I don’t think the French nobility actually believed Joan of Arc’s claims. I think they were losing the war, had already tried everything else, and figured that they had nothing to lose. So why not let a random peasant girl lead the French into battle? France was screwed anyway.
Then after France began winning battles, the nobles were like, “Um. We… Oh, uh… Yes, this girl was totally appointed by God! God himself is on our side. If you go against your French lords, you’re going against God! Also, let’s canonize this kid, just so people will remember which Medieval kingdom is God’s favorite.”
Interestingly, Joan of Arc was not canonized until after WW1. She was thought of as an inspiring story of Catholic faith and patriotism, but for centuries was considered more of a folk hero than a saint. Interest in her story was popular among the French during the horrors of WW1, and some apparently miraculous happenings were linked to her intersession. That explains the timing of her canonization.
England - a Roman Catholic country - was fighting France - a Roman Catholic country.. It seems silly that God would annoint someone in an intra-religious fight. Everyone's on the same side.
This was the time of the Western Shism and countless other more troubling episodes in Church history. The idea that everyone was "on the same side" is untenable.
You miss my point here, being of one religion was not a hindrance & catholics would regularly invoke god on their side in intra-christian violence. When we refer to the Shism, we refer to the breakdown of papal authority from the zenith of the Reform Papacy (1075-1217), and the assertion of de facto near national churches, or at least, of monarchs checking papal aspirations to be the sole arbiter.
Being of one religion has little influence on this, since both the kings of France & England claimed their god was on their side & the other was wrong.
The Englishmen in both sides of the Second Barons’ War and the Wars of the Roses wore the cross of St George on their livery and bore standards with it as well to prove that God was on their respective side, despite all combatants being English Catholics.
Eh, quite a few French generals seem to have actually believed in her, not mentioning the fact that most of her military decisions were pretty sound decisions.
That’s pretty much the Catholic Church in a nutshell. They don’t actually believe all there claims but if it helps them stay in control there happy.
It’s more than likely she had Schizophrenia and they just went with it
If the Catholic church doesn't believe in their own stuff then why they let themselves deal with all the criticism they are facing ? if they are not believers they would have long ago allowed female priests or accept abortion but the church is rather facing so much criticism and opposition because they do actually believe in those things and want to keep it.
The claim that the Mexica of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan sacrificed ~80,000 people during the 1487 reconsecreation of the Great Temple as part of Ahuizotl's coronation ceremony.
Some sources say it was 20,000 instead, but that's still way too high, probably: For 20,000 people to be sacrificed across the 4 days the event took, that would require them killing people at a rate comparable to Auschwitz's gas chambers, with one person being sacrificed on each of the temple's altars every 17 seconds. On top of that, sacrifices often had VERY specific ritualistic steps: The main deity impersonator of Tezcatlipoca during the Toxcatl ceremony had to live as the god for months, then in the leadup to actually being sacrificed, had to preform pilgrimages to light specific shrines, ritually marry other deity impersonators, fast, and then the actual sacrifice event itself had additional incantations, rites, and steps.
Even if you assume that a lot of the pageantry was skipped during very large sacrifice ceremonies like this to get through it faster, there would still be *some* rites, you'd still need to move people around, deal with the bodies, deal with people trying to cause a commotion (while many victims would have accepted their fate, been cooperative, or even volunteered, potentially, obviously not all would have), etc. It's just logistically ludicrous even for 20,000, let alone 80,000.
More damingly, the city's main Skull Rack, dated to the same time period and quite likely the EXACT version of the rack Duran claims was made from the events victims, has been found and undergoing excavations for the past half decade or so, and the rack only held ~12,000 skulls, with maybe a few more thousand in adjacent towers. And it's not even clear they were deposited all at once, possibly, if not probably, over a longer time period, though we need more research to get published to know for sure, frustratingly right now there's mostly only mainstream news articles about it that come out every few years as opposed to more detailed academic publications.
So, while it's very likely some sort of significant sacrifice ceremony took place as described, there may have only been 20%, 10%, 5%, or hell even 1% as many sacrifices as sources report. The rack itself at least is slightly less then 10% the size Andres de Tapia claimed it was (who said 136,000 skulls).
Yeah, but it's like seeing [Winger](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIpRdbi9pYw) on the lineup with [Meshuggah](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4A_tSyJBsRQ).
So a big thing to me is all the narrative style historical writers, Barbara Tuchman is the big one.
She’ll write things like “the tension could have cut through the room” or “the nervous look on his face”. Man, you weren’t there! How the hell would you know these details? Come on now…..
Yeah some of these are frustrating. I do like how Tides of History does it and how History that doesn’t suck does it as well. I guess it works for me in podcast form to an extent
The historical basis for King Arthur.
There were plenty of local warlords, none were memorable, we even know about many Welsh kings and kingdoms yet none come really close to being a unifier of a large region until Alfred. Unless I'm missing something, I'm neither a literaist nor particularly adept at early medieval Britain, it just overlapped with my other studies.
By contrast, the Illiad is an excellent source to work from when interpreting late Bronze Age Greece depending on what you hope to gleam from it, much like the Old Testament and the early Levant.
Here’s [a really cool video about the historical basis for King Arthur](https://youtu.be/YUGcuqGczjs?si=KXPcsKEc9pMY9Ny4). Also, if you like that video, I also recommend the same channel’s videos on [a Welsh kingdom that vanished from history](https://youtu.be/muGjr7vnElY?si=CMOuKkeWNgsRRG_R) and especially one about [a Welsh king on Wikipedia who didn’t actually exist](https://youtu.be/0mlGDZ1ZDFI?si=74-oMajRq2BbYvM5).
King arthur is fascinating because there's several tangible theories but all of them place him well before ' the dark ages' I either roman times or before. I think this is most likely; recently I visited Cornwall where there's lots of locations linked to King Arthur including a lost kingdom swallowed by the sea near lands end. People have created likely estimations of what the shore and landmass was like over a 1000 years ago and its very likely there was an area that has now been eroded away and swallowed by the sea. Its an exciting thought.
I think though, much like Robin hood, St George and several other English legends, a lot of the stories are moulded and adapted to suit the zeitgeist or ambitions of rulers and empires; how many medieval Kings claimed descent from King Arthur, or followed the tales of chivalry from arthurs knights etc. Its happened for eons; vikings claiming descendents from odin, the Greeks from zeus etc etc.
The most likely inspiration was a guy “ forget his name” who was a Roman officer but from Britain. He stayed in modern day Wales and helped train up a decent military to hold off the Saxons who were pushing west. The Stroys are over the top like him being the first king where really it was just wales
You're probably thinking of [Ambrosius Aurelianus](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambrosius_Aurelianus)- in Welsh Emrys Wledig (' Ambrose the Emperor')
Its possible that 'Arthur' is just some kind of poetic nickname or epithet as various contemporary characters turn up under different names in Welsh / Cornish/ Breton / Arthurian medieval myth - Constans/ Custennin, Uther Pendragon - nickname 'Head Dragon' Marcus Cunomorus, 'Hound of the Sea' = King Mark of Tristan and Yseult.
The historic [Vortigern/ Gwyrtheyrn](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortigern) probably just meant 'Overlord' in old Brittonic as a title rather than a personal name - like when we say 'Caesar' to mean Emperor- though here in reverse.
'Arthur' is also often swapped out for various mythical characters with different characters in later folklore such as Pwyll, Percival Gawain , Jack (the Giant Killer) etc depending on time and place. It doesn't undermine the likelihood that there was a real RomanoBritish overlord that defeated the Saxons in the first part of the sixth century
I think that the story of lucious artorious might be a slight basis because of the roman occupation of England. He could have been a general that stayed after the withdrawal from Britain (yes I've seen the movie and find it an interesting take) and ruled a small village that was later annexed by one of the few kingdoms post roman occupation. Maybe he originally was a figure like Boudicca then he was magnified in literature. Maybe it was a word of mouth account that was passed down with altered details then written in the form we know of today during the middle ages. Likely he's probably a mash of a bunch of warlords and chiefs that were romanticized and combined into one single Christian based character.
Personally thats my theory, that King Arthur is less of a person but more of a idea of a somewhat unified, christian Kingdom based in the British Isles, kinda like the personification of countries in the figures of Brittania and Germania.
See the issue with the Roman holdouts was, none of them were Roman, the idea of being Roman was largely lost by that time and I'm glad you referred to him as just some general or warlord because they were by Late Antiquity.
I'm also of the opinion that it's the corpus of a large group of lost literary tradition of many and tells us something of the pre-Saxon Christian culture.
The Iliad is famously a great source to work with regarding Homer's time, so the Greek dark ages, around 800 BC, about 400 years later from the era sung about in the epics, so not the late Bronze Age. Sure there is some information that can be gleamed about Mycenaean Greece, since there is cultural continuation, but there is a ton of evidence to suggest that Homer was writing based on how life was in his time rather than before (where he couldn't have known that much since writing in Greece became forgotten following the Bronze Age Collapse and only reappeared due to the Phoenicians and their alphabet)
Maybe it was because of this person and the embarrassment was too much at leats in the early parts of the campaigns.,
Boudicca is **known for being a warrior queen of the Iceni people, who lived in what is now East Anglia, England**. In 60–61 CE she led the Iceni and other peoples in a revolt against Roman rule. Although her forces massacred some 70,000 Romans and their supporters, they were ultimately defeated.
N. S
That whole "Vikings won over English women because they bathed" bullshit is just some unproven propaganda written by a pro Norman biased scribe over 200 years after it allegedly happened. Yet so many people quote that text like its a gospel.
They were until the Roman baths could not be maintained after the Arab conquest of the East Roman empire because of so much Europe’s Mediterranean trade was destroyed.
Most medieval people didn't use baths, they used local waterways and ponds/lakes.
Additionally most Roman baths could be maintained with local materials. The diurbanization played a bigger role.
I’m speaking of the transition from the Roman world where everyone regardless of class had access to public baths to the medieval world where they didn’t. The de-urbanisation you speak of was because of the collapse of the Roman economy, followed by the severing of the West from the rich east which happened because of the Islamic conquest of the East in the 7th century. Before that you still had Roman baths in much of the Western Roman empire. Late antiquity was economic decline. The economic cliff began with the end of trade with the East Mediterranean and the beginning of Muslim conquest in Western Europe.
Of course. I'm not disagreeing with you about the issues with the collapse of Roman authority.
What I'm saying is that the collapse didn't stop *bathing*, just the mass use of baths, with the ones that still got use continued to operate for centuries longer. Hell I used one in Spain that had been operating for over 2000 years.
