For those of you who don't know, the Sea Peoples were......well we actually don't know a lot about them! They just show up one day and wreck Egypt. Nobody (alive) really knows where they came from, or why they suddenly invaded Egypt.
Some speculate they may be the result or cause of the Bronze Age collapse, which saw just about ever civilization in the Near East fall apart.
The Sea Peoples wrecked pretty much every group in the Eastern Mediterranean; Egypt was in bad shape, yeah, but the Hittites were done. Damn shame considering they pioneered iron working (well, so far. I was poking around and saw this in the footnotes, which pushes things back another five or six centuries).
Like an incorrigible egomaniac, the demise of the Roman Empire actually reminds me of something I used to tell every single one of my HIST 2112 undergraduates towards the end of the semester, just as we hit the 1990s (that nebulous period where history becomes political sciences and we're not really sure if students are old enough to remember 11 September 2001 that well).
Whatever you know about the collapse of the Soviet Union, and its transformation into the CIS, is wrong. Probably more than 99 times out of 100, this is a correct assumption, and it boils down to correcting two wrong notions: if one literally meant the collapse of the USSR as a nation, that was because of a refusal to use military means to enforce the Soviet constitution and the New Union Treaty referendum after the August Coup. The economic drag and pressure, while a factor, was much less influential than the August Coup, or the outcome 1990/1991 general elections.
If one instead meant when the USSR could not genuinely maintain its status in a bipolar world, resulting in a monopolar one, that happened some time before 1991, with the collapse of the Warsaw Pact (the so-called "Sinatra Doctrine"--aka "My Way") and the substantial reductions in military spending the country was compelled to make going into the mid 1980s. Some have argued even earlier. It goes hand in hand with Moscow willing to concede to Washington's position, somewhat dubiously (the Gorbachev-Baker 'agreement' that NATO would not expand to include unified Germany, then not into Poland, than not into etc.) Gorbachev should have known better.
In this regard, one nugget of knowledge--"Reagan beat Russia"--is actually not that incorrect, if you shape your question sufficiently. But everything else--that it was an economic collapse and not a political one, for example, tends to be way off base.
(Spoiled because it's a big detour, and because the end of the Western Roman Empire is a more interesting topic. Please continue on that.)
My foreign policy prof argued that Reagan's belligerence (and stuff like Able Archer) actually prolonged the Soviet Union by more or less forcing the fence-sitters in the Politiburo to give serious credence to Brezhnev (et al) who claimed that any sign of weakness would lead to an immediate NATO strike.
I don't know how accurate that is, I'm not an IR guy, but I found his argument somewhat compelling on its face.
Didn't hurt that one of my other profs was in the Romanian riots in '89 calling for Ceasceau's head and had the general demeanor of fuck Reagan
Oh yeah, Reagan gets way to much credit in the US for ending the cold war. That is to say any credit to Regan is misplaced is usually misplaced.
Remember Reagan was voted into office on a platform that said to ratchet up the cold war! His military build up unprecedented at the time and worrying because it was peace time. It was also mostly buying stuff the US military already had, like Nimitz class carriers, F-15 and M1 Tanks. The new weapons systems like the Minuteman MX missile had already finished their development. It was also acquired on a much shorter time scale then usual for such weapons buys. over 4 years instead of 10.
This gave the impression, not of someone trying to modernize their forces, but to build them up in preparation for war. Then Star Wars came along and the Kremlin became convinced that it was a trick to cover a preemtive strike. The Russians didn't believe that SDI could work, but they did believe that SDI "test" where the perfect cover for a sneak attack.
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
Ancient history is awesome and very interesting. There are battle plans and peace agreements, or copies of them, from this battle damn near 3000 years ago, that survive to this day. That's sort of mind-boggling. Will things we have now be around in 5545?
I'm really interested in American ancient history, but there isn't much that goes that far back. I guess there was a huge city in the Brazilian rainforest. It was discovered after a forest fire.
