tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67703416230234944612024-03-05T12:47:28.775-08:00World MythtoryMythtory: n. The branch of knowledge dealing with past events that never actually happened.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger53125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6770341623023494461.post-88725177669599803462013-02-16T09:47:00.000-08:002013-02-16T09:47:24.968-08:00Hitler Firing Off<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3q6EAUZc9puWkeDG2VQoCcwXlvmOW1bQ7TCkuL6e14vVqCWal-ureZ-bVM_i4dHJcmK98LxfMfwz-Ozy-APwS_6PpKdGAPDUXCoS01-qV6SmeKKh_gMK2xn8G_uqMQ6Mxb8NaqCAFMIo/s1600/hitler-gun-control425x320.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3q6EAUZc9puWkeDG2VQoCcwXlvmOW1bQ7TCkuL6e14vVqCWal-ureZ-bVM_i4dHJcmK98LxfMfwz-Ozy-APwS_6PpKdGAPDUXCoS01-qV6SmeKKh_gMK2xn8G_uqMQ6Mxb8NaqCAFMIo/s1600/hitler-gun-control425x320.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">I found this image all over. Anyone know who made it?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thanks to recent politics, I've been seeing the same myth cropping up over and over. There are several different versions, but each one has the same central core: that part of Adolf Hitler's control of Nazi Germany rested on the fact that he managed to take the guns away from the German people. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So did he?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Well. No. He didn't. In fact, he did the opposite. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em style="background-color: white; line-height: 16.796875px;">“This year will go down in history! For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration! Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future!”</em><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 16.796875px;"> –Adolf Hitler, 1935</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This particular quote I've seen crop up several times. And it seems pretty damning, I mean, if you look at it, it's pretty clear that Hitler is talking about gun registration, an issue that's still pertinent today. And if <i>Hitler</i> liked it... it must be bad... </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yeah. Only<i> Hitler never said it</i>.<a href="http://www.opposingviews.com/i/society/guns/did-hitler-really-support-gun-control-nra-myth-debunked#"> *</a> First of all, the timeline isn't just wrong, it's backwards. The <em style="background-color: white; font-style: normal; line-height: 16px;">Weimar Republic</em> (the government before Nazi Germany) had full gun registration in 1928 (the reason they did this requires a long explication that I don't want to get into here. Long story short, it was due to the </span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Versailles">Treaty of Versailles</a>)</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hitler <i>deregulated</i> gun ownership, for the most part. <a href="http://propagandaprofessor.net/2011/09/26/the-myth-of-hitlers-gun-ban/">**</a> In 1938 with the </span><span class="mw-headline" id="The_1938_German_Weapons_Act" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 19.1875px;"><a href="http://the%201938%20german%20weapons%20act/">1938 German Weapons Act</a>, h</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 19.1875px;">e deregulated the buying and selling of rifles and shotguns, as well as ammunition. <a href="http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-hitler-passed-gun-control-myth-also.html">***</a> If you were a member of the Nazi party, you were exempt from all gun regulation. </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 19.1875px;"> He also lowered the legal gun-owning age from 20 to 18. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 19.1875px;">If you were German, Hitler </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 19.1875px;">wanted</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 19.1875px;"> you to have guns. And he wanted you to start young -- which is why the mandatory Nazi Youth Movement taught boys between the ages of 10 and 18 how to handle and use firearms. <a href="http://www.123helpme.com/view.asp?id=122450">****</a></span></span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6770341623023494461.post-14716279801261359622012-11-30T00:30:00.000-08:002012-11-30T00:30:04.423-08:00Patent Malarkey <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPVvTKsOraknWJoKVs7eYxRrTIdbBSJd6LQ9mU20LGImeiLISaWBUpZFWZxzkOKi3VG3gjTnlJzI9gNqY5TnEWCm7oNA420Nnjqmr7v5wGYKqoOUrDT_t0Meal7bPCXOLtX-1zMyiiH-8/s1600/Mythtory+Charles_H._Duell.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPVvTKsOraknWJoKVs7eYxRrTIdbBSJd6LQ9mU20LGImeiLISaWBUpZFWZxzkOKi3VG3gjTnlJzI9gNqY5TnEWCm7oNA420Nnjqmr7v5wGYKqoOUrDT_t0Meal7bPCXOLtX-1zMyiiH-8/s400/Mythtory+Charles_H._Duell.jpg" width="245" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This one is usually told at tech conferences, to get chuckles from the audience. That in 1899 the Head of the American Patent Office said that the patent office should be closed because everything that could be invented had been invented.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">Charles Holland Duell was the the "head" of the "American Patent Office" in 1899 -- in that he was the Commissioner of the </span></span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">United States Patent and Trademark Office.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">You know the myth is going south when they 1) can't get the title right, 2) can't name the person who supposedly did whatever the myth is about, and 3) don't even know the name of the department. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">In actuality, Commissioner Duell said no such thing. If you'd like to have an actual quote he said, a good choice may be, </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"In my opinion, all previous advances in the various lines of invention will appear totally insignificant when compared with those which the present century will witness. I almost wish that I might live my life over again to see the wonders which are at the threshold." <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=VMcpAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA28&dq=charles+h+duell+invented&hl=en&ei=row8TfrUG9T1gAfP4sDTCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=book-preview-link&resnum=6&ved=0CEEQuwUwBQ#v=onepage&q=all%20previous%20advances&f=false">*</a></span></span></blockquote>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6770341623023494461.post-27905336102025197802012-11-27T00:30:00.000-08:002012-11-27T00:30:02.798-08:00Sir Beef<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdxHK4YDHaM6a4ENfpWBvo-nXehLRFYzFnlmmmHQlkTD0-xSJI1XMNBegBXc1NX5WGleqDxxgYcwQJ-TGm6vVziq6L-9vMfNfAQMHw1zwxKMf1xXZYFze7groaHMH4k-KhsPoJRUgc9aI/s1600/Mythtory+Sirloin_steak.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdxHK4YDHaM6a4ENfpWBvo-nXehLRFYzFnlmmmHQlkTD0-xSJI1XMNBegBXc1NX5WGleqDxxgYcwQJ-TGm6vVziq6L-9vMfNfAQMHw1zwxKMf1xXZYFze7groaHMH4k-KhsPoJRUgc9aI/s400/Mythtory+Sirloin_steak.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Wikipedia says this is a sirloin. I'll have to take their word for it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I heard this one the other day and I had to rush home and look it up, because I'd never heard it before. To be fair, that may be because I don't really know a lot about meat or preparing it (not something I do much, being unable to digest it).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What is this myth? That the cut of beef called s</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">irloin got its name because an English king once knighted a piece of meat and called it "Sir loin."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sadly, as cute as the story is, it's not at all true. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It's French. "Sir Loin" is actually "<span style="background-color: white;"><i>sur longe</i>" ... <i>Longe</i> was French for loin, and <i>sur</i> simply means "above." So it is literally the cut "above the loin." <a href="http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sirloin">*</a></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Where is that? Well, that depends on where you live.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you're American, it's this lime green spot:</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigrxvUdv-_JEK5OEbmO2UnCWSszoQWstg_RSEsKm2TctNw9pErY7GS-RJEn-qGihyMHITeI1f98s6XtYfxWyxrTBTR3rROZhrtpVbA0fuMTc7Z2-MYy7-AbkcY1E7LXQ6cY7Kr2b33j2g/s1600/Mythtory+US_Beef_cuts.svg.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigrxvUdv-_JEK5OEbmO2UnCWSszoQWstg_RSEsKm2TctNw9pErY7GS-RJEn-qGihyMHITeI1f98s6XtYfxWyxrTBTR3rROZhrtpVbA0fuMTc7Z2-MYy7-AbkcY1E7LXQ6cY7Kr2b33j2g/s400/Mythtory+US_Beef_cuts.svg.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you're British, it's practically a quarter of the cow:</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaXUEfNwXR1SX0K41jrk1Ves32fWJl5JWIOXMXkFUtLmdIOgRvuN2fggzBaM4s53UOoRqPy7eg74Am-nocaPipTeANVdtCI4TB5cFzV0xUNCrmmEbALWjWUbW1yH8u3g82-frmR4XVJxM/s1600/Mythtory+British_Beef_Cuts.svg.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="235" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaXUEfNwXR1SX0K41jrk1Ves32fWJl5JWIOXMXkFUtLmdIOgRvuN2fggzBaM4s53UOoRqPy7eg74Am-nocaPipTeANVdtCI4TB5cFzV0xUNCrmmEbALWjWUbW1yH8u3g82-frmR4XVJxM/s400/Mythtory+British_Beef_Cuts.svg.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you're Dutch, it's this long peach colored area:</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO1zx0Y9L1aIa1FKiGC1eORthiFU83GkOR8pXBVbC241y2YJKbS96wom46bn_dTIHX8WGmdgsXdUwdfyYsjuSElBLrmBIjcT-5_VJoOpZUcLENfoKFDLEUknzqei5UYFtYaxONCv6AjK0/s1600/Mythtory+Dutch_Beef_cuts.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="235" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO1zx0Y9L1aIa1FKiGC1eORthiFU83GkOR8pXBVbC241y2YJKbS96wom46bn_dTIHX8WGmdgsXdUwdfyYsjuSElBLrmBIjcT-5_VJoOpZUcLENfoKFDLEUknzqei5UYFtYaxONCv6AjK0/s400/Mythtory+Dutch_Beef_cuts.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And if you're Brazilian, it's a slim area between the tenderloin and it's skirt (and your cows have this funny hump too):</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG8l4DzEmrr-ue329c8exeqEsnSGVxW1bZYXsOaA8O3fkL-5P5bjDTqoUwOirgLRO8U4-0rbadom3FCPZafOHxT2DUQ3quWxCaljHFfEl1tIUgt6tXDCaE8d1yPXr1S1Xc1WCENEEKlUk/s1600/Mythtory+Beef_cuts_in_Brazil.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="336" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG8l4DzEmrr-ue329c8exeqEsnSGVxW1bZYXsOaA8O3fkL-5P5bjDTqoUwOirgLRO8U4-0rbadom3FCPZafOHxT2DUQ3quWxCaljHFfEl1tIUgt6tXDCaE8d1yPXr1S1Xc1WCENEEKlUk/s400/Mythtory+Beef_cuts_in_Brazil.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6770341623023494461.post-16075795493694587542012-11-23T00:30:00.000-08:002012-11-23T20:43:33.603-08:00Doomsday 2012<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It's that one that everybody knows, but nobody will quite admit to believing -- that the world is going to end on 21 December 2012. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The usual story is that it's because of some Mayan Prophecy and an asteroid hitting the earth. Or the magnetic poles flipping. Or the sun going supernova and flame broiling all life on earth. Or something.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So what's it all about?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Usually it's seen with something that looks like this:</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJyWB0F24NhtyDANn1fFOKKMPztM6scGdrEXI987esVVdUc5PEmYEoNxc14v1AH2SX9nYpiESYNgHtDe3Ozy6fuNzpVoNYLwt98uHFWFCJ4zh0ZAU_Q8uDnWLErQNqy_KUBYdDkG9820I/s1600/Mythtory+Aztec+Calendar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJyWB0F24NhtyDANn1fFOKKMPztM6scGdrEXI987esVVdUc5PEmYEoNxc14v1AH2SX9nYpiESYNgHtDe3Ozy6fuNzpVoNYLwt98uHFWFCJ4zh0ZAU_Q8uDnWLErQNqy_KUBYdDkG9820I/s400/Mythtory+Aztec+Calendar.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But that's not even Mayan -- it's the <i>Aztec</i> "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_calendar_stone">Stone of the Sun</a>". You've got to take anything with a grain of salt when they can't even get the culture right for their pictograph proof. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So what is the Mayan Calendar? It's a little complicated but basically, the Mayans had a calendar within a calender. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I'll explain it the best I can. We write our dates in days of the month, months, and years. I'm going to write this vertically like the Mayans did so they stay the same:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So if you're American:</span><br />
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Month</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Day</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Year</span></li>
</ul>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> If you're from pretty much everywhere else:</span><br />
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Day</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Month</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Year</span></li>
</ul>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Mayans had a similar system, but with more counting systems. Kind of like how some places have both a lunar calender and a solar calender:</span><br />
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<li><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.3;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Kin = 1 day.</span></span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.3;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Uinal = 20 kin = 20 days. </span></span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.3;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Tun = 18 uinal = 360 days. </span></span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.3;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Katun = 20 tun = 360 uinal = 7,200 days. </span></span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.3;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Baktun = 20 katun = 400 tun = 7,200 uinal = 144,000 days.</span></span></li>
