Yes and no. Written histories also have their flaws but they are treated as superior to oral histories. While each has their own unique (and not unique) problems, the common view that written history is superior to oral history is mostly founded on prejudice. Both systems are capable of being regulated and fact checked.
This is a really good post, thanks
+6
Der Waffle MousBlame this on the misfortune of your birth.New Yark, New Yark.Registered Userregular
edited November 2017
My first thought is basically seeing how much victorian-era historical scholarship was up their own asses about making history way less gay than it really was.
My first thought is basically seeing how much victorian-era historical scholarship was up their own asses about making history way less gay than it really was.
Victorian era historians and archeologists were so up their own asses that they ruined a lot of important sites by trying to make them fit their image of what it was supposed to look like. Like the people who dug through successive layers of old cities looking for Troy, or who screwed up the site of Knossos looking for evidence of the labyrinth from the minotaur myth, or screwed up Great Zimbabwe because they thought the African art there was added on later because "Africans couldn't possibly have built that".
+3
MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
My first thought is basically seeing how much victorian-era historical scholarship was up their own asses about making history way less gay than it really was.
Victorian era historians and archeologists were so up their own asses that they ruined a lot of important sites by trying to make them fit their image of what it was supposed to look like. Like the people who used dynamite to blow up successive layers of old cities looking for Troy, or who screwed up the site of Knossos looking for evidence of the labyrinth from the minotaur myth, or screwed up Great Zimbabwe because they thought the African art there was added on later because "Africans couldn't possibly have built that".
FTFY
Also one of the layers that got blown up was the actual Troy they were looking for. Heinrich Schliemann just kept exploding ancient history until he found shiny things that he could steal, which happened to be at a layer a thousand years before the Trojan War times.
+3
UnbrokenEvaHIGH ON THE WIREBUT I WON'T TRIP ITRegistered Userregular
edited December 2017
"Hold up the train. Ammunition ship afire in harbor making for Pier 6 and will explode. Guess this will be my last message. Good-bye boys."
100 years ago yesterday, the French cargo ship SS Mont Blanc, loaded with high explosives arrived late to Halifax Harbour en route to France. Around the same time, the Norwegian cargo ship SS Imo was late departing the harbour for New York, where it was to pick up relief supplies to bring to Belgium. At the time, Halifax was the Allies' main staging port in North America for ships headed for Europe and the First World War. This meant that securing the harbour against German U-Boats was critical, and every night a submarine met was raised across the entrance. Both ships would have to wait until morning to continue their journey.
When morning came, the Captain of the Imo was eager to make up lost time, and entered the narrowest part of the harbour well in excess of the speed limit. When they encountered an American ship coming up the wrong side of the narrows (all ships were required to travel on the starboard side and pass port-to-port), the pilots agreed to pass starboard-to-starboard instead. Due to their excessive speed, when the Imo then came upon a tug going the proper speed, on the correct side of the harbour, it veered even more towards the opposite shore.
The Captain of the Mont-Blanc was in a hurry as well, but knew what his cargo was and was taking no chances. They entered the narrows at the required speed, on the correct side of the harbour, only to see the Imo speeding towards them. He gave a short blast of his ship's signal whistle to indicate that he had right of way - the Imo replied with two blasts, a refusal to yield. The Mont-Blanc cut her engines and turned slightly to starboard, and gave the whistle again, hoping the other vessel would turn as well - another refusal in response.
If only one of the ships' Captains had acted at this point, the disaster may have been averted - the Mont-Blanc could not turn further to starboard without running aground, so they cut hard to port, hoping to cut across the path of the Imo. The Imo's Captain finally took action as well, ordering his ship to reverse its' engines. Unfortunately, because the Imo was without cargo and riding high in the water, this was enough to swing the bow into the side of the Mont-Blanc
The damage from the collision itself was not severe, but it toppled barrels of benzol, a highly flammable fuel component that spilled across the deck of the Mont-Blanc. As the Imo's engines kicked in the ships disengaged, the metal-on-metal caused sparks that ignited the ship, and the Mont-Blanc was soon burning out of control.
Several other ships in the harbour attempted to help - a couple used their fire hoses to try and douse the flames, another thought to try and tow the ship away from the pier to prevent the fire from spreading. None of them were aware of the cargo the Mont-Blanc had been carrying.
100 years ago today, at 9:04:35am, the single largest man-made explosion before the development of nuclear weapons occurred.