Ancient history is awesome and very interesting. There are battle plans and peace agreements, or copies of them, from this battle damn near 3000 years ago, that survive to this day. That's sort of mind-boggling. Will things we have now be around in 5545?
I'm really interested in American ancient history, but there isn't much that goes that far back. I guess there was a huge city in the Brazilian rainforest. It was discovered after a forest fire.
Ancient history is awesome and very interesting. There are battle plans and peace agreements, or copies of them, from this battle damn near 3000 years ago, that survive to this day. That's sort of mind-boggling. Will things we have now be around in 5545?
I'm really interested in American ancient history, but there isn't much that goes that far back. I guess there was a huge city in the Brazilian rainforest. It was discovered after a forest fire.
Something I always think is amazing is that our perception of all New World civilization is completely wrong. It doesn't account for how sprawling and busy the new world was, because a generation or so earlier plagues had knocked out something like 80-95% of the population and nature reclaimed everything.
A lot of the sprawling forests of North America that were inhabited by small numbers of natives living closely with the land? A couple hundred years earlier were actually cleared fields / meadows and carefully managed animals. Quite a bit of the native fauna was completely out of balance because populations of their predators had been wiped out by humans (or were humans) and hadn't rebounded.
Hell, I've heard that the vast herds of bison that define the untouched west were an abberation, and the populations would have crashed on their own if the white men hadn't slaughtered them so pointlessly.
I recall reading a decent sized article about how the ecosystems that we consider to be pure and unspoiled in North, Central, and South America were either carefully managed, or largely cleared and sprang back even before the conquistadors got around to exploring.
Don't underestimate how much of a role racism by the pioneers played, and still plays, in our perception of pre-Columbian American civilizations. I mean, we're talking about pioneers who found burial mounds (from the outside looking just like big piles of dirt) and declared them uncontroversial evidence of pre-Columbian European settlers in America because there's simply no way Native Americans could possibly figure out how to make a big pile of dirt on their own. When your colonization is justified by the philosophy that you're bringing about civilization and proper exploitation of the land, you need to enforce the belief that the current inhabitants are uncivilized and not exploiting the land... and they were extremely successful at pushing that belief, it has tainted every subsequent generation to our day. It wasn't until the middle of the 20th Century that we started stumbling upon the ruins of pre-Columbian cities in North America and started realizing how false this belief was.
EDIT: As for South America, a lot of the "pristine rainforest untouched by man and completely impossible to tame or even travel" was actually terrassed gardens and farmland before the Conquistadors came around.
Meet the Novgorod: the Czarist Russian attempt at naval innovation. In keeping with the traditional Russian flair for poor decisions, this beast was circular with two 11in. central guns. In addition to being exceptionally ugly, the ship was practically useless in naval combat.
The shallow draft provided by the circular design caused it to pitch and roll in even slightly rough seas, and the ship itself was slow and difficult to maneuver. Even better, as those with basic knowledge of physics have figured out, the recoil of the guns caused the ship to rotate, forcing the captain to slam the rudder as a brake to compensate in alternating directions during firing.
Ancient history is awesome and very interesting. There are battle plans and peace agreements, or copies of them, from this battle damn near 3000 years ago, that survive to this day. That's sort of mind-boggling. Will things we have now be around in 5545?
I'm really interested in American ancient history, but there isn't much that goes that far back. I guess there was a huge city in the Brazilian rainforest. It was discovered after a forest fire.
That's really neat. I have a hard time believing that article's claim that was the only city north of Mexico in all of history. Maybe the only city we have rediscovered.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
Yeah, Pre-Columbian natives were a lot more advanced. The image of native americans that most people got was basically the post-apocalyptic remains of what civilizations had been around previously.
Ancient history is awesome and very interesting. There are battle plans and peace agreements, or copies of them, from this battle damn near 3000 years ago, that survive to this day. That's sort of mind-boggling. Will things we have now be around in 5545?
