Welcome to Tuesday Trivia!
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Come share the cool stuff you love about the past!
We do not allow posts based on personal or relatives' anecdotes. Brief and short answers are allowed but MUST be properly sourced to respectable literature. All other rules also apply—no bigotry, current events, and so forth.
For this round, let’s look at: Love & Romance! Big gestures of love, small moments of love, agápe, éros, philía, philautia, etc. etc. This week's thread is about all the trivia related to love and romance you want to share. Let your romantic flag fly!
1 Answers 2022-02-08
I've been reading The Tipping Point by Malcom Gladwell & while it has a lot of very interesting anecdotes/case studies, I find some of the conclusions he draws from them to be less than convincing. As such, I'm not entirely prepared to just accept his version of events as fact.
When positing the question "Why do we remember Paul Revere but not William Dawes?" my answer was "Because he got a poem written about him."
Gladwell largely claims that the poem was ultimately written for the same reason we remember him now - because Revere's ride was so much more successful than Dawes', and that's because Revere knew more people and how to get in touch with them.
In Chapter 2, he writes:
He was carrying the identical message, through just as many towns over just as many miles as Paul Revere. But Dawes's ride didn't set the countryside afire. The local militia leaders weren't alerted. In fact, so few men from one of the main towns he rode through - Waltham - fought the following day that some subsequent historians concluded that it must have been a strongly pro-British community. It wasn't. The people of Waltham just didn't find out the British were coming until it was too late.
and later in the same chapter:
...he would have known just how to spread the news as far and wide as possible. When he saw people on the roads, he was so naturally and irrepressibly social he would have stopped and told them. When he came upon a town, he would have known exactly whose door to knock on, who the local militia leader was, who the key players in town were. He had met most of them before. And they knew and respected him as well.
The implication being that Dawes didn't know those things/simply wasn't as equipped as Revere to pull it off.
How accurate is this telling of the story?
Are there other reasons that Dawes ride might've been less successful?
Would he have been as successful as Revere if they had swapped routes?
Is there a possibility he simply didn't attempt to warn that many local militiamen since his goal (according to Wikipedia) was to warn John Hancock & Samuel Adams that they were in danger of arrest?
Gladwell cites Paul Revere's Ride by David Hackett Fischer, but I don't know how much of his narrative actually comes from that book as I haven't read it.
1 Answers 2022-02-08
Becoming a sailor was the stereotypical escape from the pressure and monotony of everyday life for young men in age of sail, but how actually common was it for a captain to look at a well-dressed eighteen year old city boy who didn't know fore from aft and was talking about "adventure" and think, "Sure, let's bring this guy on board"?
For those who were hired having never been on a boat in their lives, how formal was their training?
2 Answers 2022-02-08
Like I'm not crazy, right? Like, fuedalism, or warlordism, was nearly universal for thousands of years. A king, daimyo, warlord, what have you, extorts everyone else, using lesser landed warlords to do his bidding and continue extorting others.
Warlords in contemporary China and modern Africa have the same system.
Japan's Samurai and all seem mystical and awesome, but they're effectively the same as existed in Europe. "Vikings", as well, as I understand it, followed a similar concept, with Jarls having men who swore loyalty to them.
2 Answers 2022-02-08
Being firmly in the Soviet sphere of influence, what reason did Stalin and the western powers have to split the city?
1 Answers 2022-02-08
From my understanding, king Charles was also English, and having him restore his seat on the throne would just result in Scotland still being under English rule, just with a new king. Why did Scots see such promise in this? I understand supporters of Charles claimed he would be more favorable to Scots, but did they have any real guarantee they would have more freedom under Charles?
1 Answers 2022-02-08
I'm about to write a research proposal that raises this particular concern given that the history of my country is almost, if not fully, written by the perspectives of our past colonizers. I've been trying to find rrls for this topic too and I hope some of you can help.
2 Answers 2022-02-08
Full quotation is from the World History Encyclopedia (emphasis added):
The geographical extent of the Byzantine Empire changed over the centuries as the military successes and failures of individual emperors fluctuated. Territories which were held in the earlier part of the empire's history included Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine. Greece was less important in practical terms than it was as a symbol of the Byzantine's view of themselves as the true heirs of the Greco-Roman culture. Italy and Sicily had to be defended, ultimately unsuccessfully, against the ambitions of the Popes and the Normans. The Balkans up to the Danube River were important throughout, and Asia Minor up to the Black Sea coast in the north and Armenia in the east was a major source of wealth, but both these regions would require regular and vigorous defence against various perennial enemies.
The Byzantine entry links to an entry on ancient Armenia, but the latter focuses on kings and borders rather than on economy.
1 Answers 2022-02-08
In the movie "In the Electric Mist" (2009) General John Bell Hood delivers the following lines:
It's just like when they load their cannon with horseshoes and log chain.
You'd think the barrage would last forever.
Then all of a sudden there's a silence louder than the cannon fire.
Would armies load cannon with "horseshoes and log chain"?
Perhaps when they had exhausted proper ammunition?
Would make sense that it's a sign the barrage may soon be ending.
Bonus Question: How accurate is his introduction?
I'm General John Bell Hood, commander of the Texas Brigade, commander of the 4th Texas Cavalry, the 5th Texas Cavalry, and the 17th Texas Infantry.
