Fascinating History

Wibbs

Curly Judge wrote: »

I was surprised to discover that the canal lock was not used until the 14th centuary.

And it was Leonardo DaVinci who perfected the design we see today with mitred edged, so the water pressure helped seal it, but it was an easy seal to break when required. Based some of it on heart valves IIRC. On that front Leo worked out certain functions and blood flow patterns in the heart that were only rediscovered in the late 20th century.

Interesting thing about him is though he was the very definition of a clever bloke, he lived through one of the greatest revolutions of history, the explosion of printed books, yet avoided the process like the plague. He did a frontispiece for a book when a mate of his twisted his arm but that was about it. It would be like if today you had someone with the mind of a Hawking, who could paint like Picasso, but who refused to own a computer and be online. He was a godawful poet too.

Rachiee

lucozade13 wrote: »

http://www.tara.tcd.ie/bitstream/2262/7823/1/jssisiVolXXIIIPartI_108124.pdf

this paper from 1974 suggests that rates of liver cirrhosis went up and up until the start of the 20th century and started to drop rapidly around the time of the first world war ... i assume because people stopped drinking so much. Were they too busy dying in the trenches instead I wonder! Although prosecutions for drunkeness died down about 15- 20 years before that but it seems the liver damage was done by then!

This is a factor but also hepatitis c causes cirrosis and is communicable through bodily fluids so poor sanitation could have led to high levels of hepatitis amongst the population.

Caonima

Today (October 1st) is/was the anniversary of the beginning of Communist Party rule in China, and began it being called the People's Republic of China (PRC). I've been here over three years and only today realised what this date actually means. Basically, Mao came into power post-WW2, chased the nationalists to Taiwan, made a hames of things, impoverished millions of people, inflicted famine on a lot more, denigrated and ostracised those involved in the arts, got a deLorean-sized time machine and transported China back a few hundred years, slept around, laid the foundations for the rampant levels of corruption China now suffers... basically wrecked the gaff.

B-B-Bertie's role model, by all accounts...

HansHolzel

Yeah, China was the place to live before 1949.

Caonima

HansHolzel wrote: »

Yeah, China was the place to live before 1949.

Like, totally

HansHolzel

Caonima wrote: »

Like, totally

Except for all the Japanese tourists.

ScumLord

Wibbs wrote: »

Interesting thing about him is though he was the very definition of a clever bloke,

He's easily one of historys most impressive people IMO. I like that despite being gifted at art he didn't wallow in that brilliance and it was just a tool to allow him to better understand the world.

Capt'n Midnight

HansHolzel wrote: »

Except for all the Japanese tourists.

Wasn't so good for them either, living off the land meant that sometimes they resorted to cannibalism.

HansHolzel

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Wasn't so good for them either, living off the land meant that sometimes they resorted to cannibalism.

New meaning to "Chinese food" I guess.

bizmark

Caonima wrote: »

B-B-Bertie's role model, by all accounts...

Ya no just no

yoloc

Nikola tesla!

sopretty

I thought Marie Curie discovered antibiotics - what did she discover then?

Gráinne Mhaoil (not sure if I've spelled that correctly) - though I've never bothered to google her.

A lady called Budica who launched war on the Romans after they invaded Britain. Her husband was a nobleman or lord of a tribe or something but the Romans raped and murdered her 2 daughters so she burned a lot of cities in her grief.

Hitler (my new teacher informs me) was the epitome of a 'good' leader. I.e. he could manipulate an intelligent and vast amount of people into committing unspeakable acts.

The Norman invasions of Ireland.

Also discovered, that the Romans couldn't conquer Scotland - hence Hadrian's wall. Sunday morning Tv can be pretty dismal at times so I've watched a few programmes about these things. Of course it appears they couldn't be assed to invade Ireland........ heh heh.

A lot of stuff around and leading up to 1916 fascinate me.

parttime

Ten of Swords wrote: »

The St Patricks Battalion (San Patricios in spanish) was a unit of the Mexican army made up almost entirely of irish famine immigrants that had deserted from the American army due to abuse and mistreatment they received for being catholics.