</ul>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There was the <span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">Calendar Round system, which was a calender like we use today, broken into 18 months of 20 days. So like how we have days, months, and years, the Mayan Calender had Kin, Uinal, and Tun. </span></span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">(You might have noticed that 18 times 20 only equals 360, and not 365 days. Each year was ended with 5 "unlucky" days that didn't belong to any month.) This calendar worked in cycles of 52 </span><i style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">Haab'</i><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;"> (think "century"). </span><a href="http://ancienthistory.about.com/library/weekly/aa101800a.htm" style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">*</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">But what that meant was that the Calender Round would reset to the year 0 every 52 years. Which would be ridiculous. But it was paired up with the Long Cycle calender with Katun and Baktun, which is the one that's getting all the 2012 buzz. The Long Cycle gave another number to the date that the Calender Round date fit into so that every day <i>ever</i> would have a unique number.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">Now, what happens on 21 December 2012? </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">The long count calender rolls over to a new Baktun. So 20 December 2012 in Mayan would be written </span></span><span style="background-color: white;"><b>12, 19, 19, 17, 19</b>.</span><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;"> (Mayans started counting with 0, so it was 20 days 0 - 19).</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">21 December 2012 will be written,<b> 13, 0, 0, 0, 0</b>. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">That's it. That's all that is happening. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">So how did the end of the world get wrapped up in it? </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">It certainly didn't have anything to do with the Mayans. Enter </span></span></span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nancy Lieder.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">Lieder claims to have been in contact with what she calls "Zetas." According to her, they're a race of super-advanced aliens who implanted a communication device in her head when she was a child. Using this device , the Zetas told her that "Planet X" was going to come and destroy the earth on the 27th of May, </span><i style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">2003</i><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">. When this failed to happen, she hastily explained that the given date was a </span></span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">"White Lie ... to fool the establishment." <a href="http://www.zetatalk.com/index/psdate.htm">**</a> Because of reasons, I suppose. </span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">After this, many of her followers latched onto the Baktun rollover as a "probable" real date for the end of the world.</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;"> </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">And then somehow took over the internet. </span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6770341623023494461.post-45630123930083320402012-11-20T00:30:00.000-08:002012-11-19T20:37:20.760-08:00Thanksgiving Feast<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipqYauaQXjGkEoAkx2xefIYh2wxc040KmyK5BE6ZW_JQvydvR3w87FXuhitc5-pSiLihIz3KsdaOsz3JMCAx1LQl97STM7BQ8yFgexL9KH4Cg19N8FbYL1uw1v5cZplYDj1s8sPn91sXY/s1600/Mythtory+TraditionalThanksgiving.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipqYauaQXjGkEoAkx2xefIYh2wxc040KmyK5BE6ZW_JQvydvR3w87FXuhitc5-pSiLihIz3KsdaOsz3JMCAx1LQl97STM7BQ8yFgexL9KH4Cg19N8FbYL1uw1v5cZplYDj1s8sPn91sXY/s400/Mythtory+TraditionalThanksgiving.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For those who aren't USians, this up coming Thursday is Thanksgiving. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What this means is that USians around the country will be sitting down to eat turkey and pumpkin pie. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Why? Because that's that traditional food that was eaten at the first Thanksgiving. And every Thanksgiving since. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Right? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Well, no. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While the definition of the "first" American Thanksgiving are debatable, most people are thinking of the 1921 feast in Plymouth.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGi1WRxSzw3sXeDPZONWfpZ_yQkPpl4uQEsNqIwGNMjlo37tY43rsB1EU39yoij7DNnCk2r-362KAuK2LEqzDIfSzq8X_t-fotPePll7yhpau7ZyktgvTW66N3blcDWHO3djdgIWEez70/s1600/Mythtory+Turkey.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGi1WRxSzw3sXeDPZONWfpZ_yQkPpl4uQEsNqIwGNMjlo37tY43rsB1EU39yoij7DNnCk2r-362KAuK2LEqzDIfSzq8X_t-fotPePll7yhpau7ZyktgvTW66N3blcDWHO3djdgIWEez70/s400/Mythtory+Turkey.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To be fair, turkey <i>may</i> have been eaten at that first Thanksgiving. We don't actually know for sure, all we know is that was recorded:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> "<span style="line-height: 18.200000762939453px;">Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week. At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the plantation and bestowed on our governor, and upon the captain and others." <a href="http://www.plimoth.org/learn/MRL/read/thanksgiving-history">*</a></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So it may well have been turkey. But it could just have easily been duck, grouse, goose, pheasant or chicken. We simply just don't know.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF3W8tF8NYjw2bCTg4D_drI9A9rGkMw0bYryXoxnh_VbDOizNDz67DtvF2IVZ0glJm3zcQ8IIXOxEn216_mmS_H6MjW_bUrP3fXW2iOkK05Nb9g4Cbvk7-lL9n92NbxgTIQi0dzHNofnw/s1600/Mythtory+Pumpkin_Pie.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF3W8tF8NYjw2bCTg4D_drI9A9rGkMw0bYryXoxnh_VbDOizNDz67DtvF2IVZ0glJm3zcQ8IIXOxEn216_mmS_H6MjW_bUrP3fXW2iOkK05Nb9g4Cbvk7-lL9n92NbxgTIQi0dzHNofnw/s400/Mythtory+Pumpkin_Pie.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sadly, what we do know, is that there was no pumpkin pie in 1621. They might have had roasted pumpkins, but pumpkin pie itself wasn't invented yet. <a href="http://whatscookingamerica.net/History/PieHistory/PumpkinPie.htm">**</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Which I find quite sad, since it's the best part of the traditional thanksgiving feast, in my not so humble opinion. </span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6770341623023494461.post-77584140560876868362012-11-16T00:30:00.000-08:002012-11-17T07:40:04.968-08:00It's all still paper in the vernacular<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The United States Constitution. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsXHDYrXAt6NmWhn2jp6mpWBRopNFCZgL9BbfdI74pMBwqHU8uy4NfszEu_mUS-2eZHeJVQP5XO_8abH0tJCrJrwIhbNeyH1cGchJICEXw3BFxcBvnWsL_A84ZzblkEvj9I8vqXDEFd20/s1600/Mythtory+Constitution_of_the_United_States,_page_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsXHDYrXAt6NmWhn2jp6mpWBRopNFCZgL9BbfdI74pMBwqHU8uy4NfszEu_mUS-2eZHeJVQP5XO_8abH0tJCrJrwIhbNeyH1cGchJICEXw3BFxcBvnWsL_A84ZzblkEvj9I8vqXDEFd20/s640/Mythtory+Constitution_of_the_United_States,_page_1.jpg" width="528" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are a lot of myths about the US Constitution says, but that's not the kind mythbelief we're dealing with today. Instead, it's what the US Constitution is physically written upon.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It's a common belief that the US </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Constitution</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> is written on hemp paper. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It's written on parchment. Parchment isn't made from plants, but from cured animal skins.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hemp paper was popular at the end of the 1700s. It's probable that drafts of the Constitution were penned on hemp paper, and that the founding fathers may have taken notes on hemp paper, but parchment lasts longer and they wanted the document to last. </span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6770341623023494461.post-7505606545682072672012-11-13T00:30:00.000-08:002012-11-13T00:30:06.144-08:00Pilgrims<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I suspect that with the USian Thanksgiving right around the corner, there's going to be talk and pictures of the Pilgrims.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For those who don't know what I'm talking about, here's a quick rundown of the usual story: Thanksgiving (AKA "Turkey Day") is an American holiday which is a feast of Thanksgiving, given in remembrance of the First Thanksgiving where the Pilgrims had a big feast to celebrate not starving to death though their first winter in America. It's traditionally celebrated with eating of turkey, cranberries, and pumpkin pie (traditionally "pilgrim food") and pictures of people who look like this:</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuv1yac-T5o7-sEz8Eydco1HOp5Bhe8V5c7DIzPeRgw3OBJ4hlL33sgFum0uFPmkfr6usHYv-813QpfAh3Jv5_8zC-LLzshpMGi1ftRzfivyvBkDEaAsCjobzcHebNpzo4ZHXmBnoFQYo/s1600/Mythtory+pilgrim-clothes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuv1yac-T5o7-sEz8Eydco1HOp5Bhe8V5c7DIzPeRgw3OBJ4hlL33sgFum0uFPmkfr6usHYv-813QpfAh3Jv5_8zC-LLzshpMGi1ftRzfivyvBkDEaAsCjobzcHebNpzo4ZHXmBnoFQYo/s1600/Mythtory+pilgrim-clothes.jpg" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Because Black, White, and Buckles were totally the style in 1620.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I'm not tackling Thanksgiving today (maybe a little closer to the actual holiday) but let's talk about the Pilgrims! Common ideas include:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1) They dressed.. well, like Pilgrims.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2) They landed at Plymouth Rock.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3) They can also be called "Puritans."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">....</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I'm afraid, as per the usual, we're 0 for 3 for actual facts in that list.</span><br />
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<u><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1) They dressed like Pilgrims.</span></u><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The image of Pilgrims we see today were actually made much later... and they were stylized to look "quaint." In reality, Pilgrims dressed like pretty much everyone else in the mid 1600s. <a href="http://www.coveryourhair.com/blog/thanksgiving-pilgrims-had-more-style-than-you-thought/">*</a></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkWLjEZvl454qHa890bCc7cR9T_I68krgcTndDdN0r1NCAeSoCTZoBmple4lVkAM7tzmGqVZ3O7iGimGHYm35S6eIYxlALvGaOafppLy4HZYKbiqxmW7dvN8AUqgrp28_R05Jr5hZ8HoI/s1600/Mythtory+pilgrim-woman-and-boy-e1290195780518.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkWLjEZvl454qHa890bCc7cR9T_I68krgcTndDdN0r1NCAeSoCTZoBmple4lVkAM7tzmGqVZ3O7iGimGHYm35S6eIYxlALvGaOafppLy4HZYKbiqxmW7dvN8AUqgrp28_R05Jr5hZ8HoI/s1600/Mythtory+pilgrim-woman-and-boy-e1290195780518.jpg" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It wasn't until about two centuries later that people decided that the pilgrims were important enough to romanticize, and they went with a bunch of things that represented "quaintness" in the 19th century.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6cvHPlj1rpluJeOlSe8jIlfebnkazf1gOLmBxCP7LMkt72JVeqbuTtwu9-peIJR4yMfTeC-lH9ongoUB99AgVXY69Kc0StRJXIas79rIwi_U3viTvmrBnlYNVIOUALsnUsUO1jSjBqGY/s1600/Mythtory+Plymouth_Rock,_Plymouth,_MA,_jjron_03.05.2012.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="252" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6cvHPlj1rpluJeOlSe8jIlfebnkazf1gOLmBxCP7LMkt72JVeqbuTtwu9-peIJR4yMfTeC-lH9ongoUB99AgVXY69Kc0StRJXIas79rIwi_U3viTvmrBnlYNVIOUALsnUsUO1jSjBqGY/s400/Mythtory+Plymouth_Rock,_Plymouth,_MA,_jjron_03.05.2012.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<u><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2) They landed at Plymouth Rock.</span></u><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They landed at Provicetown, Maine. If you drive on US Highway 6, Provincetown and Plymouth are only about an hour and a half drive apart. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In a car. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At highway speed. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Pilgrims didn't move to Plymouth until about 30 years after sailing to America. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provincetown,_Massachusetts">**</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">How did Plymouth Rock get to be about then? In 1741 (yes, well over 100 years after the event) Plymouth residents decided they needed to raise a memorial to the landing at Plymouth. They asked the oldest man in town to ID the rock where it happened. He wasn't quite old enough to be that old, but he obliged. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plymouth_Rock">Tourism destiny was made that day</a>.</span><br />
