Annoying Historical Myths

The BBQ Pit
181

That Thomas Edison had invented, or was working on at the time of his death, a device for communicating with the dead.

He did describe a device ‘so sensitive that if there is life after death, it will pick up the evidence.’ But this is just a figure of speech used to describe how sensitive the device was. My WAG most of the time he used ‘so sensitive, it can pick up on a fly farting a mile away’. While lacking a certain poetry, that expression was certainly clearer

Re The Alamo

I expect several pit threads just from the upcoming film and the hundreds of inaccuracies it will surely contain.

182

Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say that the Puritans were the ones who remained within the Church of England–hence the term puritan. They wanted the CoE to purify itself so the “Established Church” would bring itself closer in line with the Calvinistic doctrine. “Many Puritans sought to remain within the Established Church but wanted to eliminate what they as the “popish” elements in the Liturgy of The Book of Common Prayer and the 'idolatrous” religious images in churchs…" (Norton Anthology of English Literature, 7th Ed. 1213)

The Pilgirms were the “seperatists Puritans (Congregationalists, Brownists, Anabaptists) (who) wanted no national church, only individual gathered churches of the elect; some of them went to Holland or New England to escape repression” (Norton Anthology of English Literature, 7th Ed. 1213)

183

Well, naturally. But how many women do we know of who are that tiny? Not a whole lot.

We’ve been having this fascinating discussion about it on the Sense and Sensibility boards-What’s Your Favorite Corset Myth?
So who were stricter-the Puritans, or the Pilgrims?

184

Wow. I knew I’d forgotten a lot in the last 20 years or so, but I didn’t realize it was that much. tomndebb, Sampiro, and all the others who have expanded on the Pilgrims vs Puritans and their arrival in North America–thank you very much. I wonder what the ones in Holland would have done if (a) more of them were able to afford land there, and (b) they weren’t afraid that Spain was going to conquer the country?

Now I have to decide if I want to do some research. I’m curious about when Holland became part of the Netherlands–didn’t it used to be its own country? Which countries joined together to become the Netherlands?

185

In the linked thread, you addressed one of the myths I meant to- that men forced women to wear corsets. One of Charle’s Panati’s books (either Browser’s Book Of Beginings, or The Extraordinary Origins Of Everyday Things) includes some of the handouts doctors made urging women not to wear corsets.

Your link also terrifies me. Some moderator of those boards will find the link. Then we shall be inundated by S&S posters trying to force their agenda upon us. Tips will be usernames including-crinoline, baleen, bustle, and Victoria. Some of the smarter ones will simply append 101 (10 1 or J A for Jane Austen) to the end of their names.

The proper response will not be to ignore them. But to ask them to accompany you to the gazebo. There, they shall use their fans to send a series of coded signals. Finally, she’ll say “I remind you, sir, that I am a rather accomplished seamstress.” Then, she shall spread her arms, both to display the dress she crafted so well (and fills so alluringly) and in the hopes that her invitation shall be understood. I, having felt her desire since our eyes first met across the ballroom, shall understand her offer and ravenously accept. Our lips will meet in a desperate, hungry kiss. My rough, broad hands will roam her bodice, thrilling at the feel of the velvet, and at the quivering silken flesh beneath. Unable to stand any more, I will grasp the bodice and tear it assunder. It will rip easily, along a seam weakened for this especial purpose. For a moment, I shall look at the fabric in my hands and marvel at the ingenuity of this creation. Than I shall raise my eyes to her pale flesh and marvel at wonders far more breathtaking.

186

After which the camera will pan away to the kickoff for the second half.

187

The history of psychiatry and mental hygiene in a ::cough:: nutshell:

First they locked up crazy people and chained them to the wall because they thought the moon had driven them mad and made them lunatics.

Then Phillippe Pinel made them take the chains off (sorry, “struck”, in every account I’ve ever read he “struck” their chains off) and the poor lunatics were free to run around in the asylum and treated with compassion and all (but presumably were not allowed to leave).

Then came Sigmund Freud and that ushered in the next phase, in which lunatics became “the mentally ill” for the first time.

Eventually in the 1950s, Thorazine came out and started making everything all better, because before that all the mental patients were getting psychoanalysis (::insert image of people on the Bellevue ward being escorted to the therapy office for their time to lay face-up on the couch and talk about their potty training days::).

But with the advent of Thorazine, we came to realize mental illness is a chemical imbalance, and a great social stride was made by understanding that these people are sick, not bad, that it’s a medical, not a moral problem, so they are so much better off now.

Oh, then around the same time, they were doing electroshock and lobotomies. The lobotomies were Bad Things and made Vegetables out of people so everyone in psychiatry knows that was a mistake and they don’t do that any more.

But electroshock got better and safer and stuff and so it’s OK now.

Meanwhile, they started understanding what causes mental illness. At first in the 1960s we were really shooting blind and just had some theories about mental illness being a chemical imbalance in the brain, and the drugs turned people into shuffling zombies and gave them bad side effects and bad permanent damage that made them drool and twitch.