2,000 people were killed in the blast and ensuing fires, another 9,000 were injured Nearly all structures within an 800-metre (half-mile) radius were obliterated, and fragments of the Mont-Blanc were skattered across kilometres. A community of the Mi'kmaq First Nation was wiped away by a tsunami, the survivors choosing to settle in other reserves in the province.
That quote at the start of this post? That's the part most Canadians know about the explosion, if they know anything about it. Railway dispatcher Patrick Vincent (Vince) Coleman worked at the railyard, about 750 feet from where the Mont-Blanc was burning. He was warned of the dangerous cargo by a sailor fleeing the ship, and as his co-worker fled, Coleman remembered that an incoming passenger train was due to arrive within minutes. He returned to his post and sent out urgent telegraph messages to stop the train. Coleman died at his post, but was successful in halting all incoming train traffic to the city, saving the lives of 300 passengers aboard the overnight train from Saint John, New Brunswick.
My first thought is basically seeing how much victorian-era historical scholarship was up their own asses about making history way less gay than it really was.
Victorian era historians and archeologists were so up their own asses that they ruined a lot of important sites by trying to make them fit their image of what it was supposed to look like. Like the people who used dynamite to blow up successive layers of old cities looking for Troy, or who screwed up the site of Knossos looking for evidence of the labyrinth from the minotaur myth, or screwed up Great Zimbabwe because they thought the African art there was added on later because "Africans couldn't possibly have built that".
FTFY
Also one of the layers that got blown up was the actual Troy they were looking for. Heinrich Schliemann just kept exploding ancient history until he found shiny things that he could steal, which happened to be at a layer a thousand years before the Trojan War times.
To be honest, we destroy things on a much larger scale nowadays, there's so much which gets sacrificed in the name of land development or business interests
The mishandling of (some) excavations in the Middle East in the Victorian era also completely pales compared to the massive destruction brought about by the US invasion of Iraq and the Syrian Civil War
There's probably never been a period in which more archaeological data has been destroyed, and it's an ongoing process
Platy on
0
Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
My first thought is basically seeing how much victorian-era historical scholarship was up their own asses about making history way less gay than it really was.
Victorian era historians and archeologists were so up their own asses that they ruined a lot of important sites by trying to make them fit their image of what it was supposed to look like. Like the people who used dynamite to blow up successive layers of old cities looking for Troy, or who screwed up the site of Knossos looking for evidence of the labyrinth from the minotaur myth, or screwed up Great Zimbabwe because they thought the African art there was added on later because "Africans couldn't possibly have built that".
FTFY
Also one of the layers that got blown up was the actual Troy they were looking for. Heinrich Schliemann just kept exploding ancient history until he found shiny things that he could steal, which happened to be at a layer a thousand years before the Trojan War times.
To be honest, we destroy things on a much larger scale nowadays, there's so much which gets sacrificed in the name of land development or business interests
The mishandling of (some) excavations in the Middle East in the Victorian era also completely pales compared to the massive destruction brought about by the US invasion of Iraq and the Syrian Civil War
There's probably never been a period in which more archaeological data has been destroyed, and it's an ongoing process
Al-Qaeda and ISIS systematically dynamiting ruins and artifacts, and killing researchers and historians.
edit: Fun fact, I only learned of John Maynard because of German class in school. Was probably my favourite poem. Also fun fact, thae poem is pretty bollocks when it comes to accuracy.
It's not only high-profile destruction like that, the most important Neolithic site in my home area got destroyed for a gravel pit
And a few years ago, a town archive sold boxes full of documents dating to the 15th/16th centuries to a paper recycling plant
People only think something is important when it's behind glass
There's some amount of valuation that comes with different artifacts. There's lots of pottery that's destroyed after archeological digs just because there's so much of it, and its not all of great importance. There's thousands of dinosaur fossils, and an uncountable number of trilobites.
Thousands of old books get destroyed because they don't all have great historical importance. You don't need 500 copies of books on 1850s tax law or every ledger for businesses that havent existed in a hundred years.
All of that is very different from iconoclasm, where they're intentionally destroying works of great importance in order to modify the historical narrative or because they're trying to make it fit their religious views on art.
