Quotulatiousness

November 29, 2019

Why was Cavalry Used in Warfare? | Animated History

Filed under: History, Military — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

The Armchair Historian
Published 11 Jan 2018

Why was Cavalry used in warfare?

Our Website: https://www.thearmchairhistorian.com/

Our Twitter:
@ArmchairHist

Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horses_…
http://www.napolun.com/mirror/napoleo…
http://napoleonistyka.atspace.com/cav…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavalry…
https://ehistory.osu.edu/exhibitions/…
http://www.cincinnaticwrt.org/data/cc…
http://www.napolun.com/mirror/web2.ai…

Music: Music: Antonio Salieri: “Twenty six variations on La Folia de Spagna“

From the comments:

The Armchair Historian
1 year ago

So two things….

1. A lot of people are saying the video is an oversimplification. You’re exactly right, this is a prelude of a series I’ll be doing covering all types of cavalry from all different eras, as well as tanks. I’ll be covering mainly the abstract, and the concepts, and less of all the specific numbers and statistics. This video is to act as an intro.

2. A lot of people are saying cavalry and tanks aren’t the same. You’re right again, but here’s what I meant in the video. The tank replaced the cavalry, and still fulfills the abstract usage of cavalry, as a decisive shock unit. You don’t have many of them, they’re more expensive, and they hit harder than their counterparts, infantry, and artillery. Of course tanks are not used in the same way cavalry was in warfare, but as cavalry left they were replaced by armor. In fact, many people tried to use tanks just like cavalry, but it didn’t work. It took up until the end of WW2 for most generals to realize this.

Hope that clears some stuff up,

Griff

To give an example of his second point, the British use of “cruiser” tanks in the Western Desert campaign of World War 2 typified the “it’s just an armoured horse” view of tanks. Disproportional British tank losses to German anti-tank guns was the usual result.

November 28, 2019

Deltic Diesel Powered Train (1962) | British Pathé

Filed under: Britain, History, Railways — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

British Pathé
Published 13 Apr 2014

Catch a glimpse of Finsbury Park and Kings Cross station back in the day in this remarkable footage of diesel powered trains in 1962.

For Archive Licensing Enquiries Visit: https://goo.gl/W4hZBv
Explore Our Online Channel For FULL Documentaries, Fascinating Interviews & Classic Movies: https://goo.gl/7dVe8r

#BritishPathé #History #London #KingsCross #FinsburyPark #Trains

(FILM ID:165.08)

Finsbury Park and Kings Cross, London.

L/S of a row of steam train engines on a set of tracks, M/S of steam coming out of the engine. M/S of the driver and fireman in overalls climbing down from the cabin of the engine. M/S of a diesel train in a station, two staff climb into the train, they are a lot cleaner than the steam men.

Interior of the engine, one of the men turns a couple of taps before the journey. C/U of a set of gauges, C/U of another part of the engine. M/S of the driver washing his hands, he closes the folding washbasin and dries his hands. C/U of the sign ‘Max. Speed 100 M.P.H.’ M/S of the driver pouring water from a kettle into a coffee pot. He places the pot on a hot plate and sits down. C/U of his feet on the footrest. M/S of the train pulling out of Kings Cross Station. M/S from the driver’s viewpoint as the train comes out of a tunnel. M/S of two shafts rotating in the engine. M/S of the driver in the cabin, M/S from his viewpoint as the train travels down the track. M/S as the train passes through a station. Various shots of the train and driver, and various point of view shots from inside the cabin of the track as it speeds along. C/U of the speed dials. M/S from the point of view of the driver as the train speeds down the track under bridges and past a steam train going in the opposite direction.

BRITISH PATHÉ’S STORY
Before television, people came to movie theatres to watch the news. British Pathé was at the forefront of cinematic journalism, blending information with entertainment to popular effect. Over the course of a century, it documented everything from major armed conflicts and seismic political crises to the curious hobbies and eccentric lives of ordinary people. If it happened, British Pathé filmed it.

Now considered to be the finest newsreel archive in the world, British Pathé is a treasure trove of 85,000 films unrivalled in their historical and cultural significance.

