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Post by Big Lin on Jan 4, 2016 1:32:19 GMT
Well, I'm fascinated, Menantol; I love history and I love alternative history too!
Personally I'd love to have seen Harold win but that's the way the cookie crumbles.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 4, 2016 6:14:37 GMT
Well, I'm fascinated, Menantol; I love history and I love alternative history too! Personally I'd love to have seen Harold win but that's the way the cookie crumbles. Just think Big Lin. The structure of community was quite different with King Harold’s world. Certainly there was the king and members of the royalty, but there was more of connection with local community. Responsibility went both up and down. People could actually own property, not everyone, but far more than under the Normans who existed with actual Feudalism. Oh make no mistake, none of we today would have cared about living then as it was not so nice. For example, the custom of being married in or about in June is because that is when people took their annual bath. They lived in a different world of smells. Thatched roofing was where many little creatures lived. This would have been about 600 years after the time we assign to King Arthur. Most people were born in their village, lived in their village, and died in their village. Their world was very different is ours. Most people were rural and they farmed usually in common community grounds and plowed with oxen, and rarely did they ever leave the village except at the request of the Lord they lived under. These people were not stupid. As the Normans took over it was common for most people to speak three languages. Around the leaders they spoke Norman French, in the Church (which was Catholic under the Prince of Rome) they spoke Latin, and daily they spoke that English before the Great Vowel shift with variants from village to village. While horses were faster than Oxen, they could not pull heavy weight until the horse collar came to Europe (about 920 A.D.) from China. By around 1200 A.D. the Horse collar was commonly used across Europe and that changed farming and carting and economies making it more likely to increase transportation and commerce between villages. In Williams time 1066 books were still written and copied by hand and it would be about another 400 years before the printing press would be invented and start to spread. This as much as anything began to bring peoples together as they began to read an increasingly common language. Our world today has come into being rather recently and in part that is due to increasing availability of energy being available to growing numbers of people at lower cost. In part this has made the possibility of advances in a short period of time. However, at the same time we live in a quite fragile world, while my grand parents lived in a world still significantly similar to 200 years prior, our world could end nearly over night due to a major solar flare, with little back up and nearly no way for people to live at the level of just 100 years ago.
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Post by DAS (formerly BushAdmirer) on Jan 4, 2016 15:13:41 GMT
Fascinating discussion Menantol. I love history and the lessons to be learned from it. I also find it interesting to see how history gets distorted for the benefit of one group or another.
For example, reading the history of Napoleon and his era is so different when the source is a French author vs. an English author. Like Hitler, and ISIL today, Napoleon overreached, made too many enemies, and that cost him everything in the long run.
Abraham Lincoln's history has been distorted by the civil rights movement. They want to see him first and foremost as the President who freed the slaves. Though late in the war he did come around to the view that slaves should be freed, that wasn't his view during most of his Presidency. He once said he'd be happy with no slaves, some slaves, or slavery as it existed before the war if only the war could be ended and the Union preserved. Lincoln's real problem with slavery was economics. He was a staunch capitalist who wanted the economy to grow based on individual opportunity and wages. If everyone got paid for their work, they would then spend those wages creating significant economic activity and raising society. Since slaves didn't get paid, it was only their owners spending money and that limited the economy. Lincoln was a strong Republican back then and he would still be a Republican were he alive today.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 4, 2016 15:55:12 GMT
Fascinating discussion Menantol. I love history and the lessons to be learned from it. I also find it interesting to see how history gets distorted for the benefit of one group or another. For example, reading the history of Napoleon and his era is so different when the source is a French author vs. an English author. Like Hitler, and ISIL today, Napoleon overreached, made too many enemies, and that cost him everything in the long run. Abraham Lincoln's history has been distorted by the civil rights movement. They want to see him first and foremost as the President who freed the slaves. Though late in the war he did come around to the view that slaves should be freed, that wasn't his view during most of his Presidency. He once said he'd be happy with no slaves, some slaves, or slavery as it existed before the war if only the war could be ended and the Union preserved. Lincoln's real problem with slavery was economics. He was a staunch capitalist who wanted the economy to grow based on individual opportunity and wages. If everyone got paid for their work, they would then spend those wages creating significant economic activity and raising society. Since slaves didn't get paid, it was only their owners spending money and that limited the economy. Lincoln was a strong Republican back then and he would still be a Republican were he alive today. Lincoln was a fascinating person and you are right, his image has been used and warped by many through the ages to the point that the real man is lost in all of those ‘new’ personal goals. So much has been written about him it would seem that his personality, his history, everything about him would be known by everyone, but it sometimes seems that he (in a way) becomes fainter in image rather than clearer. That he was a complex individual that became more so as the war progressed and the deaths began to pile up adds to the challenges of understanding him. History is an all-consuming activity. Or at least should be. I increasingly believe that the teaching of it in our (the United States) school systems is not very good and getting worse.
