Also am fascinated by the whole realm of the conquest of the Americas. I'm from one of the focal points of Spanish Colonial history, so I actually get to live it as well.
The History Thread
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Also am fascinated by the whole realm of the conquest of the Americas. I'm from one of the focal points of Spanish Colonial history, so I actually get to live it as well.
it's cool too being in southern (or Alta as the Spanish called it) California.
been to 17 of the 21 missions and while I'm still learning I've picked up a fair amount already. would love to have been here back in the day, but not as an Indian
been to 17 of the 21 missions and while I'm still learning I've picked up a fair amount already. would love to have been here back in the day, but not as an Indian
cheers, I'd not heard of the moors!
I know my fair share of Irish history, especially Irish Independence and stuff, and have basically every book and first hand source available, but I'd like to widen my knoledge.
I know my fair share of Irish history, especially Irish Independence and stuff, and have basically every book and first hand source available, but I'd like to widen my knoledge.
it's cool too being in southern (or Alta as the Spanish called it) California.
been to 17 of the 21 missions and while I'm still learning I've picked up a fair amount already. would love to have been here back in the day, but not as an Indian
When Grizzly Bears roamed L.A.
A newb called 2cents has been really helpful and gave me lots of links for history books in his level of expertise, Middle Eastern History, and has linked me to his blog about it.
I've read the first two articles and have really enjoyed his writing style, I'd seriously recommend everyone in here to give it a go.
http://arabbureau.blogspot.ie/
I've read the first two articles and have really enjoyed his writing style, I'd seriously recommend everyone in here to give it a go.
http://arabbureau.blogspot.ie/
The nonfiction author Alison Weir is always good on Tudor England, Jake. Regardless of bad historical novels, Henry VIII's reign provides us with the greatest drama in British history, and features unforgettable real-life characters.
Has U.S. Army veteran been found living in Vietnam village 44 YEARS after being shot down and presumed dead?
Sgt. John Hartley Robertson is believed to have died in 1968 over Laos during a special ops mission during the Vietnam War. A new documentary claims to have found him - aged 76 - still living there:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-44-YEARS-shot-down.html?ICO=most_read_module
Sgt. John Hartley Robertson is believed to have died in 1968 over Laos during a special ops mission during the Vietnam War. A new documentary claims to have found him - aged 76 - still living there:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-44-YEARS-shot-down.html?ICO=most_read_module
Yeah, it's a pity there isn't more on the historical record about it.
As far as Pre-Columbian America is concerned, unfortunately the Spanish destroyed most of the Aztec records. Idiots.
There was a similar story about a Soviet era soldier being found living with some villagers in Afghanistan. A few stories of Japanese soldiers who took to the jungles at the end of WW2 and stayed hidden for decades after.
As far as Pre-Columbian America is concerned, unfortunately the Spanish destroyed most of the Aztec records. Idiots.
Yeah, really the only ones who had a written language in our sense of it as in phonetic sounds and syllables were the Mayans, sort of done in characters like some Asian languages. But it was done on a bark paper that didn't last, and the tropical climate certainly didn't help. Almost all of it has rotted away or been destroyed by the Catholic Spanish.
The Aztecs wrote in pictograms that told stories as opposed to sounds and letters and words. These original "codices" were mostly destroyed by the Spanish, though some still remain, and some were copied by the Spanish and remain in that copied form.
The Incas had the most bizarre "written" form which were quipus that were of colored strings tied together in knots and certain forms and were once readable. The Spanish pretty much destroyed all these as well. Of what remains, I don't think anyone's been able to decipher them.
When you look at today's Taliban and how incredible bull headed and stoopid and ignorant they were to destroy those massive "heathen" buddahs in Afghanistan, The Europeans were hardly less guilty in their Catholic and Puritan destruction of "heathen" things in the Americas. Such a shame.
The Limoges Becket Reliquary Châsses (Archbishop Saint Thomas Becket):
More:
http://www.paradoxplace.com/Photo Pages/UK/British History/Saint_Thomas/Beckets_Bits.htm
More:
http://www.paradoxplace.com/Photo Pages/UK/British History/Saint_Thomas/Beckets_Bits.htm
That is a very beautiful object.