I have a problem when churches for example get stripped of their baroque layers to expose the gothic layer underneath - the current zeitgeist favors the gothic element, but that could very well change at some point in the future
Standards of importance and value change with the times and standards of former generations can often seem crass or even downright incomprehensible
I'm not saying that everything needs to be preserved with the same care, but much of our cultural heritage gets subjected to willful destruction, often for short-term gains
Platy on
0
PiptheFairFrequently not in boats.Registered Userregular
On the plus side: Recognition that indigenous oral histories are valuable and valid
On the minus side: It shouldn't have taken over a fucking century for white people to go, "Wow, that shit was fucked up."
Also on the minus side: The fact that indigenous oral histories are viewed as so illegitimate that they need a team of white people to co-sign on 'em
Biggest question: What're folks gonna do, armed with this white-sanctified knowledge that indigenous people haven't been making up massacres? Smart money's on "bupkis"
the conquest of the incas was believed to be almost solely responsible by the hundred or so spaniards that pizzaro brought
it took centuries to discover that that, no, in fact the spanish enlisted a lot of smaller rivals to the empire to assist them
history 100% needs to be scrutinized and I get the dissatisfaction of it being a team of non-native scientists doing it, but if that's what it takes
also, what exactly can anybody do about it? memorial? teach it in school? how the fuck do you fix post-imperialism cause holy shit south america really wants to know too
0
PiptheFairFrequently not in boats.Registered Userregular
also RE: civil war discussion
turning people into monsters a. strips history of it's complexity and b. tends to lionize their opponents and holy fuck don't do that
nothern war heroes went on to become the architects of the native genocide
Lost Salientblink twiceif you'd like me to mercy kill youRegistered Userregular
edited January 2018
Today I learned some stuff about Thomas Paine. Or, more specifically, his corpse.
So after Thomas Paine died he was buried. (This is normal. It is the only normal part of this story.) Ten years later a radical British journalist named William Cobbett dug him up, and shipped him to England to erect a monument in his honour. But something happened or the Kickstarter didn't get funded or something because once the body arrived in England it just went into a box in this dude's house. And the dude wrote his own name on Thomas Paine's skull, just in case someone was like "excuse me this skull isn't yours." Fast forward to 1835 and aforementioned bodynapper dies in bankruptcy, but the estate auctioneers were like uhh we can't really auction off human remains even if you write your own name on them in sharpie sooo this is awkward... And the body or parts thereof (and hopefully the box) sort of vanish into the ether until 1853? In 1853 an "ultraradical" by the name of James Watson buys whatever is left of Thomas Paine at auction because I guess by then they were like fuck it, sure, you can own a famous dead body. Then Watson died and Paine's brain, separated from the skull, got sold at auction AGAIN to phrenologists in 1897.
Lost Salient on
"Sandra has a good solid anti-murderer vibe. My skin felt very secure and sufficiently attached to my body when I met her. Also my organs." HAIL SATAN
“Badluram ka badan Zamin ke neeche hai….aur humko uska ration milta hai…” (Badluram’s body is buried but we draw his ration) goes the regimental song. The legend of the song is based in a true story: Badluram was a soldier who died in the ‘Japan War’ (World War II). His Quarter Master was apparently ‘smart’ and continued to draw rations on the jawan’s name.
The surplus ration that collected in the name of Badluram over the months proved to be a godsend when the regiment was surrounded by the Japanese and cut off from supplies. The regiment survived the siege thanks to Badluram’s ration and averted a possibly disastrous fate that could have resulted in many deaths goes the story.
Basically the quartermaster was pulling one on their colonial overlord and it ended up saving the regiment
Today I learned some stuff about Thomas Paine. Or, more specifically, his corpse.
So after Thomas Paine died he was buried. (This is normal. It is the only normal part of this story.) Ten years later a radical British journalist named William Cobbett dug him up, and shipped him to England to erect a monument in his honour. But something happened or the Kickstarter didn't get funded or something because once the body arrived in England it just went into a box in this dude's house. And the dude wrote his own name on Thomas Paine's skull, just in case someone was like "excuse me this skull isn't yours." Fast forward to 1835 and aforementioned bodynapper dies in bankruptcy, but the estate auctioneers were like uhh we can't really auction off human remains even if you write your own name on them in sharpie sooo this is awkward... And the body or parts thereof (and hopefully the box) sort of vanish into the ether until 1853? In 1853 an "ultraradical" by the name of James Watson buys whatever is left of Thomas Paine at auction because I guess by then they were like fuck it, sure, you can own a famous dead body. Then Watson died and Paine's brain, separated from the skull, got sold at auction AGAIN to phrenologists in 1897.