But in the 70s, and the 80s, and the 90s, and now, we’ve gotten more and more closer to being on the verge of really understanding mental illness as a chemical imbalance and having drugs that make mental illnesses go away and although yesterday’s drugs turned people into shuffling zombies and didn’t really make the problems go away, we’re so much closer now, and psych treatment is only imposed against people’s will because they are too sick to know any better and don’t realize how much the drug helps them think straight, it’s not that they hate the drugs because the drugs turn them into shuffling zombies or anything, and so mental patients are so much better off now.

188

The Babylonian’s invented zero :wink:

They used a mark. Not a zero. It was a marker to indicate that no value existed there.

I realise it sounds the same thing, but it’s not. In babmath you might write five hundred and five as 505 (let’s pretend they used decimal) but they would write

505 - 505 = Nothing remains

It was the appreciation of zero as a number that was the valuable invention and that Babylonians did not have. It was an Arabic invention.

189
  1. The native americans (indians) were noble savages, living at peace with eachother and respecting nature-wrong! At the time of the Indian Wars (ca 1875-1890) the plains indians were happily exterminating eachother. It was a mark of bravery for an indian male to kill a member of another tribe…and the women were given the job of carving up any enemies who survived an initial attack.
    2)the antebellum south was a peaceful, happy society…the rich planters lived in big mansions, and the slaves lived in hovels. Wrong, most of the american south was dirt poor. There were a small handful ofvery rich planters, the rest were close to bankruptcy. The antebellum south was also am violent place-there were regular slave revolts, and poor whites often raided rich plantations, committing a series of appallingly brutal murders.
190

That King Cnut really thought that he could order the rising tide back.

http://www.encyclopedia4u.com/c/canute-the-great.html

191

Somebody is spreading their own myths…

They were not exterminating each other. The plains indians would often fight battles, but they were not about to wipe each other off the face of the earth. And in any case, the plains indians are not representative of all tribes, they were very much the exception in their warrior traditions. And yes, they DID live in harmony with their environment - they fully understood the need to conserve buffalo stocks. And have you a cite for the comment about women carving up enemies?

192

dylan: It was the appreciation of zero as a number that was the valuable invention and that Babylonians did not have. It was an Arabic invention.

All right, if you’re going to talk specifically about the use of zero as a valid number in arithmetic operations and so forth, rather than as a placeholder in a place-value system, it’s true that zero is not used that way in Babylonian texts.

However, you’re wrong to call it an "Arabic invention; it’s clear that the Indians used zero as a number well before the arithmetic of zero appeared in Arabic texts. The Brahmasphutasiddhanta of Brahmagupta, a Sanskrit work written in 628 CE, has a quite sophisticated discussion of operations with zero.

193

The right of the first night – don’t know if this link has already been posted – the myth turns up in just about every film and fiction book that takes place in medieval Europe.

Straight Dope Classic

194

On conserving buffalo stocks:
http://www.head-smashed-in.com/

See, you get a cliff, and you stampede some buffalo towards it. They go over the cliff, fall, smash their heads in.

Good eating on them buffalo. Admittedly, you can’t use all of 'em you kill.

And, of course, what happened to the megafauna? Some people say disease… others think people killed 'em all. And ate 'em.

http://www.trussel.com/prehist/news275.htm

195

Nonsense. Both before and after European settlement, Native American tribes regularly fought each other in bloody wars. Just to name a few: In the east, Iroquois fought amongst themselves (pre-5 Nations), as well as against Algonquin and other tribes. The Apaches and (perhaps to a lesser extent) the Navaho had warlike traditions in the southwest. And the Calusa were an aggressive Florida tribe. It’s also been established that the Sioux (admittedly a plains tribe) used to live much further east, until they were driven out by other tribes.

There wasn’t a magic line at the (current) Mexican-US border that demarcated peaceful from warlike tribes. (Surely you agree that the Aztecs, Caribs, Inca and other tribes were expansionist, slave-taking, warlike societies, correct?)

196

OK, so I was stretching too far by saying ‘exception’ - but the situation of perptual conflicts is perhaps comparable to medieval Europe. On paper, it looks like there was no end of strife, but actually most people lived peacefully most of the time.

197

That medieval swordsmen were unskilled knights clumsily swinging crude swords while lumbering around in heavy armor, or that they did not practice effective and complete martial arts including armored and unarmored, armed and unarmed technique, and that this was solely unique to eastern forms of combat.

198

As that site points out, it proved to be a sustainable method for six millennia. You can’t ask for a much more environmentally-balanced approach than that.

199

Actually there is evidence: Lincoln was caught no less than 52 times at Mr. P’s during his presidency; attempts to get photographic evidence stalled when Matthew Brady was unable to set up his camera outside due to Walt Whitman’s drunken protestations of love and “I just wanna tell you a little poem…”.
Finally captured by a Currier & Ives quick sketch artist as he fled the back room on his last known visit, Lincoln was confronted by activist Mattathias Catullus Besen but insisted “I only went there to use the telephone”, in spite of the fact that the phone would not even be invented for more than a decade.

Wait… I might be thinking of someone else…

200

So what became of the mammoth? The giant armadillo? The giant ground sloth? American horses? American camels? Etc., etc…