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Post by DAS (formerly BushAdmirer) on Jan 4, 2016 16:41:32 GMT
Problem is that history is taught in high school where most students haven't travelled much. My interest in history was kindled when I got travel in Europe where you can see so much history first hand.
For instance, I remember driving alongside the Rhine and Mosel rivers where you can see castles sitting in defensive positions atop so many hills. We don't have any hilltop castles in America. My curiosity was triggered. I wondered why we have no castles. Turns out that gun powder was invented before America was founded. Cannons were invented soon thereafter. Once a hostile force was in possession of cannons, those castle walls were easily penetrated. Since castles in defensive positions on hilltops no longer provided a sound defense, they were never built in America.
Another example was a trip to France with my then 19 year old son. He had little or no interest in history before that trip, though he had been fed a heavy dose in high school. It so happened that we drove the Napoleon Highway through the French Alps from Grenoble to Provence. That highway traces the route that Napoleon followed when returning from exile in Elba to Paris. He chose a difficult mountain route so as to avoid encounters with hostile forces. As we drove along that route, we discussed Napoleonic history, the wars, his exiles, his successes and his failures. My son's interest was piqued and he eventually became a history buff. His high school history teacher didn't have a way to garner his attention as did I on that road trip.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 6, 2016 6:04:18 GMT
Well, I'm fascinated, Menantol; I love history and I love alternative history too! Personally I'd love to have seen Harold win but that's the way the cookie crumbles. The historic things I often find of interest are those which provide the little things of day to day life as opposed to the grand scheme of the great events. One historian I like is Leslie Alcock Professor of Archaeology at the University of Glasgow, and one of the leading archaeologists of Early Mediaeval Britain. In one of his works he is discussing pottery as a way to identify and date peoples and there he mentions, ‘grass marked pottery’ which is pottery that was set on a surface of chopped grass to dry prior to firing with the grass used so the pottery would not stick to the underlying surface. Some of the grass stuck to the pottery and during the firing the grass would burn off leaving a pattern of grass impressions, hence the name. It is these things which give a long dead people some color of which helps them come alive in our minds so that they are not just a misty image.
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Post by adam56 on Aug 12, 2016 11:41:39 GMT
I m not getting anything about the quiz, can anybody help me out ?
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Post by mikemarshall on Aug 15, 2016 22:03:35 GMT
Go back to the first page of the quiz and the questions are there.
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Post by Scottish Lassie on Dec 18, 2018 7:41:03 GMT
Come on, please, let's have some of you having a go at my quiz! I could only remember three. Micklwaite is Michael Caine The old groaner was Bing Crosby. I think the last Chancellor was Hitler.I wish I had a better memory. A great quiz game by the way.
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Post by Scottish Lassie on Dec 18, 2018 7:49:19 GMT
Fascinating discussion Menantol. I love history and the lessons to be learned from it. I also find it interesting to see how history gets distorted for the benefit of one group or another. For example, reading the history of Napoleon and his era is so different when the source is a French author vs. an English author. Like Hitler, and ISIL today, Napoleon overreached, made too many enemies, and that cost him everything in the long run. Abraham Lincoln's history has been distorted by the civil rights movement. They want to see him first and foremost as the President who freed the slaves. Though late in the war he did come around to the view that slaves should be freed, that wasn't his view during most of his Presidency. He once said he'd be happy with no slaves, some slaves, or slavery as it existed before the war if only the war could be ended and the Union preserved. Lincoln's real problem with slavery was economics. He was a staunch capitalist who wanted the economy to grow based on individual opportunity and wages. If everyone got paid for their work, they would then spend those wages creating significant economic activity and raising society. Since slaves didn't get paid, it was only their owners spending money and that limited the economy. Lincoln was a strong Republican back then and he would still be a Republican were he alive today. Wasn't Abraham Lincoln known as Honest Abe before he became President? I always remember the story of him walking miles to return a few coins that he had overcharged a shopper in his grocery shop.