I'm really interested in American ancient history, but there isn't much that goes that far back. I guess there was a huge city in the Brazilian rainforest. It was discovered after a forest fire.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
Taken by the founders of Scotland's first photographic studio, a meeting in 1843
whoop, spoiled for huge
And I love this duo of pictures. We get such an incomplete picture of the past from black and white. Monks from 1880s Japan
And monks of the same sect taken in color:
Kana on
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
I feel like that second one must be colorized (or color-corrected) because I'm not sure how you could manage to have such a deep red while everything else is so faded. Unless you have the provenance that proves it was an original color photo.
I feel like I could pull random interesting bits from just about every period I've studied. My favorite is tangentially touched on by this xkcd comic. William Marshall, a famous knight from the 1200s had a friend called John D'Erley who basically says the equivalent to "Kids just don't respect their elders like they used to" (...spoken 800 years ago). Which is basically my rationale behind believing that humans as individuals just haven't changed all that much over time.
On William Marshall in particular: He is called the "Flower of Chivalry" because he was basically the picturesque role model of what was expected of a knight. He rose from being an unlanded knight to being an incredibly wealthy earl and - coincidentally marshal for the kingdom. He was even fighting into his 70s, a few months before his eventual death of old age in 1219. He's basically the ur-knight of fantasy: no money, no land, almost nothing to his name. Working through jousting tournaments and melees and various work to gain prestige and network until he's hanging out with the king's wife and in a position to basically usurp the kingdom (but of course you don't do that because it would not be chivalrous).
(...never mind the fact it's possible he may have had an affair with the queen)
These early tri-color photographs look pretty amazing generally, but when it gets really pure red or blue it gets super saturated looking (sometimes). A similar thing happens with the Russia pictures. It gives them sort of a color-corrected look, especially if they're not processed perfectly
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
I already posted this in chat but it's just too funny:
“Henry Cyril Paget, 5th Marquess of Anglesey (1875-1905), nicknamed “Toppy”, was a British Peer who was notable during his short life for squandering his inheritance on a lavish social life and accumulating massive debts. Regarded as the “black sheep” of the family, he was dubbed “the dancing marquess” for his habit of performing “sinuous, sexy, snake-like dances”
“The Complete Peerage says that he “seems only to have existed for the purpose of giving a melancholy and unneeded illustration of the truth that a man with the finest prospects, may, by the wildest folly and extravagance, as Sir Thomas Browne says, ‘foully miscarry in the advantage of humanity, play away an uniterable life, and have lived in vain.’”
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
Since we got started in cool medieval figures, how about Götz von Berlichingen?
Also known as Götz of the Iron Hand, this guy was a German knight credited for the expression er kann mich am Arsche lecken, "he can lick my arse".
Götz basically fought in every possible tussle between 1500-1550, where in 1504, he lost his right arm to cannon fire. Not about to retire so early in his career of fighting dudes, he had an iron prosthesis made, which was very advanced for its time. The important bit? It could hold a sword, so he could continue his career in fighting more dudes.
The man was pretty hardcore.
These are really cool cuz we don't get a lot of photos of super low class people and their clothes that much: Newcastle Convicts, 1871-1873
Ellen Woodman, 11, convicted of stealing iron sentenced to 7 days hard labor
James Scullion, 14, convicted of stealing clothes sentenced to 14 days hard labor
John Reed, 15, Convicted of stealing money senteced to 14 days hard labour and 5 years reformation. Now that kid's a gangster, looks like he might have a broken nose too.
Kana on
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
The Boulevard to Temple. Taken in 1838, it is the first picture of human beings. At the time, it took hours for the image to become imprinted on the plates, so pictures of landscapes (which had no problem staying put for a few hours) were common but pictures of humans (who had better things to do than just stand around holding a pose for a few hours) were unheard of. If a human happened to walk through the scene while a picture was being taken, no worries, just being there for a few minutes didn't leave any trace on the plates which, as I said, needed hours to form a picture.