I want to own everything in the Metropolitan Museum, dear.
http://www.metmuseum.org/collections/search-the-collections/170007654
http://www.metmuseum.org/collections/search-the-collections/170007654
1920s London in full colour:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/jonathanjonesblog/2013/may/22/colour-footage-london-1920s
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/jonathanjonesblog/2013/may/22/colour-footage-london-1920s
Rite that caused riots: celebrating 100 years of The Rite of Spring
More:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2013/may/27/rite-of-spring-100-years-stravinsky
More:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2013/may/27/rite-of-spring-100-years-stravinsky
Tributes paid to Mary Rose 470 years after she sank as new £27million museum is opened
with artefacts from one of Britain's most famous ships
More:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...m-opened-artefacts-Britains-famous-ships.html
Fascinating story of an ancient silk road city, Mes Aynak, in Afghanistan, which doesn't sound like it'll have a such happy ending.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/06/...s-buddhist-buried-treasure-faces-destruction/
Mes Aynak: Afghanistan’s Buddhist buried treasure faces destruction
Mes Aynak, a magnificent Buddhist city, is the most important archaeological discovery in a generation. But it is sitting on a vast copper deposit and is about to be destroyed.
In the spring of 1963, a French geologist set out from Kabul to carry out a survey in Logar province in eastern Afghanistan. His destination was the large outcrop of copper-bearing strata in the mountains above the village of Mes Aynak. But in the course of boring for samples, the geologist stumbled on something much more exciting: an entire buried Buddhist city dating from the early centuries AD. The site was clearly very large – he estimated that it covered six sq km – and, although long forgotten, he correctly guessed that it must once have been a huge and wealthy terminus on the Silk Road.
Archaeologists in Kabul did a preliminary survey of the site, mapping it and digging test trenches, but before they could gather the enormous resources needed for a full-scale excavation, first the 1978 Marxist coup then the 1979 Saur Communist revolution and the Soviet invasion intervened. In the chaos of conflict that followed, the Soviets visited Mes Aynak to dig test tunnels into the hillside and investigate the feasibility of extracting its copper. Later, during the Taliban era, one of the abandoned Soviet tunnels became an al-Qaida hideout, while the remote valley became a training camp: the 9/11 hijackers stopped off here en route to New York. During the American onslaught of December 2001, US special forces attacked the tunnel: an unexploded rocket lodged in the roof and burn marks at the cave mouth still bear witness to the attack.
By the time French archaeologists returned in 2004, they found that the secret of the buried city was out. As had happened in many other sites in the country, a large and highly organised team of professional art looters, probably from Pakistan, had systematically plundered the mounds at Mes Aynak and, judging by the detritus they left, had found large quantities of hugely valuable Gandharan Buddha images: the remains of many painted stucco figures deemed too fragile or too damaged to sell were left lying around the looting trenches which now crisscrossed the site. Beside them, the archaeologists found empty tubes of glue and bags of fine plaster – evidence of attempts at restoration and conservation . . .
. . . Then, in 2008, the Chinese returned, this time not as pilgrims or scholars but instead as businessmen. A Chinese mining consortium – Chinese Metallurgical Group and Jiangxi Copper Co – bought a 30-year lease on the entire site for $3bn (£2bn); they estimated that the valley contained potentially $100bn worth of copper, possibly the largest such deposit in the world, and potentially worth around five times the estimated value of Afghanistan’s entire economy. Afghan president Hamid Karzai’s government hailed the mine as a key component in bringing about a national economic resurgence that would not be dependent on aid and military spending – which, between them, currently make up 97% of the legal economy – or, indeed, the profits of the illegal opium trade. Some observers estimated that the project could bring in $300m a year by 2016 and provide about $40bn in total royalties to the Afghan government . . .
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/06/...s-buddhist-buried-treasure-faces-destruction/
Mes Aynak: Afghanistan’s Buddhist buried treasure faces destruction
Mes Aynak, a magnificent Buddhist city, is the most important archaeological discovery in a generation. But it is sitting on a vast copper deposit and is about to be destroyed.