1 Answers 2022-02-07
I'm aware of plenty of cases of former Wehrmacht generals and Nazi officers denying personal knowledge of or involvement in the Holocaust. "I was only following orders," "I thought they were being deported," "It was all the SS, not the Wehrmacht," and so on. But were there any prominent Nazis (i.e., those who would've known about the scope and goal of the Holocaust or were implicated in its execution) who outright denied that there was an organized plan to mass murder Jews and other ethnic groups, or claimed that the Allies were vastly inflating the death tolls?
1 Answers 2022-02-07
I’m interested to know what the general public thought about this new discovery of terra Australis.
1 Answers 2022-02-07
The US military budget is larger than the budgets of China, India, Russia, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, Germany, France, Japan, South Korea, Italy, and Australia combined. Our police budget is larger than most countries' military budget. When and how did this happen? Did we always prioritize military spending? Was there a particular president, secretary of defense, or other policymakers that pushed for this? Was there a particular war, event, or movement that caused this?
(Thanks for considering. Big fan. Long time reader, first time poster :)
1 Answers 2022-02-07
2 Answers 2022-02-07
1 Answers 2022-02-07
I would like all the biographical information I can get about the consuls of Rome in 188 BC and 187 BC, to wit:
Marcus Valerius Messalla, Gaius, Livius Salinator, M. Aemilius Lepidus I, and C. Faminius.
All I can figure out so far about each of them is which were Plebians and which were Patricians. Where should I be looking other than Wikipedia?
1 Answers 2022-02-07
1 Answers 2022-02-07
I was reading a poem, The grief of the Pasha by Victor Hugo, and twice he references mute men (or a mute man). I’ve tried googling it, but got zero results. I think it might be referencing a specific army, or maybe mythological figures? For context, the poem takes place in the Ottoman Empire and was written in 1827. It was originally written in French and then translated into English. Here’s the poem I read (the mute men are mentioned in the third and sixth stanzas): https://www.joslyn.org/Post/sections/375/Files/The%20Grief%20of%20the%20Pasha-translation.pdf
2 Answers 2022-02-07
Hello dear historian. Today I came accross a very interesting fact. I've learned that the walls of the ancient city of Pompei are covered with readable and understandable Antic graffitis.
I found some English translations of some of these on the internet, but I'm not sure if the list is valid, or if it is just a troll.
I don't know if an archeologist has done a compilation of all the juicy messages that we can read..
Thank you in advance.
1 Answers 2022-02-07
Here's the image, mirrored to Imgur and here's the original Instagram post.
It appears to be from Boccaccio's Des cleres et nobles femmes.
My impression was that in the Middle Ages, this would have been far outside the role of women. Am I wrong about this? Would some women have been recipients of instruction in things like astronomy, and would some have even taught?
Was Boccaccio working to change this by publishing his book?
1 Answers 2022-02-07
I'm curious as the usual argument to justify the second bomb is "But they didn't surrender after Hiroshima", when it seems impossible to get even the surrender talks started in three days.
I mean, you need to write the surrender, find translators, get a delegation formed, translate the surrender, contact the opposite side, negociate the safe passage of the delegation to the enemy delegation and then have them meet. Then you need the order to cancel the nuclear bombing, all of that in three days.
1 Answers 2022-02-07
Hello people of r/AskHistorians. Yesterday I was having an argument with a friend about whether or not the Third Reich was a Christian state. I was arguing that it wasn’t. Hitler just wanted to keep Christianity around for the time being to keep Germany stable during World War II and that had he succeeded he would’ve gotten rid of it later because a religion that preaches that you should be loyal to something other than the state (God) would not be great for an authoritarian like Hitler. My friend on the other hand was arguing that Nazi Germany was “super Christian” and he cited the fact that multiple German Churches and Christian organizations openly sided with Hitler and that most of the Wehrmacht’s uniforms had the phrase “Gott Mit Uns” on them. I argued that the Christian Churches and Organizations were only siding with Hitler so they would not face the same fate as the Jews. I also argued that the phrase “Gott Mit Uns” had been used by Prussia for 240 years at the point and that Hitler wasn’t going to just get rid of it. Anyway we both walked away frustrated because neither of us could convince the other that they were wrong. Can you guys help settle this by telling me who is correct? And please send evidence from credible sources because if I am right then my friend still won’t believe me unless I have credible sources to back up my claim. Thank You.
2 Answers 2022-02-07
1 Answers 2022-02-07
When talking about slings as a weapon, people often talk about their apparently incredible power, some sources even saying they could take of people’s heads and national geographic even saying they are as powerful as a .44 magnum, how accurate are these claims deemed by historians?
The National Geographic article: https://api.nationalgeographic.com/distribution/public/amp/history/article/ancient-slingshot-lethal-44-magnum-scotland
2 Answers 2022-02-07
It is understandable that he married an austrian prince and gave Austria a somewhat lenient treatment after defeating them to strengthen the legitimacy of his reign and appease the coalition members but considering how many times Austria has sided against France and eventually contributed to the demise of his reign - Why did he insist on keeping this policy? The way he kept the Austrian Empire in one piece even after the war of the fifth coalition seems like quite a poor decision.
1 Answers 2022-02-07
