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Merry Olde Historie
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A thread for interesting events and peoples of previous days that happen to catch your fancy, and which you want to share or discuss.
Reading an article in FA by Max Boot I came across the story of Koxinga, a chinese pirate of the 17th century who lead at one point over 100,000 men and ended up conquering Taiwan from the Dutch.
Wiki Article
Here's to you Koxinga. It's nice to come across someone interesting in Chinese history, since I don't know much about it.
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That's what made them famous, but it's not the funny bit.
I always loved that. My favorite "make a random person king" story, because it's real.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qarmatian
That is awesome Elki.
Neolithic Europe is pretty interesting. Basically, the neolithic is when the hunter-gatherers of the past 200,000 years or so began to settle down into permanent, agriculturally-oriented groups. Things like organized religion, government, trade, and all the trappings of "society" as we know it were in their infancy, yet from what we know about these people they had very sophisticated ways of observing the world and shaping their environment; the megalithic structures of ancient Europe would be difficult to replicate even today.
(Note that the above applies to just about everywhere in the world during what we call the Neolithic period, although Europe had particularly cool artifacts/structures/etc.)
The catch? Well... technically this isn't "history", since these people left no written records, and it's only through archaeological analysis that we can reconstruct their lives.
Barring that, I've always been interested in antiquity - especially Jewish history from the diaspora to the rabbinic period. Hopefully, that's what I'll get to study in grad school, at least if I get accepted to such a program.
They have a monument at their burial site in Thebes.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
Jack the Ripper is a pseudonym given to an unidentified serial killer[1] active in the largely impoverished Whitechapel area and adjacent districts of London, England, in late 1888. The name originated in a letter sent to the London Central News Agency by someone claiming to be the murderer.
The victims were women earning income as prostitutes. Most victims' throats were slit, after which the bodies were mutilated. The removal of internal organs from three of the victims led some officials at the time of the murders to propose that the killer possessed anatomical or surgical knowledge.[2]
Newspapers, whose circulation had been growing during this era,[3] bestowed widespread and enduring notoriety on the killer because of the savagery of the attacks and the failure of the police to capture the murderer.[4][5]
Because the killer's identity has never been confirmed, the legends surrounding the murders have become a combination of genuine historical research, folklore, and pseudohistory. Many authors, historians, and amateur detectives have proposed theories about the identity of the killer and his victims.
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What catalyzed my search into these areas? Why none other than this man.
My favourite tidbit of all: Why are there 60 seconds per minute, 60 minutes per hour, and 60 minutes per degree?
Because the Babylonians used a base-60 counting system. They did humanity's first work in astronomy in base-60 over 4000 years ago, and did it so thoroughly and kept such detailed and complete records that they have influenced everyone since then, up to and including us. When the Hubble Telescope is aimed at the heavens, it's aimed using a measuring system thought up 4000 years ago by a long-gone civilization of which all that remains is only a few mud-brick walls in the middle of the desert.
But what really gets me dreaming is, why did they use a base-60 counting system? Common systems for early civilizations include 5 (the fingers of one hand), 10 (both hands), 20 (fingers and toes), and 6 (a small and easily dividable number that pops up from time to time). But 60?
A lot of common explanations fall flat. "60 is easily factorisable". Yes, but no one can develop factors before having a mathematical system, and besides, a mathematical base is not intelligently chosen while planning ahead. "It's a divider of 360, approximately the number of days in the year". But we know the Babylonians had a much more precise approximation of the number of days in a year. One explanation that remains is that the Babylonian system was actually the fusion of two older systems, from two other civilizations (one with a base-10 system and one with a base-6 system) which became merged overtime. I really like that suggestion. Babylon is typically considered the first, oldest human civilization, yet here is evidence that not one but two even older civilizations existed, of which we know absolutely nothing.
In about 300BC, Pyrrhus of Epirus, a Greek general, led a very successful invasion of Rome. His armies slashed through the Roman peninsula, winning battle after battle. Unfortunately, with each victory he got deeper into Roman land and farther away from his supply lines. Moreover, he was suffering losses and driving further and further away from reinforcements, while the Romans were continuously and easily replenishing their forces.
One day, as one of his officers reported victory after a particularly costly battle, Pyrrhus exclaimed "one more victory like this, and I shall be undone!"
And this is where the expression "Pyrrhic victory" comes from.
By the 12th Century, the Church in Ireland pretty much gave lip service to Rome, but Christianity in the country was a unique Celtic Catholicism, rather than Roman. This was part of the motivation for Pope Adrian IV - the only confirmed English Pope - to issue a Papal Bull in 1158 giving England Overlordship over Ireland, so that Irish Christianity would be brought into line with Rome. The English king Henry II didn't act on this edict until 1170. Since 1166, various Norman and Welsh nobles had been sending troops to assist the deposed king of Leinster Dermot MacMurrough in his struggle against the High King Rory O'Connor. Fearing these Nobles setting up a rival state, Henry sent his own troops in, with the High King accepting the overlordship in 1174 as part of the Treaty of Windsor.
Of course, this backfired against Rome six Henrys later.
Maybe in the morning I'll pull out one of the books and find out some interesting shit.
Hmm, I think I'll make an NPC in the Eberron campaign I am planning based on Rasputin.
