Hawaiian Electric was inspired by a King
I saw this post on Mastodon and went to do my own research (as we all should do.) Specifically it was around the electrification of Hawaii prior to the US taking it over:
I found a number of partial articles via IEEE, but this linked one is more of a PR piece about the Hawaiian Electrical company.
Hawaiian Electric may be the only electric utility in the United States - perhaps in the world - inspired to go into business by the vision and enthusiasm of a king.
That king was David Kalakaua, a monarch with a technical and scientific bent and an insatiable curiosity for modern devices. In an era of gas lamps, Kalakaua was shrewd enough to recognize the potential of "electricity," and helped pioneer its introduction in the Hawaiian kingdom. His vision led to the formation of Hawaiian Electric and the services it has since provided for over a century have paralleled the economic growth and modernization of the State of Hawaii.
It was the late 1870s, and "electricity" was the talk of society. The king had heard and read about this revolutionary new form of energy, but he needed further evidence of its practical application. Who better to get this information from than Thomas Edison, inventor of the incandescent lamp? Kalakaua arranged to meet Edison in New York in 1881 during the course of a world tour.
It's important to realize that non-indigenous history doesn't always properly reflect the reality of the conquered people. And, more directly, that often it benefits the narrative to belittle and talk-down the technology and civilization of those people.
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We now understand Roman concrete
Fascinating stuff. I watched a TikTok about it last night. The core is that there are larger than expected chunks of limestone in the cement mix. Their unusual size means that many cracks involve them, and when water runs through these cracks the limestone basically is porous and dissolves to be a bit more glue to fill the crack, dry and harden. However, the other major realization is that it was mixed while being hot, rather than as we do today with cold mixing.
Here's the abstract of the paper:
Ancient Roman concretes have survived millennia, but mechanistic insights into their durability remain an enigma. Here, we use a multiscale correlative elemental and chemical mapping approach to investigating relict lime clasts, a ubiquitous and conspicuous mineral component associated with ancient Roman mortars. Together, these analyses provide new insights into mortar preparation methodologies and provide evidence that the Romans employed hot mixing, using quicklime in conjunction with, or instead of, slaked lime, to create an environment where high surface area aggregate-scale lime clasts are retained within the mortar matrix. Inspired by these findings, we propose that these macroscopic inclusions might serve as critical sources of reactive calcium for long-term pore and crack-filling or post-pozzolanic reactivity within the cementitious constructs. The subsequent development and testing of modern lime clast–containing cementitious mixtures demonstrate their self-healing potential, thus paving the way for the development of more durable, resilient, and sustainable concrete formulations.
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The Laconia Incident during World War II
Found via Reddit, here is the title it was submitted under:
TIL In 1942, German submarines sunk a British passenger ship. They surfaced to collect survivors, announced their presence to the allies and sailed under a Red Cross flag. The U-Boats were attacked by allied planes, forcing the submarine to throw all the survivors back into the sea and crash dive.
The top comment, posted by yeaheah, added further insight:
Rescueing survivors of submarine attacks by the submarine itself was actually pretty common in WW1 and early WW2 until there was an incident that forced them to stop doing it (not sure if it was this exact incident)
It would also be common to just hit the ship a couple of times, then wait till everyone was in the rescue boats, and then sink the ship when it was empty. Provided the ship would not fight back
A reply by DuckDockDank:
It was exactly this incidents that resulted in the Laconia order by Donitz that said to take no quarters as it was already too risky. Basically they shot a British ship that was at the time transporting Italian POWs guarded by Poles so they surfaced, opened their radios to any nearby ships, and flew a red cross. But along the way they were strafed by a US aircraft. They loaded the sub with as much POWs and submerged to escape. Probably one the reasons Donitz wasnt hanged for his crimes since the Allies werent taking any quarters either and even if Donitz didn't order it the Allies at that late of the war didn't exactly made it easy to do so.
By atsinged:
Originally German subs operated under a set of rules (I think it was called cruiser rules) which involved approaching and allowing the crew of the target ship to get to the lifeboats then destroying the target. Providing provisions, directions to shore and even occasionally towing the lifeboats part of the way was common. In WWI the introduction of Q ships, which were armed ships that looked like merchants put an effective end to it. They would lure a submarine in close with a false surrender then blast it as it got close.
