Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win

you-wish-you-had-this-url:

jessicahenwick:

seduce me with obscure knowledge of history

*seductive voice* Alexander Hamilton wasn’t allowed to fast track trough Princeton because a student had done that the previous year, and had a nervous breakdown due to stress. That student was James Madison.

(via skymurdock)

friendlytroll:

khaleesi:

In honor of Lord Byron’s birthday I would like to remind you all of the time that Shelley and Keats, having not heard from him for some time, became concerned for his safety and it was determined that Shelley would go looking for him. Keats received a letter some time later that Shelley had found him in Venice, where he’d been having so much sex that he’d nearly died from malnourishment and dehydration. Keats’ entire response amounted to essentially, “You should probably have let him.”

“I found him, he’s in a gutter.” “Well go put him back”

(via cthulhu-with-a-fez)

womandrogyne:

polytropic-liar:

bathsabbath:

culturallyrelevanturl:

susiephone:

astra-lux:

Not enough people talk about the fact that Leonardo da Vinci was gay. Like, he’s literally the father of modern technology and one of the smartest human beings to ever live and I never ever learned in school that he was gay. 

If all the LGBT people are as “DOOMED” as the bible thumpers think we are, hell, at least we’re in good company. 

I was about to say I can’t believe I didn’t know this

and then I remembered the American education system

Yes, I can fucking believe I didn’t know this.

But yeah. Leonardo da Vinci was gay. Pass it on.

Leo painted a picture of his lover as Jesus and that’s the image we use today

Oh man that is sad. I’m sorry your teachers are failing you.

Some Leonardo facts you should tattoo on your heart:

• He was actually convicted for sodomy at age 24, but the allegations were dropped for lack of testimony. The charges affected him immensely, as he was by all means, a very private person.
• Da Vinci’s models for Christ are unknown. The claim that he depicted his lover as Jesus most likely arose from the bullshit about Cesare Borgia being the inspiration for White Jesus™ combined with the allegations that Leonardo and Cesare were lovers…There is little to no support for these claims. However, it’s speculated his lover Gian Giacomo Caprotti was the model for his St. John the Baptist.
  
• He was universally beloved (minus Michelangelo lollll), like the nicest, funniest, gentlest, handsomest man you’d ever meet. He was generous beyond words, treated everyone equally, and loved to play pranks.
• He was also fuckin’ ripped. It was rumored he could bend a horseshoe in half with his bare hands.
  
• Often wore pink and other vibrant colors.
• Rumored to sleep approx. 2 hours a night.
• Was left-handed and ambidextrous. He was dyslexic, possibly had ADD, and suffered from frequent paranoia.
  
• He was his own worst critic and often destroyed his work. He still left behind over 13k journal pages, filled with sketches and so many dick jokes.
  
• His last words were: “I have offended God and mankind because my work did not reach the quality it should have.”
  
• Would buy caged animals from the market just to set them free. He was allegedly a vegetarian.
  
• For a time he kept a pet lizard and made him a custom set of wings and horns. He would routinely scare the shit out of people with his ‘dragon.’
• My all time fave: While staying in the Vatican he would invite guests into a residential room which had been filled with cleaned/dried animal intestines that he had sewn together. He fastened a bellows to the end of the intestines and proceeded to inflate them. Onlookers were so excited to see DaVinci’s new ”invention” that they didn’t even realize this asshole was just blowing up a giant balloon and pinning them to the wall holy shit I love him so much.
  

Where is the musical. Lin-Manuel Miranda, fix this.

Call it The da Vinci Mode

(Source: sizzlebutt, via yea-lets-do-this-shit)

thefingerfuckingfemalefury:

twoheartsneverlie:

dorksidefiker:

abotl:

txwatson:

severusluver:

gulag-nietzschean:

