You omit the best part ! The reason Spartans turned on him and wanted to kill him ? He’d been macking on the queen. Truly a magnificent bastard.
The 27th Amendment to to the United States Constitution was submitted for ratification in 1789 as a prospective part of the Bill of Rights, but was not ratified until 1992. A college student started a national campaign after writing a paper about the largely forgotten proposed amendment in 1982.
Talleyrand is an impressive example of switching sides, too. He was a French diplomat for the Bourbon king, then the French Republic after the king was ousted, then Napoleon after the republicans were ousted, then the Bourbon king again when Napoleon was ousted, then the Orleanist king once the Bourbon king was ousted.
There is a short story, told in the form of letters, by H. Beam Piper, titled “He Walked Around the Horses” It’s a parallel universe story about what happens to a British diplomat, Sir Benjamin Bathurst, when he slips into an alternate timeline in which his “double” already exists.
The final correspondent speaks about people mentioned in the other timeline, who seems to have different careers. Here is what he said about Talleyrand:
I was quite amused to find our old friend Cardinal Talleyrand—without the ecclesiastical title—cast in the role of chief adviser to the usurper, Bonaparte. His Eminence, I have always thought, is the sort of fellow who would land on his feet on top of any heap, and who would as little scruple to be Prime Minister to His Satanic Majesty as to His Most Christian Majesty.
A French stand-up I love used to quip that Talleyrand lived his life bent down so far, they buried him in a hat box.
Here’s a 125 year-old pair of Levis that sold for ~100k recently. Note no belt loops. OTOH, it has buttons for hooking on suspenders.
(I guess I better add who gets my Levis to my will. Don’t want a nasty fight over them.)
*At least *the 16th. Earliest direct physical evidence I could find being 1511, with multiple occurrences in that century. Cite.
Speaking of the wrong place at the wrong time…
There is one person who survived TWO nuclear bomb attacks.
A Japanese businessman who, one fine morning in August, just happened to be going on his way, leaving Hiroshima, heading home to Nagasaki.
More American soldiers died per year in the Cold War years in the 1980’s than they did during the active wartime years of the 2000’s. 4,699 died from 1981 to 1982 (worst years in the 80’s) compared to 3,800 from 2005 to 2006 (the worst years of the 00’s).
The simple reason? There was on average 700,000 more people serving in the US military in the 1980’s than in the 2000’s. In addition due to mainly being a peacetime army a lot of soldiers died due to training accidents or off-duty accidents such as drunken driving or fights.
To make this more accessible, T. Rex (late Cretaceous) is closer to us time-wise, than to any Stegosaurus (late Jurassic). So, all of those scenes you’ve seen of Rexxie vs. a stego? Nope.
Alfonso Pérez de Guzmán, called Guzmán el Bueno (“Guzmán the Good One”) wasn’t too bad either.
A Castillian of unclear origin, he moved to what’s now Morocco, enlisting as a soldier in the toops of the Banu Marin Yusuf and rising through the ranks chop-chop. This was during some infighting the Banu Marines or Benimerines were having; you know, your typical medieval idea of a family argument. During this time he also did some fighting against his native Castille, but we’re talking more “auxiliary troops” than an official fight between his employer and his nominal king.
Eventually he returned to Castille, where he did some more chopping for Alfonso X.
Helped get a treaty going between the two, whence Castille assisted the Benimerines in their assault on Nassari Al-Andalus.
Went back to the service of the Banu Marines after Alfonso X died and his son Sancho IV inherited*.
Then the Castillians got a bit of an internecine fight of their own, so Sancho IV hired Guzmán to handle his North African fighting against Sancho’s brother Juan.
This included the siege of Tarifa, where the assaulting troops happened to include Guzmán Jr, a page in Juan’s service . This was the story that made Guzmán’s legend; as the tale goes, Juan threatened with killing the boy and the response was a thrown dagger and “in case yours isn’t sharp enough, have mine” (the legend also claims the boy had been captured).
After that he stayed in the service of Castille until his death.
My maternal grandfather changed sides something like 5 times in the Spanish Civil War of 1936-9, but he’s not famous.
- Which leads us to another curiosity: before El Quijote, Sancho was the stereotypical Spanish name. We had royal family trees full of Sanchos and Sanchas naming their firstborn Sancho or Sancha, or heck let’s get one of each. The name wasn’t as common in the 16th century as it had been at its height, but the book completely killed its popularity. If Cervantes had named Panza Jesús instead of Sancho, there wouldn’t be so many questions about “why do Hispanics use Jesús as a name?”
Boy, there’s an urban legend waiting to happen.
I’m not sure this is a historical oddity, but it is very pleasing. Alice (as in Wonderland) and Peter (as in Pan) actually met in 1932. (That’s Alice Pleasance Liddlel and Peter Llewelyn Davies, of course. John Logan on the tragedy of Peter and Alice - BBC News and others).
j
Parachutes were in use more than a century before the Wright brothers flew their airplane. The first ones, from the 1780s, were made of linen stretched over a wooden frame, similar to Da Vinci’s sketch from the 15th century. In 1797 Andre-Jacques Garnerin made the first descent in a frameless parachute, from a hot air balloon. Cite
A group of Vikings traveled to Constantinople and became the bodyguards of the Pope, thus founding the Swiss Guard.
Paul Revere never made it to Concord. The Brits stopped him and he blabbed about the revolutionaries’ plan. Nor did he receive a signal via lantern from the Old North Church.
Iolani Palace in Honolulu had electricity and telephone before the White House in DC.
Winston Churchill met and occasionally corresponded with Winston Churchill.
The traffic and finding a place to park.
Wells ribbed Welles about the spelling of his last name and was gracious enough to help Welles promote his next movie project.
Possibly even earlier. The settlement now known as Skara Brae has indoor toilets and a sewer and a form of flushing. It’s not as sophisticated as the buildings of the Indus valley civilisation, but it’s arguably a flushing toilet system and it probably dates back to ~3200 BC. The settlement as a whole dates back that far and since the sewer is buried underneath the houses it was probably the first thing built.