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The History Thread


maqroll

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Didn't know whether to put this in the Quiz or Piss You Off Threads, but watching TV general knowledge quiz shows leaves me utterly dismayed about people's total lack of knowledge of history.

On Pointless tonight, with the widest possible subject - name ANY British monarch OR Prime Minister OR Poet Laureate OR US President of the 19th Century. A hundred years to go at, and still the contestants (young and old) struggled to come up with any correct answers.

I find this depressing.

I'd have gone with Salisbury, Jackson and ...er...Disraeli. The first two would probably have been high scoring and the latter obviously so.

What were the obvious pointless answers?

 

Poet Laureates in the 19th C.? Well I don't have an earthly. (Edit - after a look, that's a bit thick of me in not thinking of Wordsworth and Tennyson)

Edited by snowychap
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I'd have gone -

Chester a Arthur (die hard with a vengeance obviously)

Lord Palmerston (the best prime minister)

Then probably james Madison (who I always remember for Madison Avenue but I doubt very much that has anything to do with him, Madison is a city somewhere in the states and also a county with some bridges in it)

Would I have won?

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  • 2 weeks later...

The Russian soldiers mass raping of German women is well documented, but I recently read about how after the Allies liberated Rome, Moroccans fighting with the French went on a massive gang rape spree there. Really sickening details.

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The Russian soldiers mass raping of German women is well documented, but I recently read about how after the Allies liberated Rome, Moroccans fighting with the French went on a massive gang rape spree there. Really sickening details.

never knew that.was gonna like the post but doesn't really seem the right thing to do.just shows in war a hell of a lot of people turn barbaric.if your treated as badly as the russians/moroccans when you are the ones in control you become the same as the germans were.terrible.

Edited by krisagg75
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The Russian soldiers mass raping of German women is well documented, but I recently read about how after the Allies liberated Rome, Moroccans fighting with the French went on a massive gang rape spree there. Really sickening details.

never knew that.was gonna like the post but doesn't really seem the right thing to do.just shows in war a hell of a lot of people turn barbaric.if your treated as badly as the russians/moroccans when you are the ones in control you become the same as the germans were.terrible.

 

 

I tend to think that ever since our species emerged as hunter-gatherers and different social groups fought over resources, that females were treated as 'spoils of war'.

 

If the theory of the selfish gene is true it would predict such a thing.

 

So under the conditions of modern war it seems likely that soldiers revert to the atavistic state of our ancestors.

 

The cultures of many tribes in Africa who have long-standing on-going wars over territory/resources have introduced various forms of mutilation (lip plates etc) to try and make their women less attractive to their enemies.

 

I think we have to accept that what we consider to be civilisation is only a veneer and our animal heritage lies only just beneath the surface. 

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The cultures of many tribes in Africa who have long-standing on-going wars over territory/resources have introduced various forms of mutilation (lip plates etc) to try and make their women less attractive to their enemies.

I'm fairly sure that's conjecture at best.

Lip plates have independently developed in numerous cultures, including those entirely removed from Africa, and the common thread is, like many forms of primitive body modification, that it acts as a rite of passage. And not solely, across those cultures, for women. A number of Amazonian tribes had their young men wear lip plates.

I don't think you can derive from that much beyond its a combination of physical identifier of increasing rank/ status in their society, and a fairly basic form of tribe identification (and associated assistance in othering).

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Dan Carlin's account of Russian atrocities in East Prussia in his 'Ghosts of the Ostfront' series is chilling.

 

 

He doesn't really spin it like the way your sentence reads, and as Carlin says repeatedly in everything he does, it's important to be able to walk a mile in the shoes of the people you are talking about before you cast judgement.   It's easy for us to to pour scorn on the behaviour of the Red Army (and pretty much every other army in the war) but you have to appreciate that they were on a revenge mission.  Their motivations were born out of years of being hammered by Germany and unfortunately for the people who lived along the road between Moscow and Berlin they were victims of that revenge.  It's here where I stress I don't think what the Russians did was right, it was clearly reprehensible but I just think people looking back at it now have to be careful they don't adopt a holier than thou attitude. War is shitty and six years of total war brought out the worst in everyone. 

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Didn't know whether to put this in the Quiz or Piss You Off Threads, but watching TV general knowledge quiz shows leaves me utterly dismayed about people's total lack of knowledge of history.

On Pointless tonight, with the widest possible subject - name ANY British monarch OR Prime Minister OR Poet Laureate OR US President of the 19th Century. A hundred years to go at, and still the contestants (young and old) struggled to come up with any correct answers.

I find this depressing.

I'd have struggled with that to be fair.

 

I'd have gone for Grover Cleveland, but only because I know his name from other quiz trivia!

 

I couldn't name a single Poet Laureate that there's ever been. I don't think I could have named a British Prime Minister form the 19th century, and if I could it would be a stab. 

 

Monarch? I'd be struggling beyond Victoria, she hogged most of the century. I'd have gone with a George. Unsure which one though.

 

 

Although it must be said, if I was going on a quiz show, especially one like Pointless, this would be exactly the sort of thing I'd brush up on beforehand

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