Yup, crazy the picture even looks like the scenes from the show.

/s Romans have been a bit paranoid about people coming back from the grave since this one time about 2000 years ago :-)

Uhhhh. I love myself some podcasts to listen to while doing chores or doing mindless stuff in games. As long as this guy isn't making up things that should be right up my alley!

So many long replies, I'm loving you all! It's also interesting to see that even in this small comment chain people are already having different opinions on how valuable England was. I'll dig into your comment a bit later, it's a long one and my brain functions with 5% capacity right now.

Shame that nobody has any sources on crochet, but I'm aware it's a very niche topic.

>My bad! I meant that in the year 800 several thousands of Scandinavians took over eastern England. They still weren't a lot of them, they exploited rivalries between Anglo-Saxons to succeed.

...This makes so much more sense, I was really impressed by those 800 raiders. :D (In my defence I'm currently a bit ill. )

I appreciate you taking your time for giving me more insight on England and it's history. Thanks a lot, I have a lot to learn it seems!

All is good, we are just discussing :) Have a nice day :)

The Romans would gut livestock and read their entrails for signs of fortune. Clearly they knew something we now don't.

no problem my dude.

I try not to think in terms of absolutes any longer and it can be a tad confusing to those not used to it.

Sorry bout that mate.

hope it didn't come off as smug or aggressive as that wasn't my intent. I'm just that I', getting to old to deal in absolutes any longer I'd make a terrible Sith.

They're both closely related, or should be (at least so far as human geography's concerned, but physical geography and the distribution of resources are just as relevant to history). But geography (other than historical geography) concerns place while history concerns time or evolution through time, which of course occurs in geography but usually in a longer timeframe.

As far as history and human geography are concerned, I'm very much for linking them as closely as possible: neither's complete without the other. We don't waft about independent of place an more than people and their creations (societies, cultures, institutions) just happen to be where they are: the interactions are fundamental and fascinating in their own right, whichever the discipline.

It's in Aungier Street, Dublin City. If I recall correctly you can go into it on Google Street View.

In fact I'd say England was special: why it should have been so remains shrouded in mystery, but that it could engorge Scandinavia with more money than raiders knew what to do with and then lured Norman rulers even at the expense of their powerful Continental duchy suggests there was something of note going on there.

This isn't to invoke any spurious English exceptionalism: any country's only as special as its resources and characteristics make it in the wider conditions of a particular time - but you can see even in this early formative period indications that there's a capacity that seems not to have gone unnoticed even among contemporaries.

Research in the past half-century on the origins of later British growth has tended to push the start back well beyond the onset of the classic period of industrial prosperity and imperial expansion: I think we can see the beginnings at a very early stage, even as the country struggled to keep up with the sophistication or military prowess of Continental neighbours.

Didn't a world war start the last time russia opened a tomb, tell them to leave it closed

Soooo.....they're just gonna re-cover the archeology find with more crap, and forget about it...because supermarket???

And they went ahead and opened it anyway.

England was long attractive to conquerors or raiders for a variety of reasons, from its resources (notably its productive agricultural land and minerals, attractive to Romans, Anglo-Saxons, vikings and Normans) to its strategic importance as a large offshore island with extensive Continental interactions and close to its southern neighbour (and potentially too close for comfort, a particular concern for Caesar after his conquest of Gaul, with which southern Britain had substantial affinities - though it was left to Claudius to expand the Empire beyond the Channel): Norse raiders were conversely drawn to its proximity and extensive irregular island coastline, a vulnerability in the face of seaborne attackers ( and btw for them it was across or sometimes down rather than up, so climatically less unappealing than for Roman soldiers with the misfortune to be posted there.)

The country's economic condition in this millennium is somewhat puzzling: that it exported grain under Roman rule and provided viking raiders with enormous treasure suggests that it had productive capacity to spare even with the limited technology of the time, yet was at least by the later period already a place of notable wealth. That it seems simultaneously to have been under-exploitated yet capable of yielding a surplus may offer a clue to its subsequent ascent as well as its attractiveness to invaders.

