Valentines Day stuff! Also, BRAND NEW EXPERIMENTAL HISTORY MEME!

[beboots]

 Good evening, everyone! Happy Valentines day, for those of you who celebrate it! 

First, a brief link recommendation. If you've never heard of Postsecrets, you should definitely check them out: essentially, people send in anonymous postcards with their secrets on them. Some are sad, some are quirky, some are touching, and all are absolutely awesome. This week they have a Valentine-themed series of postcard secrets for you to look at. This one was my favourite: 


Furthermore, the Edmonton Journal (which, along with the National Post, I read almost every day to keep up with news about the world) apparently held a contest for the best Edmonton-themed Valentines cards, most of them poking fun at the city. This particular one was my absolute favourite, mostly because I had to cross that bridge five days a week to get to Fort Edmonton this past summer. It was murder during rush hour when it was down to one lane. >_<; It's been under construction for at least two and half years.

For more, see here!

As a side note, I did celebrate this Valentine's Day as a single person. Here's hoping that I shall find my true love in the coming year! :) I should mention that I mostly enjoy Valentine's Day because it also doubles as my dearest mother's birthday! We have flowers and chocolate about the house, then, regardless of the state of our personal lives. :) Happy birthday, mother mine! Now, tomorrow is the holiday I look forward to even more than the events of St. Valentine... Cheap Chocolate Day! Celebrated: wherever chocolate is sold!

On a final note... I actually began writing this post in response to the lovely surprise left for me at atla_valentine. I hadn't realized that people would leave me messages! :)  They made me smile. Therefore, my original plan had been, in response to people writing lovely flattering things about the history dorkery that goes on in this journal, to write a post about some of the crazy little tidbits I've been learning about in my History of Translation class... which just so happens to be what I'm studying for at the moment (even as I procrastinate reviewing for the midterm to write this post). I'll get around to that very soon! It will still happen!

I did, however, just have a thought. Maybe I could do something completely and utterly crazy and unprecedented. I could... do a history meme. I want to share the love with you guys. I love telling historical anecdotes; I like to think I got quite good at it while working at Fort Edmonton. Maybe no-one will want to play with me. I will still tell crazy history stories to the world! Just give me a direction, guys. :) What do you want to hear?

It shall be a shameless effort at trying to emulate the cool kids (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE), only instead of fanfic, it will be random history tidbits, in the style of the posts that have appeared in this journal before.

THEREFORE, what I resolve to do is ask you, the readers, for history prompts! Ask me a historical question: anything you like. For instance: "who is your favourite member of European royalty and what was the most interesting thing they ever did?" "What do you think is the silliest reason a war ever started?" "What is the most unusual historical artifact you have ever seen in person?" "What can you tell me about Canada's participation in such-and-such a war?" It can even be something like "tell me the craziest thing you know about the 17th century/the bubonic plague/aboriginal history/etc., etc., ad nauseam." I shall even search for an appropriate image to accompany the historical blather! 

If I don't know the answer to your question, I resolve to use my research skills and access to university databases to find the answer! You may get more coherent history squee if I've heard of the topic before, though. I have studied European history across the ages, some East Asian history, and lots of Canadian and American history, but still, don't let that limit your selection! I suspect that if you ask me something about the history of medicine or the French or English languages you will get extra-long anecdotes. Indulge your curiosity, and I will try to be interesting in return! :) 

Comments

[beckyh2112.livejournal.com]

If you were going to do a World History course of two university semesters, what would you cover to make it truly world history? Why?

/probably not quite history but it is something I am curious about

[dark-puck.livejournal.com]

"What do you think is the silliest reason a war ever started?"


How can I do anything BUT ask this now? :D

[spyridona.livejournal.com]

Who is your favorite historical leader? :D

[avocado-love.livejournal.com]

What was the last historical fact that really amazed you? Share the love!


And I'll bite: Your favorite European monarch?

[beboots.livejournal.com]

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*)

[beboots.livejournal.com]

You know, that's a really tricky question. I was once in a seminar class that spent three hours straight discussing this question. It's difficult to cover "all" world history in even a 1,000 page textbook, and even then you skip over so much stuff... Hmm...

