A 300-Year Old Recipe for Fried Chicken

Today is apparently a food day! Here is your second food-related post of the day: a 1736 recipe for fried chicken.

Nadezhda Durova (1783-1866), was the daughter of a Russian Army officer. When Napoleon invaded Russia, she decided that the boys clearly couldn't handle this, and it was time for a woman to step up. So she disguised herself as a man, and served in a cavalry regiment. She was the first recorded Female Officer in the Russian army, and was awarded the Cross of St George for bravery under fire. Her memoir, The Cavalry Maiden, is a significant document of its era because few junior officers of the Napoleonic wars published their experiences

James Buchanan was born in 1791. He was the 15th president of the United States, and his two immediate predecessors were both born after 1800 (13th president Millard Fillmore in 1800, 14th president Franklin Pierce in 1804). Buchanan is the only US president whose century-of-birth preceded that of the president before him.

The Long Occupation of Estonia

Since 1219, Estonia was ruled at various times by Danish, Swedish, German, and Russian governments. It declared independence after World War I, but that only lasted until 1940 when it was occupied by the Soviet Union. Estonia has only been an independent nation since 1991. That means that since 1219, Estonia has been independent for exactly 50 years out of 800!

The United States flag started out with 13 stars, and 13 stripes, for the 13 original states. The flag slowly accumulated stars as new states were added to the Union. In 1959 it reached its present form of 50 stars, with the addition of Hawai’i. For obvious patriotic reasons, it was decided in 1818 that after a new state had been confirmed by Congress, that state’s star would be officially added to the flag on the next 4th of July.

This led to a fun historical oddity: even though Wyoming and Idaho became states within a week of each other in 1890, their stars were put on a year apart. How did this happen? Well, Idaho became a state on July 3rd, 1890 and Wyoming became a state on July 10th, 1890. Because Wyoming just missed the July 4th deadline, its star was added 1 year later, in 1891.

“Kleptomania” and “kleptocracy” come from the same Greek word, kléptein, "to steal." Another descendant of kléptein is kléftis.

In modern Greek, Kléftis were highwaymen turned self-appointed anti-Ottoman insurgents. They were descendants of Greeks who retreated into the mountains during the 1400s after the Ottomans conquered the Greek-speaking world, and they maintained a war of harassment against the Ottomans until the 1800s and Greek’s independence. Being an insurgent was a family tradition!

New geological research suggests that the Incan city of Macchu Picchu is located at the spot where two faults in the tectonic plates meet. These faults produced an abundance of stone over millions of years, meaning that the Incans had plenty of stone easily available to build a city with. The researchers added that other Incan cities, including Ollantaytambo, Pisac, and Cusco, are located at similar intersections.

Those same fractures that provided stone also make for excellent drains. Which is important to help avoid flooding during the heavy rainstorms that can happen in the region. The excellent drainage almost certainly contributed to Macchu Picchu surviving so well, after its abandonment by the Inca, and being left to the elements for over 400 years.

The Territory Ever Controlled By Istanbul, by Length of Control

Note that in this map, the Aceh Sultanate is considered a vassal of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans did send a fleet and other military aid to help the Acehnese in wars with the Malay kingdoms and the Portuguese, and the Acehnese did acknowledge the Ottoman sultan as caliph. It's still a stretch to say that the Ottomans in Istanbul "controlled" the Aceh territory on Sumatra.

This is why Black Sea shipwrecks are such a unique find

Remote-controlled cameras are giving humanity our first glimpse of dozens of wrecks entombed in the icy depths off the coast of Bulgaria. These cameras were originally sent down for an entirely different purpose: studying how changing sea levels affected prehistoric humanity. But once the underwater cameras were sent down, the research team was stunned at the number -- and highly preserved state -- of shipwrecks spanning from the 800s to the 1800.

TLDR: an article on why you keep hearing about Black Sea shipwrecks.