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History Rewritten: Myths Busted & New Truths Uncovered

"I bet apple pie was invented here too!"

My pupils tell me the Americans have found a new use for it. :?

edit, 4:06 pm. Missing word 'me' inserted.
 
Tea doesn't grow in Britain or chocolate in Switzerland, the Italians didn't invent pasta, the Chinese didn't invent ping pong, and the Japanese came late to mass production. It's what you do with it that counts, and I bet none of you's ever had apple pie for breakfast!
 
PeniG said:
It's what you do with it that counts, and I bet none of you's ever had apple pie for breakfast!
Click to expand...

You lose - I've had all sorts of patisserie for breakfast.

I've never had Coca Cola with breakfast though (but I've seen people who do), maybe that's the definitive US invention?
 
Pardon Messieurs, but champagne was a BRITISH invention, claims new research
By James Tozer
Last updated at 3:01 AM on 27th September 2008

It is the most quintessentially French drink, and the pride of a whole nation.

But there could be consternation across the Channel after a claim that champagne was invented by an Englishman.

Born in 1614, self-taught West Country scientist Christopher Merrett came from an area better known for producing cider.

However, records show he devised two techniques that were fundamental to making champagne decades before Benedictine monk Dom Perignon, who is usually associated with the invention of the ultimate luxury drink.

He used techniques from the cider industry to control the second fermentation which makes wine fizzy and - crucially - invented the stronger glass needed to prevent the bottle exploding.

Merrett, also spelled Merret, gave a paper to the Royal Society in 1662 describing how adding 'vast quantities of sugar and molasses' to French wine made it taste 'brisk and sparkling'.

That was more than 30 years before Dom Perignon's work at the Abbey of Hautvillers at Epernay marked the 'official' beginning of a multi-million-pound industry which the French have jealously protected ever since.

Merrett also carried out experiments which led to his masterwork The Art of Glass, explaining how stronger bottles could be blown by adding iron, manganese or carbon to the molten mixture.

Tough glass was essential to prevent the pressure created by the fermenting wine causing the bottles to explode.

Early French accounts of champagne production describe the revolutionary bottles as being made of 'verre anglais', or English glass.

Merrett's crucial contribution to the history of both champagne and cider is recounted by author James Crowden in his new book, Ciderland.

He said yesterday: 'The French will no doubt guard their rights to the methode champenoise to the last cork and rigorously prevent anyone using the champagne name outside their tightly-controlled region.

'But they cannot claim, however ingenious they are, to have invented the method for the simple reason they did not have the new stronger English bottles.

'It is the invention and manufacture of these bottles that is the key to the whole enigma as much as the addition of the extra sugar.'

The first champagne house was not founded until 1729, 97 years after Christopher Merrett first published his discoveries

The French have played down Mr Crowden's claim, insisting that while the fermentation technique is 'interesting', the drink Merrett proposed would have borne little relationship to champagne.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... earch.html
 
I can't immediately find a reference but I am quite sure that the English claims to the invention of sparkling wines are widely known. Certainly references to the English Glass as a necessary contribution to the process are in most wine books. :?:
 
Yes, I was a bit surprised at this 'new research' as I had the 'an Englishman invented the champagne method' factoid tucked away somewhere in my addled mind, probably from some late night repeat of QI or something.
 
I expect in Daily Mail speak, New Research is synonymous with New Book published! :roll:

(In fact, I think I glimpsed the book at the Cornish Food Fair in Truro yesterday... 8) )
 
Vikings preferred male grooming to pillaging
The Vikings are traditionally known for leaving destruction in their wake as they travelled around Europe raping, pillaging and plundering.
By Jonathan Wynne-Jones
Last Updated: 8:48PM BST 25 Oct 2008

But Cambridge University has launched a campaign to recast them as "new men" with an interest in grooming, fashion and poetry.

Academics claim that the old stereotype is damaging, and want teenagers to be more appreciative of the Vikings' social and cultural impact on Britain.

They say that the Norse explorers, far from being obsessed with fighting and drinking, were a largely-peaceful race who were even criticised for being too hygienic.

The university's department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic has published a guide revealing how much of the Vikings' history has been misrepresented.

They did not, in fact, wear horned or winged helmets. And they appear to have been a vain race who were concerned about their appearance.

"It seems that the Vikings may not have been as hairy and dirty as is commonly imagined," the guide says.

"A medieval chronicler, John of Wallingford, talking about the eleventh century, complained that the Danes were too clean - they combed their hair every day, washed every Saturday :D , and changed their clothes regularly."

The guide reveals that Norsemen were also stylish trend-setters: "Contemporaries who met individual Vikings were struck by the extreme bagginess of their trousers.

"A tenth-century Persian explorer described trousers (of Vikings in Russia) that were made of one hundred cubits of material, and a number of runestones depict warriors with flared breeches."

The traditional view of the Vikings as "illiterate warring thugs" exaggerates considerably the reality of their life, the academics argue.

