The History Guy: History Deserves to be Remembered
Published 15 Feb 2023In 2018 The Atlantic observed “For some Americans, a trip to the ballpark isn’t complete without the bright-yellow squiggle of French’s mustard atop a hot dog … Yet few realize that this condiment has been equally essential — maybe more so — for the past 6,000 years.”
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May 23, 2023
Mustard: A Spicy History
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QotD: Cavalry operations in Rings of Power versus cavalry operations in history
Now before I lay into this, fair is fair: Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings had a real habit of having the horses almost always move at the trot or the canter when they ought to have been walking (horses have four “gaits” – patterns of moving – which, in escalating speed are the walk, the trot, the canter and the gallop). Horses can walk or trot for long periods, but canters and gallops can only be maintained in short bursts before the horse wears itself out. So for instance when Théoden leads the Rohirrim from Edoras in Return of the King the horses are walking in the city but by the time they’re in column out of the city the whole column is moving at a canter (interestingly, you can hear the three-beat pattern of the canter in the foley, which is some attention to detail), which is not realistic – they have a long way to go and they won’t be able to maintain this gait the whole way – but fits the forward momentum of the scene. Likewise most of the horses look to be at a canter when his army leaves Dunharrow for Gondor; again this is a bit silly, but on roughly the level of silly of having Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli pursue a band of orcs by jogging for three days and nights without rest.
By contrast [in Rings of Power], the Númenóreans rush to the battle at a full gallop, apparently the whole way or at the very least for hours through the morning. Horses will be vary, but generally two to three miles is the maximum distance most horses can gallop before fatigue sets in (for most horses this distance is going to be shorter), which they’re going to cover in about six minutes. The gallop is a very fast (25-30mph), very short sprint, yet Galadriel has this whole formation at full gallop even before she can see their destination. And I just want to remember here the absurdity that these horsemen do not even know there is a battle to ride to; for all they know this is a basic scouting effort (which might be better accomplished slowly and without wearing down all of the horses). Théoden at least has the excuse that he’s on the clock and knows it!
The way we are then shown the cavalry arriving is very confusing to me. The speed of their arrival makes at least some sense. We have already established that both Arondir and Adar are incompetent commanders so the fact that they have set no scouts or lookouts checks out. Pre-modern and early-modern cavalry could effectively out-ride news of their coming, and so show up unexpectedly in places with very little warning. Not this little warning, mind you – the time from the first sound of hoof-falls (heard by Elves – the orcs evidently hear nothing) to the cavalry deluging the village is just about fifteen seconds; horses move fast but they do not move that fast (at full gallop a horse might cover 150-200 meters in those fifteen seconds and the orcs would absolutely hear them coming before they saw them). But the idea in general that the Númenórean cavalry could appear as if out of nowhere to the orcs checks out – that was one of the major advantages of cavalry operations.
Bret Devereaux, “Collections: The Nitpicks of Power, Part III: That Númenórean Charge”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2023-02-03.
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May 22, 2023
What Happened Behind a Photographer’s Lens on D-Day
World War Two
Published 21 May 2023Robert Capa has gone down in history as one the most groundbreaking war correspondents in all of journalism. His account of what happened on D-Day was something we wanted to share with all of you.
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May 21, 2023
The Fall of Monte Cassino – WW2 – Week 247 – May 20, 1944
World War Two
Published 20 May 2023In Italy, the Allies finally overcome Monte Cassino and break through the Gustav Line; in Burma Merrill’s Marauders surprise the Japanese and take Myitkyina Airfield; in China, it’s the Japanese who are playing offense, as Operation Ichi Go and the siege of Luoyang continue. That’s the field action, but there’s big planning behind the scenes for major June offensives going on by both the Western Allies and the Soviets.
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What Are The Falklands Like Today? | BFBS
BFBS Creative
Published 24 Jun 2021We take you behind the scenes on a BFBS creative shoot, 8000 miles from home. With access all areas, we take a look at the current military presence on the Falkland Islands as well as the incredible wildlife.
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QotD: Swearing
Theodore Dalrymple, “Get stuffed, sunshine”, The Independent, 1998-10-10.
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May 20, 2023
Cobray Terminator 12ga Shotgun
Forgotten Weapons
Published 3 Feb 2015The Cobray Terminator is an unusual — and unusually impractical — single-shot 12 gauge shotgun. It uses a sort of open bolt system in which the barrel is under spring pressure, and slams backwards into a fixed firing pin when the trigger is pulled. Only about 1500 of these were made before they were discontinued due to poor sales (not because of ATF intervention, as some people believe).
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QotD: Alienation
It was a real enough insight into the psychology of factory work, and Marx deserves all the credit he got for it, but “alienation” was even more useful in a broad social context — the separation of man from the cultural products of his society. After all, if capitalism is the mode of production around which society organizes itself, and the products of capitalism are by definition alienated from their producers, then by extension capitalist society must be alienated from itself. Indeed, what could “society” even mean, in a world of lever-pullers and bearing-lubers and jam-clearers?
