Favorite Historical Periods, Events, Characters

[Ymir's blood]

Originally Posted by Gawen

Pirates. Someone mentioned Pirates. A must read book is Under the Black Flag by David Cordingly.

That be me, by thunder!

I've seen that book several times but haven't picked it up (yet).

[pzmyers]

The Enlightenment, of course. But that's also a twofer: it coincides with the Age of Piracy.

There's also the Great Northern War at about the same time. That wild-eyed, obsessed, crazed genius Charles XII of Sweden in his doomed and self-destructive struggle against the evil Russian czar, Peter the Despicable.

I'm also fond of Periclean Athens. Also the Age of Alexander and particularly the Diadochi.

In the history of Rome, I'll pick one year: 69 AD.

The Albigensian Crusade. Enough said.

15th century Turkey and the Balkans. Now there was chaos and radical upheaval.

1859. 1918.

The Summer of Love (I remember that one.)


Then, of course, there was the Transplanetary Diaspora of the 22nd Century, and the subsequent Great Polyspeciation Event, which radically changed our entire concept of humanity (splintering it irreparably, actually), after which all the prior historical traumas looked like itsy-bitsy boo-boos of little consequence.

[Kaonashi]

Native America before the white bastards came along and Ancient Japan/China/Korea

[BigBlue2]

Originally Posted by livius drusus

I can't be the only one with history favorites. Even if I am, do me a favor and make some shit up so I don't feel like a helpless dweeb.

Ancient Greece from 490-400BC. Marathon, Thermopylea, Salamis, the Golden Age of Athens, the military nuthouse that was Sparta, Herodotus, Thycidides, Pericles, Socrates, topped off by a 30-year war that destroyed it all and led to the rise of the greatest conqueror of Ancient times (Alexander). What's not to love.

[Johnny Pneumatic]

Ancient China, Australian Aborigines, "Native" Americans, Japan, India, Archimedes, Leonardo da Vinci, Charles Darwin, Tomas Paine and many other things.

[Petra]

I used to be such a luscious fantasist, wiling away hours lost in daydreams. Still am to a degree, and will still indulge myself in the fantasy of being able to travel back in time to different places. I guess it's what made me want to be a traveller.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Kayyam and that whole Arabian Nights thing has always seduced me to the cultures of ancient Persia, Arabia and Northern India. Even my love of horses comes from the Arabian. Those cultures were so rich, and embraced life so sensuously: the heady scent of burnt spices, the trade routes bringing people of all cultures together in noisy, colourful, dangerous, robust markets brimming with exotica and erotica, art and industry, science and ideas. The whole imagery of belly dancers and poets and pomegranates and grapes and mosiacs and music and....ahhhh.....I wanna export myself there.

And lately, by the Tavern Door agape,
Came stealing through the Dusk an Angel Shape,
Bearing a vessel on his Shoulder; and
He bid me taste of it; and 'twas--the Grape!

The Grape that can with Logic absolute
The Two-and-Seventy jarring Sects confute:
The subtle Alchemist that in a Trice
Life's leaden Metal into Gold transmute.

The mighty Mahmud, the victorious Lord,
That all the misbelieving and black Horde
Of Fears and Sorrows that infest the Soul
Scatters and slays with his enchanted Sword.

But leave the Wise to wrangle, and with me
The Quarrel of the Universe let be:
And, in some corner of the Hubbub coucht,
Make Game of that which makes as much of Thee.



Having lived in Jerusalem, I'd also like to be able to go back through all it's many layers and live a little in each of it's ages.

And of course live among the people who lived in the city of Petra, my namesake.

Petra, by John William Burgon

It seems no work of Man's creative hand,
by labor wrought as wavering fancy plnned;
But from the rock as by magic grown,
eternal, silent, beautiful, alone!
Not virgin-white like that old Doric shrine,
where erst Athena held her rites divine;
Not saintly-grey, like many a minster fane,
that crowns the hill and consecrates the plain;
But rose-red as if the blush of dawn,
that first beheld them were not yet withdrawn;
The hues of yough upon a brow of woe,
which Man deemed old two thousand years ago,
match me such marvel save in Eastern clime,
a rose-red city half as old as time.


And then I'd like to check out the Americas - north, central and south. Before the Europeans. All of it. Everywhere.


