I still have trouble wrapping my head around the fact that there are people who want white people to feel accountable for slavery

I mean

You know that white people weren’t the only people to have slaves right

We weren’t even the first

And you know we didn’t all have ancestors who owned plantations

And that it’s really fucking idiotic to blame someone for something that a person that we may or may not be distantly related to may or may not have done

Right?

Yeah. My ancestors either a.) came from Ireland in the 1840s, following the Potato Famine, b). came from Prince Edward Island in the 1850s and  like a). ended up working in the textile mills in Lowell, c). came from Ireland in 1914, or d). came to what would become Salem, MA in 1680. So a). b). and c). definitely had no slaves: couldn’t afford them and didn’t need them. Not sure about d.), since there was one slave woman in Salem, namely Tituba, but she belonged to the Parrish family; it’s not entirely out of the question, but I don’t know enough about the Salem ancestors to give a definite yes or no.

Problem is, the social justice eedjits would pounce on that bit, lack of evidence or no.

Also, it needs to be pointed out that very often, there were tribes in Africa who would routinely make slaves out members of tribes they had vanquished.

I have ancestors who fought for the south. They have nothing to do with me.

The National Rifle Association, founded in 1871, is the oldest civil rights organization in the United States.

And was started by two Civil War Generals with the goal of arming and training blacks so they could defend themselves.

Founding Father Pin-Ups, 2nd Ed.: Tread on Me

I have no idea why someone decided to make this, but I’m glad they did.

I may have snorted because this reminded me of 1776.

OMG! Hahahaha.

Lol. Showed it to my husband and he went, “Oh my god. I’m done. I am so done!”

Jefferson wat are you reading?

do people really think there’s this sudden influx of gay/lesbian/bisexual/trans* people because it’s “hip” and “cool” now or some shit you realize that there are just as many gay/lesbian/bisexual/trans* people as there were in any point in history it’s just throughout most of history you didn’t hear about any of them because it was REALLY UNSAFE TO BE ANY OF THOSE THINGS.

SO MUCH

That’s one of the reasons historians speculate about the sexuality of icons throughout history - because realistically, they were not out and proud.  And that is correct, statistics about human sexuality tend to only change with the population, but really…

I get just as upset seeing shows/films having non-cisgendered characters just “because” as when shows/films ignore and change the historically accurate sexuality of a character.

That is one of the things upsetting me about “Da Vinci’s Demons.”  He was gay, and yet they have him in an intense heterosexual relationship with a very odd looking woman, who is actually a spy and will break his heart in the end.

But, I digress.  The point in this is - ACCURACY PEOPLE.

Yes, and that's why it's OK to speculate about historical women who never married. Louisa May Alcott said some queer things, it's a strong possibility that Emily Dickinson had female lovers, and I've read things about Alice Paul and Lucy Burns from scholars. "If they were really gay they would have said something!" No, really, they probably wouldn't.

Anastasia | does anyone know the year?

1909 or 1910, maybe?

Oh my effing god, the sass on that girl.

I think this might be some of my favorite footage of Anastasia. It seems to really capture her spirit. 

In October 1916 the five children of Nicolas II visited their father at the headquarters of the Russian army. Two years later Nicholas and his family will be executed…

March 30, 1867: The United States purchases Alaska from Russia.

The Alaska Purchase was the acquisition of the Alaska territory by the United States from the Russian Empire in the year 1867 by a treaty ratified by the Senate. Russia, fearing a war with Britain that would allow the British to seize Alaska, wanted to sell. Russia’s major role had been forcing Native Alaskans to hunt for furs, and missionary work to convert them to Christianity. The purchase, made at the initiative of United States Secretary of State William H. Seward, gained the United States 586,412 square miles of new territory.

The Russians decided that in any future war with Britain, their hard-to-defend region might become a prime target, and would be easily captured. Therefore the Russian Emperor Alexander II decided to sell the territory. Perhaps in hopes of starting a bidding war, both the British and the Americans were approached. However, the British expressed little interest in buying Alaska. The Russians in 1859 offered to sell the territory to the United States, hoping that its presence in the region would offset the plans of Russia’s greatest regional rival, Great Britain. However, no deal was brokered due to the American Civil War.

The name “Alaska” (Аляска) was already introduced in the Russian colonial period, when it was used only for the peninsula and is derived from the Aleut alaxsxaq, meaning “the mainland” or, more literally, “the object towards which the action of the sea is directed”. It is also known as Alyeska, the “great land”, an Aleut word derived from the same root.

The transfer ceremony took place in Sitka on October 18, 1867. Russian and American soldiers paraded in front of the governor’s house; the Russian flag was lowered and the American flag raised amid peals of artillery. A number of forts, blockhouses and timber buildings were handed over to the Americans. The troops occupied the barracks; General Jefferson C. Davis established his residence in the governor’s house, and most of the Russian citizens went home, leaving a few traders and priests who chose to remain.

While criticized by some at the time, the financial value of the Alaska Purchase turned out to be many times greater than what the United States had paid for it. The land turned out to be rich in resources (including gold, copper, and oil).

Hair washing and care in the the 19th century

Hair washing is something that almost every historical writer, romance or not, gets wrong. How many times have you read a story in which a heroine sinks gratefully into a sudsy tub of water and scrubs her hair–or, even worse, piles it up on her head to wash it? Or have you watched the BBC’s Manor House and other “historical reenactment” series, in which modern people invariably destroy their hair by washing using historical recipes?

