His blood contains an extremely rare *antibody that can be used to treat Rhesus disease. He has donated blood over 1000 times, and as a consequence has saved the lives of roughly 2 million newborn babies around the world.
edit: antibody, not enzyme. I r not uh sciencetist
Varlo ยท 1273 points ยท Posted at 21:48:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So the guy is 79 now. What do they do to treat this disease when he dies? Does he represent such a large share of the existing enzyme supply that fatal cases of the disease would spike in the event of his death?
corran450 ยท 1779 points ยท Posted at 22:01:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
John Harrison, invented the marine chronometer, a device for solving the problem of calculating longitude while at sea. Should also be credited for saving millions of lives.
Not necessarily a cloning farm, but should we run out of human sources (James Harrison isn't the only personhaving that globuline, he just donates like a madman) or should those source become unsustainable/uneconomical we could produce that globuline in other organisms by genetic engineering. I'm personally a fan of doing this in plants, but animals and fungi should work too. Bacteria sometimes are a little wonky when producing large proteins and folding them correctly.
Jodecho is more correct than you are. Most physicians would give this form of passive immunization (not a vaccination) to an Rh negative mother because, ultimately, you never know who the baby daddy is...
That sounds more like it! It's standard to get one shot of Rhogam at 28 weeks and another immediately post-partum. If it's determined that there's been a fetal-maternal hemorrhage (lots of fetal blood in the maternal circulation) the mom may get extra shots of Rhogam.
Because you're both Rh-negative, you should've been given the option to out of the shot. Rh-negative parents can't have an Rh-positive child, so there's no chance of Rh-positive blood getting into the maternal circulation. That being said, if I was the doc I'd still recommend the shot, because I don't KNOW with 100% certainty that the dad is who the mom says he is.
That doesn't make sense. The shot is only given to the mother, and only if she's Rh negative.
"Women who are Rh positive do not have problems with the Rh factor in pregnancy.
Blood cells from an Rh positive baby can enter the Rh negative motherโs bloodstream. The motherโs body responds to these cells by making antibodies. Antibodies are made by the body to protect it from disease and other โforeignโ substances. The motherโs antibodies can attack and damage the babyโs blood cells. This can cause the baby to have anemia or jaundice (yellow color of skin). In severe cases, the antibodies may cause stillbirth." - Source
Jodecho ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:32:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Men never get the shots, neither do RH positive females. I dont know what u got but it wasnt Rhogam
No, because the pact only comes into effect once their blood is mixed. If he never saved them with his blood, he wouldn't gain any extra time at all.
Blood is the currency of the soul, and biomagical interest rates are pretty low. I guess he could try to milk more out of each contractor, but there's something to be said for sheer quantity, you know?
Actually, the potential donor gets Rh positive red cells, then their immune system goes to town creating antibodies against the Rh antigen. The potential donors can only be Rh negative males, for obvious reasons.
The women who receive these injections of hyperimmune globulins do not start making the antibody upon treatment. The only anti-D antibody present is that which was delivered with the IM/IV shot. This is reflected in the fact that they get multiple doses (one at 28 weeks gestation, and another at delivery if the child turns out to be D positive).
I didn't know that you accepted post-menopausal and sterile women. Do you actively alloimmunize this population, or do they have to come to you creating the antibody naturally?
We only allow our current donor base to volunteer. Periodically, 3-6 months or so, we'll order a blood sample to be drawn from just about every donor for three days.
They have to be the right blood type to be considered, but if they are, we reach out to them and they have to consent to join.
It usually takes several immunizations over several weeks or months, but once they start producing the antibody they can contribute just like James Harrison.
The prevailing theory is that the antibody binds to baby red cells that find their way into the circulatory system, and the immune system clears them (because mom doesn't have the Rh antigen, there is nothing on the maternal cells for the antibody to bind to). Interestingly, in the RED2 study, they found that the use of RhoGAM actually decreased the incidence of HLA alloimmunization (completely unrelated to the components of RhoGAM), by an as to yet unknown mechanism. I think that RhoGAM also has an IVIG effect, suppressing the immune system to form ALL new antibodies.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:19:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Must be, but it's still expensive. Here in the third world, that was the costly part of the birth of my son (I switched doctors after the first place missed the potential incompatibility...I am B- and my son turned out AB+)
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:28:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
While this may be relevant, and extremely important, I can't help but to think about the pharma company that's going to profit from it. Will anything go to James's family? If not, why. What are they charging for this 'rare' cure?
