Today I learned...

[Louanne Learning]

Today I learned that in Britain only 6,000 books were published in the first decade of the eighteenth century; in the last decade of the same century the number of new titles was in excess of 56,000.

In the 18th century, a “reading revolution” happened – a term popularized by historian Rolf Engelsing. Reading expanded from a few texts, mostly religious, to a great variety of new material – in what some call a “democratization of knowledge.”

 

[Rath Darkblade]

Yep. I've read something similar between the lines of Dr. Ian Mortimer's "The Time Traveller's Guide to Restoration Britain" and "The Time Traveller's Guide to Regency Britain".

Between the Restoration (1660-something) and the start of the Regency (1811), the introduction of both coffee-houses and the Royal Mail (which became open to the public, but only very gradually) meant that more people wanted to learn how to read.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, coffee-houses were the places where people met to read the news (both from home and abroad). They also doubled as rudimentary stock exchanges. Coffee was new and very expensive, so only the upper-classes and merchants-made-good (or nouveau riche) could go there.

People who couldn't read were, naturally, at a disadvantage. The literate would read the news for the illiterate, but still, if you were illiterate, you couldn't trade. This naturally spurred on people's desire to learn to read.

Greater literacy meant that more people wanted to send mail, but in the absence of a centralized postage system (like the Royal Mail), they had to rely on paid messengers. These were slow, and could be robbed by highwaymen, so the Royal Mail decided to open up to people other than royalty (provided they could afford the postage rates).

It's funny: the stereotype of people in the past (especially in the Middle Ages, but also in the early modern world) is illiterate, untravelling, and dirty. But -- for a good chunk of the population -- that simply isn't true.

 

[Louanne Learning]

Some say we are entering a post-literate society. Reading is definitely on the wane.

 

[Louanne Learning]

Some say we are entering a post-literate society.

Today I learned that in a study of the reading comprehension skills of English majors at two midwestern universities, 58% of the subjects were found to be “problematic readers” – meaning they had no successful reading tactics to help them understand what they were reading, and became quickly lost and floundered throughout the reading test.

The selection used for the reading test was the first paragraph of Dickens’ Bleak House:

London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snowflakes—gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another’s umbrellas in a general infection of ill temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if this day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest.

 

[Rath Darkblade]

I'm not surprised, actually. Bleak House was written in 1852-53. Styles of writing have changed considerably since then.

I won't say that the above paragraph is incomprehensible -- it certainly isn't -- but this word painting of London would certainly be much more recognisable to London readers in the mid-and-later 19th century.

For instance:

- Who among us would know where Lincoln's Inn Hall or Holborn Hill unless you were English, or been to England (especially London)? I'm aware of who the Lord Chancellor is, and the fact that Lincoln's Inn is the place where lawyers generally tended to congregate, but I studied London for years. I'm not sure what the relevance of Holborn Hill is (if any).

- I'm not Christian, so I only know about Michaelmas because I looked it up. (The Feast of St. Michael, held on September 29th).
- The bit about horses being "splashed to their very blinkers" by "flakes of soot" makes no sense unless you know what horses' blinkers are. (People who have never been to the country nowadays, or for whom English is not their first language, probably wouldn't know this).

Therefore, if you're simply reading Bleak House without some of this background knowledge, some of the above wouldn't make sense. Then you'd flounder and give up.

On the other hand ... the quotes they give from problematic readers (and even halfway-competent ones) are horrifying. These people need help in interpreting a scene and what an author is saying.

 

[Homer Potvin]

Today I learned that in a study of the reading comprehension skills of English majors at two midwestern universities, 58% of the subjects were found to be “problematic readers” – meaning they had no successful reading tactics to help them understand what they were reading, and became quickly lost and floundered throughout the reading test.

The selection used for the reading test was the first paragraph of Dickens’ Bleak House:

Reason #3287 why I don't read Dickens. I would give up reading, too, if that was the only option.

 

[Link the Writer]

Jesus, and people wonder why folks don’t like reading.

Why would anyone want to read if they’re forced to read something they’re not into, then made to feel stupid afterward?

 

[Rath Darkblade]

Agreed, give them something more up-to-date to read. I haven't read Dickens for ages, not since I re-read "Oliver Twist" and found it to be hideously moralistic.

Poe is more exciting than Dickens (especially if done right - perhaps if read by someone like the late and much-missed Christopher Lee).

 

[Rigor Mortis]

Someone needs to clean up this thread before sevencrowns happens upon it.

 

[Naomasa298]

Sir Menzies Campbell, former (brief) leader of the UK Liberal Democrat party died today, although that's more a thing for the Notable Deaths thread.

What I wanted to post here was that, I learned today that during his athletics career, he held the British record over 100m, running it in 10.2 seconds twice - and the first time he ran that time, he beat... O.J. Simpson.

 

[Rath Darkblade]

Today I learned (once again) that ancient writers of history cannot be depended upon.

I googled a very simple question: "How did Agrippina the Younger die?" and received three different accounts - one from Tacitus, one from Suetonius, and one from Cassius Dio.

The only thing they agree upon is that her son killed her ... and seeing as her son was the emperor Nero, and that she did her best to keep governmental powers in her hands before her death, it doesn't take Hercule Poirot to realise why Nero wanted mummy dearest dead.

It's not that Agrippina the Younger was innocent by any means, having murdered, herself or by proxy, probably up to a dozen people for various reasons. But at least she was good at it (well, she had a lot of practice). Nero's attempts to kill her, on the other hand, read like something out of Pink Panther ... if Peter Sellers was playing an incompetent megalomaniac, that is. To this day, it is uncertain how she died.

