History

[George]

This forums needs a History thread to go along with Science, Religion, Politics, Travel, and similar catch-all discussions here.

I recently discovered the podcast Hardcore History by Dan Carlin (www.dancarlin.com). I've listened to several of his free podcasts so far and am considering buying more. I've listened to hardly anything else in the last few weeks, so that's why history is on my mind lately.

I also love Simon Winchester's books (and author-read audiobooks). I know we've discussed his work before, but here's another plug for the man who inspired me to use the word sesquipedalian in a business email once (so far): www.simonwinchester.com

Let the history discussion begin.

[Tom Servo]

History? I'm past that.

[Cam]

Zing! :lol:

[George]

Tough room today.

Did I really write "This forums"?

I'll show myself out...

[Crazed_Insanity]

It's all HisStory. Who is 'His'? Surely feminists would complain about that... why not Herstory?

In all seriousness, I've grown to appreciate history more as I get older. Back when I was in school, it was my least favorite subject.

[Tom Servo]

Same, it's always been my worst subject but I find myself more interested now than I used to be. I think it's probably related to watching Michele go through the process of figuring out her ancestry.

[FaultyMario]

Right now I'm reading up on the History of Cultural Industries, trying to understand how we went from "the English are not gifted artistically, they are not as musical as the Germans or Italians [...]" to the British invasion.

*George Orwell, c. 1940

[Yw-slayer]

Studied the subject for 3 years at University. Was and is great.

[Crazed_Insanity]

Will it be great again?

[mk]

Once only just recently adopted noble man found him self in a very bad situation in Tessalonica.

His father and his army was out when Hungarians sieged the city.
Young man had only few spear militia units and his own guards when Hungarian prince came with full army.
He and his guards knew that this is the time when heroes are made and their songs written.

Luckily hungarians didn't have siege engines with them and so had to build ones one site.
Noble mans father got the message and was hurrying back so Hungarians had no time to waste since they couldn't match coming venetian heavy infantry.

So minimal siege machines where present when hungarians attacked and that was the time for young man and his personal guards.
When hungarians came they rushed out the gate right away and rammed thru the first and only ladder carrier group and distracted them away from their ladders.
Then they turned around towards the ram and its pushers, they were also distracted and were now chasing them with the earlier unit.
After second turn around the even smaller group of knights were charging towards the siege tower pushers but behind those were first wall attacking foot knights that didn't just look around.
The bodyguard horses could pull out once but siege tower was still moving, young mans friend beside him said that he can hear a cavalry thunder around the walls, fathers men are near.
That was the time for the final push, to stop the siege tower or die trying, and so they charged, seeing how their spear men on the wall were fighting up climbing hungarians.

Young man and his friends didn't last long against hungarian foot knights and finally he couldn't control his horse anymore and just tried to stay on the saddle.
Then something thumped back of his head hard and everyting started fading away and sowly all was quiet and calm, finally freeing darkness came and pain was gone.

The young man didn't die.
He is a hero now, like is his friend, who is the other one of them who survived.
They were told that right behind their last charge came his fathers light cavalry and charged thru climbing hungarians, who were many and cavalry casualties were heavy but distraction was enough that more defending forces had time to pack against climbers.
And the siege tower was not moving, nor was the ram.
Then fathers heavy cavalry reached princes standing bodyguard from the side and when they were turned towards their attackes and be stuck there the light cavalry left overs charged teir back and one of our man punched straight thru the prince and the whole unit fled.
Others saw that and their morale was gone in no time.
So we were finally slauthering them thru the fields.
Though our heavy infantry never reached that part.
And father him self rushed thru the side gate and straight to the city central to just find out there are nobody there, the main gate holded.
Note that the prince didn't die there but his ransom was rejected so he was promptly executed.

It's a game.

[Yw-slayer]

Will it be great again?

Do you even read?

[Crazed_Insanity]

I read audio books! :p

[dodint]

Ash and I both have undergraduate history degrees. She did her thesis on Civil War nursing. I did mine on slavey in the northern colonies 1619-1800.

