Cultural and historical facts that amaze you

FloatingVoter · 05-10-2015 06:50PM

major bill wrote: »

In Ancient Egypt when a Pharaoh died all their living servants and pets + possessions were buried with them in order to serve them in the afterlife

poor bastards

True, you die a Pharaoh and wake up realising the cat is a God....eternity changing litter trays and opening doors for an uninterested deity.

OU812 · 05-10-2015 07:06PM

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Pretty minor compared to some of the other stuff here, but my parents tell me that before the 90s, carjacking and hotwiring of parked cars were so common in Dublin that a lot of people didn't bother driving into the city at all just because it was so likely their cars would get robbed. Couple of epically hilarious stories about the lengths people went to to stop it happening

Happened all the time. My dad used to leave the car door open in case it was stolen so they wouldn't break the window

Capt'n Midnight · 05-10-2015 08:10PM

Whitewinged wrote: »

Also I remember when I went to Crete. We went on a day trip to an island called Spinalonga. I cant remember all the history of the island but from the 1900s up until something like the 50s, it was used as a leper colony. It was sad in that people were separated from their families but as far as i know, they were treated well on the island and made a life there.

Guess how Leopardstown got it's name ?

We had TB sanatoriums too. Wasn't until the 1950's that we first started to get it under control. Part of Dr. Noel Browne's legacy.

http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/health/the-silent-terror-that-consumed-so-many-128709.html

FOR much of the last century in Ireland, TB was the AIDS of its day, a scourge that ravaged the country.
...
Its effect was all-embracing, even among those who were healthy. A coveted job in the civil service or a bank was not yours until a chest X-ray film was reported as normal. In the 1950s, a work colleague might disappear for some months of sick leave. After treatment, most victims returned to the workplace, their gaunt features and weight loss confirming the unspoken diagnosis.

05-10-2015 08:18PM

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Pretty minor compared to some of the other stuff here, but my parents tell me that before the 90s, carjacking and hotwiring of parked cars were so common in Dublin that a lot of people didn't bother driving into the city at all just because it was so likely their cars would get robbed. Couple of epically hilarious stories about the lengths people went to to stop it happening

Joyriding was such an issue in the 80s that it prompted the conversion of Spike Islands fort into a prison for joyriders.

http://www.rte.ie/archives/category/society/2015/0313/686951-spike-island/

Kev W · 06-10-2015 06:41AM

Notavirus.exe wrote: »

Well, you're right. There weren't days until the sun was invented.

Let's all hope Amaterasu doesn't decide to go back into her cave or we'll all have to learn to do without it again!

LordSutch · 06-10-2015 07:33AM

steddyeddy wrote: »

Cultural and historical facts that amaze you find amazing

I find it amazing that the oldest traces of human habitation on the island of Ireland only stretch back 10,000 years (approx), while the oldest traces in Britain stretch back nearly 100,000 years!

So it took 90,000 years until some smart geezers (heritage unknown) to sail west and check out this green and pleasant land. Amazing to think this neighboiring island lay uninhabited for so long after Britain was settled (Just twelve miles between the two islands at the nearest point).

I guess the end of the last ice age played a part, but still fascinating to think that we were 'human free' till relatively recently vis a vis next door!

Markcheese · 06-10-2015 07:40AM

tomwaterford wrote: »

No one :pac:.....but always depicted as that in any pics

Humpty Dumpty was a cannon during the English civil war- on the royalist side

suicide_circus · 06-10-2015 07:44AM

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/nov/18/africans-apologise-slave-trade

Peregrinus · 06-10-2015 07:49AM

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Pretty minor compared to some of the other stuff here, but my parents tell me that before the 90s, carjacking and hotwiring of parked cars were so common in Dublin that a lot of people didn't bother driving into the city at all just because it was so likely their cars would get robbed. Couple of epically hilarious stories about the lengths people went to to stop it happening

There was a bit of a moral panic about theft of cars (and theft from cars) in the 1990s and, in truth, it had been on a steady rise since the early 1970s. But in fact the rise in car-related crime simply tracked the rise in car ownership and usage. The more cars you have on the roads, the more cars parked in public or accessible places, the more you expect opportunistic car crimes. Think about it; if you left any other item of moveable personal property along on the roadside for hours at a time, would you expect it to be there when you got back?

Car crime in fact peaked in the 1980s and was already on a slow decline by the time we had our panic. The decline is probably down to improved technology - better immobilisers fitted to more cars, etc.