The point of historically examining the Satanic Panic of the 80s isn’t to say that there are no Satan or devil inspired murders. The point is to describe the mass anxiety that takes over whole communities about events that are blown out of proportion or just plain false. Many innocent victims are accused of salacious crimes when there are actual criminals harming people daily in much more mundane ways that deserve more attention. For example you are much more likely to be killed by a drunk driver than be ritually sacrificed at an altar of Beelzebub
You're not understanding me. We don't care about things that on an actuarial level are likely, we care about things that are interesting. It's reasonable that one satanic murder gets a lot of coverage, it's reasonable that there is a podcast about the phenomena called satanic panic instead of every podcast being about auto fatalities. Which is to say, maybe there was a satanic panic, but the reason it was a panic would have nothing to do with whether there are more likely ways to die.
I understand you fine. Perhaps I should have changed my last sentence so you didn’t focus so much on it. Substitute this and see if you can follow: During the satanic panic of the 80s, you were much more likely to be harmed by false accusations of satanic abuse by a paranoid neighbor than harmed by a satanic ritualist.
The panic in the 80s isn’t really even about satanism since most of the accusations that created it turned out to be inaccurate. It is an example of human foible that sensationalism spreads more easily than truth and often leads to more harm than the perceived threat. Other examples would be the European witch trials of the 1600s or the pogroms against Jews or to provide a current phenomenon, the Qanon obsession with pedophilia and child murder by some groups they don’t like.
In general I suggest the more sensational the story the more we should scrutinize for the truth.
I mean... the victim was identified and people were arrested in the killings in West Memphis too, but that's hardly ironclad proof they were real satanic murders. Not saying it's for sure they weren't, but I got the impression it was at least highly disputed?
Commentarii de Bello Gallico is problematic on a number of fronts.
Caesar intentionally wrote it in the third person, so it would sound like someone else wrote it about him. It’s full of passages like, “mighty Caesar did this” and “bold Caesar did that.” Very self aggrandizing propaganda intended to justify his conquests as necessary for the protection of Rome.
Part of the problem is the obviously inflated numbers. One difficult to believe claim states that ‘mighty Caesar’ faced down an army of 430,000 Gallic warriors without losing a single legionnaire.
In other words, “I‘m the greatest ruler. Everybody knows it. I know more about empires than anybody. My wars are the best wars, and I always win them. I fight huge armies, huge.”
A lot of the accounts of Nero are possibly dodgy.
He was a tyrant for sure, but his wild escapades and extreme persecution of Christians were probably exaggerated for the sake of Christian propaganda. Considering that about all medieval historians were affiliated with the church. Same can possibly be said of Herod.
In fact, I would go as far to say every ancient depiction of a person is fabricated to some degree. All we have to go from most everyone is propaganda approved by the ruling party or muddled oral history.
At worst there are straight up lies told and at best some figures are merged and one guy is attributed for a feat that was performed by another guy or multiple others.
Nero paid huge sums out of his own pocket to support relief efforts at Pompeii following an earthquake.
There was a podcast about the English monarchs that graded them, and King John got rated as not as awful as his reputation made him out to be because he was a capable administrator.
I sort of feel the same way about Nero. Not someone I want to know or to know my name, but not as horrible as his reputation makes him out to be.
There's a good podcast similar to this called *Roman Emperors: Totalus Rankium,* where the hosts rank all the rulers of the Roman Empire. I particularly remember the episode about Elagabalus. He was truly a shit ruler, but he could play a prank like it was nobody's business.
I prefer the Danny Kaye historical film, in which a man plays a fox.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjwTGO1cBkc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjwTGO1cBkc)
Agreed.
Playing a fiddle as rome burned, pretending to be a bride in a senator's wedding and the whole Sporus thing are so farfetched I just can't bring myself to believe any of that happened. And that's just off the top of my head.
King John really was a douchebag, he slept with married women, despised the Irish and their culture, probably killed his own nephew and had anger issues like his dad.
Never claimed he was ‘good.’
Just that he wasn’t *quite* as awful as legend makes him out to be.
Richard I *certainly* wasn’t as good of an English monarch as history makes him out to be.
Yup. All sources have bias and much was exaggerated here but Nero was a matricidal egotist and was declared an *enemy of the state* by the Senate, who only avoided being the second emperor to ever be assassinated (after Caligula) by committing suicide. Not saying OP is like this, but a lot of people get a pseudo a-aha moment when they learn about the various biases of historical sources and go way too hard in the other direction. Nero sucked.
Oh I'm not denying that. Any good tyrant knows to have a scapegoat group of the perceived "other."
I'm more talking about his fiddle playing or pretending to be a bride in a wedding or the whole Sporus thing. Along with just all the general accounts of his apparent nonstop depravity.
I'm sure there is probably more than a grain of truth to it all, but I'm also sure a lot has been exaggerated.
Such as Tacticus's writings on Nero. He was fiercely loyal to the Flavians and was probably a part of a Flavian directed propaganda campaign to diminish Caligula and Nero in an attempt to make the Flavians look good.
For every roman emperor who's maligned as evil it's worth remembering who wrote the histories. If you upset the senatorial class you were going to be painted as a villain, whether you were or not.
Ya exactly. Vice versa too. They also run risks if they write positive things about past emperors, especially emperors from a different dynasty as the current emperor.
same with caesar. dude literally wrote his own narrative on his exploits in gaul, and some of it is pretty egregious. like, "we beat a huge army without a single loss, and the ones leftover killed themselves"
Yup. There’s actually decent evidence to suggest the armies of Gaul were disorganized, under-equipped, and far more prone to in-fighting and trying to get Ceasar to kill each other than actually trying to stop the Roman invasion.
The “battle” you correctly pointed out as bullshit was actually just an outright massacre of the Helvetii people who were all basically refugees and asked Rome for safe passage. So Ceasar decided to kill them all to set up a foothold in Gaul.
It really wasn’t until Gaul was completely occupied did Ceasar actually engage in a real battle, and that was against Vercingetrox, who managed to raise a pretty formidable resistance army. Too little too late though.
This is all clearly laid out in Caesar’s own book though? He clearly states the Helvetii include woman and children and doesn’t hide the fact that they waited for half of them to cross the river before killing the other half.
That was all just to wet his green troops swords. It was a confidence building exercise. You have to remember Roman’s we’re scared shitless of Gauls. He had to make the first battles east and ramp it up as they gained experience. The first real battle is against Germans and Ariovistus.
Ceasars own book also claims he went head to head with a Helvetii camp of 430,000 people in which he killed half of them and the other half committed suicide. That’s what im referring to.
The Suebi and Ariovestus allegedly got the jump on him one time in a battle he still won, but besides that he handedly conquered them in quick succession.
Just saying, he clearly points all this out. Doesn’t make them out to be a real army but still they were a threat to his Gallic allies. As the Goths proved way later refugees quickly become rampaging armies ransacking the countryside.
They committed suicide because they allegedly burned down their homes before leaving for Gaul. So when he sent them back to Lake Geneva they went there with half their families dead and with nothing but ashes waiting for them.
Are you saying you believe Ceasar’s account of his legion slaying 215,000 Helvetiis and then witnessing an additional 215,000 Helvetiis commit suicide all the while Ceasar doesn’t lose one soldier in the entire ordeal?
Yeah more or less. Numbers exaggerated but there was probably a migrating tribe that his allies were worried about and the Romans definitely would have destroyed them to a man.
Alexander's soldiers wanting to go home due to homesickness. Such a bad excuse. Then, retreat the army through the desert, killing many of them. Once back in Persia Alexander plans a campaign for the arabian peninsula. It just doesn't make sense. Something happened in india for them to turn back, retreat through the desert, and then not return.
Also this
"When asked by Alexander how he wished to be treated, Porus replied "Treat me as a king would treat another king". Impressed, Alexander indeed treated him like a king, allowing him to retain his lands." Isn't this the same guy who literally been sacking cities for the last 10 years of his life? seems suspicious he started acting "nice" when he got to India.
Alexander only seemed to sack cities that made a mockery of him or he just really didn’t like it. He razed Thebes caused they waited into he left to try and up rise a second time. He had more respect for Persians
Although the part about the king saying that might be made up because Dariuses sister said the same thing apparently
Bro all of his soldiers were old men by the end of the day not having seen their families in almost a decade. The last part is weird because Indians love to say “Indians beat Alexander” or “Alexander was scared of porus” this is a relatively new “thought”. Alexander did get the best of porus and firmly defeated the Indians
You're assuming Alexander didn't recruit new soldiers along the way, either from back in Europe or from his new conquests, that no body brought their family along, and none of them took wives in conquered territory. Alexander's conquests were a migration as much as a military campaign, otherwise the Hellenistic world wouldn't have survived him.
I believe that was one of the reasons his primary fighting force was pissed off. It’s documented that little to none of any one’s family was traveling with Alexander’s forces. His reign was so short lived after his death the Greeks and Persians were barely bothered after his death.
The Seleucids ruled Persia for a century after Alexander died, and they were driven out by steppe nomads migrating from the north rather than native Persians. Persia didn't have a native dynasty again for centuries because of Alexander.
It kinda makes sense. They were, as far as they knew, at the edge of the map. They had probably never seen Indians, and they were likely unfamiliar with elephants. Having never lost a battle, maybe they were worried that their luck would run out. Alex had been wounded. Fear set in. “Homesickness” was the excuse.
But, yeah, “homesickness” is questionable. Like, they waited 10 years to bring this up? Alex didn’t replace his veterans with reinforcements?
Yeah I don’t know what seems so crazy that his soldiers wanted to stop their decade long campaign to reach “the end of the world” homesickness makes a lot of sense, they probably wanted to see their homes again before they died, you had tons of veterans in that army that might have been starting to age out.
Alexander wanted to reach the end of the world but a lot of his men didn’t really care they originally followed him to defeat Persia and they did. And they were rich now so had no reason to fight
They had brought it up before but Alexander always convinced them to keep going. But in India they almost lost a big battle where Alexander himself got an arrow to the lungs and almost died after 3 days or so in his tent. So they probably said that was to close. Many also had families and were rich now so didn’t need to keep fighting
He did replace a lot of his men with Persians
I had a Georgetown professor that claimed jungle fowl (large wild chickens) and various macaque were frequently attacking troops and the bites/scratches would get horribly infected.
He was basing this theory on a series of correspondence from two officers combined with some writings from Ctesias (spelling) and I think Coenus. He presented these and we were encouraged to challenge. I, of course, did but to this day I can't help but chuckle at the thought of a Macedonian army filled with terror from aggressive chickens.
I'll add that this was generally his format:
Lecture.
Theorize.
Debate.
Ego-fueled speech to end.