I think that I'd organize it along themes - history of ideas, technology, politics... I'd definitely want to talk about more than the Great Men of History and the Wars They Fought. I'd trace women's history too... and I'd be sure to barely talk about Europe in the whole first semester. Really, not much went on there except for some conquering and fighting amongst themselves until like the 1400s... China, India, Egypt, the Middle East and other places were MUCH more interesting for the longest time.

I think that I'd probably split it at about 1500, although that in itself is a very Euro-centric way of looking at things... Crazy things were beginning to happen in the Americas, Europeans were getting a bit more expansion-happy... More things were being written down. (Yay printing press! But even so China had already been there, done that...)

The second half of the course would talk a LOT about colonialism. Europeans seemed to get their sticky fingers in everywhere. I'd still talk about places like China and Japan outside of the context of the minor missionary influence. The Ottomans were badass too. Only in the last few weeks would I talk about the 20th century. One of the things I dislike about some history courses is that they place so much emphasis on stuff that happened, well, A) in medieval Europe (especially when so much cooler stuff was happening elsewhere! Well, the plague was pretty cool in a horrifying kind of way and they did build some very pretty churches and illuminate some lovely manuscripts BUT I DIGRESS) but also B)the impression that everything that happened in the 20th century was somehow RADICALLY DIFFERENT IN EVERY WAY than what had happened before and so we must spend SO MUCH TIME on talking about these things, and I really disagree. I mean, yeah, there's a lot to talk about, but in the larger scheme of things... There's a "modern" veneer to it, but I don't see the 20th century as being particularly unique. Lots more ways of recording things and large numbers of people doing stuff (oh, population growth...) and lots of horrific wars and people doing horrific things to each other... But weren't the religious wars in Europe in the 1600s also devastating and examples of total war/genocide/etc.? They may not have had helicopters and brought-to-you-live-in-your-own-home news teams, but...

Also, talk about other genocides besides the holocaust. Yes, it should definitely be addressed. Nie weider. But I definitely feel that other tragedies, such as the horrific events of Rwanda, need to be addressed more in school too. Learn from the past so that we might prevent such tragedies. (Not that the past should be studied solely for the benefit of the present, but...)

(Um, did I answer the question? Maybe. I'm not sure! Feel free to ask me to elaborate/ramble more. ;) )

[beboots.livejournal.com]

Have you ever heard of the War of Jenkins' Ear? I actually don't know much about it (it's notorious, though). Essentially, the British were just WAITING for an excuse to go to war with Spain in the early 18th century, and when a merchant sailor named Jenkins reported being boarded by some Spaniards and having part of his ear cut off (not even the entire thing! Like the bottom lobe) he brought it up with parliament and THERE YOU HAD IT. Even contemporaries thought that he was whiny, though, apparently. ;)

Hmm... that was short... how about a few more?

The Blackfoot and the Cree of the North American plains are considered traditional enemies. Apparently they still get in bar fights today. Ask each side how it began and you will get different stories. Not knowing any Blackfoot personally, I only have the story that a Cree friend of mine told me. Apparently it's recent enough in that it involved some horses; horses made their way up to the Canadian plains from some escaped Spanish horses from the South and were pretty available by the 1730s/1740s up here, even before any white folks came from Eastern Canada. I'm told that it involved a lot of horse theft: like, one specific clever Cree guy going out and stealing like EVERY HORSE this one Blackfoot chief ever had. Some chiefs could accumulate herds of a hundred or more horses; it's easy to graze them on the plains, as long as you winter them near the foothills of the mountains. This Cree man was VERY persistent. ;)

PART TWO

[beboots.livejournal.com]

Thirdly, and finally, I love telling the story of the Defenestration of Prague. I ran across this story while reading an exceedingly boring textbook for my History of the Habsburgs class. It was the only interesting two pages in that entire 300 page textbook - boring right before, then BAM super cool story, then continued on with men with long German names and confusing accounts of Christian politics and theology.

