absolutelyshafted

absolutelyshafted t1_je58g2h wrote

Reply to TIL about the Forty Elephants or Forty Thieves, an all women crime syndicate in London in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that specialized in shoplifting and pretending to be maids and robbing the wealthy families who hired them. by Professor_Hillbilly

I’m very surprised some media corp like Disney or Amazon hasn’t already gotten their hands on this.

The concept of a group of women subverting gender norms and robbing all the aristocrats in broad daylight seems like it would appeal extremely well to Gen Z and especially Gen Z girls

But then again, there’s very little evidence for it according to the article. Even so I’m sure these studios could slap “based on a true story” on the opening credits

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absolutelyshafted t1_jc0xifq wrote

Reply to comment by mogreen57 in TIL Helen Keller is credited with having introduced the Akita, a Japanese dog breed, to the United States by berkosaurus

In the 1900’s almost every single westernized country implemented eugenics to some extent

Interestingly, countries like Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, etc actually sterilized a large % of their handicapped population without any real backlash or condemnation. They did a really good job of covering this part of their history up. Many of these countries didn’t even ban forced sterilization until the 1970s

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absolutelyshafted t1_jajcnx9 wrote

Reply to comment by Ameisen in TIL that Crusaders granted safe passage to Mamluk armies to fight Mongols in 1260. by MimirHinnVitru

True but also the mongols never sent a real army (only raiding parties) and they retreated on their own after the emperor died to elect a new one.

I think if the mongols pushed hard into Europe like they did with Persia and China, it would’ve been over. The mongols had no issue with adopting new technology like siege engines and whatnot. China actually had better forts than Europe at the time

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absolutelyshafted t1_jailtqn wrote

Reply to TIL that Crusaders granted safe passage to Mamluk armies to fight Mongols in 1260. by MimirHinnVitru

There was a point in history when almost every major armed group was focused on the mongols. Even to the point of putting old fights on hold until the Mongol invasions could be repelled for good.

The funny thing is that, by this point, the mongols were vastly over extended but somehow gave Europeans and Arabs a lot of trouble regardless. The only people who defeated the Mongols decisively that I know of are the Japanese (sorta got lucky) and the Delhi sultanate

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absolutelyshafted t1_j5qqrb3 wrote

Reply to TIL The Indian dish Vindaloo originates from the Portuguese dish "Carne de Vinha D’alhos" which was brought to India by Vasco da Gama who also introduced chilli peppers to India. by memboww

Makes sense because this is a Goan dish, “native” to a tiny part of india which was historically controlled by Portugal

The reason why people know about it is due to the British Indian variant becoming globally popular

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absolutelyshafted t1_j0y1pa8 wrote

Reply to comment by radio_allah in TIL that the ancient Mayan city of Caracol in modern-day Belize was founded in 1200 BCE, held more than double the population of the largest current day city in Belize (of 61,461), and the one of its temples, Caana, built ~9th century CE, is still the tallest building in the country today. by embrace-monke

Maybe not, but I think history would have been changed forever. Like the ripple effects would be massive. America and Mexico would have not formed when they did. Technologies would be delayed

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absolutelyshafted t1_j0y1cdr wrote

Reply to comment by radio_allah in TIL that the ancient Mayan city of Caracol in modern-day Belize was founded in 1200 BCE, held more than double the population of the largest current day city in Belize (of 61,461), and the one of its temples, Caana, built ~9th century CE, is still the tallest building in the country today. by embrace-monke

Such a massive L for the world and generations to come

Reading on the Aztecs and Mayans, it looked like they were on the verge of a massive political and technological breakthrough. Metal working was starting to become really common. The Mayans began producing codexes, literally written manuscripts and documents of their society with pictures and detailed descriptions. The major powers were slowly growing larger and consolidating the smaller nations around it.

If colonization happened like 200 years later, the natives may have been way more powerful and solid

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absolutelyshafted t1_j0wtr4h wrote

Reply to comment by bozitybozitybopzebop in TIL Lake Baikal is located in southeast Siberia and is the oldest and deepest lake in the world, at 25 million years old and 1,700 meters deep. It contains 20% of the world's unfrozen freshwater and is home to a rich and unusual freshwater fauna that is of significant value to evolutionary science. by wisely_lined56

Animals regularly travel tens of thousands of miles

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absolutelyshafted t1_j0wl5dr wrote

Reply to TIL that the ancient Mayan city of Caracol in modern-day Belize was founded in 1200 BCE, held more than double the population of the largest current day city in Belize (of 61,461), and the one of its temples, Caana, built ~9th century CE, is still the tallest building in the country today. by embrace-monke

Mesoamerican civilization is so fucking cool

For me, the fact that it was basically all in isolation makes it even cooler

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absolutelyshafted t1_iyf1y7f wrote

Reply to comment by CerberusTheHunter in TIL that researchers actually studied the brain activity of free-style rappers to figure out how they improvise lyrics on the go. by dark_knight1702

Reminds me of something I read about Hindu scriptures and mythology from ancient times. None of them got written down until like 2nd Century BCE, meaning they were passed down orally from teacher to student despite being grotesquely long

For example The Mahabharata consists of over 200,000 individual verse line and long passages written in prose. The Ramayana is 24,000 verses.

Apparently the priests chant these verses in a very specific style of song/prayer and over time these get ingrained in the students heads. It’s the pattern and rhythm that really helps with memorization.

Therefore all the Hindu texts are preserved with almost perfect grammatical and tonal fidelity, to the point where we can easily learn the ancient Sanskrit language without much guessing or reconstruction

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absolutelyshafted t1_ixwomds wrote

Reply to comment by Frosty_404 in TIL, that by 1860, there were nearly 4 million people enslaved in the United States. by MookieV

Yeah but nobody actually says that

The thing is white people have always claimed to be the better ones in comparison to everyone else INCLUDING in terms of atrocities and whatnot. This was a dominant ideology for the past 100 years and just recently has fallen out of favor. And even today it’s still super common for whites to claim that Africans and East Asians are the most brutal and apathetic races in terms of genocide

This whole thing of “yeah maybe whites did slavery on a mass scale among other thing, but look these other people did stuff like that too” is a classic example of whataboutism

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absolutelyshafted t1_ixwbmla wrote

Reply to comment by Frosty_404 in TIL, that by 1860, there were nearly 4 million people enslaved in the United States. by MookieV

White people get a bit more flak than others because they called themselves morally superior for hundreds of years.

You can’t have extremely brutal slavery in the 1800’s, and then prison slavery also targeted at blacks in the 1900’s, and call yourself morally superior. It just doesn’t work

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absolutelyshafted t1_ixwbft1 wrote

Reply to comment by Strong-Inflation-776 in TIL, that by 1860, there were nearly 4 million people enslaved in the United States. by MookieV

It’s just important to understand slavery in America if you wanna understand Americas history

You keep trying to use whataboutism to distract from the truth: america was essentially built on slavery. Brazil is the only other country that had so many slaves carrying the economy for so long. And even after slavery ended for blacks, most whites didn’t just accept that. Why would they? It took over 100 years for america to actually stop treating an entire race of people like semi slaves

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