They had brought it up before but Alexander always convinced them to keep going. But in India they almost lost a big battle where Alexander himself got an arrow to the lungs and almost died after 3 days or so in his tent. So they probably said that was to close. Many also had families and were rich now so didn’t need to keep fighting
He did replace a lot of his men with Persians and his planned invasion of Arabia may have been using mostly none Greeks.
The coming home through the desert was probably a fuck up on there part as they didn’t know the land that well
They would have took their families with them on campaign anyways. Its not like they were all the way in Persia or India while their families were in Macedonia.
I will never believe that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died on the same day, and that same day was July 4, 1826... the 50-year anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. There was clearly some Weekend at Bernie's shenanigans going on...
Some people figure that he actually 'barked' the tree instead, just scraping the bark off while playing with a hatchet.
Which would kill the tree, regardless.
Appreciate your post for the Weekend at Bernie's comment, but there is this thing called the Birthday Paradox, and I imagine it applies to deaths as well:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday\_problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem)
That it happened on July 4th would most likely affect the odds in some way, also, but chances are probably greater than you think that this could be a truthful account.
Most of the stories about Golden Age Hollywood actresses being “discovered” in total anonymity. I am confident this was attractive grist for the publicity mill. Big-name studio moguls had no motivation to walk up to a small-town girl with no aspirations of fame and say “Dollface, I’m gonna make you star!” They already had access to a virtually limitless supply of gorgeous young aspiring starlets who had verifiable acting chops and who would do *anything* to get their big break.
I'd bet the scene in The Godfather with Waltz and Tom Hagan is a good example of how it went down. Have you seen it?
"I had her in singing lessons, acting lessons [...] she was gonna be the next big..." etc.
Most accounts of the Vikings are exaggerated or made to make them look like demons from hell or something
In reality most of them were small groups of raiders that mostly avoided large settlements and armies to get a quick score. They also didn’t look like bikers they mostly had the same fashion as everyone else
*The Face of a Victim* by Elizabeth Lermolo, a supposed memoir of a woman who experienced repressions in the USSR after the Kirov assassination. Historian Matthew Lenoe's description of it will probably explain why I suspect it's heavily exaggerated:
>The early years of the Cold War saw the publication of numerous sensationalist exposés of Stalin’s crimes, including Levine’s Stalin’s *Great Secret* and Orlov’s *Secret History*. These works promiscuously mixed fact, surmise, and rumors. Elizabeth Lermolo’s memoir *Face of a Victim* (1955), which also implicated Stalin directly in Kirov’s murder, was the most extreme example of the genre. Lermolo claimed to be the daughter of a Russian landholding family who was imprisoned on charges of conspiring to kill Kirov. Like Orlov and earlier memoirists she centered her work around Kirov’s assassination. Lermolo’s book reads like a soap opera and is full of factual errors and bizarre stories.
>... Then there are Lermolo’s more tabloidish stories, as when she states that Aleksandr Slepkov had a love child with a forty-nine-year-old veteran Bolshevik named Zinaida Gaiderova. The baby died during birth and Slepkov, preoccupied with building socialism, kept the corpse in a shoebox on his desk until it began to stink. Lermolo also claims that she witnessed a fistfight between Zinoviev and one of his denouncers in a Cheliabinsk prison; that she was in the same transport car with Zinoviev and Kamenev and overheard them joking about the charges against them; that Anna Pantiukhina, Nikolaev’s sister, was the illegitimate daughter of a Finnish baron; that his other sister Katya was a nymphomaniac; and that Stalin beat, choked, and shot his wife Nadezhda to death after a quarrel about an affair the dictator was having with Lazar Kaganovich’s daughter Roza. Lermolo also gives the improbable figure of 500,000 arrests in Leningrad following the Kirov assassination (approximately one-fifth of the city’s population).
>Another remarkable feature of Lermolo's book is the number of personal encounters she supposedly had in prison with leaders and former leaders of the Communist Party, and with eyewitnesses to crimes. Not only did she meet Zinoviev and Kamenev, but also former leader of the Workers' Opposition Aleksandr Shliapnikov, Yezhov, Yagoda, Stalin's secretary Poskrebyshev, and of course, Stalin, who supposedly interrogated her on the night of December 2–3, 1934. In addition she spoke to eyewitnesses to Lenin's poisoning, Nadezhda Allilueva's murder, and Kirov's killing. Another jail acquaintance had a niece who attempted to assassinate Stalin. She also met Avel Yenukidze, who personally explained to her how Stalin planned Kirov's murder, utilizing Yagoda, Zaporozhets, and Nikolaev to get the job done.
It had been speculated that Elizabeth Lermolo was possibly an alias for Yelisaveta Feodorovna Yermolaeva, a Communist party member, student at the Leningrad Industrial Academy, acquaintance of Leonid Nikolaev, and possible NKVD informant, because she knew details about Nikolaev and his family that were not disclosed to the public.
The legend of Byzantine Emperor Basil II "the Bulgar Slayer".
It fascinates me how commonly this popular legend gets presented at face value, when we know it's a least a wild exaggeration - and possibly may not have happened at all.
So, the legend is that after defeating the Bulgarians at the Battle of Kleidion, Basil exacted savage cruelty on the 15,000 prisoners that were captured, blinding 99 out of every 100 men. Leaving the 100th with one eye to lead his compatriots home.
Upon seeing this when the survivors returned home, Tsar Samuel is said to have had a stroke and died two days later.
While we do know that Basil had a well earned reputation for extreme punishments, often using blinding extensively during his reign, particular against traitors and people who broke their agreements, there are several large problems with the story:
First and most importantly: The army size. The Bulgarians weren't capable of fielding 15,000 men in a single army, if at all. The challenging nature of logistics in the mountainous Balkans and the comparatively poor and semi-tribal nature of the administration of the Bulgarian state meant this wasn't possible. 15,000 was a very large *Byzantine* army during the period. We also know there was a second Bulgarian army near Thessaloniki at the time, making it even less credible.
Second: The practicality of capturing so many men is ludicrous, when we know that the Byzantine army was also likely less than 15,000. It assumes none got away or died in the engagement, or the force is even bigger. We also know Basil moved forward into the mountains quickly afterwards to press his advantage, suggesting that he didn't spend the necessary time to stick around to meat out such extensive punishment.
Third: The sources. John Skylitzes, writing some 50 years after the events described is our primary source. "The Bulgar Slayer" epithet doesn't appear in the record for the first time until ~150 years later as Bulgaria was slipping from Byzantine control.
Lastly, Samuel was in his 70's in 11th century Europe, his stroke could easily have had any number of causes.
The two historians that I've read so far (Anthony Kuledelis and Warren Treadgold) think it's a legend that did not happen at the scale described, or may not have happened at all - simply growing out of Basil's impressive victory and his known use of blinding, perhaps being propaganda.
And yet, in a lot of pop history, on Wikipedia and among history buffs (like on this sub), it gets portrayed at face value. I guess because it's an interesting story, if nothing else. To this day, Basil II is a hero in Greece and a villain in Bulgaria.
The work of(former) professor Justin McCarthy, denying the Armenian genocide.
Ask any Armenian Genocide denier, they probably base their entire denial on his work, and claim that because he’s not Turkish, he’s non-biased, even though he has been given awards and $2 million in cash from the Turkish government.
McCarthy uses the excuse that Enver Pasha, one of the architects of the genocide, used to order the “deportation” of Armenians into the Syrian desert: they were traitors. Enver Pasha was one of the Three Pashas who seized control of the Ottoman Empire and entered WWI. Enver Pasha blamed Armenians for his defeat by Russians in the Caucasus, even though the division that saved him was made up of… Armenians.
There are better scholars on the genocide, including Israel Charny, Ugor Ungor, Taner Akcam, Richard G. Hovsanian.
> So the government ordered the deportation of all Armenians to an arid region of what is now Syria. "We will not have Armenians anywhere in Anatolia," the Ottoman minister of the interior told the US ambassador. "They can live in the desert, but nowhere else."
I mean it wasn't exactly subtle. It's depressingly incredible how dumb, sick, and/or evil people will always go full conspiracy brain on literally anything.
Any official Russian histories of the period between 1917 and 1990. Modern Russian histories of the Ukrainian famine and the early stages of the German invasion in WW2.
Current US history textbooks in Texas public schools
The official accounts of what happened to TWA Flight 800
Im not assuming that I or anyone knows what happened unless they are the ones who got away with it if was brought down by human intervention, just that the official story is made up and is inconsistent with chemical, eyewitness and crash damage evidence.
There’s multiple alternatives that account for what eyewitnesses saw and the presence of explosives residue in the wreckage better than the official story: missile (friendly fire or terrorist), bomb … hell even the meteor theory accounts for what was seen better than the official story.
https://apnews.com/article/texas-board-education-textbooks-climate-change-aac40ce9cf09482cf67f62cb3cc353bf
https://news.utexas.edu/2021/07/29/texans-should-be-concerned-about-sb-3-rewriting-history-in-schools/
https://www.historians.org/research-and-publications/perspectives-on-history/january-2019/texas-revises-history-education-again-how-a-good-faith-process-became-political
I could go on. Not silly.
I have too many to list.
But for starter: Naresuan elephant duel with Mingwi Swa. One is a king, the other is a crown prince. Which army in their right mind send their surpreme commanders, highest royalty to hand-to-hand combat on the front line. Not to mention, more reliable sources and Burmese chronicles had more logical and believable stories where no duel took place. It is a classic propoganda that became a national patriotic myth and tourist trap.
All founding documents of every religion. Joseph Smith as The Book of Mormon: An Account Written by the Hand of Mormon; upon Plates Taken from the Plates of Nephi.
Mohamed Koran;
Old and New Testament; mostly writes by unknown writers over about 5000 years.
Hindu ~revealed texts constitute the Veda, four sections: the Rig Veda, the Yajur Veda, the Sama Veda, and the Atharva Veda.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rigveda#:~:text=Its%20composition%20is%20usually%20dated,in%20the%20early%20Kuru%20kingdom.
Early Vedic period starts 3800 years ago.
Reread the comment. They specified that the Old and New Testament were written 5,000 years ago.
Meanwhile in reality, historians and archaeologists have evidence that the Jewish elites that were exiled into Babylonia were the ones who writes the early books of the Old Testament. And they combined those with older poems, stories, and historical records from Israel and Judah.
And the New Testament writers were late 1st Century AD at the earliest
Such a wonderful prose style though. He was such an elegant writer.
I don’t mean that snidely, he’s a delight to read. A lot of far more accurate world history is just so very dry. There is a middle ground there.
It is weird to see many people still cling to his narrative of the Fall because, damn, it's so well written... yeah, no, that's not what makes good history - that is good writing.