I would recommend Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine. https://www.maximumfun.org/shows/sawbones

It's a well done podcast about how people through history have tried, usually miserably, to cure various ailments. It's also pretty lighthearted which is a nice break from the mostly heavy podcasts I digest.

[Tom Servo]

I keep hearing Sawbones mentioned on another Maximum Fun podcast I'm a huge fan of, "Oh No, Ross & Carrie", which mostly investigates weird organizations/beliefs (Scientology, Flat Earth, Anti-Vaxxers, etc). I'll have to check out Sawbones too.

(Another good one before I completely derail this into the podcast thread is Judge John Hodgman)

[Yw-slayer]

Ash and I both have undergraduate history degrees. She did her thesis on Civil War nursing. I did mine on slavey in the northern colonies 1619-1800.

Ah, no wonder you are both upstanding people of fine taste and breeding!

[tigeraid]

Not sure what all to discuss, except to say that I also obsessively listen to Dan Carlin, and I have every book Simon Winchester has written. This thread is a creepy coincidence.

Blueprint for Armageddon is, in my opinion, the best podcast ever made. And if it were a book, it'd be an excellent history book, even with the liberties Carlin sometimes takes to tell his story. Riveting.

[Cam]

I recommend A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson.

[dodint]

I keep hearing Sawbones mentioned on another Maximum Fun podcast I'm a huge fan of, "Oh No, Ross & Carrie", which mostly investigates weird organizations/beliefs (Scientology, Flat Earth, Anti-Vaxxers, etc). I'll have to check out Sawbones too.

(Another good one before I completely derail this into the podcast thread is Judge John Hodgman)

I keep going back and forth about the Hodgman one. I really need to sit down and give it a listen.

Sawbones works because the doctor/wife plays a perfect straight man. She reels in the everyman/husband perfectly. Very good pair, those two. There is another Maximum Fun podcast that does the same thing with legal issues called Court Appointed but the hosts are not great (it's the father of the doctor/wife from Sawbones and a....cousin?). Court Appointed pisses me off because it's a concept I was starting to whiteboard to do myself, then they started doing it and they do not do it well. Argh.

[MR2 Fan]

I'm still waiting for a proper theatrical portrayal of the life of Teddy Roosevelt, though it may have to be a trilogy because his story is incredible.

Meanwhile, I watched The Roosevelts on Netflix (or Amazon Prime ?) and it was quite well done about Teddy, Franklin and Eleanor (who was related to Franklin already, but sort of not direct cousins?)

I miss the days of strong, tough but fair leaders who are actually smart. Obama was smart, but not tough IMO

[Crazed_Insanity]

I think it was probably much easier to portray a particular image in the past... nowadays, with HD TV and hi res photos and social media... it’ll be much easier to make somebody smart to look dumb..., to be able to zooming and magnify somebody’s shortcoming and then virally viewed by all whether viewers want to see or not.

It’s hard being a public figure nowadays.

No question reality TV helped get Trump elected. On the flip side, it also made him look dumber than he really is. If he were really as dumb as we think he is, he wouldn’t have won the WH and still be able to stick around like this. We never saw any of W’s close associates take any falls for him. W seemed like a puppet, Trump doesn’t... well maybe he’s Putin’s puppet... regardless, I think Trump is way smarter than W. He just looks dumber thanks to liberal media. Likewise, Obama was probably made to look weak thanks to conservative congress/media.

[Ashie]

Ah, no wonder you are both upstanding people of fine taste and breeding!

Aww, thank you. As a side note, my thesis is actually on women doctors, nurses, and medicine of the Civil War. Dorothea Dix was an incredible woman during that time and Nathan gifted me a letter she wrote as a graduate present. If any of you are interested in learning something new, she's a great person.

[Crazed_Insanity]

So how do you pronounce her name? Ms. Dee or Ms. Dicks? :p

[Ashie]

Ms. Disc. ;)

[George]

The Atlantic article: 100 Years Ago in Photos: A Look Back at 1919 (https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2019/05/100-years-ago-photos-look-back-1919/589528/)

[Crazed_Insanity]

Things sure looked differently back then..., but then again still very familiar... they had planes and electricity already...

