The content below is from Episode #158 of the Who’d a Thunk It? Podcast
RECOMMENDATION SEGMENT
- I recommend you read Yertle the Turtle
- It’s a Dr. Seuss book, my favorite in fact.
- Dr. Seuss’s Yertle the Turtle raises questions about justice, political rights, political authority, and the responsibilities a ruler has to their subjects.
- It is a simple kids book, but I still enjoy it today.
- I’m the kind of person that only learns things the hard way, so when I learn an intended lesson on the first try it is memorable moment.
- The first time I read Yertle the Turtle I understood what it was trying to tell me about power.
- I think that is the truly special thing about Dr. Seuss
- But I’ve never seen myself as one of the other turtles on Sala-Ma-Sond. No, I’ve always seen myself as Yertle. I’ve always been afraid of abusing what little power I have in this world.
NOW FOR THE MAIN EVENT
- This week I’m having a hard time finding the motivation to dig deep into one topic… so I didn’t.
- I’ve decided to share short little snippets of historical stories I’ve accumulated over the years. I hope you enjoy.
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Aztecs
Bernal Diaz del Castillo’s The True History of the Conquest of New Spain
A priest died during the time with Cortez and when they went through his belongings they found an adult toy made of leather.
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The University of Oxford is older than the Aztec Empire. The University of Oxford first opened its doors to students all the way back in 1096. By comparison, the Aztec Empire is said to have originated with the founding of the city of Tenochtitlán at Lake Texcoco by the Mexica, which occurred in the year 1325.
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While holding Montezuma hostage in what is now Mexico City, the men tasked with guarding him treated him relatively decently. He was a king and had lots of gold after all. Anyway, while the Spanish guards were on duty he accidentally farted on Montezuma… directly in his face.
The guard felt very embarrassed. He began apologizing profusely. He had just humiliated a noble.
Montezuma wanted to assure the apologetic guard so he gave him a piece of the vast amount of gold he had.
That’s when things shifted. The guard looked at the gold dumbfounded for a bit then proceeded to fart right into Montezuma’s face expecting more gold.
I like to imagine the guard was like “ah you like that don’t you, you dirty boy. Well here! Take some more!” Perhaps this was the first unintentional example of kink sex work lol.
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The Aztecs were such a cool culture. They built their city Tenochtitlan on a big artificial island and it was so big it could be compared to London and Constantinople at the time.
Some say the main reason they (a huge civilization with a huge army) were beaten by a handful of stinky Europeans (I say stinky because the hygiene of Europeans at the time was WAY worse than the Aztecs) was because the sacrifice-happy Aztecs made so many enemies. The Aztecs pissed off so many of their neighboring populations that Cortez was able to get like 100,000 soldiers of neighboring tribes to help him.
Montezuma (right) looks cool as hell in this painting. Cortez is on the left.
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WWII
In 1945, a balloon bomb launched by Japan landed in Oregon. It fell upon a woman and five children, who died when it exploded. These were the only World War II casualties on US soil.
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In WWII there was a guy named Juan Pujol Garcia (Allied code name Garbo). He was from Spain and was NOT a fan of the Nazis or any other fascist for that matter.
He wrote to the US and the UK governments offering his services as a spy against Germany. Both governments declined his offer.
Garbo thought he didn’t need government backing and decided to do the damn thing anyway. He got a job in the Spanish government. The idea was to become just powerful enough to catch the eye of German intelligence and it worked. To the Germans he was a Nazi-loving guy inside the Spanish government willing to spy for them, so he became a German agent.
Germany asked him to spy on London. He went to Lisbon Portugal instead. Whenever German intelligence asked him for information he just looked at English magazines and newspapers so he could make up bogus intel to feed to the Nazis. All while collecting a Nazi paycheck.
Eventually, British intelligence caught on to the fact that German resources were being sent to the wrong places on a consistent basis and figured there must be someone behind it. They were able to make contact and hired Garbo as a spy.
Germany was sending Garbo (whom they dubbed Alaric) tons of funding and resources because he was telling German high command that he was building a large spy network behind English lines. In reality, it was just a dude named Juan collecting all these resources and telling Jolly Old England anything they wanted to know. The Germans called his fabricated spy network “Arabal.”
At its peak, Arabal was being funded for 27 agents. Many of which Garbo could blame for any false info he may have given to the Nazis.
The Brits were so impressed they moved Garbo and his entire family to the UK.
His misinformation was a big factor in Allied Operation Fortitude, the intelligence operation undertaken to divert as many German troops away from Normandy as possible.
By the time the war was over Garbo had the distinction of receiving military decorations from both sides of the war – being awarded the Iron Cross and becoming a Member of the Order of the British Empire.
I love Garbo’s sneaky grin in this pic.
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We now know the Avengers as Captain America, Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, and so on from their big Hollywood hits. But “The Avengers” was also a group of Jewish assassins who hunted Nazi war criminals after World War II.
