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History Rewritten: Myths Busted & New Truths Uncovered

According to this newly published research, some of the credit for Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo should properly be extended to .... Tambora!

A possible link between Tambora's 1815 eruption and Napoleon's weather challenges has been suggested before. This new research demonstrates a previously unrecognized phenomenon makes the suggestions far more plausible.

Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo caused in part by Indonesian volcanic eruption
Electrically charged volcanic ash short-circuited Earth's atmosphere in 1815, causing global poor weather and Napoleon's defeat, says new research.

Historians know that rainy and muddy conditions helped the Allied army defeat the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte at the Battle of Waterloo. The June 1815 event changed the course of European history.

Two months prior, a volcano named Mount Tambora erupted on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa, killing 100,000 people and plunging the Earth into a 'year without a summer' in 1816.

Now, Dr Matthew Genge from Imperial College London has discovered that electrified volcanic ash from eruptions can 'short-circuit' the electrical current of the ionosphere - the upper level of the atmosphere that is responsible for cloud formation.

The findings, published today in Geology, could confirm the suggested link between the eruption and Napoleon's defeat.

Dr Genge, from Imperial's Department of Earth Science and Engineering, suggests that the Tambora eruption short-circuited the ionosphere, ultimately leading to a pulse of cloud formation. This brought heavy rain across Europe that contributed to Napoleon Bonaparte's defeat. ...

FULL STORY: https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-08/icl-nda082218.php
 
I've heard this before, but I've never been entirely sure why it assumed that what disadvantaged Napoleon didn't also disadvantage the British and their allies. It's not like the redcoats were issued umbrellas.

Oh, hold on - Wellingtons!
 
Lovers of Modena skeletons holding hands were both men.

Researchers have found that a couple of skeletons known as the Lovers of Modena, because they are holding hands, were both men.

The researchers could not determine the sex of the skeletons when they were found in Italy in 2009 because they were badly preserved.

But a new technique, using the protein on tooth enamel, revealed their sex.

The actual relationship between the skeletons from the 4-6th Century AD remains a mystery.

The researchers say the two adult males were intentionally buried hand-in-hand.
(c) BBC '19.

This maybe in the wrong place, so (re)inter else where if needs be.
 
"Remains a mystery." Right. Because only heterosexuality can be safely projected back through time. :rolleyes:
 
They were the Lovers of Modena until their biological sex was determined, but now suddenly it's a mystery. Men and women can hold hands for non-romantic reasons, too, but nobody's bothered about projecting modern romantic assumptions onto the past until it stops being heterosexual.
 
They were the Lovers of Modena until their biological sex was determined, but now suddenly it's a mystery. Men and women can hold hands for non-romantic reasons, too, but nobody's bothered about projecting modern romantic assumptions onto the past until it stops being heterosexual.

Maybe they were Transwomen.
 
They were the Lovers of Modena until their biological sex was determined, but now suddenly it's a mystery. Men and women can hold hands for non-romantic reasons, too, but nobody's bothered about projecting modern romantic assumptions onto the past until it stops being heterosexual.

It’s believed to have been a war cemetery. Two men being buried in the same grave would hardly be remarkable; and, unless specific steps were taken in order to prevent it, it would be unsurprising that their hands ended up close together.

Look: an orgy!

https%3A%2F%2Fblogs-images.forbes.com%2Fkristinakillgrove%2Ffiles%2F2017%2F05%2Fjournal.pone_.0178252.g002-1.jpg


Without compelling evidence any further interpretation is 21st century woo.

maximus otter
 
It’s believed to have been a war cemetery. Two men being buried in the same grave would hardly be remarkable; and, unless specific steps were taken in order to prevent it, it would be unsurprising that their hands ended up close together.

Look: an orgy!

https%3A%2F%2Fblogs-images.forbes.com%2Fkristinakillgrove%2Ffiles%2F2017%2F05%2Fjournal.pone_.0178252.g002-1.jpg


Without compelling evidence any further interpretation is 21st century woo.

maximus otter

Lol Max this stuff gets under your skin, doesn't it?

I'm fairly sure that lots of the ancient world happily engaged in gay sex.

It's alright though these skeletons were not British skeletons so no gayness has infected our green and pleasant land.
 
Last edited:
It’s believed to have been a war cemetery. Two men being buried in the same grave would hardly be remarkable; and, unless specific steps were taken in order to prevent it, it would be unsurprising that their hands ended up close together.

Look: an orgy!

https%3A%2F%2Fblogs-images.forbes.com%2Fkristinakillgrove%2Ffiles%2F2017%2F05%2Fjournal.pone_.0178252.g002-1.jpg


Without compelling evidence any further interpretation is 21st century woo.

maximus otter

Could have been a mass gay/trans orgy.
 
Merit Ptah has been a widely cited ancient Egyptian physician for circa 80 years. Recent research indicates she didn't exist - at least under that name and with the facts attributed to her. It appears there was at least one other ancient Egyptian healer around whom the Merit Ptah story coalesced.
The Story of That Famous Female Physician From Ancient Egypt Is Actually Wrong

Merit Ptah. ...

She is credited as being the "first woman known by name in the history of science". But there's a bit of a problem - Merit Ptah probably didn't exist. Not as described, at any rate.