I think some German captains tried to operate like that in the beginning of WWII but it was extremely dangerous for them.
Surprise attacks, on the surface, at night became the standards for U-Boats pretty quickly in WWII. It is actually best to think of U-Boats as torpedo boats that could submerge to escape, they were reasonably quick and nimble on the surface and quite slow underwater.
Check out the Convoy attack scene on Das Boot for a fantastic illustration of how a whole lot of attacks were conducted.
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Scientists exhumed Gregor Mendel to sequence DNA to mark his bicentennial
Exhuming Mendel from his grave in Brno and running genetic tests on his remains turned out to be a doable project – so long as they could get permission from the Augustinians. That's the religious order that Mendel belonged to, and with which he remains: The Augustinian tomb in the city's central cemetery was thought to contain Mendel's body.
Local religious leaders consulted with Augustinians in Prague, their bishop, and finally Augustinians in Rome. Eventually, permission was granted.
"No one at the time, including Mendel, I think, suspected that his work would be so groundbreaking in terms of being a major scientific theory," says Daniel Fairbanks, a plant geneticist and author of a book called Gregor Mendel: His Life and Legacy.
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The Babylonians calculated the square root of 2 with 99.9999% accuracy, amazing
Note: Base-60 is referred to as 'sexagesimal'
They calculated square root of 2 as 1.41421296296 without a calculator, very impressive.
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OTD: 190 years ago, the first hospital for African Americans
Chartered by the Georgia General Assembly in 1832, the Infirmary was established "for the relief and protection of afflicted and aged Africans" under the provisions of the last will and testament of Savannah merchant and minister Thomas F. Williams (1774-1816). Originally located south of the city, it was moved here in 1838. Its fourteen acres included several single-story buildings and small farm tracts for vegetable gardens. In 1904, the Infirmary became one of the earliest training schools for African-American nurses. In 1975, it became Georgia's first day center for stroke rehabilitation.
Along with this, I discovered hmdb.org which is the Historical Marker database.
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18th Century Firemen didn't let uninsured homes burn down
Pulling from the video transcript, here are (in my opinion) the most salient segments. And here is the link to the full research document they which is referenced below.
But. About a month ago, I got an email that was like, you know that source you used, the London Fire Brigade Museum's page? It doesn't say that.
And it doesn't. The page has been changed, and it now says: "There is little real evidence to suggest that this was the case."
So: I hired an experienced, professional archives research consultant. My brief was simple: is the story true? Answering that took the consultant two weeks of work. Not two weeks of undergrad-slacking-off-time, I mean two solid weeks of eight-hour work days, including visiting the British Library to check documents that haven't been digitized yet. He's put together a thoroughly-referenced report, I've linked it down in the description.
And now I'm going to summarize his summary in about 60 seconds. Here we go: Through the 18th century, fire marks were an indicator of whether a building was insured, but the general policy of London insurance companies was that their firefighters did try to fight all fires, whether insured or not. Three reasons why:
One: A fire in an un-insured building can easily spread to an insured property, or dozens of insured properties. Economically, it made sense to cut the problem off as early as possible.
Two: It is really good advertising to have smartly dressed firefighters rushing in to save the day.
And three: it was the right thing to do.
There are good references from the time to back all that up. But. By 1721, there were eight fire insurance offices in London. We don't know how many actual fire brigades there were, but there were enough for there to be rivalries between them.
And there was also a law that gave reward money to the first, second, and third brigades to attend a fire.
That's one of the reasons they raced to fires so fast, they got paid more if they did. So sometimes, too many firefighters would turn up. They couldn't all help, and there might not be enough fire-fighting water for all of them.
Many of those firefighters were recruited from being watermen on the River Thames, rough-and-ready ferry workers. So if they weren't quick enough, and they missed out on the reward, and it wasn't a building insured by their company anyway, they might just stand back, jeer a bit, or worst case, maybe even interfere with the folks who were going to get the reward money instead of them.
That is, in the researcher's view, the most probable place that the story came from. There are so many more subtleties than that, this is not certain, history is fractal and you can always, always find more detail if you keep looking.
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NatGeo's 22 discoveries of 2022
From archaeological discoveries to history and biology, lots of interesting moments from the year. There are a few which I'm like 'eh' for including and they just felt the need to hit the '22' number, but also some really cool things to be reminded about and also to learn about for the first time.