Wibbs · 06-10-2015 09:26AM

LordSutch wrote: »

I find it amazing that the oldest traces of human habitation on the island of Ireland only stretch back 10,000 years (approx), while the oldest traces in Britain stretch back nearly 100,000 years!

So it took 90,000 years until some smart geezers (heritage unknown) to sail west and check out this green and pleasant land. Amazing to think this neighboiring island lay uninhabited for so long after Britain was settled (Just twelve miles between the two islands at the nearest point).

I guess the end of the last ice age played a part, but still fascinating to think that we were 'human free' till relatively recently vis a vis next door!

Actually habitation in Britain goes back much further than 100,000 years, closer to 800,000 with earlier species of humans and they were ranging as far as Scotland. I would bet anything that they were here too and over a similarly long period of time. After all the second the ice retreated modern humans came here.

However the ice ages very efficiently scoured our landscape of earlier deposits that would have contained evidence of earlier habitation. Conversly the south of England always remained ice free and escaped the scouring, so their geology is far more diverse than here in Ireland(as is their flora and fauna) and has preserved deposits that give a snapshot of the last million years. We also lost much earlier stuff like the layers that would have contained dinosaur fossils.

Peregrinus wrote: »

Car crime in fact peaked in the 1980s and was already on a slow decline by the time we had our panic. The decline is probably down to improved technology - better immobilisers fitted to more cars, etc.

+1, pre 2000 cars were easy to steal and pre 1990 stuff was farcically vulnerable to theft. What might back the improved security angle up was that period where we went nuts for Japanese imports. They have traditionally very low car crime so Japanese models often lacked immobilisers and the like of their European versions and there was also an upward blip in car crime around that time.

Wibbs · 06-10-2015 09:52AM

major bill wrote: »

In Ancient Egypt when a Pharaoh died all their living servants and pets + possessions were buried with them in order to serve them in the afterlife

poor bastards

Only in the very early days of Pharonic Egypt. 1st dynasty period and it was dying out by the end of that. It's more a Hollywood myth that retainers were buried in pyramids and the like. They did bury clay and wooden figurines representing their servants and armies etc to serve them.

Speaking of Pharaoh. He was considered a living god, or receptacle of a god(Horus IIRC). The name pharaoh means or started of meaning great house/palace where the god king lived, later it became the word for the king himself. Some of their rituals were well odd, apparently once a year the pharaoh would go into a secret room in the temple and *ahem* crack one off onto a sacred stone so the waters of the nile would rise to nourish the land. They also wore false beards. One female ruler(whose name escapes) who reigned after her pharaoh husband died young took to wearing a false beard a few years later. Her name became masculinised in writing too. Seems she was very well liked by her people so they saw no reason to stick a bloke on the thrown.

Kev W · 06-10-2015 09:59AM

The genre of Science Fiction was invented by a teenage girl in the early 19th century.

Jawgap · 06-10-2015 09:59AM

OU812 wrote: »

Happened all the time. My dad used to leave the car door open in case it was stolen so they wouldn't break the window

Yep - I remember that along with radios that you removed and took with you - they evolved into ones where you just took the front part......

.......my Dad removing the distributor cap when he came home from work each evening - thieves just brought a bag of distributor caps when they went robbing

.....big fúck-off chains you'd wrap around the seat mounts and steering wheel as well as all kinds of contraptions for locking a steering wheel

....shatter files for breaking windows and hair thin wire for pulling locking mechanisms

.....the Guards getting 2.8L Granadas to chase the scroats

.....it almost make you nostalgic for those long summer evenings listening to the car chases on the radio scanner:)

sbsquarepants · 06-10-2015 10:33AM

Strange cultural fact - Most Rwandan women are squirters. Not just by some sexy accident of genetics or whatever but through the carefull teaching of certain techiques from mother to daughter down through the generations:eek:

recylingbin · 06-10-2015 10:34AM

It's good to have a flat head in India.

Shenshen · 06-10-2015 10:56AM

Wibbs wrote: »

They also wore false beards. One female ruler(whose name escapes) who reigned after her pharaoh husband died young took to wearing a false beard a few years later. Her name became masculinised in writing too. Seems she was very well liked by her people so they saw no reason to stick a bloke on the thrown.

