General Discussion

Hello all, I am back on my forum posting shenanigans. As a history major, I learn a lot of fun history things and I sometimes just want to casually talk about them casually. I also want to learn more than I have time to deep dive for, so I decided, "Why not make a forum post where people can share history facts and enrich shared knowledge!"

The historical event/fact/period doesn't have to be limited to the Anthropocene, you can share anything you want! Have a fact about ancient animals or evolution? Go for it! It also doesn't have to be "scholarly" or "academic", share a history fact about your favorite hobby!

I'll start first, I'm reading an article currently about Edo period Japan and more specifically, the business of the yomiuri who were peddlers of pamphlets and news who, as part of their job, went around singing parts of their publications.

Another fact (I'm taking a class on Japan) there were plans by Japan to allow a wealthy American railroad magnate, E.H. Harriman to purchase the South Manchurian Railroad which would have taken the burden off of Japan to invest in repairing the railroad, acquiring railcars that actually worked with the railroad, and so forth (Japan had been drained dry from war). Harriman was interested in the acquiring rails so he could create a "girdle around the Earth". These plans fell through, though for various reasons including a delay due to protests and riots around the country against foreign action, calls for the resignation of the Katsura cabinet, and disappointment with the provisions of the Portsmouth Treaty. (The railway served...many purposes among other things, but to keep this brief I'm focusing only on the Katsura-Harriman Agreement).

I'll try to update this as much as possible when something strikes:)

little history info about my country:
the Netherlands is known for dams, canals and elaborate waterworks, a result of the area's eternal conflict against the sea. the most well-known and elaborate waterworks, the Deltawerken and especially Stormvloedkering Neeltje Jans, were built in direct response to the Watersnoodramp of 1953. if you want to learn more about that event, look up "1953 North Sea Flood".
but I think the most impressive feat of Dutch water-related engineering is actually the fact that an entire province, Flevoland, is an artificial island. yeap. the Afsluitdijk was built in 1932, which resulted in the formerly saltwater Zuiderzee becoming a freshwater body of water referred to as the IJsselmeer. over the next few decades, dams and barriers and pumping systems to drain the water from the land were constructed, which ended up splitting off the Markermeer from the rest of the IJsselmeer and creating a new section of land surrounded by water, and this new artificial island became Flevoland. why did this all happen, you ask? well, after a large flood in 1916, the decision was made to separate the Zuiderzee from the Noordzee and reclaim it, and afterwards it was decided that a large section of the new IJsselmeer should be reclaimed as dry land. the Markermeer was actually intended to be mostly drained as well, but this plan was never carried out.

Copy pasted from another forum I had talked about this in haha, but I thought it would go PERFECTLY here as well!

To start off, Im sure you are someone else reading this might have seen this meme or some sort of variation of it at some point (and if you havent now you have): image to not clog thread

Well, as many people know that is the Demon Core, an atomic bomb that was made in the 1940's, it was actually named Charlie and was the third one in a set of triples (Baker and Abel being its siblings), the other two were actually used in the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and the Demon Core was going to be for the same thing, however after the horrible incident in Japan and other conflicts happening politically wise, the third one was never to be used, so the USA kept it and decided to do some experiments on it.

That is where we hear of the two incidents of the victims dying, however the stories are a lot more interesting than I thought to be honest, as I always thought it was a freak accident (which it technically is) however it has a lot more story under it than what a lot of people care to know about it is! The experimentation was also for the Manhattan project as well, as I just learned.


The First death was not known as much as the other one that people tend to make memes out of. Harry Daghlian was working alone doing neutron reflector experiments when he dropped one of the reflector bricks onto the core itself, setting into supercritical (below Prompt Critical, which is the last stage) and recieved a lethal dose of RADs (200RADs, or 510 REMs). He died 29 days later in the hospital.

It's unfortunate I could not find too much more on this man, however that's what happened in the first incident. The second one took place 9 months later.

The Second death happened due to the man (Louis Slotin) used a screwdriver to hold the two pieces of beryllium apart, and the screwdriver slipped, closing the two halves around the core itself, which caused it to go Prompt Critical, a blue flash happened and a wave a heat, and Slotin immediately got effected. Now, I couldn't find an exact amount of radiation he was hit with, but most sources I've seen have said 1,000RADs, which If you don't know how bad that is, the human body can safely handle about 2-7RADs without any major side effects, 25RADs being the absolute maximum a human should take in a single sitting. 150RAD's is deemed as well above the threshold for ARP (Acute Radiation Poisoning) and will cause severe damage to the cells and organs of the body, so 1,000RADs is an extremely lethal dose. Slotin died shortly later (9 days) and was the reason for better Nuclear Laboratory Safety precautions world wide.