And then the trip the Maori took from Hawai'iki to Aotearoa. They navigated the Pacific Ocean in pretty small canoes. Hawai'iki is lost to legend now, but some say it is Hawai'i (which makes sense as Maori look more like Hawai'ians than they do, say, Fijians) and we can only speculate that either a volcanic eruption, or tribal war, or whatever caused them to undertake such a huge and dangerous journey.


Oh, and I really dig that whole flapper thing of the roaring '20s, too, as someone else mentioned. I'd be perfectly happy getting about in one of those old cars, wearing my flapper dress and cloche, shimmying and cha-cha'ing with champagne in hand, to the band playing in the gazebo on Rockefeller's lawn. I would be soo there.


And the bohemians, too. Cafeing with the writers, musicians and artists of that time. And the beat generation. And the hippies. A good few decades could be had with them, I'd say.


In fact, the whole Paris/New York art scene of the first half or so of the 20th Century would be great to go hang out in.


That'll do for now. I'd better get some sleep.

[JoeP]

Ah, the Rubaiyat. Love it.

[xouper]

My all time most favorite:

• 10:56 pm EDT, July 20, 1969 - mankind first set foot on the Moon.

If that isn't an amazing event in history, I don't know what is.


Honorable Mentions:

• 240 BC, Alexandria - Eratosthenes measured the circumference of the Earth. He also measured the distance to the Moon and the Sun, and is credited with inventing a clever method for finding prime numbers (the Sieve of Eratosthenes).

• 1859, Berlin Academy - Bernhard Reimann published a conjecture that is today the most studied and celebrated unsolved problem in all of mathematics. A million dollar prize awaits the first person who solves it. The Reimann Hypothesis can be stated simply: "all the non-trivial zeros of the zeta function have real part one half." Understanding what that means to mathematics would fill a rather large book.

• the winter solstice, 11:11 UTC, December 21, 2012 - the first day of the new Mayan era (I would have said Mayan "Millennium" but their eras - 13 baktuns - are more than 5,000 years long). Many in the New Age Community consider this date to have enormous significance for the Earth and for the human race. As this date draws near, watch for more about it from nutcases and wackjobs all over the world.

• February 9, 1964 - The Beatles made their first American debut on The Ed Sullivan Show.

[livius drusus]

Great picks, xouper. Where do the million dollars for the Reimann prize come from and is the new Mayan era an apocalyptic thing or ...?

(Sure, I could look them up myself, but I much prefer making you do all the work. )

[JoeP]

Originally Posted by livius drusus

(Sure, I could look them up myself, but I much prefer making you do all the work. )

Now there's a slippery slope.

Watch out, xouper...

[xouper]

Originally Posted by livius drusus

Great picks, xouper. Where do the million dollars for the Reimann prize come from and is the new Mayan era an apocalyptic thing or ...?

The million dollar prize (one of seven such prizes) is personally funded by a rich guy by the name of Landon Clay who recently founded the Clay Mathematics Institute because he is a big fan of mathematics, although he is not himself a mathematician.

See: http://www.claymath.org/millennium/

As for the Mayan date 2012, some (erroneously) believe that the Mayan calendar ends on that date, and thus so will the world - the apocalyptic view. Others believe that the Maya had some great spiritual insight and made great spiritual predictions for that date - I have no idea where they get such nonsense.

In any case, here's a typical website, quite popular with many New Agers, and which is full of enough nonsense to last you until well past 2012:

http://www.2012.com.au/

The Mayan Long Count calendar rollover in 2012 is perhaps a bit more dramatic than the Gregorian calendar Millennium rollover (1999 to 2000), as follows:

December 20, 2012 = Mayan date 0.12.19.19.17.19
December 21, 2012 = Mayan date 1.0.0.0.0.0

As you can see, five of the six numbers in the Mayan Long Count date roll over to zeros. This assumes a 13 baktun cycle, which is not unanimous among Mayan scholars.

[livius drusus]

Originally Posted by xouper

See: http://www.claymath.org/millennium/

I guess he likes math a lot. Meanwhile, the only reasonable pertinent comment this pathetic English major has to make is that all the problems but one are named after people.

In any case, here's a typical website, quite popular with many New Agers, and which is full of enough nonsense to last you until well past 2012:

http://www.2012.com.au/

Hey cool! The Quickening! So we'll all become immortal and be able to taste music and touch the molten core of the earth and whatnot? Sounds like a blast to me. How kind of the Mayans to arrange their calendar to look so pretty when I'm alive to see it.

[Blake]

Originally Posted by xouper

... Honorable Mentions:

...

• February 9, 1964 - The Beatles made their first American debut on The Ed Sullivan Show.