British Pathé also represents the Reuters historical collection, which includes more than 136,000 items from the news agencies Gaumont Graphic (1910-1932), Empire News Bulletin (1926-1930), British Paramount (1931-1957), and Gaumont British (1934-1959), as well as Visnews content from 1957 to the end of 1984. All footage can be viewed on the British Pathé website. https://www.britishpathe.com/

The ENTIRE History of NFL Thanksgiving!

Filed under: Football, History — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

NFL Throwback
Published 25 Nov 2019

Check out the evolution of NFL games!

#NFL100

The NFL Throwback is your home for all things NFL history.

QotD: The native view of the Pilgrims

Filed under: History, Humour, Quotations, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Shorter than the natives, oddly dressed, and often unbearably dirty, the pallid foreigners had peculiar blue eyes that peeped out of the masks of bristly, animal-like hair that encased their faces. They were irritatingly garrulous, prone to fits of chicanery, and often surprisingly incompetent at what seemed to Indians like basic tasks. But they also made useful and beautiful goods — copper kettles, glittering colored glass, and steel knives and hatchets — unlike anything else in New England. Moreover they would exchange these valuable items for cheap furs of a sort used by Indians as blankets. It was like happening upon a dingy kiosk that would swap fancy electronic goods for customers’ used socks — almost anyone would be willing to overlook the shopkeeper’s peculiarities.

Charles Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, 2006.

November 27, 2019

The Father of Modern China – Sun Yat-sen l HISTORY OF CHINA

Filed under: China, History — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

IT’S HISTORY
Published 2 Sep 2015

Sun Yat-sen is known as the “father of modern China”. He spent his adult life fighting against imperial China and the ruling Qing dynasty. First as revolutionary leader and later as politician. He founded the Tongmenghui League in 1905 and supported rebellions in China. After the Wuchang Uprising, Sun handed over the presidential office for the Republic of China to Yuan Shikai who soon after would ban Sun’s political party, the Kuomintang. So he reformed it as China’s National People’s party. His military and political work laid the groundwork from which his successors would later call out the People’s Republic of China.

» Century of Humiliation
Part 1: http://bit.ly/humiliation1
Part 2: http://bit.ly/Humiliation2

» SOURCES
Videos: British Pathé (https://www.youtube.com/user/britishp…)
Pictures: mainly Picture Alliance
Content:
Chang, Johannes (1960): “Sun Yat-sen – Seine Lehre und seine Bedeutung” in: JCSW 1 [1960] S.179-194
Gernet, Jacques (1988): Die chinesische Welt. Die Geschichte Chinas von den Anfängen bis zur Jetztzeit, Suhrkamp, Berlin.
Klein, Thoralf (2008): “Politische Geschichte Chinas 1900-1949”, auf bpb.de
https://www.bpb.de/internationales/as…
Vogelsang, Kai (2013): Geschichte Chinas, Reclam, Ditzingen.
Weigelin-Schwiedrzik (2012): “Der geteilte Himmel”, in ZEIT Geschichte Nr. 01/2012
http://www.zeit.de/zeit-geschichte/20…

» ABOUT US
IT’S HISTORY is a ride through history – Join us discovering the world’s most important eras in IN TIME, BIOGRAPHIES of the GREATEST MINDS and the most important INVENTIONS.

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» CREDITS
Presented by: Guy Kiddey
Script by: Julia Korbik
Translated by: Guy Kiddey
Directed by: Daniel Czepelczauer
Director of Photography: Markus Kretzschmar
Music: Markus Kretzschmar
Sound Design: Marc Glücks
Editing: Markus Kretzschmar

A Mediakraft Networks original channel
Based on a concept by Florian Wittig and Daniel Czepelczauer
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard-Olsson, Spartacus Olsson
Head of Production: Michael Wendt
Producer: Daniel Czepelczauer
Social Media Manager: Laura Pagan

Contains material licensed from British Pathé
All rights reserved – © Mediakraft Networks GmbH, 2015

Herodotus’ Histories – Tom Holland

Filed under: Books, Europe, Greece, History, Middle East — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

The Study of Antiquity and the Middle Ages
Published 24 Mar 2018

The classical scholar Tom Holland introduces his new translation of Herodotus’ masterpiece – The Histories.