Wonder what the world will look like in another 100 years...

[MR2 Fan]

Yep, cars, telephone communication, electricity, movies were all around by then.

Also per Wikipedia:

"On 31 August 1920 the first known radio news program was broadcast by station 8MK, the unlicensed predecessor of WWJ (AM) in Detroit, Michigan"

So radio was about to become popular as well.

[Leon]

Amusingly History/Economic History grad here.

Though actually Classics is my vibe now. Read my way through Mary Beard's classics works, plus some of the writings from within the era, and watch every Roman history doco I can get my hands on :)

[mk]

The Egtved Girl 43:40
(hair)

[George]

Here's something I stumbled upon: the story of ten cent beer night in Cleveland in 1974.

On the one hand, it's sad and pathetic, but I think some of it is pretty funny if you're stuck in an office doing data entry and need something to watch and/or listen to. Running time 7:57. Audio only is fine. The pictures aren't essential to the story.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxTtzLUteDA&feature=youtu.be

[Tom Servo]

I haven't watched it yet, but that reminds me of going to a Madison Blackwolf game in Wisconsin. They had one hitter from the other team designated as the "beer batter", and if he struck out, I think it was half price beer for the rest of the inning or something like that. It seemed like a bad idea when I realized there were like 8 year old kids in the stands chanting "cheap beer, cheap beer!"

[speedpimp]

Funny thing about that Cleveland disaster is a few weeks before the Indians and Rangers had gotten into a brawl during a game in Arlington. This night both teams armed themselves with bats and came to each other's aid. The beer in question is Carling Black Label. Not even sure if it's brewed any more.

[George]

I remember my Dad and the neighbors drinking Carling Black Label when I was a kid.


It seemed like a bad idea when I realized there were like 8 year old kids in the stands chanting "cheap beer, cheap beer!"

:lol:

Kids know more than adults give them credit for. I'm learning that with my own kids all the time.

I remember a fifty cent beer night in the early '80s at a minor league game that I went to with my Dad, his friend, and his friend's son who was a year older than me. I was maybe twelve or thirteen and remember a bunch of drunk people but nothing bad happened (that I knew of). I might not have remembered the part about the cheap beer except my father still apologizes to me for driving home that night when we get to laughing about the good ol' days. At that game, they also brought a long, narrow trough filled with ice cream for kids to run down to the field and eat between innings. I remember not going, thinking I was too old for such childish foolishness and also that it was pretty gross. The other kid went down and got his fill.

Times have changed at ball parks. We got to go to a Colorado Rockies game last summer and I was telling my kids they'd see all kinds of cool stuff on the sidelines in between innings, like mascots dressed in silly costumes driving ATVs around, bringing people down from the stands for contests like foot races against the mascot, trying to throw balls into far-away barrels to win prizes, and whatever other foolishness to keep the crowd entertained while the pitcher throws a few warm-up pitches and the team that had been at bat takes the field again.

Nah. They did very little of that, and what they did was all on the jumbo-tron screen, such as going into the stands with a video cameras and microphones and asking fans trivia questions about the team, baseball in general, and whatever else. The fans cheered when they answered correctly and enthusiastically booed when they didn't. I mean, that's okay, of course, but very different from the sideshow antics in the days of plain old scoreboards in the outfield instead of today's technology.

You guys are surely sick of me mentioning the southern rock/alt-country/Americana band Drive-By Truckers, but I gotta say, the story of ten cent beer night sounds just like the kind of historical tales the DBT tell in some of their songs - lots of getting drunk and raising hell for sure, but with a level of wit and intelligence far above the typical "rock and roll all night and party ever-y day". While listening to that video, I couldn't help but think that my favorite band could (and should!) write a funny and sad song about what went down that night in Cleveland in 1974.

