Fun fact II: there was a period of earth’s infancy where the seas werr full of iron. Green in colour, mostly from volcanic activity.
Then up pop some photosynthetic bacteria who start farting out oxygen. The oceans start to rust. The rust falls to sediment and the farting contines. The ocean depletes of iron and the farting contines. The oxygen starts to fill up the sky and the farting continues. Some say it still goes on to this day. But what happened to the iron?
Well not uluru specifically but that’s what Australia’s distinctive colouration is. Ancient fart rusted sea iron
Trees are not that related to each other. Woody plants evolved multiple times over earths history. And while e.g. beeches are closely related to oaks related, they are more closely related to strawberries than to e.g. ashes. Black locust tree is more closely related to beans or peas than to birches (which are again related to oaks and beeches). Apples are even more closely related to strawberries than to oaks. That broke my mind during Covid. All conifers are somewhat closely related though.
edit: typo
Greenland sharks have incredibly long lifespans due to their large size (6m+), environment, and very slow metabolism estimated up to 500 years. There could be a shark that is still alive today that was alive during Shakespeare’s life and the switch to the Gregorian calendar.
The last American Civil War pensioner passed away in May 2020.
Her father served. He fathered her at 82, in 1930.
Possible… But unlikely in practice. Male sperm starts decreasing in quantity and quality after 30.
And the timing means they still had literal milkmen…
Terrorism used to be cool. It wasn’t about killing as many people as possible, but was aimed at wealth and wealthy
We could bring this back.
Uuuh… When was that? Got some examples?
Narodniks and Mark Twain
Communists, factory workers, Union strikes… All of Irelands history. The Robin Hood cartoon is about local terrorism as well 🤷♂️
I once turned down a gangbang that would have been me and 6 girls because I felt a little hung over… That was 25 years ago, and Im still not over how monumentally fucking stupid that was.
Could have been six child support cases… Avoided!
Thats a good one, but I usually try to sooth myself by thinking it was a ploy to steal my kidneys… YEah, they were after my kidneys… They were after my kidneys… Im going to be crying about that one on my deathbed lol
Bro, I think they were definitely gonna steal your kidneys! Good job weasling out of it, bullet dodged!
And this time period was supposedly The Enlightnement, which jack shit of was taught in the school I went to as a kid. Sounds cool as fuck.
Now I’m just imagining Nintendo in the early 1900s attempting to sue every other card manufacturing company for copyright infringement.
Men’s clothing keep getting shorter and shorter in the late Middle Ages/early modern period to the point where at court, their dicks could be seen. The solution was cod pieces, some of which were elaborate, bejeweled, erect penises. This trend ended in England when Elizabeth I fully came into her role as “the virgin queen”
The way you phrased that, it’s like the queen wouldn’t fuck so dicks went out of style.
Did someone say codpiece?
There are more trees on Earth than there are stars in the Milky Way Galaxy.
Prior to their win in 2016, the Chicago Cubs hadn’t won a world series since before the fall of the Ottoman Empire.
That’s a good one. I should really learn more about the Ottoman Empire.
Paramount Pictures was created 1 month before Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated.
Gaumont was created in 1895.
And look at them now… Scrubbing their backloga of anything that paints Nazis in a bad light.
Wouldn’t want to upset the new owners ;)
Vikings generally did a lot of trading and in some cases just kinda started to focus on trade instead of raiding taking advantage of the width and breadth of the Norse world. It wouldn’t be impossible for goods from North America to be sold in a Syrian market, though I don’t know if that did happen but we have found Norse Chainmail in an Inuit grave cache.
Columbus’ contact resulted in a 92% loss of population in North, Central, and South America. Mexico City area only just re-reached its pre-contact population estimate in the 1960s.
“1491” is a good read.
Then Cortez finished the job when he explored from Florida to Texas. He also introduced wild hogs to the continent, which introduced trichinella parasites to native fauna. Truly one of the most ecologically destructive events in the past thousand years.
The sheer amount of people, knowledge, and culture lost in the Americas due to European invasion and their treatment of the native peoples makes me so sad.
It is the greatest loss of human knowledge that we know of. Certainly the largest in the last 4000 years. It puts the burning of the Library of Alexandria to shame. Entire civilizations, and the sum of all their knowledge, gone. Wiped out. Practically erased from history. The Aztecs had a full writing system and a long recorded history, all burned to ash by the Spaniards just for the hell of it; only scraps remain.
From ChatGPT:
Several Indigenous civilizations in the Americas had their written records deliberately destroyed, while others relied heavily on oral knowledge that disappeared when communities were decimated. Here’s a clear breakdown of both types:
Civilizations Whose Records Were Intentionally Destroyed
Aztec (Mexica) Empire
- Type of records: Pictorial and glyphic codices on history, astronomy, tribute, law, and religion.
- Destruction: After the conquest, Spanish authorities, most famously Bishop Juan de Zumárraga and later Diego de Landa, burned almost all Aztec codices as “idolatrous.”