This is the case in this picture, in fact. The Boulevard du Temple is actually a very busy street, and hundreds of people must have walked through it in the hours it took for the picture to be taken, none of them staying long enough to make a mark on the plates. Except for the two men near the bottom-left corner of the picture, a shoe-shine boy and a gentlemen getting his shoes shined. This seems to have been a long shoe shine, with the gentleman standing put while the boy did his work moving in place. As a result, the man left a well-defined image (only his head is blurry, seems he looked around a lot) while the boy's body has a lot of motion blur but is still there.
Although ancient history does have it's moments of craziness (Xerxes whipping a river, Richard the Lionheart getting kidnapped, etc), I have tried to focus on some modern history lately not only to see some clear lines in the trends of today, but also some of the easy to ignore stories.
After the surrender speech of Emperor Hirohito, one of the key problems were the future behavior of Allied troops on Japanese soil. The main issue was rape of innocent japanese women. The cabinet was worried that due to their own troops behavior during the war, the allies were going to do the same. The plan was to channel the sexual acts towards lower classes of women (poor folk, peasants) instead of the higher classes (mostly related to officers and bureaucrats) and thus keep the women "pure". The plan was to create a "comfort women" system in order to efficiently "protect" the majority of Japanese women.
Thus the Recreation and Amusement Association (特殊慰安施設協会 Tokushu Ian Shisetsu Kyōkai (Special Comfort Facility Association), was formed. Their recruitment started with ads in newspapers and in office windows for work that would reward free accomodations, food, clothes and payment. This being in a wartorn country, there was plenty of applicants. However, when informed of what the job would entail most chose not to. Those who did had either no other choice, prior work in the field or was patriotic. Sadly, this only was the "offical" recruitment method. A far more efficent method was the use of Yakusa (Japanese mafia) who would recruit women and deliver them to the local comfort facilities without informing them of the work itself.
At the start patriotic language was used (such as was used during the war years) and during inauguration of the RAA, a oath was read:
And so we unite and go forward to where our beliefs lead us, and through the sacrifice of several thousands of "Okichis of our era" build a breakwater to hold back the raging waves and defend and nurture the purity of our race, becoming as well an invisible underground pillar at the root of the postwar social order... we are but offering ourselves for the defense of the national polity. We reaffirm this. This is our proclamation.
The amount of clients one of these women would have a day, would be anything from twelve to fifty. As you can guess, STDs became rampant due to this. At it's height around 25 % of the occupation force had some form of a sexual disease. Numerous clinics and labs was built next to these facilities to combat disease. Tens of thousands of condoms were given away (and presumably not to create funny balloons) every week.
In the end in 16 Jan 1946, Gen MacArthur ended licence brothels and later would prohibit all occupational forces to these facilities. The immediate effect was thousands of women thrown out on the streets, rape increased eight-fold and a much harder time to combat sexual diseases. The women who had worked for the RAA, would often continue the work either on the street or as "voluntary" prostitutes. A new system was later to continue prostitution as a viable means of work for women without any other hope.
*General sources are the wiki article and Embracing Defeat by John W. Dower, great book if you want to learn about the occupation of Japan.
Also if any of you are interested to learn about European geography while playing a game, I recommend Crusader kings 2! Fun game, and when you know how to play, it will fill your mind with the ambition of creating super babies and trying to be the best magnificent bastard you can be.
It's a little embarrassing to admit just how much crusader kings and the other paradox games have improved my geography knowledge
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
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NocrenLt Futz, Back in ActionNorth CarolinaRegistered Userregular
Are those hats, or was somebody exploiting their AI to steal from them?
While silly looking, that was how people repented. If they turned themselves over entirely to Buddha and his teachings, giving up their previous life, they wore the baskets. Mainly because if you were a (former) criminal, plastic surgery wouldn't be offered for another century.