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<u><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3) They can also be called "Puritans."</span></u><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Pilgrims came over on the <i>Mayflower</i> and settled in Maine. Puritans lived in <span style="background-color: white;"><i style="font-style: normal; line-height: 16px;">Massachusetts. </i></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><i style="font-style: normal; line-height: 16px;">Pilgrims and </i><span style="line-height: 16px;">Puritans</span><i style="font-style: normal; line-height: 16px;"> didn't actually get along. </i></span></span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; line-height: 16px;">Mostly because Pilgrims called Puritans, "Puritans." You see, the term "</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 16px;">Puritan</span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; line-height: 16px;">" was actually an insult. </i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puritan" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: italic; line-height: 16px;">***</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> They called themselves, "The Godly."</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6770341623023494461.post-64083482737590600392012-11-09T00:30:00.000-08:002012-11-09T00:30:00.052-08:00Elections<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I apologize, but I've not written most of this post. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mostly because I've been dealing with an attack of the allergies that has left me a whimpering mass of red itchy welts.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It's more than mildly uncomfortable. Especially the backs of my ears.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But since in the US this was election week, I thought I'd share a quick video that has been one of my favorite history videos ever since I first saw it: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_zTN4BXvYI">Attack Ads, Circa 1800</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Y_zTN4BXvYI" width="560"></iframe></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(And if the embedded video isn't working for you, the link in the title should take you right to the YouTube page proper.)</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6770341623023494461.post-69527836459358327272012-11-06T00:30:00.000-08:002012-11-06T00:30:01.023-08:00Bonfire Bright<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNzXjeghdVfx_OrKKLvW6N2TW29vrL6pUPjuAs8jYuu-Tf49HwE002P1Gws0TFvETQkOTseL8K1D3EA5KsoKmRFsQx0dW7KtcpKzNx6dvYGxRV7tmw7FyMvb-5Scw45p81RUQcQmo0PJM/s1600/Mythtory+guyfawkes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="322" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNzXjeghdVfx_OrKKLvW6N2TW29vrL6pUPjuAs8jYuu-Tf49HwE002P1Gws0TFvETQkOTseL8K1D3EA5KsoKmRFsQx0dW7KtcpKzNx6dvYGxRV7tmw7FyMvb-5Scw45p81RUQcQmo0PJM/s400/Mythtory+guyfawkes.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This one I suspect many (if not most) USians became familiar with the name Fawkes from the character in Harry Potter. I recall one English friend of mine being very surprised to discover that Bonfire Night isn't celebrated in the US. So for those of you who don't know what Bonfire Night is all about, here's a really quick, dirty, rundown:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the early 1600s, Guy Fawkes was involved in what was called the Gunpowder Plot. It was basically a failed assassination plot to kill James I of England VI of Scotland (the guy who was King of England after Elisabeth I). He was caught on 5 November, and people lit bonfires in celebration. The tradition continues to this day as Bonfire Night. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There's a couple things I've heard about both the Gunpowder Plot and Guy Fawkes, that I'll tackle here:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1) Guy Fawkes was a lone conspirator. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2) He piled barrels of gunpowder in the Parliament basement.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3) The gunpowder was old, so there was actually no danger. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So are those true?</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid0ejKy7WTX2lXNhcjCf0J6M3aZc8AABA9r0uupUD6TMtq_yvwi3XB6Al3VvTIpP47UXlW9a4S8eWUTN1-N4NRTdGblWGZTVpocC9fxw7nvFQWtF9x9JjGyysHQyGWdsZ4x88ii8OYTVY/s1600/Mythtory+Gunpowder+conspirators.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid0ejKy7WTX2lXNhcjCf0J6M3aZc8AABA9r0uupUD6TMtq_yvwi3XB6Al3VvTIpP47UXlW9a4S8eWUTN1-N4NRTdGblWGZTVpocC9fxw7nvFQWtF9x9JjGyysHQyGWdsZ4x88ii8OYTVY/s640/Mythtory+Gunpowder+conspirators.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<u><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1) Guy Fawkes was a lone conspirator. </span></u><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Guy Fawkes was just the most famous conspirator. Other known conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot were <span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;"> </span>John Wright<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">, </span>Thomas Wintour<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">, </span>Thomas Percy<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">,</span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;"> </span>Robert Keyes<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">, </span>Thomas Bates<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">, </span>Robert Wintour<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">, </span>Christopher Wright<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">, </span>John Grant<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">, </span>Sir Ambrose Rookwood<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">, </span>Sir Everard Digby<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;"> and </span>Francis Tresham<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">. </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpowder_Plot" style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">*</a><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;"> Fawkes was the guy in charge of the gunpowder, and the one caught in the Parliament building <i>with</i> the gunpowder, so he just got the most press. </span></span></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNKjQhQWQbYQiTj4IWeVad1U2OCPGB3NIhec0hvKoJR6BVT6sw5bOcLRCNdw63uZh24nkXfJZ5KoI3dRde2478q_ZCMPsryPsghYvarKnVJVTgot0vyXeaUAfGiwA8HXu-gXcSXu_NTZQ/s1600/Mythtory+Capon_map_of_parliament.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="408" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNKjQhQWQbYQiTj4IWeVad1U2OCPGB3NIhec0hvKoJR6BVT6sw5bOcLRCNdw63uZh24nkXfJZ5KoI3dRde2478q_ZCMPsryPsghYvarKnVJVTgot0vyXeaUAfGiwA8HXu-gXcSXu_NTZQ/s640/Mythtory+Capon_map_of_parliament.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.archive.org/stream/whatgunpowderplo00gardiala#page/80/mode/1up"><span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">William Capon's </span><span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;"> diagram of the old Parliament buildings, London</span></a></span></div>
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<u><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></u></div>
<u><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2) He piled barrels of gunpowder in the Parliament basement.</span></u><br />
<u><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></u>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This one is a bit trickier. The Parliament building that stands in London today isn't the same Parliament building that Fawkes put the gunpowder in. It was remodeled in 1822. The room was actually on ground floor level, not subterranean. <a href="http://www.parliament.uk/visiting/online-tours/virtualtours/transcripts/basements/">**</a> The gunpowder was hidden under firewood, which Fawkes claimed to be watching over.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhioYWXWyfnYCX3zahG9Oj8Kjt9-bSuxPPReukl_vfIakAYSJ1KdT6zK5L9q91fwEhKqwIJ44t5Hb2aHnBEpKnWDq8JoFiiKjCO4mT0Pmmu7EswUx6kHLuPzdC0LgP37Mb8yA2Cf2Oj8ug/s1600/Gunpowder.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="297" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhioYWXWyfnYCX3zahG9Oj8Kjt9-bSuxPPReukl_vfIakAYSJ1KdT6zK5L9q91fwEhKqwIJ44t5Hb2aHnBEpKnWDq8JoFiiKjCO4mT0Pmmu7EswUx6kHLuPzdC0LgP37Mb8yA2Cf2Oj8ug/s400/Gunpowder.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<u><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3) The gunpowder was old, so there was actually no danger.</span></u><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Gunpowder is tricky. Gunpowder can go "bad" but still be explosive. <a href="http://www.ronspomeroutdoors.com/blog/danger-old-gunpowder-can-kill-you/">***</a> It's a mix of<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;"> </span>sulfur<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">, </span>charcoal<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">, and </span>potassium nitrate, and can be surprisingly resilient, even in some bad conditions. The trick is that if the powder goes "bad," you need more of it to get the chemical reaction to take off. So even if it's been rated as bad for firearms use, you wouldn't want to throw a canister of old gunpowder into a fireplace. The Gunpowder Plot was using old powder, but they also had <i>36 barrels</i> of it. <a href="http://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/evolutionofparliament/parliamentaryauthority/the-gunpowder-plot-of-1605/overview/the-plot-and-its-discovery/conspiracy-and-deception/">****</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The question if it would have actually exploded has been debated for centuries. For the 400th anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot, a documentary program decided to re-crate it and see if it would have worked. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0492459/">*****</a> They reconstructed the </span><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">17th-century Houses of Parliament, filled the appropriate area with the right amount of "bad" gunpowder, and lit it on fire. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">It looked like this:</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/57-BJmeh9y0" width="420"></iframe></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And if for some reason that embedded video isn't working, you can see it <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57-BJmeh9y0">HERE</a>.</span></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6770341623023494461.post-90143327433669242052012-11-02T00:30:00.000-07:002012-11-02T00:30:03.397-07:00Pens In Space<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF5Q97djaCoBSwECHQAKELnjwDxHpYDXAlBKDb9zJq0A4V3pHlNn4uUmhipeBTUfSuZUImvKb7K841iickAm9BWcWr1OpPEqDLL8zI3U8wom9zKyIE8Y9LvJ2shx80t3i2mZofkh4QHRo/s1600/Mythtory+Space+Pen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF5Q97djaCoBSwECHQAKELnjwDxHpYDXAlBKDb9zJq0A4V3pHlNn4uUmhipeBTUfSuZUImvKb7K841iickAm9BWcWr1OpPEqDLL8zI3U8wom9zKyIE8Y9LvJ2shx80t3i2mZofkh4QHRo/s640/Mythtory+Space+Pen.jpg" width="292" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Gotten from Tumblr. Source hidden to protect the guilty.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is one that seems to be making the internet rounds lately. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">American astronauts actually started off using pencils when they first went into space. But they quickly realized that the higher oxygen content in the capsule make the highly flammable carbon in the graphite of the pencil even more... flammable. Which isn't really a good thing.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The tip of the pencils would also break off and float though the cabin. This was more than just a small hazard from potentially inhaling a small piece of sharp graphite -- the bits of pencil got into the equipment and caused shorts. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">NASA didn't actually invest any money into the Space Pen -- it w<span style="background-color: white;">as done by </span></span><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 17.27272605895996px;">Paul C. Fisher, with his own money.<a href="http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp">*</a> He was </span><span style="line-height: 17.266666412353516px;">successful</span><span style="line-height: 17.27272605895996px;">, creating the Fisher Space Pen used today by both the Americans and the Russians. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Pen">**</a> He sold his pens to the Space Agencies for $2.95 </span><span style="line-height: 17.266666412353516px;">apiece</span><span style="line-height: 17.27272605895996px;">. </span></span></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6770341623023494461.post-5344386519322022662012-10-30T00:30:00.000-07:002012-10-30T00:30:04.313-07:00Apple Edge<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc-1LkQuWZ3Z2zqLRtqXrMoDM7LWs_cg5Vfoicf7RDmFsyDKzystlzsdRDsYJyd5oPoYFyl86RRkYw_mko2yfY7nlp5ocEKCSj3Sjtffm4-fEE9ES6MDQr0TJgRKncri-uSnCCb2NifNo/s1600/razor-apple.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc-1LkQuWZ3Z2zqLRtqXrMoDM7LWs_cg5Vfoicf7RDmFsyDKzystlzsdRDsYJyd5oPoYFyl86RRkYw_mko2yfY7nlp5ocEKCSj3Sjtffm4-fEE9ES6MDQr0TJgRKncri-uSnCCb2NifNo/s1600/razor-apple.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">I found this image everywhere, but never with a source. So if you know it, please send me info on who to credit!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This one is a little more recent than most of the things I've covered here. I don't want to date myself here, but when I was a kid Halloween was kind of the Biggest Day of the Year. Mostly because it was a holiday we could celebrate at school, and was thus exempt from the "no celebrating holidays" tradition at home. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I never got to go trick or treating though, because there wasn't really much point in trying to do that through a school, and my parents were convinced that the candy being handed out to children were laced with things like razors and hypodermic needles. Every parent "knew" that it happened to a ton kinds<i> just last year</i> somewhere out there. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Except it totally didn't. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In reality, since 1958, a total of 5 children in the entirety of the USA have had their death blamed on Halloween Candy. And of these 5, two of them weren't even because of homicidal candy, but because of family members.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoned_candy_myths">*</a> One child was killed when his own father laced his pixi sticks with cyanide to collect on a life insurance deal <a href="http://helfyre.com/?tag=myth">**</a> and another overdosed on his uncle's heroin and then the family sprinkled the heroin onto his candy to try to hide the source of his OD.<a href="http://www.ksl.com/?sid=22750373&nid=711">***</a> The other three died of natural causes, that just happened to coincide with Halloween Candy consumption. <a href="http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/halloween/a/Is-Halloween-Candy-Tampering-A-Myth.htm">****</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But what about razors hidden in apples/candy bars/larger treats? </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sadly, that seems to be mostly family too. As in, older siblings playing prank younger siblings. A</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">nd the fatality rate for razors or needles in Halloween treats is... zero. Ever. </span><a href="http://helfyre.com/?tag=myth" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">*****</a><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So the moral of this particular Mythtory seems to be that it's not the strangers that are out to get you. It's your family. </span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6770341623023494461.post-6496098492652251332012-10-26T00:30:00.000-07:002012-10-26T00:30:01.910-07:00Vomeo, Vomere, Vomitum<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This one isn't particularly complicated, but it's pretty prolific. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1p72FwNvwf5N7t5sln7AxFJuZSjycUGy1knLIN4jJMV1nkMeQ_zgfgM_p472tV8kOnJmRd59MHD2I1b-A5_Ks7Q3Z-ouCwGW6NkIQCLBMccLYSlGpKCvlWVeoK0KEiEn6YiXVvixvvvA/s1600/Mythtory+Vomitorium+Sign.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1p72FwNvwf5N7t5sln7AxFJuZSjycUGy1knLIN4jJMV1nkMeQ_zgfgM_p472tV8kOnJmRd59MHD2I1b-A5_Ks7Q3Z-ouCwGW6NkIQCLBMccLYSlGpKCvlWVeoK0KEiEn6YiXVvixvvvA/s400/Mythtory+Vomitorium+Sign.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The idea is that the ancient Romans, with their great love of feats, would have a room set aside so that guests could go and vomit what they've eaten, so they could resume feasting with a freshly emptied stomach. This room was supposedly called a "vomitorium."