History

From the beginning of time, women have cared for their hair. The famous Ice Age statuettes known as the Venus of Willendorf and of Brassempouy show clear evidence of stylised hair. Perhaps 30,000 years old, these statuettes reveal that at least some women in the society took care about how their hair looked and had a concept of beauty and attractiveness. Considerable labor was required to have created the hairstyles of these statuettes. There are also small clay figurines from Butmir in Bosnia illustrating short, neatly combed hair, which are up to 7,000 years old. - Halil from Bookmarklet

Fascinting, but I don't know how they had the time to spend on hair :) - WoH: Professor MOTHRA

"The Dust Bowl of the 1930s was vicious. Crops were ravaged, dust clouds darkened the sky, and thousands fled the Great Plains to look for work elsewhere. But one meteorologist in France had an idea that very much appealed to the parched farmers and ranchers of yesteryear — enormous weather-manipulation towers that would dwarf the Empire State Building." - Mark H from Bookmarklet

"The October 1935 issue of Everyday Science and Mechanics took an illustrated look at a proposal by one Bernard Dubos, who thought that his system might provide some much needed rain, more or less on demand. The process was supposed to work by drawing warm water at a pumping station at ground level into the hollow, Bugle-shaped concrete and steel tower. The rising air in the tower would... more... - Mark H

Archaeologists today do not as a rule seek to excavate the remains of famous people and historical events, but the results of the project reported in this article provide an important exception. Excavations on the site of the Grey Friars friary in Leicester, demolished at the Reformation and subsequently built over, revealed the remains of the friary church with a grave in a high status position beneath the choir. The authors set out the argument that this grave can be associated with historical records indicating that Richard III was buried in this friary after his death at the Battle of Bosworth. Details of the treatment of the corpse and the injuries that it had sustained support their case that this should be identified as the burial of the last Plantagenet king. This paper presents the archaeological and the basic skeletal evidence: the results of the genetic analysis and full osteoarchaeological analysis will be published elsewhere. - Halil from Bookmarklet

full article pdf format: http://antiquity.ac.uk/Ant... - Halil

"We now know that the founders of the first advanced European civilization were European," said study co-author George Stamatoyannopoulos, a human geneticist at the University of Washington. "They were very similar to Neolithic Europeans and very similar to present day-Cretans," residents of the Mediterranean island of Crete. (...) The Minoan culture emerged on Crete, which is now part of Greece, and flourished from about 2,700 B.C. to 1,420 B.C. Some believe that a massive eruption from the Volcano Thera on the island of Santorini doomed the Bronze Age civilization, while others argue that invading Mycenaeans toppled the once-great power. Nowadays, the Minoans may be most famous for the myth of the minotaur, a half-man, half-bull that was fabled to lived within a labyrinth in Crete." - Amira

See also: Minoan civilization http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... - Amira

minoan bull leapers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... - ufuk

"On December 7, 1938, a BBC radio crew visited Sigmund Freud at his new home at Hampstead, North London. Freud had moved to England only a few months earlier to escape the Nazi annexation of Austria. He was 81 years old and suffering from incurable jaw cancer. Every word was an agony to speak. Less then a year later, when the pain became unbearable, Freud asked his doctor to administer a lethal dose of morphine. The BBC recording is the only known audio recording of Freud." - Amira from Bookmarklet

In heavily accented English, he says: "I started my professional activity as a neurologist trying to bring relief to my neurotic patients. Under the influence of an older friend and by my own efforts, I discovered some important new facts about the unconscious in psychic life, the role of instinctual urges, and so on. Out of these findings grew a new science, psychoanalysis, a part of... more... - Amira

"This object was in common use in medieval libraries, even though very few survive today. It’s a bookmark - and a smart one for that matter. As with our own bookmarks, it tells you where you are in the book: the rope was attached to the binding and placed between two pages. The reader subsequently pulled down the marker along the rope to the line where he had stopped reading. Since an open medieval book often presented four text columns, the reader then turned the disk to indicate in which column he had left off. In this case we read “4” in medieval Arabic numerals - the column on the far right. So this tiny piece of parchment marks it all: page, column and line. That’s what I call smart. Source unknown, likely 13th or 14th century." - Amira from Bookmarklet