I LEARNED RECENTLY THAT PLATO WON THE GOLD MEDAL IN THE OLYMPICS FOR WRESTLING THREE TIMES. THIS PUTS A NEW PERSPECTIVE ON THINGS. I ALWAYS IMAGINED PLATO TO BE FRAIL AND MISSHAPEN BUT HE MUST HAVE BEEN FRICKEN RIPPED. I WONDER IF ARISTOTLE EVER FELT ANXIETY ABOUT GETTING PHYSICALLY (I.E. NOT JUST METAPHYSICALLY) DISMANTLED BY PLATO. PLATO WAS PROBABLY PISSED OFF BY AT LEAST A HANDFUL OF QUESTIONS ARISTOTLE ASKED HIM. ARISTOTLE WAS A LITERAL GENIUS TOO. IMAGINE PLATO LECTURING AND WRITING ON A BLACKBOARD AND ARISTOTLE THROWING A COMMENT OUT THERE ABOUT SOME COMPLEX MISSTEP IN PLATO’S LOGIC AND PLATO’S CHALK JUST SNAPS AND ARISTOTLE’S TESTICLES SUCK WAY BACK UP TO WHERE THEY DROPPED FROM, THEN PLATO IN A BLUR APPEARS BESIDE ARISTOTLE SITTING AT HIS DESK AND HE PICKS HIM UP AND SUPLEXES HIS MACEDONIAN ASS.

This needs to be a comic.

louisrzurn

given the content of a lot of Plato’s conclusions I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Plato responded to a lot of reasonable criticisms with “Fight me” and that was the end of it.

We’re not actually sure whether Plato is his real name! Some people speculate that, because Platon means “broad” in Greek, this was actually his wrestling nick name. Basically, it’s like Dwayne Johnson became a famous philosopher and everyone still called him “The Rock”.

Can we have a movie about Plato starring Dwayne Johnson?

You can’t convince me that wouldn’t be the best thing ever.

I didn’t know I needed this until now. If someone can write a decent screenplay, and we get enough people to talk about it, maybe he’ll actually see it and we can kickstart the shit out of it

Plato’s name is literally just the Ancient Greek for ‘Swol’ how is this the real life

(Source: rangordnung, via littlestartopaz)

philly-osopher:

*slams binders on table*

LET’S TALK ABOUT JAMES ARMISTEAD LAFAYETTE

This is the best photo I can find of him, you guys. I’m sorry. You should all draw fanart of him because he’s the best. And you know I wouldn’t make such a claim without hard evidence to back it up.

He was born a slave on a Virginia plantation. The year was either 1748 or 1760. Seriously, fans of Hamilton think they have it hard with his age having two years of uncertainty. Try TWELVE.

The name Armistead came from his owner, William Armistead. William Armistead was apparently “a man of strong peculiarities, a gentleman of the old school, wearing knee buckles and retaining English tastes.” (source) Despite his English tastes, several of his sons fought in the Revolution; one of them was killed at the Battle of Brandywine.

We don’t know very much about Armistead’s youth, but I think it’s fair to say it sucked. However, we also know that he learned how to read and write at some point. This would come in handy later.

In 1781, the war came to Virginia. Cornwallis was wreaking havoc and Lafayette, outgunned outmanned etc., was desperately attempting to annoy him without being captured or crushed. It was apparently at this time (at the age of either 21 or 33) that James Armistead asked for and received permission to join Lafayette’s command.

Conditions for former slaves under the British were significantly better than under the Americans. (Witness, John Laurens’ extreme difficulties trying to get a black battalion approved by South Carolina’s legislature. Meanwhile, the British were offering emancipation to slaves who would fight for them. They were using them as cannon fodder and manual laborers, but still.)

James and Lafayette hit it off. Lafayette was an abolitionist, and he quickly realized that James had qualities (e.g. he was literate and quick-witted, but, being black, was also likely to be overlooked) that made him suitable for intelligence work. And, as he wrote to Hamilton around that time, “I shall work devilish hard for intelligences.” (source)

James crafted a plausible story for himself: that he had escaped a cruel owner and wanted to join the British for a shot at freedom. The first person he convinced of this story? BENEDICT FUCKING ARNOLD.

Let that sink in. Benedict Arnold, infamous turncoat, who knew exactly what to look for in a double agent because he had been one himself for two years. Who was only caught because John Andre got himself captured! And Arnold never suspected a thing. And I QUOTE, “Arnold was so convinced of Armistead’s pose as a runaway slave that he used him to guide British troops through local roads. Armistead often traveled between camps, spying on British officers, who spoke openly about their strategies in front of him. Armistead documented this information in written reports, delivered them to other American spies, and then return to General Cornwallis’s camp.” (source)

Are you impressed yet? I know I am. IT GETS BETTER.