Nakam (Hebrew: נקם, ‘revenge’) was a paramilitary organization of about fifty Holocaust survivors who, after 1945, sought revenge for the murder of six million Jews during the Holocaust. Led by Abba Kovner, the group sought to kill six million German people in a form of indiscriminate revenge, “a nation for a nation”. In the end they poisoned 2,283 German prisoners of war.
I’m not sure poisoning prisoners of war without a trial is a very ethical thing to do, even if they are Nazis.
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Russia ran out of vodka celebrating the end of World War II! When the long war ended, street parties engulfed the Soviet Union, lasting for days—until all of the nation’s vodka reserves ran out a mere 22 hours after the partying started.
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Ancient Rome/Greece
Cato the Elder was a Roman was a Roman Senator who would end all of his speeches with “Carthago Delenda Est.” It means Carthage (a city constantly at arms with Rome) must be destroyed. Years after he died Carthage was destroyed.
Cato’s son Cato the Younger was appointed Senator years later during Julius Ceasar’s time. Ceasar was reading a note during a big government meeting, the equivalent to checking your text during a staff meeting these days. Cato the Younger seeing an opportunity accused Ceasar of being a spy thinking he might be able to take out a powerful rival.
Ceasar denied being a spy and was like, “what’s the big deal Cato the Younger? I’m definitely not a spy.”
So Cato the Younger says “oh yeah? Then why don’t you read that note to the entire class if you don’t have anything to hide!”
Ceasar agreed to read the note… it was a steamy love note from Cato the Younger’s sister LMAO
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The Romans, like any culture, were not perfect. But they did have what some today might consider progressive views on Religion and Sexuality.
Rome conquered a lot of different peoples, each one having a different god or goddess. Instead of making the locals worship their Roman gods, the Romans would pray to the local gods. They would pray to the local deities asking they abandon the local government structure and have the local population join the Roman empire. If the Romans were successful they would officially recognize or even fully adopt the local god into their own religion.
Some Emperors saw it as spiritually hedging their bets. Why piss off gods that might be real when you can make friends with a bunch of gods, that way, if one or some of them are real you’ll have a nicer time in the afterworld.
And when it came to sexuality, the concept of gay didn’t exist. Neither did straight for that matter. The same goes for the Ancient Greeks. They only saw sexuality in terms of dominant or submissive. Didn’t matter what fleshy bits you had.
That’s why I’ve always had an issue with the one scene from 300 where Leonidas gave an insult to King Xerxes by calling him and his men “boy lovers.” LOL in reality the Spartans constantly had sex with boys (in what we would DEFINITELY now consider pedophilia) while ancient Persia had laws against homosexuality. Most Spartan soldiers had the equivalent of a squire accompanying them on military campaigns and it was common for that squire to polish BOTH of his masters’ swords if you catch my drift.
Around 250 BCE, during the Parthian Empire, the Zoroastrian text, the Vendidad, was written. It contains provisions that are part of the sexual code promoting procreative sexuality that is interpreted to prohibit same-sex intercourse as a form of demon worship, and thus sinful.
So when Girard Butler’s character Leonidas calls Xerxes a “Boy-Lover” it’s not only a historical inaccuracy, it’s an ass-backward comment (pun intended) lol.
Um… these are the Spartans that Hollywood would have you believe hate “Boy-Lovers” LMAO
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In Ancient Greece, they believed redheads became vampires after death! This was partly because redheaded people are very pale-skinned and sensitive to sunlight—unlike the Mediterranean Greeks, who had olive skin and dark features.
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Salem
During the Salem witch trials, the accused witches weren’t actually burned at the stake. The majority were jailed, and some were hanged. But none of the 2,000 people accused ever got burned alive.
Think about that every time you see a movie or show depicting a woman being burned alive in Salem… IT. DIDN’T. HAPPEN.
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Napoleon
Famous conqueror Napoleon Bonaparte was once attacked by a horde of bunnies! He had requested that a rabbit hunt be arranged for himself and his men. When the rabbits were released from their cages, the bunnies charged toward Bonaparte and his men in an unstoppable onslaught.
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Alexander
Alexander the Great was accidentally buried alive. Following Alexander’s death in Babylon, his body was initially buried in Memphis by one of his generals, Ptolemy I Soter, before being transferred to Alexandria, where it was reburied.
Scientists believe Alexander suffered from a neurological disorder called Guillain-Barré Syndrome. They believe that when he died, he was actually just paralyzed and mentally aware!
General Ptolemy is actually believed to be Cleopatra’s ancestor. As far as historians can tell, Egypt’s famous femme fatal was actually Greek! She was a descendant of Alexander the Great’s Macedonian general Ptolemy. So yeah, she wasn’t Egyptian.
CREDIT
The Journal of A_C_Unit 