#cool history stuff

[sjwallin]

Guess what? My beloved fiddle Gerrie (they’re gender fluid) is a 1909 Guarneri-style violin originally sold in the Sears Catalog. Later on, mechanical pegs were added (bowed strings traditionally use friction pegs)—but they look like they’re mid-20th century mandolin or banjo type pegs.

I love it! It gives Gerrie so much character and history—and the mechanical pegs still work surprisingly well! (I recently played for an outdoor wedding in chilly temperatures, and my violin was the only one of the group that was staying in tune.) 😋

Kudos to @macmanx for first spotting Gerrie hanging in the shop, waiting for a home—and then tracking down the original Sears page!

If you wanna know more about the history of Sears and its famous catalog, check out this Smithsonian article…

Sears’s mail-order catalog, or “Big Book” as it was later known, became the Amazon of the Victorian era (and beyond).

[aethersea]

I have a vague memory of an ancient history class in high school where the reason September-December don't make sense any more (they are literally 7/8/9/10 month) is because somebody went and added months for Julius and Augustus (which is also why they are the only bank to back months within the year with 31 days each).

(in reference to this post) I've heard that too! But it seems like it was January and February that were added in later, according to this wikipedia page, and then Julius Caesar made some calendrical reforms that included shunting those two months to the start of the year instead of the end. Augustus Caesar made some more changes, notably adding a leap year. That gave us the Julian calendar, which was used in Europe for over 1500 years!

July and August were apparently named after them, but according to this almanac they didn't create new months, they renamed existing ones, Quintilis and Sextilis.

I was told when I was little that July and August both have 31 days because if you gave only one emperor 31 and the other a mere 30, because they couldn't have one emperor having fewer days in his month than the other! The outrage! If you elevated one above the other they'd come haunt you about it probably.

I'm not sure if that's true, but I really hope so.

[aquanutart]

[yasmeensh]

Zelda 2 Link my beloved

[geek-22]

[daily-odile]

odile in hsr outfits my beloved (ref below)

[fictionadventurer]

I saw a page of a local newspaper from 1911 with an article that was like, "Guess what, guys? That Spanish nobleman is still in prison! And he still hasn't found anyone to take that chest of gold off his hands! Apparently in Spain, they're under the impression that our town has an unusually high population of suckers."

I'm just weirdly delighted to know that the Nigerian prince scam is so much older than I thought.

[pineapplesaresweet]

Im in history class rn lmao

[zytes]

something’s wrong?

[paper-mario-wiki]

Ortho-Fusor

REFERENCE MANUAL

Modern Visual Training

Bear in mind that these polaroids are from 1941, and are presented with as much clarity as I could muster with only my phone camera.

[television-overload]

I'm just curious...

If yes: what media/characters specifically? I find this so interesting!

If not: have you ever considered a career choice based on a form of media you enjoy, but ended up not doing it?

[sjwallin]

Timelines are always fascinating to me!

Photo 1:

What bit of historical perspective gives you an existential crisis? Mine is that Harriet Tubman was born in Thomas Jefferson's lifetime and died in Reagan's.

Photo 2:

Okay so

The samurai were officially abolished as a caste in Japanese society during the Meiii Restoration in 1867

The first ever fax machine, the "printing telegraph", was invented in 1843

And Abraham Lincoln was famously assassinated at Ford's Theatre in 1865

Which means there was a 22 vear window in which a samurai could have sent a fax to Abraham Lincoln

[reality-detective]

Objects from another time...

A very old way of making popcorn! 🤔

[dashing-through-ecto]

The difference one and a half years can make

My first comic

My latest comic

It's been absolutely staggering to see the differences even though these panels have the same vibes.

[ganondoodle]

kind of expected that the ability breakdown wouldnt get that much traction (especially on twitter bc if it doesnt do well in the first few hours it might as well be dead) but what i didnt need to wake up to was looking at my twitter notifications and thinking there was a long comment on it at first but then i read it and it turned out to be some guy having dug up one of my old totk tweets where i talked about how zelda was treated-

and if a quote retweet with a thread attached already starts with "this entitled brat didnt understand that zelda was being a history nerd by being in the past and getting to experience it herself" with two screenshots attached of the end of totk with zelda staring at the cam all uwu (which has ??? to do with their point??) i dont even want to know what else was in that thread

if thats how the majority of the fandom is then im even less surprised that nintendy doesnt even have to try to write anything good :I

ah yes, i am a game nerd, and by putting me in a game where i stand around doing puppy dog eyes while being shoved around by NPCs is me being a game nerd OBVIOSULY

[alpaca-clouds]

Experimental Archeologists are fucking rad!

Let me geek out about science a bit more, alright? And for that I really wanna talk about that part of archeology that normal folks know very little about: Experimental Archeology.

And I know for a lot of people this sounds kinda strange. How the fuck are you going to experiment about archeology? Isn't archeology all about dicking in the dirt for some ceramic or something? Or about excavating ruins?

Well, here is the thing. Ruins and ceramics can tell us a lot about the life back in "ye olden days", but they also leave a lot of questions. Questions about how the people were actually living and how the things that were excavated were actually created.

You might know all those Ancient Alien nutjobs. Folks that will yell about how people in the ancient times (or, lets be honest, how non-white people in the ancient times) could never have ever done this with the technology of the time.

That is where experimental archeology comes in. In a lot of the cases from the old times we actually have found some tools, too. So we know what kind of tools that might have been used and the like. And as thus they experiment how to use those tools and other things we know were available to create those things.

With that we know that for example Stonehenge could have been created by very few people in a fairly short amount of time. We also have a good idea of how the pyramids might have been build and how many people it took. (Less than you think.)

But experimental archeologists and experimental historians do even more. They recreate food and the methods it was cooked based on findings we made. They recreate clothing and furniture and other tools, learning a lot about the process through it.

Which is amazing - and we are learning quite a lot about the past through it. It is fucking amazing.