First cat video ever? 1899, colorized & speed corrected.

GUYS. THERE WAS DRIVE-THROUGH IN ANCIENT ROME. FINDING OUT THIS ALONE IS WORTH THE COST OF MY MASTERS IN HISTORY.

[From Daily Life of the Ancient Romans by David Matz]

*rolls up to the window* yeah gimme a number V combo

“I’ll have two number IXs, a number IX large, a number VI with extra ambrosia, a number VIII, two number XLVs, one with cheese, and a large goblet of wine.”

hail, I am Gaius Furius, welcome to Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives

“YEAH CAN I GET A FVCKIN VVVVHHH….VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVHHHHHHHHH…BVRGER?”

@fortooate I had to do it

Please tell me someone has tagged @dduane and@petermorwood on this…

TL;DR - Yes, Ancient Roman cities had fast food outlets; No, they didn’t have drive-throughs because most vehicles were prohibited except when making deliveries at set times .

You just tagged me, and it pushed so many buttons, because our research for “Games” (optioned twice so far, though not produced either time) showed us that when it comes to comparing Ancient Roman eating habits with now - and particularly the US - the similarities are remarkable.

The usual name (though see below) was a “thermopolium”, meaning “Hot Food Here”, and archaeologists estimate there were about 300 thermopolia in Pompeii and Herculaneum.

This sounds like a lot, but lower-class Roman tenement dwellings (”insulae”) were usually just somewhere to sleep; there was no bathroom, no toilet and no kitchen. So besides their work all other parts of citizens’ lives, from bathing and eating to peeing and pooping, also happened away from home, in non-domestic facilities like public baths, public latrines (the Guilds of Fullers and Tanners thank you for your contributions) and eating-houses like thermopolia, tabernae and popinae.

The archaeologists think these three words may have been interchangeable, or subject to dialect variations, but saying that Ancient Rome had Diners, Drive-ins and Dives is as close to true as makes no never-mind. There were no Roman “fine dining” restaurants, since meals of that category would be eaten at home with invited guests as part of social networking, but though upper-class Romans looked down on the D, D-I & D establishments, there’s written evidence that they ate from them regardless.

Think of them as a cross between fast-food outlets, gastropubs and tapas bars.

Here’s a reconstruction:

Here are a few examples of real ones, all similar but each different:

Pots of prepared food were set in those counter recesses. I haven’t found out if there was a way to keep it hot, but the design looks like there might have been a charcoal brazier at one end sending hot air through the counter-space on the same principal as a hypocaust (Roman under-floor central heating), otherwise why make the counter of stone rather than wood?

@dduane​ suggests it may be because old bricks and broken rubble were easier to find, but IMO these were built with more care than just “because it’s cheap”.

The second two have a side that obviously faces the street (they would all have done, it’s just more obvious in those pics) which is where takeaway would have happened. Customers wanting to eat in would have moved along the indoor side of the L-shaped counter.

                                                    ———-

As for takeaway, it didn’t include Drive-In or Drive-Through as we’d know it. Roman cities were almost entirely pedestrian so Walk-In or Walk-Through was more likely, but there might be a certain amount of Stop-In-Front-For-Takeaway by hungry deliverymen, ignoring vulgar cries in Vulgar Latin along the lines of “get that bloody cart out of the bloody way!”

Even then it wouldn’t happen at peak times since, except for unusual circumstances, deliveries were restricted to and had to be completed within set hours before and after the business day. Roman writers including Martial and Pliny bitch about being woken at early o’clock by squeaky axles, braying mules and swearing drivers as fresh provisions arrived for sale.

This reconstruction shows the ruts in the road for cart-wheels…

…and these are the real thing, which along with the frequent crossing-stones restricted what size of vehicle could enter the city: local delivery wagons drawn by a single mule, yes, out-of-town heavy freight drawn by a yoke of oxen, no.

There’s a longstanding chicken-and-egg argument over what came first, carts making ruts in soft lava rock, or ruts cut into rock to control carts. Since ruts of the same size (supposedly recycled in the Industrial Revolution as the size of Standard Gauge railway track, YMMV on that) appear on roads in other parts of the Empire which aren’t made of soft lava rock, my two sesterces is on deliberate cutting.

                                                     ———-

Okay, so what kind of food did these places serve? Those keep-hot pots (dolias) would have contained vegetables like onions, carrots, leeks, cabbage, etc., also stews of beans, lentils, fish and some cheap kind of meat; since this was poor or at least not-rich people’s food, that meat would have been the inner bits most modern diners don’t want to know about. Not that organ meat worried the Romans; they were nose-to-tail diners in the way that was common throughout history until about 150 years ago.

This 1st-century terracotta relief supposedly shows a basic meal of fish, bread (top left), possibly cheese (bottom left) and an egg (bottom right); there’s a knife (top) and spoon (bottom) to eat with, a cup and a pannier for drink. So far so good.

