The Blood Countess
Elizabeth Báthory lived in the late 16th and early 17th century in Hungary and she wasn’t a nice person. Hence the nickname of The Blood Countess. She was accused of some quite horrific crimes but the Rejected Princesses website doubts whether she was guilty of them at all, instead preferring that she was a dominant woman in a period of history when she needed to be. So no, she was not warm and cuddly. I absolutely believe she made life shitty for misbehaving servants (or, more likely, had her head servants do it for her). Some undoubtedly died from it – I mean, she had thousands of servants in an age before penicillin. In fact, one scholar claims that the more outlandish tortures (stinging nettles, metal rods, amateur acupuncture) were contemporary folk remedies. Tough lady? Yes. Cartoon supervillain? Hell no. Make your own mind up by reading the full article here. Amongst other things you’ll find a long list of the Blood Countess’s alleged crimes, including the force-feeding of hot cakes, strangling with silk scarves, and lacerating servants’ genitals with her teeth....
The War Of 1812
From the Smithsonian website comes this interesting account of the war of 1812 which cemented United States’ independence from Britain. They’ve been regretting it ever since, poor things. As the article explains here in Britain the War of 1812 isn’t that large a part of our history simply because we were more engrossed with defeating Napoleon at the same time. By contrast, the British historiography of the War of 1812 has generally consisted of short chapters squeezed between the grand sweeping narratives of the Napoleonic Wars. The justification for this begins with the numbers: Roughly 20,000 on all sides died fighting the War of 1812 compared with over 3.5 million in the Napoleonic. But the brevity with which the war has been treated has allowed a persistent myth to grow about British ignorance. In the 19th century, the Canadian historian William Kingsford was only half-joking when he commented, “The events of the War of 1812 have not been forgotten in England for they have never been known there.” In the 20th, another Canadian historian remarked that the War of 1812 is “an episode in history that makes everybody happy, because everybody interprets it differently…the English are happiest of all, because they don’t even know it happened.” For a quick history lesson read the full – not too long – article here: The British View the War of 1812 Quite Differently Than Americans...
Soccer Is Running America Into The Ground
“Soccer is running America into the ground, and there is very little anyone can do about it.” So starts an email to blogger Avicenna who then proceeds to pick apart the preposterous points raised by “an overworked teacher” in the post I Get Mail – How Soccer is Ruining ‘Merica. The arguments made by the teacher are the typical fare you’d expect from someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about but they’re worth reading nonetheless especially if you happen to like football and like despairing of humans. I know I do. Of particular interest to me was this quote from the teacher (just after expressing his sexist attitude labelling football as “a game for girls”: My daughter is on a traveling team, and she is quite good. I had to sign a form that said, among other things, I would not do anything embarrassing to her or the team during the game. I told the coach I could not sign it. She was perplexed and worried. “Why not,” she asked? “Are you one of those parents who yells at their kids?” “Not at all,” I replied, “I read books on the sidelines during the game, and this embarrasses my daughter to no end.” That is my one way of protesting the rise of this pitiful sport. Screw the fact your daughter may enjoy the sport you can’t comprehend. The most important thing is to embarrass her away from the game. A petty, domineering, sexist teacher who thinks soccer is ruining...
Alien Erotica
Via The Toast and the mind of Mallory Ortberg is a fantastically funny piece of Erotica Written By An Alien Pretending Not To Be Horrified By The Human Body, featuring instantly recognisable yet unarguably disgusting acts of sexual intercourse such as: They licked one another as if they were food, but they were not food. And: Some sort of gel...
How Portsmouth Might Have Been
Via http://www.lukestubbs.com/index.php/78-blog/83-portsmouth-s-1970s-roads-plan comes this short article showing off the road plans for Portsmouth in the 1970s discovered while searching for references to famous Pompey landmark, the Johnson & Johnson Roundabout (not a roundabout; no Johnson & Johnson building; but those of us of a certain age know where it is). For me, at least, it’s quite weird to see what might have been, especially the route the Eastern Road would have taken all the way into the city centre. The northern part of the Eastern Road was to be upgraded to full dual carriageway with flyovers. The southern part was to follow a completely different line that would have linked up with Winston Churchill Avenue. Departing from the old road just south of Portsmouth College, it would have hugged the coast, crossing open space that is now the University’s Langstone campus before turning in and following a line along the old canal just off Locksway Road. […] The road would then have continued broadly along the line of Goldsmith Avenue. It is because of the safeguarding of this route that some of the industrial units around Fratton station remain to this day. Clicking the image below will load a very high resolution image of the plan (over 7MB in size; you have been warned) or you can head along to Luke’s site via the link above to see a few close crops of areas of interest as well as some write-ups of the seventies’ proposed road plans for...
Pyramiden
Via the Smithsonian website comes this article about Pyramiden, an abandoned Soviet town within the Arctic Circle in Svalbard. In addition of a history of Pyramiden and its coal mines the article includes a short history of Svalbard itself but it’s the description of the place as it is now – as explored by a couple of archaeologists and a photographer – that’s most interesting. For the first time, Bjerck—who had visited the town many times when it was still inhabited—was able to venture into the residents’ private rooms. Walls were still covered with maps, magazine clippings of nature or animals, pin-ups and stickers reading “Playboy,” “Puma,” and “Brooklyn,” to name a few. Many people had built homemade wind chimes and ornaments from paper clips, plastic bottles, string and cardboard, evidence of the town’s DIY mentality. “For me, if I don’t have a hanger, I just throw my jacket on a chair – I don’t go and make one myself,” Bjerck says. “But the closets were full of homemade coat hangers fashioned out of electrical...
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