Itt: historical myths that need to die

>le french army was destroyed in russia cause of le russian winter

Considering that the majority of the losses of Napoleon's army came first from the march *into* Russia during the *summer*, when diseases ran rampant, and then more huge losses at the Battle of Borodino in *spring*, it's a blatantly inaccurate myth. The casualties sustained in the retreat - only which some it occurred during the beginning of winter - was just the final nail in the coffin of the French army. They were screwed well before the winter came, thanks to Moscow being burnt down and Kutusov's army still being intact.

But the meme of "le russian winter" appeals to idiots that have an extremely surface level knowledge of history and like things being very simple and easy to explain, and so it keeps being used.

>Everything about Rasputin

the study made a further distinction between male passengers and male crew in the broken down statistics. On average, male passengers had about 30% lower survival rate than male crew, and female passengers about half the survival rate of male passengers.

Crew typically had a higher survival rate because, as you said, they were more physically fit and knew where the lifeboats/emergency boats were, and were able to get aboard them and launch them quickly enough to save their lives. Crew are also familiar with the ship and are more likely to find their way on deck quickly. And crew are more apt to survive once they're in the water because they can swim, aren't bogged down by heavy clothes, and likely had at least some sort of training versus the average passenger, especially women.

Although that brings to mind another important distinction: male passengers with wives and/or children were statistically more likely to die than male passengers traveling alone, because (like female passengers traveling with children) they have to try to get their families to safety which takes more time and is overall pretty a cumbersome task.

RARARASPUTIN
LOVER OF THE RUSSIAN QUEEN

yup

>"Let them eat cake" is an English mis-translation of a French anecdote

Oh, and also a higher survival rate for crew because the concept of "The crew gallantly evacuates the passengers first, especially women and children, before trying to save themselves" is not true in almost every case.

Now I'm thinking of the 1945 sinking of the MV Wilhelm Gustloff, where the four captains were the first on the boats and survived, but over 5,000 children died.

It's a bidet for washing your private parts.

>safety drilling for crew members in the first half of the 20th century or before

I actually work on a 100 year old sail ship and the owner and captain, who started before the advent of container ships and modern legislation i.e the heyday of smaller cargo ships with those huge crews, many still dependant on sails and according to his first hand experience, and second hand information passed by his captains and bosoms back then (he started in the early 70s therefore big cargo ships were already out there, so much he takes from those who came before), according to those accounts, those sailors had mostly no "safety drilling" as we know today, but rather a very very cold blood when dealing with disastrous circumstances.

Your point is valid, I just needed to point out that credit is due to be given, those guys were not drilled, they just had massive balls, unlike the average passenger

Pretty neat, thanks man. Can you recommend any books on the era in question's sea travel?

Source?

Artillery killed more people than guns
more people are killed in a rout than the battle

Neither of those is a myth you illiterate

For the study? ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3421183/

It's really really interesting. It also goes into survival based on other factors like length of voyage, length of sinking, etc.

The references are worth a look too.

I have never seen this painting or contraption before. +1 user.

can someone make a rasputin myth thread? pls n thank u.
>tfw when i said to my auntie the other day that the romanovs were gonna be on tv again and that the good of the show rests on who plays rasputin and she said "o i love rasputin"

To be honest I'm mostly just interested in a few prominent ship sinkings rather than sea travel in general, but here are some books I've liked:

Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson
Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic's First-Class Passengers and Their World by Hugh Brewster
A Night to Remember + The Night Lives on By Walter Lord (Both about Titanic)

and maybe Titanic at Two A.M.: An Illustrated Narrative with Survivor Accounts by Paul J. Quinn, since it breaks down the most 'active' part of the sinking in a way that made things a lot clearer for me.

Also not about a sinking but

Olympic, Titanic, Britannic: An Illustrated History of the Olympic Class Ships by Mark Chimside is great.

+1 to this.
hnnngggg btw

That Indians were primitve people who merrily hunted around the woods and were either nature loving pacifists or savages. These always bothered me because my father is a Mohawk Indian but one should read 1491 and Cahokia. Mesoamerican and Andean civilizations are credited with less than they deserve and given far less attention than they warrant, but the idea that North America lacked civilization is even worse. Native Americans have complex cultural traditions and yet they are usually dismissed as simple barbariNs.

speaking of Titanic...

