If you’re a fan of Joan of Arc (and I mean, who isn’t? Who has ever been like her before or since?) you should definitely look up the 1928 movie, The Passion of Joan of Arc. Maria Falconetti as Joan gives what is widely regarded as one of the best performances on film, ever – though certainly at a cost.Mesmerizing.
Hey, ponies are back in stock! They were out for a while, but they are back! woop woop woop!
A loaf of bread made in the first century AD, which was discovered at Pompeii, preserved for centuries in the volcanic ashes of Mount Vesuvius. The markings visible on the top are made from a Roman bread stamp, which bakeries were required to use in order to mark the source of the loaves, and to prevent fraud. (via Ridiculously Interesting)
(sigh) I’ve seen these before, but this one’s particularly beautiful.
I feel like I’m supposed to be marveling over the fact that this is a loaf of bread that’s been preserved for thousands of years, and don’t get me wrong, that’s hella cool. But honestly, I’m mostly struck by the unexpected news that “bread fraud” was apparently once a serious concern.
Bread Fraud was a huge thing, Bread was provided to the Roman people by the government – bakers were given grain to make the free bread, but some of them stole the government grain to use in other baked goods and would add various substitutes, like sawdust or even worse things, to the bread instead. So if people complained that their free bread was not proper bread, the stamp told them exactly whose bakery they ought to burn down.
Bread stamps continued to be used at least until the Medieval period in Europe. Any commercially sold bread had to be stamped with an official seal to identify the baker to show that it complied with all rules and regulations about size, price, and quality. This way, rotten or undersized loaves could be traced back to the baker. Bakers could be pilloried, sent down the streets in a hurdle cart with the offending loaf tied around their neck, fined, or forbidden to engage in baking commercially ever again in that city. There are records of a baker in London being sent on a hurdle cart because he used an iron rod to increase the weight of his loaves, and another who wrapped rotten dough with fresh who was pilloried. Any baker hurdled three times had to move to a new city if they wanted to continue baking.
If you have made bread, you are probably familiar with a molding board. It’s a flat board used to shape the bread. Clever fraudsters came up with a molding board that had a little hole drilled into it that wasn’t easily noticed. A customer would buy his dough by weight, and then the baker would force some of that dough through the hole, so they could sell and underweight loaf and use the stolen dough to bake new loafs to sell. Molding boards ended up being banned in London after nine different bakers were caught doing this. There were also instances of grain sellers withholding grain to create an artificial scarcity drive up the price of that, and things like bread.
Bread, being one of the main things that literally everyone ate in many parts of the world, ended up with a plethora of rules and regulations. Bakers were probably no more likely to commit fraud than anyone else, but there were so many of them, that we ended up with lots and lots of rules and records of people being shifty.
Check out Fabulous Feasts: Medieval Cookery and Ceremony by Madeleine Pelner Cosman for a whole chapter on food laws as they existed in about 1400. Plus the color plates are fantastic.
ALL OF THIS IS SO COOL
I found something too awesome not share with you!
I’m completely fascinated by the history of food, could I choose a similar topic for my Third Year Dissertation? Who knows, but it is very interesting all the same!
Bread fraud us actually where the concept of a bakers dozen came from. Undersized rolls/loaves/whatever were added to the dozen purchased to ensure that the total weight evened out so the baker couldn’t be punished for shorting someone.
[wants to talk about bread fraud laws and punishments]
Bridget Holmes (1591-1691) was a domestic servant at the
English royal court during the 17th century. As a “necessary woman”,
her jobs included cleaning the royal apartments and emptying and scouring
chamber pots. She lived through the reigns of seven monarchs (Elizabeth I,
James I, Charles I, Charles II, James II, William III and Mary II), the age of
Shakespeare, the age of discovery and the age of revolution. She served five of
the Stuart monarchs (Charles I, Charles II, James II, William III and Mary II)
and was considered to be a bit of a fixture at the court. She was so
well-respected and regarded with affection, as a lady of great age and of great
loyalty to the Stuart kings, that James II commissioned this portrait of her in
1686, probably painted by John Riley and John Closterman; an extravagant
commission but one certainly to James’ credit as this is one of the first
pre-eighteenth century portraits of a working class person. In this portrait,
Holmes teasingly brandishes her mop at a Page of the Backstairs, and the set-up
of the portrait treats her with great dignity.