However IMO what it may show is a kitchen table in the classic cookery demo top-down view. Those two fish are about to be cut up using the knife (top centre right with a curved horn(?) handle and possibly a sheath) then cooked in the pan on the right. There’s a spoon to stir and taste (bottom right), and the egg, bread and cheese(?) are either other ingredients or meant to accompany the pieces of cooked fish when they go into the bowl at top centre left.

Okay, I’m guessing; but it’s a fair guess. :->

Fast food would also have included bread, fresh and dried figs and other fruit, olives, cheese, honey, shellfish, eggs raw and hard-boiled, dried and smoked meat and fish, olive oil and, inevitably, garum, the (in)famous Roman fish sauce to which the entire Empire was addicted. They had FACTORIES to make the stuff though like tanneries, they were built well away from human - or at least wealthy - habitation.

Internet pages delight in focussing on the “Ew, rotted fish guts!” aspect; the Romans for their part would have looked at tomato ketchup and said “hang on, tomatoes are deadly nightshade in a party frock” before falling on them with delight because Ancient Roman recipes suggest a real fondness for sweet-sour. Anyway garum’s not rotted, it’s fermented with lots of salt like Worcestershire and Tabasco.

You know how modern foodstuffs are packaged in distinctive containers so you can spot them easily? Garum did it too.

Some Roman fast-foods were surprisingly familiar: kebabs (meats grilled on spits, including more inner bits); pizza (more of a foccacia or flatbread, drizzled with oil, sprinkled with herbs, topped with cheese and / or bits of meat or smoke-cured salami); burgers (grilled chopped-meat patties using yet more inner bits) and hot-dogs (various sausages including the famous Lucanian Sausage, smoked pork with herbs and pine-nuts).

We don’t know if Roman bakers produced small loaves - what we’d know as buns - for the sausages and burgers; it’s more likely that if eaten modern-style, they’d be seasoned with pepper and a dash of garum, then rolled in a flatbread wrap or put into a split section of the standard Roman panis quadratus loaf, like these on a Pompeii fresco…

…or this actual loaf, somewhat overbaked by Mount Vesuvius.

As mentioned before, there was no ketchup, but there were several kinds of mustard from mild to pungent, including ones made with water, wine, vinegar, honey and of course garum.

The Romans didn’t have popcorn (like tomatoes, maize was still an Atlantic Ocean away) but roasted crunchy chickpeas - in new leek’n’garum flavour! - were a direct equivalent.

Some of what follows is known historical fact; some of the rest is logical extrapolation from research for our “Games” project.

Keep reading

Medievalists of Tumblr: what inaccuracies annoy you the most in movies set in the Middle Ages?

Mine is probably the 'everyone was constantly caked in mud and only wore grey and brown' aesthetic.

Same. Also the idea that “women were property so they did nothing but sew and have babies and the time was inherently backwards and violent”

the complete absence of christianity from pop culture perceptions of the medieval period really bugs me (or it being relegated to the fringes and a few monks somewhere)

like... this was a major part of most people’s daily lives even if it didn’t necessarily look like christianity as we know it. also medieval theology is fucking wild! where are all the debates about cannibal babies in pop culture medieval stuff? WHERE is the twelfth century werewolf renaissance? the fuckign infancy gospels?? give me weird medieval theology you cowards

A lot of them had already been mentioned, so may I add

"The dishes were only bland soups and maybe some moldy bread"

I'm studying English language and literature, not History, but like... Pork vs Pig... Deer vs Venison... Cow vs Beef... May give you the idea THEY FUCKING ATE MEAT AT LEAST GODDAMIT

And not even like we do

Where's the feast with venison? The ridiculous amount of salmon and other fishes? The little gardens full of spices? Or the trade of exotic foods? Slaughtering season was celebrated in some places not that much ago (like... I saw one when little), why not portray one?

And more importantly

WHERE'S THE CHICKEN WITH HELMET???

GIVE ME CHICKEN WITH HELMET OR GIVE ME DEATH

Yeah, and for better or for worse they were much less picky about which animals they ate than we are. Porpoise, anyone?

Medieval people loved their spices; The Forme of Cury has a lot of flavours I'd associate more with Indian food than anything else. Even if you weren't a wealthy seasoning-loving king like Richard II, you could still have garlic, onions, and herbs.

Also please link me a picture of the chicken with helmet if you can, I need to see this.

Here it is

Here's a link with more info. Apparently the dish is called Singing Chicken... But that's a chicken with a helmet

This is the best thing I've ever seen.

Hollywood has a tendency to portray the past as “just like today, minus whatever of today’s things we know they didn’t have.” There’s no concept that the past had things that today doesn’t.

Like bawdy medicinal tips.