Essentially, after the beginning of the protestant reformation in the early 1500s (Luther's Theses really just gave voice to the malcontents), there was a century in which trouble slowly stewed, simmered, then came to a boil. In the early 1600s, most of the generation of men who were into, well, compromising and debating had essentially died off, leaving a bunch of young guys raring for a fight, just waiting for an excuse to fight the other side - either Catholic or Protestant. Now, Prague at this time was a part of the Holy Roman Empire, run out of what is now Austria but which was then a powerful if eclectic kingdom which. As you may be able to divine from the title, the Holy Roman Empire was Catholic: it gained much of its legitimacy from the Pope's approval, among other things. However, as they controlled much of Central Europe - AKA what would eventually become the modern State of Germany, AKA where Luther was from AKA the seat of protestantism - there were tensions, to say the least. In many areas to the North, the majority of the population was protestant while the ones running everything were Catholic. There will be problems. There were lots of little incidents that led to the outbreak of complicated and drawn-out religious wars, but this incident was one of the straws that broke the camel's back. I find it a bit silly in retrospect, but the participants were deadly serious.

"Defenestration" comes from the Latin roots "fenestre" ("window" - where we get the modern word fenêtre in French) and "de" ("out of"). Thus, it means to be thrown out of a window. Essentially, there was this castle in the heart of Prague with a lovely tall tower: this was the seat of the Holy Roman Empire's administration. About a half dozen young protestant hotheads rushed the tower, where two Catholic administrators (and their hapless male secretary) were working. These men seized the Catholics and threw them out of the window at the top of the tower, shouting, no joke (as my textbook wrote) an early 17th century version of: "see if your Virgin Mary will save you now."

The interesting thing is, she actually kind of did. All three men thrown from the tower lived. With broken bones, yes, but they survived, likely because they fell into a convenient dungheap or something. So this incident did end up backfiring on the Protestants because a flurry of pamphlets were published afterwards saying something like "and lo, angels sang out and saved them from the wickedness of the protestants"...

So yeah, the Defenestration of Prague didn't necessarily START a war, per se, but it was one of the last incidents in a long line of events that actually led up to open hostilities. Tadaa!

[anyjen.livejournal.com]

History meme, eh?

Well, just to be contrary, and because I like to take people outside their comfort zone, here is my question:

In a hundred words or less, what is it you know about the history of Argentina?

(Depending on your answer, I may ask to elaborate. Yes, I'm evil. I'm also studying to be a teacher. All's fair in war and education! XD)

[beboots.livejournal.com]

My favourite historical leader? I was going to say KING CHARLES I again but I already answered that to another question and besides he wasn't exactly the best LEADER anyway, considering how he ended up... AKA headless. ;_;

Do I have to pick just one? ;)

I could say something like Winston Churchill because of his inspiring wartime speeches, but everybody hated him after the war.

I could also talk about Elizabeth I because she was epic and I'm a bit of an anglophile. I mean, she cultivated this image based on chastity and her ability to be regal and compromise while still remaining firm... "Though I have the frail body of a woman, I have the heart and stomach of a king"... And she could last for so long ruling over a country in such religious tumult WHILE A WOMAN during an era in Europe in which women had less than an ideal amount of rights...

I think I'll talk about Louis Riel, because I haven't spoken much about Canadian history yet. He was an amazing leader of the 1869 rebellion. He had kind of gone crazy by the 1885 rebellion, after which he was captured, tried and hung as a traitor by the Canadian government, but in 1869 he was young, confident, and clever.

He was a Métis man who had been trained as a lawyer in Quebec. He had returned to the West, to Red River (near modern day Winnipeg) in the mid-1860s only to learn that the Canadian government had unilaterally purchased all of Rupert's Land from the Hudson's Bay Company, which essentially comprises of everything West of Ontario, minus some bits in the Yukon and British Columbia, but which, most importantly to him, included the Red River region. (Whether or not the HBC actually OWNED what was nominally native land and even had the right to sell it is an entirely different question altogether.) The natives and the Métis of the region got no notice and no say; they'd been doing just fine on their own, thanks without a government taxing them or telling them what to do or not do. In fact, one of the first word that they got that this was going down was when Ottawa randomly sent out a few surveyors who essentially tromped around Métis farmland making everyone nervous. Because the Métis TECHNICALLY didn't have title to the land that they had farmed on, sometimes for generations, they were worried that it was going to be given away to new settlers from Ontario and Scotland and such. The Métis of the region actually chased these surveyors off.

