The last historical fact that amazed me? Hmm... good question. Everything is amazing to me! ;) I guess I recently had an epiphany for my thesis, regarding Civil War amputation and why surgeons of the era had such a bad reputation even amongst contemporaries. I was trying to get into their heads and figure out people's perceptions of amputation and amputees and such. I then read this really interesting article on amputee veterans after the war, and I was shocked at how overwhelmingly POSITIVE so many of them were. In that article there was an account of a nurse who had expressed her sorrow to a young man who had just lost a leg only to get the reply of something along the lines of "I did not lose it: I gave it to my country" and he didn't seem to feel any regret.
Apparently because so many men lost limbs during the conflict it wasn't that unusual to see them walking around the street, and so they weren't stigmatized at all. On the contrary: in the South, especially, they were held up as heroes. If you were missing an arm you were almost guaranteed to be swarmed with ladies in the street. Many politicians after the war used lost limbs as a rallying point and as a source of street cred. You were significantly more likely to win an election if you were missing a limb, even if both contenders were war vets. I just found that culture of acceptance to those who experienced such hardship absolutely amazing!
My favourite European monarch has to be Charles I of England. Yes, the only one to be executed. The more I read about him as a person the more I sympathize with him. He was relatively shy for a monarch (compare with his father, James I, who famously threatened to moon the court once, no lie), and wasn't even supposed to be king except that his elder brother, Henry, died young. Charles had a stutter, he married a Catholic French princess (apparently because he loved her), patronized some awesome painters... He just wasn't exactly popular. Apparently on the day of his execution he requested an extra layer of clothing because it was cold out and he didn't want anybody in the crowd to think that he was scared when he shivered in the cold. Also, Cromwell was a dick, everyone knows that. Evidence: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJ1yPz14LrU And hey, if CROMWELL hates you then you must be an interesting person, amirite? This is the guy that cancelled Christmas and hated on the Irish Catholics.
I bought a published collection of Charles' papers while I was in Scotland and I've been meaning to read them for a while. The others on that trip kept photographing all of the portraits of Charles that they ran across in England (before I got there) so, they claimed, that they could photoshop me into them later. ;) Charles = <3.
(Now if only I can figure out how to insert pictures into these reply boxes... *fails at HTML*)
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Date: 2011-02-15 04:10 am (UTC)Apparently because so many men lost limbs during the conflict it wasn't that unusual to see them walking around the street, and so they weren't stigmatized at all. On the contrary: in the South, especially, they were held up as heroes. If you were missing an arm you were almost guaranteed to be swarmed with ladies in the street. Many politicians after the war used lost limbs as a rallying point and as a source of street cred. You were significantly more likely to win an election if you were missing a limb, even if both contenders were war vets. I just found that culture of acceptance to those who experienced such hardship absolutely amazing!
My favourite European monarch has to be Charles I of England. Yes, the only one to be executed. The more I read about him as a person the more I sympathize with him. He was relatively shy for a monarch (compare with his father, James I, who famously threatened to moon the court once, no lie), and wasn't even supposed to be king except that his elder brother, Henry, died young. Charles had a stutter, he married a Catholic French princess (apparently because he loved her), patronized some awesome painters... He just wasn't exactly popular. Apparently on the day of his execution he requested an extra layer of clothing because it was cold out and he didn't want anybody in the crowd to think that he was scared when he shivered in the cold. Also, Cromwell was a dick, everyone knows that. Evidence: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJ1yPz14LrU And hey, if CROMWELL hates you then you must be an interesting person, amirite? This is the guy that cancelled Christmas and hated on the Irish Catholics.
I bought a published collection of Charles' papers while I was in Scotland and I've been meaning to read them for a while. The others on that trip kept photographing all of the portraits of Charles that they ran across in England (before I got there) so, they claimed, that they could photoshop me into them later. ;) Charles = <3.
(Now if only I can figure out how to insert pictures into these reply boxes... *fails at HTML*)