Bruce Ismay did not goad Captain Smith into making the ship go faster.

This myth is a distortion from the testimony of a 1st class woman who stated that she heard Ismay talking with the Captain at lunch--the Captain didn't say much, she said--about how every day they were improving on their speed, and surely their speed shall improve the next day as well, so much that they beat the Lusitania's record and get to New York on Tuesday.

A few things: this woman was seated 2 tables behind Ismay and the Captain, and she said she had to turn around in order to see them, yet claimed in her testimony that Ismay was "animated" as she talked. Yet I doubt this first class woman was turned around in her chair gawking at them, so her claims of Ismay's body language are dubious IMO.

More importantly: "Getting to New York" meant that you passed a particular beacon off of New Jersey, not that you pulled into the docks in NYC. So if you passed the beacon at 1 am on Wednesday, this meant you got into New York on Tuesday. If you passed the beacon at 11:59 AM on Tuesday, you got into New York on Tuesday. Ismay had no desire to get the Titanic to New York a literal full day ahead, because that would be insane: passengers had travel and hotels and pick-ups booked with a Wednesday debarking on mind, and it would be a logistical nightmare to make everyone leave a full day ahead.

Secondly: getting to New York on Tuesday was not some crazy feat. The Lusitania's maiden voyage had her arrive to New York at 2 AM Wednesday, so we're talking Ismay hoping that they'd beat it by 2 hours and 1 minute. On her second voyage, the Lusitania got into New York at 10 PM Tuesday and matched or beat that time on subsequent voyages, so it wasn't like these ships weren't built for that speed.

No problem. Gotta keep clean!

This woman is very much enjoying cleaning her cunt.

if I'm getting my portrait painted cleaning my vagina you bet I'm going to put on my best portrait face

>according to those accounts, those sailors had mostly no "safety drilling" as we know today, but rather a very very cold blood when dealing with disastrous circumstances.

What do you mean by this?

laughed irl

good to know

Another Titanic myth: No stokers were trapped below decks, doomed to a watery grave, because of the watertight doors closing. The watertight doors only went up to a certain height, and every compartment had an escape ladder which went up past the bulkheads so they could easily get out.

misconceptions then
also le ronson sherman

>Le Chinese invented gunpowder and only made firecrackers out of it.
Not only is this completely false - the development of diverse gunpowder arsenal of the Song/Jin/Yuan Dynasties from the 1000s-1300s attest to this- but the first gunpowder didn't even pop, it just burned.

As the Chinese realized it wasnt a good medicinal formula (it was supposed to be medicine), its immediate use was military in nature: as incendiaries or firestarters. So instead of Chang standing around with a torch, he'd just pour gunpowder on something flamable and light it up.

Gunpowder still doesn’t explode. Take a bullet apart and light the powder in a frying pan outside. It just burns rapidly. The explosion of a firearm is pressure building up.

You meant they didn't have to kill him four times?

The French as cheese eating surrender monkeys, people won't let this one go even in the face of actual goddamn history.

don't make me post the pasta amigo

Then even in the winter retreat he managed to preserve the backbone of his army along with the officers..

But not his beard

bump

Can I have a source for this claim please?

Hugo Boss never designed anything for the Nazis. He was just an ordinary tailor sewing uniforms. Walter Heck and Karl Diebitsch were the design geniuses.

The Lost Ships of Robert Ballard.

Sure!

books.google.com/books?id=UYWs-GQDiOkC&pg=PA190&lpg=PA190&dq="bathing in 18th century

frockflicks.com/the-gross-18th-century/ (blog has multiple sources to go through)

janeaustensworld.wordpress.com/category/personal-hygiene/ (another post with images, sources, etc)

Plus the countless paintings depicting bathing as "sponge" bathing rather than immersion baths.

That’s true though

post for me amigo

Even if you packed the earliest version of Chink Gunpowder in a container, it still wont explode. The formula was """""correct""" yet.