I'm sure this was exploited, but for a society based on honor it worked out ok.
So during the Vietnam War soviet built Sam installations were taking out a lot of American planes so the Air Force came up with the idea of "wild weasel" squadrons that would target them. This being before fancy ECMs and harm anti radar missiles so the plan consisted of a bait plane flying around until they got shot at and then the pilot would evade the missile while the attack planes looked for the smoke from the launch and destroyed the installation.
When the first pilot was told of his mission he spoke the words that would be the motto for these squadrons to this day.
It's a little embarrassing to admit just how much crusader kings and the other paradox games have improved my geography knowledge
You should never feel embarrassed to admit you learned something while playing a video game. It's a great way to counter the perception that games are mindless and you don't accomplish anything while playing them.
It's not so much embarrassment of where I learned it, but rather how damned terrible my memory is for geography otherwise!
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
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NocrenLt Futz, Back in ActionNorth CarolinaRegistered Userregular
I actually had a thread years ago about real knowledge learned from video games.
Didn't stay on topic very long, but it was fun. Mostly people learned a lot of history from the Civ games.
Hearts of Iron 2 essentially gave me the basic knowledge to pursue one of my major undergraduate papers (coincidentally not really related to WW2). I can also list off tons of things I've learned from other games or skills I have honed or acquired.
Instead, I will briefly mention the Hindenburg. Many people believe the Germans intentionally used hydrogen (either because they didn't know any better or were willing to risk the dangers), but the original plans called for the use of helium (which is obviously safer). Unfortunately (for rigid airships), the US was embargoing the export of helium to Germany (because it can be used for other devious things like rockets and nuclear sciences). As a result, the Hindenburg was redesigned to use hydrogen - as a side benefit, the increase in buoyancy meant that the Hindenburg could easily include a baby grand piano among its semi-standard accoutrements.
It also didn't eliminate the on-board smoking room.
The smoking room was at the bottom of the ship (which ends up the safest place, since any latent hydrogen would rise). It came with a pressurized airlock (to keep out any hydrogen) and one electric lighter (ostensibly the only intentional fire ignition source on the airship). The smoking room was one of the most popular rooms during every voyage - right up there with a lounge and full bar (bonus alcohol-related story).
Despite Archer's take on zeppelins, I would be all for bringing back luxury air cruises (...preferably with helium, seeing as there are no Nazis to embargo any more). Imagine a 2-2.5 day cruise in luxury and comfort in the skies or crowded onto an airplane like a sardine.
...Never mind the ticket basically cost the equivalent of $6,000 in today's dollars.
Airships are basically cruise-liners, that fly.
I do hope they make a comeback, because their heavy-lifting capacity and low running costs and VTOL capacity make them a very good alternative for cargo transport.
Incidentally, the Empire State building was supposed to act as a mooring tower for zeppelins:
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NocrenLt Futz, Back in ActionNorth CarolinaRegistered Userregular
Zeppelins/Airships are one of the reasons I love Crimson Skies.
I also loved that they knew how dangerous an open flame was and took every conceivable precaution.
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First evidence of Urban Planning, Sanitation Works, and Dental Hygiene.
Seriously, India and China get sooooo over looked in world history.
As were talking about cool stuff, I always like the Sea Peoples.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Peoples#Serbonian_Bog
For those of you who don't know, the Sea Peoples were......well we actually don't know a lot about them! They just show up one day and wreck Egypt. Nobody (alive) really knows where they came from, or why they suddenly invaded Egypt.
Some speculate they may be the result or cause of the Bronze Age collapse, which saw just about ever civilization in the Near East fall apart.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze_Age_collapse
Mysterious ocean based warrior society some how linked to the destruction of every major kingdom in the know world. How much cooler does it get!