@candiceirae

The idea that people used spices to cover spoiled meat is similarly stupid and utterly infuriating.

And yes, the gaping absence of religion from depictions of the Middle Ages is jarring.

All of this, but mostly that they existed in a sepia toned world with no color, pattern, or texture.

Going off the colors of textiles, the assumption that their textiles were always crude and rough compared to today's. Think of the twills and brocades! The cloth of gold! The silks, and the wool so gauzy you could see through it! The soft wool clothing! The quality and variety of fabric we have available has plummetted since the industrial revolution.

beyond conventional spices the medieval cook and especially the resourceful housewife would have been exploiting herbs by the fistfull on a level we today cannot comprehend, like we dont even know what some of the names of herbs they used even mean anymore and they grew them like suburban homeowners today grow ugly border hedges. whatever soups they had access to had a decent chance of being something that would be 100% locally grown and every bit as flavorful as any regonal dish today withiout having to resort to saying ‘well they could possibly have been eating curry’ instead of giving them a flavor identity of their own. just because ‘spice’ isnt readily available dont assume ‘flavor’ is out of reach, the aromatics they used would be on par with the modern french concept of mirepoix but, moving past the kitchen the two things that irk me are that everyone toiled miserably and everything was grey stone, rudely carved buildings, shoddy construction unadorned well yeah, if you went to a decrepit ruin thats been abandoned for centuries it would look like that, but not when people lived there! you see the shows and movies and sweet baby cheese the kings residence looks like a dank basement and sometimes he doesnt even have a change of clothes when castles were in use they were prominent displays of power and wealth, whitewashed so that even small amounts of light reflected well inside them so that they illuminated well, paintings and murals in a riot of colors and displaying personal tastes, tapestries that may be the local lords wife, aunt, or grandmothers gift to them as tappestry making was a popular hobby at court where women gathered to gossip and giggle while making vibrantly colored decorations that are usually dismissed because the only ones that survive had endured about 500 years of sun damage, smoke damage, and uncertain cleaning history

that clearly showed the people of the time valued color, had style, and only occasionally made horses look like a dog made out of play-doh. even people who didnt live in a castle still had access to paint to liven up the plaster walls of their homes, brightly dyed fabrics and flowers were as available to them as and they sang, constantly. what we assume was a life of toiling in the mud from dusk till dawn the whole year was typically a relaxed paced life of 10 hour a night sleep in a comfortable bed where work didnt start untill you had your flagon of ale and a song with your buddies as you walked to the field, you sang as you worked, took three ale breaks from work while singing, and then you sang as you walked to the tavern so you could sing while you played nine mens morris or cheated at mancala because you thought the miller was too soused to notice. we barely know any of the songs they sang and humanity is less for it, a scant handfull of them do remain and its just beautiful to hear what a table of tavern patrons would break into song about to prove they werent too drunk for another round song and story were all day every day, theres a reason the most well known middle english text was canterbury tales- whose narrative was that a selection of travelers on the way to the same location had an ongoing bar-bet about who could tell the better story, asking bartenders to judge the complexity of these stories, all of which were absolutely valid as just shit you would say to another drunk in a tavern, would give modern soap operas a swift kick in the pants and its sad that it takes a historian to tell you just how crass and lowbrow humor they were on a similar vein to how so many people somehow forgot that shakespear was lowbrow humor for the commoner and not somehow too sophisticated for rubes it wasnt just bards who would own an instrument, instruments are wood, leather, string, bone/horn, or even clay... those are all commonly available and affordable if not straight up FREE items to someone in the medieval world so a hefty chunk of the population would have an instrument and know how to use it, anything from a wood flute to a simple drum to an ocarina. many designs were even specifically for travel so you could always have it at the ready

how about this- in all the versions of robin hood i have -EVER- seen the most historically accurate any of them got was the scene in kevin costner ‘king of theves’ where friar tuck was singing to himself while on the road ‘women wine and whoring’. not just because its one of the only times in any medieval period movie ive seen someone singing to pass the time in the mind-numbing hours of traveling before the invention of the car radio, but ALSO because they based the tune he sings off the classic ‘ Bache Benne Venies’, the oldest known drinking song we still know the words and tune of and let me tell you that song slaps talk to me about historical accuracy in movies and ill tell you that tolkein writing hobbit songs for walking, drinking, or describing what an elephant was was more historically accurate then all of GOT passed through a sieve to collect every grain of stray element of medievalness gaily dressed hobbits full of pie, sitting in a well decorated room full of beautiful hand carved furniture, on their fifth ale, and singing about the man in the moon getting shitfaced is about ten times historically accurate as most anything else i can think of if you ignored the historical accuracy of them being hobbits

There were also lots of non-white people in the middle ages but you don't ever see it in pop culture

Every word in this post is art and it is a wonderful, invaluable resource,

but is nobody commenting that @elfwreck 's medicinal tip was to slap butter in your wife's ass and then lick it off to cure her toothache

No, to cure YOUR toothache. (And it doesn’t need to be your wife; any woman’s arse will presumably do. It’s just that women who aren’t your wife aren’t as likely to cooperate.) 

