Hyperlinked History

This is too cute, and really useful too.

It’s a memory device to remember the names and order of the Chinese dynasties, sung to the tune of Frère Jacques.

Shang, Zhou, Qin, Han,
Shang, Zhou, Qin, Han,

Sui, Tang, Song,
Sui, Tang, Song,

Yuan, Ming, Qing, Republic~
Yuan, Ming, Qing, Republic~

Mao Zedong (Deng!)
Mao Zedong (Deng!)

From Eff Yeah Asian History.

Found this last night and wanted to share. It’s good to see a Hollywood star, indeed a legend, knew what he was doing was pure cinema with almost no history involved.

“n the old days, the real gunmen fought dirty. In the movies the hero walks down the main street, as I did in High Noon until the villain materializes and then mows him down after challenging him to draw first. In real life that would be the last challenge the hero ever issued, because to give a rival gunman even a few seconds the best of it was a a one way ticket to the nearest cemetery.”

Read more over at Bert & Morty.

I know a little German, indeed, here’s a picture of him.

Sorry, folks. When I saw this picture, I JUST COULDN’T RESIST!

The German Luftwaffe had some really weird looking warplanes as the end of World War II loomed heavy over Berlin. It was fortunate for the Allies, indeed for the world as a whole, that these aircraft never saw mass deployment into the German war effort. Many of these planes were radically unorthodox, but also far advanced of the Allied aircraft. One example of these strange birds was the Dornier Do 335.

What you are looking at here is really a marvel of the twin engine fighter/bomber style of airplane. One thing the 335 had over any twin engine airplane was it’s strange design. With its pusher/puller propeller configuration mounted front and back instead of on each wing like a more conventionally designed aircraft, it had less aerodynamic drag. In other words, this thing was fast. 

In one recorded encounter with the Do 335, the French fighter ace Pierre Clostermann wrote about how he found a 335 sailing over the trees at maximum speed. When the German pilot realized he’d been spotted, he bugged out, making a run for safety. While Clostermann was flying a Hawker Tempest, one of the most powerful Allied warplanes, the Do 335 was able to get away thanks to its sheer speed. Indeed, the Tempests never even got into a position where they could fire on it.

The Atlantic website is running a wonderful series on photos from World War II. It’ll eventually be a twenty part series but they already have some of the finest images online that I’ve ever seen from that traumatic period in world history. As a librarian, this one struck me as particularly interesting and poignant. Here we find a young man sitting in the ruins of a London bookstore, bombed during one of the many German attacks on the UK during the Battle of Britain. He’s reading a book called The History of London.

As the Space Shuttle programme ends here in America, I can’t help but turn an eye toward Russia and the former Soviet Union. They too, at one point, had a fledgling shuttle programme. The space race heated up again when it came to light that the Americans were working on a vehicle that could go up into space, return to Earth, and then made ready to go back to space again. Up to then, space vehicles were mostly a one time use thing. A reusable vehicle, capable of delivering satellites, repairing satellites, and carrying out various other orbital missions was a totally new idea in space flight.

So the Soviet Union tried their hand at the idea, unabashedly copying the Space Shuttle design and adapting it to their own ideas. They called their shuttle, and the shuttle project, by the name Buran, which means snowstorm.

The thing is, developing and designing a space shuttle programme takes a lot of money, something the USSR was short on at the time. After one, unmanned, test flight into space, the Buran programme was cancelled. Their shuttle was stored away in a hanger and was eventually destroyed when that hanger collapsed.

However, the Buran destroyed in the collapse wasn’t the only shuttle. There are others and you can still see them here and there around Russia. Sadly, they’re a relic of a bygone time when nationalistic pride meant more than international scientific cooperation. So instead of being preserved, as Space Shuttle Discovery will be, they sit outside, in the weather, slowly falling apart.

For instance, here’s Abraham Lincoln riding a grizzly bear astride a stars and stripes saddle bearing the Emancipation Proclamation and (I believe) a modified Beryl assault rifle.

Awesome art by SharpWriter!

Even though I’m a historian, the fact that I’m a geek should be obvious since I write, shoot, and produce an online show. I’ve been a geek since I was ten years old, before the term became cool.

Part of that geek persona involves my love for video games. I’ve also played video games since I was ten years old because I happened to get my first computer at the age of ten. One of the games I’ve recently picked up on is the blockbuster hit Call of Duty: Black Ops for the PlayStation 3. While I am well familiar with the Call of Duty series, I wasn’t aware that Opsactually took place during the post World War II and Cold War eras. So as a gamer, I’m enjoying the action but as a historian I’m reveling in the historical settings and significant people.

I mean, wow, your character is sent on a mission highlighting one of the many failed attempts to kill Fidel Castro during the equally failed Bay of Pigs Invasion.

It was quite the shock for me when my character met Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and then I was positively giddy when I was chauffeured to the Pentagon for an important meeting with none other than John F. Kennedy. Soon after I was hit by a stunning realization.

I’m not a young guy, but I’m certainly not old. Still, at 34 years old I know that I’m probably in the minority when it comes to people my age actually knowing who Robert McNamara was. I mean, sure, most everyone has a passing familiarity with JFK, but did they catch the hypnotic (and hallucinogenic) imagery in the inner sanctum with the images of Lee Harvey Oswald, John Jr., and Caroline Kennedy? Did they understand the significance?

 

It’s events like this in video games that make me realize what a powerful tool they can be when it comes to teaching. I hope that a few gamers, at least, will grow curious about some of the characters they see in games like this and go learn something about them.