Historical Miscellany

historicalmatters: August 9, 1902: Edward VII and Alexandra of...

Thu, 09 Aug 2012 20:11:23 -0400

August 9, 1902: Edward VII and Alexandra of Denmark of crowned King and Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

Famous people from the past and present with cats. Bill and...

Fri, 03 Aug 2012 17:58:00 -0400

Bill and Hillary Clinton

Ray Bradbury

Aldous Huxley

George Harrison

Michel Foucault

William Carlos Williams

Famous people from the past and present with cats.

Bill and Hillary Clinton
Ray Bradbury
Aldous Huxley
George Harrison
Michel Foucault
William Carlos Williams

The best subreddit: r/historicalcatlovers

Domitian, who was proclaimed emperor by the soldiers upon his...

Fri, 03 Aug 2012 17:47:00 -0400

Domitian, who was proclaimed emperor by the soldiers upon his brother Titus’ death, possessed the mental ability of the Flavian family, joined to the vices and cruelty of the Claudian. He surrounded himself with spies and informers, and put to death the noblest men of his time. Notorious for his cruelty, he is said to have invented a new method of torture which involved burning the sexual organs of his victims.

centuriespast: PYNACKER, Adam (b. 1620/21, Schiedam, d. 1673,...

Fri, 03 Aug 2012 17:30:09 -0400

centuriespast:

PYNACKER, Adam

(b. 1620/21, Schiedam, d. 1673, Amsterdam)

View of a Harbour in Schiedam
1650-52
Oil on canvas, 56 x 46 cm
Private collection

Feminine hygiene ads from 1950s America.

Thu, 02 Aug 2012 19:30:00 -0400

Feminine hygiene ads from 1950s America.

centuriespast: PEETERS, Bonaventura the Elder (b. 1614,...

Tue, 31 Jul 2012 20:53:34 -0400

centuriespast:

PEETERS, Bonaventura the Elder

(b. 1614, Antwerpen, d. 1652, Hoboken)

Shipwreck
Oil on oak, 60 x 85 cm
National Gallery

“Give the dice a fair throw and you will find shipwreck everywhere!”

— Petronius

fyeahblackhistory: Abram Petrovich Hannibal...

Tue, 31 Jul 2012 20:51:40 -0400

fyeahblackhistory:

Abram Petrovich Hannibal (1696-1782)

Believed to be born in Born in either Senegal or Eritrea, he was brought to Peter the Great as a gift.

Abram studied math and languages in Paris, fought in the French military and returned home to become commanding general of the Russian army.

He was the maternal great-grandfather of Alexander Pushkin, one of the most revered figure in Russian culture.

Sold into Turkish slavery, Abram Petrovich Hannibal was brought as a black servant to Czar Peter I, known as Peter the Great. He became one of the royal favorites, a general-in-chief and one of the best educated men in Russia. His great-grandson was Alexander Pushkin, the famous Russian writer who later glorified the deeds of his black ancestor in his book, The Negro of Peter the Great.

It is believed that Hannibal was born on an unknown date around 1696 in the principality of Logon in present day Cameroon or South west Eritrea. Abducted by a rival tribe, Hannibal was sold to Turkish slave traders who brought him to Constantinople in 1703. As an eight-year-old boy he came to the court of Peter the Great who adopted him immediately. Being the Czar’s godson, Hannibal assumed his name, Petrovich, and became his valet on Peter’s various military campaigns and journeys. When the Czar visited France in 1716, Hannibal was left behind in Paris to study engineering and mathematics at a military school. Two years later, he joined the French army and fought in the war against Spain. In January 1723, Hannibal finally returned to Russia.

To Hannibal’s misery, his protector Peter the Great died in 1725, leaving the black artillery lieutenant in the dependence of the royal advisor Prince Menshikov, who–due to his dislike for Hannibal–assigned him to Siberia and later to the Chinese border where his task was to measure the Great Wall.

Hannibal’s fortunes changed in 1741, when Empress Elisabeth took the throne and Hannibal was allowed to officially return from his exile although in fact he had done so clandestinely in 1731. Five years after his illegal return, he married his second wife Christina Regina von Schöberg, the daughter of a Swedish army captain, who bore him eleven children. One of his sons named Osip was the grandfather of the poet Alexander Pushkin.

Although it had been his wish to retire, Empress Elisabeth did not want to abandon Hannibal and his engineering skills. He was made commander of the city of Reval between 1743 and 1751 and by 1760 had been promoted to the rank of a full general. During his military career he oversaw various projects such as the construction of the Ladoga Canal and Russian fortresses. Abram Petrovich Hannibal died on April 20, 1781, as one of the leading pioneers of his country and probably the first outstanding engineer in Russian history.