Suetonius's account is the most complicated. First, Nero tried poison (three times, in fact), but Agrippina took an antidote in advance.

Afterwards, he rigged up a machine in her room which would drop her ceiling tiles onto her as she slept, but she once again escaped death after she received word of the plan.

Nero's final plan was to get her in a boat which would collapse and sink - but Agrippina, who was a good swimmer, escaped and swam to shore.

Then Nero lost patience and sent a bunch of hitmen to stab her to death. That succeeded.

Tacitus's account is slightly less convoluted. First, there was the self-sinking boat ... where Agrippina was nearly crushed by a collapsing ceiling. (I think Tacitus is copying someone).

The boat failed to sink, so the crew then sank the boat, but Agrippina swam to shore. Then the hitmen, etc., etc.

Cassius Dio's account is simplest. First, Nero pretended to reconcile with his and put her aboard a boat that was designed to open at the bottom while at sea. Once the bottom of the ship opened up, she fell into the water.

However, the sailors ended up killing Agrippina's friend instead, and Agrippina swam to shore. Then, Nero sent the hitmen, etc.

All three authors contradict each other, so it's hard to understand what happened. One thing's for sure, though: all three authors hated Nero and his mum.

 

[Louanne Learning]

Today I learned just how vastly the Earth's surface can change: The highest point on Earth was once at the bottom of the sea!

The summit of Mount Everest was actually the seafloor 470 million years ago! That's right, the rock that comprises the "summit pyramid" or uppermost part of Mount Everest is gray limestone that was deposited on the northern continental shelf of northern India during the early to middle Ordovician Period of the Paleozoic Era, long before India began its northward journey towards Eurasia and the eventual collision of tectonic plates that uplifted the Himalaya and Tibetan Plateau.

Summit Limestone - Everest Education Expedition | Montana State University

www.montana.edu

 

[Homer Potvin]

Today I learned (once again) that ancient writers of history cannot be depended upon.

My Roman history professors explained it as "moral history" that was closer to parable than fact. The people were real but was written about them, often centuries later, was often intended to paint events in a certain light to align with the political or moral zeitgeist of the author's time. And there are entire decades that have only a single source. It wouldn't be much different if 2000 years from now, aliens land on Earth and find only a Fox News or an MSNBC opinion column on the first quarter of the 21st century. There are certain periods that have decent primary sources and some corrobation, then other periods with little to no primary accounts and only one guy writing centuries after the fact. Some of it is reliable but a lot of it is borderline useless. You can glean good info on the "what" but often little on the "why." It is what it is.

 

[Naomasa298]

Yup. That's why we rely on corroboration from multiple sources.

Writing a critical piece on the current emperor's granddad is was to result in much the same outcome in Ancient Rome as it does in modern Pyongyang. Nothing has changed much in that regard.

 

[Homer Potvin]

Yup. That's why we rely on corroboration from multiple sources.

Writing a critical piece on the current emperor's granddad is was to result in much the same outcome in Ancient Rome as it does in modern Pyongyang. Nothing has changed much in that regard.

What, you telling me he (or Jong Il) didn't invent hamburgers? Well, that changes everything.

 

[Louanne Learning]

Today I learned - The earliest definitive evidence of equestrianism dates to 4,000 years ago: In the Ural Mountains of Russia, archaeologists unearthed the remains of bridles and chariots.

But some scholars say humans began relying on horses for transport a couple of millennia earlier than that, in the Eurasian steppes near the Black Sea.

What Made Horses Rideable​

How horse genetics and human culture co-evolved

 

[Rath Darkblade]

I learned (not today, but when I read Experience of War by Robert Cowley) that the Greek legend of the Amazons may have been inspired by their experience with Scythian warrior-women, near the Black Sea. Such women were expert horse-riders, and were also famed archers, but the legend that the Amazons cut off one of their breasts to make it easier to shoot is ... ahem ... apocryphal, to say the least.

Experience of War, by the way, is a collation of essays from MHQ (Military History Quarterly), a monthly magazine that Cowley edited. I very much recommend the book.

The Real Amazons (from The New Yorker).

 

[Louanne Learning]

Today I learned that as of yesterday, 200 hikers caught in a shock blizzard are still stranded on Mount Everest's eastern slopes in Tibet. At least one hiker has died. Rescuers have so far guided 350 people to safety in the small township of Qudang. Authorities are in contact with all the hikers who are still trapped.

"Our windbreakers and raincoats were no match for the snow. We were all drenched," nature photographer Dong Shuchang said, adding that several people in his group of 20 showed signs of hypothermia.

The 27-year-old had been to the Himalayas more than a dozen times, but said he has "never experienced weather like this".

'I was lucky to get out': Everest hikers battle hypothermia as blizzard rescue continues

 

[Link the Writer]

Today I learned that Helen Keller got her eyes removed in 1911 for cosmetic reasons, because apparently her left eye was bulging out slightly and it ruined the 'magnificent beauty' of her face so out both eyes went and she wore glass eyes for the rest of her life.

 

[Louanne Learning]

A little while ago, I learned that around the mid-19th century, they called poetry "grass" - and then today I was reading something that mentioned Whitman's volume of poetry - Leaves of Grass (1855) - which I had heard about before - but it came to me today - the leaves he was talking about were pages in a book - so Leaves of Grass actually refers to Pages of Poetry.