I mean. It probably works? If you slather someone’s rear end with a pound of butter and then lick it off, you’re probably not going to be thinking about your toothache by the time you’re done.

Akhenaton “the Alien hybrid” pharaoh according to Ancient Alien theorists

The argument is “WhY dOesS AkHenAtOn lOok DiffreN to OhEr PhaRaOhs? ALIEMS????”

Here’s the answer and its a wild fucking ride, lemme tell you.

Akhenaton was a fucking revolutionary Pharaoh and almost single handedly tried to rewrite ALL of ancient Egypt’s religion during his rule. He;

1: Moved Egypt’s Capital to a new city further down the Nile called Akhenaton after himself which is entirely based on worshiping the singular god, Aten. 2: Established a new religion that saw a singular god called “Aten” rather than an entire pantheon and esentially said “Yeah all those other gods we’ve been worshiping for literally thousands of years? Yeah just throw those out. They’re not canon now” 3: Re-worked how ancient Egyptian art was drawn (and this is the big one) where he was essentially bored with the “Eyptian style” of art and instead urged all HIS depictions in art capture his appearance more accurately to real life. His frescos also, unlike any other pharoah, show him in domestic scenes, spending time with his wife and children in very mundane, every day situations

(an image of Akhenaton with his wife playing with their young children. Akhenaton is shown kissing one of his daughters in fatherly affection)

Akhenaton was not traditionally handsome (probably thanks to hundreds of years of inbreeding thanks to how Ancient Egyptian royalty worked) and did not want to be depicted in a way that wasn’t true to himself. So his image is always shown as gangly with long limbs, slightly over-weight with a belly, elongated features and pronounced lips.

So….. this kind of really REALLY fucking pissed off literally every high ranking priest in all of Egypt because they’re now, to put it plainly, out of a job. Akhenaton’s moving of the capital also severely crippled the religious structure, moving political power away from where most of the greatest temples were, and since the Pharoahs are meant to be living gods on Earth, what does it say when the gods of Earth don’t live in the same city any more?

Akhenaton dies from unknown reasons but most likely the same genetic disease that gave him his appearance (some have obviously suggested assassination but there is no proof of this that’s been found and it remains up for debate) and the priests and historians go about striking his name from history and destroying and defacing artwork depicting him and his new religion.

(whoops)

He is then excluded from the king lists and is referred by later Dynasties as “The Enemy” or “That Criminal” in archival records. When Akhenaton’s mummy was located his sarcophagus and funerary mask were both deliberately destroyed.

You may have heard of his wife, btw. Nefertiti.

You ever wonder why she’s called the most beauiful woman in history? It’s probably because she was one of the few Pharaoh women accurate sculpted to relfect what she really looked like, versus a stock style.

also fun fact, this most famous image of her is an incomplete wooden bust found in the ruins of a sculptors’ workshop, presumeably because she was killed before he could finish it and he was like “aw shit… NOW what do I do with this?”

Now the problem is, the priests can’t just appoint a brand new Pharaoh, because pharoahs are descended from the gods themselves and their blood can’t be mixed with that of mere mortals (which is why Egyptian pharaohs marry their mothers and sisters. To keep their godly blood “pure”). So, the hastily appoint Akhenaton’s son who is 9 years old as the new pharaoh (and of course the child will have advisors to help him rule until he is an adult… of course.)

Problem. Akhenaton’s son’s name is Tutankhaten. “Living Image of Aten” and that just won’t do. So 2 years into his reign (aged 11) his name is changed to  Tutankhamun, “Living image of Amun”after the sun god Amun or Amun-Ra. The city of Akhenaton is abandoned and falls into ruin.

All is well and Tutankhamun’s kingdom is ruled by his advisors… until he’s about 18 or 19. Whoops! Now he’s an adult and probably wants to start actually doing his job as the ruler of Egypt.

Oh wait no nevermind. he conveniently died. We’re not sure how exactly because, oh… uhm… it seems there are no surviving records of King Tut’s final days! Whoops!

Ok that’s an over simplification. In truth, thanks to many… many… many…. MANY scans and autopsies, we now now Tut broke his knee recently before he died, had a very aggressive strain of malaria which led to a bone disease and also, due to being inbred as FUCK because of how Pharaohs work, also suffered from mild kyphoscoliosis (a curved spine), pes planus (flat feet), hypophalangism of the right foot (missing bone), bone necrosis of the second and third metatarsal bones of the left foot, and a club foot that was so bad he could not stand unless aided by walking sticks. However the exact cause of death is still unknown but it seems direct assassination is unlikely.

