The Wanderer
Cracked Bones Reveal Cannibalism by Doomed Arctic Explorers
: "An ill-fated 19th-century expedition that became trapped in the Canadian Arctic ended in a particularly gruesome type of cannibalism, new research suggests.
The gory end was faced by the British navy on the Franklin expedition, the doomed 1845 voyage to discover a sea route through the Canadian Arctic to the Orient.
Though scientists had long known that the shipmen likely resorted to cannibalism to survive, the new study reveals the true extremes the crew went to. Not only did the starving explorers cut flesh off the bones of their fallen comrades, they also cracked open the bones to suck out the marrow."
Eating a Vanilluxe will give you frostbite.
HGW XX/7
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Yes, though I don't know if all of it survived. You can read transcripts of the July 20 trial, in German, here.
Gaah. That's horrendous.
Schild und Schwert der Partei
How is marrow beneficial to survival, btw?
I concur. Yikes.
edited 21st Jul '15 3:24:17 PM by Quag15
HGW XX/7
There's a lot of fat and energy in marrow. Bone marrow as food was and is very common.
Schild und Schwert der Partei
Yes, though I don't know if all of it survived. You can read transcripts of the July 20 trial, in German, here.
Thanks
Show an affirming flame
Even more reasons to be grateful to England: you guys gave us Al Stewart. The man's a living treasure.
Link. (Youtube embeds seem not to be working for me.)
They've given me my ticket to this place beyond the grave
I suppose it's kind of funny, I suppose it's kind of sad
Thinking back on all the times we had.
[Chorus]
But it's kind of hot and smoky in this ante-room to Hell
And I won't make up a story 'cause you know the truth so well
It's much too late to worry that we never had a chance
And when Joe the Georgian gets here, we will dance, dance, dance
When Joe the Georgian gets here, we will dance.
We all set off together on this sorry ship of state
When the captain took the fever, we were hijacked by the mate
And he steered us through the shadows upon an angry tide
And cast us one by one over the side.
Chorus
There's Kamenev, Zinoviev, Bukharin and the rest
We're sharpening our pitchforks, and we're heating up the ends.
We've got a few surprises for the mate when he appears
I hope he likes the next few million years.
Chorus
edited 24th Jul '15 7:31:24 PM by SabresEdge
Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.
A question about medieval tactics : it's well-known that infantry armed with spear was great at breaking cavalry charges. But how did that work exactly ? Did the horses actually ran into the spears and impaled themselves, or did they stop on their own because they were afraid of the spears ?
Worldbuilding is fun, writing is a chore
Blowout soon fellow Stalker
Basically the spears means if you charge you die. So the riders just sorta didn't do that.
Oh really when?
V
And neither did the horses, rather sensibly.
Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
Actually the horses not running onto spears out of fear is largely a myth. Warhorses were often selected for aggression as well as other physical attributes and then trained to charge regardless of hazard. The use of limited eye coverings and blinders was also common to help control the horses. Warhorses are well known to charge everything from bristling pike formations to artillery parks without breaking from the charge. There are numerous accounts of cavalry charging directly into pike formations and successfully breaking them. Sometimes it was at great cost but they did it on multiple occasions. Pike only formations were slowly replaced with pike and shot formations. Add in knights were among the first wide spread adopters of personal fire arms and frequently used them not only against each other but against formations of armored men like pikes. In addition there are numerous cavalry lances that were as long or longer then the pikes used against them.
The Winged Hussars are known for achieving success against pike formations. Even the bayonet and the famous square formation is a far cry from guaranteed protection against cavalry charges.
Cavalry charges were largely broken by the disruption of the formation from casualties and terrain limitations. Musket wielders were instructed to aim for the horses legs as well as the pikemen were instructed to aim for the horses. Even horses with armored protection were a lot less well protected then the knight that sat on them.
Ancient and Medieval warfare can very simplistically be described as the management and discipline of formations as the tactics and strategies of the time heavily relied on formations due to the limitations of their weapons and technology.
edited 25th Jul '15 10:25:02 AM by TuefelHundenIV
Who watches the watchmen?
Charging with lances long enough to out-reach the infantry I can understand, but wouldn't skewer your own horse on the enemy spears be suicidal ? And is it really possible to train a horse so that it'll run into certain death ?
On the other hand I see mentions of spear butts being planted in the ground to resist cavalry, so Inertial Impalement must have happened...