"Stories of corruption, crime and killing, yes it's true
Greed and fixed elections, guns and drugs and whores and booze"

- lyrics from a DBT song that describe much of their work

[Tom Servo]

I think my Madison story was maybe twenty years ago or so, so not sure how much things have changed, but at least the time going to a minor league game was *way* different (and better) than going to a major league one. I wonder how much they're still like that? Makes me sad there isn't really a lot in the way of minor league stuff near where I live.

[George]

Here's something interesting. (No, really!)

https://www.historyonthenet.com/presidential-fight-club

https://www.historyonthenet.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Presidents-Fight-Club-HEADER-2-3-1024x256.jpg

I haven't listened to any of the podcasts yet, but I'm quite amused reading the Special Abilities for each president. Some are funny but some sound like men I would not want to tangle with.

[mk]

The unheard story of David and Goliath

[Tom Servo]

Without thinking too much, I'm going Taft.

[tigeraid]

It's really gotta be Lincoln or TDR, since they were both actual boxers/wrestlers.

[Dicknose]

I tend towards science - but find it interesting when science and history overlap.

The east coast of Australia was found due to a voyage thats primary purpose was to observe the transit of Venus.
In 1769 Captain Cook went to Tahiti, taking an astronomer, to observe the transit of Venus across the sun. By having several groups do this in different locations the result could be used to determine the distance to the Sun. This distance was important because we could observe distances to planets only in terms of the distance to the sun (AU). But there was no easy way to get this distance itself.

Anyway... after doing this he opened his sealed instructions that basically said "go west and explore the east coast of Australia", so he did this, arriving in early 1770. After that he continued west and circumnavigated the globe (yes the conspiracy against flat earth was already established!)
While he was far from the first European to come to Australia, the others had only been along the west and north coasts (and Tasman had gone across the bottom, finding Tasmania but without knowing it was an island), he went up the east coast, which is now where most of our population lives.

This lead to the British settlement of Australia only a few years later in 1788. But that also had another tie in with what seemed unrelated history and some little trouble in some British colonies!

[Leon]

then spiders, snakes, and croc's killed everyone and everything

[George]

Quoting from some off-topic conversation in the Gun Control thread:


I was also reminded of a Dan Carlin Hardcore History podcast called Painfotainment (free download), which talks about the mob mentality and the desire for gruesome, public punishments and executions.


Phew, it's gonna take some work to get used to that guy's voice. I ended up repeatedly tuning out, which you'd think would be hard to do when describing horrible torture.


I get the impression that Dan says what comes to mind, rather than reading from a script. He's verbose, talks fast, and adds a lot of side stories.


Hah, if anything, I thought he talked slowly and often liked to repeat himself about how extreme he likes his history.

I stumbled upon some guy doing an imitation of Dan. I think we're both right.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BdjBV8-jKpo/?igshid=11bxrl5vfzi2c

I don't know how to make that video appear here like we do with YouTube videos.

[mk]

The unheard story of David and Goliath

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziGD7vQOwl8

[Tom Servo]

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/538/731/0fc.gif

Hah, that was a pretty decent impression. And yeah, for some reason I don't think this forum software supports any video embeds outside of Youtube.

[George]

In case anyone's looking for a long and in-depth series of podcasts about the history of Rome, here's one I keep seeing mentioned as a "must-listen."

It is available at podcast sites for your smart-phone app, but I still prefer a stand-alone mp3 player and I finally found a site from which to download them:

https://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/the_history_of_rome/archives.html

Click on July 2007 to get started.

Edited to add: it’s called The History of Rome by Mike Duncan.

[Leon]

oh nooooo, I'm a Roman history junkie....

[George]

:devil:


I've listened to the first three so far and it seems pretty good. I only know the basics of Roman history: toga parties, chariot racing, gladiators, the crucifixion of Jesus, and a little of Julius Caesar from reading the play by Shakespeare in high school and more recently thanks to Dan Carlin.

