Let's Learn Namibia's Geography!

I know I'm undereducated about Namibia. Maybe you are too?

This Dagger Has A Near-Impossible Sheath

Seriously, how do you put this dagger away without scrapping the edges, wearing down the sharpness each time? Despite its impractical sheath, this is a truly beautiful piece of art. Bali, Indonesia, early 1700s. Made with iron-nickel alloy, silver, gold, and wood.

Huge Cache Of 1700s-Era Rockets Found In India

More than a 1,000 were discovered, unexploded, from an abandoned well at a fort in the Karnataka state in southern India. They ranged in size from 12 to 14 inches long. And they were all filled with potassium nitrate, charcoal, and magnesium powder. From their make and their contents, archaeologists identified the rockets as Mysore rockets, the first iron-cased rockets to be used successfully in military combat.

The rockets are believed to have belonged to the Muslim warrior king Tipu Sultan, who ruled over Karnataka’s Shivamogga district at the time. He was also a resolute opponent of the British East India Company. He fought four wars against the British company, ultimately dying in the fourth.

What Was The Second Agricultural Revolution?

The First Agricultural Revolution occurred around 10,000 years ago when humans first domesticated plants. In the early 1700s the Industrial Revolution led to faster and more efficient farming technology, which helped usher in the Second Agricultural Revolution from 1700 to 1900 in developed countries. Many less developed countries are considered to be still experiencing the Second Agricultural Revolution.

A Brief History of Cheese

Did you know cheese is older than even writing?

The Austrian Empire was serious about its censorship. It had a very, very long state index of banned books, mostly based on the Vatican's Index librorum prohibitorum. Ironically, the Austrian state index became a defacto list of interesting books, and students would buy it, to find out what they should be reading! In the end, the state index was itself placed on a banned books register in 1777.

Today's cheesecakes are made with cream cheese, plus a combination of sugar, eggs, flour, and flavors. Cream cheese is a modern invention, but cheesecakes go further back. There is evidence that cheesecakes using ricotta, cottage cheese, mascarpone and others existed long before. However, if you traveled back to North America in the 1700s (and Western Europe) and ordered a “cheesecake” you would probably find yourself disappointed.

Cheesecakes used to have no cheese at all! Although they have various flavors a modern eater might recognize, like lemon, many others would be completely foreign, like potato cheesecake. As far as those who study the cookbooks of the 1700s can surmise, such cakes were called cheesecakes because they were made to have the consistency and texture of cheese, and also were usually made in a pie-like dish and kind of resembled a cheese wheel.

Recent Historical Analyses Reveal More About Blackbeard's Early Life

Some tidbits that interested me:

1. Blackbeard was born Edward Thache, son of a moneyed Englishman who brought his family to the Caribbean when Edward was 4 or 5 years old, to become a plantation owner. They owned slaves.
2. Edward's mother Elizabeth died in 1699, and sometime around then, Edward had a daughter he named Elizabeth.
3. By 1699, Edward Thache was working as a mariner, and he joined the British navy in April 1706.
4. In late 1706, his father passed away, and Edward signed over his inherited estates to his stepmother, choosing life at sea over life as a planter
5. Thache almost certainly fought in Queen Anne's War (1701 - 1714) and probably enjoyed the fighting, because when the war was over, he turned pirate

This type of hilt is called a "basket" style. Because it is like a basket weave? Venetian two-handed broadsword, circa 1775 - 1800.

The Shogun Who Loved Dogs

Tsunayoshi Tokugawa was shogun of Japan from 1680 to 1709. For a long time, he had a bad reputation, historically. The samurai class disliked him because Tsunayoshi had a fondness for boys of any class -- and the samurai did not like that Tsunayoshi did not discriminate his lovers by class. He was also a pretty strict ruler, confiscating many properties, cracking down on prostitution, and banning too-fancy fabrics. None of which likely endeared Tsunayoshi to the literate class, either. But this is not a post about his administrative style. This is a post about dogs.

Often fondly referred to as Oinusama (the dog shogun), Tsunayoshi really did have a soft spot for canines. He was born during the Year of the Dog, and was told that he had been a dog in a previous life. Tsunayoshi also issued a number of edicts, known as Edicts on Compassion for Living Things, that were released daily to the public. Most of them involved the protection of dogs — in fact, it was a capital crime to harm one. A massive kennel, said to have held more than 50,000 dogs, had to be set up outside the capital city of Edo to house the surfeit of dogs that resulted. Paid for by the happy citizens of Edo, of course.

Tsunayoshi was not just about the dogs, though that is what he remains known for. He became immersed in Neo-Confucianism and studied it profusely. Through this influence, Tsunayoshi enacted many protections for living beings — not just dogs — during his rule. In fact, he also insisted abandoned children and sick travelers should be taken care of and not be left to die, as was often the practice.