But anyway.

So King Tut dies as does the two stillborn children of his and Akhenaton’s family line reaches an end. It did not end well for Tut’s wife either as she disappears from history after a war which left Egypt defeated and her new husband, Ay the new Pharaoh, with a sudden second wife. After Ay’s death a new Pharaoh comes into power by usurping the throne and has a complete and utter “Stricken from history” campaign against all of Tutankhamun’s family, including father, mother, daughters, wife, half sisters, and all other family members.

King Tut is buried in an unusually small tomb most likely due to his sudden death, that became forgotten and buried.

Fast forward 3,245 years to 1915 and his tomb is discovered by Archaeologists. The tomb is one of the most intact and untouched tombs EVER discovered in the history of all Agyptian Pharoahs, and almost single-handedly caused an absolute obsession with Ancient Egyptian culture and kickstarted what we now call “Egyptology”. A fascination which has never truly died even in modern times today.

…..

Anyway Akhenaton wasn’t an alien.

Cool as fuck- and hysterical bc tut is basically the first name that comes to mind when people think of ancient Egypt so haha those priests failed big fucking time.

Extra Credits on Youtube just covered him!!!!!

https://youtu.be/wKSqgLQNIeQ

One of my all time favorite historical facts is that we have evidence of potters’ wheels that predate wheels used for transport so it’s entirely possible that one day way back in the Copper Age a potter needed to move his potter’s wheel across his hut and was like “…hey, what if we…”

Oh my god ❤️

Absolutely love this

Wow.

Please watch this. 

i was a little apprehensive to watch this because it’s four minutes long and i have a short attention span, but within the first 30 seconds i was hooked.

watch this. please, you won’t regret it.

Germany remilitarising the Rhineland (1936) - colourised

it’s hilarious to me when people call historical fashions that men hated oppressive

like in BuzzFeed’s Women Wear Hoop Skirts For A Day While Being Exaggeratedly Bad At Doing Everything In Them video, one woman comments that she’s being “oppressed by the patriarchy.” if you’ve read anything Victorian man ever said about hoop skirts, you know that’s pretty much the exact opposite of the truth

thing is, hoop skirts evolved as liberating garment for women. before them, to achieve roughly conical skirt fullness, they had to wear many layers of petticoats (some stiffened with horsehair braid or other kinds of cord). the cage crinoline made their outfits instantly lighter and easier to move in

it also enabled skirts to get waaaaay bigger. and, as you see in the late 1860s, 1870s, and mid-late 1880s, to take on even less natural shapes. we jokingly call bustles fake butts, but trust me- nobody saw them that way. it was just skirts doing weird, exciting Skirt Things that women had tons of fun with

men, obviously, loathed the whole affair

(1864)

(1850s. gods, if only crinolines were huge enough to keep men from getting too close)

(no date given, but also, this is 100% impossible)

(also undated, but the ruffles make me think 1850s)

it was also something that women of all social classes- maids and society ladies, enslaved women and free women of color -all wore at one point or another. interesting bit of unexpected equalization there

and when bustles came in, guess what? men hated those, too

(1880s)

(probably also 1880s? the ladies are being compared to beetles and snails. in case that was unclear)

(1870s, I think? the bustle itself looks early 1870s but the tight fit of the actual gown looks later)

hoops and bustles weren’t tools of the patriarchy. they were items 1 and 2 on the 19th century’s “Fashion Trends Women Love That Men Hate” lists, with bonus built-in personal space enforcement

Gonna add something as someone who’s worn a lot of period stuff for theatre:

The reason you suck at doing things in a hoop skirt is because you’re not used to doing things in a hoop skirt.

The first time I got in a Colonial-aristocracy dress I felt like I couldn’t breathe. The construction didn’t actually allow me to raise my arms all the way over my head (yes, that’s period-accurate). We had one dresser to every two women, because the only things we could put on ourselves were our tights, shifts, and first crinoline. Someone else had to lace our corsets, slip on our extra crinolines, hold our arms to balance us while a second person actually put the dresses on us like we were dolls, and do up our shoes–which we could not put on ourselves because we needed to be able to balance when the dress went on. My entire costume was almost 40 pounds (I should mention here that many of the dresses were made entirely of upholstery fabric), and I actually did not have the biggest dress in the show.

We wore our costumes for two weeks of rehearsal, which is quite a lot in university theatre. The first night we were all in dress, most of the ladies went propless because we were holding up our skirts to try and get a feel for both balance and where our feet were in comparison to where it looked like they should be. I actually fell off the stage.

