February 2012
110 posts
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If George Washington were alive today, he might face a hefty overdue library fine.
New York City’s oldest library says one of its ledgers shows that the president has racked up 220 years’ worth of late fees on two books he borrowed, but never returned.One of the books was the “Law of Nations,” which deals with international relations. The other was a volume of debates...
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The First Russian Foreign Exchange Students
Mekepher Alpheriev syn Grigoriev was one of four young men sent to England by Tsar Boris in the year 1602. His early life is a blank to history, but it is possible his family included Tsar Ivan Grozny’s ‘pechatnik’ or official printer. Of the other three young men even less is known. The most known is that all four belonged to the ‘deti boyarski’, the class of service...
Anonymous asked: I thought you might be interested in this: feminismpictureproject2012[.]tumblr[.]com/. Please spread the word!
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Old York, Old York
It housed the Ninth Legion, and was called Eboracum, under the Romans
The city derives its name from the Viking settlement there, Jorvik
It became an independent city in the Medieval Ages, after wealthy merchants petitioned multiple kings for self-rule. Sounds like DC….
Guy Fawkes was born in York in 1570. He met two fellow plotters there, who would be executed with him.
Royalist York...
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Woodrow Wilson was the first president to show a motion picture in the White House: “The Birth of a Nation”, which has become the most banned film in American history.
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“Hon A B Lincoln…
Dear Sir
My father has just home from the fair and brought...”
– The letter that made Lincoln grow a beard
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The Many Face of Erato
Erato was one of the Greek muses. But Erato can also mean:
a daughter of Thespius in Greek mythology who bore Hercules a son
one of the daughters of Danaus and Polyxo. This Erato married and then murdered Bromios.
a dryad, wife of Arcas and mother of at least one of his children
one of the Nereids, mermaids who were the children of Nereus and Doris
one of the Nymphs Dodonides, who were nurses...
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The Green Isle
Some fun facts about Ireland:
The original Abbey Theatre in Dublin was opened in 1904 on the site of a morgue.
Seventy years after the treaty, the waters of Carlingford Lough are still in dispute between the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland.
The world’s most northerly vineyard is in Mallow, County Cork.
Prehistoric tombs at Newgrange in County Meath are older than the Great...
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You Couldn't Make This Up
In 1942, the police were tipped off that there was a gay brothel in Massachusetts that was infested with Nazi spies. And before you scream that it was a set-up so they could arrest some gays, it was actually smart. The brothel was popular with sailors and other navy people. So it was a good place to gather military information, if you were an undercover Nazi and willing to bone a sailor in order...
carakalikimaka asked: Why do you think having a historical perspective when addressing issues and problems in the modern world is important? I hear a lot of people say that history doesn't really matter and aside from the trite "those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it," I never know what to say in response.
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What 300 Didn't Tell You
We often hear the epic battle called the Battle of Thermopylae, but the truth is, there were lots of Battles of Thermopylae, including one in WWII. In 1941, the British Commonwealth set up their defenses in the same pass that was used in 480 B.C.
According to “The Father of History”, Herodotus, the battle occurred while the Olympic Games were going on. Of course, Herodotus also earned the...
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Thanks for saving me from a virus worse than...
^This is why my followers are awesome. I got zero trolls telling me to go for it, it was all just honest and helpful. Thanks to everyone for the heads-up!
What Is Up With The I-Pad Thing?
This is the third fan message of this type that I’ve gotten. Normally, I would write it off as spam, but I’ve been seeing it on my dashboard too. The text is:
Hey I’ve been a big fan of your blog for a while, and figured I would tell know about the contest Tumblr is having in celebration of their recent partnership with Apple (they just made a staff post about it). Apparently they’re...
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It's Not Over Till The Fat Lady Gives You Syphilis
Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848) wrote one of opera’s most famous insanity scenes in Lucia di Lammermoor (1835), based on Sir Walter Scott’s novel The Bride of Lammermoor. He himself later went mad due to syphilis and spent the last years of his life in an insane asylum. And I guess that’s what they call ironic.
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“We know that you highly esteem the kind of learning taught in those Colleges,...”
– In June 1744, the College of William & Mary invited the Indians of the Six Nations to send 12 young men to be “properly” educated. This was the reply.