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Except, no, they didn't. And while Romans did have vomitoriums, they didn't actually have anything to do with <i>vomit</i>. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is a Roman vomitorium:</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsTCbdZeA5f0anXsBCZvImUZrRTCFWxtEhEJE6kOjEn0x-TxIEDxMI6xDA1zKjLIulrLZB4sGKqRQux5AMvXueex74eI08alg7rkaaa8aEggBLSa70ZyOsMZZkKsn1tkLJ5wxE20rpHb4/s1600/Mythtory+VomitoriumAtTriersRomanAmphitheatre2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsTCbdZeA5f0anXsBCZvImUZrRTCFWxtEhEJE6kOjEn0x-TxIEDxMI6xDA1zKjLIulrLZB4sGKqRQux5AMvXueex74eI08alg7rkaaa8aEggBLSa70ZyOsMZZkKsn1tkLJ5wxE20rpHb4/s400/Mythtory+VomitoriumAtTriersRomanAmphitheatre2.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It may make more sense if I explain that what is causing the confusion is the word itself. Vomitorium comes from the verb<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;"> </span><i style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">vomeo, vomere, vomitum.</i><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;"> It's the Latin verb for "to spew forth." (Sorry for the lack of a link on this. I got it from my old Latin textbook) This is the same root as the English word vomit, but instead of a vomitorium spewing forth <i>vomit</i>... they were spewing out <i>people</i>. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">A vomitorium is simply a large portal, gateway, or thoroughfare in an amphitheater or stadium. </span></span></span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6770341623023494461.post-25900543565261933002012-10-23T00:30:00.000-07:002012-10-23T00:30:05.843-07:00Fe Lady<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Iron Maiden. Usually this brings up one of two mental images for most people. One's a band.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That's not the one this post is talking about. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is about this one:</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBjE9SH7VyEgjbOKO1nq8hJ3J5Xzaz0kgAvhEf0bnr2dYOzJ1X8Vhyphenhyphen5z6uu0-49Spoj2IxhzJqHAu8hjDAoS4q8LPfBQEg3g5uK-SISg4yEy3yHSX2_1mxFhCytvx3cb1YAgA1St-eVlk/s1600/Mythtory+maiden_torture.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBjE9SH7VyEgjbOKO1nq8hJ3J5Xzaz0kgAvhEf0bnr2dYOzJ1X8Vhyphenhyphen5z6uu0-49Spoj2IxhzJqHAu8hjDAoS4q8LPfBQEg3g5uK-SISg4yEy3yHSX2_1mxFhCytvx3cb1YAgA1St-eVlk/s1600/Mythtory+maiden_torture.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is one you'll hear a lot. Medieval Torture Instrument # 1. The Iron Maiden. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There's only one problem. It's not medieval. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you're unfamiliar with this particular contraption, first of all, I commend you on managing to avoid pretty much every film that covered any time period from about 500 BCE to the 1800s. But if you're unaware of the common reputation of the Iron Maiden, it's a contraption that's tall enough for someone to stand it, that has spikes inside it that (depending on who's telling the story) either are designed so you have to stand perfectly still, or you get stabbed, or are designed to stab you, but miss any vital organs, so you bleed to death slowly.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I just have to take a moment here and comment how much I <i>love</i> the fact that the second one assumes that unlike today, humans of the past came in standard sizes with regular organ placement contained therein. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But sadly for this particular myth, Iron Maiden's didn't actually exist. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To be sure, there are Iron Maidens you can see in museums, but most of them were made during the 1800s (the earliest record of one is from 1793), for </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">sensationalist travelling shows (just a half-penny to see the horrors of the Witch Hunts/Inquisition/French Revolution! What a </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">bargain!). </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They were in all sorts of dramatic "historical" stories in the 19th century and continuing into today</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, where instruments such as the Iron Maiden are used to terrify and horrify countless readers. But when it comes to finding a place that actually used something even remotely similar, suddenly details become non-existent. Somewhere "over there" used them. An area's traditional enemy is often named for a place that used them in the Middle Ages, in an elusive ever changing secret place that doesn't actually ever exist on the map ("It was used in France, in a secret torture dungeon No, Spain, under a certain cathedral during the Inquisition. No, actually it was Russia. Except that no, it was really China during the Ming Dynasty, except it was actually only used in the Qin Dynasty"... and I think you can see where this is going). </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdrnVS0dyX2HEamgYPTVcIwmT05OCjbjFfVFbHMWx0F_t0cH48AaZQjTcEZ1Rxjfz3fAYh2bi_n78P5kWWDQJlPgkliY-K5ZR_8wgO9t4D-yOGNkkVicXwORrVADBUxQ-eVvBNTnsjuFU/s1600/Mythtory+pre-war+ironmaiden.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdrnVS0dyX2HEamgYPTVcIwmT05OCjbjFfVFbHMWx0F_t0cH48AaZQjTcEZ1Rxjfz3fAYh2bi_n78P5kWWDQJlPgkliY-K5ZR_8wgO9t4D-yOGNkkVicXwORrVADBUxQ-eVvBNTnsjuFU/s400/Mythtory+pre-war+ironmaiden.jpg" width="272" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Even the recent history of the most famous Iron Maiden, the Iron Maiden of Nuremberg is elaborated and often wrongly stated. Above is a picture of the Iron Maiden of Nuremberg before World War II. It's often said to have been destroyed during the bombing of Nuremberg -- when in fact it was merely damaged, and now sits in the <em style="background-color: white; font-style: normal; line-height: 16px;">Medieval Crime Museum in Rothenburg ob der Tauber</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; line-height: 16px;">, Germany. This is what the Iron Maiden of Nuremberg looks like today. A little worse for wear, but perfectly intact.</span></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPayv7zeVjnEmq3H5EOFSe5Osmfe9KMq5uKqhfN1QSr4bqiA1rgoh0UJAft7b8QGfPJBKlgkTBXh_CSI-e_twnDr-v_2_xpNrX7qOOSB3EhphY2KykDpVNyxGB7jidDnWKXUDNHlXtctE/s1600/Mythtory+post-war+Iron+Maiden.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPayv7zeVjnEmq3H5EOFSe5Osmfe9KMq5uKqhfN1QSr4bqiA1rgoh0UJAft7b8QGfPJBKlgkTBXh_CSI-e_twnDr-v_2_xpNrX7qOOSB3EhphY2KykDpVNyxGB7jidDnWKXUDNHlXtctE/s400/Mythtory+post-war+Iron+Maiden.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="line-height: 16px;">Many people who see it today are disiponted to discover that the museum removed the spikes inside. The museum removed them because of their historical inaccuracy. It is the museum's opinion (and I think they're probably right on this) that the Iron Maiden was simply a misunderstanding of the "</span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schandmantel" style="line-height: 16px;">Cloak of Shame</a><span style="line-height: 16px;">" -- a punishment where the guilty party was punished by being locked into a (not spikey) device and then publicly mocked for a set period of time. Humiliating, yes. But not exactly a slow, torturous, death by impalement. </span></span></span></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6770341623023494461.post-25234133485540701072012-10-19T00:30:00.000-07:002012-10-19T00:30:06.089-07:00Apple and Tree<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXG_HVEc7yt9M5cLIuzCaoEVA9TteLKwZaBAQgGnjHKyPDhkodnB6dTeJ9WngerLJJOgx_i-7Nvc8762nRJvKqhNGpbVEk_4i7W-IppJULTK3xQn7mUyFevC83J6ZOIvrtSr0Jb7UcBNI/s1600/Mythtory+Durer_Adam_and_Eve.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXG_HVEc7yt9M5cLIuzCaoEVA9TteLKwZaBAQgGnjHKyPDhkodnB6dTeJ9WngerLJJOgx_i-7Nvc8762nRJvKqhNGpbVEk_4i7W-IppJULTK3xQn7mUyFevC83J6ZOIvrtSr0Jb7UcBNI/s400/Mythtory+Durer_Adam_and_Eve.jpg" width="303" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Adam and Eve<span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;"> by </span>Albrecht Dürer<span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;"> (</span><a class="mw-redirect" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/1507" style="background-color: #f9f9f9; background-image: none; color: #0b0080; line-height: 19.200000762939453px; text-decoration: none;" title="1507">1507</a><span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This particular myth has been perpetuated in western art for centuries. That the narrative given in the Bible, the Qur'an<span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">, and the Torah</span> says that the forbidden fruit was an apple. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Do they say apple?</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDWbpWq7CZ46J8l6-J7RSpp3ttSVoddnnzaZ9RcbIwf-ZX5RP-mHuZDTBFJADsEzgLJnE1Pj3bDqrwdnaSLd5ZPusDV9ryOKt-MtcXHODx4FqrXc8hQNy_GHo6xDS1BOE4z39Oeldto9c/s1600/Mythtory+Tree_of_Life,_Medieval.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDWbpWq7CZ46J8l6-J7RSpp3ttSVoddnnzaZ9RcbIwf-ZX5RP-mHuZDTBFJADsEzgLJnE1Pj3bDqrwdnaSLd5ZPusDV9ryOKt-MtcXHODx4FqrXc8hQNy_GHo6xDS1BOE4z39Oeldto9c/s400/Mythtory+Tree_of_Life,_Medieval.jpg" width="291" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nope, there is no mention of apples in Eden. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In fact, historically it was held that the forbidden fruit was figs. Or possibly grapes. Or maybe a pomegranate<span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">. Unless it was an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etrog">etrog</a>. [<a href="http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2682/was-the-forbidden-fruit-in-the-garden-of-eden-an-apple">*</a>] Though it could have also been a banana. [<a href="http://www.semissourian.com/story/140697.html">**</a>]</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">...The point is, it doesn't say anywhere in </span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">Bereshit</span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;"> / </span><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">Genesis / the Koran what the fruit is, and nobody really knows. </span></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoeAqolgv_JVf6RPKqIxLrZeWGXYWgdaLs84VehGYeewR5Js2AGEt_aWzEknkVHz8Rv2KKrDKCXZiecY0ydIp8w_7le4HKJ0gjzOBvnNvbbQRRUQO2xAVB-8tVtu2445ixiGijta_2yq8/s1600/Red_Apple.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="288" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoeAqolgv_JVf6RPKqIxLrZeWGXYWgdaLs84VehGYeewR5Js2AGEt_aWzEknkVHz8Rv2KKrDKCXZiecY0ydIp8w_7le4HKJ0gjzOBvnNvbbQRRUQO2xAVB-8tVtu2445ixiGijta_2yq8/s320/Red_Apple.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So how did apples get wrapped up in it? </span></span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was a pun. </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">You see, in Latin </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;"><i>mălum</i> means "evil" while </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;"><i>mālum</i> means "apple." </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">It was an <i>evil</i> tree; i</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">t was an <i>apple</i> tree. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">Yep. A thousand years worth of art on the Latin equivalent of the "orange you glad I didn't say banana?" line. </span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6770341623023494461.post-25795347622117610462012-10-16T00:30:00.000-07:002012-10-16T00:30:01.881-07:00Cleo Myths<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB2rB3UjKeVbZ4_q7dkTcMReXLDnb51DelaFKG5Lc2XrfrtKKK1BIdl9a0NgdpvKjM4fs2znTIWO-2t_1gE-DDZyWyPODR2t6xK1FxHUShrq9W9qEWOvEu2OTH9J9SwwunzWv7R1wCpOo/s1600/elizabeth-taylor-as-cleopatra.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB2rB3UjKeVbZ4_q7dkTcMReXLDnb51DelaFKG5Lc2XrfrtKKK1BIdl9a0NgdpvKjM4fs2znTIWO-2t_1gE-DDZyWyPODR2t6xK1FxHUShrq9W9qEWOvEu2OTH9J9SwwunzWv7R1wCpOo/s320/elizabeth-taylor-as-cleopatra.jpg" width="299" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Cleopatra is one of the most famous women in the historical record. Pretty much everyone recognizes her name, and is usually able to spout of some information they've heard about her. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1) She was an Egyptian Queen.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2) She had two husbands/lovers -- Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3) She was black.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Let's see... that's a quasi right, a nope, and a.... nope.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhzJXh03x0xNQCLtAbr82Sbrp5eDm7rh3GZdA8Yxau4QQx9jv92UwG6SYo_7A66faw0thfCIx8LGnzn9iOoTFhg8_kakLGSSMbWzPDcg8rlrfnxPi9LAh4Opc2bQhCB49TirD3G6gfIB0/s1600/Mythtory+Bust-of-Cleopatra-VII.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhzJXh03x0xNQCLtAbr82Sbrp5eDm7rh3GZdA8Yxau4QQx9jv92UwG6SYo_7A66faw0thfCIx8LGnzn9iOoTFhg8_kakLGSSMbWzPDcg8rlrfnxPi9LAh4Opc2bQhCB49TirD3G6gfIB0/s400/Mythtory+Bust-of-Cleopatra-VII.jpg" width="301" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is what she actually looked like.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Bust of Cleopatra VII from life. Altes Museum, Berlin.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1) <u>She was an Egyptian Queen.</u></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Most people when they hear "Cleopatra" are actually thinking of Cleopatra the <i>seventh</i>. And yes, she was a ruling queen of Egypt. When she ascended to the throne at the death of her father, she shared the throne with her husband -- her brother Ptolemy XIII. They didn't get on well. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A very long story short, an important Roman was murdered at what was thought to be Ptolemy XIII's order, and Julius Caesar came to town intended to annex Egypt. Caesar and Cleopatra VII got on well, and Cleopatra was soon pregnant with his child. Caesar threw his support behind Cleopatra ruling in her own right, and her husband-brother was conveniently poisoned -- leaving Cleopatra alone on the throne. She married her other younger brother, Ptolmey XIV, who was her co-ruler but since he was only 8 or 9 years old, he didn't do much ruling. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgYh9dxWp2EAl5y5uCWtNojRx-o4cI5Vzgh0h5Ejc2jEfFzUIdyxEl1a61OSnfyXadziK-cK7UJ1LlDQbo3AvNjyOzRYD-bbXyMZeM8NOaY3TOVLbZ9vXuVMpq0mwovVlzrfELh8fXt0Q/s1600/Mythtory+antony-cleopatra-coin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="201" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgYh9dxWp2EAl5y5uCWtNojRx-o4cI5Vzgh0h5Ejc2jEfFzUIdyxEl1a61OSnfyXadziK-cK7UJ1LlDQbo3AvNjyOzRYD-bbXyMZeM8NOaY3TOVLbZ9vXuVMpq0mwovVlzrfELh8fXt0Q/s400/Mythtory+antony-cleopatra-coin.