By opening night? We were square-dancing in the damn things. We had one scene where our leading man needed to whistle, but he didn’t know how and I was the only one in the cast loud enough to be heard whistling from under the stage, so I was also commando-crawling underneath him at full speed trying to match his stage position–while still in the dress. And petticoats. And corset. Someone took my shoes off for that scene so I could use my toes to propel myself and I laid on a sheet so I wouldn’t get the dress dirty, but that was it–I was going full Solid Snake in a space about 18″ high, wearing a dress that covered me from collarbones to floor and weighed as much as a five-year-old child. And it worked beautifully.

These women knew how to wear these clothes. It’s a lot less “restrictive” when it’s old hat.

I have worn hoop skirts a lot, especially in summer. I still wear hoop skirts if I’m going to be at an event where I will probably be under stage lights. (For example, Vampire Ball.)

I can ride public transportation while wearing them. I can take a taxi while wearing them. I can go on rides at Disneyland while wearing them. Because I’ve practiced wearing them and twisting the rigid-but-flexible skirt bones so I can sit on them and not buffet other people with my skirts. 

Hoop skirts are awesome.

The real tragedy about the barricade is that we don’t know how much is true. Victor Hugo was there at the June Rebellion, so what is fact and what is fiction? That question gives me chills because we’ll never know. 

Charles Jeanne (who I think is probably actual real life Enjolras) wrote an in-detail account of the ACTUAL barricades in a letter to his sister after the fact

you can read it, tenlittlebullets translated it into English :)

it’s really graphic, he leaves no gory details out, just FYI if you’re gonna read it, keep TW: VIOLENCE  in mind

#how is he real-life enjolras if he survived (via metellus-cimber)

I’m so glad somebody asked this, because the answer is: when they finally ran out of ammunition, Charles Jeanne rounded up everyone who was still standing, went, “look, if we’re going to die, we might as well die fighting,” and led a suicidal ten-man charge against an entire flippin’ infantry column, armed with nothing but bayonets. The first few ranks of soldiers were so unprepared for such a spectacularly insane attack that they were too surprised to shoot. They crossed bayonets and tried to hold the insurgents off in hand-to-hand combat, but Jeanne’s swordsmanship was apparently aces, because he held off a bunch of them at once and covered his friends as they tried to breach the ranks. And once they were in, nobody could shoot them for fear of taking out their own guys.

So the last stand that the insurgents had intended as a noble suicide ended in them breaking through the ranks entirely and winding up in the next street over, outside the combat zone, going “well shit, what do we do now?” (I’m guessing the infantry column wasn’t very deep; central Paris at that point was a rabbit warren of narrow twisty streets, and assembling troops en masse for an organized attack was a logistical nightmare.) Unlike the National Guard, the army weren’t total chumps and got themselves turned around to give chase and start shooting once they weren’t at risk of friendly fire any longer… and that’s when all the civilians holed up in their houses went “no way, you’re not getting your hands on these crazy bastards” and started hurling furniture and crockery down on the soldiers’ heads. Jeanne was understandably distracted at the time, but afterwards somebody informed him that the barrage of unlikely projectiles included a piano. A piano. That is some straight-up Looney Tunes slapstick right there. No wonder Hugo went for the heroic death scene instead; if he’d stuck to real life, he probably would’ve gotten complaints that he’d wrecked his readers’ suspension of disbelief.

Anyway, someone opened an alley gate for them to shelter in and take stock of the casualties—most of them survived(!!!), but a few were pretty nastily wounded. Their host then had to lock Charles Jeanne in to keep him from charging right back out and taking on the whole goddamn army singlehanded. He probably would’ve broken down the door if the poor man hadn’t pointed out that going back out would give away his wounded comrades’ hiding place and the identities of the people sheltering them. They sat there listening to the gunfire gradually slow and go silent, and then in the middle of the night the ones who could still walk were allowed to slip away one by one at long intervals from each other. Charles Jeanne went straight home, slept like the dead for a few hours, was woken up at five in the morning with a warning that he’d been denounced and the building was surrounded, and then slipped out in disguise and managed to evade the police for four months before a former comrade ratted him out and he was arrested.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why Charles Jeanne’s letter is an absolute treasure that deserves to be available to anyone in Les Mis fandom who wants to read it. Incidentally, “how Actual Historical Enjolras survived the barricades by being too good at his suicide mission” is also one of the stories I tell when anyone asks me what the hell is so interesting about researching people nobody’s ever heard of from an obscure chapter of French history. 

#charles jeanne#what a BAMF#and then he managed to derail the whole trial with impassioned noble speeches and dramatic gestures worthy of a Hugo play#while visibly dying of consumption#seriously how was this dude even real#saint merry#june rebellion#à cinq heures nous serons tous morts#1832#history geeking ahoy

Here it is: how I got Horrible Histories banned from my school.

Sit down, I’m going to tell you a story.