At this time, Lafayette’s forces were extremely underfunded and bedraggled, and the state of Virginia wasn’t exactly doing its part to supply food/ men (thanks, Governor of Virginia at the time Thomas Jefferson). There were times when it got precarious. Good intel helped Lafayette stay a step ahead.

After Arnold got reassigned James started spying on Cornwallis instead. You know where this is going, right? Cornwallis decided to encamp on this peninsula called Yorktown that is totally not famous at all and wait for the British fleet to come up and take him and his troops away. Lafayette encircled him by land.

This whole time, James was sending Lafayette intelligence about Cornwalls; his mood, his supply situation, morale in camp, the health of the men, how the fortifications were arranged. How did he send his messages, you ask? Dead drop? Smoke signals? Strategic petticoat patterns?

He. Fucking. Walked. From camp to camp. Time after fucking time. (source) How he talked the British into being okay with this, I have no idea, but he somehow did it. Presumably, it was his hard and incredibly risky work that let Lafayette know that Cornwallis was determined to wait for the British fleet to arrive (hint: it wasn’t coming) and that many of his men were sick with malaria (which Lafayette also caught because this part of Virginia was swampy af) and various other fevers. In other words, they were sitting ducks.

Furthermore, Armistead was the ONLY SUCCESSFUL SPY in Yorktown. All the others were either a) caught or b) unable to get good information. (source)

Seriously, if we were making Hamilton lines more accurate, we should change it to, “How did we know that this plan would work? We had a spy on the inside, that’s right JAMES ARMISTEAD!!!” 

After the war James wound up a slave again, because life is incredibly unfair. There was a bill that allowed emancipation of slaves who served as soldiers during the Revolution. Can you believe the sheer levels of dickery it must have required for people to argue that this didn’t apply to James, because he had been a spy and not technically fought? He’d put his life on the line every damn day!

James petitioned for his freedom. Lafayette wrote him a letter of reference to support his case, because really, it was only fucking fair. He won his freedom, changed his name to James Armistead Lafayette, and settled down on a farm, where he had a giant family and died in 1830 (or 1832?) at the ripe old age of 70, or 72, or 82, or 84.

OH WAIT I ALMOST FORGOT THE CUTEST PART, although this story is apocryphal and I can’t find a good source. Lafayette returned to the U.S. in 1824 as an old man to tour around, visit old buddies like wacky ol’ TJeff, preside over shit being named after him, and generally be applauded and gushed over and adored from all sides. Apparently he was sitting in a carriage, in the middle of a parade in his honor, when he spots James in the crowd and LEAPS out of the carriage and hauls the guy into a bear hug. Which, okay, maybe it never happened, but my heart wants to believe it’s true.

In conclusion:

1. James Armistead Lafayette was an utter badass

2. Lafayette could have been captured playing cat-and-mouse with Cornwallis in Virginia without him. 

3. The Patriots might not have recognized Yorktown for the golden opportunity it was without him

4. The Battle of Yorktown could have been lost without him.

5. Tell your friends, tell your family.

6. If he’s not in Turn eventually I will lose my shit.

7. You should all write fic and draw art about him and then tag me in it so I can reblog it

I want to marry this post.

(via revolaurenary)

Anonymous asked: high key can u give me a rundown of ur fav wacky wwii shenanigans

rushingsnowy:

profmeowmers:

Okay friends today we are gonna learn about the GHOST ARMY, which, disappointingly, was not actually an army made of ghosts

pictured: the unit patch for the Ghost Army, which is DOPE AS FUCK

see one of the things that made WWII so fucking nuts was the totally bizarre level of technology. Like wow we invented the first real computer and radar but also if you wanted to see how many troops were hanging out somewhere you had to send a dude to fly over and take pictures manually??? this left A LOT of room for shenanigans

so the normal method of dealing with aerial surveillance was to cover shit with camouflage netting. Say you’ve got an nice air base that you really don’t want any bombs dropped on- you literally just cover that with a ludicrous amount of netting and some fake trees and BAM now it looks like just an empty field from the air

there’s a building under that weird lump

that’s cool! That’s really cool! But not cool enough

At some point somebody sat down and went “hey wait. What if…what if instead of disguising buildings and units as fields, we disguise fields as units”

holy fucking shit!!!

