Today:
You know the drill: this is the thread for all your history-related outpourings that are not necessarily questions. Minor questions that you feel don't need or merit their own threads are welcome too. Discovered a great new book, documentary, article or blog? Has your Ph.D. application been successful? Have you made an archaeological discovery in your back yard? Did you find an anecdote about the Doge of Venice telling a joke to Michel Foucault? Tell us all about it.
As usual, moderation in this thread will be relatively non-existent -- jokes, anecdotes and light-hearted banter are welcome.
At /u/Gankom's behest, I have produced a small album of /r/AskHistorians memes. Enjoy to your hearts' well-moderated delights.
A short story of getting invaded, but not even getting paid for it
So, most people would probably think Norway's oldest law is the constitution. But no, it's Lov 15. April 1687 Kong Christian Den Femtis Norske Lov. A code of law given by the danish king Christian V.
In book 5, first chapter, art. 2 we find the following passage (NL 5-1-2):
Alle Contracter (...) som ikke er imod (...) Ærbarhed, skulle holdis
Translated it means that you can't enforce contracts that are dishonourable, or contrary to public morality.
Now, Norway was invaded by the Germans on the 9th of April 1940. The invasion went reasonably well. In 1942 the Germans hired contractor Olav Fallsnes to build a torpedo battery at Julholm, for coastal defence. For this, Fallsnes hired Hans Iversen and his team. The work was done, but there was a disagreement on how much actually was done, and thus on pay. Hans Ivernes took the case to court and sued Fallsnes. He lost in first instance, but appealed the case.
However, before the case got to the appellate court, Germany unfortunately lost the war. The case came up in 1946, and the appellate court was not too fond of this agreement of making torpedo batteries for the enemy. Because of this the court didn't rule on how much work was done, rather, the court found that the agreement was:
selvsagt imot ærbarhet (...) og dermed også i strid med NL 5-1-2
Translated it means that the agreement to construct a torpedo battery for the occupying Germans was a dishonourable agreement, so it was unenforceable regardless of who was right in the dispute.
So Hans Iversen had his country taken from him by invasion, which is bad enough. And when he tries to make the best out of the situation by working a bit for the enemy, the invading powers lose and he had his wages taken from him as well.
Source:
Retstidende 1946 s. 720 (RT-1946-720).
I found this ad from 1954 quite striking.. It asks "Can you afford / not to eat / CHEESE? "
But .. what is the threat here? Long term loss of bone density? And isn't that a rather large knife he's holding?
Come join the ongoing party you cool cats, because the sub is turning 9 years old today!
It took me awhile to find again, but I really like this essay about teaching the American Revolution and wish I'd had a class like that when I was in school. This kind of teaching is harder to do when the point of every core class is to pass exams at the end of the year. I'm curious what the rest of you think. The curriculum could be applied to almost any big event/era in history, not just military history or the history of the United States.
What are good places to look for book reviews (that hopefully aren’t behind very expensive academic paywalls)?
I often find myself interested in a topic and wanting to read more about it, ideally at a level between pop history and academic history, but have nowhere where I can reliably find or look up reviews that would point me towards sources to look at further. I know that there’s the resource list in here, but wondering if there are places some of you go looking for reviews.
What, if any, 18th century army, armies, navy, or navies donned mustard yellow uniforms?
I'm asking because I've noticed that the Spanish (navy, I think) are depicted in such uniforms in this video, as well as the video game Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag. I know that AC is far from perfect in terms of historical accuracy, and I actually looked into it myself and learned that the Spanish and French armies wore more or less the same white-and-blue uniforms at around that time due to the Bourbon dynasty or something like that (feel free to correct me; I read that years ago), but I was surprised after seeing that same uniform in the linked video because I usually hold Simple History videos to a higher standard of credibility than I do works of fiction.
I'd greatly appreciate your help with this, and would like you to provide me with links to (or at least names of) your source(s).
During the age of sail, what did sailors do when they were out on the ocean and got a windless day? Did they just chill out for that day since they weren’t going anywhere no matter how much they messed with the rigging, or were there tasks they could take care of during those days? Did it depend on your position within the crew (so the captain and officers would just hang out and snack and talk about navigation while the able seamen swabbed the poop deck or something)?
What is the difference between this page and r/askhistory?
Just started my first MA history class. I am so fucked.
Your Weekly /r/askhistorians Recap
Friday, August 21 - Thursday, August 27
###Top 10 Posts
| score | comments | title & link |
|---|---|---|
| 10,559 | 157 comments | I'm a medieval toddler having dinner with my family. Do I refuse to eat peas and throw my spoon like my modern contemporaries, or are the terrible twos and tantrums a modern phenomenon as some would suggest? |
| 6,228 | 114 comments | [Great Question!] How accurate is Monty Python's 'Anarcho-Syndicalist Peasant' scene? Were small medieval villages de-facto self governing and autonomous from their noble lord and wider nation? |
| 5,207 | 20 comments | Martin Van Buren is remembered as the only US president to speak English as a second language, because he grew up in a Dutch-speaking part of New York. How long did these Dutch-speaking settlements survive, and how did the Anglo government of New York manage administering them? |
| 4,615 | 93 comments | Why did the USA's founding fathers feel the Post Office was so important it needed to be in the constitution? |
| 3,873 | 69 comments | A number of modern Muslim majority countries have laws that restrict the sale/production of alcohol. However, wine features heavily in medieval Islamic poetry - none of the historical Islamic kingdoms seems to have cracked down on it. Were there any attempts at prohibition prior to the modern era? |
| 3,463 | 90 comments | I am a medieval peasant boys in my teenage years and I start feeling attracted to other boys/men. What, if any, is my perception of homosexuality and how could I deal with it? |
| 3,316 | 206 comments | What makes Tom Holland unreliable as a historian? |
| 2,809 | 50 comments | How did KGB keep track of all those typewriters? |
| 2,389 | 58 comments | How did Chicken, Cows and Pigs become the "staple" of domesticated animals for food? |
| 2,161 | 23 comments | How credible is the theory that Adam Smith and David Hume were lovers? |
###Top 10 Comments
Does anybody know nuances of the French nobility lineages in 14th centuries? I'm asking since I've just recently stumbled upon Odadurov's official lineage chronology from 1686 which stated that in 1374 a knight from "the Frankish state of Germans, now known as France" visited Moscow duchy and offered his service to Russian prince. His name was Oblaginya, and he came together with three sons - Zinila, Twerdila and Yawter (names are definitely butchered and most likely just literally translated into Russian with some flavour, since "Twerdila", as I can guess, is a charasteristic of being stoic and tough). Any chance these two families are really connected?
In US History, is there a precedent for a major political party not adopting an official platform during their national convention?
Are there any good books on the history of mathematics, focusing on Ancient mathematics, preferably Greek or Roman?
One of Taşköprüzade's anecdote regarding Ilm al-bah (sexual science) which is basically voyeurism:
It is told that there was another king who lost his sexual power. So he married one of his slaves to a beautiful slave girl and prepared for them a place of such a condition that he was able to see them without being seen by them. By watching their acts, he regained his power, so that something similar to cream cheese came out of his penis. After that, he was endowed with a very much increased power.
It's also interesting since one of the earlier principles of Ilm al-bah is that to restore vitality, lust shouldn't be provoked intentionally by the subject and it has been since harmonized
How big could chinese armies get in medieval and antiquity? They're rumored to be big but I've heard they're over exaggerated in size.
Also, what was the composition of the chinese armies in these time periods?
