The Historical Ponderings Society

[EverySongbirdSays]

Following on from the thread "What questions do you have about stuff from History or am I the only one?" Which is here

Ever wondered how we got from the clothes of Cave people to the clothes of today?

Who was the first person to make and eat Cheese? Or cake?

How ideas became widespread

Why the Aztecs didn't have the wheel?

Why Elizabeth I never married?

How accurate historical fiction is?

Then this your thread and we are your people.

PROCEED HISTORY LOVERS

Alarm clocks - you would pay someone with a pole to come and bang on your window and wake you up. They would be woken by the return of night workers off shift or simply by adjusting their sleep patterns so they would be up early. They were called knocker uppers www.google.co.uk/amp/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/35840393?client=safari (don't know if the link will work sorry)

Thing about that is, the word similarity between a knocker upper and being knocked up. Ha. Wonder if there's a connection (getting interrupted shagging by the knocker upper?) or if it's just a coincidence

Thanks Rusty. Sounds like the acquisition of Gibraltar was quite interesting then. Don't suppose you can recommend a book for reading on the period (have Anne's biography but wondered about something more specific to the war itself)?

That's a quotation from that site which was meant to appear in italics. Hand knitting as in with needles not machines. I don't think a great deal can be made by using fingers instead of knitting needles, they are just too small; there is now arm knitting but it seems to be a very modern thing for extra chunky yarms. As PP said, these would not have been popular, as an uneconomical use of wool, in the past.

Most of my questions were answered in the first thread but I do wonder if joseph and Jesus ever argued when Jesus was a teen and what he made of Mary's story of how she became pregnant

Ooh, is anyone on this thread interested in home remedies for animals? My grandad died 2 years ago and grandma found this in his wallet - it's a few sheets of notepaper with handwritten recipes for various mixtures including one to rub on your hands to make a horse follow you, a paste to apply to white markings for "flash", a cure for "yellows" in cows, and a soak for fishing bait. It's fascinating, particularly as my grandad had no involvement with animals or farming at all and it's not his handwriting so we have no idea where he got it from or why he carried it with him! From the condition of the paper and ink, the handwriting and the spellings, it looks to be quite old - possibly something his own grandfather shared with him? I know his parents didn't have anything to do with farming either but don't know about their parents.

I think 'knocking' used to mean shagging back in the day, and US English often uses old words when British English loses them (and vice versa of course). Not sure exactly how you get to knocked up though.

If you are knocked up by a knocker upper and it interrupts your shag, that makes you LESS likely to get knocked up (if reproduction works the way I think it does...

I've definitely heard people talk about "knocking someone up" meaning going to their house and knocking on their door. I laughed of course.

On animal remedies and drinking milk - I'm from a farm and we reserve "baistins" which is milk from soon after a cow calves, to give to lambs that are particularly weak.

Somebody suggested we need a reading list, so I've made one. Actually it's a Reading/Watching/Listening list, with every reference from these threads that I could track down, up to about 3pm today.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/history_club/2790195-Historical-Ponderings-Society-Reading-List

I've tried to put the listings into a rough classification, based mostly on what we were talking about at the time, but some references are not easy to classify - feel free to suggest alterations/corrections/additions etc.

Of course, it will almost instantly become out of date, so please add to it if you can (though it would be good if it was also on the main thread as well, because people don't always want to be switching threads to find a reference)

Question: If Jesus was Jewish and was preaching the word of his (presumably Jewish) god, what on earth were his followers thinking when they decided Jesus' god wasn't good enough and they'd form a new religion around him instead? Surely Jesus would have wanted them to be Jewish?

Bloody well done Rusty. What a great idea, marvellously executed. Round of applause for Rustybear, please.

Rusty, you are an officer and a gentlewoman. Thanks on behalf of all of who will now get nothing done for the foreseeable future

Rusty - I've just ordered 3 books

I would like to know how we have developed the idea that woman should remove all the hair on their bodies apart from their head.

Surely Jesus would have wanted them to be Jewish?

That depends on what you mean by "being Jewish".

These days, following the Jewish religion explicitly involves not believing that he was the son of God. So he probably would not have wanted that.

He would probably have wanted them to keep following what his father told them, apart from where he had said "I've got an update on that one, do/believe this instead".

"Being Jewish" is something that you can do (in a way) without following the religion, because it's considered to be an ethnicity/culture/inheritance even if you are not really a believer. He probably didn't have an opinion on that as an idea, because it probably didn't occur to him.

(if anyone on the thread understands this stuff better and can express it more clearly please correct me!)

Well done, RussTBear!

Well done, Rusty.

Christians were Jewish until about 80 AD or at least they continued to go to the synagoguesender. Paul was Jewish. Not sure about the hIstory of the split, but I know they were Jewish until 80 AD.

Not sure what a synagoguesender is. Synagogue obviously.

In Christian theology Jesus is not a different god from the Jewish Old Testament God, but a part of that godhead. He (or more to the point, St Paul) taught that a lot of the Jewish laws (e.g. Regarding food) we're now redundant.

Fantastic reading list Rusty

Rusty, what a fab reading list. You must love doing bibliographies!

RustyBear You utter LEGEND

WHAT AN ABSOLUTE

THANK YOU SO MUCH

I hoped someone would.

Regarding the start of WW1, there are a lot of complexities surrounding the huge tensions in Europe at this date around different alliances, arms races etc which meant that the assassination of Franz Ferdinand was simply the excuse needed to start fighting - if it hadn't happened something else would have been the excuse.

Having said that I remember reading an interesting article that a lot of the 20th century's major crises started in summer when governments were on holidays and running with minimal staff. It put forward the idea that there simply wasn't a sensible decisive response to the assassination as people had to be recalled from hols etc and things escalated.

"baistins" which is milk from soon after a cow calves

Beestings when I was a child (Dorset dairy farm.) Or colostrum, if you're being posh.