Worldbuilding is fun, writing is a chore
Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
Considering there are no shortage of examples of cavalry charging on lance formations and even bayonet infantry squares directly yes you can train a horse to do that. Warhorses had to be able to charge just about any danger they might find on a battlefield. The only thing that really seems to phase warhorses with any regularity is a fair bit of fire. Cavlary would use their lances to rush on the formation and trust in their armor to protect them. Even if the horse goes down the rider can get back up and get a remount. Now the riders didn't always get back up or were not able to remount but it happened often enough to be notable. There are multiple accounts of unhorsed riders breaking off from the fray to get a remount and collect a fresh lance. If a formation couldn't be flanked, or gotten around the cavalry would often use their lances to try and break through the front. The accounts of such charges recall the pike formation being routed and the cavalry often taking serious damage.
Various tactics and techniques were used to help aid a cavalry charge such as using the offhand to fire a crossbow or the pistol into the enemy formation to help make gaps in the line or using something like archers to keep pressure on the enemy formation allowing the cavalry to break them.
Even then yes they can and did charge into the teeth of the pikes and it was bloody with both men and horse dying on the points of the pikes. If they got inside that formation though the footmen were often torn apart by the cavalry in their midst as their formation broke and fell apart under the onslaught.
edited 25th Jul '15 11:18:12 AM by TuefelHundenIV
Who watches the watchmen?
Show an affirming flame
Really well-trained lancers might be able to break a square; most cavalry couldn't. I have to concur that most sources say that an infantry square typically falls to cavalry if it panics and breaks, but if it holds steady, it'll hold its ground. The most dramatic illustration is the swirling cavalry battle at Waterloo; as feared as the Dutch Red Lancers were—leavened by a few troops of elite Polish light-horse lancers from Napoleon's personal guard—they weren't able to break the British and German infantry squares either, even as the infantry squares were ground down by artillery and carbine fire.
Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.
Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
They came very close to breaking several squares but that was prevented by the British Cavalary coming to their aid. The British also had quite a few more infantry formed up at the point of the charge and even then the cavalry were doing appreciable damage to the squares. There are more then a few accounts of cavalry breaking pike squares even entrenched formations that were holding in well prepared positions.
The Battle of Kircholm cavalry charged a pike and shot position that used fences to the front to strengthen their position. The cavalry pushed down the fence and proceeded to plunge headlong into the enemy position destroying the formation while noting they took serious damage to their formation.
There are even examples of cavalry breaking 17th century Swedish pike and shot formations.
In several of the instances the formations were solid when they received the charge that broke them. Again cavalry can and did break pike formations even ones that were ready to receive the charge. It isn't as rare as popular belief holds. Just like the infantry the cavalry quality was just as variable.
One thing I forgot. The pike formations were harder to break and it often took repeated charges to achieve the break. That one with the fences the cavalry charged three times after the fences went down before the pike and shot broke.
Pike formations were more resistant to cavalry charges but they weren't these cavalry doom machines as they are often depicted. Much like the cavalry were not the be all end all of formations both often relied on the support of other battlefield units to be fully effective.
edited 25th Jul '15 12:03:27 PM by TuefelHundenIV
Who watches the watchmen?
A little off-topic with this question: Anyone know where to discuss about Alternate History?
My Hair Provides Affordable Healthcare
Here?
Talking about Alternate History - I just decided to reinstall World In Conflict two weeks ago. It's an excellent 2007 Real-Time Strategy game set during World War III in 1989. Unfortunately, the game had a glorious but all too short life - its developers were purchased by Ubisoft shortly after the game's release, and thus potential hopes of a sequel were crushed.
The multiplayer community, which amazingly is still active thanks to Massive Entertainment vigilantly running its own servers instead of using the then prevalent and now defunct Game Spy, is extremely tight knit and close - thus, veteran players generally can be more than willing to help and advise newer players, whom are desperately needed to save the game, as long as one cooperates and coordinates their actions together. The game places a high-emphasis on teamwork and group strategy for success, and thus the older players and the game itself can be unforgiving of newer players that fail to catch on to this mechanic in time.
The Wanderer
A lot of the Worldbuilding threads deal with that.
Skeletons Of Napoleon's Soldiers Discovered In Mass Grave Show Signs Of Starvation
Thank you.
New question: Did French troops back in World War I really say "Vive la France" whenever they did infantry charges towards German trenches, just before getting mowed down by machine gun fire, or was that an invention of A Very Long Engagement?
edited 26th Jul '15 6:07:19 PM by HallowHawk
My Hair Provides Affordable Healthcare
They must have some sort of war cry don't you think? 
I guess.
My Hair Provides Affordable Healthcare
Evidence of Indian tribe village uncovered at Va. Navy base
The Kiskiak Indian Tribe was once part of the powerful Powhatan chiefdom in southeastern Virginia, but the tribe disappeared from the historical record by the 1630s after English colonists attacked their village on the York River and eventually settled there themselves. The tribe's location was well documented by Capt. John Smith in his 1612 Map of Virginia and in other documents, but nobody's sure what happened to the tribe after it crossed the York River and settled in an area known locally as the Middle Peninsula. The tribe's disappearance isn't uncommon in Virginia.