Leon, if you're into Caesar, you might enjoy this free six-hour podcast. Dan tends to make his podcasts free for a while when they're new but eventually you have to pay to download them. You should grab this now if you think you might be interested: https://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-60-the-celtic-holocaust/

I'm looking forward to educating myself on this important subject. Maybe it will help me understand the mess that Europe became in the middle ages. I remember struggling through a very difficult history class in college about the Holy Roman Empire with an endless cast of characters and far too many names of places to remember. The professor must have been studying it all his life, because I remember how he would come in and lecture with no books or notes and could answer any question about anything from memory. Meanwhile, we students would look at each other and groan when we'd see stuff like this handed out as a test questions:

1. Fill in the names of these territories. :eek:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/21/Mitteleuropa_zur_Zeit_der_Staufer.svg/800px-Mitteleuropa_zur_Zeit_der_Staufer.svg.png

[dodint]

You you made the first post I assumed it would be Dan Carlin. But you got there eventually. :lol:

[George]

Hey, it's squarely on topic (for once). :D

[Leon]

If you like Roman history, but struggle with the dry stuff.

Mary Beard writes some excellent Roman stuff, about the people not the style of hut building etc.

Also, weirdly, Steven Saylor writes a series of fun mystery / detective novels, set in and around the time of the fall of the republic, with a cast of very infamous names. It's fiction of course, but is really good reading.

[JoshInKC]

Beard is a really great writer for nonacademic audiences - not just for the big history about the legions and emperors, but also a lot of the interesting day-to-day life-of-the-common-man stuff.

And those Saylor books are fun - I should get caught up, I think the last one I read was ~2011 or so. And they're certainly better history than Conn Iggulden's Rome books.

Also, shout-out to HBO's Rome tv series (2005)

[Leon]

All hail Rome 2005, easily one of the best things to have hit a screen.

[George]

Rather than recommending a podcast or book (until the next time I do), I'd like to pose an historical question and see what this learned assembly has to say.

To be honest, I can't think of many events or movements that fit into what I'm about to ask, yet I'm certain history is full of examples. Kindly educate me and each other and share your thoughts if you will.

In the USA today, many Trump supporters are suspicious, at best, of Covid-19 vaccinations. I'm sure those who care have seen the similarities between 2020 election result maps and the current states' vaccination percentages.

What are some other examples of political leaders successfully influencing their supporters to put themselves and others at risk by refusing to accept "mainstream" scientific theory?

I realize "at risk" and "mainstream" are subjective. Some might say getting the vaccination is putting yourself at risk. Okay. And if you want to cite monarchs or dictators or heads of religions instead of "freely elected" leaders, that's cool too. Interpret the question as you will.

[Tom Servo]

What's so weird about it to me is that it doesn't actually follow a lot of the traditional "leader pushing this thing" plan. Trump famously brags that he is the whole reason the vaccines exist, and endlessly claims that the liberals are pretending like no vaccines existed until Biden was president (I have never seen this claim, and it's pretty common knowledge that the first non-trial doses were administered in late 2020). It more seems to just come from this "if the libs do it, it must be the wrong thing" mentality that's been sown.

I do know there was a similar level of anti science backlash around the Spanish flu a good century ago, but I don't know how aligned that was with specific politics/political parties, or if it was to the extent that we have it now.

[Crazed_Insanity]

Your question prompted me to do some googling and found this article: https://theweek.com/articles/905896/political-lessons-1918-pandemic


Really, there is absolutely nothing remotely as similar to this year as the 1920 election.

What happened? Republican Warren Harding, campaigning on a "return to normalcy" (sound familiar?) won more than 60 percent of the vote and a towering majority in the Electoral College. Republicans added massively to narrow majorities in both chambers of Congress. It was a thorough repudiation of nominee James Cox and the Democratic Party. Republicans would go on to preside over the Roaring Twenties, winning the next three presidential elections and maintaining unified control of Congress until 1931.

So hopefully during the next roaring 20's, dems will finally be able to wrestle back some control from republicans?

Anyway, back to your original question... yeah I think it's really difficult to answer. What is 'mainstream'?