Dara or Daras (Greek: Δάρας) was an important East Roman fortress city in northern Mesopotamia on the border with the Sassanid Empire. Because of its great strategic importance, it featured prominently in the Roman-Persian conflicts of the 6th century, with the famous Battle of Dara taking place before its walls in 530. Today the Turkish village of Oğuz, Mardin Province, occupies its location. - Halil from Bookmarklet

"Like that, what would become infamous as the Battle of the Overpass was on. Forty of Bennett’s men charged the union organizers. Kilpatrick called out a warning, but the security men pounced, beating the union leaders while reporters and clergy looked on. Kilpatrick and the other photographers began snapping away. Reporters accompanying them took notes on what they were seeing." - Mark H from Bookmarklet

"Reuther was kicked, stomped, lifted into the air, thrown to the ground repeatedly, and tossed down two flights of stairs. Frankensteen, a 30-year-old, hulking former football player, go it worse because he tried to fight back. Bennett’s men swarmed him, pulled his jacket over his head and beat him senseless. “It was the worst licking I’ve ever taken,” he later told reporters. “They... more... - Mark H

"Did cities exist in the New World prior to the European conquest? Of course they did! If you have any doubt, take a look at some of my books or my articles as posted on my website (and much other work on Mesoamerica and the Andes). But according to a new reference work, the Oxford Handbook of Cities in World History (Peter Clark, editor, 2013, Oxford University Press), either there were no cities in the ancient New World, or else those cities were not part of "World History." Hmmmmmm. I don't much like either choice." - Maitani from Bookmarklet

"The first section of that work, called "Early Cities," has five survey sections: Mesopotamia Calixtlahuaca, an Aztec-period city Cities of the Ancient Mediterranean Africa South Asia China Where are the cities of the Aztec, Maya, or Inka? What about the Zapotec or the Moche, the Toltec or Tiwanaku, the Mixtec or Chimu? Would it have been that hard to solicit some chapters on these... more... - Maitani

"A century ago, one section of Vienna played host to Adolf Hitler, Leon Trotsky, Joseph Tito, Sigmund Freud and Joseph Stalin. In January 1913, a man whose passport bore the name Stavros Papadopoulos disembarked from the Krakow train at Vienna's North Terminal station. Of dark complexion, he sported a large peasant's moustache and carried a very basic wooden suitcase. "I was sitting at the table," wrote the man he had come to meet, years later, "when the door opened with a knock and an unknown man entered. "He was short... thin... his greyish-brown skin covered in pockmarks... I saw nothing in his eyes that resembled friendliness." The writer of these lines was a dissident Russian intellectual, the editor of a radical newspaper called Pravda (Truth). His name was Leon Trotsky." - Mark H from Bookmarklet

Marxism is commonly used about every revolutionary grouping who has 'communism' as their utopian goal. That would be a stateless society with common ownership, where everyone is contributing according to their ability and consuming according to their need. I'm sure there are a million shades, but Leninism and Maoism is the first big split. - Eivind

"When you think of the acropolis, one immediately thinks of the Parthenon in majestic ruin, or perhaps the famous Caryatids on the porch of the Erechtheion. Perhaps, while you’re busy—perhaps a little too busy—admiring the architectural scenery as you progress up the sacred way, you might not notice some very very important bits of archaeology. Yes, I’m talking about those mysterious holes in the ground. One passes them without thinking, but when you start looking, they’re everywhere. Not interesting, you say? Well, let me tell you more: these are, in fact, carved-out bases for inscriptions, in which they were placed and then fixed in position by pouring molten lead into the gaps. Inscriptions, containing sources for all kinds of exciting aspects of Ancient Greek political and social history!" - Maitani from Bookmarklet

