DIY

Charles Bertram built his reputation as a historian on The Description of Britain, a 15th-century manuscript that he’d discovered at age 24 and that provided important new insights into British history, including an ancient map; more than a hundred names of cities, roads, and people; and information from a lost contemporary account by a Roman general. For more than a century Bertram’s discovery served as a touchstone of scholarship on Roman Britain — it was cited in Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, among many other works.

After Bertram’s death in 1765 doubts began to mount, and by 1846 it was clear that The Description of Britain had been a forgery. Bertram had managed to convince a few influential librarians, and on the strength of their endorsement other historians had been willing to take the claim seriously. Bertram had never let anyone see the original manuscript, always inventing reasons why he couldn’t share it and sending instead facsimiles of the original.

The effects of the hoax took decades to eradicate — as late as 1911 the Encyclopædia Britannica was still referring to a fictitious naval base on the strength of the Description‘s account.

January 22, 2024 | History · Hoaxes

Hospitality

A year ago my older son brought home a program printed by his school; on the second page was an illustration of the ‘First Thanksgiving,’ with a caption which read in part: ‘They served pumpkins and turkeys and corn and squash. The Indians had never seen such a feast!’

On the contrary! The Pilgrims had literally never seen ‘such a feast,’ since all foods mentioned are exclusively indigenous to the Americas and had been provided by [or with the aid of] the local tribe.

— Michael Dorris, “Why I’m Not Thankful for Thanksgiving,” in Bill Bigelow and Bob Peterson, eds., Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years, 1998

January 20, 2024January 19, 2024 | History

No Time Like the Present

In Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis points out a phenomenon he calls “chronological snobbery,” “the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited”:

You must find why it went out of date. Was it ever refuted (and if so by whom, where, and how conclusively) or did it merely die away as fashions do? If the latter, this tells us nothing about its truth or falsehood. From seeing this, one passes to the realization that our own age is also ‘a period,’ and certainly has, like all periods, its own characteristic illusions. They are likeliest to lurk in those widespread assumptions which are so ingrained in the age that no one dares to attack or feels it necessary to defend them.

“History does not always repeat itself,” wrote John W. Campbell. “Sometimes it just yells, ‘Can’t you remember anything I told you?’ and lets fly with a club.”

January 16, 2024January 15, 2024 | History · Oddities · Society

Humiliation

Captured at the Battle of Edessa, the Roman emperor Valerian spent the rest of his life as a footstool, used by the Sassanian emperor Shapur I to mount his horse.

The story may be only propaganda, but it inspired Hans Holbein the Younger to compose this sketch in 1521.

January 3, 2024January 2, 2024 | Art · History

Practical Philosophy

Immanuel Kant held up his stockings using suspenders of his own devising. From his friend Ehregott Wasianski:

On this occasion, whilst illustrating Kant’s notions of the animal economy, it may be as well to add one other particular, which is, that for fear of obstructing the circulation of the blood, he never would wear garters; yet, as he found it difficult to keep up his stockings without them, he had invented for himself a most elaborate substitute, which I shall describe. In a little pocket, somewhat smaller than a watch-pocket, but occupying pretty nearly the same situation as a watch-pocket on each thigh, there was placed a small box, something like a watch-case, but smaller; into this box was introduced a watch-spring in a wheel, round about which wheel was wound an elastic cord, for regulating the force of which there was a separate contrivance. To the two ends of this cord were attached hooks, which hooks were carried through a small aperture in the pockets, and so passing down the inner and the outer side of the thigh, caught hold of two loops which were fixed on the off side and the near side of each stocking.

“As might be expected, so complex an apparatus was liable, like the Ptolemaic system of the heavens, to occasional derangements; however, by good luck, I was able to apply an easy remedy to these disorders which sometimes threatened to disturb the comfort, and even the serenity, of the great man.”

(Ehregott Andreas Wasianski, Immanuel Kant in seinen letzten Lebensjahren, 1804, via Thomas De Quincey, “The Last Days of Immanuel Kant,” 1827.)

January 2, 2024January 1, 2024 | History · Literature · Technology

Tally Sticks

Until 1826, the British Royal Treasury recognized notched sticks as proof of payment. In a practice that had begun in medieval times, a debt would be recorded on a “tally stick,” and then the stick would be split lengthwise, with the shorter portion, the “foil,” given to the debtor and the longer portion, the “stock,” held by the creditor. Because the two halves of the stick could be matched together, this gave both parties a record of the deal, and the valuable stock could then be traded on a secondary market.

Accumulated tally sticks might have given us a valuable record of British monetary transactions, but unfortunately most of them have been lost. In 1834, after the advent of paper ledgers, it was decided to burn 600 years of accumulated tally sticks in a coal-fired stove in the House of Lords. A chimney fire resulted, destroying most of the Palace of Westminster.