They fought against the American army during the Mexican-American war and most were killed or captured at the Battle of Churubusco

The unit leader, John Patrick Riley, originally from Clifden, was captured but was spared execution as he had defected to the Mexican army before the war had begun which was a far less serious offence.

Tim O'Brien has a great song about that,although he sings that Riley was from Galway Town. It is on The Crossing.

swimming in a sea

The Romans were at least advanced as 17/18th century peoples, I wonder what stopped them from harnessing steam for traction as they knew how to heat homes.

If they had and then it would probably have led on to electricity, 1400 years earlier than when it was discovered\put to use.

Wibbs

The Greeks and the Romans after them understood the power of steam, even built small "steam engines" to show it off. Some theories have it the greeks may have used a form of steam power to open and close the doors of a temple. However metallurgy wasn't up to speed yet so building an actual steam engine would have been difficult.

Philo Beddoe

sopretty wrote: »

I thought Marie Curie discovered antibiotics - what did she discover then?

Marie Curie was a physicist and a chemist. She basically discovered radiation.

sopretty wrote: »

Hitler (my new teacher informs me) was the epitome of a 'good' leader. I.e. he could manipulate an intelligent and vast amount of people into committing unspeakable acts.

'Good' in the sense of effective, rather than morally I would think!

Kat1170

Philo Beddoe wrote: »

Marie Curie was a physicist and a chemist. She basically discovered radiation.

Which ultimately killed her.

Capt'n Midnight

swimming in a sea wrote: »

The Romans were at least advanced as 17/18th century peoples, I wonder what stopped them from harnessing steam for traction as they knew how to heat homes.

If they had and then it would probably have led on to electricity, 1400 years earlier than when it was discovered\put to use.

oh yeah , if it hadn't been for the Christian dark ages we could have been exploring the galaxy by now

People from that empire in Mali were fairly close to the Europeans in metalwork until about a few centuries ago.

But we didn't have centralised control, the Chinese suppressed lots of inventions that threatened to change things. With a slight change in outlook, technology or even political stability there is no reason they couldn't have taken Oz and the Americas before the Europeans showed up.


Speaking of Oz the reason it's part of the Anglo Sphere is that the French showed up a few hours after the first colony was started and peacefully departed. Who knows what might have happened if it was the other way around ?

Curly Judge

Kat1170 wrote: »

Which ultimately killed her.

Your point being...?

sock puppet

Steamed Hams wrote: »

What events in History fascinate you?

I only just found out that penicillin was only discovered as recently as 1928 by Alexander Fleming, I find it shocking that simple infections were such a serious threat until then with the advent of antibiotics. I would have thought they were discovered in the 18th or 19th centuries.

On a related note, one of the things I was pretty fascinated to learn was that before antibiotics the cure for late stage syphilis was to intentionally infect the patient with malaria! The idea was the malaria would induce a fever which would kill the syphilis and quinine would be used to try and alleviate the malaria symptoms. Possible death from malaria was presumably preferable to certain insanity and death from syphilis. It's a crazy workaround but shows you the lengths physicians had to go to before modern medicine.

RDM_83 again

sock puppet wrote: »

On a related note, one of the things I was pretty fascinated to learn was that before antibiotics the cure for late stage syphilis was to intentionally infect the patient with malaria! The idea was the malaria would induce a fever which would kill the syphilis and quinine would be used to try and alleviate the malaria symptoms. Possible death from malaria was presumably preferable to certain insanity and death from syphilis. It's a crazy workaround but shows you the lengths physicians had to go to before modern medicine.

I think they also treated it with Mercury, so you could go mad from syphilis or you could risk going mad from Mercury poising, its a much more horrible disease than people realize these days, haven't had the chance in person to see a skeleton with it yet but apparently its really obvious.

AudreyHepburn

I have been a history and archaeology lover ever since I was little and even went as far as getting a Master's degree in archaeology. I have a particular love for the history of the First and Second World Wars.

I feel a particular connection to WWI because my great-grandfather (maternal Grandfather's father) fought during the Battle of Ypres ( a little town in Belgium) in 1914 as part of the Royal Field Artillery. He was a gunner and suffered a shrapnel wound to the leg which in a sort of twisted way proved lucky because although he lost his leg it meant he made it home.