Thinking fast, the charismatic Riel managed to convince some other men of Red River to stage what was later called a rebellion. (Cleverly, he chose a time when most of his political opponents amongst the Red River men, mostly the older, more traditional types, were away on the buffalo hunt.) They stopped the Lieutenant-Governor that Ottawa had sent from crossing over into the new territory, captured Fort Garry (not that there was much of a fight) and declared a provisional government, then sent their own delegation to Ottawa, and drew up their own list of rights. They were TECHNICALLY on the up-and-up, legally, in declaring a provisional government, because the Lieutenant-Governor hadn't yet read a declaration by the Canadian government while on the soil of the new territory. So they really were just acting as a governing body in the interim. Kinda sorta. ;)

[beboots.livejournal.com]

Anyway, they had some trouble with the anglo populace, and they ended up court-marshialling and executing a young man by the name of Thomas Scott (who was, by all accounts a racist and a really, really rude rabble-rouser), which pretty much made Prime Minister MacDonald and others in Ottawa FLIP OUT. There are all of these nasty political cartoons from the era which show a dark and angry looking Riel like personally shooting a blindfolded and pitiful-looking Scott in the face, like it was murder, but things didn't go down that way at all.

Anyway, eventually, because this is Canadian history, there was a compromise. In 1870, the Canadian government agreed to let the area around Red River be admitted on more favourable terms as an actual province and not a territory - which means they had more representation in the federal government, for one, but also had more leeway to govern themselves locally. Famously Manitoba was called the "postage stamp province" because MacDonald was so stingy with allocating land for this new province. It really was tiny.

Anyway, Riel was the fall guy and TECHNICALLY a traitor half-breed bastard who murdered an innocent white man to the guys in Ottawa, so he fled South of the border for a decade or so to avoid being arrested and executed. A reward of $5000 was placed on his head but essentially MacDonald agreed not to pursue him as long as he never returned to the North. He was actually elected to the House of Commons by people in Red River, but couldn't actually take his seat on account of, y'know, being a wanted man.

Eventually he did, obviously, return, when he was invited back to help lead the 1885 North-West Rebellion, but in those intervening years he became ridiculously religious and thought of himself as a prophet. He may have been crazy - there were rumours that he streaked through an American town naked. He apparently wanted to move the seat of the Catholic Church to Winnipeg, too.

ANYWAY he is still a very controversial figure today. Those in the West and in Quebec loved him. The Quebecois really admire him because he was a francophone who was defending his culture and defying Ottawa. A lot of anglophones, especially in Ontario, still think he committed treason. He may not have in 1869, because he technically wasn't Canadian then, but he definitely was in 1885. He was hanged for this crime in 1885.

Even if he was - possibly? - crazy in the end, he was still an inspiring figure to a lot of people.

P.S.: another moral of the story? Our first Prime Minister was not necessarily very nice.

Wow, that was a long story. Um, yeah. Canadian history is awesome?

[beboots.livejournal.com]

Oh god what do I know about Argentina... I actually learned absolutely nothing about the country until university, and even then I'm on shaky ground. Forgive me!

Presumably, what is now Argentina was conquered by the Spanish sometime in the 1500s or 1600s. There were silver mines? Bad stuff happened?

After achieving independence from Spain in the early 1800s, the country had difficulty defining its own culture as distinct from the colonizers. It was of utmost importance to write original literature... which was difficult because so little of the populace was literate at the time, the educational system having been neglected by the Spanish overlords.

Um... something about the Quechua language being encouraged? I AM ASHAMED AT MY LACK OF KNOWLEDGE HERE HAVE A VIDEO OF TWO KINDLY OLD MÉTIS PEOPLE HAVING A CONVERSATION IN MICHIF: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFUGfkRQ4RE

[beboots.livejournal.com]

I only know the last bit because I just read a brief section in my history of translation textbook. D:

Re: PART TWO

[dark-puck.livejournal.com]

....I think the Defenestration of Prague is my favourite.

Just because A) Defenestration is an awesome word and B) Someone actually did that. <3

[beckyh2112.livejournal.com]

That is very interesting. Thank you!

(I think you answered the question just fine. It is something I have mulled over for a while, since I am annoyed at how much my world history courses seem to be centered on two continents.)

[redrikki.livejournal.com]

Hello fellow history buff. You're knowledge and enthusiasm for history is kind of awesome. Okay, here's my question: What is your favorite historical illness, mental affliction and/or theory of disease?

