What questions do you have about stuff from History, or am I the only one?

[EverySongbirdSays]

Hi all, HQ here. We're moving this thread over to History Club now where Songbird will be starting a Part 2 thread for more History quizzical shenanigans

The main history thing I've been pondering for the last couple of days since the weather shifted is the history of clothes.

So... how did Early Man manage in the winter, how did they make clothes out of animal skin?

After that, I understand that clothes production as we know it today began with the industrial revolution.

But how did people manage for clothes you know before we had cotton or machinery

How/when did we realise you could knit wool to make a jumper?

I'm sorry if it's a bit of a stupid question

Has anyone got any stupid questions I might know the answer to ?

BikeRunSki

Very interesting about why South London doesn't have tubes. Something I had noted, but not really thought about.

Regarding tubes, I think mining would have been well established and there would have been a lot of transferable knowledge there.

"Why did it take so long to invent sliced bread? that's only 100 years old."

Bread making wasn't mechanised before that...everything was done by hand (well or foot) until fairly late on compared to other industries.

Didn't the Ancient Egyptians used to make and eat bread? Actual loaves? I'm sure Tony Robinson discovered some bread-kneading board of some sort in a Time Team episode. I thought that was one of the things that had been around for thousands of years

If you're interested in the history of milk drinking:

www.nature.com/news/archaeology-the-milk-revolution-1.13471

It's 3 years old, though.

If you pre-slice most bread, it's hard and unpleasant after a few hours. It's not just the mechanical slicing that needs to be invented, it's the recipe/preservatives.

Speaking of bread - what is on top of a tiger loaf?

The army is still elitist now, all the high ranking posts are held by the well to do.
Charles 2 must have been fearful when he became King after the fate of his dad

High

But about Lettice, Mary's granddaughter wasn't their a notion that her mother Catherine could have been Henry's based on Lettice sheer resemblence to Liz I?

And Mary is an historically confirmed mistress isn't she?

yes I'm basing this off Gregory again

Isn't Mary

I did see a theory that Henry viii's problem what a rhesus issue which would explain why the first child from each wife was ok...

God I apologise for my rampant grammar errors throughout the thread.

I promise I'm not thick

Ever wondered why we throw coins into wishing wells and fountains for luck?

Silver kills bacteria. A village that wasn't losing population to gastroenteritis was pretty lucky. The silver spoon in the baby's mouth helped too.

Re: entertainment. There was no electric light! If you were a peasant you'd be up with the light and go to bed when it was dark. A candle would be a valuable thing. You might be hovering round the fire at best. I don't think most people would have had a lot of spare time anyway for Mediaeval Netflix.

I think there were suggestions that Catherine Carey was Elizabeth's half sister during Elizabeth's reign.
Iirc Gregory glosses over the fact that Mary is thought to have been the French king's mistress and has her as an innocent seduced by Henry, presumably to heighten the contrast between lovely Mary and scheming Anne.

What we have as sliced bread is very very different to what we have been eating throughout most of history - I think it was the early 1960s when the Chorleywood baking process was invented

Trills - the top of a tiger loaf is sesame oil

I mean, French king's mistress before Henry's. She was definitely Henry's.

I'm fairly sure I remember it being implied somewhere might be that comedy series The Tudors possibly Gregory, that both Anne and Mary were taught how to give blow jobs at the French court

Life under Cromwell was pretty dour: even if you didn't like Charles I you probably still wanted to be able to celebrate Christmas in a parish church that hadn't had all its decoration painted over in whitewash.

Similarly, when the Bolsheviks initially took power in Russia they implemented a lot of social changes which people didn't actually want: people want to get married, for example.

Didn't Cromwell ban dancing, and make women cover their heads, and people dress generally like the Pilgrims in American Thanksgiving who were after all British.

songbird I read a biography on Anne Boleyn by Eric Ives (very good btw & very well researched) and he seemed to think that they weren't Henry's. I reckon if they had been, they would have been more publicly acknowledged, like Henry Fitzroy, his son by Bessie Blount. Any resemblance between Lettice & Elizabeth I would more likely to have been through the Boleyns.

As for Mary Boleyn, there were rumours of her also being the mistress of the King of France. I think her portrayal in Wolf Hall may be nearer the truth but who knows?

High but she was ginger like the Tudors!

Re the public acknowledgement thing, the key difference with Fitzroy was that Bessie Blount wasn't married at the time. You can't publicly acknowledge the son of another man's wife as you can your unmarried mistress's. Also, strong motive for acknowledging Fitzroy (proof you can father a son) but not so much for Catherine Carey.
Who knows, really, though? I agree the physical resemblance isn't enough, especially when we don't really know much about what the Boleyn family all looked like, or William Carey's family.

It's interesting comparing present day discussion over Prince Harry - ginger like James Hewitt, and used to look more like Hewitt than Charles, but now he's older he's looking more like Charles around the eyes. My point being, even with endless photos you can't really base anything on resemblance and for the Tudors we just have a smattering of idealised portraits for everyone except Henry and Elizabeth, for whom we have a lot but even more idealised!

Quite a lot of people still don't have central heating though, right? I know my two nearest neighbours don't or my ILs. I didn't in my last house and we would get ice inside the windows!

Apparently the first milk drinkers were made sick by it. Yet they kept going back! (I'm getting this from horrible histories).

Great thread.

All of you who know all the history of Henry VIII,Cromwell, etc are you English? Do you learn all this stuff in school or have you learned it yourself as adults?

I was educated in NI and we covered none of this stuff other than a slight touch on Cromwell.

I am English and I learned about it in a fairly sketchy way in school but most of what I know comes from a previous historical reenactment hobby followed by writing historical fiction. Right now I am well up on Henry VIII etc because am writing about one of Anne Boleyn's ladies in waiting (Mary Howard who married Fitzroy).

Just sesame oil Olenna or something else as well?

(great name by the way)