Unfortunately, it still requires donors. You must be an Rh negative male who makes the anti-Rh antibody (anti-D). In fact, it's one of the few blood products you can get paid to donate.
The "drug" is actually antibodies that the donor made against the Rh antigen. When given to a mother that doesn't make the Rh antigen (Rh negative), the antibody is tasked with clearing any antigens that might be spilled over from the fetal circulation (babies red cells). In the sense that this is a "drug", it is very effective at clearing these antigens. If an Rh mother did not get this medication, then her own immune system would be tasked with generating an antibody against the antigen, and in her next pregnancy, her immune system could attack the fetus, potentially causing the baby to be anemic and jaundiced shortly after birth (because the antibody she makes will destroy babies red cells).
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:37:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your user name is awesome!
Rarus ยท 45 points ยท Posted at 23:13:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Lots of people like him in a sense. My mom has a rare type of O- and has donated every 3 weeks for the past 20 years. I'm not sure what it is exactly but her phone will ring like mad when bearing the 3 week point. She even got a little badge to show how many times she's donated.
Please thank your mom for me, and if possible, give her a big hug. I am alive today because of people like your mom who selflessly donated blood. I almost bled to death after the birth of my second daughter. I required blood and a second surgery to save my life. If I hadn't had several blood transfusions there is no way I would have made it. I even went on and had another baby (my doctors assured me it was safe and I was fine). My kids have a mother because people decided to donate blood. My husband has a wife because of them. We lost our oldest to a genetic disorder six days after birth. Losing me in the birthing process was one of his biggest fears and I worry that it would have been too much for him. We had already been through so much and this was a completely unexpected complication.
I am grateful every single day that people donate. I wish I could donate, but I have some medical conditions that make it impossible. It isn't just giving blood it's giving life. Please let her know that what she is doing means the world to so many :)
Zykium ยท 24 points ยท Posted at 02:14:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
who selflessly donated blood.
Hey, I do it for the cookie and the juice.
31773 ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 02:44:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I do it so I have to spend less getting drunk
Steinrik ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 03:51:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Get drunk right before donating - share your drunkenness too!
I'm not sure if it's still the case now, but when I was in college in Dublin in the late 90's, we'd occasionally head down to the big-ass (probably the national flagship) blood-bank to donate. And afterwards, in the recovery/chill-out area, you had your choice of snacks and drinks, including draught Guinness served by a young lady in a nurse's uniform. I hope that remains the situation today.
31773 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:50:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Actually when my mum was pregnant with me, her doctor 'prescribed' her Guinness for iron- this was also in Ireland in the 90s
We are all doing well. My daughters are amazing. They are smart and funny and the light of my life. At the moment they are visiting my mother in law. My husband and I have been fighting off a cold and are been downright exhausted so she offered to take the kids for the night. It is good to relax, but I miss them terribly at the same time. We have been through so much, but we are also so lucky to have each other. I can't imagine surviving all that has happened if I didn't have my husband. He is truly my other half. I was very lucky to meet him young. I was 16 and he was 18. It is hard to believe, but in two years I will have been with him half my life. Every last bit of heartbreak was worth all the joy I have been blessed with :)
it's because O negative is the universal blood type, and as such it can always be used and is always in demand. your mom is awesome for donating that many times.
[deleted] ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 02:57:52 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
O- is universal blood donor, not universal blood type. AB+ is universal blood recipient.
My husband is O- as well! I'm B- and that's why I needed the Rhogam because our blood types weren't compatible. Yeah, the Red Cross practically stalks my husband!
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 16:38:17 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's funny. My mom is B+ and she is literally the happiest person in the world. She just found out she going deaf, has throat cancer (she's never smoked in her life), and colon cancer and all she can do is smile and help others. I'm certainly more pragmatic and would probably be wallowing in all that shit right about now...
[deleted] ยท 52 points ยท Posted at 22:14:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I know! Most people act like it's the worst thing in the world. Whatever, it's a shot in the ass, the fleshiest part of your body! A little pinch was worth my body not eating my babies.
xpowa ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 05:09:17 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That gives me the most feels I've ever had from this thread. Hope your littles are great.