"Although Norse men and women may have sometimes liked fighting and drinking, and were sometimes buried with weapons, they also spent much of their time in peaceful activities such as farming, building, writing and illustrating."

The guide points out that the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a contemporary list of notable events beginning in the ninth century and running through to the twelfth, records some battles, but not for every year.

"Life can't have been as violent as we sometimes like to imagine," it adds.

Dr Elizabeth Rowe, a Viking expert and lecturer in Scandinavian mediaeval history at the university, said it was important that children should not picture the Norse warriors as an aggressive race, preoccupied with raping and looting.

"Many British children are quite likely to have Viking ancestry and we want to make them think about the reality of their past," she said.

"It's damaging to think that they were simply a violent society, and easy to undermine them as a people who have no redeeming qualities.

"The truth is that their culture was very artistic and they were keen to make an impression because they want to cultivate a certain look. They were very concerned about their appearance."

The first burial ground of Viking origin in Britain was located only four years ago. Discoveries at the site have challenged the romanticised picture of a noble savage race, perpetuated most famously in Wagner's operas and Hollywood films.

Archaeologists in Cumbria unearthed the remains of Viking men and women buried with copper brooches, jewellery, and riding gear as well as swords and spears.

Dr Francis Pryor, an archaeologist and regular on the Channel Four series Time Team, said the discovery had shown the Norse warriors to be part of an advanced society.

He said: "Far from the illiterate warring thugs in horned helmets who brought us to new depths of barbarism after landing by boat to sack monasteries and molest women, they were a settled and remarkably civilised people who integrated into community life and joined the property-owning classes."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop ... aging.html
 
Well it´s been known for years that the vikings were quite sophisticated but that article makes them sound like a bunch of metrosexuals.
 
Why, what were they getting up to in those movies? Getting manicures?
 
disgusting people, yes, but should we pretend they were never there? or that they never achieved anything, besides being nonces?

Cavern club removes Glitter brick

A brick bearing the name of disgraced glam rocker Gary Glitter was removed from Liverpool's famous Cavern Club and replaced with a plaque.

The convicted paedophile's name was featured among the hundreds of acts who have played the Matthew Street club, made famous by The Beatles.

Owner Bill Heckle, 52, scrubbed the 1970s star out of the club's history on Thursday after a local media campaign.

But he has erected a plaque addressing the brick's removal in its place.

He said: "I used to be a history teacher and this is like Stalinism, revisionism."

Glitter, real name Paul Gadd, served nearly three years in a Vietnam jail for sex offences against young girls.

The 63-year-old has now returned to Britain and is on the sex offenders register.


We've put up a plaque saying two other performers played the Cavern Club between 1957 and 1973 and they had their bricks removed, they were Gary Glitter and Jonathan King
Bill Heckle, club owner

For years Glitter's name was in the company of performers such as Chuck Berry, The Who and the Rolling Stones, written on one of the wall's 1,801 bricks.

The 1970s star's name was chipped off on Thursday and replaced by Merseyside musician Pete Wylie.

Mr Heckle said: "We actually thought it had been done nine years ago when Glitter was done and we removed all the merchandise.

"But it is not up to us to censor the wall - it is a historical document.

"When the brick was made a big issue of, we thought it would attract attention and end up being vandalised.

"We spoke to a victim of paedophile crime and she said unequivocally 'take it out'.

"I was still fighting the corner but ended up taking it out."

Mr Heckle revealed the name of disgraced record producer Jonathan King, who was also jailed for sex offences, was also removed.

He added: "We've put up a plaque saying two other performers played the Cavern Club between 1957 and 1973 and they had their bricks removed, they were Gary Glitter and Jonathan King.

"The situation has been blown out of all proportion. Yes, Glitter committed heinous crimes but this is rock and roll.

"Chuck Berry was in trouble as were lots of the stars."
Click to expand...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/mers ... 731012.stm
 
I was going to say, if Jerry Lee Lewis played there have they done the same to his brick?
 
More4 showed the classic music documentary All You Need Is Love over the past few months and when it got to the 70s, naturally it included Gary Glitter and the station didn't edit him out. Which is fair enough, as he was a huge figure of the era, but it does make you wonder where respect for "artistry", for want of a better word, is cancelled out by disgust at his crimes.

It's not as if he's the only unsavoury character to make it big in showbiz, it's more that he and Jonathan King are most visible. Nobody bans Arthur Mullard's films from TV, do they? But King will always be the rapist of teenage boys in the public's mind, no matter how massive his influence in British music.

Mind you, fuck him, he always said he hated Scottish people.
 
I wondered what Mullard had done. Not buggering teenage boys surely?

The Britmovie site has this:-

Bob M. "I saw Mr. Mullard sitting all alone in a pub near Euston some years ago. I approached him and asked to buy him a drink. He said a pint, please. When I returned with his drink I asked him for his autograph. He said, quite loudly, No, now f**ck off and don't bother me again.
Charming."

There was, unfortunately more . . . the link has the details, such as they are. :(
 
gncxx said:
M... no matter how massive his influence in British music.