Imagine a little girl, a 4’9” fifth grader with dimples and twinkling blue eyes. Oh, look, she’s going to the school library. Perhaps she’s going to rent Little Women, or read On the Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder!

Five minutes later, she exits the library holding a large stack of books called “Horrible Histories.”

And she’s thumbing through one called “Angry Aztecs.”

Record scratch. Freeze frame.

Yup, that’s me! The only history geek in a fifty mile radius. Living in Bumhicksville, Nowhere (name changed, but very accurate) is pretty terrible, and going to school at Caucasian Christian School of Goodness (again, a name change, but an apt description) is even worse. I snapped a bit while I was attending, due to the lack of permissible self-expression, but horrible histories were my guiding light.

Flash forward six months.

Our teacher wants us to do a history project about an ancient civilization. Since our curriculum is Eurocentricism.JPEG, most kids pick the Greeks or Romans (and completely skip over all of the good stuff, like orgies and gladiator fights) in their presentations.

I choose my favorite ancient civilization:

The Aztecs.

My teachers knew I’d been reading Horrible Histories, but what they didn’t know was that I’d also been avidly reading all about Aztec mythology. I walk up to the front of the class, pull on a turquoise skull mask, and raise my arms to the sky.

My teacher goes sheet white.

I give my presentation and skip nothing. Nothing. Every detail of the sacrifices, every dirty, disgusting part.

It all culminates when I point to the calendar.

“It’s May!” I shout, my little girl voice rising an octave. My teacher looks like she’s about to phone the police. “The Aztecs called May Toxcatl.”

No one moves or breathed. I continue blithely.

“Toxcatl was a month dedicated to the worship of the god of the night, Tezcatlipoca.” I’m still going. Everyone is afraid. Marie, one of my classmates, looks like she’s about to cry.

“They’d dress a brave warrior as the god all year, and at the end-“ I pull the red streamers out from behind my display, shouting: “They’d sacrifice him!”

The kids shriek as the streamers of “blood” roll out across the floor.

The principal walked in, hearing the commotion, just in time for me to really get into character and shout “BLOOD FOR THE GOD OF THE NIGHT!”

And that’s how Horrible Histories and all mentions of the Aztecs were banned from my school.

this is like the opening of a children’s movie about a girl who was reprimanded for over-creativity / morbid obsessions, and i love it

useless ancient roman law facts

History memes…because I’m a nerd. 

what. why? someone pls explain to me pls i wasnt born yet in 1999 why turn computer off before midnight? what happen if u dont?

y2k lol everyone was like “the supervirus is gonna take over the world and ruin everything and end the world!!!”

This is the oldest I’ve ever felt. Right now.

WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN YOU WEREN’T BORN YET IN 1999.

Ahh the Millenium bug.

It wasn’t a virus, it was an issue with how some old computers at the time were programmed to deal with dates. Basically some computers with older operating systems didn’t have anything in place to deal with the year reaching 99 and looping around to 00. It was believed that this inability to sync with the correct date would cause issues, and even crash entire systems the moment the date changed.

People flipped out about it, convinced that the date discrepancy between netwoked systems would bring down computers everywhere and shut down the internet and so all systems relying on computers, including plane navigation etc. would go down causing worldwide chaos. It was genuinely believed that people should all switch off computers to avoid this. One or two smart people spoke up and said “um hey, this actually will only effect a few very outdated computers and they’ll just display the wrong date, so it probably won’t be harmful” but were largely ignored because people selling books about the end of the world were talking louder.

In the end, absolutely nothing happened.

Oh gosh.

I’ve been a programmer working for various government agencies since the early 1990s and I can say with some confidence:

NOTHING HAPPENED BECAUSE WE WORKED VERY HARD FIXING SHIT THAT MOST DEFINITELY WOULD HAVE BROKEN ON 1-JAN-2000.

One example I personally worked on: vaccination databases.

My contract was with the CDC to coordinate immunization registries — you know, kids’ vaccine histories. What they got, when they got it, and (most importantly) which vaccines they were due to get next and when. These were state-wide registries, containing millions of records each.

Most of these systems were designed in the 1970s and 1980s, and stored the child’s DOB year as only two digits. This means that — had we not fixed it — just about every child in all the databases I worked on would have SUDDENLY AGED OUT OF THE PROGRAM 1-JAN-2000.

In other words: these kids would suddenly be “too old” to receive critical vaccines.

Okay, so that’s not a nuke plant exploding or airplanes dropping from the sky. In fact, nothing obvious would have occurred come Jan 1st.

BUT

Without the software advising doctors when to give vaccinations, an entire generation’s immunity to things like measles, mumps, smallpox (etc) would have been compromised. And nobody would even know there was a problem for months — possibly years — after.

You think the fun & games caused by a few anti-vaxers is bad?

Imagine whole populations going unvaccinated by accident… one case of measles and the death toll might be measured in millions.

