tidbits cross time
Feb. 19th, 2024 11:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marycatelliIn classical times, politicians loved to associate themselves with Hercules if they were somewhat maverick. After all -- blunt, plain-spoken, unrefined in manners but kind, hospitable and a good guest, fought monsters, and primarily after the pure honor of winning victory, and lots of food and drink, rather than money.
At the Battle of Lepanto, after a ramming, Don Juan of Austria ordered the convicts serving as rowers on the Christian ships be freed to fight. This was so effective as reinforcements that the Muslim commander ordered their slave rowers be freed. The slaves then promptly reinforced -- the Christians.
"Pharoah" originally mean the Egyptian king's palace. The use of it to refer to the king himself occurred, apparently, during Hatshepsut's reign -- that is, it was used to refer to the king herself. It is suspected, though not of course known, that scribes started to say that orders came from the Palace rather than the King to deal with titles. On the other hand, it did stick.
The USS Gambier Bay was the only US carrier sunk by naval gunfire in WWII. On the other hand, the Admiral in charge of TAFFY-3 including that ship was not unreasonably expecting a crushing defeat despite best efforts, they were so outnumbered. As a subordinate captain put it to his crew, "A large Japanese fleet has been contacted. They are fifteen miles away and headed in our direction. They are believed to have four battleships, eight cruisers, and a number of destroyers. This will be a fight against overwhelming odds from which survival cannot be expected. We will do what damage we can."
Queen Brunhilda of Austrasia was, over her lifespan, regent for first her son, then for her grandson, and finally for her great-grandson.
Although Scottish universities were founded much later than English ones, by the eighteenth century, English aristocrats would send their sons to the Scottish ones for a superior education.
Repetundae courts in ancient Rome dealt with corruption. Consequently, anyone who held office was not eligible to serve on the jury; this is defined as anyone who was, or shall be, in the Senate.
James Garfield, besides being president of the United States, also devised a new and original proof of the Pythagorean Theorem.
The term vagr in Swedish means both outlaw and wolf. The evidence is that the original meaning was "outlaw" and that it was used as a euphemism for wolf.
The junior senators in ancient Rome were known, literally, as "foot men" and more idiomatically, as "walkers," because as the speeches were given on whatever the subject was, the way to indicate your support for a more senior senator's position was to walk over and sit near him.
You could not distrain on a woman's comb for her debts in medieval Ireland.
The two most vital torpedos in the Battle off Samar didn't hit, but drove the Yamato away from the battle. It turned north to evade. If it had turned south, there was more risk from the torpedo hitting, and also colliding with another Japanese ship, but effectively taking it out of the battle was a major contribution to American success.
The Roman Senate had to meet in a place prepared by checking the auguries and making sacrifices. It often met in temples, such as Jupiter Optimus Maximus, Fides, or Concord. Two such temples were Bellona and Apollo, both of which were outside the pomerium, the boundary of the city into which magistrates could not enter if they were in command of an army, so they could meet them. Also foreign dignitaries they did not want to allow into the city.
Egypt had a reputation as a pestilent place in ancient times.
Even after the Mayan civilization collapsed, six-tenths of its population continued to live along the trade routes that it had established.
When Lord Lyons arrived to be the British ambassador to the United States in 1857, he had to ask the departing ambassador what was this Mason-Dixon Line that all the American kept telling him they were north or south of.
In Anglo-Saxon, summer could be referred to as "somer" -- the root of summer -- or "gear" -- the root of year.
Ancient Greek priests and priestesses had a job for a period of time -- perhaps a year, perhaps a single festival -- as well as those who held it for somewhat longer. Particularly among young unmarried maidens. Longer term priestesses held posts that allowed them to be wives and mothers. Celibate long-term priestesses were aged widows.
Paratroopers, blown off course during the D-Day attacks, landed miles from their targets. So they attacked whatever they could find. Germans assumed that they were attacking in force, estimating up to ten times as many attackers as were involved in some cases, and thus sometimes surrendering to vastly inferior forces.
The Grass Crown was the highest military award in Rome, given a general who, by his actions, had saved an entire army. It was also called the Blockade Crown, since breaking through a blockade was one way to win it. It was a chaplet of grass and other plants from the battlefield. Lesser soldiers who had saved the lives of Roman citizens could get the civic crown, which was made of oak leaves. The naval crown and the camp crown were the honors of soldiers who first boarded an enemy ship or breached an enemy camp.
Captain Richard Pearson fought John Paul Jones in the famous naval battle of Jones's "I have not yet begun to fight!" The convey he escorted escaped, and he was knighted. Jones, on hearing of this, said that he wanted to fall in with him again -- he'd make him a lord.
Records in Krakow were at first kept in German. When this changed in 1312, it was to Latin. It was centuries before they were done in Polish.
