Quite Interesting

Yeah, I know. I figured that was known enough to just leave it. I actually edited that sentence three times over the issue of how much historical knowledge I'd have to fit in. Now I find that I ended up completely on the calculatino. Now I know how Stonewall felt.

And now a 15-ish year old joke on The Simpsons finally makes sense.

A local museum is preparing an exhibit on several generations of Lincoln's family, and outside it they have archival copies of the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment. The sign by the Proclamation says that the document declares that "persons held as slaves... henceforward shall be free."

That's a mighty important ellipsis. It jumps over the bit about how it only applies to territories in rebellion. This is not at all mentioned in the sign.

And then you take three steps to the right, and the sign by the amendment says that Lincoln hurried it through before the war was over because the proclamation didn't free Union slaves and if the amendment went to vote after the war ended and the South rejoined Congress, it would never pass.

In China they have a singing competition like the Idol shows called Super Girl. Li Yu Chun won the show in 2005. Most attribute the win to her androgynous looks and atypical style. She wore loose pants, a button down shirt and no makeup through out the competition. Her fans are called Corns because the hanzi that combine part of her name and the word "fan" is the word for corn.

Of course, this is not how I found out about it. I found out that there was a fandom called Corns and was very very confused about it it, till I did a big ol' Google walk. I have now learned something about that subject and absolutely nothing about what I was originally researching.

I completely did not remember this. I have a dim recollection of Elvis shooting his TV, but not why.

Interesting things I learned from "More Fool Me: Stephen Fry Live" (Fry standing in front of an audience for 90ish minutes saying whatever came into his head)

• "Checkmate" comes from the Arabic (?) phrase "Shah mat", "The King is dead".
• Fry once asked a Dutch friend how the Netherlands could be so open and progressive and loving and wonderful, and the answer he got was "we exported all our assholes. You may have heard of them, they called themselves Afrikaners and invented Apartheid."

I didn't even know Elvis had shot his TV.

From The Knight and the Blast Furnace medieval metallurgy is not what people have assumed it is and take for granted the quality of metal working even the industrial revolution brought to us.

The medieval steel was never as hard as modern steel because of limits in smelting and production of steel. Many of the pieces of the steel even mid grade by modern standards had a lot of unconverted iron and slag in the metal. This was in untraceable bands and spots throughout a piece of steel in various sizes and shapes. This meant the bits of steel could be riddled with numerous weak points compromising its strength. For it's time this was pretty good material.

Crucible steel not found in Europe in terms of manufacturing is older then the modern era and came from Asia.

Copper is actually harder then iron, but iron is easier and cheaper to mine and work then copper. Especially because copper was a key ingredient in Bronze which is also harder and stronger then most forms of early steel. However it was more expensive to produce because of a more involved production process. This paved the way for iron as the material of choice and further development of the technology over the centuries has led to steel surpassing bronze thanks to advanced alloying processes and the ability to precisely control the content of a smelter and its temperature.

Technically Strawberries aren't berries! Bananas however are.