"During the Easter break I had the wonderful opportunity to participate in the Postgraduate Epigraphy Course put on by the British School at Athens March 24th to April 7th, taught by Robert Pitt (BSA Assistant Director) and Graham Oliver (University of Liverpool). As many of you may know, my Ph.D. work focuses on the Ancient Greek dialects, for which the overwhelming amount of evidence... more... - Maitani

"The first week of the course was devoted to seminars in practical epigraphy and field trips around Attica and Delphi. The first stop of the Grand Tour (of epigraphy) was the mighty acropolis with its many aforementioned holes in the ground, but still with much remaining epigraphy to be reckoned with, mainly a lot of dedications. One example (IG I³ 833 + IG II² 4147) gives an excellent... more... - Maitani

The book is alternately comic and serious, charting Durrell's experiences on Cyprus and the people he met and befriended, as well as charting the progress of the Cypriot "Enosis" (union with Greece and freedom from British rule) movement, which plunged the island into chaos and violence. Comic moments include Durrell's successful house-buying adventure, and the visits of his mother and brother, naturalist Gerald Durrell. Durrell settled in the village of Bellapais (purposely spelt "Bellapaix" by Durrell to evoke the old name Paix), which is now part of the Turkish-controlled Northern Cyprus. - Halil from Bookmarklet

I'm about 50-50 Kindle and paper now :) - Eivind

“Aleppo located in northwestern Syria 310 kilometres from Damascus, is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world; it has been inhabited since perhaps as early as the 6th millennium BC. (...) What it had was tradition, heritage and incredible diversity. Five hundred years after Shakespeare made Aleppo souk the epitome of a distant cornucopia, you could still buy almost anything here, eat and drink a vast range of dishes, and even bathe in the traditional Hammam Nahasin. (...) When I first wandered in via the gate near the citadel, I discovered that there was only one thing I could not find in there: the desire to leave. It was just too diverting and fascinating. Every shopkeeper seemed to want to have a chat over a glass of red tea. (...) Architecturally and culturally, Aleppo carries the genetic imprint of a succession of ruling powers and invaders including Hittites, Assyrians, Arabs, Greeks, Romans, crusading European Christians, Mamelukes and Ottomans." - Amira

Photo: "The Pianist" [Warsaw city after WW2] vs Syria 2013 https://twitter.com/LineHol... - Amira

Over 2,400 extinct titles are contained in these tables and are organized alphabetically by their title. - Halil from Bookmarklet

afaik a lot of peerages became extinct after WWI as loads of aristos sent their kids off as officers only for them to die and hence their titles, can anyone confirm this please? - Halil

Those peerages include the dates on which they became extinct in the rightmost column; a lot of them look to be before 1900 (those without dates) and not many of the rest appear to be around the WW1 era. - Mark H

"Lucretius (borrowing from Democritus and others), says [more than 2,000 years ago] the universe is made of an infinite number of atoms. (...) All things, including the species to which you belong, have evolved over vast stretches of time. The evolution is random, though in the case of living organisms, it involves a principle of natural selection, (...) there is no life after death, and that there is no purpose to creation beyond pleasure. (...) Lucretius argued for a mechanistic universe governed by chance. He also argued for a plurality of worlds (and these planets, like the Earth, need not be spherical) and a non-hierarchical universe. (...)" - Amira from Bookmarklet

"[It] dropped like an atomic bomb on the fixedly Christian culture of Western Europe. But this poem’s radical and transformative ideas survived (...) One reason is that it was art. (...) In the spirit of commonplace books, readers of that era focused on individual passages rather than larger (and disturbing) meanings. Readers preferred to see the poem as a primer on Latin and Greek... more... - Amira

"From ancient Egyptian religions to Edgar Allen Poe's The Black Cat to the latest I Can Haz Cheeseburger meme, felines, literature, and culture have enjoyed a long love affair. But perhaps no other feline has walked through history in quite the fashion that a Mediterranean cat did when it left paw prints across the pages of a 15th century manuscript from Dubrovnik, Croatia." - Amira from Bookmarklet

Probably most remembered for being the mother of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna of Russia; however she was not the only daughter of the Grand Duchess's to die during Russia's revolution, her daughter the Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna of Russia was also murdered by the Russians. - Halil from Bookmarklet

