, and courage."
It was quickly forgotten. In 1861 Confederate general Richard Ewell remarked, "Women would make a grand brigade -- if it was not for snakes and spiders! They don't mind bullets -- women are not afraid of bullets; but one big black-snake would put a whole army to flight."
0
KwoaruConfident SmirkFlawless Golden PecsRegistered Userregular
Lyudmila Mykhailivna Pavlichenko (July 12, 1916 – October 10, 1974) was a Soviet sniper during World War II. Credited with 309 kills, she is regarded as the most successful female sniper in history.
+3
KwoaruConfident SmirkFlawless Golden PecsRegistered Userregular
Kindergartners recount Rosa Parks' story, from Vivian Paley's 1981 collection Wally's Stories:
Wally: My mom said Martin Luther King was smart and he decided about having white people to sit in the front and black people in the back. Wait! That was what they decided. And then he decided to throw off that sign and so you could sit anywhere.
Eddie: You forgot to say about Rosa Parks. See, she came on the bus and gave the bus driver some money and she sat in the chair and the bus driver said, "No, you're not white." And she said, "I don't care. I want to sit because I'm tired and also I gave you a dime." Was it a dime or a nickel?
Tanya: Maybe a quarter.
Eddie: Maybe a dime. So she said, "I'm not going to leave." So they put her in jail.
Wally: Now you can sit wherever you want. Also Martin wasn't allowed to go to any water fountain or any bathroom and he also had to have only a black grocery-store man to pay. He was separated. My mom knows all about that. She even used to be separated. ...
Jill: That reminds me. Why do we have to always sit at the same lunch table?
Teacher: What would you rather do?
Jill: Sit anywhere we want. That's more fair.
Teacher: That might become confusing. Most people would rather know exactly where they sit, Jill.
Deana: I don't would rather know.
Eddie: Me neither.
Teacher: How does everyone else feel about this? [There is unanimous approval.] Well, then, it's okay with me.
So starting uni again, so reading as many books as you can count. Since part of my curriculum is about British culture, I decided to read through the Irish potato famine.
I, never knew that it was that bad and the worst fact was that during the famine, the irish had to export a large amount of their own crops (corn, beef, etc) to England while everything went to hell.
"The Almighty, indeed, sent the potato blight, but the English created the Famine." John Mitchell Being badass during the "greatest" period of the English empire.
And this legend (if true, everything about 19th century England must be crazy): "According to legend, in 1845, Ottoman Sultan Abdülmecid declared his intention to send £10,000 to Irish farmers but Queen Victoria requested that the Sultan send only £1,000, because she herself had sent only £2,000. The Sultan sent the £1,000 sterling but also sent three ships full of food. According to Abdullah Aymaz in an article in The Fountain magazine, the British administration tried to block the ships, but the food arrived secretly at Drogheda harbour and was left there by Ottoman sailors. Uncertainty remains regarding the story as shipping records relating to the port at this time appear not to have survived."
I am going to make a rare exception to my rule of avoiding gendered insults:
My God, what a fucking bitch.
+6
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
So starting uni again, so reading as many books as you can count. Since part of my curriculum is about British culture, I decided to read through the Irish potato famine.
I, never knew that it was that bad and the worst fact was that during the famine, the irish had to export a large amount of their own crops (corn, beef, etc) to England while everything went to hell.
"The Almighty, indeed, sent the potato blight, but the English created the Famine." John Mitchell Being badass during the "greatest" period of the English empire.
And this legend (if true, everything about 19th century England must be crazy): "According to legend, in 1845, Ottoman Sultan Abdülmecid declared his intention to send £10,000 to Irish farmers but Queen Victoria requested that the Sultan send only £1,000, because she herself had sent only £2,000. The Sultan sent the £1,000 sterling but also sent three ships full of food. According to Abdullah Aymaz in an article in The Fountain magazine, the British administration tried to block the ships, but the food arrived secretly at Drogheda harbour and was left there by Ottoman sailors. Uncertainty remains regarding the story as shipping records relating to the port at this time appear not to have survived."
Oh yeah, the Irish potato famine is one of the better examples of the British being huge dicks. I took a pretty extensive course on Irish history of the last couple centuries in college, and man, the things I could say about the famine.
Essentially the way Irish agriculture was set up was you had a farm, which is where you went to go to work, owned by a wealthy Englishman, and then on your own plot of land (most likely owned by the same Englishman and rented to you), in addition to your one room hovel, you had a tiny little place to grow crops. Of course, there's not a lot you can grow in a small vegetable garden, and potatoes, at the end of the day, were cheap. So you grew potatoes.
What this leads to, of course, is going out for a ten hour day of work harvesting food for somebody else to make money off of in a country you have never been to, and then coming home to find that all of your potatoes are covered in a disgusting black mold and quietly starving to death.
0
PiptheFairFrequently not in boats.Registered Userregular
george washington was probably the luckiest human being that ever walked the planet
+1
FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
Yeah, Ireland was a net food exporter during the famine.