The Histories (Greek: Ἱστορίαι; Ancient Greek: [his.to.rí.ai̯]; also known as The History) of Herodotus is now considered the founding work of history in Western literature.

Written in 440 BC in the Ionic dialect of classical Greek, The Histories serves as a record of the ancient traditions, politics, geography, and clashes of various cultures that were known in Western Asia, Northern Africa and Greece at that time. Although not a fully impartial record, it remains one of the West’s most important sources regarding these affairs.

Moreover, it established the genre and study of history in the Western world (despite the existence of historical records and chronicles beforehand).

The Histories also stands as one of the first accounts of the rise of the Persian Empire, as well as the events and causes of the Greco-Persian Wars between the Achaemenid Empire and the Greek city-states in the 5th century BC. Herodotus portrays the conflict as one between the forces of slavery (the Persians) on the one hand, and freedom (the Athenians and the confederacy of Greek city-states which united against the invaders) on the other.

The Histories was at some point divided into the nine books that appear in modern editions, conventionally named after the nine Muses.

John Browning vs Hiram Maxim: Patent Fight!

Filed under: History, Military, USA, Weapons — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published on 25 Sep 2019

http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons

Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! http://shop.bbtv.com/collections/forg…

When John Browning designed his Model 1895 machine gun with its rotary-lever gas operation system, Hiram Maxim filed suit claiming patent infringement. Maxim had filed quite broad patents covering gas pistons operation, but specifically in a linear format. Browning and Colt (who had the license to manufacture the Model 1895 machine gun) countered that the swinging lever was a different system, and thus not covered by Maxim’s patents. More to the point, they claimed that the gun would work without using a gas piston at all – and built this experimental model using a gas trap or muzzle cap system instead to prove the point.

Ultimately, the genesis of the fight was moot (the Maxim did not run well in 6mm Lee Navy, and would not have won a US Navy contract regardless of the Colt/Browning gun), and the court ultimately decided in favor of Colt and Browning. But this gun remains from the incident…

Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
6281 N. Oracle #36270
Tucson, AZ 85704

QotD: The evolution of markets

Filed under: Economics, History, Liberty, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

It is a settled assumption among most libertarians, classical liberals and English-speaking conservatives that market behaviour is part of human nature. Whether or not we care to make a point of it, we stand with John Locke and, through him, with the men of the Middle Ages and with the Greeks and Romans, in trying to derive what is right from what is natural.

We believe that there is a natural inclination to promote our own welfare and that of our loved ones. We further believe that, given reasonable security of life and property, this inclination will lead to the emergence of a system of voluntary exchange. That is, we will seek to trade the things we have or can create for other things that we regard as of greater value to ourselves.

In doing so, ratios of exchange that we call prices will be revealed. These prices, in turn, will provide general information about what should be produced, in what ways and in what quantities. Furthermore, changes in price will provide information about changes in preferences or in abilities to produce. Custom will set aside one or more goods to serve as money. Institutions will emerge that channel savings into productive investment, that spread risk, and that moderate expected fluctuations in price. Laws will develop to police the transfer of property and performance of contracts.

We believe that market economies emerge spontaneously and are self-regulating and self-sustaining. This is not to say that all market societies will be the same. Their exact shape will depend on the intellectual and moral qualities of the individuals who comprise them. They will reflect pre-existing patterns of trust and honesty and the general cultural and religious values of a people. They will also be more or less distorted by government intervention. But we do say that market behaviour is natural — that, in the absence of extreme government coercion, or extreme disorder, buying and selling to increase our own welfare is what we naturally do.

Sean Gabb, “Market Behaviour in the Ancient World: An Overview of the Debate”, 2008-05.

November 26, 2019

Invasion of Poland 1939 – Fall Weiß – Case White

Filed under: Europe, Germany, History, Military, Russia, WW2 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

Military History Visualized
Published 30 Aug 2016

The German Invasion of Poland in 1939 started the Second World War in Europe. The German name of operation was “Fall Weiß” meaning “Case White”. In this video I will take a look at the major German troop movements, the Soviet invasion of Poland, the losses and a final assessment.