Again, a profound and important insight into the social conditions of the Industrial Age. Ours is a mechanical, transactional world, one not well-suited to the kind of organism we are. That’s why Marxism and its spacey little brother Nazism are both what Jeffrey Herf calls “reactionary modernism.” The Communists thought they were the endpoint of the Enlightenment; the Nazis rejected it entirely; but both of them were curdled Romantics, in love with Enlightenment science while terrified of that science’s society. Lenin said that Communism was “Soviet power plus electrification”. Goebbels wasn’t that pithy, but “the feudal system plus autobahns” is pretty much what he meant by Nazism, and both boil down to “medieval peasant villages with air conditioning”.
That the one excludes the other — necessarily, comrade, necessarily, in the full Hegelian sense of the word — never occurred to either of them shouldn’t really be held against them, since both of them were determined to freeze the world exactly as it was. Both were so terrified of individuality that they were determined to stamp it out, not realizing that individuality was the only thing that made their fantasy worlds possible. Medieval peasants who were happy being medieval peasants never would’ve invented air conditioning in the first place, nicht wahr?
Severian, “Alienation”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2020-10-29.
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May 19, 2023
They made a MOVIE about the discovery of Richard III’s remains!!!
Vlogging Through History
Published 16 Sept 2022Here’s a fantastic hour-long breakdown of the entire search and discovery process – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsTyG…
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QotD: The horses of the Eurasian Steppe
I wanted to start by stressing these dates just to note that the peoples of the Eurasian Steppe had a long time to adapt themselves to a nomadic lifestyle structured around horses and pastoralism, which, as we’ve seen, was not the case for the peoples of the Americas, whose development of a sustainable system of horse nomadism was violently disrupted.
That said, the steppe horse (perhaps more correctly, the steppe pony) is not quite the same as modern domesticated horses. The sorts of horses that occupy stables in Europe or America are the product of centuries of selective breeding for larger and stronger horses. Because those horses were stable fed (that is, fed grains and hay, in addition to grass), they could be bred much larger what a horse fed entirely on grass could support (with the irony that many of those breeds of horses, if released into the wild in their native steppe, would be unable to subsist themselves), because processed grains have much higher nutrition and calorie density than grass. So while most modern horses range between c. 145-180cm tall, the horses of the steppe were substantially smaller, 122-142cm. Again, just to be clear, this is essential because the big chargers and work-horses of the agrarian world cannot sustain themselves purely on grass and the Steppe nomad needs a horse which can feed itself (while we’re on horse-size, mustangs, the feral horses of the Americas, generally occupy the low-end of the horse range as well, typically 142-152cm in height – even when it is clear that their domesticated ancestors were breeds of much larger work horses).
Bret Devereaux, “That Dothraki Horde, Part II: Subsistence on the Hoof”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2020-12-11.
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May 18, 2023
How the Tabasco Factory Makes 700,000 Bottles of Hot Sauce Per Day — Dan Does
Eater
Published 4 Dec 2019On this episode of Cult Following, host Daniel Geneen heads to the McIlhenny factory on Avery Island, Louisiana, where the world’s supply of Tabasco sauce is made. Follow along as Daniel learns about the 150-year-old family-run business, and the Tabasco-making process, from pepper to barrel to bottle.
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May 17, 2023
Texas Chili & The Chili Queens of San Antonio
Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 16 May 2023
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Swiss LMG25 light machine gun
Forgotten Weapons
Published 23 Jul 2012This week, we will be featuring all Swiss weapons here at Forgotten Weapons. Kind of like Shark Week, but more land-locked. We’ll kick off today with a video showing you around a Swiss LMG-25 light machine gun we found for sale at Cornet & Company in Brussels (a better gun shop than any I’ve found here in the US, I must say). Like pretty much all Swiss arms, it’s a gorgeous example of precision machining — and like pretty much all Swiss arms it was too expensive for anyone else to adopt. On this, as with other Swiss weapons I’ve handled, you can just feel the quality in how smoothly the moving parts operate.
In case you’re wondering, this LMG25 is live and fully functional, and priced at 1950 Euros (about $2800) — mere pocket change compared to machine gun prices here. It’s not too difficult to get the permit to own it in Belgium, but sadly there is no legal way to bring it into the US.
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May 16, 2023
See inside Little Willie | The Tank Museum
The Tank Museum
Published 3 Feb 2023In this episode of Tank Chats Reloaded, David Willey revisits the iconic Little Willie, the world’s first tank. David delves into the historical significance of this revolutionary invention, and we also get an exclusive look inside what’s left of Little Willie.
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May 15, 2023
Every Detail of Grand Central Terminal Explained | Architectural Digest
Architectural Digest
Published 6 Jun 2018Historian and author Anthony W. Robins and journalist Sam Roberts of the New York Times guide Architectural Digest through every detail of Grand Central Terminal. Our narrators walk us through the legendary structure from the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Foyer through Vanderbilt Hall to the main concourse (and the famous four-faced clock). From there, we learn more about the underground walkways, whispering gallery, Oyster Bar restaurant, Campbell Apartment, Pershing Square, and more.
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