Round earth took a while to become mainstream. Theory of relativity as well... mainstream could be wrong.

However, yeah, there are plenty of examples of political leaders influencing their supporters I suppose. I think they are mostly authoritarian regimes, right? Even for Trump, he's more like that as well. He does aspire to want to be a dictator, right?

However 2, I have to also question whether if it's really these political leaders influencing the people... or perhaps these leaders are just very natural at feeding off of the energies and the will of the people.

Trump did NOT create the Trump supporters. Trump only got there because of his supporters. He said things they want to hear!

Likewise for Hitler, Mao...

It'll be difficult to manipulate or influence people if those people have no weaknesses for you to exploit in the 1st place.

When people are hurting, whether physically or emotionally, they no longer care about reasons or science or truth.

[George]

^ I guess we could include Hitler. He was an elected leader who convinced some of his followers that they were a "master race". They then caused themselves and their country harm and they certainly harmed others on a scale seldom seen in history.

I was thinking more along the lines of health-related things, but let the conversation go where it will (if it goes anywhere).

While typing this, I just thought of the Smokers in the movie Waterworld. Maybe The Deacon (I had to look up Dennis Hopper's character name) qualifies for this list, if we can include fictional characters.


When people are hurting, whether physically or emotionally, they no longer care about reasons or science or truth.

Good point. I'd add economically to the list, also.

[Crazed_Insanity]

Lack of money can definitely hurt! :p

If we were to stay on health issues... and let's just stick with the US and 'recent' history...

I suppose our war on drugs and preaching abstinence over birth control certainly didn't help much and actually made problems worse. We should've learned our lessons during the prohibitions. Banning alcohol is a good idea in theory... trying to help alcoholics..., but in the end, our problems ended up worse. For a 'Christian' nation, it's amazing that America still believe problems could be ban away. If that's true, Jewish Old Testament laws would be sufficient and there'd be no need for the New Testament Jesus to come.

Anyway, bottomline is that we shouldn't go too extreme either way... let people practice making their own choices and be responsible for their own choices. I suppose same should go with the masks and vaccines. Help people realize the different consequences of their choices and let them learn 1st hand. Some people just need to go thru with it in order to learn.

How can we be careful of never end up with leaders like Hitler or Mao in the future? Well, not until the day we no longer have poor and angry voters around. However, I'm sure that will never happen on earth. There will always be people like Hitler and Mao who are master manipulatists... Trump is really not nearly as good in comparison. Or perhaps US still has sufficient sensible folks around? I really think Covid screwed Trump up. He'll most likely win reelection if it weren't for Covid... Whatever the reason for his lost, at least this will give us some hope. 4 more years of Trump may be great for our stock market, but our nation probably will be further weakened... who knows, he just might end up becoming a real dictator!

[George]

...not until the day we no longer have poor and angry voters around. However, I'm sure that will never happen on earth.

Never. Some humans will always find a way to establish dominance over other humans.

Speaking of history and some humans dominating other humans, for the last few days I've been listening to the audiobook The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley. It is read by (although I'd say it is performed by) Lawrence Fishburne. Fishburne is outstanding, but more importantly, it is one hell of a story and a history lesson that I'll wager most white folks like me haven't had explained to them in this way.

[JoshInKC]

That's a great book, and I bet that Fishburne is great

[Crazed_Insanity]

Morpheus explaining the Histrix to Geo? How cool is that! :D

[JSGeneral]

What are some other examples of political leaders successfully influencing their supporters to put themselves and others at risk by refusing to accept "mainstream" scientific theory?

Did you ever hear about the time San Fransisco got the plague in the 20th Century? And it's coverup? Probably not, but this youtube video did a fantastically researched report on it (and even makes direct parallels to the event you are referring to, George.)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtG_5YHaWms

[George]

...and even makes direct parallels to the event you are referring to, George.

Wow. What a story. It surely does parallel current events.

Thanks for posting, JSG. I saw it a couple days ago but waited until I had time to watch it all without rushing through it.