#philomena cunk#a true test of how good you are with children(via@arrows-for-pens) XD The Truth uwu uwu

I love how every historian I know has a list of historically-themed movies a mile long that they will not watch under any circumstances because the inaccuracies in story and costuming make them want to jump off a cliff

But all of them, 100%, with no exceptions agree that the greatest movie of all time is Stephen Sommers' 1999 masterpiece The Mummy starring Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weicsz

“In 1404, King Taejong fell from his horse during a hunting expedition. Embarrassed, looking to his left and right, he commanded, “Do not let the historian find out about this.” To his disappointment, the historian accompanying the hunting party included these words in the annals, in addition to a description of the king’s fall.“

LMFAOOOOOO rip to that guy

i thought maybe this was fake, but there’s even a citation!

Taejong Sillok Book 7. 5th year of King Taejong’s Reign (1404), February 8.

Happy 618th anniversary of the day King Taejong fell from his horse!

Apparently the recorders were really intense about this. We have a record of King Taejong complaining about a recorder who followed him on a hunt in disguise and another who eavesdropped on him behind a screen. No one was allowed to see the records, even the king (one king did and killed five men based on what was written there, after which they took greater care to ensure it would never happen again), and changing the content or disclosing it was a capital punishment. Even when there were rival political factions trying to influence the writers, they wrote down what was a revision and what wasn’t and kept an original version with no revisions in it.

They also made sure to back up their data. They made four copies of it, then when three copies were lost in the Imrim Wars they decided to make five more copies just in case. One copy was destroyed in a rebellion, another was partially damaged in an invasion, and Japan stole one copy during their occupation and moved it to Tokyo University, where it was mostly destroyed in the Kanto Earthquake (47 books remained and were returned to South Korea in 2006). Now the whole thing is digitized, free on the internet, and translated into modern Korean for all to see.

It took centuries of meticulous recorders, justifiably paranoid copiers, absolutely determined historians, and painstaking infrastructure for this joke to be possible. Happy 618th anniversary to the day King Taejong fell from his horse.

The thing that fucked me up over this documentary, is just how…this reveal wouldn’t have happened if the archivists and the media historians never documented the bumpers.

If the archivists never put the bumpers, their dates, their creations, and documented them online, Kevin wouldn’t have anything to go off of. If it weren’t for the wayback machine and the media wikipedias (specifically the Audiovisual Identity Database), Kevin wouldn’t have found the people involved with Tonal Sound and Elias Associates.

The unsung heroes, who do this all for the sake of documenting and archiving stuff we take for granted, helped give credit to a man who did this just because he loved his work, and it really does encapsulate how important these kinds of jobs are — no matter how “unimportant” they seem.

As someone who studies history I often wondered how ordinary people thought about living through such huge historical events. Now I know they were sick and tired of that shit.

i learned about Marion Stokes, a Philadelphia woman who began taping whatever was on television in 1979 and didn’t stop until her death in 2012.. The 71,000 VHS and Betamax tapes she made are the most complete collection preserving this era of TV. They are being digitized by the Internet Archive. (x)

i feel like this is selling her a bit short tbh.  It’s not like she was a random woman who decided to tape ‘whatever’ was on television.  She was a civil rights activist and archivist, who was extremely concerned about preserving history.  She believed that, by taping television, she would be preserving history EXACTLY as it was perceived at the time; she didn’t want the detail in the news to disappear with time.  And she was RIGHT.

Like I said, she didn’t just tape ‘whatever’ was on television.  It was extremely targeted towards news stations.  There were 8 VCRs running at all times in her home.  Her life—-and her family’s lives—-were centered around 6 hour blocks, since that was the amount of time that a tape would record for.  Her collections were also extremely organized. 

Me: *rolls up to a merchant in ancient Athens on Heelys and sipping a Starbucks*

Me: Yo where’s your horribly dense wine I’ve got coin

Merchant: What on earth are you wearing

Me: It’s called pants.

Merchant: I hate that.

Me: *struts up to an Inca temple in bright green sunglasses*

Me: Hey guy of knowing stuff what do you know can I see your dead kings

Ancient Inca man: Are you sent from the gods to annoy me

Me: Nope, I’m doing this for free.

Me: *banging pots and pans in the street in the middle of the Mali empire*

Me: WHERE’S THE SALT???

Random passerby: What is a European doing this far south

Other rando: Yelling about salt apparently.

Me: *walks into the Song Dynasty with a backpack and a hydro flask*

Me: Hey have you guys invented paper money yet?

Woman washing clothes: What are you talking about? Who are you?

Me: *takes a sip of my Ancient Greek wine I’m keeping in my hydro flask* Do you have paper money?

Woman: I suppose?

Me: Sweet. *walks off*

Me: *struts onto a Polynesian canoe in a Star Wars t-shirt*

Me: What do you guys eat on these things? Fish?

Sailor: What the f*ck are you and where did you come from we’re in the middle of the ocean

Me: Can I have that fruit

Sailor: No. Absolutely not.

Me: Fair. *jumps overboard with my hydro flask*

Me: *sitting on top of a building during the beheading of Marie Antoinette*

Me: *pulls a bag of popcorn and some peasant bread out of my backpack*

Roof climbing child: Who are you?

Me: Someone on a roof. *hands them some bread*

Child: Why are you dressed like that?

Me: Because I can.

Me: *arrives home totally plastered*

Friend: You know you’re supposed to water down that kind of wine right

Me: *throws bread at them* It was the Song Dynasty. I was right. Frick you.

people on here get worried about saying dumb things sometimes like

don’t worry about it

every single thing every single person has ever said or thought out-loud on the internet will eventually be called a historical artifact of the past and they will call this the graveyard of voices

if an Egyptians dildo can be an artifact you bet your ass that shitpost you did yesterday about piss and balls is going to be an artifact in the year 3000

Nah, it’ll all be deleted in, like, 20 years max. Which is just more reason why you shouldn’t worry about it.

Until the internet, most literate people kept private diaries and collected records; physical hard-copies they owned, which they decided to keep or destroy, and which notables would often turn over to academic libraries on their deaths. Our “records” are all on corporate-owned server-farms that’ll be wiped to make space for more stuff whenever it becomes convenient. The Internet is an absolute Nightmare for historians, from a preservation standpoint. It is probably one of the most ephemeral “records” media ever made.

highlights from the medieval scholars that took over my workplace today

so my campus is currently hosting an ENORMOUS conference of scholars who study medieval history. they’ve been completely flooding the tiny cafe where I work and drinking our coffee faster than we can make it, but the good news is that they provide some PRIME people watching, including: 

I have more:

You know Florence’s Mum is a renaissance scholar with a specialty in fashion/material goods history, yes? Evelyn Welch, superstar.

I didn’t know that, but it explains a lot about Florence’s style and I’m very happy I know it now

History won’t have had much record of Diana’s existence because she hung around the war for like 2 days but

there IS precisely One grainy-ass photo of a motley band of generic soldiers and also… a single woman in antiquity plate armor brandishing a sword??

like

what the FUCK is a historian supposed to make of this?

Wonder Woman is a WW1 cryptid

honestly like half a century’s worth of historians probably shattheir collective pants when Diana resurfaced to fight Doomsday. like amid all the Superman mourning and such a very small but passionate group of WWI historians across the globe were emailing their old colleagues and professors in all caps RE: SHE’S REAL AND SHE’S STILL ALIVE WTF 

people call on the ‘science side of tumblr’ because generally scientists are eager lil nerds willing to help others

people don’t call on the history side of tumblr because all historians are - without fail - sarcastic angry assholes looking to start a fight

arrowsforpens: #where is the lie