Not to quibble, but I'm going to quibble. That was their first live appearance. Jack Paar found out about the booking and scooped Sullivan by scoring some tape and airing it the month before. Sullivan was so angry he had to be convinced not to cancel them.

[wade-w]

Originally Posted by xouper

1859, Berlin Academy - Bernhard Reimann published a conjecture that is today the most studied and celebrated unsolved problem in all of mathematics. A million dollar prize awaits the first person who solves it. The Reimann Hypothesis can be stated simply: "all the non-trivial zeros of the zeta function have real part one half." Understanding what that means to mathematics would fill a rather large book.

Now explain to the nice people what the zeta function is.

[xouper]

Originally Posted by wade-w

Now explain to the nice people what the zeta function is.

I guess it would also help if I spelled the man's name correctly?

For the mathematically inclined:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_zeta_function
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/RiemannZetaFunction.html

A simpler introduction:
http://www.maths.ex.ac.uk/~mwatkins/zeta/devlin.pdf

[xouper]

Originally Posted by Blake

Not to quibble, but I'm going to quibble. That was their first live appearance. Jack Paar found out about the booking and scooped Sullivan by scoring some tape and airing it the month before.

Quibbles are good.

So let me ask, was the tape Paar aired of the Beatles performing in America? Because if it wasn't then it doesn't count as an American debut.

As far as I know, the Beatles had never set foot in America prior to arriving at LaGuardia airport on Feb 7, 1964. I could be wrong, though.

[xouper]

Originally Posted by xouper

• February 9, 1964 - The Beatles made their first American debut on The Ed Sullivan Show.

For the pedantic and/or astute observers among us, I offer this question: When did the Beatles make their second American debut?

[godfry n. glad]

Originally Posted by xouper

I guess it would also help if I spelled the man's name correctly?

For the mathematically inclined:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_zeta_function
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/RiemannZetaFunction.html

A simpler introduction:
http://www.maths.ex.ac.uk/~mwatkins/zeta/devlin.pdf

oh....so it has nothing to do with selling mobile phones, huh? Or making Michael Douglas happy?

ah, well...

[Skep]

Originally Posted by xouper

For the pedantic and/or astute observers among us, I offer this question: When did the Beatles make their second American debut?

Was it before or after their first American premiere?

[godfry n. glad]

Originally Posted by xouper

For the pedantic and/or astute observers among us, I offer this question: When did the Beatles make their second American debut?

Later?

Wait...can't you have only one debut?

[xouper]

Originally Posted by godfry n. glad

Wait...can't you have only one debut?

Exactly. You can have a "first appearance", or you can have a debut (which means the same thing), but when I wrote "first debut" that was a pleonasm (same as people who say ATM machine).

[Clutch Munny]

The Aegean before the first Peloponnesian war.

The Roman and Byzantine Near East.

Early and mid Byzantium.

20thC China.

Norse Scotland/Orkney

[livius drusus]

The Roman and Byzantine Near East.

Early and mid Byzantium.

Have you been to Turkey?

[Socratoad]

Let me think ..... hmmm this is very difficult as there are so many times, places and people with and where I would love to hang out. Oh well I guess I can post again.

However three things immediately pop into my enfeebled mind.

Socrates of course. I would love to have hung about with him. Even enduring the many hardships and even the end would be worthwhile only to be able to be among those in discussion with him in the markets squares.

Paris, in the era of the salons. Again to be able to participate in the great discussions. I would hope to gain admittance to the women's salons because of my admiration of the minds of women everywhere. like Farren methinks sipping absinthe would be an added pleasure.

Emma Goldman, simply because of my admiration of this unique fearless incorruptible person. Damn..... I doubt very much if another of her stature will ever grace this planet. I would campaign by her side until I dropped dead of exhaustion ....gladly.

[Sweetie]

Nero and Constantine <--favorite in the sense of very interesting to me.

Scotland and the Clans, Culloden, etc.

Earlier in this age, I would have liked to witness the atmosphere for the "Inklings" - the group of friends/writers: G.K. Chesterton, J.R.R.Tolkien, C.S.Lewis and whomever else.

Can't think of much else. I would like to watch sped-up but first hand the development of Islam and I would like to know more about the Turks, it interests me.

The Middle Ages doesn't interest me much, but perhaps that's bias, how it has been represented to me. What I think in the sense of those times reeks of humanity, pain and insanity so it hasn't been a favorite of mine so far.

Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Augustine.