It's sad as he actually did not have to die at all- he was using a screwdriver as he was trying to show off to the scientists saying he knows the procedure and its perfectly fine, and instead caused himself an early death and several other scientists in the room shortened lives. One of his colleagues, Alvin Graves, died 20 years later after suffering neurological and sight issues due to the incident (they were farther away in the room, whereas Louis was touching the Beryllium outershell of the Core).

After that, the core got the nickname Demon Core, and was melted down in 1946 to be used in smaller bombs, due to it being extremely dangerous. Anyways, yeah long story short this is an insane thing that I heard about but never knew too much about the actual incidents surrounding it, as I had only seen the memes, but when I took an actual dive into the story behind it, its actually rather insane. I heard some other things that had happened to Daghlian during his hospital stay however I could not find solid evidence for it so I will not be sharing it here until I find some solid proof behind it, but yeah. Insane ****.

I love science (my major is in science for college, dont know what yet as im only in community right now to get my basics out of the way) and this type of stuff tickles my brain in a nice way. Although I will say, i find the memes surrounding it rather insensitive to the incident, but thats just my opinion

Oh wow, amazing!

*Edit: I am from the NL too, woah! Also, this is fun to read!

I finally found a place where to share my randomly learned history facts because I love learning random stuff like that.

Kinda short, but wasn't I shocked when I learnt Ninjas didn't dress in black to conceal their identities? Yeah, I was... turns out media nowadays has this idea of Ninjas wearing all black clothes that covers them all up when in fact... they dressed like ordinary people because their mission was to pass as such to get information ("spies" in other words), often as farmers or just your ordinary citizens. Where did the idea of ninjas dressing all black come from? (Which is, not the brightest of ideas if you think about it honestly, they would have found right out what you came to do with an attire like that, probably not your identity but nonetheless, still not a brilliant idea) and the answer is: Theater plays... in Japan they used to present stories on a pretty modest theater where the key to recognizing which character was which, certain attires were exaggerated to the point it was associated with certain field of work and all that, and that's where the full black ninja costume came from and, yeah, at some point we all believed they actually dressed like that when there's no historical record of such thing aside from the ninja costumes for theater plays.

---

The Celts having a Zodiac is something that also took me off guard pretty recently, specially considering the most known to a certain level are the Western and Chinese Zodiac, and they don't only have a Zodiac related to animals but Trees as well (non related but this kinda inspired me to do some dragons after all my zodiac signs lol) all with their own characteristics!
This is probably a known fact already, but, another thing is that the Halloween celebration comes from their culture as well, Halloween being known as "Samhain", representing the death of summer and the beginning of the harvest season, they believed that around those dates the spiritual and earthly world met at some point, in which the spiritual world's layer was at its finest, just enough to pass messages through and such (Foxes are usually seen as the animals who walk between these two worlds and as such can get messages through and out, that's crazy), but not only that, the costumes and such were used to ward off evil spirits as well during the festival. Surprisingly enough it is believed that they also did trick-or-treating while/or entertain/ing other people at their doorstep while asking for something in return (food, drinks) it is also believed that poor people went from doorstep to doorstep for the exact same reason, hoping to get an exchange in food or money for paying respects to the dead as well.
Next time someone tells you Halloween is something of the "Devil", y'all tell them "No, in fact, is to ward off evil!" although I feel like these creatures would laugh at us lmao.

---

I want to touch so much stuff still, but I'm afraid this goes into muddy terrain because it is abt religion/beliefs and I don't want to tick anybody off out of respect and because of the site rules, but what I will tell is that: Ancient Egyptians used to play board games, which is oddly amazing actually...

Just learned about the Great Grain Robbery which took place in the 1970s.

Under the Soviet Union, Russia switched to a largely livestock based agriculture, but they needed grain to support it. Prior to the Soviet Union, Russia was one of if not the largest exporter of grain, but due to incentivization (and nationalization of the agriculture sector to focus on livestock) and a pretty bad drought during the 1970s, Soviet Russia was desperate for grain. They brokered a deal with the United States to purchase 10 mil short tons of grain at subsidized prices and... And the global prices of grain SOARED and grain stockpiles were WRECKED.