George Washington did not have wooden teeth. According to a study of Washington's four known dentures by a forensic anthropologist from the University of Pittsburgh (in collaboration with the National Museum of Dentistry, itself associated with the Smithsonian Museum), the dentures were made of gold, hippopotamus ivory, lead, and human and animal teeth (including horse and donkey teeth).[35]
honestly i would have preferred the teeth be wooden because at least it wouldn't be a nightmarish amalgam of horse teeth and gold inside a man's mouth
horse teeth are really big, how did they even fit
0
DepressperadoI just wanted to see you laughingin the pizza rainRegistered Userregular
linked at the bottom of that article is a laser that they use as a filament to transfer tons of power down and it's basically a lightning gun
also bullets that you steer with a laser sight
there has never been a better time to die horrendously
+2
KwoaruConfident SmirkFlawless Golden PecsRegistered Userregular
favlaud I dont think they were those things mixed, I think he had a set of dentures made of each of those things
one gold, one ivory, one lead, one creepy real teeth
0
DepressperadoI just wanted to see you laughingin the pizza rainRegistered Userregular
do you think you can transplant teeth?
like, rather than getting falsies you can get a tooth pulled and replaced with another tooth?
'cause getting fangs or something would be preeeetty sweet
0
DepressperadoI just wanted to see you laughingin the pizza rainRegistered Userregular
favlaud I dont think they were those things mixed, I think he had a set of dentures made of each of those things
one gold, one ivory, one lead, one creepy real teeth
"Hmmm. I've got a speech in public later today, they usually like me to appear human so I'd better wear the real teeth today - but then I'm going before Congress where I want to look rich, I'll bring the gold with me and swap them out on the ride there."
favlaud I dont think they were those things mixed, I think he had a set of dentures made of each of those things
one gold, one ivory, one lead, one creepy real teeth
no see i have this image of the teeth in my head now
like, the molars are from horses and donkeys so his mouth can't shut properly, and his incisors are lead so they look all weird but the gums are covered by gold so he's all grilled out
real human teeth peppered among the rest just for variety
You know why England didn't do more to help out during the Irish famine? Well it's complicated and there are many factors, but a big one was a belief in Lassez-faire economic philosophy. The tl;dr is that many believed the problem would correct itself through free market forces and it was wrong to manipulate it.
learning world history and being taught about laissez faire economics in school without ever having what 'market forces' or 'the unseen hand' really meant explained made it seem VERY silly and nonsensical
...which it is
Snork on
0
PiptheFairFrequently not in boats.Registered Userregular
You know why England didn't do more to help out during the Irish famine? Well it's complicated and there are many factors, but a big one was a belief in Lassez-faire economic philosophy. The tl;dr is that many believed the problem would correct itself through free market forces and it was wrong to manipulate it.
The more things change...
it's mostly because victoria fucking hated the irish
+2
Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
You know why England didn't do more to help out during the Irish famine? Well it's complicated and there are many factors, but a big one was a belief in Lassez-faire economic philosophy. The tl;dr is that many believed the problem would correct itself through free market forces and it was wrong to manipulate it.
The more things change...
it's mostly because victoria fucking hated the irish
It feels like Victoria hated most things that weren't Albert or played by Billy Connolly in a TV Film. Or maybe it's that documentary I watched about her relationship with her children.
Also do you know why she was crowned Empress of India? Her eldest daughter Vicky was married to the heir to the Prussian Throne, which after German Unification went from being a King to an Emperor, and she couldn't bare to be of subordinate rank to her daughter.
Also England got to have another colony go through a large famine and help make it much worse. The Indian famine of 1876-78. at least 5.5 million died, although estimates also go upto 28million.
Which wasn't helped by the British concern not for people dying but whether it was cost effective to help. Including cutting relief rations lest the Indians grow to depend on relief food (because that costs money).
Oh and while the famine was happening the British oversaw the export to England of a record 6.4 million hundredweight of wheat. Exporting food during a famine. what the hell!
0
MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
Even more Irish Famine dumbness:
A few Brits did have ideas for relief for people in Ireland; since it was considered bad to just give starving people food (because the market, and they'd be lazy, or something) they funded work projects so people could earn wages so they could eat.
Thing is, they couldn't have these masses of unskilled labor actually building something useful because that would be taking work out of the hands of skilled laborers, so they had projects like people building useless roads that went from one random point in the countryside to another random point in the countryside, and piers in swamps and so on. They were called famine follies.
the tragic (well, one of them) thing about the Great Indian Famine was that the British Raj had just recently dealt with a previous severe famine very successfully by deploying massive government relief and were well aware that it worked
Posts
Doesn't stop me from still liking the Lethal Weapon series.
It's sad to watch that series now and realise he probably wasn't faking being a fucking psychopath...
can you imagine mel gibson playing the villain in a Die Hard movie
Get Bruce Willis on the god damned phone.
She served for 17 months, eating and sleeping with the troops and fighting in several battles in New York -- she received a sword wound to the head and a bullet in the thigh which removed herself with a penknife.
A doctor discovered her identity when she was hospitalized with fever in summer 1783, but he kept her secret and she was discharged honorably shortly after the Treaty of Paris was signed in September. The government awarded her a pension for her service and extended one to her husband as well, declaring that the Revolutionary War "furnishes no other similar example of female heroism, fidelity, and courage."