In the spring of 1963, a French geologist set out from Kabul to carry out a survey in Logar province in eastern Afghanistan. His destination was the large outcrop of copper-bearing strata in the mountains above the village of Mes Aynak. But in the course of boring for samples, the geologist stumbled on something much more exciting: an entire buried Buddhist city dating from the early centuries AD. The site was clearly very large – he estimated that it covered six sq km – and, although long forgotten, he correctly guessed that it must once have been a huge and wealthy terminus on the Silk Road.
Archaeologists in Kabul did a preliminary survey of the site, mapping it and digging test trenches, but before they could gather the enormous resources needed for a full-scale excavation, first the 1978 Marxist coup then the 1979 Saur Communist revolution and the Soviet invasion intervened. In the chaos of conflict that followed, the Soviets visited Mes Aynak to dig test tunnels into the hillside and investigate the feasibility of extracting its copper. Later, during the Taliban era, one of the abandoned Soviet tunnels became an al-Qaida hideout, while the remote valley became a training camp: the 9/11 hijackers stopped off here en route to New York. During the American onslaught of December 2001, US special forces attacked the tunnel: an unexploded rocket lodged in the roof and burn marks at the cave mouth still bear witness to the attack.
By the time French archaeologists returned in 2004, they found that the secret of the buried city was out. As had happened in many other sites in the country, a large and highly organised team of professional art looters, probably from Pakistan, had systematically plundered the mounds at Mes Aynak and, judging by the detritus they left, had found large quantities of hugely valuable Gandharan Buddha images: the remains of many painted stucco figures deemed too fragile or too damaged to sell were left lying around the looting trenches which now crisscrossed the site. Beside them, the archaeologists found empty tubes of glue and bags of fine plaster – evidence of attempts at restoration and conservation . . .
. . . Then, in 2008, the Chinese returned, this time not as pilgrims or scholars but instead as businessmen. A Chinese mining consortium – Chinese Metallurgical Group and Jiangxi Copper Co – bought a 30-year lease on the entire site for $3bn (£2bn); they estimated that the valley contained potentially $100bn worth of copper, possibly the largest such deposit in the world, and potentially worth around five times the estimated value of Afghanistan’s entire economy. Afghan president Hamid Karzai’s government hailed the mine as a key component in bringing about a national economic resurgence that would not be dependent on aid and military spending – which, between them, currently make up 97% of the legal economy – or, indeed, the profits of the illegal opium trade. Some observers estimated that the project could bring in $300m a year by 2016 and provide about $40bn in total royalties to the Afghan government . . .
Depressing story. A little reminiscent of what happened to the Baghdad museum in the aftermath of the American invasion.
In a way, it's just as well that European archaeologists/treasure hunters carted off so many artefacts in the 19th century. At least they'll be safe for the foreseeable future.
In a way, it's just as well that European archaeologists/treasure hunters carted off so many artefacts in the 19th century. At least they'll be safe for the foreseeable future.
What Pangea would look like with current borders marked in.
Britain's about as big as India then.
Apart from its size, I was about to ask how India was contiguous with China at this time, when it's normally described making a slow, northwards migration from the region of Antarctica over the last 100 million years.
Then I looked at the bottom of the map, and all was revealed .....
Apart from its size, I was about to ask how India was contiguous with China at this time, when it's normally described making a slow, northwards migration from the region of Antarctica over the last 100 million years.
Then I looked at the bottom of the map, and all was revealed .....
Sometimes it pays to take that extra look before commenting. Isn't that right 711.This summer will mark the 150th Anniversary of The Battle of Gettysburg (July 1-3, 1863), that marked the souths last best chance at winning the war. So for any of the caftards living in or visiting the US this summer and you Canadians to, if you have an interest in history I suggest a visit to the historic battlefield.
There will be lots going on and even if there are not any special events when you visit it is still a fantastic place to visit and get a taste of history. Give yourself at least one whole day to spend at the National Park. You can take guided tours given by park rangers or you can buy a CD or Tape that you can play in your car and it will guide you through the park and give you a history of the battle.
My great great Grandfather fought there and his name appears on the Pennsylvannia monument.