New historical research has traced the legend of Merit Ptah to its origins, and discovered that a lot of the details got mixed up in the 80 years since her name first surfaced in 1938.

In fact, according to medical historian Jakub Kwiecinski of the University of Colorado Anschutz, the entire legend of this ancient Egyptian doctor is almost completely wrong. ...

"The first woman doctor of 'the old kingdom' in the fifth dynasty, or about 2730 BC, practiced during the reign of a queen Neferirika-ra. Her son was a high priest at whose tomb is a tablet describing his mother as the 'Chief Physician' " ...

And, "in a tomb in the Valley of the Kings is the picture of a woman named Merit Ptah, the mother of a high priest, who is calling her 'the Chief Physician,' although neither her costume nor her bearing indicate her medical profession or her importance."

In addition to the fact that the Valley of the Kings wasn't in use until over 1,000 years later - from 1539 BCE to 1075 BCE - there are currently no records of any physician named Merit Ptah in the Old Kingdom of ancient Egypt, female or otherwise, Kwiecinski found.

"Merit Ptah as a name existed in the Old Kingdom, but does not appear in any of the collated lists of ancient Egyptian healers - not even as one of the 'legendary' or 'controversial' cases," he said.

"She is also absent from the list of Old Kingdom women administrators. No Old Kingdom tombs are present in the Valley of the Kings, where the story places Merit Ptah's son, and only a handful of such tombs exist in the larger area, the Theban Necropolis."

That does not mean there were no female doctors recorded in ancient Egypt, however. In fact, that's where it seems the mix-up occurred. ...
FULL STORY: https://www.sciencealert.com/this-a...r-women-in-stem-one-problem-she-never-existed
 
Here are the bibliographic particulars and the abstract from Kwiecinski's published research.


Merit Ptah, “The First Woman Physician”: Crafting of a Feminist History with an Ancient Egyptian Setting
Jakub M Kwiecinski
Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Volume 75, Issue 1, January 2020, Pages 83–106, https://doi.org/10.1093/jhmas/jrz058
Published:22 November 2019

Abstract

Merit Ptah is widely described as “the first woman physician and scientist” on the Internet and in popular history books. This essay explores the origins of this figure, showing that Merit Ptah came into being in the 1930s when Kate Campbell Hurd-Mead misinterpreted a report about an authentic ancient Egyptian healer. Merit Ptah gradually became a prominent figure in popular historical accounts during second-wave of feminism, and, in the twenty-first century she appeared in Wikipedia and subsequently spread throughout the Internet as a female (sometimes black African) founding figure. The history of Merit Ptah reveals powerful mechanisms of knowledge creation in the network of amateur historians, independently from the scholarly community. The case of Merit Ptah also pinpoints factors enabling the spread of erroneous historical accounts: the absence of professional audience, the development of echo chambers due to an obscured chain of knowledge transmission, the wide reach of the Internet, the coherence with existing preconceptions, the emotional charge of heritage, and even – in the case of ancient Egypt – the tendency to perceive certain pasts through a legendary lens. At the same time, the story of Merit Ptah reveals how important role models have been for women entering science and medicine.

SOURCE: https://academic.oup.com/jhmas/article-abstract/75/1/83/5637812?redirectedFrom=fulltext
 
Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman knew this during the American Civil War:

"We are not only fighting armies, but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war, as well as their organized armies. I know that this recent movement of mine through Georgia has had a wonderful effect in this respect. Thousands who had been deceived by their lying papers into the belief that we were being whipped all the time, realized the truth, and have no appetite for a repetition of the same experience."

"War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueller it is, the sooner it will be over."

Remember that - even after the bombs were dropped - the emperor's speech to his people announcing the cessation of hostilities included the almost comic evasion, "...the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage", and didn't even include an unequivocal declaration that Japan had, in fact, surrendered.

maximus otter
Hurrah! Hurrah! We bring the jubilee!
Hurrah! Hurrah! The flag that makes you free!
So we sang the chorus from Atlanta to the sea,
While we were marching through Georgia.
I'm happy the Union won. I'm a southerner with racist, traitor ancestors. Why can't U.S. southerners be as mature as most Germans, who know how shameful their past is?
 
Alfred didn't found the Royal Navy!

Alfred the Great, King of Wessex from 871 and King of the Anglo-Saxons from 886 to 899, is widely touted as establishing England's first Royal fleet but research led by Flinders Medieval Studies Ph.D. candidate Matt Firth has found evidence that the Anglo-Saxons' first recorded naval victory occurred 20 years before Alfred was crowned King of Wessex and 24 years before his first recorded naval victory.

The research—Kingship and Maritime Power in 10th‐Century England, by Matthew Firth and Erin Sebo—has been published in the International Journal of Nautical Archeology.

"The nationalistic rhetoric that as grown up around the Royal Navy and its central role in British Empire identity since at least the 18th century has given rise to some questionable 'facts' around its origins," says Firth.

"The idea that Alfred founded the navy is widespread—and the claim has been uncritically reproduced by such reputable authorities as the National Museum of the Royal Navy, Encyclopædia Britannica and BBC's history webpage."

https://phys.org/news/2020-08-medieval-texts-reveal-false-royal.html
 
It would make a good basis for a flying car though.
 
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