[redrikki.livejournal.com]

Interesting stuff about the post-colonial culture. Personally, when I think of Argentina I tend to think of Los Desaparasidos (the Disappeared), i.e. the folks kidnapped, tortured and killed by the military junta in the late-1970s to mid-1980s. Also, it was a really popular spot for German refugees post-WWII (including some notorious ex-Nazis), so there are a lot of folks with German last names. It's not a history book, it's actually magical realism, but I heartily recommend reading Imagining Argentina for a sense of that time period.

[beboots.livejournal.com]

Exactly! I wholeheartedly agree. If you want world history "done right", the closest thing I've found recently was an amazing podcast by the BBC called "A History of the World in 100 Objects." I think that in the first 50 objects there were only like 3 from Europe, because again, not much was going on there for the longest time. I would highly recommend a listen. The producer essentially picked 100 objects from the British Museum and told a history of the world through them. Super interesting.

[beckyh2112.livejournal.com]

I think I actually have that bookmarked, I just have a hard time focusing on audio things. Too much of a tendency to tune them out while working on something else. I will try to get back to it, though!

[beboots.livejournal.com]

I do a lot of driving, especially in the summer, and every day during the rest of the year I have to commute by bus for 45 minutes or so to university, so podcasts work out really well for me. When I drive, I swear podcasts have saved me from becoming enraged by traffic: I don't feel so bad about being stuck for an extra 10 minutes in construction if I'm learning something, you know? ;)

Re: PART TWO

[beboots.livejournal.com]

(Curses! Livejournal ate my post! A thousand sorrows: I shall endeavour again.)

I'm just waiting to find an opportunity to use the word "defenestration" in real life conversation. I'm just biding my time... It really is an epic word that needs to have more common currency amongst English speakers. :3

[beckyh2112.livejournal.com]

Sadly, my job is only fifteen minutes away from me, and that's only when traffic is bad. Otherwise I'd consider burning some podcasts to CD to listen to.

[beboots.livejournal.com]

Oh man oh man where do I start...

I'm always a huge fan of the miasma theory of disease. (See here: http://beboots.livejournal.com/69275.html ) I think it just makes so much sense! Especially since I myself have never seen a germ with my own eyes. Essentially, obnoxious smells cause disease. It makes intuitive sense: there's a giant dung heap, which stinks. Everyone living around the dung heap is getting sick. Clearly, the smell causes the sickness. This belief is really what first started spurring sanitarians in the 19th century to clean up cities. I mean, you don't want the residential areas being built right next to cemeteries where obnoxious fumes from putrefication can make everyone sick, right? Right. Of course, it was this exact same theory that encouraged the building of the sewer system in London in the mid-1800s, which on the face of it sounds great, but in reality what it meant was that all of the individual cesspools in which festered individual illnesses were now all dumped, raw, into the Thames, which was also the source of a huge amount of drinking water for the city... So after the sewer system came in illnesses became less localized and more widespread: everyone downriver would get it. But anyway...

Miasma was a part of Western medical thinking for centuries, possibly even almost a millenium. It shaped everything we used to know about disease. I just learned the other day about the origin of the word "malaria": although it's today believed to be spread by mosquitoes, the components of the word actually come from the Italian "mal aria", or "bad air".

...Then again, you can't really beat 19th century ideas about women and hysteria. Can't stop those uteri from wandering about our inner cavities... I read this fascinating book a while back on the subject. It was by Michelle Stacey, and it was entitled "The Fasting Girl." The summary/title on the title page went: "In 1865, MOLLIE FANCHER of Brooklyn, New York, began suffering unexplained symptoms, including blindness, paralysis, and trances. Thirteen years later, she became an international sensation: fought over by scientists and philosophers: called a "psychological miracle" and a fraud. Igniting her fame was one remarkable question: HOW HAD MOLLIE LIVED FOR SIX MONTHS ON A FEW TEASPOONS OF MILK AND A SMALL BANANA - AND FOR THE NEXT TWELVE YEARS, ON NOTHING AT ALL?" The history of hysteria is absolutely fascinating and absolutely CRAZY.

[beboots.livejournal.com]

I see. Take up knitting or beadwork to fiddle with as you listen? ;) It's one of the ways I've been zenning-out lately when the schoolwork stress gets to be a bit much. ;)

[beckyh2112.livejournal.com]

That is a possibility. I might load some podcasts on my mp3-player to listen to when the weather gets nicer and I'm out gardening.