He didn’t make his horse anything, The rumour was that he planned to make it a consul.
“To prevent Incitatus, his favourite horse, from growing restive he always picketed the neighbour-hood with troops on the day before the races, ordering them to enforce absolute silence. Incitatus owned a marble stable, an ivory stall, and a jewelled collar; also a house, furniture, and slaves - to provide suitable entertainment for guests whom Caligula invited in its name. It is said that he even planned to award Incitatus a consulship.”
Well, I think those of us arguing the case for a “Canada” were pretty much ignoring the whole White House thing. I know after my first post I dropped it.
Alas, I don’t think there’s a way to debunk it. Some parts of history we can debunk (such as “Good luck, Mr. Gorsky, wherever you are”). That’s because we’ve got really good records and we’re trying to debunk a precise fact.
But “The Civil War was not about slavery”! Impossible. The verdict of the majority of US historians is that the Civil War was about slavery. Probably 99% of people in the old “North” and “West” would believe that now. A majority in the “New South” believe it, but not as many as in the North.
Neither the US nor the Confederate states ever claimed that it was about slavery. A Southerner of the time would have said it was about “state’s rights” and the implicit idea that the Constitution allowed states to leave the Union as well as enter it. A Northerner would have said that it was about “rebellion” and “upholding the Constitution.” To be fair, some Southerners were outspoken in their support of slavery and their firm belief that African-Americans were subhumans. Some Northerners were outspokenly against slavery and supported a war to end it. The majority hedged.
My late father was a historian who had studied that period. I studied it myself, both in college and on my own. My father and I talked about it a lot. We concluded that we believe that the Civil War was about slavery. Other issues were involved, but slavery would have precipitated a war even without them, and without slavery, war might have been avoided.
All else is argument. Good historians will offer opinions and nothing more.
Myth: A statue of George Washington stands at the top of the Nelson Column in Trafalgar Square.
Truth: As we all know, this is not a statue of George Washington, it is a statue of Catherine the Great. In drag. On a horse. :rolleyes:
“What is this guy talking about?” you ask?
My story is (and I swear I am not making this up) while I was on one of those wonderful sightseeing buses in London several years ago, we happened to pull into Trafalgar Square. As I gazed around, I heard a woman say, with a distinctively American accent “Who is that up there? Is that a statue of George Washington?” I think she was confused by the hat and coat.
I had to explain that, in a square named after a famous naval battle, on top of a column named after the hero of that battle, it was unlikely that the statue would be of an American, particularly that American.
[/quote]
The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery.
…
The Presidential election of 1852 resulted in the total overthrow of the advocates of restriction and their party friends. Immediately after this result the anti-slavery portion of the defeated party resolved to unite all the elements in the North opposed to slavery an to stake their future political fortunes upon their hostility to slavery everywhere. This is the party two whom the people of the North have committed the Government. They raised their standard in 1856 and were barely defeated. They entered the Presidential contest again in 1860 and succeeded.
The prohibition of slavery in the Territories, hostility to it everywhere, the equality of the black and white races, disregard of all constitutional guarantees it its favor, were boldly proclaimed by its leaders and applauded by its followers.
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Seems to me that there is ample evidence from the secessionists themselves that the Civil War was about slavery.
The annoying historical myth is the one being promulgated by the Sons of Confederate Veterans and others that the Civil War was rather about taxation and “state’s rights.”
While this is true, the Ruplublican strongholds were far outgunned, politically.
Though the distinction, historically, is fairly minimal.
Here’s a related myth: Ninja could fight. Quite frankly, a Ninja trying to fight a Samurai (especially one of those modern fools who think they’ve got secret Ninja fighting techniques) would get his ass handed to him on a stick. A very pointed, sharp, curved metal stick, in fact. Ninja carried weapons and knew how to use them decently, but they studied every possible methgod of avoiding combat, because Samurai guards trained their whole lived just to kill people and were better armed and more heavily armored. And their was no secret ninja fighting style, not at least as a credible martial school.
“Ninja magic” actually did exist, thougyh. They had many tricks for making it seem as though they had mystic powers.
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One bit of lore I’ve heard repeated many times is "When native Americans
Its partly true, albeit not literally so. but its also true mostly because they had no choice. The Plains ain’t exactly overflowing with bountiful resources.