Oh yeah, Reagan gets way to much credit in the US for ending the cold war. That is to say any credit to Regan is misplaced is usually misplaced.
Remember Reagan was voted into office on a platform that said to ratchet up the cold war! His military build up unprecedented at the time and worrying because it was peace time. It was also mostly buying stuff the US military already had, like Nimitz class carriers, F-15 and M1 Tanks. The new weapons systems like the Minuteman MX missile had already finished their development. It was also acquired on a much shorter time scale then usual for such weapons buys. over 4 years instead of 10.
This gave the impression, not of someone trying to modernize their forces, but to build them up in preparation for war. Then Star Wars came along and the Kremlin became convinced that it was a trick to cover a preemtive strike. The Russians didn't believe that SDI could work, but they did believe that SDI "test" where the perfect cover for a sneak attack.
Ancient history is awesome and very interesting. There are battle plans and peace agreements, or copies of them, from this battle damn near 3000 years ago, that survive to this day. That's sort of mind-boggling. Will things we have now be around in 5545?
I'm really interested in American ancient history, but there isn't much that goes that far back. I guess there was a huge city in the Brazilian rainforest. It was discovered after a forest fire.
Diablo Canyon 1, why can't you be more like Diablo Canyon 2
Speaking of battles, this book is pretty awesome
http://www.amazon.com/100-Decisive-Battles-Ancient-Present/dp/0195143663/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_y
Pre-Columbian North American civilizations were actually a lot more advanced than we give them credit for.
A lot of the sprawling forests of North America that were inhabited by small numbers of natives living closely with the land? A couple hundred years earlier were actually cleared fields / meadows and carefully managed animals. Quite a bit of the native fauna was completely out of balance because populations of their predators had been wiped out by humans (or were humans) and hadn't rebounded.
Hell, I've heard that the vast herds of bison that define the untouched west were an abberation, and the populations would have crashed on their own if the white men hadn't slaughtered them so pointlessly.
I recall reading a decent sized article about how the ecosystems that we consider to be pure and unspoiled in North, Central, and South America were either carefully managed, or largely cleared and sprang back even before the conquistadors got around to exploring.
EDIT: As for South America, a lot of the "pristine rainforest untouched by man and completely impossible to tame or even travel" was actually terrassed gardens and farmland before the Conquistadors came around.
My great-great-great-great-grandfather narrowly survived the inside of Haun's Mill, according to his journal.
The shallow draft provided by the circular design caused it to pitch and roll in even slightly rough seas, and the ship itself was slow and difficult to maneuver. Even better, as those with basic knowledge of physics have figured out, the recoil of the guns caused the ship to rotate, forcing the captain to slam the rudder as a brake to compensate in alternating directions during firing.
That's really neat. I have a hard time believing that article's claim that was the only city north of Mexico in all of history. Maybe the only city we have rediscovered.
did they have internet porn?
no? then they were savages
From the Victorian era
1900-1903
whoop, spoiled for huge
And I love this duo of pictures. We get such an incomplete picture of the past from black and white. Monks from 1880s Japan
And monks of the same sect taken in color:
I feel like I could pull random interesting bits from just about every period I've studied. My favorite is tangentially touched on by this xkcd comic. William Marshall, a famous knight from the 1200s had a friend called John D'Erley who basically says the equivalent to "Kids just don't respect their elders like they used to" (...spoken 800 years ago). Which is basically my rationale behind believing that humans as individuals just haven't changed all that much over time.
On William Marshall in particular: He is called the "Flower of Chivalry" because he was basically the picturesque role model of what was expected of a knight. He rose from being an unlanded knight to being an incredibly wealthy earl and - coincidentally marshal for the kingdom. He was even fighting into his 70s, a few months before his eventual death of old age in 1219. He's basically the ur-knight of fantasy: no money, no land, almost nothing to his name. Working through jousting tournaments and melees and various work to gain prestige and network until he's hanging out with the king's wife and in a position to basically usurp the kingdom (but of course you don't do that because it would not be chivalrous).