This is one example I KNOW to be true, because I was there.

I also know that in the years leading up to 2000 there were ad-hoc discussion groups (particularly alt.risk) of amazed programmers and project managers that uncovered year-2000 traps… and fixed them.

Quietly, without fanfare. 

In many cases because admitting there was a problem would have resulted in a lawsuit by angry customers. But mostly because it was our job to fix those design flaws before anyone was inconvenienced or hurt.

So, yeah… all that Y2K hysteria was for nothing, because programmers worked their asses off to make sure it was for nothing.

Bolding mine.

Absolutely true.  My Mom worked like crazy all throughout 1998 and 1999 on dozens of systems to avoid Y2K crashes. Nothing major happened because people worked to made sure it didn’t.

Now if we could just harness that concept for some of the other major issues facing us today.  

this meme came so far since i saw it this morning. god i love tumblr teaching tumblr about history.

As a young Sys Admin during Y2K, I can confirm that it was SRS BZNS.  I worked for a major pharmaceutical company at the time.  They spent millions of dollars on consultant and programmer hours, not to mention their own employees’ time, to fix all their in-house software as well as replace it with new systems.  Sys Admins like myself were continually deploying patches, updating firmware, and deploying new systems in the months leading up to Y2K.  Once that was done, though, the programmers went home and cashed their checks.

When the FATEFUL HOUR came along, it wasn’t just one hour.  For a global company with offices in dozens of countries, it was 24 hours of being alert and on-call.  I imagine that other large organizations had similar setups with entire IT departments working in shifts to monitor everything.  Everyone was on a hair trigger, too, so the slightest problem caused ALL HANDS ON DECK pages to go out.

Yes, we had pagers.

For hard numbers IDC’s 2006 calculation put the total US cost of remediation, before and after, at $147 billion - that’s in 1999 dollars.  That paid for an army of programmers, including calling up retired grandparents from the senior center because COBOL and FORTRAN apps from the ‘60s needed fixing.

Also note that there were some problems, including $13 billion in remediation included in the figure above.  Some of these involved nuclear power plants, medical equipment, and “a customer at a New York State video rental store had a bill for $91,250, the cost of renting the movie ‘The General’s Daughter’ for 100 years.”

Y2K was anything but nothing.

@figure-forever

tfw you do your job so fucking well that everyone thinks you weren’t necessary in the first place :(

salute our COBOL cowpokes and other Y2K wranglers, they saved all our asses

another important lesson we learned: a shitload of stuff in the ‘90s was still running programs from the ‘60s and ‘70s. it’s hard to justify the expense and trouble of a massive upgrade when things are working “fine” – easier to say “well, I suppose we’ll need to change at some point, but not now”

and if things really are working “fine” you can let them go on for a while but every so often you run into something like Y2K where the software simply wasn’t designed to handle certain eventualities. can’t really blame the programmers, either. if you were writing shit in the ‘60s, would you expect people to still be using it in the science-fiction year of 2000? that’s not a real year! you might be dead by then!

so, y’know, you don’t always need the latest and greatest for everything you’re doing – how much power do you really need for an inventory system? – but regular upgrades are a Good Idea

nerds quietly saving the world. this is superhero nonsense i love it

Holy shit so THIS was why my older cousins were saying all the computers were going to die and four year old me was like “what.”

Within a certain FTSE 100 retailer, I worked on the millennium bug project for over 8 months to make sure that none of our 2,400 mainframe programs would crash. Out of those, over 900 needed changing and testing.

On New Year even while others were out drinking and being merry, my colleague and I sat in a dark room together until 5am keeping one eye on our computer screens, and the other on a large TV I’d brought in for movies.

Rest of the world: Nothing went wrong! hahah

Me: You’re welcome.

Thank you for your service

i want to share with you some of my favourite graffiti from Pompeii

Honestly, my favourite one is the bread one.

My favorites are the bread, the Yelp review, and the one about how it being 640 paces walking back and forth ten times.

And the one about best friends. THEY’RE FRIENDS FOREVER BECAUSE 2000 YEARS LATER WE HAVE THEIR NAMES AND KNOW THEY WERE FRIENDS.

the bread one is actually really sad because an enxahusted slave wrote that 

This is a Mills & Boon from 1967 and honestly I don’t know what I’d do if I met someone and they said ‘with those hands she simply must play the piano’ but it would probably end in tears

For those asking, this is from ‘When Love is Blind’ by Mary Burchell, aka Ida Cook. My New Year’s Resolution is to try and read books by really interesting authors, and Ida Cook comes under that umbrella category because:

@mumblingsage

SOMEONE MAKE A FILM ABOUT IDA AND MARY FOR THE LOVE OF GOODNESS 

Right?!

You know what would be even better though? If they made an opera about it.

The cycle continues