Well, that's my history lesson for the day, hope you all have a good day. - Halil

you too :) - Pete #TeamMonique

1914 - Cyprus annexed by Britain, after more than 300 years of Ottoman rule. Britain had occupied the island in 1878, although it remained nominally under Ottoman sovereignty. 1925 - Becomes crown colony. - Halil from Bookmarklet

2004 April - Twin referendums on whether to accept UN reunification plan in last-minute bid to achieve united EU entry. Plan is endorsed by Turkish Cypriots but overwhelmingly rejected by Greek Cypriots. ~ EU accession 2004 May - Cyprus is one of 10 new states to join the EU, but does so as a divided island. 2006 May - Greek Cypriots back ruling coalition in parliamentary elections, endorsing its opposition to reunification efforts. - Halil

I've been to Girne, beautiful place! - Halil

Safflower is one of humanity's oldest crops. Chemical analysis of ancient Egyptian textiles dated to the Twelfth dynasty identified dyes made from safflower, and garlands made from safflowers were found in the tomb of the pharaoh Tutankhamun.[3] John Chadwick reports that the Greek name for safflower occurs many times in Linear B tablets, distinguished into two kinds: a white safflower, which is measured, and red which is weighed. "The explanation is that there are two parts of the plant which can be used; the pale seeds and the red florets."[4] - Halil from Bookmarklet

Has a slight dandelion look about it - Halil

The ruins contain numerous interesting buildings, the most outstanding of which is the temple of Zeus Lepsinos from the reign of Emperor Hadrian. [2] Archaeologists have found terra cotta shards indicating that the temple site had its origins back at least to the 6th century BC. The temple is one of the best preserved classical temples in Turkey: sixteen columns remain standing and most of the columns are inscribed in honor of the citizen who commissioned their construction. Carian rock-cut tombs are also found at Euromus. [edit] - Halil from Bookmarklet

Turkey is full of history, especially historical sites/ruins. - Halil

"We do know that limp binding was used in the 14th & 15th centuries and that it became a quite popular style in the 16th century, with some library collections having over 50% of their works bound in this fashion thanks to the efforts of scholar-publishers. (...) One of the examples that stood out for me was a limp binding with a linen cloth cover, held by the National Library of Sweden. It's a document from 1451-1452, which is simply referred to as the Vadstena Observance. Vadstena was a monastery. (...) It's a simple way of binding things. I can't help but feel that these books are meant for use; a copy meant for wear, rather than a library reference, which would be the grander version of the manuscript that you'd want to keep nice. Some of the records from 14th and 15th century convent libraries certainly agree as most of these books were in the hands of the nuns, with only 9% of the books in the library being limp bound. That doesn't mean these books weren't of value though. They still contained information and have even been documented as being taken as part of the spoils of war." - Amira from Bookmarklet

"Medieval manuscripts often begin with a portrait of the author, a practice taken from Roman books. When this copy of 'About Virginity' was made, an artist drew on the first page a man writing, presumably meant as a 'portrait' of Aldhelm. The drawing was done with a stylus, indented into the surface of the vellum, but it was never inked in or painted. Later in the 10th century, when many of the glosses in Old English were added, the drawing was partly redrawn with ink, leaving part of the indented original drawing is clearly visible." http://www.bl.uk/onlineg... - Amira

Forty years ago this August, tens of thousands of families were given 90 days to leave their homes and possessions or face internment in military camps. Around half of those exiled would find their way to Britain and change the face of the country forever. - Halil from Bookmarklet

Dunno. There are usually geopolitical reasons these things happen. - Spidra Webster

"Researchers have created software that can rebuild protolanguages - the ancient tongues from which our modern languages evolved. To test the system, the team took 637 languages currently spoken in Asia and the Pacific and recreated the early language from which they descended. (...) Over thousands of years, tiny variations in the way that we produce sounds have meant that early languages have morphed into many different descendents. Dr Klein explains: "These sound changes are almost always regular, with similar words changing in similar ways, so patterns are left that a human or a computer can find. "The trick is to identify these patterns of change and then to 'reverse' them, basically evolving words backwards in time." (...)" - Amira from Bookmarklet