"There are a number of other groups in Tidewater Virginia that have a similar sequence in which they're described, their location is mapped, there's trade, interaction, warfare and hostilities with the English colonists," said Martin Gallivan, an archaeology professor at the College of William and Mary who is leading the site's excavation. "Eventually, they get displaced by the English and they either merge with other groups or move out of the region."
Archaeologists from the College of William and Mary have dug up artifacts that indicate the heart of the Kiskiak Indian Tribe's village sits on the same bluff that is now occupied by two-story homes with well-manicured lawns that are reserved for the military base's leaders. The officers' housing was originally built in 1920, leaving the area relatively undisturbed by modern farming practices that ordinarily can destroy historical artifacts.
"In many ways, the weapons station having being locked down, if you will, for almost a 100 years now, has really created an archaeological park that is unparalleled on the East Coast," said Bruce Larson, cultural resources branch manager for Naval Facilities Engineering Command Atlantic.
Naval Weapons Station Yorktown is where missiles and torpedoes are assembled and loaded onto Navy warships. Unlike most Navy bases, its 13,000 acres has a relatively rural feel to it and is heavily forested as part of an effort to protect against potential blasts in its storage sites.
The Navy is required to document and preserve historical and cultural artifacts before moving forward with any developments, and previous surveys have indicated there are plenty of artifacts on the base dating back centuries.
"We're between Yorktown, Jamestown and Williamsburg. This is the beginning of America," Naval Weapons Station Yorktown spokesman Mark Piggott said while standing by the dig site that overlooks the National Park Service's scenic Colonial Parkway that connects the three cities.
Larson, who oversees archaeology projects for the Navy and Marines from the Pacific Coast to the middle of the Indian Ocean, said Naval Weapons Station Yorktown is one of the most well-preserved archaeology sites in the military's inventory.
"The intact nature of it is really unprecedented," Larson said. "They're in a quite remarkable, almost untouched position."
This summer, students from the College of William and Mary excavated the site behind the officers' housing and found broken pottery, stone tools, arrowheads, smoking pipe fragments and animal bones and charred plant materials that indicate what the tribe was eating when it lived there.
"Combining all that together, we can begin to tell the story of what's going on on a daily basis in this Indian town," Gallivan said. "We found evidence of a palisade in a boundary ditch, which we think are signaling a really important part of this Indian town."
Gallivan said the palisades indicate that the tribe's ceremonial spaces and leaders were protected there. Early analysis of the artifacts indicates the tribe had a diverse diet, eating corn, beans, squash, fish, oysters, clams, deer, raccoon and turtles. Gallivan said his students will continue examining the artifacts this school year and that another class will continue excavations at the site next summer. He said less than one percent of the tribe's village has been excavated so far, and that excavating the entire village would probably take about 100 years. Larson said work would continue in five year intervals and that the artifacts, which belong to the Navy, would likely be placed on long-term loan at the College of William and Mary.
The Wanderer
Researchers identify four skeletons from Jamestown
Brain surgery saved Russian general who helped defeat Napoleon: Scientists 'rewrite' history books: "After more than two-years of international investigation, scientists have concluded that Napoleon likely would have conquered Russia in 1812 if not for the life-saving brain surgery performed on Russian general Mikhail Kutuzov by the French surgeon Jean Massot, who operated on Kutuzov after bullets twice passed through his head."
edited 29th Jul '15 2:10:03 PM by rmctagg09
Eating a Vanilluxe will give you frostbite.
HGW XX/7
U wot m8?
More like "scientists think they are can apply themselves to any discipline without formal training, resurrect spurious Great Man theory dismissed by historians a century and a half ago". Napoleon's defeat in Russia, like any historical event, was the result of many factors. The winter, partisan warfare, Russian strategy, economics, Napoleon's shaky web of alliances, insecure supply lines, the burning of Moscow, and many other things all played an equal role to the single personality of Mikhail Kutuzov. Kutuzov dying of either of his two head wounds might have resulted in Napoleon's victory...or it might have resulted in Barclay de Tolly, Bagration, or Bennigsen proving equally skilled in defending their home turf from an enemy at the end of his resources.
Schild und Schwert der Partei
Any reason why when Maxwell Taylor became West Point's superintendent post-World War II, he abolished fencing and horsemanship?
Sorry to double-post, but I have this to ask about Nazi Germany's Volksgerichtshof: Were everything said in the sham trials presided over by Roland Freisler recorded?