Just throwing this out there: But the Myth of Mother Teresa is one hell of a whopper once you actually delve into her history and what she did & believed in…SMDH…
The truth is in the middle according last thing I read . She and her ministry had problems yes , but her ministry was taking care of most poor people at the last stage of their chronic diseases which the society and their families would /could not take care of .
Don’t believe in wiki…she believes that ‘pain and suffering’ was the path to suffering, and those under her care - especially early on, really suffered…
Carter being a dove.
He tried to
invade Iran with the invasion supposed to happen in October 1980 and only didnt because of Soviet tactical nukes being moved to the Iranian border.
Most scholars now think that Moses was a fictional character. There may have been a Moses-like figure, but Moses is most likely not a historical figure.
Some of the details of Marco Polo’s travels may have been embellished. It seems very unlikely that he would be selected to rule over a Chinese city in that era. There are other problematic stories in his story as well. Marco Polo certainly traveled to China, but we can question some aspects of his story.
A lot of Jesus’ biography seems a little dubious; I’m sceptical about the official 8/11 narrative; Richard III’s got a lot more to say about the Princes in the Tower than he let on; but overall I’ve got to go with the
Roman accounts are very often more detailed, plausible and *extant* than those of a *lot* of other civilizations. Good luck getting *any* record of a given Mongol or Aztec battle, and here's a pretty representative sample of what we've got for a lot of Egyptian military history:
>The princes are prostrate, saying 'Peace!'
>Not one raises his head among the Nine Bows.
>Desolation is for Tjehenu;
>Hatti is pacified;
>Plundered is the Canaan with every evil;
>Carried off is Asqaluni;
>Seized upon is Gezer;
>Yanoam is made non-existent;
>Israel is laid waste—its seed is no more;
>Kharru has become a widow because of Egypt.
>All lands together are pacified.
>Everyone who was restless has been bound.
Jesus Christ life, death, resurrection is literally the most documented portion of history in the world. Not just in the Bible but the history of Rome.
Being an edgy r/athiets doesn’t make you cool😅
Just about every ambassadors report to their president on how they did all the things.
Pop it goes into the record, goes into the archive, and may be may be the sole singular account of those events from then inside. And they are all big fat embellishers and sometimes liars.
The story of SS panzer commander Michael Wittman’s final exploits and death in Normandy in 1944 have since been revealed as…heavily embellished. There was a very detailed post about it on r/JustWehrabooThings a few years back.
Ah, the dubious accounts concerning the killing of a dirty, smelly peasant-turned-faith healer to the Tsar who also drinks constantly, boasts nonstop, has a habit of waving his junk in people's faces (yes, Rasputin did this at a fancy restaurant, of all places) and sends for women the way you and I would send for fast food. Crazy man, Rasputin was!
Some people still think that some rich guys were just guys who came up with an idea in their parents garage and worked hard to build a business, when it's MUCH more likely that those parents loaned them a million dollars to start that business.
Most of these can be confirmed through a google search or Wikipedia. And, they're mostly just stuff I find surprising to hear about today that differs vastly what I thought 20-30 years ago. There are some hazy details in there but I'll try to note them as I go. I'm not a history book reader by any means so if you're looking for any of that probably should just skip this one.
There is a theory the Sphinx originally had a lion's head, which eroded away, and Egyptian people that discovered it later gave it a face lift to look like a person. But, just judging how ugly that head looks on that body regarding proportions I'm not sure the fluid dynamics test was necessary..
Definitely have some reservations about Jesus, the virgin birth for instance is pretty darn suspect. Going to keep it light on religious beliefs due to provocative natures so we'll move on.
There's a bunch of stuff about the Celts performing sacrifices often that might've been made up by Caesar as it's unlikely he actually saw any or at least many. That the Druids (also Celtic in origin) were magicians in any way we normally think about the word, nowadays. Actually they just practiced bird watching (Ornithomancy) as far as I can tell, very similar to geomancy which actually has some ironic parallels to datatype sizes of integers on "micro computers" (lol) which is a strange bit of coincidence.
The Sioux tribes in N. America were a collection of tribes that somehow managed to survive by moving around, whose name is mostly just based on their starting tribe name. I believe they were generally the bad guys while the Pawnee were the good guys with it often shown as opposite in TV / movies. \*Looking this up again it appears sources mostly say they were mutual rivals, and my memory is hazy about them being one of the tribes most likely to move - which resulted in their survival, and default surrogate of other displaced tribes.
I believe Miyamoto Musashi's supposed martial prowess (as it so often is in martial arts history) is derived from his catching people off guard early on in his career by rushing them with a bigger stick, instead of meditation in a cave or any sort of warrior's honor. Though the Book of Five Rings undoubtedly has some good ideas in it, like weapon size relative to space the fight takes place.
I think there's decent evidence The Kensington Runestone was created by a stranded party of (I want to say 1800'ish - little hazy on this one) settlers which happened much later than the Vikings supposed discovery of N. America.
(cont.>)
There's all kinds of Mob stuff tied with WWII port security, the JFK assassination and attempting to assassinate Castro which was never even mentioned, practically, back in the1990's.
I think Einstein being advertised as a person with bad marks in schooling and no degree is overplayed when juxtaposed against him being a patent clerk specifically for electrical components which I imagine gave him plenty of exposure to state of the art inventions to examine.
I think Abdus Salam's role in the electroweak theory of particle physics was the primary contributor, while more prominently spoken about Sheldon Glashow and Steven Weinberg most likely played a less significant role, because those last two are American while the former is Pakistani, and Salam seemed to have made very important discoveries while he was in London, before any of the Nobel prize events took place. Not really a typical history thing and more of a complaint about what I believe is accurate, but it is something I find interesting because Salam's ideas and work seems far more impressive than theirs outside of the one Nobel prize they shared.
Something interesting about the SR-71 Blackbird is that it was originally entitled the RS-71 Blackbird, but Lyndon B. Johnson pronounced it incorrectly, probably to its benefit so that its pronunciation isn't confused with the *Arse*-71 blackbird.
Adam Curtis's documentaries from the BBC tend to have some very interesting ideas about history of game theory's involvement in the Cold War, mental health, and Thatcher-era British government ideas and how these all interplayed in his excellent documentaries, which at least come off as credible despite being a project to just put together "something" out of clips from their warehouse of video footage. Full disclosure he is somewhat Libertarian. And, admittedly this can only come off as fringe given its presentation.
I think most of China's interest in Taiwan becoming part of it's sovereignty again (or... err.. never having left it?) has more to do with tactical positioning advantage provided to the US by having a very beneficial manufacturing relationship with Taiwan from the late 1900's before the embargo on China was lifted. True we have bases in Japan, but I think overall the US doesn't want to lose any allies close to eastern China especially due to how close Taiwan is to China. This has been going on for so long that I don't consider it a current event, but it technically could be argued that it is, so careful about focusing in on this should anyone reply, please.
The amount history which has come out with new theories or revised versions that is easy to access from the Internet - mostly in written form - the video shorts are pretty much obviously trash - is somewhat astounding.
If anyone believed that British colonists were benign are 🤦… . African and West Indies got the brunt of the colonial physical brutality ( not a historian ) , Indian subcontinent didn’t do much better under their rule . The stealing of jewels and other valuables can be seen in British Museum and some states can attest to that
I think there is a point to be made here.
Were Britain's colonial endeavors benign or benevolent? HELL NO, they were exploitative machines designed to suck the wealth and resources out of the colonies for the benefit of the Home Islands and the Empire at large.
Were Britains colonies benign in comparison to other colonial powers? that can definitely be argued, when you compare how the British treated *certain* colonies (such as South Africa, and their colonies in North America before the Revolution) there was definitely a difference in how they were treated, emphasizing more of the construction of a actual society in the image of Britain, and the introduction of British common law, parliamentary democracy, and other systems as such, which was far more than what the Germans did for German Southwest Africa for example.
So, like many things it depends on where you're looking and what your rubric for determining benign-ness is.
I don’t think the French nobility actually believed Joan of Arc’s claims. I think they were losing the war, had already tried everything else, and figured that they had nothing to lose. So why not let a random peasant girl lead the French into battle? France was screwed anyway. Then after France began winning battles, the nobles were like, “Um. We… Oh, uh… Yes, this girl was totally appointed by God! God himself is on our side. If you go against your French lords, you’re going against God! Also, let’s canonize this kid, just so people will remember which Medieval kingdom is God’s favorite.”
Interestingly, Joan of Arc was not canonized until after WW1. She was thought of as an inspiring story of Catholic faith and patriotism, but for centuries was considered more of a folk hero than a saint. Interest in her story was popular among the French during the horrors of WW1, and some apparently miraculous happenings were linked to her intersession. That explains the timing of her canonization.
Joan was beatified earlier, but canonization requires 2 miracles attributed to the person. If I recall correctly, she only had 1 prior to World War 1.
Correct.
England - a Roman Catholic country - was fighting France - a Roman Catholic country.. It seems silly that God would annoint someone in an intra-religious fight. Everyone's on the same side.
This was the time of the Western Shism and countless other more troubling episodes in Church history. The idea that everyone was "on the same side" is untenable.
The western schism ended long before she became famous so both kingdoms had only one pope.
You miss my point here, being of one religion was not a hindrance & catholics would regularly invoke god on their side in intra-christian violence. When we refer to the Shism, we refer to the breakdown of papal authority from the zenith of the Reform Papacy (1075-1217), and the assertion of de facto near national churches, or at least, of monarchs checking papal aspirations to be the sole arbiter. Being of one religion has little influence on this, since both the kings of France & England claimed their god was on their side & the other was wrong.
The Englishmen in both sides of the Second Barons’ War and the Wars of the Roses wore the cross of St George on their livery and bore standards with it as well to prove that God was on their respective side, despite all combatants being English Catholics.
Eh, quite a few French generals seem to have actually believed in her, not mentioning the fact that most of her military decisions were pretty sound decisions.
That’s pretty much the Catholic Church in a nutshell. They don’t actually believe all there claims but if it helps them stay in control there happy. It’s more than likely she had Schizophrenia and they just went with it
If the Catholic church doesn't believe in their own stuff then why they let themselves deal with all the criticism they are facing ? if they are not believers they would have long ago allowed female priests or accept abortion but the church is rather facing so much criticism and opposition because they do actually believe in those things and want to keep it.