That wasn't nearly as rad as Jeremy Bentham.
0
Donovan PuppyfuckerA dagger in the dark isworth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered Userregular
Today I learned some stuff about Thomas Paine. Or, more specifically, his corpse.
So after Thomas Paine died he was buried. (This is normal. It is the only normal part of this story.) Ten years later a radical British journalist named William Cobbett dug him up, and shipped him to England to erect a monument in his honour. But something happened or the Kickstarter didn't get funded or something because once the body arrived in England it just went into a box in this dude's house. And the dude wrote his own name on Thomas Paine's skull, just in case someone was like "excuse me this skull isn't yours." Fast forward to 1835 and aforementioned bodynapper dies in bankruptcy, but the estate auctioneers were like uhh we can't really auction off human remains even if you write your own name on them in sharpie sooo this is awkward... And the body or parts thereof (and hopefully the box) sort of vanish into the ether until 1853? In 1853 an "ultraradical" by the name of James Watson buys whatever is left of Thomas Paine at auction because I guess by then they were like fuck it, sure, you can own a famous dead body. Then Watson died and Paine's brain, separated from the skull, got sold at auction AGAIN to phrenologists in 1897.
That wasn't nearly as rad as Jeremy Bentham.
Here, I'll do it for you:
"Bentham died on 6 June 1832 aged 84 at his residence in Queen Square Place in Westminster, London, England. He had continued to write up to a month before his death, and had made careful preparations for the dissection of his body after death and its preservation as an auto-icon. As early as 1769, when Bentham was 21 years old, he made a will leaving his body for dissection to a family friend, the physician and chemist George Fordyce, whose daughter, Maria Sophia (1765–1858), married Jeremy's brother Samuel Bentham.[31] A paper written in 1830, instructing Thomas Southwood Smith to create the auto-icon, was attached to his last will, dated 30 May 1832.[31]
On 8 June 1832, two days after his death, invitations were distributed to a select group of friends, and on the following day at 3 p.m., Southwood Smith delivered a lengthy oration over Bentham's remains in the Webb Street School of Anatomy & Medicine in Southwark, London. The printed oration contains a frontispiece with an engraving of Bentham's body partly covered by a sheet.[31]
Afterward, the skeleton and head were preserved and stored in a wooden cabinet called the "Auto-icon", with the skeleton padded out with hay and dressed in Bentham's clothes. Originally kept by his disciple Thomas Southwood Smith,[32] it was acquired by University College London in 1850. It is normally kept on public display at the end of the South Cloisters in the main building of the college; however, for the 100th and 150th anniversaries of the college, and in 2013,[33] it was brought to the meeting of the College Council, where it was listed as "present but not voting".[34]
Bentham had intended the Auto-icon to incorporate his actual head, mummified to resemble its appearance in life. Southwood Smith's experimental efforts at mummification, based on practices of the indigenous people of New Zealand and involving placing the head under an air pump over sulfuric acid and drawing off the fluids, although technically successful, left the head looking distastefully macabre, with dried and darkened skin stretched tautly over the skull.[31] The auto-icon was therefore given a wax head, fitted with some of Bentham's own hair. The real head was displayed in the same case as the auto-icon for many years, but became the target of repeated student pranks. It is now locked away securely.[35]
In 2017 plans were announced to re-exhibit the head and at the same time test Bentham's DNA for autism.[36]
A 360-degree rotatable, high-resolution 'Virtual Auto-Icon'[37] is available at the UCL Bentham Project's website."
Today I learned some stuff about Thomas Paine. Or, more specifically, his corpse.
So after Thomas Paine died he was buried. (This is normal. It is the only normal part of this story.) Ten years later a radical British journalist named William Cobbett dug him up, and shipped him to England to erect a monument in his honour. But something happened or the Kickstarter didn't get funded or something because once the body arrived in England it just went into a box in this dude's house. And the dude wrote his own name on Thomas Paine's skull, just in case someone was like "excuse me this skull isn't yours." Fast forward to 1835 and aforementioned bodynapper dies in bankruptcy, but the estate auctioneers were like uhh we can't really auction off human remains even if you write your own name on them in sharpie sooo this is awkward... And the body or parts thereof (and hopefully the box) sort of vanish into the ether until 1853? In 1853 an "ultraradical" by the name of James Watson buys whatever is left of Thomas Paine at auction because I guess by then they were like fuck it, sure, you can own a famous dead body. Then Watson died and Paine's brain, separated from the skull, got sold at auction AGAIN to phrenologists in 1897.