Historical women kept their hair clean, but that doesn’t mean their hair was often directly washed. Those who had incredibly difficult to manage hair might employ a hairdresser to help them wash, cut, and singe (yes, singe!) their hair as often as once a month, but for most women, hair-washing was, at most, a seasonal activity.

“Why?” you might ask. “Wasn’t their hair lank, smelly, and nasty?”

And the writers who embrace ignorance as a badge of honor will say, “Well, that just goes to show that people used to be gross and dirty, and that’s why I never bother with that historical accuracy stuff!”

And then I have to restrain myself from hitting them…

The reason that hair was rarely washed has to do with the nature of soaps versus modern shampoos. Soaps are made from a lye base and are alkaline. Hair and shampoo are acidic. Washing hair in soap makes it very dry, brittle, and tangly. Men’s hair was short enough and cut often enough that using soap didn’t harm it too much and the natural oils from the scalp could re-moisturize it fairly easily after even the harshest treatment, but in an age when the average woman’s hair was down to her waist, soap could literally destroy a woman’s head of hair in fairly short order.

Instead, indirect methods of hair-cleaning were used. Women washed their hair brushes daily, and the proverbial “100 strokes” were used to spread conditioning oils from roots to tips and to remove older or excess oil and dirt. This was more time-consuming than modern washing, and this is one of the reasons that “good hair” was a class marker. The fact that only women of the upper classes could afford all the various rats, rolls, and other fake additions to bulk out their real hair was another. (An average Victorian woman of the upper middle or upper class had more apparent “hair” in her hairstyle than women I know whose unbound hair falls well below their knees.) Women rarely wore their hair lose unless it was in the process of being put up or taken down–or unless they were having a picture specifically taken of it! At night, most women braided their hair for bed. Now that my hair is well below my waist, I understand why!

The first modern shampoo was introduced in the late 1920s. Shampoos clean hair quickly and also remove modern styling products, like hairspray and gel, but the frequent hair-washing that has become common leaves longer hair brittle even with the best modern formulations. (From the 1940s to the 1960s, many if not most middle-class women had their hair washed only once a week, at their hairdresser’s, where it was restyled for the next week. The professional hairdresser stepped into the void that the maid left when domestic service became rare. Washing one’s hair daily or every other day is a very recent development.) That’s where conditioners came into play. Many people have wondered how on earth women could have nice hair by modern standards before conditioners, but conditioners are made necessary by shampoos. Well-maintained hair of the 19th century didn’t need conditioners because the oils weren’t regularly stripped from it.

Additionally, the oils made hair much more manageable than most people’s is today, which made it possible for women to obtain elaborate hairstyles using combs and pins–without modern clips or sprays–to keep their hair in place. This is why hair dressers still like to work with “day-old” hair when making elaborate hairstyles.

There were hair products like oils for women to add shine and powders meant to help brush dirt out of hair, but they weren’t in very wide use at the time. Hair “tonics”–mean to be put on the hair or taken orally to make hair shinier, thicker, or stronger–were ineffective but were readily available and widely marketed.

If you have a heroine go through something particularly nasty–such as a fall into a pond or the like–then she should wash her hair, by all means. This would be done in a tub prepared for the purpose–not in the bath–and would involve dissolving soap shavings into a water and combine them with whatever other products were desired. Then a maid would wash the woman’s hair as she leaned either forward or backward to thoroughly wet and wash her hair. Rinsing would be another stage. The hair would NEVER be piled on the head. If you have greater than waist-length hair and have ever tried to wash it in a modern-sized bathtub, you understand why no one attempted to wash her hair in a hip bath or an old, short claw foot tub! It would be almost impossible.

A quick rundown of other hair facts:

Hydrogen peroxide was used to bleach hair from 1867. Before that, trying to bleach it with soda ash and sunlight was the most a girl could do. Henna was extremely popular from the 1870s through the 1890s, especially for covering gray hair, to such an extent that gray hair became almost unseen in certain circles in England in this time. Red hair was considered ugly up until the 1860s, when the public embracing of the feminine images as presented by the aesthetic movement (Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood) gained ground, culminating in a positive rage for red hair in the 1870s to 1880s. Some truly scary metallic salt compounds were used to color hair with henna formulations by the late 19th century, often with unfortunate results.

Hair curling was popular in the 19th century and could either by achieved with rag rolls or hot tongs. Loose “sausage” rolls were the result of rag rolling. Hot tongs were used for making the “frizzled” bangs of the 1870s to 1880s–and “frizzled” they certainly were. The damage caused by the poor control of heating a curler over a gas jet or candle flame was substantial, and most women suffered burnt hair at one time or another. For this reason, a number of women chose to eschew the popular style and preserve their hair from such dangers! Permanents were first in use in the 1930s.  

(From: http://www.lydiajoyce.com/blog/?p=1022)

Maud Wagner, the first known female tattooist in the U.S., 1911. In 1907, she traded a date with her husband-to-be for tattoo lessons. Their daughter, Lotteva Wagner, was also a tattooist.

Ten Colors That Have Faded Away

via jessethevictor

World Battleground, 1000 years of war in 5 minutes - YouTube

PLACES THAT NEED TO CALM DOWN: EUROPE.

Made rebloggable by request