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Minted in 41 BCE. Mark Anthony is on the left. Cleopatra is on the left. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2) <u>She had two husbands/lover, Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony, and one son</u>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As I pointed out just above, Cleopatra VII was actually married to her brothers. She also married Mark Anthony, though she was his 4th wife and it's complicated. She didn't marry Caesar. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">She did however have Caesar's son, <span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">Ptolemy XV Philopator Philometor Caesar (nicknamed<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesarion"> </a></span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesarion">Caesarion</a>). She also had three children with Mark Anthony, the twins </span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;"> </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Helios" style="background-color: white; background-image: none; color: #0b0080; line-height: 19.200000762939453px; text-decoration: none;" title="Alexander Helios">Alexander Helios</a><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;"> & </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleopatra_Selene_II" style="background-color: white; background-image: none; color: #0b0080; line-height: 19.200000762939453px; text-decoration: none;" title="Cleopatra Selene II">Cleopatra Selene II</a>, and <a class="mw-redirect" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemy_Philadelphus_(Cleopatra)" style="background-color: white; background-image: none; color: #0b0080; line-height: 19.200000762939453px; text-decoration: none;" title="Ptolemy Philadelphus (Cleopatra)">Ptolemy Philadelphus</a><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">.</span></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-aD4gS4m5i9PxG0J6mv9kyL3URaz59lWONue7WBYe96JOcc1rmpQTr5DjQlbjosU8a7COa0Gtj-ImL7vrt9uJTanBeao_zZH5fQsqq9-jScGHK1MVwU8xO7-i34Z322YG8uZ4uVTlucY/s1600/Mythtory+Cleopatra+Family+Tree.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="326" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-aD4gS4m5i9PxG0J6mv9kyL3URaz59lWONue7WBYe96JOcc1rmpQTr5DjQlbjosU8a7COa0Gtj-ImL7vrt9uJTanBeao_zZH5fQsqq9-jScGHK1MVwU8xO7-i34Z322YG8uZ4uVTlucY/s400/Mythtory+Cleopatra+Family+Tree.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3) <u>She was black.</u></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It sounds rude to say it this way, but Cleoptra VII was<i> inbred</i>. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Ptolemaic_Egypt">Her family was Greek</a>, and had gotten power in Egypt after Alexander the Great conquered most of the known world at the time. They were also very <span style="line-height: 18px;">xenophobic. When they didn't marry within the family, they married within other Hellenistic noble families. Cleopatra VII was the first person in her family to even bother leaning how to speak </span><span style="background-color: white;">Egyptian.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">There were black queens of Egypt (my favorite is </span><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 20px;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiye">Tiye</a>, the wife of </span><span style="line-height: 20px;">Amenhotep III, she was King Tut's grandmother, and if you ever need a role model, she's always an excellent choice), but the Ptolemy dynasties kept themselves tied as closely to Greece (and to a lesser extent, Rome) as possible -- especially in matters of marriage and lovers. </span></span></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6770341623023494461.post-27311260731398469632012-10-12T00:30:00.000-07:002012-10-12T00:30:04.882-07:00Ages of Old<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3zYbI2OmCbBwmx67n24HiBXHntJxp9VXLKzCAuyQVnazGGSi09J53AI_UGjQAJzj7dl4VsQ6sxWez0h0C36B6EYQ5DA2BYkDT_1L2mtUcXpcvwNN_I_l6mI9ib7IWFU0lIacyqVRL3TY/s1600/Mythtory+Georg_von_Rosen_-_Oden_som_vandringsman,_1886_(Odin,_the_Wanderer).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3zYbI2OmCbBwmx67n24HiBXHntJxp9VXLKzCAuyQVnazGGSi09J53AI_UGjQAJzj7dl4VsQ6sxWez0h0C36B6EYQ5DA2BYkDT_1L2mtUcXpcvwNN_I_l6mI9ib7IWFU0lIacyqVRL3TY/s400/Mythtory+Georg_von_Rosen_-_Oden_som_vandringsman,_1886_(Odin,_the_Wanderer).jpg" width="272" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Georg von Rosen - Oden som vandringsman, 1886 (Odin, the Wanderer)</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It seems to be a common belief that the current generation of people below the age of 20(ish) <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/17/health/17obese.html">will be the first generation to live a shorter lifespan than their parents</a>. It's often paired with the belief that every generation BEFORE this generation has lived a slightly longer time than the one before them (with a few exceptions due to massive wars).</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So much so that I've heard people say that people died of old age in Ancient Egypt while in their mid-20s. And that you were "ancient" if you made it to 30. Now, obviously this can't be true for all of human history, or else people would have been dying of "old age" while they were still infants. [<a href="http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2011/05/01/falsehood-if-this-was-the-ston/">*</a>]</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But how much younger was "old age" back in "the day"?</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A lot of the confusion, I think, comes from a confusion between the differences of "life expectancy" and "lifespan." Life expectancy is the noun used to describe t</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 15px;">he average period that a person may expect to live. It's calculated by taking the ages that everyone in a population was at their death, and then dividing it by the number of people. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 15px;">It works better if I give a small example. Let's say there is a village of 10 people (it's a very small village). The ages of these people when they died were:</span></span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 15px;">2 years</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 15px;">10 years</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 15px;">45 years</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 15px;">49 years</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 15px;">20 years</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 15px;">34 years</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 15px;">1 year</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 15px;">15 years</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 15px;">31 years</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 15px;">70 years</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 15px;">If you take those then people and add their ages at death together, you get a combined 277 years. Then you divide by 10 (the number of people) to figure out the average -- 27.7 years. So the average life expectancy would be just under 28 years old. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 15px;">But nobody was actually that age when they died. Instead a lot died when they were kids, a lot died when they were middle aged, and one person made it into their seventh decade. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 15px;">Now I completely made up those numbers, because in real life it's a little more complicated. Men tended to live longer than women, because women died in childbirth a lot. Children also had a high mortality rate. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 15px;">For a male child in the middle ages, if he could survive to the age of 21, he could reasonably expect to live another </span><i style="line-height: 15px;">forty years</i><span style="line-height: 15px;">. [</span><a href="http://apps.business.ualberta.ca/rfield/lifeexpectancy.htm" style="line-height: 15px;">**</a><span style="line-height: 15px;">] Childhood was the most dangerous time in a man's life. If he could get though that, he was well on his way to making it to our modern retirement age. If a 21 year old woman didn't have children in the rest of her life, she could also reasonably expect to live six or more decades. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 15px;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maternal_death">Childbirth was a woman's biggest risk</a>, historically, with the average of 1 in 100 deliveries resulting in the death of the mother (though this number has changed a lot in time, rising from as high as 40 per 100 of all births down to </span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">24 per 100,000)</span><span style="line-height: 15px;">. [<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maternal_death">***</a>] Since a woman could realistically have multiple pregnancies, this was a risk that was more or less constant through her life until </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">menopause</span><span style="line-height: 15px;"> -- the average woman in the early modern era had 7-8 life births in her lifespan, each one brought risk of death [<a href="http://chnm.gmu.edu/cyh/teaching-modules/166">****</a>] (an example is Queen Jane of England, the wife of Henry VIII -- she had the best medical care </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">available</span><span style="line-height: 15px;"> and died giving birth to her first child). </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 15px;">You can see how this number is suddenly a lot more complex than "people in year X lived to be Y years old." Realistically, if you could survive childhood, you had the right to look forward to a lifespan long enough to get you membership in the AARP today -- as long as you weren't a woman, at which point each delivery was something like a time bomb. </span></span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6770341623023494461.post-87296478488627759262012-10-09T00:30:00.000-07:002012-10-09T00:30:00.628-07:00Columbus <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Columbus is probably another one of those "American Continent history people that get a lot less attention in Europe. Since "Columbus Day" was just yesterday in the US, I figured we'd tackle some Columbus myths. <a href="http://dahrjamail.net/the-myth-of-america">I'll admit that Columbus is a bit of a sore subject for me</a>, (I don't think you'll find many people with even a fraction of a percentage of Amerindian decent singing his praises), so I'm not going to go on about what he actually did once he got here, these are just going to myths about his first trip.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1) He proved the earth was round, when everyone in his time thought it was flat.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2) His ships were named the "Nina," the "Pinta," and the "Santa Maria."</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3) His trip was the only big thing to happen in 1492. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1) <u>He proved the earth was round, when everyone in his time thought it was flat.</u></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I tackled a big chunk of this myth in <a href="http://worldmythtory.blogspot.com/2012/06/this-pancake-earth.html">This Pancake Earth</a>. Columbus's contemporaries weren't worried about him falling off the end of the world -- they were worried about running out of supplies and dying of dehydration and starvation. Columbus thought that he'd be sailing something like 2,400 - 3000 miles,when in actuality he was looking at a a distance closer to 11,000 miles. [<a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=141164702">*</a>] His contemporaries knew the actual distance, Columbus was just bad at math.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are times that I'm forced to wonder that if you don't know what's impossible there's no limit to what you can't do. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2) <u>His ships were named the "Nina," the "Pinta," and the "Santa Maria."</u></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This one is only partially wrong. The Santa Maria was actually called the Santa Maria -- except for when she was called the Gallega. That was her original name, but later she was renamed to <span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">La Santa María de la Inmaculada Concepción -- shortened to Santa Maria. [<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Mar%C3%ADa_(ship)">**</a>]</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">The </span><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">Nina</span><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;"> was actually named the Santa Clara, but was nicknamed "La </span><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">Niña</span><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;"> by her crew. It meant "the little girl," which makes sense in two contexts. First of all, she was a smaller ship than the other "Saint" ship on the trip, the Santa Maria. Secondly, her owners name was Juan </span><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">Niño. [<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ni%C3%B1a">***</a>] So she was "little man"'s "little girl."</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">The Pinta is a little trickier. We know her nickname was Pinta, but we don't know what her actual ship-name was. Pinta means "painted lady" ... as in "prostitute." (I don't know about your school, but that was totally skipped over in my elementary school.) [<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinta_(ship)">****</a>]</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3) <u>His trip was the only big thing to happen in 1492. </u></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While in the US, it's the only thing that is flagged with importance for that year, there were two other very important historical events that year. It really does seem to be the year that was All About Spain: </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In January, the Granada War<span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;"> came to an close, ending a 780 year presence of Islamic Moor government in Spain. [<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granada_War">*****</a>] </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">Six months later, in July, Spain's Alhambra Decree</span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">expels</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;"> all Jewish citizens who refuse to convert to </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">Catholicism</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">. [<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alhambra_Decree">******</a>] Fun fact! This decree wasn't revoked until <i>1968</i>.