Also how the black plague got to Norway: A ship from England with everyone on board dead floated into the harbour at Bergen.
kpop appreciation station i also like to tweet some
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Even more interestingly, Major Henry Robert of "Robert's Rules of Order" fame was stationed in the San Juan's during this period and used the time to work on his book.
what did I do
The story I posted.
Didn't they make a Hey Arnold! episode about the Pig War?
Also, Taft was apparently a pretty cool dude. He was extremely popular with the Filipinos he oversaw as the governor there, bringing peace to the end of an uprising. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Howard_Taft
Codex Sinaiticus
It's the worlds oldest collected bible. It is about 1,600 years old and is in Greek. Contains books that aren't in the current Hebrew scriptures or accepted by Christianity. It was found in 1844 and split into 3 parts. Now it's back together as one online for the first time. Just kind of an interesting piece of history.
British Museum's official site: www.codexsinaiticus.org
Wiki:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Sinaiticus
can't prove a god damn thing
You know the Bismarck, right? Big, German warship? It's famous for Churchill's declaration that we must sink the Bismarck. And that's all I knew. I went to the library maybe five years ago in search of something completely unrelated... and came across a book on the warship Tirpitz. Tirpitz was a sister ship of the Bismarck- she mostly stayed in moorings, but nonetheless impressed a serious threat upon Allied forces. Her mere presence forced the diverting of not insignificant naval defenses to her possible paths of travel. She was a beast! Who cares, though, right- just a big ship no one knew about. Then I started to think about it even more.
Many hundreds of men were certainly involved in the building of this ship. For them, this was the biggest project of their lives- nothing could ever exceed it. They were involved in the construction of one of the most portentous vessels of WW2 (despite its relative obscurity), and it was probably the most important thing they ever did... but for many years I never knew it existed. And shit like that must happen all the time.
Looking at the sky at night, the Ancient Egyptians could see 12 different constellations rising at roughly equal interval. Hence the idea to divide night time into 12 hours. And with 12 hour night, it's only natural to divide the day into 12 hours as well, which they could keep track off using sundials.
But wait! That means you'll always have a constant 12 hours from sunrise to sunset, and 12 hours from sunset to sunrise. As we all know, the length of daylight in a day increases and decreases throughout the year. So the Ancient Egyptian actually had daytime hours that were longer in the summer and shorter in the winter, and vice-versa from the nighttime hours. It wasn't until Ancient Greece that hours were defined as a fixed amount of time.
The first one, Olympic, had a long and happy career, except for the HMS Hawke incident, and ramming the Nantucket Lightship. After she was launched in 1910, the keel for Britannic (originally Gigantic) was laid while Titanic was built in the slipway next to her. After Titanic sank, they felt Gigantic was a bit arrogant, so they changed it to something more patriotic, seeing how World War I was round the corner.
Florance in 1418 had a problem. One that was making them look some what stupid. They built a massive cathedral, a huge work to glorify god. An absolutely beautiful building with one massive flaw. It didn't have a dome. In fact, according to the builders of the time, it wasn't physically possible to build a dome for it. Everytime it rains the Archbishop gets wet. It was making them look bad. So along comes this young banker, Cosimo de'Medici. And he's got a problem. His problem is that he has a PR issue. So he announces he's going to build the dome for this Cathedral. He has various artists show him how the propose to hold the dome up, and he makes them show it using an egg and a block of marble. Brunelleschi takes the egg and breaks the bottom and then places it facing upwards on the block. He gets the job.
And he builds his dome, in the process reinventing the reversing gear. So why should history remember him? Well Cosimo rides the acclaim of this into becoming the banker to talk to in Europe. I can hear you saying so what, bear with me. Cosimo now has lots of money and power, and he puts it to use. He gets the Pope to move the Ecumenical council from Ferrara to Florance. This brings in scholars from Byzantine Empire. Cosimo is also doing what rich men did and is a patron of the arts. This combination lights off the Italian Renaissance. Every Italian artist of the period ends up linked to the de'Medici family some how. Kind of a big deal, it's easy to see how Brunelleschi can get lost in the shuffle. But he did one more thing of note.
He invented linear perspective, allowing the artists of the time to paint things as they saw them. So instead of the middle ages 2-D artwork, he gives us the beautiful paintings of the Italian Renaissance. This makes him kind of a big deal.
No, it prevents it from falling into the church. The lack of dome made it somewhat open air.
Maybe I'm confused. What cathedral is this in Florence? (was that a stupid question?)
edit: Yes, stupid question. I don't understand how other artists couldn't find the answer to this problem. Were they used to making domes with a lower height?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nedelin_catastrophe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Cathedral#Dome
Yeah, I don't know if he's trying to say that Brunelleschi reinvented the dome or something, but he didn't. Domes were used in Muslim architecture, having been adopted from from Byzantine architecture.
If I remember right the idea that he had was to have the dome be supported by the walls of the cathedral rather than sitting on top of a wooden roof.
The problem was the weight of the dome. Any of them could build a dome to cover it. The trick was making sure the dome didn't collapse in on itself and crush the archbishop below.
Did he build special supports or arches for it etc. ?
No, I didn't say he invented the dome. But he did come up with the technique to allow a masonry dome to be made to such a large scale. The trick is that the dome is really two domes with inner ribs and supports. He also pioneered the use of the herringbone pattern to keep the bricks from falling inwards.
awesome