(...never mind the fact it's possible he may have had an affair with the queen)
“Henry Cyril Paget, 5th Marquess of Anglesey (1875-1905), nicknamed “Toppy”, was a British Peer who was notable during his short life for squandering his inheritance on a lavish social life and accumulating massive debts. Regarded as the “black sheep” of the family, he was dubbed “the dancing marquess” for his habit of performing “sinuous, sexy, snake-like dances”
“The Complete Peerage says that he “seems only to have existed for the purpose of giving a melancholy and unneeded illustration of the truth that a man with the finest prospects, may, by the wildest folly and extravagance, as Sir Thomas Browne says, ‘foully miscarry in the advantage of humanity, play away an uniterable life, and have lived in vain.’”
Also known as Götz of the Iron Hand, this guy was a German knight credited for the expression er kann mich am Arsche lecken, "he can lick my arse".
Götz basically fought in every possible tussle between 1500-1550, where in 1504, he lost his right arm to cannon fire. Not about to retire so early in his career of fighting dudes, he had an iron prosthesis made, which was very advanced for its time. The important bit? It could hold a sword, so he could continue his career in fighting more dudes.
The man was pretty hardcore.
These are really cool cuz we don't get a lot of photos of super low class people and their clothes that much: Newcastle Convicts, 1871-1873
Ellen Woodman, 11, convicted of stealing iron sentenced to 7 days hard labor
James Scullion, 14, convicted of stealing clothes sentenced to 14 days hard labor
John Reed, 15, Convicted of stealing money senteced to 14 days hard labour and 5 years reformation. Now that kid's a gangster, looks like he might have a broken nose too.
The Boulevard to Temple. Taken in 1838, it is the first picture of human beings. At the time, it took hours for the image to become imprinted on the plates, so pictures of landscapes (which had no problem staying put for a few hours) were common but pictures of humans (who had better things to do than just stand around holding a pose for a few hours) were unheard of. If a human happened to walk through the scene while a picture was being taken, no worries, just being there for a few minutes didn't leave any trace on the plates which, as I said, needed hours to form a picture.
This is the case in this picture, in fact. The Boulevard du Temple is actually a very busy street, and hundreds of people must have walked through it in the hours it took for the picture to be taken, none of them staying long enough to make a mark on the plates. Except for the two men near the bottom-left corner of the picture, a shoe-shine boy and a gentlemen getting his shoes shined. This seems to have been a long shoe shine, with the gentleman standing put while the boy did his work moving in place. As a result, the man left a well-defined image (only his head is blurry, seems he looked around a lot) while the boy's body has a lot of motion blur but is still there.
Although ancient history does have it's moments of craziness (Xerxes whipping a river, Richard the Lionheart getting kidnapped, etc), I have tried to focus on some modern history lately not only to see some clear lines in the trends of today, but also some of the easy to ignore stories.
One of them is the Recreation and Amusement Association
After the surrender speech of Emperor Hirohito, one of the key problems were the future behavior of Allied troops on Japanese soil. The main issue was rape of innocent japanese women. The cabinet was worried that due to their own troops behavior during the war, the allies were going to do the same. The plan was to channel the sexual acts towards lower classes of women (poor folk, peasants) instead of the higher classes (mostly related to officers and bureaucrats) and thus keep the women "pure". The plan was to create a "comfort women" system in order to efficiently "protect" the majority of Japanese women.
Thus the Recreation and Amusement Association (特殊慰安施設協会 Tokushu Ian Shisetsu Kyōkai (Special Comfort Facility Association), was formed. Their recruitment started with ads in newspapers and in office windows for work that would reward free accomodations, food, clothes and payment. This being in a wartorn country, there was plenty of applicants. However, when informed of what the job would entail most chose not to. Those who did had either no other choice, prior work in the field or was patriotic. Sadly, this only was the "offical" recruitment method. A far more efficent method was the use of Yakusa (Japanese mafia) who would recruit women and deliver them to the local comfort facilities without informing them of the work itself.