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Post by Scottish Lassie on Jan 6, 2019 5:11:32 GMT
Hi Gibby Thanks for being brave and trying my quiz. I thought it was quite easy (mostly) and all I'll say at this stage is you've got most of the ones you answered right! I think it is great quiz. I would have known most of them when I was younger, but my memory is too bad now., but I will always give it a try when I'm on your forum.
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Post by Big Lin on Jan 7, 2019 0:58:53 GMT
I posted this quiz ages ago: if anyone wants to try to fill in the answers feel free!
At the moment Gibby is winning because she's got the most right answers!
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Post by andie on Jan 21, 2019 16:56:53 GMT
a) Real name/ pseudonymn: The person I've given is better known by their pseudonymn than their real name. Match the real name with the pseudonym. Terence Nelhams -Adam Faith Maurice Micklewhite -Michael Caine Marion Montgomery-jazz or writer but not John Wayne (Marion Morrison) Walker Smith-Sugar Ray Robinson Douglas McPherson - b) Nicknames: who are: The Old Groaner -Bing Crosby Old Hickory - Andrew Jackson Old Tippacanoe -William Henry Harrison The Grand Old Man -Archibald Henderson The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street -Bank of England nickname c) Odd Man Out: Victor Hugo Charles Dickens Mark Twain T S Eliot - guessing he is the odd man out because he was a poet. The rest were writers. Miguel Cervantes d) History: Who was the last Anglo-Saxon king of England? -King Harold II Who was the last Chancellor of the Third Reich? -Joseph Goebbels Who was the first Christian Roman Emperor? -Constantine Who was 'the sick man of Europe?' -not a man but the Ottaman Empire in its last days Why was Sam Houston imprisoned when the American Civil War began? -I do not think he was but I have been wrong plenty of times. I do not know if this is too late but I thought I would give it a whack.
I have been getting quite a workout on Trivia on another forum.
Doing it so my brain does not turn into oatmeal any sooner than need be.
Good quiz.
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Post by Big Lin on Jan 21, 2019 22:19:54 GMT
a) Real name/ pseudonymn: The person I've given is better known by their pseudonymn than their real name. Match the real name with the pseudonym. Terence Nelhams -Adam Faith Maurice Micklewhite -Michael Caine Marion Montgomery-jazz or writer but not John Wayne (Marion Morrison) Walker Smith-Sugar Ray Robinson Douglas McPherson - b) Nicknames: who are: The Old Groaner -Bing Crosby Old Hickory - Andrew Jackson Old Tippacanoe -William Henry Harrison The Grand Old Man -Archibald Henderson The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street -Bank of England nickname c) Odd Man Out: Victor Hugo Charles Dickens Mark Twain T S Eliot - guessing he is the odd man out because he was a poet. The rest were writers. Miguel Cervantes d) History: Who was the last Anglo-Saxon king of England? -King Harold II Who was the last Chancellor of the Third Reich? -Joseph Goebbels Who was the first Christian Roman Emperor? -Constantine Who was 'the sick man of Europe?' -not a man but the Ottaman Empire in its last days Why was Sam Houston imprisoned when the American Civil War began? -I do not think he was but I have been wrong plenty of times. I do not know if this is too late but I thought I would give it a whack.
I have been getting quite a workout on Trivia on another forum.
Doing it so my brain does not turn into oatmeal any sooner than need be.
Good quiz. You've done quite well, Andie; Of the ones you've answered you've got four wrong! But thanks for giving it a go1 BTW, I need to admit a mistake on my part; Sam Houston was imprisoned BEFORE the Civil War began but he was forced to resign as Governor of Texas when it started.
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Post by andie on Jan 22, 2019 15:56:06 GMT
Thank you. And it was easy not to be tempted to look at the other answers because they were on the previous page. Do not worry about your mistake. We all make them. No offense...but I have to disagree that it was quite easy. But then I have not been in school for a long time. College is a long time ago. High school even longer. And getting longer every day. I will be interested to see all the correct answers when you are ready.
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