» HOW YOU CAN SUPPORT MILITARY HISTORY VISUALIZED «
(A) You can support my channel on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mhv

(B) You can also buy “Spoils of War” (merchandise) in the online shop: https://www.redbubble.com/people/mhvi…

(C) If you want to buy books that I use or recommend, here is the link to the Amazon Store: http://astore.amazon.com/ytmh-20 which has the same price for you and gives a small commission to me, thus it is a win/win.

» SOURCES & LINKS «

Maier, Klaus; Rohde, Horst; Stegemann, Bernd; Umbreit, Hans: Die Errichtung der Hegemonie auf dem europäischen Kontient. Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg (DR2WK), Band 2.

Müller, Rolf-Dieter: Hitler’s Wehrmacht, 1935-1945

Zaloga, Steven J.: Poland 1939 – The Birth of Blitzkrieg

Wettstein, Adrian: Wehrmacht im Stadtkampf

http://www.cgsc.edu/CARL/nafziger/939…

http://www.cgsc.edu/CARL/nafziger/939…

http://niehorster.org/029_poland/1939…

http://www.westpoint.edu/history/Site…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_…

» CREDITS & SPECIAL THX «
Song: Ethan Meixsell – “Demilitarized Zone”

The Counter-Design is heavily inspired by Black ICE Mod for the game Hearts of Iron 3 by Paradox Interactive
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/…

» DISCLAIMER «
Amazon Associates Program: “Bernhard Kast is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.”

Communal farming nearly killed off the Plymouth Colony

Filed under: Britain, History, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

What saved them was abandoning the “common property” communalism and adopting private ownership of the farms:

The Plymouth Colony 1620-1691.
Map by Hoodinski via Wikimedia Commons.

The first few years of the settlement were fraught with hardship and hunger. Four centuries later, they also provide us with one of history’s most decisive verdicts on the critical importance of private property. We should never forget that the Plymouth colony was headed straight for oblivion under a communal, socialist plan but saved itself when it embraced something very different.

In the diary of the colony’s first governor, William Bradford, we can read about the settlers’ initial arrangement: Land was held in common. Crops were brought to a common storehouse and distributed equally. For two years, every person had to work for everybody else (the community), not for themselves as individuals or families. Did they live happily ever after in this socialist utopia?

Hardly. The “common property” approach killed off about half the settlers. Governor Bradford recorded in his diary that everybody was happy to claim their equal share of production, but production only shrank. Slackers showed up late for work in the fields, and the hard workers resented it. It’s called “human nature.”

The disincentives of the socialist scheme bred impoverishment and conflict until, facing starvation and extinction, Bradford altered the system. He divided common property into private plots, and the new owners could produce what they wanted and then keep or trade it freely.

Communal socialist failure was transformed into private property/capitalist success, something that’s happened so often historically it’s almost monotonous. The “people over profits” mentality produced fewer people until profit — earned as a result of one’s care for his own property and his desire for improvement — saved the people.

Over the centuries, socialism has crash-landed into lamentable bits and pieces too many times to keep count — no matter what shade of it you pick: central planning, welfare statism, or government ownership of the means of production. Then some measure of free markets and private property turned the wreckage into progress. I know of no instance in history when the reverse was true — that is, when free markets and private property produced a disaster that was cured by socialism. None.

A few of the many examples that echo the Pilgrims’ experience include Germany after World War II, Hong Kong after Japanese occupation, New Zealand in the 1980s, Scandinavia in recent decades, and even Lenin’s New Economic Policy of the 1920s.

The Avro Arrow

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, History, Military, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered
Published 25 Nov 2019

In the 1950s, Canada had one of the world’s most advanced aerospace industries. But the cancellation of the Avro CF-105 “Arrow” changed everything. The History Guy remembers the Avro Arrow and forgotten aviation history. It deserves to be remembered.
(more…)

“Women’s sports are dying, and very quickly”

Filed under: Australia, History, Sports — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Mark Steyn outlines the rise and sudden fall of women’s sports:

Rachel McKinnon on the podium after winning the Union Cycliste Internationale Masters Track Cycling World Championship, October 2018.