That wasn't nearly as rad as Jeremy Bentham.
Here, I'll do it for you:
"Bentham died on 6 June 1832 aged 84 at his residence in Queen Square Place in Westminster, London, England. He had continued to write up to a month before his death, and had made careful preparations for the dissection of his body after death and its preservation as an auto-icon. As early as 1769, when Bentham was 21 years old, he made a will leaving his body for dissection to a family friend, the physician and chemist George Fordyce, whose daughter, Maria Sophia (1765–1858), married Jeremy's brother Samuel Bentham.[31] A paper written in 1830, instructing Thomas Southwood Smith to create the auto-icon, was attached to his last will, dated 30 May 1832.[31]
On 8 June 1832, two days after his death, invitations were distributed to a select group of friends, and on the following day at 3 p.m., Southwood Smith delivered a lengthy oration over Bentham's remains in the Webb Street School of Anatomy & Medicine in Southwark, London. The printed oration contains a frontispiece with an engraving of Bentham's body partly covered by a sheet.[31]
Afterward, the skeleton and head were preserved and stored in a wooden cabinet called the "Auto-icon", with the skeleton padded out with hay and dressed in Bentham's clothes. Originally kept by his disciple Thomas Southwood Smith,[32] it was acquired by University College London in 1850. It is normally kept on public display at the end of the South Cloisters in the main building of the college; however, for the 100th and 150th anniversaries of the college, and in 2013,[33] it was brought to the meeting of the College Council, where it was listed as "present but not voting".[34]
Bentham had intended the Auto-icon to incorporate his actual head, mummified to resemble its appearance in life. Southwood Smith's experimental efforts at mummification, based on practices of the indigenous people of New Zealand and involving placing the head under an air pump over sulfuric acid and drawing off the fluids, although technically successful, left the head looking distastefully macabre, with dried and darkened skin stretched tautly over the skull.[31] The auto-icon was therefore given a wax head, fitted with some of Bentham's own hair. The real head was displayed in the same case as the auto-icon for many years, but became the target of repeated student pranks. It is now locked away securely.[35]
In 2017 plans were announced to re-exhibit the head and at the same time test Bentham's DNA for autism.[36]
A 360-degree rotatable, high-resolution 'Virtual Auto-Icon'[37] is available at the UCL Bentham Project's website."
+5
Lost Salientblink twiceif you'd like me to mercy kill youRegistered Userregular
WELP gonna need to see that in person
"Sandra has a good solid anti-murderer vibe. My skin felt very secure and sufficiently attached to my body when I met her. Also my organs." HAIL SATAN
Posts
This is a really good post, thanks
that appears to be a ballock dagger:
which is a pretty apt name for the thing!
hitting hot metal with hammers
Victorian era historians and archeologists were so up their own asses that they ruined a lot of important sites by trying to make them fit their image of what it was supposed to look like. Like the people who dug through successive layers of old cities looking for Troy, or who screwed up the site of Knossos looking for evidence of the labyrinth from the minotaur myth, or screwed up Great Zimbabwe because they thought the African art there was added on later because "Africans couldn't possibly have built that".
FTFY
Also one of the layers that got blown up was the actual Troy they were looking for. Heinrich Schliemann just kept exploding ancient history until he found shiny things that he could steal, which happened to be at a layer a thousand years before the Trojan War times.
100 years ago yesterday, the French cargo ship SS Mont Blanc, loaded with high explosives arrived late to Halifax Harbour en route to France. Around the same time, the Norwegian cargo ship SS Imo was late departing the harbour for New York, where it was to pick up relief supplies to bring to Belgium. At the time, Halifax was the Allies' main staging port in North America for ships headed for Europe and the First World War. This meant that securing the harbour against German U-Boats was critical, and every night a submarine met was raised across the entrance. Both ships would have to wait until morning to continue their journey.
When morning came, the Captain of the Imo was eager to make up lost time, and entered the narrowest part of the harbour well in excess of the speed limit. When they encountered an American ship coming up the wrong side of the narrows (all ships were required to travel on the starboard side and pass port-to-port), the pilots agreed to pass starboard-to-starboard instead. Due to their excessive speed, when the Imo then came upon a tug going the proper speed, on the correct side of the harbour, it veered even more towards the opposite shore.