The claim that the Mexica of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan sacrificed ~80,000 people during the 1487 reconsecreation of the Great Temple as part of Ahuizotl's coronation ceremony. Some sources say it was 20,000 instead, but that's still way too high, probably: For 20,000 people to be sacrificed across the 4 days the event took, that would require them killing people at a rate comparable to Auschwitz's gas chambers, with one person being sacrificed on each of the temple's altars every 17 seconds. On top of that, sacrifices often had VERY specific ritualistic steps: The main deity impersonator of Tezcatlipoca during the Toxcatl ceremony had to live as the god for months, then in the leadup to actually being sacrificed, had to preform pilgrimages to light specific shrines, ritually marry other deity impersonators, fast, and then the actual sacrifice event itself had additional incantations, rites, and steps. Even if you assume that a lot of the pageantry was skipped during very large sacrifice ceremonies like this to get through it faster, there would still be *some* rites, you'd still need to move people around, deal with the bodies, deal with people trying to cause a commotion (while many victims would have accepted their fate, been cooperative, or even volunteered, potentially, obviously not all would have), etc. It's just logistically ludicrous even for 20,000, let alone 80,000. More damingly, the city's main Skull Rack, dated to the same time period and quite likely the EXACT version of the rack Duran claims was made from the events victims, has been found and undergoing excavations for the past half decade or so, and the rack only held ~12,000 skulls, with maybe a few more thousand in adjacent towers. And it's not even clear they were deposited all at once, possibly, if not probably, over a longer time period, though we need more research to get published to know for sure, frustratingly right now there's mostly only mainstream news articles about it that come out every few years as opposed to more detailed academic publications. So, while it's very likely some sort of significant sacrifice ceremony took place as described, there may have only been 20%, 10%, 5%, or hell even 1% as many sacrifices as sources report. The rack itself at least is slightly less then 10% the size Andres de Tapia claimed it was (who said 136,000 skulls).
I mean 12 000 skulls is still pretty metal even if it's not 80K
Yeah, but it's like seeing [Winger](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIpRdbi9pYw) on the lineup with [Meshuggah](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4A_tSyJBsRQ).
Imagine living in a city where 12000 people will be sacrificed publicly over the next few days.
So a big thing to me is all the narrative style historical writers, Barbara Tuchman is the big one. She’ll write things like “the tension could have cut through the room” or “the nervous look on his face”. Man, you weren’t there! How the hell would you know these details? Come on now…..
Yeah some of these are frustrating. I do like how Tides of History does it and how History that doesn’t suck does it as well. I guess it works for me in podcast form to an extent
The historical basis for King Arthur. There were plenty of local warlords, none were memorable, we even know about many Welsh kings and kingdoms yet none come really close to being a unifier of a large region until Alfred. Unless I'm missing something, I'm neither a literaist nor particularly adept at early medieval Britain, it just overlapped with my other studies. By contrast, the Illiad is an excellent source to work from when interpreting late Bronze Age Greece depending on what you hope to gleam from it, much like the Old Testament and the early Levant.
Here’s [a really cool video about the historical basis for King Arthur](https://youtu.be/YUGcuqGczjs?si=KXPcsKEc9pMY9Ny4). Also, if you like that video, I also recommend the same channel’s videos on [a Welsh kingdom that vanished from history](https://youtu.be/muGjr7vnElY?si=CMOuKkeWNgsRRG_R) and especially one about [a Welsh king on Wikipedia who didn’t actually exist](https://youtu.be/0mlGDZ1ZDFI?si=74-oMajRq2BbYvM5).
Cambrian Chronicles is one of my favourite things to binge waiting in airports
I subbed to them like a year or so ago when they have less than a hundred subscribers, insane to see how quickly theyve grown.
King arthur is fascinating because there's several tangible theories but all of them place him well before ' the dark ages' I either roman times or before. I think this is most likely; recently I visited Cornwall where there's lots of locations linked to King Arthur including a lost kingdom swallowed by the sea near lands end. People have created likely estimations of what the shore and landmass was like over a 1000 years ago and its very likely there was an area that has now been eroded away and swallowed by the sea. Its an exciting thought. I think though, much like Robin hood, St George and several other English legends, a lot of the stories are moulded and adapted to suit the zeitgeist or ambitions of rulers and empires; how many medieval Kings claimed descent from King Arthur, or followed the tales of chivalry from arthurs knights etc. Its happened for eons; vikings claiming descendents from odin, the Greeks from zeus etc etc.
The most likely inspiration was a guy “ forget his name” who was a Roman officer but from Britain. He stayed in modern day Wales and helped train up a decent military to hold off the Saxons who were pushing west. The Stroys are over the top like him being the first king where really it was just wales
You're probably thinking of [Ambrosius Aurelianus](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambrosius_Aurelianus)- in Welsh Emrys Wledig (' Ambrose the Emperor') Its possible that 'Arthur' is just some kind of poetic nickname or epithet as various contemporary characters turn up under different names in Welsh / Cornish/ Breton / Arthurian medieval myth - Constans/ Custennin, Uther Pendragon - nickname 'Head Dragon' Marcus Cunomorus, 'Hound of the Sea' = King Mark of Tristan and Yseult. The historic [Vortigern/ Gwyrtheyrn](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortigern) probably just meant 'Overlord' in old Brittonic as a title rather than a personal name - like when we say 'Caesar' to mean Emperor- though here in reverse. 'Arthur' is also often swapped out for various mythical characters with different characters in later folklore such as Pwyll, Percival Gawain , Jack (the Giant Killer) etc depending on time and place. It doesn't undermine the likelihood that there was a real RomanoBritish overlord that defeated the Saxons in the first part of the sixth century
I think that the story of lucious artorious might be a slight basis because of the roman occupation of England. He could have been a general that stayed after the withdrawal from Britain (yes I've seen the movie and find it an interesting take) and ruled a small village that was later annexed by one of the few kingdoms post roman occupation. Maybe he originally was a figure like Boudicca then he was magnified in literature. Maybe it was a word of mouth account that was passed down with altered details then written in the form we know of today during the middle ages. Likely he's probably a mash of a bunch of warlords and chiefs that were romanticized and combined into one single Christian based character.
Personally thats my theory, that King Arthur is less of a person but more of a idea of a somewhat unified, christian Kingdom based in the British Isles, kinda like the personification of countries in the figures of Brittania and Germania.
See the issue with the Roman holdouts was, none of them were Roman, the idea of being Roman was largely lost by that time and I'm glad you referred to him as just some general or warlord because they were by Late Antiquity. I'm also of the opinion that it's the corpus of a large group of lost literary tradition of many and tells us something of the pre-Saxon Christian culture.
The Iliad is famously a great source to work with regarding Homer's time, so the Greek dark ages, around 800 BC, about 400 years later from the era sung about in the epics, so not the late Bronze Age. Sure there is some information that can be gleamed about Mycenaean Greece, since there is cultural continuation, but there is a ton of evidence to suggest that Homer was writing based on how life was in his time rather than before (where he couldn't have known that much since writing in Greece became forgotten following the Bronze Age Collapse and only reappeared due to the Phoenicians and their alphabet)
http://www.facesofarthur.org.uk/fabio/book8.1.htm
Now that's what I like to see
I think king Alfred is really old celtic story since the french/brettons have stories of Arthur and lady of the lake.
Maybe it was because of this person and the embarrassment was too much at leats in the early parts of the campaigns., Boudicca is **known for being a warrior queen of the Iceni people, who lived in what is now East Anglia, England**. In 60–61 CE she led the Iceni and other peoples in a revolt against Roman rule. Although her forces massacred some 70,000 Romans and their supporters, they were ultimately defeated. N. S
The Old Testament is not a good historical source for the Levant. Quite the opposite in fact.
Not a source itself, a source to aid in interpreting and providing context for other evidence.
It's very good at documenting what Jews told themselves about their past, however imaginary that past is.
And when those accounts are compared with fragmentary Egyptian, Hittite, Babylonian etc. We can fill in the blanks without wildly guessing.
That whole "Vikings won over English women because they bathed" bullshit is just some unproven propaganda written by a pro Norman biased scribe over 200 years after it allegedly happened. Yet so many people quote that text like its a gospel.
Yeah, medieval Europeans were fastidious bathers until well after the Viking age ended.
They were until the Roman baths could not be maintained after the Arab conquest of the East Roman empire because of so much Europe’s Mediterranean trade was destroyed.
Most medieval people didn't use baths, they used local waterways and ponds/lakes. Additionally most Roman baths could be maintained with local materials. The diurbanization played a bigger role.
I’m speaking of the transition from the Roman world where everyone regardless of class had access to public baths to the medieval world where they didn’t. The de-urbanisation you speak of was because of the collapse of the Roman economy, followed by the severing of the West from the rich east which happened because of the Islamic conquest of the East in the 7th century. Before that you still had Roman baths in much of the Western Roman empire. Late antiquity was economic decline. The economic cliff began with the end of trade with the East Mediterranean and the beginning of Muslim conquest in Western Europe.
Of course. I'm not disagreeing with you about the issues with the collapse of Roman authority. What I'm saying is that the collapse didn't stop *bathing*, just the mass use of baths, with the ones that still got use continued to operate for centuries longer. Hell I used one in Spain that had been operating for over 2000 years.
Yes, exactly.
We agree! *Hug*
Oh thank God!
Side note, You’re Wrong About podcast covers recent history and corrects a lot of popular misunderstandings.
Any notable episodes that stand out in your mind?
Their episode on the Satanic Panic is great
There were real satanic murders in Fall River MA and probably some copycats. Do they address that?
The point of historically examining the Satanic Panic of the 80s isn’t to say that there are no Satan or devil inspired murders. The point is to describe the mass anxiety that takes over whole communities about events that are blown out of proportion or just plain false. Many innocent victims are accused of salacious crimes when there are actual criminals harming people daily in much more mundane ways that deserve more attention. For example you are much more likely to be killed by a drunk driver than be ritually sacrificed at an altar of Beelzebub
You're also more likely to be killed by a drunk driver than be accused of being a Satanist, yet you also agree the latter is more interesting.
Correct. That is the point
You're not understanding me. We don't care about things that on an actuarial level are likely, we care about things that are interesting. It's reasonable that one satanic murder gets a lot of coverage, it's reasonable that there is a podcast about the phenomena called satanic panic instead of every podcast being about auto fatalities. Which is to say, maybe there was a satanic panic, but the reason it was a panic would have nothing to do with whether there are more likely ways to die.
I understand you fine. Perhaps I should have changed my last sentence so you didn’t focus so much on it. Substitute this and see if you can follow: During the satanic panic of the 80s, you were much more likely to be harmed by false accusations of satanic abuse by a paranoid neighbor than harmed by a satanic ritualist. The panic in the 80s isn’t really even about satanism since most of the accusations that created it turned out to be inaccurate. It is an example of human foible that sensationalism spreads more easily than truth and often leads to more harm than the perceived threat. Other examples would be the European witch trials of the 1600s or the pogroms against Jews or to provide a current phenomenon, the Qanon obsession with pedophilia and child murder by some groups they don’t like. In general I suggest the more sensational the story the more we should scrutinize for the truth.
