June 2012
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I Am Not Spartacus
In response to a 73 B.C. revolt against Rome by Spartacus the gladiator, 6,000 slaves were crucified.
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“Love, friendship, respect, do not unite people as much as a common hatred for...”
– Anton Chekhov
Anonymous asked: I have to admit that I disagree with your assessment that the naval race led to WWI. If anyone is to blame for WWI, I think it should be Bismarck. He set the stage for a worldwide conflict with his aggressive actions to create a strong, unified Germany. He knew it would upset and even perhaps destroy the Concert of Europe as envisioned by the Congress of Vienna, but he still unified Germany. WWI...
Anonymous asked: I think the reason why people are so willing to accept America as a failure (including a lot of American's) is that it's often used as a scapegoat country where even the citizens feel obligated to apologize for mistakes that may not even be fully theirs.
Anonymous asked: For the oldest skates ever discovered, those look pretty brand new! How craftsmanship has declined.
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Demon Babies (Seriously, Soulless Babies)
The Stoics thought the soul came when the fetus was exposed to cool air, although the potential was present at conception. So if your baby was born in the hot noontime, he or she wouldn’t be a human until it cooled down around dusk. Plutarch and Tertullian both ridiculed that idea because babies born in hot climates or in warm rooms were certainly alive.
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Romans and Their Books
Around 80 B.C., the men of a Roman army invading Asia Minor found a number of manuscripts of Aristotle’s works in a pit and brought them to their general, Sulla. It turned out that no other copies of many of them existed, and Sulla had them taken to Rome and recopied.
Vergil, who is generally accepted as the greatest of the Roman poets, left instructions that, upon his death, his...
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An Unwanted Distinction
On January 31, 1945, Private Eddie Slovik was shot for desertion, the first American executed for the crime since the Civil War and the only one to suffer this punishment during WWII.
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“How to hit home runs: I swing as hard as I can, and I try to swing right through...”
– Babe Ruth
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Che Guevara’s dad was Irish, and his last name was Lynch.
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“The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there...”
– A ditty about grave diggers, a serious problem back in the day due to a low supply of executed criminals and a high demand for medical cadavers
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What's In A Name?
Benito Mussolini was named for Mexican revolutionary leader Benito Juarez.
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Stink Bombs and the US Military
the Odorous Substances Project of the Joint Nonlethal Weapons Directorate has a very specific task: create a stink bomb so powerful soldiers cannot fight. Back in the 1970s, the army tried filling chicken eggs with aromatic chemicals and throwing them at soldiers. This never really went anywhere.
There have been many subsequent efforts, but the most universally hated substance is good old Who...
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Once You Go Blonde, You Get On Your Back
In the Roman Empire,light-color hair was associated with the barbarian women of Gaul and Germany who often ended up as slaves in brothels. Consequently, Roman law required all prostitutes to dye their hair blonde in order to distinguish themselves from “proper,” dark-mane ladies.
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The Birth of Nessie
The legend of the Loch Ness Monster began around the year 565, when St. Columba claimed to meet a water beast at Loch Ness, granting it “perpetual freedom of the loch”.
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The earliest medical description of depression dates back to Hippocrates, the Greek “father of medicine,” who attributed depression, or melancholy, to an imbalance of the body’s four humors. The theory was that too much black bile created a melancholic temperament—literally melanin (black) and cholia (bile). Hippocrates recommended rebalancing body systems by using relaxation and healthy living...
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John Lennon
Some icky facts about the famous Beatle
he beat his wives. It is documented back to his younger days in Liverpool, and the man even admitted it in later life
he lied about his past. And not little stuff, either. When the Beatles were first becoming popular, he lied about being not married. He claimed it was love at first sight with Yoko Ono; in fact, she stalked him for months before he gave...
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We Can't Have Homo Sapiens In Congress!
In 1950, in a senatorial primary election in the U.S., George Smathers, running against Claude Pepper, worked to expose Pepper’s secret “vices”. Smathers disclosed that Pepper’s sister was a “thespian” and his brother a “practicing homo sapiens”. Pepper himself was “a known extravert”, he “matriculated” when he went to...
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“I am still alive!”
– last words of Caligula, Roman Emperor who was insane, hated, and assassinated
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Thomas Jefferson: Constitution Hater and President
Thomas Jefferson was not happy with the Constitution, which was created while he was serving as a diplomat in France. He wrote to a friend “There are very good articles in it: & very bad. I do not know which preponderate.” He later elaborated, “what I do not like…[is] the omission of a bill of rights.” More disturbing was “the abandonment in every instance...
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To Life!
Ancient Egyptians’ life expectancy was about forty. That seems young, until you put it in context. The Romans, who were dominant long after Egyptian civilization declined, had a life expectancy of twenty-eight. Medieval Europeans had a life expectancy of thirty, actually better than when under one of the “great” empires!
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