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Amazing medieval necklace from 1,300 years ago found
A 1,300-year-old necklace beaded with gold and semiprecious stones has been discovered in an early-Anglo Saxon burial site under a construction project in central England. The location is being hailed as the most significant female burial site from the era discovered in Britain.
"We know about these people from deeds, from literary sources, from hagiographies, but very often we don't have much material evidence for their existence," he said, adding that these aristocratic women played a central role in spreading new religious practices: "There is a form of soft power exercised by these queens."
Experts have hailed the find as particularly significant evidence of the role played by elite women at the time. "This woman probably belonged to the first generation of English Christians in this part of England," Francis Young, a historian of religion who was not involved in the excavation, told The Post. "This is people wanting to show off their newly acquired identity as Christians."
The buried woman's identity is not known, but she is thought likely to have been either an abbess or member of Saxon royalty — if not both.
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Nine Worthies
The Nine Worthies are nine historical, scriptural, and legendary personages who personify the ideals of chivalry established in the Middle Ages, whose lives were deemed a valuable study for aspirants to chivalric status. All were commonly referred to as 'Princes', regardless of their historical titles. In French they are called Les Neuf Preux or "Nine Valiants", giving a more specific idea of the moral virtues they exemplified: those of soldierly courage and generalship. In Italy they are i Nove Prodi.
The Nine Worthies include three pagans (Hector, Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar), three Jews (Joshua, David and Judas Maccabeus) and three Christians (King Arthur, Charlemagne and Godfrey of Bouillon).
They were first described in the early fourteenth century, by Jacques de Longuyon in his Voeux du Paon (1312). Their selection, as Johan Huizinga pointed out, betrays a close connection with the romance genre of chivalry.
Going to have to investigate this further, very interesting.
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A look at Seattle Duwamish Indigenous Place Names and Settlements
The graphics aren't large, but it has some very interesting maps showing historic settlement locations of where the various groups of Duwamish people lived.
26. SWAH-tsoo-gweel ('portage'). Duwamish. Around the top margins of Union Bay. Five longhouses were located on the N edge of the bay, which--pre-1916--lay nearly a mile further N. One longhouse was near the present UW steam plant, and one near the former Battelle Institute campus. This was the principal village of an influential group known as hloo-weelh-AHBSH who took their name from the s’hloo-WEELH (literally, "a tiny hole drilled to measure the thickness of a canoe"), the narrow passage through the resource-rich Union Bay marsh. All the people living around Lake Washington were collectively known as hah-choo-AHBSH, that is, people of HAH-choo, meaning 'a large lake' and referring to present-day Lake Washington. (2, 8)
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Julius Streicher is an important reminder from World War 2 - executed for crimes against humanity despite never having killed anyone
Julius Streicher (12 February 1885 – 16 October 1946) was a member of the Nazi Party, the Gauleiter (regional leader) of Franconia and a member of the Reichstag, the national legislature. He was the founder and publisher of the virulently antisemitic newspaper Der Stürmer, which became a central element of the Nazi propaganda machine. The publishing firm was financially very successful and made Streicher a multi-millionaire.
After the war, Streicher was convicted of crimes against humanity at the end of the Nuremberg trials. Specifically, he was found to have continued his vitriolic antisemitic propaganda when he was well aware that Jews were being murdered. For this, he was executed by hanging. Streicher was the first member of the Nazi regime held accountable for inciting genocide by the Nuremberg Tribunal.
Fomenting hate is still a violent action.
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15th century manuscript all about the names of dogs
Mine are Elwood (after Elwood Blues) and Ozzie (after Ozzie Smith & Ozzie Alonso.) Neither make this list of 15th century names somehow.
I found this courtesy of OpenCulture which also links to this imgur album of name list in the pdf as images.
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Vox populi, vox Dei
Elon Musk used the most familiar portion of the quote, but the full quote is rather important and changes its meaning.
This quote comes from a letter between Alcuin and Charlemagne.
Nec audiendi qui solent dicere, Vox populi, vox Dei, quum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit.
And those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness.
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"271 Years Before Pantone, an Artist Mixed and Described Every Color Imaginable in an 800-Page Book"
In 1692 an artist known only as "A. Boogert" sat down to write a book in Dutch about mixing watercolors. Not only would he begin the book with a bit about the use of color in painting, but would go on to explain how to create certain hues and change the tone by adding one, two, or three parts of water. The premise sounds simple enough, but the final product is almost unfathomable in its detail and scope.