Hatshepsut, was it? To me, she would be the most fascinating figure in all of ancient Egypt. But most of the records have been purged of her name after she died. Bit like Echnaton, too far ahead of their times.

melissak · 06-10-2015 11:38AM

I'm not sure if it is true but read that basques don't have the same unconscious tells eg looking a certain way when lyin, as everyone else.why??

whisky_galore · 06-10-2015 11:50AM

Deleted User wrote: »

Joyriding was such an issue in the 80s that it prompted the conversion of Spike Islands fort into a prison for joyriders.

http://www.rte.ie/archives/category/society/2015/0313/686951-spike-island/

The 80s in Ireland were pretty bizarre, GUBU in fact.

A good proportion of this country's population stared at concrete statues back then under the belief they would dance a jig or something.

Earthhorse · 06-10-2015 12:14PM

Kev W wrote: »

The genre of Science Fiction was invented by a teenage girl in the early 19th century.

Are you going to share her name and that of her work with us or do we have to guess? I can't find any mention of this over on the wiki page which also cites work like Gulliver's Travels as some of the earliest SF and which was written centuries earlier.

Kev W · 06-10-2015 12:17PM

Earthhorse wrote: »

Are you going to share her name and that of her work with us or do we have to guess? I can't find any mention of this over on the wiki page which also cites work like Gulliver's Travels as some of the earliest SF and which was written centuries earlier.

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein.

Sorry, thought it was more common knowledge!

I don't know by what metric Gulliver's Travels could be called Science Fiction.

Donkey Oaty · 06-10-2015 12:26PM

Kev W wrote: »

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein.

Sorry, thought it was more common knowledge!

I don't know by what metric Gulliver's Travels could be called Science Fiction.

Gulliver's Travels most certainly is sci-fi by many definitions.

And what do you make of Voltaire's Micromegas?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microm%C3%A9gas

steddyeddy · 06-10-2015 12:29PM

Our word panic is derived from the Greek god pan. Pan was a wild forest Demi god that used to hide out in forests making travellers uneasy. Eventually he would jump out of a bush causing a "panic".

harry Bailey esq · 06-10-2015 12:39PM

kneemos wrote: »

What else breaks when it falls?

Glass

Kev W · 06-10-2015 12:54PM

Donkey Oaty wrote: »

Gulliver's Travels most certainly is sci-fi by many definitions.

Nope. Fantasy. Because there's giants and magic.

And what do you make of Voltaire's Micromegas?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microm%C3%A9gas

Point taken.

The_Minister · 06-10-2015 12:54PM

Kev W wrote: »

The genre of Science Fiction was invented by a teenage girl in the early 19th century.

Emmmm......no.

Frankenstein was significant, but people had been writing science fiction for centuries - Moore's Utopia for one.

Pretty sure some of the Ancient Greek stuff about Atlantis might count too.

Earthhorse · 06-10-2015 01:29PM

Kev W wrote: »

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein.

Sorry, thought it was more common knowledge!

I don't know by what metric Gulliver's Travels could be called Science Fiction.

It was your description of her as a teenage girl that threw me. I even saw her name mentioned in the wiki entry and breezed by it looking for the girl.

To be honest defining genre's is a mug's game at the best of time, I was just curious to see who you were talking about.

Duffy the Vampire Slayer · 06-10-2015 02:01PM

The_Valeyard wrote: »

Dueling in Paraguay is legal as long as both parties are registered blood donors.

Sadly, this ones not true, although I wish it was.

garrixfan · 07-10-2015 12:45AM

LordSutch wrote: »

I find it amazing that the oldest traces of human habitation on the island of Ireland only stretch back 10,000 years (approx), while the oldest traces in Britain stretch back nearly 100,000 years!

So it took 90,000 years until some smart geezers (heritage unknown) to sail west and check out this green and pleasant land. Amazing to think this neighboiring island lay uninhabited for so long after Britain was settled (Just twelve miles between the two islands at the nearest point).

I guess the end of the last ice age played a part, but still fascinating to think that we were 'human free' till relatively recently vis a vis next door!

Do we even know for certain that the first inhabitants sailed from what is now Britain to here? It wans't really a neighboring Ireland back then either was it? Wasn't the east of the south UK joined to what is now Holland 6,000 years ago?
Also when was the last time Ireland was part of continental Europe?

But holy hell I didn't realize the first humans came to Europe so long ago, its pretty crazy that ourselves and Iceland weren't only inhabited in the last 10,000 years ago.

podgemonster · 07-10-2015 01:00AM

Ohio is the only state in the United States whose letters are not used in the word "Mackerel"

07-10-2015 06:15AM

podgemonster wrote: »

Ohio is the only state in the United States whose letters are not used in the word "Mackerel"

Think Swindon Town is the only English football club with that mackerel claim too.

Cultural and historical facts that amaze you

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