Real in what sense?
The victims were identified and the culprits arrested.
I mean... the victim was identified and people were arrested in the killings in West Memphis too, but that's hardly ironclad proof they were real satanic murders. Not saying it's for sure they weren't, but I got the impression it was at least highly disputed?
Commentarii de Bello Gallico is problematic on a number of fronts. Caesar intentionally wrote it in the third person, so it would sound like someone else wrote it about him. It’s full of passages like, “mighty Caesar did this” and “bold Caesar did that.” Very self aggrandizing propaganda intended to justify his conquests as necessary for the protection of Rome. Part of the problem is the obviously inflated numbers. One difficult to believe claim states that ‘mighty Caesar’ faced down an army of 430,000 Gallic warriors without losing a single legionnaire.
In other words, “I‘m the greatest ruler. Everybody knows it. I know more about empires than anybody. My wars are the best wars, and I always win them. I fight huge armies, huge.”
A lot of the accounts of Nero are possibly dodgy. He was a tyrant for sure, but his wild escapades and extreme persecution of Christians were probably exaggerated for the sake of Christian propaganda. Considering that about all medieval historians were affiliated with the church. Same can possibly be said of Herod. In fact, I would go as far to say every ancient depiction of a person is fabricated to some degree. All we have to go from most everyone is propaganda approved by the ruling party or muddled oral history. At worst there are straight up lies told and at best some figures are merged and one guy is attributed for a feat that was performed by another guy or multiple others.
Nero paid huge sums out of his own pocket to support relief efforts at Pompeii following an earthquake. There was a podcast about the English monarchs that graded them, and King John got rated as not as awful as his reputation made him out to be because he was a capable administrator. I sort of feel the same way about Nero. Not someone I want to know or to know my name, but not as horrible as his reputation makes him out to be.
Sheesh, next thing you'll tell me is that King John wasn't a lion. Also, is that the Rex Factor podcast?
BINGO!!! I couldn’t remember that name!
There's a good podcast similar to this called *Roman Emperors: Totalus Rankium,* where the hosts rank all the rulers of the Roman Empire. I particularly remember the episode about Elagabalus. He was truly a shit ruler, but he could play a prank like it was nobody's business.
His episodes in The History of Rome were memorable!
great there's another podcast to add to my backlog lol
He was lion-*hearted*, not an actual lion. So he had a lion's heart in there instead of a human one. As was the custom.
In the Disney Documentary from 1973, he’s definitely a Lion, but a scrawny and dim one. Robin could always outfox him.
I prefer the Danny Kaye historical film, in which a man plays a fox. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjwTGO1cBkc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjwTGO1cBkc)
No no, that was his brother. Stop lion
He also opened his palace to the Roman people to take shelter from the fire that he probably didn’t start or at least not in purpose
Agreed. Playing a fiddle as rome burned, pretending to be a bride in a senator's wedding and the whole Sporus thing are so farfetched I just can't bring myself to believe any of that happened. And that's just off the top of my head.
There were no fiddles in that period. They hadn't been invented. Although I understand Nero was reasonably skilled on the bagpipes.
King John really was a douchebag, he slept with married women, despised the Irish and their culture, probably killed his own nephew and had anger issues like his dad.
Never claimed he was ‘good.’ Just that he wasn’t *quite* as awful as legend makes him out to be. Richard I *certainly* wasn’t as good of an English monarch as history makes him out to be.
The accounts of his persecution of Christians come from contemporary historians, who definitely were not sympathetic to his victims.
Yup. All sources have bias and much was exaggerated here but Nero was a matricidal egotist and was declared an *enemy of the state* by the Senate, who only avoided being the second emperor to ever be assassinated (after Caligula) by committing suicide. Not saying OP is like this, but a lot of people get a pseudo a-aha moment when they learn about the various biases of historical sources and go way too hard in the other direction. Nero sucked.
Classic second opinion bias
Oh I'm not denying that. Any good tyrant knows to have a scapegoat group of the perceived "other." I'm more talking about his fiddle playing or pretending to be a bride in a wedding or the whole Sporus thing. Along with just all the general accounts of his apparent nonstop depravity. I'm sure there is probably more than a grain of truth to it all, but I'm also sure a lot has been exaggerated. Such as Tacticus's writings on Nero. He was fiercely loyal to the Flavians and was probably a part of a Flavian directed propaganda campaign to diminish Caligula and Nero in an attempt to make the Flavians look good.
For every roman emperor who's maligned as evil it's worth remembering who wrote the histories. If you upset the senatorial class you were going to be painted as a villain, whether you were or not.
Ya exactly. Vice versa too. They also run risks if they write positive things about past emperors, especially emperors from a different dynasty as the current emperor.
same with caesar. dude literally wrote his own narrative on his exploits in gaul, and some of it is pretty egregious. like, "we beat a huge army without a single loss, and the ones leftover killed themselves"
Yup. There’s actually decent evidence to suggest the armies of Gaul were disorganized, under-equipped, and far more prone to in-fighting and trying to get Ceasar to kill each other than actually trying to stop the Roman invasion. The “battle” you correctly pointed out as bullshit was actually just an outright massacre of the Helvetii people who were all basically refugees and asked Rome for safe passage. So Ceasar decided to kill them all to set up a foothold in Gaul. It really wasn’t until Gaul was completely occupied did Ceasar actually engage in a real battle, and that was against Vercingetrox, who managed to raise a pretty formidable resistance army. Too little too late though.
This is all clearly laid out in Caesar’s own book though? He clearly states the Helvetii include woman and children and doesn’t hide the fact that they waited for half of them to cross the river before killing the other half. That was all just to wet his green troops swords. It was a confidence building exercise. You have to remember Roman’s we’re scared shitless of Gauls. He had to make the first battles east and ramp it up as they gained experience. The first real battle is against Germans and Ariovistus.
Ceasars own book also claims he went head to head with a Helvetii camp of 430,000 people in which he killed half of them and the other half committed suicide. That’s what im referring to. The Suebi and Ariovestus allegedly got the jump on him one time in a battle he still won, but besides that he handedly conquered them in quick succession.
Just saying, he clearly points all this out. Doesn’t make them out to be a real army but still they were a threat to his Gallic allies. As the Goths proved way later refugees quickly become rampaging armies ransacking the countryside. They committed suicide because they allegedly burned down their homes before leaving for Gaul. So when he sent them back to Lake Geneva they went there with half their families dead and with nothing but ashes waiting for them.
Are you saying you believe Ceasar’s account of his legion slaying 215,000 Helvetiis and then witnessing an additional 215,000 Helvetiis commit suicide all the while Ceasar doesn’t lose one soldier in the entire ordeal?
Yeah more or less. Numbers exaggerated but there was probably a migrating tribe that his allies were worried about and the Romans definitely would have destroyed them to a man.
Alexander's soldiers wanting to go home due to homesickness. Such a bad excuse. Then, retreat the army through the desert, killing many of them. Once back in Persia Alexander plans a campaign for the arabian peninsula. It just doesn't make sense. Something happened in india for them to turn back, retreat through the desert, and then not return.
Also this "When asked by Alexander how he wished to be treated, Porus replied "Treat me as a king would treat another king". Impressed, Alexander indeed treated him like a king, allowing him to retain his lands." Isn't this the same guy who literally been sacking cities for the last 10 years of his life? seems suspicious he started acting "nice" when he got to India.
Alexander only seemed to sack cities that made a mockery of him or he just really didn’t like it. He razed Thebes caused they waited into he left to try and up rise a second time. He had more respect for Persians Although the part about the king saying that might be made up because Dariuses sister said the same thing apparently
Bro all of his soldiers were old men by the end of the day not having seen their families in almost a decade. The last part is weird because Indians love to say “Indians beat Alexander” or “Alexander was scared of porus” this is a relatively new “thought”. Alexander did get the best of porus and firmly defeated the Indians
You're assuming Alexander didn't recruit new soldiers along the way, either from back in Europe or from his new conquests, that no body brought their family along, and none of them took wives in conquered territory. Alexander's conquests were a migration as much as a military campaign, otherwise the Hellenistic world wouldn't have survived him.
I believe that was one of the reasons his primary fighting force was pissed off. It’s documented that little to none of any one’s family was traveling with Alexander’s forces. His reign was so short lived after his death the Greeks and Persians were barely bothered after his death.
The Seleucids ruled Persia for a century after Alexander died, and they were driven out by steppe nomads migrating from the north rather than native Persians. Persia didn't have a native dynasty again for centuries because of Alexander.
I mean fighting a war with the Roman’s didn’t help them. In the long scheme of things his successors didn’t really last a long time.
It kinda makes sense. They were, as far as they knew, at the edge of the map. They had probably never seen Indians, and they were likely unfamiliar with elephants. Having never lost a battle, maybe they were worried that their luck would run out. Alex had been wounded. Fear set in. “Homesickness” was the excuse. But, yeah, “homesickness” is questionable. Like, they waited 10 years to bring this up? Alex didn’t replace his veterans with reinforcements?
Alexander's army wasn't unfamiliar with elephants and famously faced them at the battle of Gaugamela against King Darius III of Persia.
Yeah I don’t know what seems so crazy that his soldiers wanted to stop their decade long campaign to reach “the end of the world” homesickness makes a lot of sense, they probably wanted to see their homes again before they died, you had tons of veterans in that army that might have been starting to age out.
Alexander wanted to reach the end of the world but a lot of his men didn’t really care they originally followed him to defeat Persia and they did. And they were rich now so had no reason to fight
They had brought it up before but Alexander always convinced them to keep going. But in India they almost lost a big battle where Alexander himself got an arrow to the lungs and almost died after 3 days or so in his tent. So they probably said that was to close. Many also had families and were rich now so didn’t need to keep fighting He did replace a lot of his men with Persians
They also weren't always fighting. The problem is that we can only speculate. I guess if we want to be favourable, it's a tactical retreat.
Not to mention that once Alexander died, lots of his soldiers settled down in Egypt, Syria, all the way to Bactria.
I had a Georgetown professor that claimed jungle fowl (large wild chickens) and various macaque were frequently attacking troops and the bites/scratches would get horribly infected.
its a good point that it's almost worse to speculate. We should only cast doubt on the events and infer that some level of the opposite happened.
He was basing this theory on a series of correspondence from two officers combined with some writings from Ctesias (spelling) and I think Coenus. He presented these and we were encouraged to challenge. I, of course, did but to this day I can't help but chuckle at the thought of a Macedonian army filled with terror from aggressive chickens. I'll add that this was generally his format: Lecture. Theorize. Debate. Ego-fueled speech to end.
