Posts tagged: history
Just Salvador Dali and Man Ray doing some crazy-wild eyes. Scary-cute.
Mansa Musa and Islam in Africa: Crash Course World History #16 (by crashcourse)
In which John Green teaches you about Sub-Saharan Africa! So, what exactly was going on there? It turns out, it was a lot of trade, converting to Islam, visits from Ibn Battuta, trade, beautiful women, trade, some impressive architecture, and several empires. John not only cover the the West African Malian Empire, which is the one Mansa Musa ruled, but he discusses the Ghana Empire, and even gets over to East Africa as well to discuss the trade-based city-states of Mogadishu, Mombasa, and Zanzibar. In addition to all this, John considers emigrating to Canada.
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I enjoyed learning ANYTHING about pre-colonial Africa in a positive light. History far too often just compares it to Europe written from the European biased history and a lot of Othering that taking it as it was and comparing it to itself and earlier Indian and European civilizations it makes sense in a way that Africa had developed differently.
Given that the European hand can’t be taken from African history and the high oral record keeping, I wonder how much more information there might be on African history had colonizing Europeans acted differently and had not worked as much to shift the foreign culture to something more resembling what they were accustomed to.
i’d also appreciate actual black history during black history month and not recycled stories of the white man’s mythologized version of MLK.
I’d say go a step further and call that bitch history. Integrate all races, religions, creeds and codes into history, the more we know the better armed the future can be against repeating the atrocities of the past.
I hear this at least once a day, every day.
Gordon S. Wood.
It pisses me off to no fucking end when people shove their morals on the people they study, shove their politics on them, etc. If the people in the past do not believe exactly as they do, they are vilified. It pisses me off when people refuse to realize the people of the past lived in completely different time periods and you cannot put your beliefs and morals on them. You will only be disappointed and writing crappy history.
(via feministhistorian)
A woman attacks a nazi in a nazist demonstration in Växjö, 1985 (Sweden). She was a Polish woman who had been in a concentration camp during the second world war. Minutes later, thousands of anti-nazists chased the nazists away.
Kick ass.
They had never met, you know. One of the most famous kisses, and it was a whim, spur of the moment.
Flying Fish.
Flying fish are of the family Exocoetidae. They’ve been a popular fish with naval forces since the time of Ancient Greece. The “Exocet” guided missile is named after the family, and the United States Navy has had three separate ships named USS Flying Fish.
The first USS Flying Fish was a schooner, which was purchased in 1838, and sold in 1842. It was used on one of the first major expeditions to explore the boundaries of Antarctica, and literally went all over the world.
In World War II, the USS Flying Fish was a Gato-class submarine actively used throughout the war, from the Battle of Midway to July 4, 1945. It sunk primarily Japanese cargo ships, and received 12 stars for battle during the war.
The most recent USS Flying Fish was a Sturgeon-class attack submarine commissioned in 1976 and struck in 1996. She was a short-hull Sturgeon and patrolled the East coast for the most part.
Racism is a modern disease
The ancient world was devoid of racism. At the time of Piye’s historic conquest, the fact that his skin was dark was irrelevant. Artwork from ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome shows a clear awareness of racial features and skin tone, but there is little evidence that darker skin was seen as a sign of inferiority. Only after the European powers colonized Africa in the 19th century did Western scholars pay attention to the color of the Nubians’ skin, to uncharitable effect.
June 1964. Black Children integrate the swimming pool of the Monson Motel. To force them out, the owner pours acid into the water.
— Helen Keller, 1911
It really frustrates the hell out of me that the only public mention of Hellen Keller in any modern context is to poke fun at her disabilities. Keller helped to found the modern day American Civil Liberties Union, wrote extensively on the exploitation of the working poor (particularly those with medical issues), and was a member and contributor to the Industrial Workers of the World. She was a badass and a passionate socialist radical. I intend on posting a more in-depth background on her in the future.
Critics attempted to diminish the impact of her work by saying that her embracing socialism and activism was obviously the result of her “limits in ability and development”. All you are doing is participating in the perpetuation of that lie.
“Garvey’s Women’s Brigade”
James Van Der Zee portfolio, 1924.