- Survival: Fewer than 20 pre-conquest or early-contact codices survive.
Maya Civilization
- Type of records: Highly developed writing system; texts on astronomy, mathematics, calendars, history, and ritual.
- Destruction: Inquisition-era clerics burned “thousands” of books and idols; Diego de Landa’s auto-da-fé in 1562 is the most notorious.
- Survival: Only four confirmed pre-conquest Maya codices remain (Dresden, Madrid, Paris, Grolier).
Mixtec Civilization
- Type of records: Rich pictographic histories of dynasties, genealogies, wars, religious rituals.
- Destruction: Many codices lost to Spanish burnings and suppression of Mixtec priest-scribes.
- Survival: A few extraordinary codices remain (Codex Zouche-Nuttall, Codex Vindobonensis).
Inca Empire (Tawantinsuyu)
- Type of records: Not written in books, but quipus—complex knotted-string recording systems for census, tribute, calendrics, and possibly narrative information.
- Destruction: Colonial authorities destroyed many quipus, and forced conversion efforts suppressed quipu-keepers (khipukamayuqs).
- Survival: ~1,000 quipus remain, but most without context.
Taíno (Caribbean)
- Type of records: Primarily oral, but also ceremonial carvings (zemis), sacred objects, and chronicled songs.
- Destruction: Spanish campaigns wiped out most of the population within decades; much material culture was destroyed or lost.
Muisca (Colombia)
- Type of records: Mostly oral histories and sacred textiles and objects.
- Destruction: Spanish suppression of temples and ceremonial items erased much of their intellectual heritage.
Civilizations Whose Knowledge Faded With Their Communities
These relied heavily on oral traditions or fragile local materials. When communities were devastated by disease, enslavement, and forced assimilation, their knowledge systems could not survive intact.
Mississippian Cultures (e.g., Cahokia)
- No writing system; history was preserved orally.
- Collapse accelerated by population loss after contact, long before written ethnography could record their traditions.
Ancestral Puebloans, Hohokam, Mogollon
- Sophisticated sciences (astronomy, hydrology, architecture) maintained through oral knowledge.
- Much was lost after displacement, missionization, and cultural fragmentation.
Wari, Tiwanaku (pre-Inca Andes)
- No writing system; relied on knot-based or symbolic systems.
- Knowledge of state organization and ritual life vanished after the societies collapsed long before Spanish arrival, and then post-contact disruptions erased remaining memories.
Nahua, Zapotec, Purepecha, and many others
-
These groups had writing or semi-writing systems, but much of what we know today survives only in fragments because:
- manuscripts were burned,
- priestly classes were suppressed,
- or oral lineages were broken.
The Scale of Loss
Across the Americas, scholars estimate:
- hundreds of languages vanished, each carrying unique worldviews and knowledge systems;
- countless scientific, agricultural, ecological, and medical traditions were lost or fragmented;
- many civilizations’ histories and lineages were erased or only partially reconstructed through archaeology.
It truly was a civilizational-scale knowledge collapse—yet also a story of survival, because many Indigenous peoples continue to preserve, revive, and rebuild these traditions today.
Don’t care
Fuck ChatGPT.
Lol
The weird part about that is that Columbus was the third expedition to the American continent from the European continent.
First was a single Irish/Celtic(?) monk in the 800s. Second was Leif Erikson and his crew of “Vikings” in the 1100-1200s. Neither one of those caused widespread disease in the Americas, despite the fact that the monk made it as far as The Great Lakes, and Leif Erickson’s expedition was cut quite short with them engaging in battle with the first natives they saw, resulting in the death of Leif Erikson as well as a few of his companions.
Who was the monk?
Brendan the navigator, 6th c., but the story about “Saint Brendan’s island” is not proven to be about America AFAIK. Or true. It’s a legend about a blessed island that may be a religious myth.
There’s a ton of legends of sailors finding a vanishing island, an island of plenty, the island of apples, that various theories have attached to the Canaries or Azores and such IINM. Saint Brendan is just one among those, so it’s hard to assume it’s fact.
Also, Leif Erikson was in year 1000. And there is a strong suspicion that diseases did play a big role and made it a shitshow.
follow it up with “Guns, Germs, and Steel”
That is historically not accurate.
Walgreens the pharmacy that was ran by the family of the same name made their fortune selling Alcohol during the prohibition era. If you were well off your doctor would write you a prescription for booze which they would happily fill. They grew over thirty times their original size during this time.
and now private equity is going to burn the candle at both ends until all the stores are spirit halloweens
George Washington’s Continental Army had a vaccine mandate.
Heroin was first synthesized in 1874. It’s older than 13 US states. Sitting Bull and heroin existed at the same time. In 1898 it was sold by Bayer as a recreational drug under the brand name Heroin. Frederick Nietzsche was around for the heroin trade.
I’ve seen Bayer heroin tins in a few museums and was glad I lived in an era where you had to go to the work of calling your friend’s brother Todd to take you to Corey’s house to get high, which was way more trouble than it was worth.