Also, literally anything involving Shostakovich. He was very funny. Apparently he was commissioned by The Guy of the USSR (who I shan't name) to write a Big Bold 9th Symphony and what he wrote was.....not big and bold it was actually really funny and kind of subversive. Because it was meant to celebrate the defeat of the ww2 bad guys (who I also won't name) AND it was Shostakovich's 9th symphony (which are notoriously a THING for a composer, like all the classic composers have banger 9ths), everyone was expecting something very patriotic and celebratory and with a lot of OOMPH. Instead he made a symphony that's kind of melodramatic, and the very first piece in the symphony has a repeating pattern that SOUNDS like it's going to lead into something cool and awesome but instead is followed immediately with some whimpish flute playing.

Neil Armstrong was known as the first man on the moon during the Apollo 11 mission, but there was actually another crew of astronauts lined up to be the first on the moon.

The crew was Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger B. Chaffee. Their mission was designated AS-204 and they were going to be the first men on the moon. Unfortunately, this wouldn't come to pass.
On January 27th, 1967, the crew was doing a launch rehearsal in their lunar module when one of them noticed a weird smell, described as sour buttermilk. The rehearsal was put on hold as the module was inspected, before they resumed.
Important to note is the module was constructed out of a lot of nylon and the atmosphere was pressurized pure oxygen. The door to the module was incredibly difficult to open due to its construction combined with the pressurization.
When the rehearsal resumed, things seemed to be going smoothly, until some of the electrical components in the module caught fire. Unfortunately, due to the module being unfuelled, NASA hadn't prepared for disaster, and the astronauts sadly didn't survive the fire.
They had nicknamed their mission Apollo 1, and after the disaster, it was officially named as such. In the wake of this incident, lunar modules were redesigned to be easier to escape, as well as to be made of fewer flammable materials.
Space travel incidents fascinate me in a special way, but I feel like Apollo 1 is overlooked in comparison to incidents like Challenger or Columbia.

I did a presentation about historical fiction and disability about two weeks ago, and while I'm too lazy to share a link to Xenophon and archaeologists right now, I'll try to link them later.

Contrary to popular belief, the Ancient Spartans didn't practice throwing disabled babies off a mountain. There is only one source of this, Plutarch, who lived years after when Ancient Sparta would've practiced it, isn't a contemporary source and must be taken with some salt. When archaeologists excavated to supposed grave the infants would've been in, they only found the skeletons of adult criminals.

Beyond that, according to Xenophon (a contemporary and friend), the ancient spartan king Agesilaos II was born with a limp. And most definitely not thrown off a mountain, given he died in his old age. So... yea!

Granted this location at this time really isn't my specialty, so please correct me if I got anything wrong!

My very favorite strange historical anomaly was the Kentucky Meat Shower of 1876.

It's exactly what it sounds like. Some big 'ol chunks of meat just started raining from the sky one day. I'll copy the intro blurb from Wikipedia:

"The Kentucky meat shower was an incident occurring for a period of several minutes between 11 a.m. and 12 p.m. on March 3, 1876, where what appeared to be chunks of red meat fell from the sky in a 100-by-50-yard (90-by-45-meter) area near Olympia Springs in Bath County, Kentucky. There exist several explanations (from the plausible blood rain to the not so plausible vulture ejecta) as to how this occurred and what the "meat" was. Although the exact type of meat was never identified, various reports suggested it was beef, lamb, deer, bear, horse, or [redacted]."

Redaction mine because some might find it upsetting, and I don't want to be ruining anyones mood while trying to drop off some fun trivia.

There was apparently a very similar incident just a few days later in London.

Oh man I love collecting Weird History nonsense
um lemme see here what're some good ones

During American Prohibition, a lot of alcoholics would resort to drinking stuff like wood alcohol aka methanol to cope with their addictions. This did not go well, and most government and religious officials responded to stories of people going blind or straight up dying by going "Um well they should be addicts lol they can just quite let them suffer". In fact! Many state government's decided it's be good idea to poison existing alcohol supplies with either ******* or methanol to discourage folks from drinking!
So yeah,
the gov poisoned people to keep them from poisoning themselves
Amazing plan.
If ya want more on this please look into the life of NY Medical Examiner Charles Norris(esp rec the Poisoner's Handbook by Deborah Blum) who was apparently one of very few sane people present and called the government out on multiple occasions
edit: why did the site block out ethy alcohol