Historical Tidbits Archives – Page 21 of 59

December 7, 2022December 7, 2022

December Histories: The Wild Hunt on Christmas Eve

Peter Nicolai Arbo’s Asgardreien (The Wild Hunt of Odin), 1872, wikipedia.

Dear Reader: this is one of my favorite holiday posts, so I couldn’t resist a repeat for 2022.

Pretend this is the Jeopardy category: Common Bonds. The Wild Hunt, mind control, and the 1871 Polaris disaster. What do they all have in common? Got it? Add in fan fiction, Zwarte Piet, shoemakers, Martin Luther, reliquary theft…. Yes? Norse mythology? Saving girls from prostitution? Louisa May Alcott, Thomas Nast? How about Shadrack, the Black Reindeer?

It will soon be Christmas Eve, after all.

The mythology–the extensive fan fiction, which is what mythology is, isn’t it?–around the legends of Santa Claus and Christmas have roots that go waa-a-a-y beyond the Coca Cola commercial. Although I dug deep into a comparison of Santa and Jesus back in 2021, there are Santa rabbit holes to be discovered. Even if we just talk about Santa and his helpers, there’s plenty that even that Greek scholar and seminarian Clement Moore didn’t envision.

November 18, 2022December 5, 2022

I’m Sorry, Genghis Khan*

Dear Mongol Empire,
I’m sorry that I suggested you caused the Black Death. I’m sorry that I thought your tribe was a bunch of bloodthirsty barbarians who raged across Asia, killing everything that moved, just for fun. I don’t know where I got that idea.

I’m sorry that I mentioned that you used biological warfare to bring the Black Death to Europe, when it was more likely ships that brought infected animals and people from those voyages in search of Chinese silk and porcelains. And I sort of glossed over the millions of deaths of Mongolians and others in the Far East. I’m sorry that I thought this sort of caused the Renaissance rather than giving credit to the Khan’s enhancement of trade along the Silk Road which brought printing and gunpowder from the Yuan (Mongol) Dynasty in Northern China to the West.

I’ll admit, I was a little confused about why the Mongols could end up being called hordes, Tartars, Chinese, Russian, Turkish, Buddhists, Muslims, and worshipers of a Sky God (Tenggeri). I think I’ve finally figured all that out. “Hordes” comes from a Turkish word ordu which means group, so it’s not throwing shade to say Mongol hordes. Anyway, I’m sorry I thought you all looked like Shan Yu in “Mulan.” I don’t know where that came from. (Oh, maybe “Mulan”?)

Mea culpa. Wait… that’s Latin. How about намайг уучлаарай?

August 10, 2022August 13, 2022

All the News that Fits the Puzzle

Spoiler promise: Stay to the end and you will see animated puzzle-creating.

Corruption, Politics, Talking Heads. Not much has changed. Kajmeister photo of Birthday Puzzle.

It is perhaps a personality flaw of mine to analyze Everything, even gifts. On my recent birthday, I received a puzzle based on The New York Times headlines on the day I was born a few decades back. (rhymes with -ixty). Of course, it got me to thinking about so many things.

The world, at first, in pieces. Kajmeister photo.

I decided to do the puzzle without looking at the cover, so it was first a jumble of pieces. But this became a fun analytical exercise on several fronts: first separating light from dark, secondly finding meaning in all these letters, and thirdly evaluating what made news in those days. Letting the meaning rise from the ashes, so to speak. As to the last part and what made the news of yesteryear? plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, as the saying goes. Things haven’t changed that much.

All you need to see is a headline like “Theobald says Brooklyn class built his boat…” to know that someone is in trouble. I don’t know who Theobald was, but I suspect the Brooklyn class was not supposed to build his boat. It seems odd that such provincial issues for New Yorkers are treated side-by-side with international incidents. But that’s the NYT for you. And they wouldn’t have known–at the time–which of these issues were nitpicking and which would escalate into years of grief. We know now.