"From a database of 142,000 words, the system was able to recreate the early language from which these modern tongues derived. The scientists believe it would have been spoken about 7,000 years ago. They then compared the computer's findings to those of linguists, finding that 85% of the early words that the software presented were within one "character" - or sound - of the words that... more... - Amira

Once the *recursive* features of language evolution are deduced, one can chain forward from the present (cf. prediction in physics), as well as simulate back to initial conditions (e.g. stochastic MCMC). By relying on probabilistic models of sound change, the authors zoom past symbolic representations of languages. My guess for first ever uttered sound: "Duh!" (maybe "wut" :-) - Adriano

This was a real turn around folks, and to understand it, we will have to look at 35mm photography in 1959. While the Japanese were the up and coming new boys on the block, everyone knew that the Germans were the undisputed leaders. Leica was far and away the best selling professional Rangefinder camera. Rollei's TLR was the pro's choice in 120 cameras. And then of course there were the marvelously sharp Zeiss optics on the awkward but superlatively made Contax and Contarex. Japan was where the cheap cameras came from. You bought Japanese if you couldn't afford German. - Halil from Bookmarklet

Who used to or still does own one? - Halil

Not me. I'm a relatively recent convert to Nikon, but now thoroughly hooked! - Son of Groucho

Bones were discovered in 1674 by workmen rebuilding a stairway in the Tower, and these were subsequently placed in Westminster Abbey, in an urn bearing the names of Edward and Richard. However it has never been proven that the bones belonged to the princes. With the discovery and DNA testing of the bones of Richard III, there now may be more attention placed on the DNA testing of the bones discovered in 1674. - Halil from Bookmarklet

Yes there were many many illegitimate offspring, we currently have two illegitimate sprogs in office in the UK! :-/ getting back to the initial topic, I can't find any current news/blog/debate article about the possible DNA testing of the bones, maybe it's too early? - Halil

Given that they could barely keep a king on the throne in all this, keeping track of him after he was dead was probably even more difficult—especially since the new regime didn’t want to keep track of him. Henry Tudor, now Henry VII, feared that Richard’s burial site would become a rallying point for anti-Tudorists, so its location was kept quiet. When Henry VIII created the Anglican Church in the mid 16th-century, breaking off from the Vatican, England’s missions were dissolved; the friary was taken apart stone by stone and Richard’s grave was lost with it. Rumors even spread that his bones were dug up and thrown into a river. - Halil from Bookmarklet

The Richard III Society was founded in 1924 to “strip away the spin, the unfair innuendo, Tudor artistic shaping and the lazy acquiescence of later ages, and get at the truth”. He didn’t kill his nephews, or his brother or Henry VI, and he didn’t kill his wife—that’s all the stuff that historians in the pay of the Tudors wanted everyone to believe. Moreover, according to the society,... more... - Halil

Their findings also confirmed that Richard III was killed rather gruesomely—he was felled by one of two vicious blows to the head, including one from a sword that nearly sliced the back of his skull off. The team found 10 wounds to his body in total, including a “humiliation” stab wound to his right buttock and several to his trunk that were likely inflicted after his death; there was... more... - Halil

In 1764 a porcelain factory was started in Fulda under Prince-Bishop, Prince-Abbot Heinrich von Bibra, but shortly after his death it was closed down in 1789 by his successor, Prince-Bishop, Prince-Abbot Adalbert von Harstall. Because of its quality and rarity, this porcelain is much prized by collectors. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... - Halil from Bookmarklet

Might cheer myself up by going to the V&A and finally checking these out sometime next week, been meaning to do so since last year! - Halil

City mayor Sir Peter Soulsby said a nearby former school building will be refitted in time for the re-interment of his remains at the city's cathedral. A bid to get the king interred in York, where he had close ties, continues. Richard, who was killed at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, was buried in the church of the Greyfriars but the location was lost when the building was demolished. - Halil from Bookmarklet

:) - Eivind