Sources:
Hugh Barnes, Gannibal: The Moor of Petersburg (London: Profile Books, 2005); Allison Blakely, Russia and the Negro: Blacks in Russian History and Thought (Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1986); N. K. Teletova, “A.P. Gannibal: On the Occasion of the Three Hundredth Anniversary of the Birth of Alexander Pushkin’s Great-Grandfather,” Under the Sky of My Africa: Alexander Pushkin and Blackness, Ed. Catharine Theimer Nepomnyashchy, Nicole Svobodny, and Ludmilla A. Trigos (Evanston, Northwestern University Press, 2006).

here are some excerpts from the Economist’s review of Gannibal: The Moor of Petersburg (published in America as The Stolen Prince)

Click here for more.

Courtesan and Blind Cupid by Pietro Bertelli (Flap print with...

Tue, 31 Jul 2012 20:46:23 -0400

Courtesan and Blind Cupid by Pietro Bertelli

(Flap print with liftable skirt)

Venice was famed for its legions of elaborately clad and coiffed courtesans. Foreign visitors marveled at their opulent jewels and abundant application of cosmetics, while civic authorities decried the courtesans’ deliberately misleading resemblance to “honest women.” Capitalizing on their titillating popularity, Pietro Bertelli published a series of prints of courtesans, each with a flap that lifted to reveal, below a seemingly innocent exterior, a glimpse of the carnal pleasures for which Venice was notorious. Here, the flap is the skirt, which can be raised to display the courtesan’s undergarments and chopines (the platform shoes that Venetian ladies wore to keep their feet dry).

As the Black Death spread throughout Europe, one extreme...

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 15:59:42 -0400

As the Black Death spread throughout Europe, one extreme reaction was processions of Flagellants, religious fanatics who beat themselves in ritual penance, believing such action would bring divine intervention.

The German and Low Countries movement, the Brothers of the Cross, is particularly well documented; they wore white robes and marched across Germany in 33.5 day campaigns (each day referred to a year of Jesus’ earthly life) of penance, stopping in any one place for no more than a day. They established their camps in fields near towns and held their rituals twice a day. The ritual began with the reading of a letter, claimed to have been delivered by an angel and justifying the Flagellants’ activities. Next the followers would fall to their knees and scourge themselves, gesturing with their free hands to indicate their sin and striking themselves rhythmically to songs, known as Geisslerlieder, until blood flowed. Sometimes the blood was soaked up in rags and treated as a holy relic.

The terror the Flagellants created - and their dirty, bleeding bodies may have spread the disease - became so socially disruptive and threatening that the church finally outlawed such processions.

Alfred Sisley (1839-1899)

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 11:52:55 -0400

Alfred Sisley (1839-1899)

Gouverneur Morris (January 31, 1752 – November 6, 1816) was an...

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 00:53:16 -0400

Gouverneur Morris (January 31, 1752 – November 6, 1816) was an American statesman, a Founding Father of the United States, and a native of New York City who represented Pennsylvania in the Constitutional Convention of 1787. A signatory to the Articles of Confederation, Morris was also an author of large sections of the Constitution of the United States and one of its signers. He is widely credited as the author of the document’s preamble, and has been called the “Penman of the Constitution.”

In 1780, Morris’s left leg was shattered and replaced with a wooden pegleg. Morris’s public account for the loss of his leg was that it happened in a carriage accident, but there is evidence that this was a false story concocted to cover for a dalliance with a woman, during which he jumped from a window to escape a jealous husband. Morris was well-known throughout much of his life for having many affairs, with both married and unmarried women, and he recorded many of these adventures and misadventures in his diary.

Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840)

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 00:09:33 -0400

Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840)

historicalmatters: Top: Helmets worn by Carthaginian soldiers...

Sun, 29 Jul 2012 23:48:06 -0400

historicalmatters:

Top: Helmets worn by Carthaginian soldiers from the first Punic war found off the coast of Sicily.

Bottom: The capture of the Carthaginian fleet by the Romans during the First Punic War. Roman soldiers are walking across the corvus of their fleet to board and attack a Carthaginian ship.

The Punic wars were a series of three wars fought between Rome and Carthage lasting from 264-146 BCE. Rome came away the victor in every war. The first war was fought from 264-241 BCE, the second from 218-201, and the third from 149-146. The second war is often the most memorable due to the Carthaginian general Hannibal Barca and his use of Elephants across the Alps to wage war on Rome.

Tiberius was one of Rome’s greatest generals, conquering...

Sun, 29 Jul 2012 23:15:59 -0400

Tiberius was one of Rome’s greatest generals, conquering Pannonia, Dalmatia, Raetia, and temporarily Germania, laying the foundations for the northern frontier. But he came to be remembered as a dark, reclusive, and sombre ruler who never really desired to be emperor; Pliny the Elder called him tristissimus hominum, “the gloomiest of men.”

In 26, Tiberius retired to the Isle of Capri to live in his palace, Villa Jovis. At least according to Suetonius, this villa is the place where Tiberius engaged in wild debauchery. Legend has it that Tiberius ordered disobedient servants and unwelcome guests to be thrown off the cliff to a watery demise.