Bridget died in 1691, at the age of 100. One of the longest
serving royal servants in history, she is buried in Westminster Abbey and there
is a monument noting the monarchs under which she dutifully served. This
portrait now resides in the state apartments of Windsor Castle.
also re: teens sitting around with their tablets and smartphones
like, if a kid can access the internet (with some privacy still) while also sitting in the same room as their parents, honestly that’s better and more social than what I did as a teenager, which was hole up in my room at my desktop computer that I couldn’t move anywhere else in the house
mostly what I see from the teens in my family is they will sit and scroll through their phone, but if something interesting starts happening, or a new person enters the room, or they see something cool they want to share, they look up and interact again, because they’re sitting right there with everyone else.
that is waaaay more social than 2002 me, hunched over my desktop for hours and only seeing my mom in passing when I went to microwave a burrito at 1am. way, way more social.
My whole family does this now. We’re all in the same room, but each on a phone, tablet, or laptop. Certain poop heads will shake their heads at how technology is dividing us.
But
Like
What do they think families have done for since ever? Talk constantly while playing educational board games every evening? No.
They’d each be reading, or sewing, or writing letters or some shit, and mostly sat quietly near each other but not bothering each other.
yes this
It reminds me of the whole “omg people on trains used to TALK to each other” argument. No, they didn’t. They read the newspaper or stared straight ahead avoiding eye contact.
It’s not uncommon knowledge that the sides of the Egyptian pyramids are aligned with the compass points: North, South, East, and West, which is mildly impressive since ancient Egyptians didn’t have compasses.
It’s a little more impressive when you stop to think about the fact that there was no north star back then, because over time earth’s axis wobbles with respect to the stars. We’re just lucky to live at a time when there’s a star in about the right spot.
It becomes incredibly impressive when you read the article in a 2000 issue of Nature, in which Egyptologist Kate Spence plots the errors in this alignment and shows that they drift on a predictable pattern. That pattern is the aforementioned polar wobble. This tells us two things:
1) Despite the lack of a stationary north star, the Egyptians used the stars to lay out the bases of their pyramids. They did this so carefully that we can see evidence of a 26,000-year cycle in the orientations of monuments built over a period of a few hundred years. Holy shit.
2) The start dates for the construction of each pyramid. The great pyramid of Khufu was begun in 2478 BC, plus or minus five years. Probably in October, which would have been the best time of year to make the measurement. HOLY FUCKING SHIT.
I’ve seen this image going around, and I feel compelled to point out that it’s only half-right. It’s true that high heels were originally a masculine fashion, but they weren’t originally worn by butchers – nor for any other utilitarian purpose, for that matter.
High heels were worn by men for exactly the same reason they’re worn by women today: to display one’s legs to best effect. Until quite recently, shapely, well-toned calves and thighs were regarded as an absolute prerequisite for male attractiveness. That’s why you see so many paintings of famous men framed to show off their legs – like this one of George Washington displaying his fantastic calves:
… or this one of Louis XIV of France rocking a fabulous pair of red platform heels (check out those thighs!):
… or even this one of Charles I of England showing off his high-heeled riding boots – note, again, the visual emphasis on his well-formed calves:
In summary: were high heels originally worn by men? Yes. Were they worn to keep blood off their feet? No at all – they were worn for the same reason they’re worn today: to look fabulous.
so then how did they become a solo feminine item of attire?
A variety of reasons. In France, for example, high heels fell out out of favour in the court of Napoleon due to their association with aristocratic decadence, while in England, the more conservative fashions of the Victorian era regarded it as indecent for a man to openly display his calves.
But then, fashions come and go. The real question is why heels never came back into fashion for men – and that can be laid squarely at the feet of institutionalised homophobia. Essentially, heels for men were never revived because, by the early 20th Century, sexually provocative attire for men had come to be associated with homosexuality; the resulting moral panic ushered in an era of drab, blocky, fully concealing menswear in which a well-turned calf simply had no place – a setback from which men’s fashion has yet to fully recover.
FASHION HISTORY IS HUMAN HISTORY OK
Thank you, history side of tumblr. That “stay out of blood” thing has been driving me mad.
Wait. So, you’re telling me that the reason straight boys dress horribly is because they’re not over a 100 year old gay panic?
You’re telling me that the gross, baggy, shapeless menswear that has been almost singlehandedly ruining my life is the result of a bunch of dudes in the 1900’s collectively going ‘AAAAH WHAT IF THEY THINK WE’RE GAY’
Fuck that shit. BRING BACK MENS HEELS
BRING BACK MENS TIGHTS
MAKE MEN SEXY AGAIN
Actually the original image and the commentary are both right! Ancient Egyptian butchers wore high heels to avoid the blood and carcasses of slaughtered animals.