The country passed through various forms of administration - from a patchwork of local kingdoms or chiefdoms and then a Roman province under successive governors and occupied by 40-50,000 Roman troops and again a patchwork of post-Roman and Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, to a unified realm from the 9th-10th centuries (for a time in the 11th under Danish rule) to a Norman kingdom notable for its centralisation under the crown, another source of its later power even as royal fiat gave way to parliamentary government, most notably from the 17th century when a king ignored his legislature and rather lost his head. Regional identities (and accents!) persist, but with none of the political continuity that characterises Continental provinces and regions.

The big facts though in modern England are industry and Empire, both mostly or wholly gone but casting a vast shadow. Early factory mechanisation made Britain (as the state now was) the world's economic frontrunner from the 1780s until the emergence of more dynamic rivals from the mid-19th century, and while its economy is today (like most of the developed world) essentially a post-industrial one reliant mainly on services, the abruptness of the earlier break transformed society and disrupted its traditions more thoroughly than probably anywhere else. A "deep" England survives in some more rural parts but for most persists only in period TV drama. This is a modern nation, for all its nominal adherence to (largely likewise re-imagined) pageantry invoking earlier times.

The other thing that hasn't gone away is the phantom of colonial empire in which Britain used its industrial might and wealth to impose its rule over at one time a quarter of the world. The loss of bygone power and prestige still provokes bewilderment and sometimes resentment among a (mostly but not exclusively older) segment of the population and hangs over political life: it's not omnipresent, but you'll encounter it. Race is reassuringly less of an issue than in some societies, England's insularity and innate conservatism being tempered by its modern reality and centuries of global exchange. But Acheson's observation that "Britain has lost an empire and has not yet found a role" remains relevant.

For a good place to begin the story I still recommend PH Sawyer, From Roman Britain to Norman England, after which it's probably best to trace developments thematically (society, economy, political evolution) unless you want to tackle the multi-volume Oxford History of England (two series, the old now being replaced apart from its first volumes of which the updated two-part vol 1 and Stenton's revised vol 2 remain important for the first millennium).

Crochet's an interesting one, to my surprise only emerging as a discrete form in the early 19th century but with antecedents in 18th-century Scottish knitting and French embroidery. So that's something I learned today!

Little did they know, treating someone like they’re a bad omen and a curse IS the curse. Self-fulfilling prophecies are littered all through history.

Why did the Polynesians have Roosters with them on their ships? Did it really help with navigation, or is that just a movie trope?

What’s amused me before is that Latin has been a dead language for probably more than 1,000 years, and it has a word that directly translates to “vampire.”

The “urban legends” of them have been around for a long time, even if our modern interpretation of them—suave, sophisticated aristocrats and the like—is different

I said it somewhere else but I imagine it was more to throw a fair portion of the crew into panic while it's being boarded. After a (hopefully) successful boarding the new owners beach it and after the battle they can patch it up.

Sinking ships as the primary goal is relatively new for the past 130 years or so with the advent of widely available explosive munitions and engagement ranges measured in the kilometers. Even with the powerful guns of the age of sail they still fought at ranges of 400m or less because they didn't have what came to he called fire directors or fire control systems.

The emigres pounced on the fact he became emperor. The people were fine with strong hands reigning in the excess. Napoleon, though declaring himself emperor, still carried the anti aristocracy sentiment and didn't hesitate to promote talent wherever he found it. He also issued his Code, which was well received by the people. He made military service, something available to most men, a way to get a better life if you applied yourself, many of his best commanders rose from low positions and it would have been impossible under the ancien regime. Eventually his forever wars outlasted the rosy feeling of "la Gloire" as the bodies started stacking up and the people were much less receptive to him and his ideas.

That's like the 4th time in a decade

The tomb of histories first Lawyer?

A scary idea came into my head. People usually do things for a reason. They sealed that tomb for a reason.

I'm not saying vampires exist, but we just undid everything they did to keep the thing safe.

That is true. But I haven't seen them.

Stupid question about french history: Napoleon did roll back the revolution with making himself Emperor, but somehow the french history seems to be unbroken, liberte, egalite, fraternite is still the national motto. How did the french society feel at that time about the "counter revolution " ?