The Captain of the Mont-Blanc was in a hurry as well, but knew what his cargo was and was taking no chances. They entered the narrows at the required speed, on the correct side of the harbour, only to see the Imo speeding towards them. He gave a short blast of his ship's signal whistle to indicate that he had right of way - the Imo replied with two blasts, a refusal to yield. The Mont-Blanc cut her engines and turned slightly to starboard, and gave the whistle again, hoping the other vessel would turn as well - another refusal in response.
If only one of the ships' Captains had acted at this point, the disaster may have been averted - the Mont-Blanc could not turn further to starboard without running aground, so they cut hard to port, hoping to cut across the path of the Imo. The Imo's Captain finally took action as well, ordering his ship to reverse its' engines. Unfortunately, because the Imo was without cargo and riding high in the water, this was enough to swing the bow into the side of the Mont-Blanc
The damage from the collision itself was not severe, but it toppled barrels of benzol, a highly flammable fuel component that spilled across the deck of the Mont-Blanc. As the Imo's engines kicked in the ships disengaged, the metal-on-metal caused sparks that ignited the ship, and the Mont-Blanc was soon burning out of control.
Several other ships in the harbour attempted to help - a couple used their fire hoses to try and douse the flames, another thought to try and tow the ship away from the pier to prevent the fire from spreading. None of them were aware of the cargo the Mont-Blanc had been carrying.
100 years ago today, at 9:04:35am, the single largest man-made explosion before the development of nuclear weapons occurred.
2,000 people were killed in the blast and ensuing fires, another 9,000 were injured Nearly all structures within an 800-metre (half-mile) radius were obliterated, and fragments of the Mont-Blanc were skattered across kilometres. A community of the Mi'kmaq First Nation was wiped away by a tsunami, the survivors choosing to settle in other reserves in the province.
That quote at the start of this post? That's the part most Canadians know about the explosion, if they know anything about it. Railway dispatcher Patrick Vincent (Vince) Coleman worked at the railyard, about 750 feet from where the Mont-Blanc was burning. He was warned of the dangerous cargo by a sailor fleeing the ship, and as his co-worker fled, Coleman remembered that an incoming passenger train was due to arrive within minutes. He returned to his post and sent out urgent telegraph messages to stop the train. Coleman died at his post, but was successful in halting all incoming train traffic to the city, saving the lives of 300 passengers aboard the overnight train from Saint John, New Brunswick.
To be honest, we destroy things on a much larger scale nowadays, there's so much which gets sacrificed in the name of land development or business interests
The mishandling of (some) excavations in the Middle East in the Victorian era also completely pales compared to the massive destruction brought about by the US invasion of Iraq and the Syrian Civil War
There's probably never been a period in which more archaeological data has been destroyed, and it's an ongoing process
I dunno, looks like bofa dagger to me.
Al-Qaeda and ISIS systematically dynamiting ruins and artifacts, and killing researchers and historians.
And a few years ago, a town archive sold boxes full of documents dating to the 15th/16th centuries to a paper recycling plant
People only think something is important when it's behind glass
WoW
Dear Satan.....
edit: Fun fact, I only learned of John Maynard because of German class in school. Was probably my favourite poem. Also fun fact, thae poem is pretty bollocks when it comes to accuracy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luther_Fuller
There's some amount of valuation that comes with different artifacts. There's lots of pottery that's destroyed after archeological digs just because there's so much of it, and its not all of great importance. There's thousands of dinosaur fossils, and an uncountable number of trilobites.
Thousands of old books get destroyed because they don't all have great historical importance. You don't need 500 copies of books on 1850s tax law or every ledger for businesses that havent existed in a hundred years.
All of that is very different from iconoclasm, where they're intentionally destroying works of great importance in order to modify the historical narrative or because they're trying to make it fit their religious views on art.
I have a problem when churches for example get stripped of their baroque layers to expose the gothic layer underneath - the current zeitgeist favors the gothic element, but that could very well change at some point in the future
Standards of importance and value change with the times and standards of former generations can often seem crass or even downright incomprehensible
I'm not saying that everything needs to be preserved with the same care, but much of our cultural heritage gets subjected to willful destruction, often for short-term gains
the conquest of the incas was believed to be almost solely responsible by the hundred or so spaniards that pizzaro brought
it took centuries to discover that that, no, in fact the spanish enlisted a lot of smaller rivals to the empire to assist them
history 100% needs to be scrutinized and I get the dissatisfaction of it being a team of non-native scientists doing it, but if that's what it takes
also, what exactly can anybody do about it? memorial? teach it in school? how the fuck do you fix post-imperialism cause holy shit south america really wants to know too
turning people into monsters a. strips history of it's complexity and b. tends to lionize their opponents and holy fuck don't do that
nothern war heroes went on to become the architects of the native genocide
sherman and sheridan can eat shit eternally
It's literally named as such because it looks like a dick
Okay, it's been a day and nobody else has bitten, and I can't let a joke setup like that lie...