Greek rites had strict rules about attire, punishable not only by exclusion but by curses, blows, or forfeiting the offending item as a dedication to the god of the sanctuary. White was often required, for purity, and purple often prohibited -- though some priests and priestesses were required to wear purple. The monetary limits, when set, were rather high, showing that initiates of mysteries were often wealthy women.
The Commissioner for the Russian Night Witches, Yevdokiya Rachkevich, when she retired from that job, went to identify every crashed plane and the bodies of her pilots so they could be cleared of charges of being MIA -- everyone who wasn't found was deemed to have deserted, with consequences for your family.
In Rome, your patron would defend you against criminal charges in court. If he hadn't been your patron before, defending you against charges would automatically make him so.
After the clash of the Monitor and the Virginia, British officials were contemplating how it was the severest fight yet between ironclads and frustrated that they could not get good reports. When it was clear that navies need to go to all iron ships and no wood, some people thought it was also clear that cannon were useless, and ramming would have to return as a tactic. When that was cleared up, the ships were still designed to ram, and this resulted in many accidents being much more serious than necessary.
Persephone probably didn't go to the underworld in Greek myth during the winter. Winter was a time of rain and not much cold. It was the bone-dry summer that was impossible to raise crops in, and indeed, a farmer trying to raise crops during the summer was an image of stupidity, to compare other follies to. Deciduous trees would lose their leaves for winter, but a lot of trees were evergreen.
In colonial North America, most of the fighting occurred between tribes. Frequently, what was fought over was access to the white man. The Iroquois monopolized contact as much as they could, and often their place in the fur trade was as middleman, selling the furs that other tribes had caught to the French, even though the other tribes and the French would much rather have cut them out.
The official rations for British sailors on sailing ships were quite large, with a lot of meat, beer, and other food, for over four thousand calories a day. Some captains would supplement this.
In Latin, a province was first of all an office or duty. It eventually acquired meaning of the boundaries to the land in order to demarcate the duties of different offices.
Hearth initiates at Eleusis were boys and girls who offered prayers and sacrifices on behalf of the initiates of the mysteries, and most of the dedications there are for hearth initiates. Classical ones are all boys, but Hellenistic ones are one boy and all the rest girls.
Great Britain spent over a million pounds preparing for war with the United States after the Trent affair, and discussion of war made it very clear that Canada was simply indefensible. Soldiers departed for it in great gloom, and one person predicted that the North would give up the South and snag Canada instead. Meanwhile, the North was considering that the blockade on southern ports would fall into smithereens before the British Navy.
At the Battle of Lepanto, after a ramming, Don Juan of Austria ordered the convicts serving as rowers on the Christian ships be freed to fight. This was so effective as reinforcements that the Muslim commander ordered their slave rowers be freed. The slaves then promptly reinforced -- the Christians.
"Pharoah" originally mean the Egyptian king's palace. The use of it to refer to the king himself occurred, apparently, during Hatshepsut's reign -- that is, it was used to refer to the king herself. It is suspected, though not of course known, that scribes started to say that orders came from the Palace rather than the King to deal with titles. On the other hand, it did stick.
The USS Gambier Bay was the only US carrier sunk by naval gunfire in WWII. On the other hand, the Admiral in charge of TAFFY-3 including that ship was not unreasonably expecting a crushing defeat despite best efforts, they were so outnumbered. As a subordinate captain put it to his crew, "A large Japanese fleet has been contacted. They are fifteen miles away and headed in our direction. They are believed to have four battleships, eight cruisers, and a number of destroyers. This will be a fight against overwhelming odds from which survival cannot be expected. We will do what damage we can."
Queen Brunhilda of Austrasia was, over her lifespan, regent for first her son, then for her grandson, and finally for her great-grandson.
Although Scottish universities were founded much later than English ones, by the eighteenth century, English aristocrats would send their sons to the Scottish ones for a superior education.
Repetundae courts in ancient Rome dealt with corruption. Consequently, anyone who held office was not eligible to serve on the jury; this is defined as anyone who was, or shall be, in the Senate.
James Garfield, besides being president of the United States, also devised a new and original proof of the Pythagorean Theorem.
The term vagr in Swedish means both outlaw and wolf. The evidence is that the original meaning was "outlaw" and that it was used as a euphemism for wolf.
The junior senators in ancient Rome were known, literally, as "foot men" and more idiomatically, as "walkers," because as the speeches were given on whatever the subject was, the way to indicate your support for a more senior senator's position was to walk over and sit near him.
You could not distrain on a woman's comb for her debts in medieval Ireland.
The two most vital torpedos in the Battle off Samar didn't hit, but drove the Yamato away from the battle. It turned north to evade. If it had turned south, there was more risk from the torpedo hitting, and also colliding with another Japanese ship, but effectively taking it out of the battle was a major contribution to American success.