There will be lots going on and even if there are not any special events when you visit it is still a fantastic place to visit and get a taste of history. Give yourself at least one whole day to spend at the National Park. You can take guided tours given by park rangers or you can buy a CD or Tape that you can play in your car and it will guide you through the park and give you a history of the battle.
My great great Grandfather fought there and his name appears on the Pennsylvannia monument.
Well the other countries haven't been split up like India has, the awkward buggers.
And I didn't have to look at it again three more times at all, no, no, no.
Dare I ask, on which side? Aristocratic, slave-owning, oppressors or abolitonist, freedom-loving democrats?
On the answer to this question rests your moral worth as a human being. So think carefully.
Not sure of what political party he belonged to but he fought for the Union, hence being on the Pennsylvannia Monument.
I didn't realise the significance of the monument's name. I wasn't being serious, in any case.
I presume he survived the war. Or you wouldn't be here?
I presume he survived the war. Or you wouldn't be here?
Yes he survived and yes that was pivotal to my existence.
ET game excavation confirmed by studio
A Canadian studio has confirmed to the BBC it will search a former landfill site in New Mexico where Atari's much-criticised ET game may be buried.
Fuel Entertainment has permission from the city of Alamogordo to excavate and is finalising funding for the project.
The video game was among the first to be licensed from a film franchise and was based on the Spielberg film ET.
Despite the success of the film the game was very badly received and
Atari suffered huge financial losses.
It was released at Christmas 1982 for the Atari 2600 console but many copies were returned and the game was given terrible reviews.
Shortly afterwards the entire video games industry crashed, as PCs started to become more widespread.
Urban legend
In September 1983 the firm is said to have dumped millions of cartridges at the landfill site and buried them under concrete.
Fuel Entertainment, which has offices in Canada and LA, has six months to carry out its search, to coincide with the 30th anniversary.
"ET was one of the first videogames based on a licensed property, and one of the earliest and most poignant examples of mass over-hyping in digital entertainment," Mike Burns, CEO of Fuel Entertainment, told the BBC.
"With the city of Alamogordo's approval to explore the dump site, we're currently looking forward to moving further into the planning and preparation process."
Atari has never confirmed whether it did dump the games there and journalists were kept away when several trucks arrived from the firm's El Paso plant in Texas.
Local resident Joe Lewandowski, who worked at the site at the time, told the Almogordo Daily News that he saw "games and other Atari related brick-a-brac" bulldozed and buried in concrete.
However Mr Burns has admitted that Fuel Entertainment's search may prove fruitless.
"We don't know exactly what we'll find, but it's bound to be interesting," he said.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22766511
Wasn't sure where to put this but I thought it was kind of appropriate here and quite an interesting story.
I rememeber that game, I even had it. It made no sense whatsoever.So what do they hope to do with the games when found? They have been buried in a land fill for over 20 years. Not exactly a prime enviroment for keeping the games in working condition.
Basically at most the will find a bunch of dirty, smashed up game cartridges, of no monetary or historical value.
Basically at most the will find a bunch of dirty, smashed up game cartridges, of no monetary or historical value.
'Was Elizabeth I really a man?' shrieks the Mail in a girly way. As part of the paper's never-ending 'Women are Rubbish' series, the Mail ponders the old canard of the Bisley Boy. Regarding the initial question, the answer's almost certainly 'no' but it's an interesting myth/theory anyway, bolstered by new research:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...istoric-manuscripts.html?ICO=most_read_module
Very delicate features for a man.
Elizabethan ruffs probably hide the adam's apple. Fashion with a purpose. Just think, we wouldn't all be wearing collars and ties if Liz was female!
Elizabethan ruffs probably hide the adam's apple. Fashion with a purpose. Just think, we wouldn't all be wearing collars and ties if Liz was female!
Interestingly...
It's pretty funny that the only thread in the CE where Daily Mail links are tolerated is in the history thread, where they should have the least influence of all.
what a cool thread!!! Just discovered it!
Tolerant indeed! The Cafe should get some kind of award.
So I've been learning the basics of WWI and one thing I don't really understand is why Germany didn't just not go through Belgium to invade France to avoid a war with Great Britain.
That sentence is worse than WWI.