words-writ-in-starlight:
I’m still watching Liberty’s Kids because REASONS and I watched an episode with Baron von Steuben, and I get why they didn’t include this in a kid’s show, but this dude is THE BEST PART of the winter at Valley Forge.
LET ME TELL YOU WHY, WITH ABUSE OF CAPS LOCK AND BAD LANGUAGE AND IRREVERENCE.
Okay, some background. Baron von Steuben was a Prussian baron who shipped his ass over to America in 1777 in order to help Washington whip the bunch of random farmers, miners, tradesmen, etc who formed the Continental ‘Army’ at the time into shape. He reached Valley Forge in early 1778 (after almost getting his own soldiers ARRESTED IN BOSTON because he accidentally outfitted them in red coats, honestly this dude’s life is just PRIME HISTORICAL COMEDY MATERIAL, someone get the fuck on that) and immediately made a name for himself as a complete–but effective!–wackjob. He would go outside in the middle of winter in full military dress and have all the soldiers (many of whom were lacking a coat and boots at the time, because the goddess of efficiency Martha Washington had not yet made her presence known) run drills from sunup to sundown, whereas most military commanders of the day were Pointedly Uninvolved in the messy day-to-day shit. He also continued the trend of having commanders who were still learning English (Lafayette spoke almost no English upon his arrival, for example), because when von Steuben reached America he spoke zero English and had to write all his orders in French and give them to either HIS aide de camp to translate or the aide Washington periodically lent him (fun fact: Lt. Colonols Hamilton and Laurens were his usual lent-out aides because they both spoke French).
NOW YOU HAVE SOME BACKGROUND AND WE CAN GET TO THE GOOD STUFF.
Keep reading
I’m watching Turn and I’ve just finished the set of episodes on Valley Forge and honestly can someone just point me towards literally any media that includes the Pantless Party.
runecestershire:
words-writ-in-starlight:
So in my research for my thesis, I learned a thing, and it’s not useful for my thesis so I’m posting it here instead.
Okay, so, everyone knows that the words canon and cannon are not synonyms, and if you’re like me it kind of makes your teeth grind when people talk about firing the canons or historical cannon. BUT HERE’S THE THING. The word canon is a direct lift from Latin, and it means law or rule. And so when heavy metal guns were developed and needed to be called something other than ‘that big murder machine over there’, the word cannon developed directly out of canon in the sense of “to lay down the law,” the same way Samuel Colt’s gun got called the Peacemaker. Likewise, ordnance comes directly from the Latin ordinance, which also got transferred directly into English as another synonym for ‘rule.’
And that is your totally useless historical fun fact of the day.
Hmmm, do we have a source for this? Because according to Etymonline, cannon is related to cane, roughly means “tube”, and goes back to Latin canna (reed).
Etymology is a vast and complex field, and it’s of course possible that Etymonline is only reporting one of several purported derivations, but he’s usually really good at listing various theories and I’ve never heard this one before soo….
(similarly, ordinance as in weaponry seems to come from the notion of organising it in an armoury)
Yes I do, but the page presenting the theories (although well-cited and reputable to the best of my research, and as this thesis is what’s going to dictate whether I get a BA I’m being rather choosy) is about three hours of reading. It’s about halfway through, and if you want to Ctrl-F it you can just search ‘Peacemaker’. I suppose a better way to phrase it would be that, yeah, cannon is related to canna for ‘reed’ but was introduced with significantly strong associations to bind it to the word canon on an implicit level. This is, generally speaking, why I don’t write posts while distracted late at night–ADHD doesn’t play well with those things if I’m trying to be coherent and weird connections start to appear. And now that it’s a respectable hour I’m kind of wondering how I even managed grammatical sentences.
So in my research for my thesis, I learned a thing, and it’s not useful for my thesis so I’m posting it here instead.
Okay, so, everyone knows that the words canon and cannon are not synonyms, and if you’re like me it kind of makes your teeth grind when people talk about firing the canons or historical cannon. BUT HERE’S THE THING. The word canon is a direct lift from Latin, and it means law or rule. And so when heavy metal guns were developed and needed to be called something other than ‘that big murder machine over there’, the word cannon developed directly out of canon in the sense of “to lay down the law,” the same way Samuel Colt’s gun got called the Peacemaker. Likewise, ordnance comes directly from the Latin ordinance, which also got transferred directly into English as another synonym for ‘rule.’
And that is your totally useless historical fun fact of the day.
just-shower-thoughts:
The entire purpose of a bayonet is to bring a knife to a gun fight.
Redoubt 9, Battle of Yorktown. AKA that one time Alexander Hamilton led an entire battalion of soldiers with nothing but bayonets against the fully armed British. He had half the casualties as any of the battalions attacking with guns.
(via windbladess)
Anonymous asked: Idk if you've answered this somewhere else, but what's your thesis on?
Actually I have NOT answered that, and I am VERY EXCITED about this thesis, please pity my roommate.