the British had used a bunch of fake tanks and like, boxes of provisions stacked up in tank shape and then covered with a tarp in 1942 during Operation Bertram and it worked really well, but they didn’t have a special unit devoted to just clowning on the Germans like that.

so the US military decides they do want a designated clowning unit and goes out and recruits a bunch of fucking nerds from all the art schools and makes them into the 23^rd Headquarters Special Troops aka THE GHOST ARMY, WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU USE ANY OTHER NAME LIKE SERIOUSLY

the ghost army’s job was basically to go in, sidle up to a real unit, and then basically set up a fake version of that unit while the actual unit sneaked away to go dunk on Nazis where the Nazis weren’t expecting them

okay time to get into the really cool part of this story, which is HOW the ghost army faked being a real unit:

step 1: INFLATABLE TANKS AND AIRCRAFT OH MY GOD

that’s a big ol balloon!!!

the ghost army had a stockpile of inflatable tanks, aircraft, artillery, cars, whatever, that they would set up and then poorly cover with camouflage netting so from the air it looked like someone had just done a real shit job of hiding actual materiel. They even had dummy soldiers that they would set up to make the scene look populated, since the ghost army itself was about 1,000 dudes regularly imitating units of 30,000 men

what’s really cool is that visual deception was more than just the inflatable stuff itself. If the ghost army plopped down a balloon tank, they then also had to go out with shovels and rakes and shit to make a fake track that a real tank would have left, because it turns out tanks are really hard on your landscaping

step 2: “spoof radio”

the last couple of days before the real unit moved out, the radio operators of the ghost army would move in. see, radio transmissions were done in Morse code, and it turns out every radio operator has a slightly different “fist” when typing Morse. A “fist” is basically typing style- some people would take longer to type out certain letters or would have pauses between groups or anything like. Anybody listening to the radio transmissions who was skilled enough could tell different radio operators apart from just their fist

anyway the ghost army operators would move in and basically listen to all the real unit’s radio transmissions until they had learned the real operators’ fists. Then they would take over radio traffic, imitating that fist so it seemed like the real operator had never left. I forgot to make this section funny because I was too caught up in how rad it is SORRY

step 3: making a lot of noise

the ghost army had special trucks fitted with huge fuck off speakers and a whole library of stock sound effects. Once the real unit left and the fake unit inflated, the sound trucks would come in, select a combination of sound effects that matched the unit they were impersonating, and then played everyone in the 15 mile radius of the speakers their fire mix tape

step 4: fuckin partying!!!

see the thing about impersonating your own units is that other allied units would know about it and might talk about it where enemy collaborators could hear. So the ghost army had to fool the Germans but they also had to fool their own army. Every time they impersonated a new unit, the ghost soldiers would paint that unit’s insignia on all the fake materiel, make fake signs with the unit’s name and colors, and sew the unit’s patches on their own uniforms

once they were dressed up as soldiers from the impersonated unit, the ghost army dudes would go into town and mingle with other soldiers from actual fighting units nearby and hang out in bars while loudly saying things like “YES HELLO I AM DEFINITELY A REAL SOLDIER FROM THE WHATEVER DIVISION, ABSOLUTELY FOR REAL STATIONED ON THAT HILL OVER THERE”

so anyway this bunch of weedy American art nerds staged 20+ battlefield deceptions between 1944 and the end of the war, sometimes fooling that Germans so successfully that they actually got shelled

I'mma leave you with this quote from the book “The Ghost Army of World War II” by Rick Beyer and Elizabeth Sayles, because it’s a quote from an actual member of the Ghost Army and that alone makes it funnier than anything I could ever write:

On another occasion, two Frenchmen on bicycles somehow got through the security perimeter. Shilstone managed to halt them, but not before they had seen more than they should. “What they thought they saw was four GIs picking up a forty-ton Sherman tank and turning it around. They looked at me, and they were looking for answers, and I finally said ‘The Americans are very strong.‘”

1. Jack definitely studied this.

2. Where’s my AU????