In ancient Rome, prostitutes would wear high heels to show that they were, well, prostitutes. In Greece, actors would use heels of varying sizes in costuming to show the social class of characters (the higher the heel, the higher the social ranking of those who wear them, with peasants and the proletariat being barefoot)
In Persia, high heeled shoes were worn by cavalry to help with riding and fighting on horses. In medieval Europe, people would attach heels to their shoes to protect them from dirty, muddy roads. Knights and aristocrats would wear high heeled shoes to prove their nobility.
In round about the 1400′s in Turkey, women started wearing a type of high heeled shoe for no particular reason other than fashion. By the 16th century, men and women were both wearing heels for fashion which is right about where the original commentary starts in.
Putting a heel on a shoe wasn’t something that happened once and got traded around. Different cultures and civilizations innovate and create things concurrently.
Hopefully this inspires more ladies to apply. -Emily
Excuse you @npr. Women have been applying since the beginning of the manned space program. NASA hasn’t been interested in accepting them till recently.
(The Mercury Thirteen. Women who wanted to go to space in the 50′s, paid their own way through testing to prove they were capable of the same rigorous standards the men were, and then were ignored and forgotten by NASA.)
Don’t put the lack of female astronauts on a (supposed) lack of female applicants. The fault lies on the shoulders of those who refused (and continue to refuse) to believe that women are just as capable of travelling to space as men.
This is the Great Pyramid of King Khufu. Everybody knows the Great Pyramid of King Khufu, but you probably don’t know about the Shit Pyramids of his father, King Sneferu. This is a shame, because they are amazing.
When King Sneferu came to the throne of Egypt, the cool thing that all the pharaohs had was a Step Pyramid, like the original one built by King Djoser and designed by Imhotep (not the mummy). King Sneferu could easily have had one one because his predecessor King Huni had died before his could be finished. All Sneferu had to do was step in and put the last few blocks on.
But King Sneferu had a vision. He didn’t want any old Step Pyramid. He was going to build Egypt’s first smooth-sided pyramid, and make King Huni’s pyramid way taller in the bargain. It didn’t work. The core of Huni’s pyramid couldn’t handle the modifications and nowadays the Step Pyramid at Meidum looks like this:
It’s not on a hill – that’s the outer layers of the pyramid that have fallen down all around it. The name of the structure in Arabic is Heram el-Kaddaab, which means something like The Sort-Of Pyramid.
Anyway, King Sneferu was understandably disappointed and made his pyramid-builders start over from scratch at a different site. Apparently having learned nothing about the Big Fat Nowhere that hubristic pyramid ambition was going to get him, this pyramid was designed to be even taller and pointier than the last effort! Too tall and pointy, in fact – the bedrock proved to be less stable than he might have hoped, and by the time the pyramid was half-finished stuff was already moving and cracking inside of it. There are ceilings in this pyramid that are to this day partially held up by wooden beams.
The builders seem to have panicked and decided that the only way to finish the pyramid without another disaster was to make the top half lighter than the bottom half. They did this by changing the angle of the slope, ending up with a pyramid that looks like this:
Egyptologists call this one the Bent Pyramid for fairly obvious reasons. Uniquely among Egyptian Pyramids, it has most of its smooth outer blocks intact, rather than having them all stolen to build other stuff (most of medieval Cairo is built from the skin of the Giza pyramids). I’m guessing this is because nobody dared touch the thing for fear the whole structure would come down like a giant limestone game of Jenga.
I’m sure the pyramid-builders were very proud of this solution. Sneferu appears to have been less so. He had them move over about half a mile and start over. Again. Why only half a mile when he had them move 34 miles between the Sort-of Pyramid and the Bent Pyramid is a mystery. I think he wanted to keep them in sight of the Bent Pyramid so they could look at it and feel ashamed every once in a while.
And there they built Sneferu’s third pyramid, which is called the Red Pyramid. As pyramids go, it’s a very cautious one – it’s got the shallowest slope rise of any Egyptian pyramid, and while it’s the same height as the Bent Pyramid it spreads its weight over a much greater base area, making it far more stable. Sneferu seems to have been happy with this one, because he was buried in it. Either that, or after a forty-eight-year reign he just finally died and that was the pyramid they used because it was the nicest of the three.
These three pyramids together actually contain substantially more stone than the Great Pyramid of Sneferu’s son Khufu. By the time Sneferu died, his workforce had honed themselves into a lean, mean pyramid-building machine. They had already made every possible pyramid mistake. So when Khufu announced that he didn’t just want a great pyramid, but The Great Pyramid, these guys built him a pyramid so fucking great that we now think aliens must have done it.
Kimchi and Justice 