Mind you, fuck him, he always said he hated Scottish people.
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If you were more attentive to his music, you'd realise that he hated music, in general, too. He managed to put a superior sneer into everything he sung, wrote, or produced.

The only song that rings even half authentic, is 'Everyone's gone To The Moon', that's the song of a young man, almost terminally lonely.

He had a penchant for young teenage boys and every foray he made into popular youth culture was aimed at attracting them into his clutches.

Arthur Mullard abused his own daughters though and that is indeed worse.
 
Re: Glitter's brick.

As someone else said:
stalin12.jpg


Let's just not start. The same person can do great (or popular) things as well as terribly hideous things and there's no contradiction. It's just being human.
 
Gary Glitter enjoyed abusing very young girls. Some folks, the parents of said children, for example, might enjoy cutting off Gary Glitter's balls and making him eat them (I once roomed with a Nigerian, who admitted to something of the sort, during the Biafran War).

Would that just be 'being human,' too?

Or, is there some sort of sliding scale of what constitutes 'humanity'? What is acceptable and unacceptable, about the duties and responsibilities of being human?

I've always thought that not wilfully doing harm to, or abusing, others, especially the young, the weak and the vulnerable, was the foundation stone of inclusion into humanity.

And, I'll bet that it is the foundation for some of the most basic 'primitive' tribal societies, since the word go, as far as humanity is concerned.

After all, when neighbours start fighting and forcing each other to eat their own balls and raping each other's children, or even their own, something must have gone badly wrong, somewhere.

Or, is that just being human, too? :(
 
I think Yith's point is that we should accept that heroes sometimes turn out to have feet of clay. Rather than trying to pretend their achievements never happened, we should remember them, because this will remind us that our heroes are only human, like ourselves.

Apologies if I've misunderstood.
 
Long but interesting article here:

Mary Rose sunk by French cannonball
For almost 500 years, the sinking of the Mary Rose has been blamed on poor seamanship and the fateful intervention of a freak gust of wind which combined to topple her over.
By Jasper Copping
Last Updated: 10:35PM GMT 15 Nov 2008

Now, academics believe the vessel, the pride of Henry VIII's fleet, was actually sunk by a French warship – a fact covered up by the Tudors to save face.

The Mary Rose, which was raised from the seabed in 1982 and remains on public display in Portsmouth, was sunk in 1545, as Henry watched from the shore, during the Battle of The Solent, a clash between the English fleet and a French invasion force.

Traditionally, historians have blamed the sinking, not on the intervention of the French, but on a recklessly sharp turn and the failure to close gun ports, allowing water to flood in.

To exacerbate the situation, the craft, already overladen with soldiers on the top decks, was also struck by a strong gust of wind.

But new research, carried out by academics at the University of Portsmouth, suggests the ship was fatally holed by a cannonball fired from a much smaller French galley.

They have analysed a remarkably detailed engraving of the battle, created shortly after the event, and used modern mapping techniques to create a virtual 3D account of the battle.

Calculating the tides on the day, and using primary sources about the prevailing wind patterns and movement of the ships, they have been able to establish the limited manoeuvres that each ship could have taken.

It shows how the Mary Rose would have found herself directly in the firing line of the French galleys.

Dr Dominic Fontana, who led the research, said: "The trigger that made the whole situation uncontrollable was the French getting a cannonball through the side of the ship.

"Those watching onshore would not have known anything about flooding in the hull and it would have appeared as though she had been caught by a freak gust of wind and blown over.

"It would have been embarrassing enough for Henry that the ship sunk in front of him, but it is not unreasonable that if he discovered what had happened he would not have wanted to have it credited to the French."

etc....

The new findings feature in a new documentary, "What really sunk the Mary Rose?", to be screened on the History Channel, on November 24.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop ... nball.html
 
Pietro: I'm talking about the human capacity for tremendous good and evil and a huge range in-between. That's one of the numerous ways we differ from other living creatures. I was commenting that it is in no way contradictory for someone to commit acts deemed 'good' and acts deemed 'evil' according to conventional standards. To step sideways, that's why i steer well-clear of any portrayals of Hitler as a monster. He was utterly human, and an exemplar of all the horror that they can descend to.

Humanity is another issue.

Clearly not all humans demonstrate humanity. Though I think it's quite possible that the same individuals can act with humanity in one instance and total inhumanity another; that's just a product of being a creature who exists across time. I don't, to be clear, think there's ever a point at which you forfeit your claim to be human, even if you're a shockingly bad specimen of one.

escargot1 said:
I think Yith's point is that we should accept that heroes sometimes turn out to have feet of clay. Rather than trying to pretend their achievements never happened, we should remember them, because this will remind us that our heroes are only human, like ourselves.

Apologies if I've misunderstood.
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You haven't. That's it in a nutshell.
8)
 
8) My work here is done.

Seriously, allowing offenders to be seen as monsters is a cop-out. They're men and women like us, not aliens or devils. That means that WE could behave like that. Scary, but true.
 
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