It was quickly forgotten. In 1861 Confederate general Richard Ewell remarked, "Women would make a grand brigade -- if it was not for snakes and spiders! They don't mind bullets -- women are not afraid of bullets; but one big black-snake would put a whole army to flight."
Wally: My mom said Martin Luther King was smart and he decided about having white people to sit in the front and black people in the back. Wait! That was what they decided. And then he decided to throw off that sign and so you could sit anywhere.
Eddie: You forgot to say about Rosa Parks. See, she came on the bus and gave the bus driver some money and she sat in the chair and the bus driver said, "No, you're not white." And she said, "I don't care. I want to sit because I'm tired and also I gave you a dime." Was it a dime or a nickel?
Tanya: Maybe a quarter.
Eddie: Maybe a dime. So she said, "I'm not going to leave." So they put her in jail.
Wally: Now you can sit wherever you want. Also Martin wasn't allowed to go to any water fountain or any bathroom and he also had to have only a black grocery-store man to pay. He was separated. My mom knows all about that. She even used to be separated. ...
Jill: That reminds me. Why do we have to always sit at the same lunch table?
Teacher: What would you rather do?
Jill: Sit anywhere we want. That's more fair.
Teacher: That might become confusing. Most people would rather know exactly where they sit, Jill.
Deana: I don't would rather know.
Eddie: Me neither.
Teacher: How does everyone else feel about this? [There is unanimous approval.] Well, then, it's okay with me.
Jill: Free at last!
I am going to make a rare exception to my rule of avoiding gendered insults:
My God, what a fucking bitch.
Oh yeah, the Irish potato famine is one of the better examples of the British being huge dicks. I took a pretty extensive course on Irish history of the last couple centuries in college, and man, the things I could say about the famine.
Essentially the way Irish agriculture was set up was you had a farm, which is where you went to go to work, owned by a wealthy Englishman, and then on your own plot of land (most likely owned by the same Englishman and rented to you), in addition to your one room hovel, you had a tiny little place to grow crops. Of course, there's not a lot you can grow in a small vegetable garden, and potatoes, at the end of the day, were cheap. So you grew potatoes.
What this leads to, of course, is going out for a ten hour day of work harvesting food for somebody else to make money off of in a country you have never been to, and then coming home to find that all of your potatoes are covered in a disgusting black mold and quietly starving to death.
Steam Support is the worst. Seriously, the worst
Sweet. Now we need to see if they can trade out that with the 120mm cannon on the M1 Abrams. Laser tanks!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions
George Washington did not have wooden teeth. According to a study of Washington's four known dentures by a forensic anthropologist from the University of Pittsburgh (in collaboration with the National Museum of Dentistry, itself associated with the Smithsonian Museum), the dentures were made of gold, hippopotamus ivory, lead, and human and animal teeth (including horse and donkey teeth).[35]
honestly i would have preferred the teeth be wooden because at least it wouldn't be a nightmarish amalgam of horse teeth and gold inside a man's mouth
horse teeth are really big, how did they even fit
also bullets that you steer with a laser sight
there has never been a better time to die horrendously
one gold, one ivory, one lead, one creepy real teeth
like, rather than getting falsies you can get a tooth pulled and replaced with another tooth?
'cause getting fangs or something would be preeeetty sweet
and one of my molars can be the triggertooth
"Hmmm. I've got a speech in public later today, they usually like me to appear human so I'd better wear the real teeth today - but then I'm going before Congress where I want to look rich, I'll bring the gold with me and swap them out on the ride there."
dentures from real teeth is creepy as hell
no see i have this image of the teeth in my head now
like, the molars are from horses and donkeys so his mouth can't shut properly, and his incisors are lead so they look all weird but the gums are covered by gold so he's all grilled out
real human teeth peppered among the rest just for variety
The more things change...
...which it is
it's mostly because victoria fucking hated the irish
Man, did you even play Metal Gear Solid?
It feels like Victoria hated most things that weren't Albert or played by Billy Connolly in a TV Film. Or maybe it's that documentary I watched about her relationship with her children.
Also do you know why she was crowned Empress of India? Her eldest daughter Vicky was married to the heir to the Prussian Throne, which after German Unification went from being a King to an Emperor, and she couldn't bare to be of subordinate rank to her daughter.
Which wasn't helped by the British concern not for people dying but whether it was cost effective to help. Including cutting relief rations lest the Indians grow to depend on relief food (because that costs money).
Oh and while the famine was happening the British oversaw the export to England of a record 6.4 million hundredweight of wheat. Exporting food during a famine. what the hell!
A few Brits did have ideas for relief for people in Ireland; since it was considered bad to just give starving people food (because the market, and they'd be lazy, or something) they funded work projects so people could earn wages so they could eat.
Thing is, they couldn't have these masses of unskilled labor actually building something useful because that would be taking work out of the hands of skilled laborers, so they had projects like people building useless roads that went from one random point in the countryside to another random point in the countryside, and piers in swamps and so on. They were called famine follies.