Tag: history

sylphidine:

fandomisreality:

In other news, “’Fraid I’ve got the malaria” is my new favorite sentence. I shall be using it in conversation from now on.

One of my favourite books.  Published in 1998, yo.

https://tomstandage.wordpress.com/books/the-victorian-internet/

The telegraph unleashed the greatest revolution in communications since the development of the printing press. Modern Internet users are in many ways the heirs of the telegraphic tradition, which means that today we are in a unique position to understand the telegraph — and the telegraph, in turn, can give us a fascinating perspective on the challenges, opportunities and pitfalls of the Internet.

[I feel like death warmed over today, so I can relate to 

“’Fraid I’ve got the malaria”.]

infernalorchestrina:

the-milk-eyed-mender:

kitsunecoffee:

beecharts:

fangirequeen:

knottybear:

archiemcphee:

Here’s an awesome little piece of history:

Archaeologists in the Burnt City have discovered what appears to be an ancient prosthetic eye. What makes this discovery exceptionally awesome is the striking description of how the owner and her false eye would have appeared while she was still alive and blinking:

[The eye] has a hemispherical form and a diameter of just over 2.5 cm (1 inch). It consists of very light material, probably bitumen paste. The surface of the artificial eye is covered with a thin layer of gold, engraved with a central circle (representing the iris) and gold lines patterned like sun rays. The female remains found with the artificial eye was 1.82 m tall (6 feet), much taller than ordinary women of her time. On both sides of the eye are drilled tiny holes, through which a golden thread could hold the eyeball in place. Since microscopic research has shown that the eye socket showed clear imprints of the golden thread, the eyeball must have been worn during her lifetime. The woman’s skeleton has been dated to between 2900 and 2800 BCE. 

So she was an extraordinarily tall woman walking around wearing an engraved golden eye patterned with rays like a tiny sun. What an awesome sight that must have been.

[via TYWKIWDBI]

Wow.

SOMEONE DRAW HER PLEASE

CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!!

CAN WE TALK ABOUT HOW AN ANCIENT CRAFTSMAN WAS PRESENTED WITH PEOPLE LOOKING FOR HELP TO NORMALIZE THEIR DISABILITY. AND THEN SAID ‘NAH FUCK THIS WE’RE GOING TO

MAKE YOU LOOK BADASS.’ 

i love her

i still love her

justsomeantifas:

justsomeantifas:

reagan: *becomes president*

aid crisis: happens exactly because of reagans administration

donald trump: *becomes president*

the usa:

to all the “we survived reagan we can survive this” folks … a lot of people didnt fucking survive reagan and donald trumps administration is currently on a murder rampage heres a modicum of proof

thegreenwolf:

turings:

the dodo might hold the crown as the most famous extinct animal, and granted, they deserve it. they were the first species that humans acknowledged they had led to the extinction of. that’s a really significant title! but comparatively speaking, the death of a species of fat flightless pigeon with no natural predator on a tiny island isn’t half as horrifying as what happened to passenger pigeons.

the sheer scale at which these birds existed, and their subsequent extinction, is something i cannot wrap my head around. i know what happened – i’ve read novels upon novels about this, i’ve seen the pictures, i know all the details, but the more i think about it the more i realise i can’t possibly process it to its fullest extent because i wasn’t there. i didn’t live through that. i’ll never be able to fully understand how sudden it was.

these birds were over 5 billion strong at their peak. when they travelled, they allegedly blacked out the sun for thirty minutes at a time. they formed rivers in the sky, and there’s art and record of this from dozens of people. it wasn’t just one person’s poetic interpretation. these birds existed in an overwhelming quantity, and no doubt because of that that people took them for granted.

they were plentiful. they were obnoxiously plentiful, and yet humans took them out so cleanly and quickly and efficiently that from this species, from this five billion-strong species, we have only a single picture of a passenger pigeon squab. 

image

these birds faded out of existence in the span of someone’s lifetime.

And now you know why we have the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. It’s not to inconvenience those who whine when you can’t keep a crow feather you found on the ground or a taxidermy owl without papers at an antique shop. It’s because by the time the law was passed in 1918 the commercial hunting of birds was so incredibly destructive that it was already to late for several species, and many others were on the brink.

We have a HUGE abundance of wildlife compared to how many places in the US were by the turn of the 20th century. Not just birds, but mammals and other species. From the MBTA of 1918 to the Endangered Species Act of 1973 to the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act of 1940, all of these and more are there to keep us from doing the same damned thing we did before. Only now we have SO MANY MORE PEOPLE who are sucking up even more habitat and other resources wildlife need. 

We have proven that we aren’t responsible enough to just enjoy wildlife and only take what we need. That is why the laws are in place. And you can read more about laws on animal parts here at this database.

I have a question. Why is there Kansas but you travel a ways down on the map and suddenly it’s Arkansaw America Explain! Why not AR-Kansas?!

thegreatsnapescape:

That vine is pretty funny but actually I do have the answer to that.

Both “Kansas” and “Arkansas” are names of indigenous people in the area, but the lingustic root for both words is different. 

Kansas is the English word for the Kansa tribe, and so it’s pronounced according to English pronunciation rules (that is, voicing that last ‘s’). 

Arkansas was filtered through a few different languages. The Quapaw tribe was called the ‘akansa’ by the Algonquians, and when the French came through they turned ‘akansa’ into “Arkansas.” The reason we don’t pronounce “Arkansas” like “Ar-kansas” is because it’s a French word, not an English word, and so is pronounced by French rules (here, that would mean that the ‘s’ on the end of a word is silent).

Fun fact: though I’m from Arkansas, spent most of my life living elsewhere, and when I was a kid would get asked this all the time and other kids would tell me that Arkansas is a ‘stupid rip off’ of Kansas, but really it’s the other way around, because Arkansas was a state before Kansas was– AR joined the union in 1836, but Kansas wasn’t admitted until 1861. So really we can argue that Kansas should be pronounced Kan-saw.

Another fun fact: in Arkansas it’s actually illegal to mispronounce “Arkansas” (but the law only applies to official proceedings. you might get beat up on a street corner by angry Arkansans tho don’t risk it)

However there are many funny “Arkansas” puns I’ve heard over the years. My friends in Florida used to accuse me of having “Arkansass” when I was sarcastic, or assured me when I was preparing for a date that I have a nice “Arkanass.” Legally, I don’t know of their currant whereabouts, don’t ask again. 

Once I saw a BBQ in Little Rock called “Arkansauce”