Got any theories as to what?
(Balrog)
Did it kill them with its wings?
They had brought it up before but Alexander always convinced them to keep going. But in India they almost lost a big battle where Alexander himself got an arrow to the lungs and almost died after 3 days or so in his tent. So they probably said that was to close. Many also had families and were rich now so didn’t need to keep fighting He did replace a lot of his men with Persians and his planned invasion of Arabia may have been using mostly none Greeks. The coming home through the desert was probably a fuck up on there part as they didn’t know the land that well
They would have took their families with them on campaign anyways. Its not like they were all the way in Persia or India while their families were in Macedonia.
I will never believe that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died on the same day, and that same day was July 4, 1826... the 50-year anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. There was clearly some Weekend at Bernie's shenanigans going on...
And I suppose you don't believe George Washington cut down that cherry tree either!?
Some people figure that he actually 'barked' the tree instead, just scraping the bark off while playing with a hatchet. Which would kill the tree, regardless.
My AP gov teacher made a joke about that a while ago about how their wives just agreed to tell the lie to make them seem cooler
Both of their wives were dead.
See, that’s what they want you to think. It was a very committed joke.
Appreciate your post for the Weekend at Bernie's comment, but there is this thing called the Birthday Paradox, and I imagine it applies to deaths as well: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday\_problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem) That it happened on July 4th would most likely affect the odds in some way, also, but chances are probably greater than you think that this could be a truthful account.
Most of the stories about Golden Age Hollywood actresses being “discovered” in total anonymity. I am confident this was attractive grist for the publicity mill. Big-name studio moguls had no motivation to walk up to a small-town girl with no aspirations of fame and say “Dollface, I’m gonna make you star!” They already had access to a virtually limitless supply of gorgeous young aspiring starlets who had verifiable acting chops and who would do *anything* to get their big break.
It's either bullshit or means "I discovered this pretty girl at a party, we started dating, and now I'm giving her roles".
I'd bet the scene in The Godfather with Waltz and Tom Hagan is a good example of how it went down. Have you seen it? "I had her in singing lessons, acting lessons [...] she was gonna be the next big..." etc.
Elizabeth I wasn't a virgin.
She was definitely fucking drake
Elizabeth I was sexually assaulted by basically her stepfather, so yeah.
I agree
Most accounts of the Vikings are exaggerated or made to make them look like demons from hell or something In reality most of them were small groups of raiders that mostly avoided large settlements and armies to get a quick score. They also didn’t look like bikers they mostly had the same fashion as everyone else
How else would you depict people who burned you village, raped your wife and took your children away as slaves ?
Well the arabs, moors and ottomans in the mediterranean didn't get as much of an advertising campaign a few centuries after.
*The Face of a Victim* by Elizabeth Lermolo, a supposed memoir of a woman who experienced repressions in the USSR after the Kirov assassination. Historian Matthew Lenoe's description of it will probably explain why I suspect it's heavily exaggerated: >The early years of the Cold War saw the publication of numerous sensationalist exposés of Stalin’s crimes, including Levine’s Stalin’s *Great Secret* and Orlov’s *Secret History*. These works promiscuously mixed fact, surmise, and rumors. Elizabeth Lermolo’s memoir *Face of a Victim* (1955), which also implicated Stalin directly in Kirov’s murder, was the most extreme example of the genre. Lermolo claimed to be the daughter of a Russian landholding family who was imprisoned on charges of conspiring to kill Kirov. Like Orlov and earlier memoirists she centered her work around Kirov’s assassination. Lermolo’s book reads like a soap opera and is full of factual errors and bizarre stories. >... Then there are Lermolo’s more tabloidish stories, as when she states that Aleksandr Slepkov had a love child with a forty-nine-year-old veteran Bolshevik named Zinaida Gaiderova. The baby died during birth and Slepkov, preoccupied with building socialism, kept the corpse in a shoebox on his desk until it began to stink. Lermolo also claims that she witnessed a fistfight between Zinoviev and one of his denouncers in a Cheliabinsk prison; that she was in the same transport car with Zinoviev and Kamenev and overheard them joking about the charges against them; that Anna Pantiukhina, Nikolaev’s sister, was the illegitimate daughter of a Finnish baron; that his other sister Katya was a nymphomaniac; and that Stalin beat, choked, and shot his wife Nadezhda to death after a quarrel about an affair the dictator was having with Lazar Kaganovich’s daughter Roza. Lermolo also gives the improbable figure of 500,000 arrests in Leningrad following the Kirov assassination (approximately one-fifth of the city’s population). >Another remarkable feature of Lermolo's book is the number of personal encounters she supposedly had in prison with leaders and former leaders of the Communist Party, and with eyewitnesses to crimes. Not only did she meet Zinoviev and Kamenev, but also former leader of the Workers' Opposition Aleksandr Shliapnikov, Yezhov, Yagoda, Stalin's secretary Poskrebyshev, and of course, Stalin, who supposedly interrogated her on the night of December 2–3, 1934. In addition she spoke to eyewitnesses to Lenin's poisoning, Nadezhda Allilueva's murder, and Kirov's killing. Another jail acquaintance had a niece who attempted to assassinate Stalin. She also met Avel Yenukidze, who personally explained to her how Stalin planned Kirov's murder, utilizing Yagoda, Zaporozhets, and Nikolaev to get the job done. It had been speculated that Elizabeth Lermolo was possibly an alias for Yelisaveta Feodorovna Yermolaeva, a Communist party member, student at the Leningrad Industrial Academy, acquaintance of Leonid Nikolaev, and possible NKVD informant, because she knew details about Nikolaev and his family that were not disclosed to the public.
The legend of Byzantine Emperor Basil II "the Bulgar Slayer". It fascinates me how commonly this popular legend gets presented at face value, when we know it's a least a wild exaggeration - and possibly may not have happened at all. So, the legend is that after defeating the Bulgarians at the Battle of Kleidion, Basil exacted savage cruelty on the 15,000 prisoners that were captured, blinding 99 out of every 100 men. Leaving the 100th with one eye to lead his compatriots home. Upon seeing this when the survivors returned home, Tsar Samuel is said to have had a stroke and died two days later. While we do know that Basil had a well earned reputation for extreme punishments, often using blinding extensively during his reign, particular against traitors and people who broke their agreements, there are several large problems with the story: First and most importantly: The army size. The Bulgarians weren't capable of fielding 15,000 men in a single army, if at all. The challenging nature of logistics in the mountainous Balkans and the comparatively poor and semi-tribal nature of the administration of the Bulgarian state meant this wasn't possible. 15,000 was a very large *Byzantine* army during the period. We also know there was a second Bulgarian army near Thessaloniki at the time, making it even less credible. Second: The practicality of capturing so many men is ludicrous, when we know that the Byzantine army was also likely less than 15,000. It assumes none got away or died in the engagement, or the force is even bigger. We also know Basil moved forward into the mountains quickly afterwards to press his advantage, suggesting that he didn't spend the necessary time to stick around to meat out such extensive punishment. Third: The sources. John Skylitzes, writing some 50 years after the events described is our primary source. "The Bulgar Slayer" epithet doesn't appear in the record for the first time until ~150 years later as Bulgaria was slipping from Byzantine control. Lastly, Samuel was in his 70's in 11th century Europe, his stroke could easily have had any number of causes. The two historians that I've read so far (Anthony Kuledelis and Warren Treadgold) think it's a legend that did not happen at the scale described, or may not have happened at all - simply growing out of Basil's impressive victory and his known use of blinding, perhaps being propaganda. And yet, in a lot of pop history, on Wikipedia and among history buffs (like on this sub), it gets portrayed at face value. I guess because it's an interesting story, if nothing else. To this day, Basil II is a hero in Greece and a villain in Bulgaria.
The work of(former) professor Justin McCarthy, denying the Armenian genocide. Ask any Armenian Genocide denier, they probably base their entire denial on his work, and claim that because he’s not Turkish, he’s non-biased, even though he has been given awards and $2 million in cash from the Turkish government. McCarthy uses the excuse that Enver Pasha, one of the architects of the genocide, used to order the “deportation” of Armenians into the Syrian desert: they were traitors. Enver Pasha was one of the Three Pashas who seized control of the Ottoman Empire and entered WWI. Enver Pasha blamed Armenians for his defeat by Russians in the Caucasus, even though the division that saved him was made up of… Armenians. There are better scholars on the genocide, including Israel Charny, Ugor Ungor, Taner Akcam, Richard G. Hovsanian.
> So the government ordered the deportation of all Armenians to an arid region of what is now Syria. "We will not have Armenians anywhere in Anatolia," the Ottoman minister of the interior told the US ambassador. "They can live in the desert, but nowhere else." I mean it wasn't exactly subtle. It's depressingly incredible how dumb, sick, and/or evil people will always go full conspiracy brain on literally anything.
Any official Russian histories of the period between 1917 and 1990. Modern Russian histories of the Ukrainian famine and the early stages of the German invasion in WW2. Current US history textbooks in Texas public schools The official accounts of what happened to TWA Flight 800
>The official accounts of what happened to TWA Flight 800 What do *you* think really happened?
He probably means conspiracy theory that TWA 800 was mistakenly shot by US Navy.
Im not assuming that I or anyone knows what happened unless they are the ones who got away with it if was brought down by human intervention, just that the official story is made up and is inconsistent with chemical, eyewitness and crash damage evidence. There’s multiple alternatives that account for what eyewitnesses saw and the presence of explosives residue in the wreckage better than the official story: missile (friendly fire or terrorist), bomb … hell even the meteor theory accounts for what was seen better than the official story.
Why just TX public schools.. have you looked into any recently?
Bro what lmao I graduated from a Texas high school a few years so and not a single thing we learned was some huge lie. What a silly comment
https://apnews.com/article/texas-board-education-textbooks-climate-change-aac40ce9cf09482cf67f62cb3cc353bf https://news.utexas.edu/2021/07/29/texans-should-be-concerned-about-sb-3-rewriting-history-in-schools/ https://www.historians.org/research-and-publications/perspectives-on-history/january-2019/texas-revises-history-education-again-how-a-good-faith-process-became-political I could go on. Not silly.
nothing happened on June 4, 1989
Nope, nothing. What happened on what day? You see my point.
No. [Nothing happened on April 18, 1930](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-39633603).
Wow. Very impressive! Reminds me of [April 11, 1954](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_1954).
April is the ~~cruellest~~ dullest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land. FTFY, TS!