A few things you need to know to explain this whole thing:
- my college requires every student, regardless of major, to do some kind of thesis project to graduate;
- my college started as a liberal arts school/social experiment, and would probably let you summon Satan for your senior thesis as long as you could justify it (”Oh, sure, professor, I understand that you’re concerned about that intricate circle of blood on the floor of the art studio, but I have here the proof that this is part of my combined thesis on the history of religious ritual and Ancient Greek, are we good here?”);
- my college generally expects that their science majors (like myself, pre-med track) do an experimental thesis, but my explicit criterion for majoring in the pre-med track was that I not have to do a goddamn year-long experiment;
- I am a history nerd, specifically military history and obscure details that no one else cares about; and
- I have basically constructed an entire thesis around my desire to
- talk about medicine
- talk about history
- title it with a Princess Bride quote
So I’m doing my thesis on the history of battlefield medicine (probably going to have to cut that down, preferably in such a way that I still get to talk about the Revolutionary War, which is my pet obsession) and I’m going to title it “Only Mostly Dead” because I’m an irreverent little shit.
My thesis adviser already gets a little long-suffering with me and I’ve only turned in the preliminary proposal.
buckygreyjoy:
words-writ-in-starlight:
I’m still watching Liberty’s Kids because REASONS and I watched an episode with Baron von Steuben, and I get why they didn’t include this in a kid’s show, but this dude is THE BEST PART of the winter at Valley Forge.
LET ME TELL YOU WHY, WITH ABUSE OF CAPS LOCK AND BAD LANGUAGE AND IRREVERENCE.
Okay, some background. Baron von Steuben was a Prussian baron who shipped his ass over to America in 1777 in order to help Washington whip the bunch of random farmers, miners, tradesmen, etc who formed the Continental ‘Army’ at the time into shape. He reached Valley Forge in early 1778 (after almost getting his own soldiers ARRESTED IN BOSTON because he accidentally outfitted them in red coats, honestly this dude’s life is just PRIME HISTORICAL COMEDY MATERIAL, someone get the fuck on that) and immediately made a name for himself as a complete–but effective!–wackjob. He would go outside in the middle of winter in full military dress and have all the soldiers (many of whom were lacking a coat and boots at the time, because the goddess of efficiency Martha Washington had not yet made her presence known) run drills from sunup to sundown, whereas most military commanders of the day were Pointedly Uninvolved in the messy day-to-day shit. He also continued the trend of having commanders who were still learning English (Lafayette spoke almost no English upon his arrival, for example), because when von Steuben reached America he spoke zero English and had to write all his orders in French and give them to either HIS aide de camp to translate or the aide Washington periodically lent him (fun fact: Lt. Colonols Hamilton and Laurens were his usual lent-out aides because they both spoke French).
NOW YOU HAVE SOME BACKGROUND AND WE CAN GET TO THE GOOD STUFF.
Keep reading
REMEMBER THE PANTSLESS FLAMING SHOTS PARTY
YEAH
(ALSO. it is possible Alexander Hamilton was there. it is SO possible.)
Actually hell yes, given Alexander Hamilton’s apparent proclivity to hitting on anything that stood still long enough and wasn’t either British or Jefferson, it’s frankly PROBABLE that, not only was he there, he probably dragged anyone who seemed willing with him. (John Laurens. I am saying he probably dragged Laurens. Valley Forge is a veritable cornucopia of delightful historical hypotheses. I hope you’re all braced for me to do my thesis next year and become VERY ANNOYING.)
(via skymurdock)
I’m still watching Liberty’s Kids because REASONS and I watched an episode with Baron von Steuben, and I get why they didn’t include this in a kid’s show, but this dude is THE BEST PART of the winter at Valley Forge.
LET ME TELL YOU WHY, WITH ABUSE OF CAPS LOCK AND BAD LANGUAGE AND IRREVERENCE.
Okay, some background. Baron von Steuben was a Prussian baron who shipped his ass over to America in 1777 in order to help Washington whip the bunch of random farmers, miners, tradesmen, etc who formed the Continental ‘Army’ at the time into shape. He reached Valley Forge in early 1778 (after almost getting his own soldiers ARRESTED IN BOSTON because he accidentally outfitted them in red coats, honestly this dude’s life is just PRIME HISTORICAL COMEDY MATERIAL, someone get the fuck on that) and immediately made a name for himself as a complete–but effective!–wackjob. He would go outside in the middle of winter in full military dress and have all the soldiers (many of whom were lacking a coat and boots at the time, because the goddess of efficiency Martha Washington had not yet made her presence known) run drills from sunup to sundown, whereas most military commanders of the day were Pointedly Uninvolved in the messy day-to-day shit. He also continued the trend of having commanders who were still learning English (Lafayette spoke almost no English upon his arrival, for example), because when von Steuben reached America he spoke zero English and had to write all his orders in French and give them to either HIS aide de camp to translate or the aide Washington periodically lent him (fun fact: Lt. Colonols Hamilton and Laurens were his usual lent-out aides because they both spoke French).
NOW YOU HAVE SOME BACKGROUND AND WE CAN GET TO THE GOOD STUFF.
Keep reading