In South America several tribes practiced burn agriculture, which destroyed huge swaths of rainforest. And no, they didn’t shed any tears over it. And it may not have been ustainable, either - their was a definite shrinkage. In fact, the forest came back with the arrival of the White Man in SA, because too many poeple died from disease to keep burning so much land.
To be fair, he invented an economic niche that defines the PC era to this day.
Are you sure abotu this? I thought that the poor, especially agricultural folk, tended to marry quite early. Urban workers, of course, married later.
Come to think of it, I’ve also heard that they only were able to confirm very few executions, with other deaths being attributed to the Inquisition unfarily. Certainly, it was far, far outmatched by the conveniently-forgotten British version.
It is still amazing to read about this disaster! The French high command were on drugs or something…they had AMPLE warning that the VietMinh were dragging heavy guns through the jungle, and had encircled Dien Ben Phu months before the battle.
I am just an armchair general…but even I would never have been so foolish as to drop my troops into a valley, encircled by high hills! Also, there was NO escape plan!
From the Bernard fall book (“HELL IN A VERY SMALL PLACE”)-once Colonel Piroth (the French artillery commander) realized that the base was surrounded by VitMinh with heavy artillery, he committed suicide! :smack:
Well, now I know what to get Guinastasia for Christmas. With the myth being as old as it is there must be countless woodcuts, statuettes, and matreshka dolls based on it.
I thought of one the other night when my husband was watching that Merlin mini-series on the Sci-Fi channel: King Arthur was a King of England in medieval times. This one really annoys me. I think there are peope who think medieval = dark ages or something, I don’t know. What I do know is that the names Kings of England are very well-documented (this really feels like an understatement) during that period and Arthur isn’t one of them! There are theories that this guy or that guy from the first millenium might be Arthur, but a medieval King? Nope.
I remember mom taking me to a lecture on Arthur at a library way back in elementary school.
The speaker described the way most people pictured Arthur, in a suit of finely crafted plate mail. He then explained that this was about as accurate as picturing Arthur in chaps, a ten gallon hat, and wielding six shooters.
AFAIK (I’m sure Guinastasia will correct any errors I make) If Arthur was based on a real king, the man would have lived between 500 and 1000 AD. The original tales did not include Lancelot (IIRC he was taken from a French source and stuck in) or the grail. Morganna was originally two women rather than one. And there were plenty of other changes.
Well, if Arthur was a dux bellorum in the sixth century (as originally reported by Nennius around 800), then he clearly was an early medieval figure (if we date the Middle Ages to the fall of Rome and deposition of Romulus Augustulus in 476). I am unaware of any clearly recorded English kings prior to the Saxon Egbert of 802-809, so there is room for Arthur back before the year 600. (Although, strictly speaking, Nennius never claimed that he was king. Arthur did not get elevated to “king” until Geoffrey of Monmouth had him conquer all of western and northern Europe in his 1136 work. In fact, I doubt that anything not wholly fictional and anachronistic has been written about Arthur from Geoffrey onward.)
Certainly, giving Arthur and his knights plate armor and jousts and the orders of chivalry are seriously anachronistic–but even anachronism has a long pedigree: Malory, writing around 1470, places the appearance of the Siege Perilous in 487, then has Arthur lament the use of cannons against his people as he goes to fight Mordred.
You see, uh, Malory was actually, er, making a scathing indictment of the state of church law and its misapplication against, um, well, he was really referring to Innocent III’s interdict against England in 1208 … you see, he’s lamenting the use of canons against his people.
True. I wasn’t saying that they were anywhere near parity with the Dems ( they weren’t, not even in Tennessee) but that, yes, Virginia, there were Southern Reps (albeit not particularly powerful ones) between Reconstruction and the 1950’s.
Every time I see hat POW/MIA black flag, I wonder: are there really thousands of vietnam war prisoners, in jungle camps in vietnam?The youngest of these guys have to be pushing 50 by now…why is the vietnam government still keeping them locked up? :mad:
I can’t give any sources, since it’s quite old, and actually, I don’t even remember exactly what period was covered (the fourteenth or fifteenth century, I believe). But I read a study based on churches records, showing that indeed first marriages, on average, happened quite late. I can’t remember what were these averages, either. But it seems to me it was in the mid-20’s for men, a couple years less for women. So it’s consistent with the 26 yo advanced by the poster you’re responding too.
You’re going to tell me that my memory is so blurry that I shouldn’t have bothered posting, but this information striked me since, like you, I believed that people marrried significantly earlier at this time.
