The History Thread!

Except Beethoven, of course.

hell, even unborn people can change history!

Imagine if Henry VIII had had a male, healthy child from Catherine of Aragon on his first attempt!

What did ancient Babylonian songs sound like? Something like this

Terrific link.

That said, I prefer Civ 5's version better:

Hey - does anyone think that Hollywood should totally do a sequel to Fiddler on the Roof where Operation Barbarossa rolls into the Pale and everyone is "evacuated" to Auschwitz? Because that's totally what happens after the story ends.

But that would be... hugely depressing.

Historically speaking, any reason why militaries stopped with the "light, medium, and heavy" classifications for tanks?

Because they stopped existing. It's all about the Main Battle Tank now.

Because there was no point to heavy tanks.

One big issue was how they became Awesome, yet Impractical towards the end of their runs, and later on the awesome part was dropped because of how newer missiles made short work of them. They were literally hulks of steel which could break very easily, so they were dropped as weaponry advanced, and little could save them.

edited 12th Jan '15 8:21:29 AM by RatherRandomRachel

Heavy Tanks are basically what MBT's are now these days. Including weight and powerful guns. However the more modern MB Ts have the advantage of better engineering, more powerful engines, higher velocity guns, more potent HEAT shells, better armor layouts, and the rise the APFSDS rounds.

Basically, once the British L7 105mm gun became popular among medium-tank users, the primary users of heavy tanks (the Sovs) took one look at their heavies and asked the tank designers what was the point of having these big, slow, expensive tanks when an opposing medium could lance its armor.

Antiquity of dairying on Emerald Isle revealed: "As dairy farmers across Europe anxiously await the lifting of EU milk quotas in April this year, new research from the University of Bristol, UK has revealed the antiquity of dairy farming in a region famous for its dairy exports: Ireland.

Research published today in the Journal of Environmental Archaeology shows that dairying on the island goes back approximately 6,000 years, revealed through traces of ancient dairy fats found in pots dating to around 4,000 to 2,500 BC.

Dr Jessica Smyth of Bristol's School of Chemistry analysed nearly 500 pots from the Neolithic, the period when people switched from hunting and gathering to farming. In Britain and Ireland, this change occurred around 4,000 BC, more than 1,000 years later than on the Continent. The Bristol team use a combination of fat or lipid 'fingerprinting' and compound-specific carbon isotope techniques to identify the origin of fats preserved in the walls of prehistoric cooking pots."

Random question.

What are some historical figures who are considered a great warrior/fighter but not a great thinker?

Alexander III of Russia was super strong but dumb as rocks.

Search for the world's first zero leads to the home of Angkor Wat: "US-based mathematician, Amir Aczel, made it his life’s work to find the world’s first zero. Having already discovered the first magic square inscribed on the doorway of a 10th-century Indian temple, this ‘mathematical archaeologist’ had come to know of K-127 - a stone stele first documented in 1931 that clearly held the inscription “605”. Dated to AD 683, it’s the oldest known representation of zero - a numeral that Aczel describes as the most significant of them all."

Plenty. Jan III Sobieski was the last of the great Polish warrior-kings, but his foreign policy was hopeless, despite his Theoden-king moment outside Vienna. Andrew Jackson and James Garfield also spring to mind. I suppose you could add Hitler, since he had one of Europe's best armies in 1941 and threw it away with an ill-conceived invasion of the only European power that could completely defeat him. I doubt some of the Soviet WWII generals would have won many pub quizzes either; there seems to be a dearth of theory immediately after WWII, when before it you have guys like Tukhachevsky and Shaposhnikov.

How interesting.

edited 18th Jan '15 1:47:54 AM by Achaemenid

Shakespear of Arabia

This was well before oil was discovered in Arabia. The issue then was expanding The British Empire and stopping the influence of Ottoman Turkey, something which Abdulaziz — known as Ibn Saud — agreed with as his rival, Ibn Rashid, was an ally of the Ottomans.

, Ooh, I see. Thanks.

Jan III Sobieski's foreign policy was hopeless not because of him, but despite him. All he got from the Empire whose capital he saved was essentially a "kthnxbai".

edited 18th Jan '15 7:53:16 AM by entropy13

Apparently, 9th century Frankish peasants believed in UFOs.

In the subject of great warriors but not great thinkers you could go more obscure and list Marshall Deodoro da Fonseca who by all accounts was the most competent military man of his time but didn't work so well as a President due a combination of inexperience, Brutal Honesty in the cutthroat world of politics, authoriarian manners and plummeting health.

In a slightly less obscure example, Mardonius of Persia, supreme commander of the Persian army in the Greco-Persian invasion. He mostly steamrolled the Greeks in the battlefield, but he had a problem of not being as politically savvy as Themistocles who could sway politicians to his side in a way Mardonius couldn't. Namely, Themistocles was corrupt to the bone, while Mardonius seemed to have some Honor Before Reason going on.

Oliver Cromwell is a stand out here. While he was a superb commander, some of his diplomatic answers were... lacking, and he managed to anger quite a few with what he did. His only real diplomatic accomplishment was getting Irish protestants on his side, and he made a few blunders to France which meant even if they needed him against the Spanish, they didn't much like him.

@Santos Oh that's interesting, it's interesting to see how mythologies interact with Urban Legends in general I think

Archduke Francis Ferdinand's (Y'know, the one whose assassination sparked WW 1) name is spelled Francis, but I've heard it pronounced like it was spelled Franz. Which is correct?

First time I saw his name as "Francis Ferdinand". I've always seen the name written and pronounced as Franz Ferdinand.