We recently went as a family, including my grandfather and grandmother, to Ypres and toured some of the battlegrounds, as well as the unbelievable number of war graves and some preserved Allied and German trenches and it was one of the most meaningful and eye opening trips I've ever been on, added to by the fact that we were there 100 years to the day when my great-grandfather would have gone to battle there.

We are also lucky enough to still have his medals as well as various discharge papers and other documents relating to his time in the army.

Edit; We also discovered, during the aforementioned trip, that my maternal grandmother had an uncle who fought at the Somme. We don't know much else at the moment but my uncle is going to do some research, alongside what he is doing on my great-grandfather, and see what he can drum up.

The_Valeyard

Gah!!

I really need to read thread dates before I start liking comments back in the far past!!!

bnt

I went to school in South Africa, so you can bet that I learned a bit of their history, and the strange influence they've had on the rest of the world.

For example, when the Afrikaners in the Cape decided they'd had enough of the Brits in the 1830s, these "Voortrekkers" hitched up their ox wagons and headed east in the "Great Trek" (literally, the "Big Pull"). So the word "Trek" entered the English language for any long journey, even one in space: a "Star Trek".

When they reached what is now Kwa-Zulu Natal, they ran head-first in to the Zulus, and after a few battles, tried to make a deal with them. However, when a delegation under Piet Retief went to talks, they were massacred, and the deal was (shall we say) off. Before long, about 500 Voortrekkers were surrounded by over 15,000 Zulu by a river ... after which it was named "Blood River". The Voortrekkers had guns, you see ... and the Zulu didn't. If you wonder where Afrikaners got their bad attitudes from, look no further. :eek:

shuffles88

Christopher Columbus was a total scumbag, a harbinger of genocide driven by greed and the lust for gold. Not once growing up was this fact brought up when the whole 'discovered America' spiel came up.

The rhyme should really go 'In the year of 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue...
then hit land and murdered everyone in sight or took them as slaves and really made a total bags of life for an otherwise peaceful indigenous population'

Insect Overlord

shuffles88 wrote: »

Christopher Columbus was a total scumbag, a harbinger of genocide driven by greed and the lust for gold. Not once growing up was this fact brought up when the whole 'discovered America' spiel came up.

The rhyme should really go 'In the year of 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue...
then hit land and murdered everyone in sight or took them as slaves and really made a total bags of life for an otherwise peaceful indigenous population'

Sounds like you've been reading The Oatmeal! http://theoatmeal.com/comics/columbus_day

SIX PACK

Doing Geography lessons when I was 5 or 6 and teacher explaining to us that 6 of the 32 counties were under UK occupation.
Yea could never really understand that as we are an Island Nation. Tál

Links234

An File wrote: »

Sounds like you've been reading The Oatmeal! http://theoatmeal.com/comics/columbus_day

To be fair, you don't need to be a reader of The Oatmeal to know Columbus was a bit of a ****

Wompa1

Half of my family is American, the other half Irish.

My grandfather on the American side was adopted by an Austrian couple living in America.

My grandmother on the American side is the really interesting one, which we can only try to piece the history together and go off of hear say. Unfortunately, she left my grandfather for his best friend and abandoned the family. I met her once, a week before she died. She did not talk to the family at all, after she left.

The hear say goes that, through her we are related to Robert E. Lee. The leader of the Confederate army in the American civil war. But we didn't have any real proof to go off of. Recently my aunt (who is a hardcore alcoholic) found a scrap book and shoe box full of newspaper clips, letters, post card and even the deeds to some oil wells! (Which turned out to be pretty worthless)

Something which was very interesting was a picture of my great, great grandmother. A lady by the name of Mary Lou...it was interesting because she had such a dark complexion and some unique features...it looks like her mother may have been black.

Sure enough, I found several newspaper articles about Robert E. Lee and even one about his grandson (I think it was) and that he was a farmer in some small town but had also held local office at one point and had fought to get Robert E. Lees name cleared as a traitor or some crap.

It's not a very nice family tie to have but I found it interesting. I tried to look into it all on Ancestry.com but couldn't get too far without paying.

WILL NEVER LOG OFF

sorry to lower the tone but i found this fascinating

http://www.enemakit.com/enema_history.html