At the start patriotic language was used (such as was used during the war years) and during inauguration of the RAA, a oath was read:
The amount of clients one of these women would have a day, would be anything from twelve to fifty. As you can guess, STDs became rampant due to this. At it's height around 25 % of the occupation force had some form of a sexual disease. Numerous clinics and labs was built next to these facilities to combat disease. Tens of thousands of condoms were given away (and presumably not to create funny balloons) every week.
In the end in 16 Jan 1946, Gen MacArthur ended licence brothels and later would prohibit all occupational forces to these facilities. The immediate effect was thousands of women thrown out on the streets, rape increased eight-fold and a much harder time to combat sexual diseases. The women who had worked for the RAA, would often continue the work either on the street or as "voluntary" prostitutes. A new system was later to continue prostitution as a viable means of work for women without any other hope.
*General sources are the wiki article and Embracing Defeat by John W. Dower, great book if you want to learn about the occupation of Japan.
Also if any of you are interested to learn about European geography while playing a game, I recommend Crusader kings 2! Fun game, and when you know how to play, it will fill your mind with the ambition of creating super babies and trying to be the best magnificent bastard you can be.
While silly looking, that was how people repented. If they turned themselves over entirely to Buddha and his teachings, giving up their previous life, they wore the baskets. Mainly because if you were a (former) criminal, plastic surgery wouldn't be offered for another century.
I'm sure this was exploited, but for a society based on honor it worked out ok.
When the first pilot was told of his mission he spoke the words that would be the motto for these squadrons to this day.
"You have got to be shitting me"
You should never feel embarrassed to admit you learned something while playing a video game. It's a great way to counter the perception that games are mindless and you don't accomplish anything while playing them.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Didn't stay on topic very long, but it was fun. Mostly people learned a lot of history from the Civ games.
Dude. I learned to read/write/speak English from video games. As well as lot of history. And geography.
No shame whatsoever.
Instead, I will briefly mention the Hindenburg. Many people believe the Germans intentionally used hydrogen (either because they didn't know any better or were willing to risk the dangers), but the original plans called for the use of helium (which is obviously safer). Unfortunately (for rigid airships), the US was embargoing the export of helium to Germany (because it can be used for other devious things like rockets and nuclear sciences). As a result, the Hindenburg was redesigned to use hydrogen - as a side benefit, the increase in buoyancy meant that the Hindenburg could easily include a baby grand piano among its semi-standard accoutrements.
It also didn't eliminate the on-board smoking room.
The smoking room was at the bottom of the ship (which ends up the safest place, since any latent hydrogen would rise). It came with a pressurized airlock (to keep out any hydrogen) and one electric lighter (ostensibly the only intentional fire ignition source on the airship). The smoking room was one of the most popular rooms during every voyage - right up there with a lounge and full bar (bonus alcohol-related story).
Despite Archer's take on zeppelins, I would be all for bringing back luxury air cruises (...preferably with helium, seeing as there are no Nazis to embargo any more). Imagine a 2-2.5 day cruise in luxury and comfort in the skies or crowded onto an airplane like a sardine.
...Never mind the ticket basically cost the equivalent of $6,000 in today's dollars.
I do hope they make a comeback, because their heavy-lifting capacity and low running costs and VTOL capacity make them a very good alternative for cargo transport.
Incidentally, the Empire State building was supposed to act as a mooring tower for zeppelins:
I also loved that they knew how dangerous an open flame was and took every conceivable precaution.
Jesus Christ, Crimson Skies straight into my veins. It's a travesty there isn't more stuff based on that setting available.
Incidentally, a lot of the apparently batshit designs for planes are based on very real planes: http://firedrake.org/roger/crimsonskies/equivalency.html