</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6770341623023494461.post-40463687066830145032012-10-05T00:30:00.000-07:002012-10-05T09:36:29.112-07:00Medieval Food<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When asked to list what foods people ate in the middle ages, most people think of huge feats of meat, bread, and copious amounts of alcohol. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;">Something like this, really:</span></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB9wgtycAnLP3imF4prTq3hvqkmx7fo3SI5zXOeALZkOFjxcO4kEA2hn11ysbEdQVk71C2unTsHTg8jKnX5ZcAIhHP9unfn-ZsczwKi3BHYsDpWQxMA2aYdP0tWbnf4_tZGRDDEHhXR0E/s1600/Mythtory+Hogwarts-Feast.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="273" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB9wgtycAnLP3imF4prTq3hvqkmx7fo3SI5zXOeALZkOFjxcO4kEA2hn11ysbEdQVk71C2unTsHTg8jKnX5ZcAIhHP9unfn-ZsczwKi3BHYsDpWQxMA2aYdP0tWbnf4_tZGRDDEHhXR0E/s400/Mythtory+Hogwarts-Feast.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">But when pressed for details, those details can get a little... odd. </span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;">The most common "fact" to crop up was that people ate a lot of meat, but the m</span><span style="background-color: white;">eat was usually spoiled, but seasoned with a lot of spices so you </span><span style="background-color: white;">couldn't</span><span style="background-color: white;"> taste it.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While it is true that there was no refrigeration as we have today in the middle ages, they did have ways to preserve food. The easiest way was to keep it on the hoof. Meat markets didn't look like like they do today, with rows of refrigerated meat in plastic wrap, instead they looked more like this:</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqAjYUNbEJFNxdPEsHbmAAjGNkL1K__afObNyUR-ufZr4eHKl2RmmILlBpFb4sWQvjOR5tel84Jmflt72_rbw3uCQd2mbzBgC6obqOJxvxoVKL3yJVGZe3XDaNOUHvwD98xm8-quphm9g/s1600/Hereford_bull_large.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqAjYUNbEJFNxdPEsHbmAAjGNkL1K__afObNyUR-ufZr4eHKl2RmmILlBpFb4sWQvjOR5tel84Jmflt72_rbw3uCQd2mbzBgC6obqOJxvxoVKL3yJVGZe3XDaNOUHvwD98xm8-quphm9g/s400/Hereford_bull_large.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">See, the animals at the market were alive. They were only killed when they were just about to be eaten. Any meat left over was preserved via <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curing_(food_preservation)">curing</a>. Think beef jerky, or summer sausage.</span></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_N2wUKviKItu4qUq6nXJV9G0qXt1EInaRDntBBewh3YbesqFcnYM0l5QohhF5JYSAXbxKj1ht1xV1x9IEIJ7O9x8VA1V5Rf2pGy0h5oiQm4ge6x3VJYySKiZ6AKqvAAALaz2s7cr7LwU/s1600/Mythtory+Cured+Meat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_N2wUKviKItu4qUq6nXJV9G0qXt1EInaRDntBBewh3YbesqFcnYM0l5QohhF5JYSAXbxKj1ht1xV1x9IEIJ7O9x8VA1V5Rf2pGy0h5oiQm4ge6x3VJYySKiZ6AKqvAAALaz2s7cr7LwU/s400/Mythtory+Cured+Meat.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">There's a double whammy to this particular myth, because not only was meat pretty fresh, spices were <i>expensive</i>. I think Medieval Cookery phrases it best, "<span style="line-height: 20.78333282470703px;">Considering that spices were more expensive than meat, why would they spend the equivalent of $10 of spices to cover the spoiled taste of a $2 chicken? It'd be much cheaper (and nicer) to just buy a fresh chicken."[<a href="http://medievalcookery.blogspot.com/2007/10/medieval-food-myths.html">*</a>]</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 20.78333282470703px;"><a href="http://cookingontheside.com/herb-crusted-roast-chicken/">You guys have no idea how weird this was to google.</a></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 20.78333282470703px;">So where did this particular idea come from? The most likely </span><span style="line-height: 20.766666412353516px;">culprit </span><span style="line-height: 20.78333282470703px;">is a book called<i> The Englishman's Food: Five Centuries of English Diet</i>, by </span></span><span style="line-height: 20.766666412353516px;">Jack Cecil Drummond and </span><span style="line-height: 20.75px;">Anne Wilbraham</span><span style="line-height: 20.766666412353516px;">. Published in 1939, Drummond and Wilbraham mistook the word "greene" when describing meat in period medieval documents to mean "tainted" or "rotten" -- when in fact it meant "fresh." [</span><a href="http://medievalcookery.com/notes/drummond.pdf" style="line-height: 20.766666412353516px;">**</a><span style="line-height: 20.766666412353516px;">] So all the </span><span style="line-height: 20.75px;">recipes</span><span style="line-height: 20.766666412353516px;"> written describing how </span><span style="line-height: 20.766666412353516px;">to chemically tenderize meat with </span><span style="line-height: 20.75px;">vinegar</span><span style="line-height: 20.766666412353516px;">, they took to mean ways to combat decay. </span></span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 20.766666412353516px;">Whoops.</span></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6770341623023494461.post-29715195993325283662012-10-02T00:30:00.000-07:002012-10-02T00:30:04.230-07:00Wooden Washington<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20081125f2.html">Wooden teeth image courtesy of Japan Times.</a></span></div>
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One of the more common things I hear when people start talking about myths and George Washington is that they know that Washington didn't actually chop down a cherry tree, and then they go on to inform me that Washington did have wooden teeth -- occasionally with the elaboration that the teeth were made from cherry wood, and thus the origin of the tree chopping myth. </span><div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So did George Washington have wooden teeth, cherry or otherwise? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">George Washington started losing his teeth when he was only 19. I guess it's just proof that you can't have everything -- height (he was just a tad over 6' 3" {191cm}) [<a href="http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/project/faq/index.html">*</a>], being unanimously voted in as President (twice), and an attractive wife [<a href="http://www.chron.com/life/mom-houston/article/Martha-Washington-was-a-hottie-historians-now-say-1721934.php">**</a>] -- I suppose having all his own teeth would have just been too much of a good thing. By the time he became President, he only had one natural tooth left. [<a href="http://www.dentalmuseum.org/gw/03teeth.htm">***</a>]</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However, while Washington had false teeth, he never had false teeth made of wood as far as we know. Instead they were made from things like<span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">hippopotamus ivory and elephant ivory. [<a href="http://www.dentalmuseum.org/gw/02teeth.htm">****</a>] We know of four pairs of dentures that were his, and all of them were made from metals like gold and lead, and with ivory teeth or real teeth from humans or animals.[<a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6875436/#.UGpw5k3R62A">*****</a>]</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">And instead of looking like the dentures at the top, they looked like this:</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg80ogojq7N-ZxzlMmHYuy1pdmVA-EfIlTgVeD0UR8AZFQ4LzWr5UCwxMi_LOsAS0ixPI1fH8W4uGF-dVDmEIStl3nx_2Eq60Nh4m27kwOXGyaK3T63flXe9BN09QIlt7p4AkzK59hYKHs/s1600/Mythtory+Washington's+Dentures.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="292" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg80ogojq7N-ZxzlMmHYuy1pdmVA-EfIlTgVeD0UR8AZFQ4LzWr5UCwxMi_LOsAS0ixPI1fH8W4uGF-dVDmEIStl3nx_2Eq60Nh4m27kwOXGyaK3T63flXe9BN09QIlt7p4AkzK59hYKHs/s400/Mythtory+Washington's+Dentures.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.nidcr.nih.gov/CareersAndTraining/PhotoGallery/Archive/GWDentures.htm"><span style="background-color: white;">Image from the US </span>National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research.</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">They looked exactly like those -- because those are three of the four pairs of dentures that we know about.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">So while there were wood dentures, George Washington didn't use them. The ones he used were a<i> lot</i> more intimidating looking. </span></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6770341623023494461.post-9168836877585023322012-09-28T00:30:00.000-07:002012-09-28T00:30:00.433-07:00Turkish Delight<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWuMicckzdqYF5fZarD_cDhXKTJK6g9UyvALWgJce-CQpqlF2TGailILO7XLCNyFga3H5mBjB09Yr0tR-_0XGUjHR9DEn89aLH7LsuEmEUh0WYoJARQ8dwjvndKqtr-cyM-uFByKjEIq8/s1600/006.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWuMicckzdqYF5fZarD_cDhXKTJK6g9UyvALWgJce-CQpqlF2TGailILO7XLCNyFga3H5mBjB09Yr0tR-_0XGUjHR9DEn89aLH7LsuEmEUh0WYoJARQ8dwjvndKqtr-cyM-uFByKjEIq8/s400/006.JPG" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This myth made me smile. And not only because it's about one of my favorite treats (if you're ever overcome with the desire to get me something, I'm particularly partial to rose, lemon, and bergamot flavors). </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The myth is quite simple: That C.W. Lewis invented a candy called "Turkish Delight" that later enterprising candy makers made into a real treat. Much like how one can find<a href="http://www.bakingdom.com/2010/11/butterbeer-oh-yes-friends-butterbeer.html"> recipes for Butterbeer</a> from the Harry Potter series today. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Fortunately, the world did not have to wait until 1950 to enjoy the deliciousness that is Turkish Delight. Turkish Delight as we know it today was invented in 1777 by Bekir Effendi who owned a confectionery shop in Istanbul.[<a href="http://www.passportchop.com/reviews/food-reviews/turkish-sweet-treats-baklava-and-turkish-delight/">*</a>] The family still owns the shop and it still makes Turkish Delight. The confectionery is called <span style="background-color: white; color: #111111; line-height: 21.983333587646484px;"><a href="http://www.hacibekir.com.tr/eng/hb_tarihce.html">Ali Muhiddin Haci Bekir Confectioners</a> today (the link takes you to their website. I suggest you check it out!)</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #111111; line-height: 21.983333587646484px;">I suspect C.W. Lewis simply gets the credit (or the blame) because today it's not a common candy, so most people's first brush with it comes from reading about it in his novels or from watching the movies based on his novels. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #111111; line-height: 21.983333587646484px;"><a href="http://candy.about.com/od/sugarcandy/r/turkish_delight.htm">If you'd like to try to make it yourself, you can find a recipe to make Turkish Delight here.</a></span></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6770341623023494461.post-20994357400698070342012-09-25T00:30:00.000-07:002012-09-25T00:30:00.985-07:00It's like posting First! in comments... <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0_CBLZIX2QemUXQ3HE3bi_ctOnoxD7RmneXHWa_n2lCatfiO0Jm7rl9Qgya_vp-UXaQDWnnyjJa_j6NbI9w7XsA2efFLAzcs4RV52plJXpUCEN4pvkmhvTyrVQdYTJP7MefbcIpETv6I/s1600/Mythtory+George+Washington.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0_CBLZIX2QemUXQ3HE3bi_ctOnoxD7RmneXHWa_n2lCatfiO0Jm7rl9Qgya_vp-UXaQDWnnyjJa_j6NbI9w7XsA2efFLAzcs4RV52plJXpUCEN4pvkmhvTyrVQdYTJP7MefbcIpETv6I/s400/Mythtory+George+Washington.jpg" width="333" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">George Washington, by <span style="line-height: 1.2em;">Gilbert Stuart (mostly). </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 1.2em;">Ask anyone who the first president of the US was, and they'll either look at you blankly and have no idea, or they'll tell you that the first president was George Washington. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 1.2em;">Ask them when his </span><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">presidency</span><span style="line-height: 1.2em;"> started, and most people will tell you 1776.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 1.2em;">... </span><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">Unfortunately</span><span style="line-height: 1.2em;">, that's a myth. George Washington didn't become president until 1789.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 1.2em;">Yes, that means there's a 13 year gap between the kick-off of the R</span><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">evolutionary</span><span style="line-height: 1.2em;"> War / American War of Independence and Washington's presidency. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 1.2em;">So what happened? </span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY8YB0kt_YychaaWRbMis1ipxAfK11tEdqI0FsydsCyQqMevc4J8GqJIqk3kRT-s0FNNzbe7DOEEsHuiNroSYrX3uVHfCw4PKIgl_qY64bJ4BUCP4vo4QRJdA333FN4RZt-AKzCqOuCO4/s1600/Mythtory+original-thirteen-states-map.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY8YB0kt_YychaaWRbMis1ipxAfK11tEdqI0FsydsCyQqMevc4J8GqJIqk3kRT-s0FNNzbe7DOEEsHuiNroSYrX3uVHfCw4PKIgl_qY64bJ4BUCP4vo4QRJdA333FN4RZt-AKzCqOuCO4/s640/Mythtory+original-thirteen-states-map.jpg" width="415" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The map looks a little different now, I know. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 1.2em;">It gets a little tricky to explain, but George Washington was the first </span><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">president</span><span style="line-height: 1.2em;"> of the United States of America under the current </span><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">Constitution</span><span style="line-height: 1.2em;">. But that wasn't the first government that was set up after the US gained independence from England. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 1.2em;">The first government was the Articles of Confederation. Each of the 13 colonies was an </span><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">independent</span><span style="line-height: 1.2em;"> country. Basically, the Articles of Confederation was an agreement between these 13 nation-states to work together jointly, while retaining their independence. They each printed their own money. They each managed their own taxes. And they each governed themselves as </span><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">independent</span><span style="line-height: 1.2em;"> nations. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 1.2em;">A modern example for how it worked is the current European Union. It's not an exact match, but you get the basic idea. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 1.2em;">Instead of having a central federal </span><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">government</span><span style="line-height: 1.2em;">, the Confederation was a loose confederation of </span><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">nations</span><span style="line-height: 1.2em;"> that had what was called the </span></span><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">Congress of the Confederation. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congress_of_the_Confederation">*</a> This Congress had a president, though his abilities and legal powers were far smaller than the ones the US presidents have under the Constitution. This Congress of the Confederation had 16 successive presidents. </span></span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">(The longest was president for about 2 years, the shortest term was <i>4 days</i>). </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;"> [</span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_of_the_Continental_Congress#List_of_presidents" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">**</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">]</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 1.2em;">I won't say that the Confederation was an unmitigated disaster, but it wasn't a raving </span><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">success</span><span style="line-height: 1.2em;">. 8 of its years of power were during the War of Independence, which does go some way in explaining how it ate though </span><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">presidents at an average rate of more than one a year. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 1.2em;">5 </span><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">years</span><span style="line-height: 1.2em;"> after the war, the government was reformed so that instead of the Articles of Confederation, the state were joined via the Constitution, creating the United States of America </span><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">government</span><span style="line-height: 1.2em;"> we have today, and George Washington was the </span><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">first</span><span style="line-height: 1.2em;"> president of the new </span><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">government</span><span style="line-height: 1.2em;">. </span></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6770341623023494461.post-81724349289422764072012-09-21T00:30:00.000-07:002012-09-21T00:30:03.632-07:00Ich Bin Ein Schmeckty<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUC4Eg01YPXyA02ypGGwh8jSBp7X4XyYwZKsfZRQLQst47k5UT4KRjpYCx-cqLDhHVR4HIUnfzncNSNiJWMqWA7LfsInb7DHaEWX1LkmmBNmSurDrt082Kyc_Slar7AXqsodB5TTmrUVo/s1600/Mythtory+Berliner-Pfannkuchen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUC4Eg01YPXyA02ypGGwh8jSBp7X4XyYwZKsfZRQLQst47k5UT4KRjpYCx-cqLDhHVR4HIUnfzncNSNiJWMqWA7LfsInb7DHaEWX1LkmmBNmSurDrt082Kyc_Slar7AXqsodB5TTmrUVo/s400/Mythtory+Berliner-Pfannkuchen.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It's one of the few non-girlfriend related instances where the former US president JFK still gets ribbed -- his speech in Berlin on <span style="line-height: 18px;">June 26, 1963.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">It's said that in his speech he claimed to be a jelly doughnut. </span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">While I'm pretty sure we all know that he wasn't actually a jelly doughnut, did he actually make such a gaffe? </span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Long story short, no. No he did not.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">If you'd like the longer version, read on.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">What President Kennedy actually said was, </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">"</span></span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">Two thousand years ago the proudest boast was </span><i style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">civis Romanus sum</i><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;"> ("I am a Roman citizen"). Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is </span><i style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">Ich bin ein Berliner! ...</i></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words "<i>Ich bin ein Berliner</i>!"</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">The claim is that by putting the "ein" before "Berliner," he changed the meaning from "I am from Berlin" to "I am a Berliner." The claim then goes on to explain that a Berliner is a type of doughnut filled with fruit jelly. [<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ich_bin_ein_Berliner">*</a>]</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">This is grammatically incorrect. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">Before everyone who took a couple of years of German in high school begins waving their torches and pitchforks, yes, an actual native of Berlin would say, </span><i style="line-height: 18px;">Ich bin Berliner</i><span style="line-height: 18px;">. But JFK wasn't an actual native of Berlin, and to claim otherwise would be ludicrous. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">So a </span></span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;">indefinite</span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;"> article is needed to clarify that the statement is </span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;"><i>metaphorical</i>. That's where the <i>ein</i> comes in. By adding it before <i>Berliner</i>, he's clarifying that he's not literally someone from Berlin. [<a href="http://urbanlegends.about.com/cs/historical/a/jfk_berliner.htm">**</a>] </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;">So a better way to translate it isn't "I am a jelly doughnut," nor is it "I am from Berlin" -- but instead, "I am one with the people of Berlin.</span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">"</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">Oh, and in certain areas of Germany a fruit paste filled doughnut is called a Berliner, but in Berlin itself those pastries are called </span></span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Pfannkuchen</i>. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;"><a href="http://urbanlegends.about.com/cs/historical/a/jfk_berliner.htm">David Emery of About.com</a> has the best comparison to a similar thing in English, "...</span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;">if I were to tell a group of Americans that my editor is a New Yorker, would any of them </span><i style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;">really</i><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;"> think I'd confused him with the weekly magazine of the same name?"</span></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6770341623023494461.post-75673907333087005682012-09-18T00:30:00.000-07:002012-09-18T00:30:03.707-07:00The Spanish Flu<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After the slog that was researching Custer myths last time, this one is going to be short and simple. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFigmIeDE24LsbCTW6Q1Ba4WnxwW5mO111xqf7bBV6a1iHE0MDJA15dJGauzvWGimSTJsTJstED32hej1eEcRYEvtM2Wvee46pXAXaKq1xDCF-ssms8kmoFGG2yteewT5T56q9HnvaO80/s1600/Mythtory+Spanish+Flu+warning.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="355" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFigmIeDE24LsbCTW6Q1Ba4WnxwW5mO111xqf7bBV6a1iHE0MDJA15dJGauzvWGimSTJsTJstED32hej1eEcRYEvtM2Wvee46pXAXaKq1xDCF-ssms8kmoFGG2yteewT5T56q9HnvaO80/s400/Mythtory+Spanish+Flu+warning.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You may be familiar with The Spanish Flu. Also known as The Great Influenza and/or La Grippe.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you're not, I'll give you a very quick rundown:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Spanish Flu was a highly contagious strain of Influenza (aka "the flu") that rampaged around the <span style="background-color: white;">world starting around </span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px;">March 1918 and ending sometime June 1920. From Mid-1918 to late 1919, the United State's death toll was </span><span style="background-color: white;">675,000 people. [<a href="http://www.ninthday.com/spanish_flu.htm">*</a>] World wide estimates start at about 50 million fatalities world wide -- on the low end. [<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic#Around_the_globe">**</a>] Higher estimates are closer to 100 million deaths.</span></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXRvHX5WpSW8r23Zymi4LFgyDzFMxu3CrweXjDEBjjTNdQBBCbgJB80tayQl3_SF0MbYZCrfUJz5_Y-b3kVSoEixP3CCDXAh3uMBkRQwHCHSoFfNjoD6uaskAU6ff85wvNGtNCT-U41Tk/s1600/Mythtory+Spanish+Flu+Pandemic+GIF.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="356" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXRvHX5WpSW8r23Zymi4LFgyDzFMxu3CrweXjDEBjjTNdQBBCbgJB80tayQl3_SF0MbYZCrfUJz5_Y-b3kVSoEixP3CCDXAh3uMBkRQwHCHSoFfNjoD6uaskAU6ff85wvNGtNCT-U41Tk/s400/Mythtory+Spanish+Flu+Pandemic+GIF.gif" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But that's not the myth -- because it most certainly did happen. </span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The myth is the name, the "Spanish Flu." </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You might have noticed from the dates that the flu coincided with World War I. This meant a lot of censors in the news media, and the countries involved in what was known then as The Great War didn't report anything about influenza epidemic. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Spain was neutral in the war, and didn't censor its news. Thus, it was the only large European country reporting the outbreak. Since it was only appearing in Spanish papers, people assumed it was a Spanish disease. For the record, <em style="background-color: white; font-style: normal; line-height: 16px;">Spaniards</em> called it "The French Flu." [<a href="http://quezi.com/7537">***</a>]</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yep, they got the blame because they were honest. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For the record, we still don't know for sure where the strain of influenza came from. The three most likely sources are China, Austria, and Kansas USA. [<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic#Theories_about_source">****</a>]</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6770341623023494461.post-44661524450823330812012-09-14T00:30:00.000-07:002012-09-15T07:33:45.661-07:00Custer myths<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbPNFpyMqXW26F2N9EwYWkcmsOAhyphenhyphenRE5YUz68Nrr3S9NBWz5h5Qj4L2C7PeMFKqM57gWoPxLd4gU0rHwC-O2qG8WIaa7tM3dMIFAy8N3LJJXpZ1ug4saXjofLoQlopabpO3WzJ05MO4T4/s1600/Mythtory+Custer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbPNFpyMqXW26F2N9EwYWkcmsOAhyphenhyphenRE5YUz68Nrr3S9NBWz5h5Qj4L2C7PeMFKqM57gWoPxLd4gU0rHwC-O2qG8WIaa7tM3dMIFAy8N3LJJXpZ1ug4saXjofLoQlopabpO3WzJ05MO4T4/s1600/Mythtory+Custer.jpg" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Custer in 1875</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This may be another mostly USian myth. For those who aren't inundated with tons of United States history, I'll give you some brief context.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">George Armstrong Custer was in the US Army from 1862 though 1876. He died at what is called by the US government "The Battle of Little Big Horn", and what the Lakota<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">, </span>Cheyenne <span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">and </span>Arapaho call "The Battle of the Greasy Grass." It's more popularly known as "Custer's Last Stand." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are a lot of myths about Custer. I'm not going to cover all of them, but some of the popular ones are: </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1) He was a general who was very popular with his troops.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2) The battle he died in was a trap sprung upon the US troops, after a heroic last stand.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3) There were no US troop survivors / there was only one survivor and he was Custer's horse.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">4) The Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Lakota refused to desecrate Custer's body because of their great respect for him. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I'm afraid that's going to be a no, no, no, and a no.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSXGHZrCFgNfrp1-eEYABPDFGI_eO3BVYiroddPSIVRCXeeggjnN-B9724ALKRWzezfVNckhCCPip6_dwN5OEz0QRAaWjheKP9hACTKNTJeB6K_sQ1paooPkkVn-wqUvn8HfG0lNOjPsg/s1600/Mythtory+Custer+at+fort+lincoln.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="252" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSXGHZrCFgNfrp1-eEYABPDFGI_eO3BVYiroddPSIVRCXeeggjnN-B9724ALKRWzezfVNckhCCPip6_dwN5OEz0QRAaWjheKP9hACTKNTJeB6K_sQ1paooPkkVn-wqUvn8HfG0lNOjPsg/s400/Mythtory+Custer+at+fort+lincoln.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: #fafafa; color: #333333;"><a href="http://george%20armstrong%20custer%20with%20his%20officers%20%26%20their%20families/">George Armstrong Custer with his Officers & Their Families</a></span>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /><u>He was a general who was very popular with his troops</u>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Custer's highest rank achieved was Brevet Major General George Armstrong Custer, Lieutenant Colonel, 7th U.S. Cavalry. To be </span><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">brevetted means to do the duty of a different rank for a short time, until someone actually of that rank is available or until the need disappears. A more modern example would be if at a retail store, an area's lead is acting manager until an actual manager is available/hired. It doesn't mean one is actually a manager (or is going to get manager's benefits). The highest rank he actually achieved was Lieutenant Colonel.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;"><span style="background-color: white;">Custer also wasn't popular with his troops. Most liked that he was willing to be in the thick of a battle with them (many officers would hang toward the back of a battle, where it was safer). But the good-will that enthusiasm gained was offset by his quick temper and the way he treated those under him. One of his men, </span></span><span style="background-color: white;">Albert Barnitz, wrote,</span><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;"><span style="background-color: white;"> "</span></span><span style="background-color: white;">the ‘Brevet Major General commanding’ is fast losing whatever little influence for good he may have once had in the Regiment, and… he …will eventually come to grief , as a consequence of his tyrannical conduct." [<a href="http://www.nativeamerican.co.uk/custer.html">*</a>]</span></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi_n_t2o6hulCm6FHjO9x9ocFvYiYjWpiqHH9I4D7C5aMRZi6zHfJID_jhIY3VVl9gq6T2Wj9nPeFG5fVFCRxWtGVAXtoRNYDVUIB70JVo0cQiwY4g3gIt4iPhc4lOSGZKyTrh0oJaKgc/s1600/Mythtory+Last+Stand.