December 29, 2023December 28, 2023 | History · Society

In a Word

passeggiata
n. a leisurely walk

In the ancient world, distances were sometimes measured by pacing. Specialists known as bematists were employed for this purpose in both Egypt and Greece, and their accuracy could be startling: In his Naturalis Historia, Pliny the Elder notes that two bematists employed by Alexander the Great had measured the distance from Hecatompylos to Alexandria Areion on the Silk Road at 851 kilometers. The actual distance is 855 kilometers, a deviation of just 0.4 percent. In general, according to Pliny’s records, Alexander’s bematists showed a median deviation of just 2.8 percent from the true distances; a separate account by Strabo shows a median deviation of only 1.9 percent.

This accuracy suggests that the bematists may have been using an early odometer, such as one described by Heron of Alexandria, though the records don’t mention this.

12/30/2023 UPDATE: Reader Charlotte Fare has made a data visualization. (Thanks, Charlotte.)

December 29, 2023December 30, 2023 | History · Language · Science & Math

Protocol

The late Mr. Dawson Damer — ‘Hippy’ Damer, afterwards Lord Portarlington — was one of the most deservedly popular men in London and a great favourite of Queen Victoria. The Prince of Wales gave a garden party at Marlborough House to his mother, and to this gathering ‘Hippy’ Damer came — but came very much under the influence of ‘la dive bouteille.’ Spying the Queen he went up to her offered his hand cordially and said: ‘Gad! How glad I am to see you! How well you’re looking! But, I say, do forgive me — your face is, of course, very familiar to me; but I can’t for the life of me recall your name!’ The Queen took in the situation at once, and as she cordially grasped the hand extended to her, said smiling: ‘Oh, never mind my name, Mr. Damer — I’m very glad to see you. Sit down and tell me all about yourself.’

— Julian Osgood Field, Uncensored Recollections, 1924

Below: “Her Majesty has been the recipient of some remarkably addressed envelopes,” reported the Strand in 1891.

December 26, 2023December 25, 2023 | History · Society

Not Guilty

The Swedish courts took up a perplexing case in 1656: Småland maid Karin Svensdotter claimed to have had a sexual relationship with the King of the Fairies. She said she’d met a beautiful man in golden clothes who called himself Älvakungen and courted her with gifts. She’d borne him seven children, which he’d taken away to the land of the fairies. She said she’d given birth during recurring fits, from which she was known to suffer, and her employer testified that he’d heard her searching for her children in the forest.

In the 17th century the church acknowledged the existence of mythical creatures, and consorting with nature spirits such as Älvakungen would have constituted bestiality, for which a human might face a death sentence. After some consideration, though, it was determined that Svensdotter had been driven mad by Satan’s magic. The congregation was ordered to pray for her, relatives gave her a silver cross, and Älvakungen never troubled her again.

December 9, 2023December 8, 2023 | Crime · History · Oddities

Circumstance

Excerpt from a letter by Lt. James Simmen, 5th Battalion, 60th Infantry (Mechanized), in Vietnam, to his brother Vern, a parish priest:

You’d be surprised how similar killing is to hunting. I know I’m after souls, but I get all excited when I see a VC, just like when I see a deer. I go ape firing at him. It isn’t that I’m so crazy. I think a man who freezes killing a man would freeze killing a deer. I’m not perverted, crazy, or anything else. Civilians think such thinking is crazy, but it’s no big deal. He runs, you fire. You hunt so I think you’d feel the same way. It isn’t all that horrifying.

When you see a man laughing about it, remember he talks the same about killing a deer. Of course, revenge has a part in wanting him just like you want a deer for a trophy and meat. I know I’m not nuts. If I killed a man in the U.S., everyone would stare. Last night I killed and everyone has been patting me on the back, including the battalion commander. What do you think?

That’s from Bernard Edelman’s Dear America: Letters Home From Vietnam (2002). In The Fate of a Nation (1975), Hugh Rankin quotes Pvt. Joseph Plumb Martin describing an experience at the Battle of Monmouth, June 28, 1778:

When within about five rods of the rear of the retreating foe, I could distinguish everything about them, they were retreating in line, though in some disorder; I singled out a man and took my aim directly between his shoulders (they were divested of their packs,) he was a good mark, being a broad shouldered fellow; what became of him I know not, the fire and smoke hid him from my sight; one thing I know, that is, I took as deliberate aim at him as ever I did in my life. But after all, I hope I did not kill him, although I intended to at the time.

A few months after his Vietnam experience, Simmen wrote, “[I] feel kind of ashamed of the way I’ve thought and acted over here. I realize that I’ve actually enjoyed some of the things I’ve done which would be repulsive to a healthy mind. … When one starts to enjoy the sickness of war, he is sick.”

December 7, 2023December 6, 2023 | History · Society