Spanning nearly 800 completely handwritten (and painted) pages, Traité des couleurs servant à la peinture à l'eau, was probably the most comprehensive guide to paint and color of its time. According to Medieval book historian Erik Kwakkel who translated part of the introduction, the color book was intended as an educational guide. The irony being there was only a single copy that was probably seen by very few eyes.
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Freedom House Ambulance Service on 99% Invisible Podcast
Today we think of paramedics as a service which has always existed. But that is far from true. Among the three emergency response groups they are, by far, the youngest. And this episode of the excellent 99% Invisible podcast delves into the history of the first paramedics. Young black men in Pittsburgh who were, up to then, considered unemployable.
Fascinating stuff which should definitely be known by more people.
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The oldest sentence ever written: "May this tusk root out the lice of the hair and the beard."
Inscribed on a beard comb in Canaanite over 5,200 years ago.
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"Engaging with History" on the importance of history and context
Marcus Aurelius said, "We all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own," which to be honest sounds like something you'll find written on an $11 IKEA poster today. Part of the value of reading an Aurelius quote like that is that he said it almost 2,000 years ago. Its age is the important part. If it was true then, and it's true today, then it's a fundamental part of how humans work and of course it's going to be true for the rest of my life. So I should pay close attention to it.
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Where did Ketchup come from?
I fell down a rabbit hole today about ketchup. Ketchup has been, for much of my life, the only real "condiment" which I use. I'm not big on mayo or mustard. I will eat both in various foods, but generally I don't add them to things like hamburgers, hot dogs, etc. And because of this, I have a t-shirt courtesy of my wife (though I don't often wear it) which says "I put ketchup on my ketchup."
So, you could say ketchup is a big deal for me. But, I realized, I know very little about it's history and why it's so monolithic in what it is, compared to the variety we see in mustard.
This link is an interesting read about the history of it, and looking at where and when it might have become a thing.
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Architecture around the world thread
Another excellent Twitter thread, this one to show the variety in the architecture around the world.
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"Kazakhstan approves proposal to restore capital’s old name Astana"
Kazakhstan's President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has approved a proposal to restore the capital's previous name Astana, in a new sign of a break with the legacy of the country's former longtime leader, President Nursultan Nazarbayev.
The skyscraper-filled capital of the Central Asian country was renamed Nur-Sultan in March 2019, in honour of outgoing president Nazarbayev.
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Egypt has the pyramids, Iraq has the Ziggurat of Ur
I had no idea! I knew the term ziggurat because of gaming, but fascinating to learn about this historic site.
"In Mesopotamia, every city was believed to have been founded and built as the residence of a god/goddess… who acted as its protector and political authority," Rumor said. In Ur, that was Nanna the moon god – for whom the ziggurat was constructed as an earthly home and temple. "The cult of Nanna developed very early around the lower course of the Euphrates (at the centre of which was Ur) in connection with the herding of cows and the cycles of nature that increased the herd," she said.
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A look at the Enlightenment through a lens of footwear fashion
The exhibition opens with an array of men's shoes illustrating how Enlightenment ideals of masculinity have left an indelible footprint on subsequent centuries of men's dress. Honest work was viewed in an increasingly positive light during this period, due in part to mounting criticism of the aristocracy's hereditary power and to the rising influence of the middle class. Manliness became associated with productivity; even noblemen who didn't need to work to survive were expected to participate in politics, manage their estates and hunt. "One of the most profound [notions of masculinity to arise] is that privileged men need to not be the idle rich," says Semmelhack. "They need to actually do something."
[...]
As men's shoes shrunk in height, women's heels grew higher and narrower—not to make the wearer look tall, but to create the illusion of smallness. "The purpose of high heels wasn't to elongate the legs; no one saw women's legs," Semmelhack explains. "It was to take the big foot and hide it up under women's skirts, so all that's being seen are tiny, tiny little tips of toes." She points to a pair of early 18th-century shoes adorned with green and silver needlepoint. The toes are sharply pointed to ensure they peer out from beneath a long dress; the high heels are placed under the instep to make the wearer's footprints appear dainty and small.
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