*ahem*
"A bofa dagger? Bofa what?"
dude who invented it
odd chap
Oh I thought it was named after bollocks for some reason other than its prominent bollocks
No that's bol- it's bullshit.
Something something facetype wingdings.
Nailed it.
So after Thomas Paine died he was buried. (This is normal. It is the only normal part of this story.) Ten years later a radical British journalist named William Cobbett dug him up, and shipped him to England to erect a monument in his honour. But something happened or the Kickstarter didn't get funded or something because once the body arrived in England it just went into a box in this dude's house. And the dude wrote his own name on Thomas Paine's skull, just in case someone was like "excuse me this skull isn't yours." Fast forward to 1835 and aforementioned bodynapper dies in bankruptcy, but the estate auctioneers were like uhh we can't really auction off human remains even if you write your own name on them in sharpie sooo this is awkward... And the body or parts thereof (and hopefully the box) sort of vanish into the ether until 1853? In 1853 an "ultraradical" by the name of James Watson buys whatever is left of Thomas Paine at auction because I guess by then they were like fuck it, sure, you can own a famous dead body. Then Watson died and Paine's brain, separated from the skull, got sold at auction AGAIN to phrenologists in 1897.
"Sandra has a good solid anti-murderer vibe. My skin felt very secure and sufficiently attached to my body when I met her. Also my organs." HAIL SATAN
Basically the quartermaster was pulling one on their colonial overlord and it ended up saving the regiment
That wasn't nearly as rad as Jeremy Bentham.
Here, I'll do it for you:
"Bentham died on 6 June 1832 aged 84 at his residence in Queen Square Place in Westminster, London, England. He had continued to write up to a month before his death, and had made careful preparations for the dissection of his body after death and its preservation as an auto-icon. As early as 1769, when Bentham was 21 years old, he made a will leaving his body for dissection to a family friend, the physician and chemist George Fordyce, whose daughter, Maria Sophia (1765–1858), married Jeremy's brother Samuel Bentham.[31] A paper written in 1830, instructing Thomas Southwood Smith to create the auto-icon, was attached to his last will, dated 30 May 1832.[31]
On 8 June 1832, two days after his death, invitations were distributed to a select group of friends, and on the following day at 3 p.m., Southwood Smith delivered a lengthy oration over Bentham's remains in the Webb Street School of Anatomy & Medicine in Southwark, London. The printed oration contains a frontispiece with an engraving of Bentham's body partly covered by a sheet.[31]
Afterward, the skeleton and head were preserved and stored in a wooden cabinet called the "Auto-icon", with the skeleton padded out with hay and dressed in Bentham's clothes. Originally kept by his disciple Thomas Southwood Smith,[32] it was acquired by University College London in 1850. It is normally kept on public display at the end of the South Cloisters in the main building of the college; however, for the 100th and 150th anniversaries of the college, and in 2013,[33] it was brought to the meeting of the College Council, where it was listed as "present but not voting".[34]
Bentham had intended the Auto-icon to incorporate his actual head, mummified to resemble its appearance in life. Southwood Smith's experimental efforts at mummification, based on practices of the indigenous people of New Zealand and involving placing the head under an air pump over sulfuric acid and drawing off the fluids, although technically successful, left the head looking distastefully macabre, with dried and darkened skin stretched tautly over the skull.[31] The auto-icon was therefore given a wax head, fitted with some of Bentham's own hair. The real head was displayed in the same case as the auto-icon for many years, but became the target of repeated student pranks. It is now locked away securely.[35]
In 2017 plans were announced to re-exhibit the head and at the same time test Bentham's DNA for autism.[36]
A 360-degree rotatable, high-resolution 'Virtual Auto-Icon'[37] is available at the UCL Bentham Project's website."
"Sandra has a good solid anti-murderer vibe. My skin felt very secure and sufficiently attached to my body when I met her. Also my organs." HAIL SATAN