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Pirates and Soldiers and Immigrants, Oh My!
Ellis Island, in the 1770s while owned by the original Ellis, was a hideout for pirates. It was a fort during the War of 1812, to prevent the British from waltzing into New York City like they did in the Revolutionary War. It was virtually abandoned until 1892, when it opened as the main entrance point to the East Coast.
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Mighty Mosquitoes: The Bug That Changed The World
500 BCE: Susruta, a Brahmin priest, deduces that mosquitoes are the carriers of malaria. No one listens.
323 BCE: Alexander the Great is felled by a lowly mosquito, dying of malaria at the age of 33.
410 CE: marauding Visigoths finish off Rome, which had been weakened by malarial outbreaks. Shortly afterward, the leader of the Visigoths Alaric dies of malaria himself.
1658 CE: Oliver Cromwell...
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Presidential Pets
John Quincy Adams had an alligator, and his wife kept silkworms
William Henry Harrison kept a billy goat and a Durham cow so he could have fresh milk at the White House
Martin Van Buren had a pair of tiger cubs given to him by the Sultan of Oman which Congress told him to send to the zoo
Zachary Taylor had a shortlived canary named Johnny Ty
Gerald Ford’s golden retriever Liberty had a...
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The Olympics Exposed
In ancient Greece, the Olympics were competed completely in the nude. Originally, the athletes wore shorts. Then one guy tossed his trunks to run faster, and after he won, everyone followed suit (according to one ancient writer, Pausanias, anyway).
Women were banned from the games. Supposedly this had something to do with the religious aspects of serving Zeus. If caught watching, they would be...
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The Kingdom of Songhay
The time when Songhay counted as a kingdom was roughly from 1350 (with significant overlap with Mali) to 1500. Most of its power came from control of the caravan routes across the Sahara like Ghana and Mali before. Songhay also benefited from the religious leadership of the king. There are records of King Kossoi accepting Islam around 1009 CE, but it took longer for the religion to dominate the...
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The Empire of Mali
Mali was roughly the 13th to 15th centuries, but there was significant overlap with Ghana before it and Songhay after it. Mali derived its power from controlling the trade routes — of gold to the north, and copper to the east (with Egypt).
The founder and first ruler of the Kingdom of Mali was Sundiata Keita. We know about him through the writings of a 14th century North African historian...
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The Kingdom of Ghana
This is in answer to a request that I talk on the Three Kingdoms Of West Africa. This is the first.
Ghana was the earliest West African state to develop. It was first mentioned in 833 AD by the Arab historian Kwarizmi, and described in great detail about two hundred years later when the Almoravids of North Africa captured Aoudaghast, a minor city. Ghana was known for its metallurgy, especially...
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The US has invaded Canada twice, once during the Revolutionary War and once during the War of 1812.
Canada had a plan in the 1930s for the invasion of the US.
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“The ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered...”
– Western Union internal memo, 1876
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Those Crazy Aztecs
The Aztecs had some interesting (and unpronounceable) names for their gods. Here’s a small sampling:
Chalchitlicue was the goddess of all waters on earth, but especially associated with running water.
Xochiquetzal was goddess of flowers, dance, and love.
Coyolxauhqui was the moon goddess and a powerful magician.
Huitzilopochtli was the war-lord god of the south, and it was to him that...
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Medieval Meals
The staple of any peasant’s diet was gruel — what we’d today call oatmeal. Bread, if they had it, was black. That may sound healthier, but grains back then were coarse and filled with impurities. Fungus, mold, and weevils would have been common. And if you got really lucky, you might get ergotism. This was caused by fungus-infected rye, which when cooked produced a fatal...
weltliteratur asked: However, in higher doses, digitalis derived from a few species of the foxglove family can kill patients be making the heart stop beating! Proper dosage is indeed important.
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The Lost Legion
After the Parthians of Persia defeated a surprisingly bad Roman army led by General Crassus, legend has it that a small band of POWs wandered through the desert and were eventually rounded up by the Han military. First-century Chinese historian Ban Gu wrote an account of a confrontation with a strange army that fought in a “fish-scale formation” — which sounds like something that was unique...
