The culture of the past feels so unrelatably foreign that it really feels like a fictional world.
Can you imagine hearing that some dude is walking really far and going to see an improvised carnival with an entourage of “bodyguards” with whips keeping people away from some guy walking thousands of laps around a track?
> The culture of the past feels so unrelatably foreign that it really feels like a fictional world.
One idea for teaching history is to emphasize that which you, as a time traveler, would find startlingly strange ("wait, WAT?!?").
A 1700's British officer, traveling with American militia, is utterly boggled... the American officer, he is talking with his men, asking them what they think!?! A WWII American officer, with not-unfamiliar clothes, familiar language, many familiar ideas, and culture... and then he shares his commonplace views on negroes. A familiar city in the 1950's, with familiar still-there office buildings, in the summer... without any AC (so people sit by open windows to catch a breeze). Making arrangements to meet at highly specific locations and times (at noon under the clock at Grand Central)... because without cell phones, mobile incremental rendezvous is hard. The Sun goes down, so you stop working, because you can't see in the dark - it's been suggested that the greatest US technological triumph of the entire 20th Century was... rural electrification. Small-village farmers in Egypt, part of the Ottoman empire, using strikes and slowdowns to discipline local elites, who fear the attention of "what's wrong here and how do I fix it" imperial officials. Sales guy, eventually to head IBM, is said to have gone into stores with competitors' cash registers... and smashed them with a baseball bat. Fights and drawn knives on the floor of the US Senate. The opulence of Versailles... human excrement is cleaned off hallway floors not once, but twice a day! And so on, and on...
One of my favourites: at the height of the British Empire, a private rises on merit to become Chief of the Imperial General Staff - rising from the lowest rank to the very highest.
Admiral Jeremy Boorda, U.S. Navy, enlisted as a sailor at age 17 in 1956; he eventually rose to become Chief of Naval Operations, the highest-ranking USN officer (save for when a Navy officer is Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff).
Enlisted personnel are often tapped to become officers. Once in the officer ranks, they've got the same shot at 4 stars as any other 2L, no?
Quick googling turns up the career of John Shalikashvili, who was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1993 to 1997.
Shalikashvili was drafted into the Army as a private in 1958, eventually applied to Officer Candidate School, and ended up literally in charge of all US forces.
Not sure about CEO, but I do know the owner of the one in my hometown (and a few others) started that way. He worked in one and was frugal and was eventually able to buy his own franchise.
> Can you imagine hearing that some dude is walking really far and going to see an improvised carnival with an entourage of “bodyguards” with whips keeping people away from some guy walking thousands of laps around a track?
The right person could absolutely pitch this as a reality TV show.
The culture of the past looks different because the material conditions are different, but what are people really doing here? There's gambling, an ordinary person gaining memetic celebrity, and an audience watching someone struggle with physical endurance. All of those are present in the culture of today as then as in ancient Rome. Just their focus and intensity differs.
You see people like this sometimes. I met a guy who practically lives on his bike. Like the guy in the article, he's sort of an outcast. Yet when he's not riding, he's walking around with his helmet on his head. It's like he's a tool that can only do one job, but is fantastic at it. I wonder how many luminaries throughout history have been similarly specialized. It seems like a type of beneficial obsession.
Makes sense to me. If you spend your whole life mostly doing one thing then you’ll end up amazing at that thing. When you compare to everyone else, even across generations, you’ll still be ranked among the best because most people never focus that intensely.
Given how they treated eg Alan Turing, I think you have a point :-)
(preventive anti-outrage disclaimer: I'm not suggesting that homosexuality is eccentric, I'm only suggesting that it might have been considered eccentric by many in mid-20th century UK)
That was an interesting read, but man oh man what a harsh life, and, what a dreadful family. Can you even imagine going through even a tiny bit of that without breaking?
This is just an observation more than an opinion - you know how it's common knowledge that women had no power not that long ago and were kept under the boot of men?
His wife not only cheated on him, when he found out she arranged to have him arrested and thrown in prison, and then was seeking to imprison him for life. As far as the article says, absolutely nothing has happened to her as a consequence of this.
After she held him down and had him beaten with a red hit iron poker? He was a physically weak man "fighting" a much stronger woman. If a weak woman hit her husband and then he held her down and had her beaten, you think that would be ok?
Anyone who wants to learn more about the history of pedestrianism, long-distance walking and latterly ultrarunning should check out Davy Crockett's Ultra Running History website and podcast [1]. He covers George Wilson in a two-part episode about 1,000 mile attempts [2].
I suppose this is a nitpick, but what kind of timekeeping was available for this?
> He kept walking, one step at a time, and hit 50 miles with four minutes and 43 seconds to spare.
My understanding of the time is that pocket watches very rarely had second hands, or maybe not even minute hands. And certainly wouldn't be expected to maintain such accuracy over a period of ten hours. What else would be available in a prison yard?
Just to add watches were extremely important for sailing. Maybe as important as a compass. You need an accurate clock to calculate longitude at sea. Here’s a book I’ve been meaning to read about an eccentric guy who solved the problem[1].
> He would need to escape from poverty and free himself and his children from strangling debt.
It seems like so many of the things we take for granted today couldn't be taken for granted to the same degree in the past.
Things like being able to declare bankruptcy and erase all your debts, the general liberty/protection provided by the state from having our freedom/autonomy being violated by others, etc.
One interesting distinction is that many of the modern protections that have in many ways shaped modern society, are not protections against other people - but protections against governments themselves. This is a recurring theme in the constitution. For instance the constitution does not grant you the right to free speech. It observes that you, by nature of being a human capable of speaking already inherently have the right to free speech. The constitution simply stops the government from passing laws to take that right away from people.
Most of the bad acts people can commit against other people have been illegal for time immemorial. The revolution that started with the United States was the founders of a nation passing legislation to protect the people from the government itself. Things like debtor's prisons, as you mention, are of course state-driven institutions. There are also things now illegal that we can't even imagine. For instance the third amendment prevents the government from forcing you house soldiers which is so far away as to feel unimaginable. Other things we're constantly reminded of, but they have become so socially ingrained that we take them for granted. For instance protections against unreasonable search and seizure, protections against being forced to testify against yourself.
Can you imagine hearing that some dude is walking really far and going to see an improvised carnival with an entourage of “bodyguards” with whips keeping people away from some guy walking thousands of laps around a track?