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="261" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi_n_t2o6hulCm6FHjO9x9ocFvYiYjWpiqHH9I4D7C5aMRZi6zHfJID_jhIY3VVl9gq6T2Wj9nPeFG5fVFCRxWtGVAXtoRNYDVUIB70JVo0cQiwY4g3gIt4iPhc4lOSGZKyTrh0oJaKgc/s400/Mythtory+Last+Stand.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<u><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The battle he died in was a trap sprung upon the US troops, after a heroic last stand</span></u><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The US troops were on the offensive, not the defensive. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Custer had been planning a surprise attack on a group that he considered hostile. Due to a series of misunderstandings and bad assumptions on the part of Custer, his troops, and his scouts, Custer decided to attack a nearby village. (This is a very simplified telling of the events. If you'd like more detail, I suggest picking up a copy of <span style="background-color: white;"><u><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Archaeology-History-Custers-Last-Battle/dp/0806129980">Archaeology, History, and Custer's Last Battle: The Little Big Horn Re-examined</a></u> by Richard Allan Fox Jr.)</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Custer was expecting to be against about 800 combatants. He was actually attacking something closer to 3,500.[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Armstrong_Custer#Battle_of_the_Little_Bighorn">**</a>] </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The "Last Stand" wasn't exactly a protracted blaze of glory either. The entire battle from beginning to Custer's death was about an hour, and the hill where he died was far too small to actually provide any strategic advantage. How exactly he died has been a subject of some debate, he had been shot twice -- once in the left temple, and once right above the heart. The bullet types suggest both wounds came from a ranged riffle. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While it's impossible to know for certain who killed Custer (at the time, any </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Arapaho, </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Cheyenne</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, or </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lakota who did kill him woul</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">d have kept quiet about it for fear of retribution by the US Army), Cheyenne records have Custer being killed by <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; line-height: 22px;">Buffalo Calf Trail Woman. [<a href="http://helenair.com/news/state-and-regional/article_fcf44c96-cfb6-56f4-9c57-062e944350ce.html">***</a>] </span></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh142-zQMVS79qISH9BCH4G-E0LmIxY2MV1P9gvy6bG0OewAFo6t5ClkvLKXKxMmdjSKg2JoEcGg1uiOKBZUviA1lbGdnw-o06hnLBOZ2MOgb8328Fl1ga8Of4GhmIG2FcRnRbZrQL98So/s1600/Mythtory+Comanchee+Custers+Horse.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh142-zQMVS79qISH9BCH4G-E0LmIxY2MV1P9gvy6bG0OewAFo6t5ClkvLKXKxMmdjSKg2JoEcGg1uiOKBZUviA1lbGdnw-o06hnLBOZ2MOgb8328Fl1ga8Of4GhmIG2FcRnRbZrQL98So/s400/Mythtory+Comanchee+Custers+Horse.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Comanche, after the battle. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For the record, the horses in the background<i> aren't</i> dead, it was a hot day and they're resting.</span></div>
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<u><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> There were no US troop survivors / there was only one survivor and he was Custer's horse</span></u><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This one I think is a simple matter of confusion. The US forces in the battle were the US Army's 7th <span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">Cavalry</span> division. (For the record,<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7th_Cavalry_Regiment_(United_States)"> it's still around today</a>.) At the time, it was organized as a 12 company regiment in 3 b<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">attalions -- the first battalion comprised companies A - D, the second had companies E - H, and the third had companies I - M (there was no J company). The 7th Cavalry itself suffered a 52% fatality rate, but five of the twelve companies were were wiped out completely -- the ones that had been fighting under Custer's direct command. So <i>Custer's</i> companies had no survivors, but nearly half of the 7th Calvary survived the battle. [<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Little_Bighorn#7th_Cavalry_casualties">****</a>]</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">The only survivor to have fought "with" Custer in the battle was a horse named Comanche. But he wasn't Custer's horse, he belonged to Captain </span></span><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">Myles Walter Keogh. He was found two days after the battle, and was taken back to Fort Lincoln, where he retired to a life of horsey-luxury, occasionally participating in parades (but he was never ridden again) and indulging in the occasional beer with the troops. He lived for another 15 years, until he passed at the age of 29. At his death he was given full military honors (an honor he shares only with </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Jack_(horse)" style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">Black Jack</a><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">).</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">Post the </span></span>Battle of Antietam<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">The tall guy with the fantastic hat is President Lincoln. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">The guy on the far right is Custer.</span></span></div>
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<u><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Arapaho, </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Cheyenne</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, and </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lakota</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> refused to </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">desecrate</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Custer's body because of their great respect for him</span></u><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">According to the Cheyenne, <span style="background-color: white; line-height: 22px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 22px;">"When [Custer] fell, he wasn't touched by the warriors because he was unclean. He was bad medicine." [<a href="http://helenair.com/news/state-and-regional/article_fcf44c96-cfb6-56f4-9c57-062e944350ce.html">***</a>] </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.2em;">Spring Grass (Mo-nah-se-tah), a young Cheyenne woman, had been taken along wi</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 1.2em;">th 52 other Cheyenne women and children by the 7th Cavalry when she was 17. According to both US Army servicemen and her fellow captives, Custer took her as his "mistress" </span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">during the winter and early spring of 1868-1869.[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mo-nah-se-tah">*****</a>] She became pregnant, and had a son named </span></span><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">Yellow Bird. The Cheyenne record that Spring Grass's relatives prevented the other tribes from desecrating his body since he was considered family, since they believed that he was Yellow Bird's father. In the 1920s two of Spring Grass's kinswomen described how they had </span></span></span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">shoved their sewing awls into his ears, to permit Custer's corpse to "hear better in the afterlife" because of all of his broken promises. [<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Armstrong_Custer#Death">******</a>]</span></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6770341623023494461.post-70356612528318448752012-09-11T00:30:00.000-07:002012-09-11T00:30:01.187-07:00Mona Lisa Myths<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It's arguably the most famous painting in the world. Leonardo da Vinci's painting <i>Mona Lisa</i> is instantly recognizable -- even people who have no interest in art can still identify it. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For all of its fame though, (or perhaps because of it) there are a lot of myths about the <i>Mona Lisa</i>. I'm not going to list all of them (we'd never get done here!) but some of the main ones are:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1) The identity if the woman in the painting is unknown or is Leonardo in drag. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2) Leonardo carried the painting with him for the whole of his painting career. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3) The woman in the painting has no eyebrows or eyelashes because women in her time removed them for being "too sexual."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For the record, I never thought I'd have "eyebrows" and "sexual" together on this blog.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiot4vHPgnpa_vxvxFymfWC8ZdNzOeYri791S6a2ls6lyjMQbak604NF-R5Cm0uRR9BMVg_f2NRT_2PjCkHZrXnK7BiOWCBmRaHRIEzF4TA81JHMAGDJWmHCzg4pfL2Te94C6DYrJqznKA/s1600/Mythtory+Mona_Lisa_margin_scribble.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="120" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiot4vHPgnpa_vxvxFymfWC8ZdNzOeYri791S6a2ls6lyjMQbak604NF-R5Cm0uRR9BMVg_f2NRT_2PjCkHZrXnK7BiOWCBmRaHRIEzF4TA81JHMAGDJWmHCzg4pfL2Te94C6DYrJqznKA/s400/Mythtory+Mona_Lisa_margin_scribble.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<u><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The identity if the woman in the painting is unknown or is Leonardo in drag</span></u><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This one only makes sense if you don't speak Italian. <i>Mona Lisa</i> <span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">(in modern Italian it would be </span><i style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">Monna Lisa</i><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">, the spelling has changed a bit)</span> translates as "My Lady Lisa." The particular Lisa in question is <span style="line-height: 1.2em;">Lisa del Giocondo. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 1.2em;">The picture above is a snipped of the</span><span style="line-height: 1.2em;"> </span><span style="line-height: 18.71666717529297px; text-align: justify;">Heidelberg manuscript (Shelf mark D 7620 gt. INC) [<a href="http://www.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/Englisch/news/monalisa.html">*</a>] where </span><span style="text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 18.71666717529297px;">Agostino Vespucci notes that Leonardo is working on a portrait of Mona Lisa </span></span><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px; text-align: left;">del Giocondo. The dates match up perfectly for the age of the painting <i>Mona Lisa</i>.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">Just for fun, the painting is only called <i>Mona Lisa</i> in English, in French it's called </span><i style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">La Joconde</i><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">, and in Italian the painting is known as </span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;"> </span><i style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">La Gioconda. </i><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">Both of these titles are puns off of the real Lisa's last name of </span><span style="line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">Giocondo.</span></span></div>
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<u><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Leonardo carried the painting with him for the whole of his painting career</span></u></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Leonardo did work on the painting for a very long time, but he didn't start it until sometime in 1503 - 1504. That's only 15 years before his death. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There were a couple reasons it took so long. The most obvious one is the way he painted the <i>Mona Lisa</i>. It was made using slow drying oil paints, and before one layer could be added to another, it would take hours to dry. Mixing the colors using crosshatching, it required painstaking attention to detail and a lot of layers. A similar painting style and a similar sized portrat took another artist over 3,000 hours to complete. [<a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/unmasking-the-mona-lisa-expert-claims-to-have-discovered-da-vincis-technique-473653.html">**</a>] And that was a young man, not a 52 year old man with health problems. [<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/may/01/italy.arts?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487">***</a>]</span></div>
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<u><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The woman in the painting has no eyebrows or eyelashes because women in her time removed them for being "too sexual"</span></u></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While it is true that for portions of the Middle Ages and the Renascence, it was fashionable for women to remove their eyebrows (and some went as far as removing their eyelashes), <i>Mona Lisa</i>'s were removed by over-zealous cleaning. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It's easy to forget that the <i>Mona Lisa</i> is over 500 years old, and that she's actually changed a bit in looks during that half-millennium. Thanks to modern technology, we're able to determine that the picture above is what the <i>Mona Lisa</i> looked like when she was brand new. She had eyebrows and eyelashes, very small ones. This particular painting above is actually from Leonardo's own workshop. It's a true-to-life copy made by one of his apprentices. Sadly what saved her (and why she's in such better condition than the other <i>Mona Lisa</i>) is that was was painted over and forgotten about in a museum vault. [<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/02/mona-lisa-copy-done-hand-_n_1249931.html#s658485&title=Close_Up_Of">****</a>]</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2