When the Olympic Games was revived in 1896, it was assumed by all that, as in the ancient games of Greece, the competitors would be men. The inclusion of women, said Baron de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympiad, would be “impractical, uninteresting, unaesthetic and incorrect”.

By “uninteresting”, he meant that the innate differences between the male and female bodies ensured that women’s participation would require one to feign interest in races that were slower and jumps that were shorter. In a competitive celebration of excellence, what’s the point? So the first female Olympians were women who could hold their own with men and compete in the chaps’ events — such as Hélène de Pourtalès, who won a gold medal at the 1900 Paris Olympics as part of the Swiss sailing crew. A week later Mesdames Guerra and Moulin competed, unsuccessfully, in the hacks and hunter rounds of the equestrian events. In the croquet competition, seven men and three women participated, with the men taking all the medals.

And then came the tennis, for which they introduced a ladies’ singles event, at which Miss Charlotte Cooper (a five-times Wimbledon champ) prevailed.

These were the two models for female sportsmen, if you’ll forgive the expression: Compete in mixed events and spend most of your life losing to blokes, or compete only against other women where the lesser achievements are, as M le Baron saw it, “uninteresting”. In the case of certain activities, male sports felt obliged to spin off more genteel and (in Coubertin terms) even less interesting female variants — softball and netball, rather than baseball and basketball.

In the second half of the twentieth century, the latter model — female-only sports — prevailed, as part of what was understood by the general trend of “women’s rights”, loosely defined, and indeed more explicitly so by things like America’s Title Nine legislation.

In the second decade of the twenty-first century, the Charlotte Cooper model is collapsing, very fast. Women are back to losing to rivals who, whatever their lipstick, skirts or breast implants, are biologically male with all the inherent advantages. Miss Hannah Mouncey, for example, is six-foot-two and 220 pounds, which is rather heavier than me and an inch taller. The average Australian woman is five-foot-four-and-a-quarter and just under 157 pounds. If you have to catch a ball, standing six inches above anybody else on court comes in helpful:

Did Miss Mouncey procure her advantages over her sisters through a rigorous workout regime? No. She gained them by being born male. She played for Oz’s national men’s handball team until 2016, when she revealed she was transitioning and thus would henceforth play for the women’s team. She also announced she was taking up Aussie football, again for the ladies.

Tank Chats #55 Churchill Crocodile | The Funnies | The Tank Museum

Filed under: Britain, History, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

The Tank Museum
Published 18 Aug 2018

Another episode in the Tank Chats Funnies Specials, with David Fletcher looking at the weird and wonderful vehicles of 79th Armoured Division led by Major General Percy Hobart, known as “Hobart’s Funnies”.

The Churchill Crocodile was a British flamethrower tank and a variant of the Churchill Mark VII tank. The Crocodile was developed in time for the D-Day landings and used during the Allied invasion of North-West Europe.

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QotD: The “Glorious Revolution” of 1688

Filed under: Britain, History, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

William of Orange masterminds a coup d’état known here as the “Glorious Revolution” (1688), and installs himself as King of England. My teachers made it sound as if the English elite suddenly decided one day that they wanted a different king, found William of Orange in a mail order catalogue, liked the look of him and had him delivered the next day, in a state of great amazement and gratitude. In fact, William bossed the entire operation, albeit with plenty of English support. It is worth noting that William achieved a successful cross-Channel invasion of England, so all that stuff about England not having been invaded since 1066 is quite wrong.

Brian Micklethwait, “Navigating individuals”, Samizdata, 2004-10-04.

November 25, 2019

Historical hats

Filed under: Europe, History, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

Lindybeige
Published 4 Mar 2015

Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Lindybeige
More videos here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…

There were so many types of hat in the past, and yet it turns out that many of them were actually the same.

Lindybeige: a channel of archaeology, ancient and medieval warfare, rants, swing dance, travelogues, evolution, and whatever else occurs to me to make.

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