The Roman Senate had to meet in a place prepared by checking the auguries and making sacrifices. It often met in temples, such as Jupiter Optimus Maximus, Fides, or Concord. Two such temples were Bellona and Apollo, both of which were outside the pomerium, the boundary of the city into which magistrates could not enter if they were in command of an army, so they could meet them. Also foreign dignitaries they did not want to allow into the city.
Egypt had a reputation as a pestilent place in ancient times.
Even after the Mayan civilization collapsed, six-tenths of its population continued to live along the trade routes that it had established.
When Lord Lyons arrived to be the British ambassador to the United States in 1857, he had to ask the departing ambassador what was this Mason-Dixon Line that all the American kept telling him they were north or south of.
In Anglo-Saxon, summer could be referred to as "somer" -- the root of summer -- or "gear" -- the root of year.
Ancient Greek priests and priestesses had a job for a period of time -- perhaps a year, perhaps a single festival -- as well as those who held it for somewhat longer. Particularly among young unmarried maidens. Longer term priestesses held posts that allowed them to be wives and mothers. Celibate long-term priestesses were aged widows.
Paratroopers, blown off course during the D-Day attacks, landed miles from their targets. So they attacked whatever they could find. Germans assumed that they were attacking in force, estimating up to ten times as many attackers as were involved in some cases, and thus sometimes surrendering to vastly inferior forces.
The Grass Crown was the highest military award in Rome, given a general who, by his actions, had saved an entire army. It was also called the Blockade Crown, since breaking through a blockade was one way to win it. It was a chaplet of grass and other plants from the battlefield. Lesser soldiers who had saved the lives of Roman citizens could get the civic crown, which was made of oak leaves. The naval crown and the camp crown were the honors of soldiers who first boarded an enemy ship or breached an enemy camp.
Captain Richard Pearson fought John Paul Jones in the famous naval battle of Jones's "I have not yet begun to fight!" The convey he escorted escaped, and he was knighted. Jones, on hearing of this, said that he wanted to fall in with him again -- he'd make him a lord.
Records in Krakow were at first kept in German. When this changed in 1312, it was to Latin. It was centuries before they were done in Polish.
Greek rites had strict rules about attire, punishable not only by exclusion but by curses, blows, or forfeiting the offending item as a dedication to the god of the sanctuary. White was often required, for purity, and purple often prohibited -- though some priests and priestesses were required to wear purple. The monetary limits, when set, were rather high, showing that initiates of mysteries were often wealthy women.
The Commissioner for the Russian Night Witches, Yevdokiya Rachkevich, when she retired from that job, went to identify every crashed plane and the bodies of her pilots so they could be cleared of charges of being MIA -- everyone who wasn't found was deemed to have deserted, with consequences for your family.
In Rome, your patron would defend you against criminal charges in court. If he hadn't been your patron before, defending you against charges would automatically make him so.
After the clash of the Monitor and the Virginia, British officials were contemplating how it was the severest fight yet between ironclads and frustrated that they could not get good reports. When it was clear that navies need to go to all iron ships and no wood, some people thought it was also clear that cannon were useless, and ramming would have to return as a tactic. When that was cleared up, the ships were still designed to ram, and this resulted in many accidents being much more serious than necessary.
Persephone probably didn't go to the underworld in Greek myth during the winter. Winter was a time of rain and not much cold. It was the bone-dry summer that was impossible to raise crops in, and indeed, a farmer trying to raise crops during the summer was an image of stupidity, to compare other follies to. Deciduous trees would lose their leaves for winter, but a lot of trees were evergreen.
In colonial North America, most of the fighting occurred between tribes. Frequently, what was fought over was access to the white man. The Iroquois monopolized contact as much as they could, and often their place in the fur trade was as middleman, selling the furs that other tribes had caught to the French, even though the other tribes and the French would much rather have cut them out.
The official rations for British sailors on sailing ships were quite large, with a lot of meat, beer, and other food, for over four thousand calories a day. Some captains would supplement this.
In Latin, a province was first of all an office or duty. It eventually acquired meaning of the boundaries to the land in order to demarcate the duties of different offices.
Hearth initiates at Eleusis were boys and girls who offered prayers and sacrifices on behalf of the initiates of the mysteries, and most of the dedications there are for hearth initiates. Classical ones are all boys, but Hellenistic ones are one boy and all the rest girls.
Great Britain spent over a million pounds preparing for war with the United States after the Trent affair, and discussion of war made it very clear that Canada was simply indefensible. Soldiers departed for it in great gloom, and one person predicted that the North would give up the South and snag Canada instead. Meanwhile, the North was considering that the blockade on southern ports would fall into smithereens before the British Navy.