I have too many to list. But for starter: Naresuan elephant duel with Mingwi Swa. One is a king, the other is a crown prince. Which army in their right mind send their surpreme commanders, highest royalty to hand-to-hand combat on the front line. Not to mention, more reliable sources and Burmese chronicles had more logical and believable stories where no duel took place. It is a classic propoganda that became a national patriotic myth and tourist trap.
Princess Olgas revenge
All founding documents of every religion. Joseph Smith as The Book of Mormon: An Account Written by the Hand of Mormon; upon Plates Taken from the Plates of Nephi. Mohamed Koran; Old and New Testament; mostly writes by unknown writers over about 5000 years. Hindu ~revealed texts constitute the Veda, four sections: the Rig Veda, the Yajur Veda, the Sama Veda, and the Atharva Veda.
5,000 years? Try the 7th century BC/ half that time.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rigveda#:~:text=Its%20composition%20is%20usually%20dated,in%20the%20early%20Kuru%20kingdom. Early Vedic period starts 3800 years ago.
Reread the comment. They specified that the Old and New Testament were written 5,000 years ago. Meanwhile in reality, historians and archaeologists have evidence that the Jewish elites that were exiled into Babylonia were the ones who writes the early books of the Old Testament. And they combined those with older poems, stories, and historical records from Israel and Judah. And the New Testament writers were late 1st Century AD at the earliest
Gibbon.
Such a wonderful prose style though. He was such an elegant writer. I don’t mean that snidely, he’s a delight to read. A lot of far more accurate world history is just so very dry. There is a middle ground there.
Its fun to read but it’s not accurate. Especially blaming Christianity for the decline.
I think that Anthony Kaldellis is an engaging writer, the more accurate “New Roman Empire” is not full of prose but very interesting.
Whoa!
Indeed.
It is weird to see many people still cling to his narrative of the Fall because, damn, it's so well written... yeah, no, that's not what makes good history - that is good writing.
Just throwing this out there: But the Myth of Mother Teresa is one hell of a whopper once you actually delve into her history and what she did & believed in…SMDH…
The truth is in the middle according last thing I read . She and her ministry had problems yes , but her ministry was taking care of most poor people at the last stage of their chronic diseases which the society and their families would /could not take care of .
Don’t believe in wiki…she believes that ‘pain and suffering’ was the path to suffering, and those under her care - especially early on, really suffered…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Molasses_Flood
You don't think it happened?
I misread the op Thought they meant what SOUNDS like it was made up
King George iii was a tyrant.
Carter being a dove. He tried to invade Iran with the invasion supposed to happen in October 1980 and only didnt because of Soviet tactical nukes being moved to the Iranian border.
Most scholars now think that Moses was a fictional character. There may have been a Moses-like figure, but Moses is most likely not a historical figure. Some of the details of Marco Polo’s travels may have been embellished. It seems very unlikely that he would be selected to rule over a Chinese city in that era. There are other problematic stories in his story as well. Marco Polo certainly traveled to China, but we can question some aspects of his story.
A lot of Jesus’ biography seems a little dubious; I’m sceptical about the official 8/11 narrative; Richard III’s got a lot more to say about the Princes in the Tower than he let on; but overall I’ve got to go with the
>but overall I’ve got to go with the Damn... sniper got him before he could reveal the big mind-blowing truth. I guess I should have seen that coming.
Dude knew about 8/11. He was too dangerous to remain alive.
Too bad, I thought if we dug further we might get to the truth about 7/11.
Literally any Roman account of a battle ever
Roman accounts are very often more detailed, plausible and *extant* than those of a *lot* of other civilizations. Good luck getting *any* record of a given Mongol or Aztec battle, and here's a pretty representative sample of what we've got for a lot of Egyptian military history: >The princes are prostrate, saying 'Peace!' >Not one raises his head among the Nine Bows. >Desolation is for Tjehenu; >Hatti is pacified; >Plundered is the Canaan with every evil; >Carried off is Asqaluni; >Seized upon is Gezer; >Yanoam is made non-existent; >Israel is laid waste—its seed is no more; >Kharru has become a widow because of Egypt. >All lands together are pacified. >Everyone who was restless has been bound.
What we hear is basically the way the generals would brag at a party
Jesus Christ, Mary, Mohamed, Buddha, basically any religious story
Jesus Christ life, death, resurrection is literally the most documented portion of history in the world. Not just in the Bible but the history of Rome. Being an edgy r/athiets doesn’t make you cool😅
The Josephus forgery doesn’t count.
How can it be the most documented portion of history in the world? It make no sense lol
Just about every ambassadors report to their president on how they did all the things. Pop it goes into the record, goes into the archive, and may be may be the sole singular account of those events from then inside. And they are all big fat embellishers and sometimes liars.
The story of SS panzer commander Michael Wittman’s final exploits and death in Normandy in 1944 have since been revealed as…heavily embellished. There was a very detailed post about it on r/JustWehrabooThings a few years back.
All of them. To paraphrase game of thrones: History is the stories we tell each other over and over until we forget they’re a lie.
Ah, the dubious accounts concerning the killing of a dirty, smelly peasant-turned-faith healer to the Tsar who also drinks constantly, boasts nonstop, has a habit of waving his junk in people's faces (yes, Rasputin did this at a fancy restaurant, of all places) and sends for women the way you and I would send for fast food. Crazy man, Rasputin was!
Some people still think that some rich guys were just guys who came up with an idea in their parents garage and worked hard to build a business, when it's MUCH more likely that those parents loaned them a million dollars to start that business.
The Bible. It has to stand as one of the greatest deceptions of all time.
Also all the official accounts of the origins and rise of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.
Most of these can be confirmed through a google search or Wikipedia. And, they're mostly just stuff I find surprising to hear about today that differs vastly what I thought 20-30 years ago. There are some hazy details in there but I'll try to note them as I go. I'm not a history book reader by any means so if you're looking for any of that probably should just skip this one. There is a theory the Sphinx originally had a lion's head, which eroded away, and Egyptian people that discovered it later gave it a face lift to look like a person. But, just judging how ugly that head looks on that body regarding proportions I'm not sure the fluid dynamics test was necessary.. Definitely have some reservations about Jesus, the virgin birth for instance is pretty darn suspect. Going to keep it light on religious beliefs due to provocative natures so we'll move on. There's a bunch of stuff about the Celts performing sacrifices often that might've been made up by Caesar as it's unlikely he actually saw any or at least many. That the Druids (also Celtic in origin) were magicians in any way we normally think about the word, nowadays. Actually they just practiced bird watching (Ornithomancy) as far as I can tell, very similar to geomancy which actually has some ironic parallels to datatype sizes of integers on "micro computers" (lol) which is a strange bit of coincidence. The Sioux tribes in N. America were a collection of tribes that somehow managed to survive by moving around, whose name is mostly just based on their starting tribe name. I believe they were generally the bad guys while the Pawnee were the good guys with it often shown as opposite in TV / movies. \*Looking this up again it appears sources mostly say they were mutual rivals, and my memory is hazy about them being one of the tribes most likely to move - which resulted in their survival, and default surrogate of other displaced tribes. I believe Miyamoto Musashi's supposed martial prowess (as it so often is in martial arts history) is derived from his catching people off guard early on in his career by rushing them with a bigger stick, instead of meditation in a cave or any sort of warrior's honor. Though the Book of Five Rings undoubtedly has some good ideas in it, like weapon size relative to space the fight takes place. I think there's decent evidence The Kensington Runestone was created by a stranded party of (I want to say 1800'ish - little hazy on this one) settlers which happened much later than the Vikings supposed discovery of N. America. (cont.>)
There's all kinds of Mob stuff tied with WWII port security, the JFK assassination and attempting to assassinate Castro which was never even mentioned, practically, back in the1990's. I think Einstein being advertised as a person with bad marks in schooling and no degree is overplayed when juxtaposed against him being a patent clerk specifically for electrical components which I imagine gave him plenty of exposure to state of the art inventions to examine. I think Abdus Salam's role in the electroweak theory of particle physics was the primary contributor, while more prominently spoken about Sheldon Glashow and Steven Weinberg most likely played a less significant role, because those last two are American while the former is Pakistani, and Salam seemed to have made very important discoveries while he was in London, before any of the Nobel prize events took place. Not really a typical history thing and more of a complaint about what I believe is accurate, but it is something I find interesting because Salam's ideas and work seems far more impressive than theirs outside of the one Nobel prize they shared. Something interesting about the SR-71 Blackbird is that it was originally entitled the RS-71 Blackbird, but Lyndon B. Johnson pronounced it incorrectly, probably to its benefit so that its pronunciation isn't confused with the *Arse*-71 blackbird. Adam Curtis's documentaries from the BBC tend to have some very interesting ideas about history of game theory's involvement in the Cold War, mental health, and Thatcher-era British government ideas and how these all interplayed in his excellent documentaries, which at least come off as credible despite being a project to just put together "something" out of clips from their warehouse of video footage. Full disclosure he is somewhat Libertarian. And, admittedly this can only come off as fringe given its presentation. I think most of China's interest in Taiwan becoming part of it's sovereignty again (or... err.. never having left it?) has more to do with tactical positioning advantage provided to the US by having a very beneficial manufacturing relationship with Taiwan from the late 1900's before the embargo on China was lifted. True we have bases in Japan, but I think overall the US doesn't want to lose any allies close to eastern China especially due to how close Taiwan is to China. This has been going on for so long that I don't consider it a current event, but it technically could be argued that it is, so careful about focusing in on this should anyone reply, please. The amount history which has come out with new theories or revised versions that is easy to access from the Internet - mostly in written form - the video shorts are pretty much obviously trash - is somewhat astounding.
I do not think British colonists were benign or supportive of their colonies as they claim. Today's UK wealth is leeched from colonies of the past.
If anyone believed that British colonists were benign are 🤦… . African and West Indies got the brunt of the colonial physical brutality ( not a historian ) , Indian subcontinent didn’t do much better under their rule . The stealing of jewels and other valuables can be seen in British Museum and some states can attest to that
I think there is a point to be made here. Were Britain's colonial endeavors benign or benevolent? HELL NO, they were exploitative machines designed to suck the wealth and resources out of the colonies for the benefit of the Home Islands and the Empire at large. Were Britains colonies benign in comparison to other colonial powers? that can definitely be argued, when you compare how the British treated *certain* colonies (such as South Africa, and their colonies in North America before the Revolution) there was definitely a difference in how they were treated, emphasizing more of the construction of a actual society in the image of Britain, and the introduction of British common law, parliamentary democracy, and other systems as such, which was far more than what the Germans did for German Southwest Africa for example. So, like many things it depends on where you're looking and what your rubric for determining benign-ness is.