He only saved one of your babies. Forming anti-D during your first pregnancy will not harm that pregnancy or child. It's the second (& 3rd, 4th, etc) time (when the antibodies come back as IgG), that would kill your baby.
jm001 ยท 15 points ยท Posted at 00:03:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ah well, you're right, what's one dead child anyway. Not even worth thanking the guy at that point, really.
meherab ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:00:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He's providing info, relax. Did he say he shouldn't thank him? Smh
That's not how it works. If her first child didn't make it, it wasn't because of anti-D, and if it was, she wouldn't need any more rhogam. Rhogam tricks your body into thinking you already made anti-D, so if you actually have it, you're not a candidate for rhogam.
I'm a biologist- I'm well aware of how RhoGam works. I also know that RhoGam is administered every pregnancy for Rh- women. The antibodies from RhoGam don't last forever.
After the first pregnancy, she would forever have anti-D, only returing in future pregnancies as IgG, which can cross the placenta and kill the baby. And, she would not be a rhogam candidate.
So, if you don't get rhogam, and develop anti-D, the first pregnancy will be unharmed (because IgM can't cross the placenta). And if you happen to develop anti-D, then rhogam will do nothing for you, but you're a biologist so I'm sure you already know all of that. /s
No you don't.....
Active anti-D = you were Rh negative and received Rh positive blood or had a fetal maternal hemorrhage(With Rh positive baby) and now your body makes anti-D. Not everyone that is Rh negative and has a Rh positive bleed will make anti D. Rhogam exists that in the event of a fetal maternal hemorrhage your body doesn't become sensitized.
Basically think of it as a flu vaccine in reverse. Vaccine exposes body to antigens so body attacks those antigens later. Rhogam hides the antigens so that your body won't make Anti-D (IGG which can cross the placenta) and kill future babies.
Passive anti-D (rhogam) coats Rh positive cells so you don't start making your own anti D.
Medical Laboratory Technician that worked in hospital blood bank
In the same realm, Henrietta Lacks. Her cancer cells were the first (and if I'm not mistaken, the only) cells to ever regenerate for endless generations outside her body. Her tumor was taken from her and her cells have been used by almost every doctoral student since. Her cells have been on the moon and used in countless studies. Her family was not informed, did not give consent, and were never compensated.
I agree, and she's mentioned elsewhere in the thread.
I do think, though, that more people are being made aware of her contributions to medicine, and hopefully, her family will start to see some significant recognition, if not actual compensation.
I thought the book was fascinating. I'm glad I had to read it at university and that her story is getting popularized. We had to write three papers on it (not so glad about that) and debated her situation a lot.
Wikipedia says that he was nominated for "Australian of the Year" but didn't win! Makes me wonder about the person that won? Perhaps it was a man with two golden arms?
Maybe it was someone who was born legally as another nationality but transitioned to Australian, how they had always identified, despite outward appearances.
bercl ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 09:33:51 on January 22, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
tl;dr - He's a philanthropist of quite a few fields, poverty, homelessness, education, drug addiction, research into MS, some wildlife stuff. He appears to mostly be a chairman/director/something along those lines for those organisations. Plus he does a bunch of other stuff so he's hard to properly tl;dr.
Actually, it isn't an enzyme. It's an antibody that he (and thousands others) make that prevents women from developing hemolytic disease of the fetus and newborn. The antibody is partially purified from the blood of unique men (all over the world) who donate. The purified RhoGAM, RhoPhylac, and WinRho can only be made from these human donations.
I think antibodies are pretty much enzymes, they allow reactions in the immune response to proceed more quickly than normal by lowering the activation energy of the reaction, the same as an enzyme. You could use either term, imo.
Unfortunately, the scientific community does not agree with you. Some extremely rare antibodies do act as enzymes, as you said by lowering the activation energy of a chemical reaction (the definition of an enzyme). In the immune system, antibodies act as a signal for consumption or destruction by the immune system. That has nothing to do with the activation energy of a reaction.
mbp214 ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 21:45:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Similarly, Henrietta Lacks had an immortalized cell line that produced an endless supply of living cells that scientists have used around the world for decades to conduct scientific and medical research on. Her cells, known as HeLa cells, were used by Jonas Salk to create the Polio vaccine and they were also the first human cells successfully cloned.
Scientists are estimated to have grown 20 tonnes of HeLa cells.
Drudicta ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:22:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
According to Wikipedia: "James Harrison (or simply, Khan), was the most prominent of the genetically-engineered Human Augments of the late-20th century Eugenics Wars period on Earth. Considered genocidal tyrants who conquered and killed in the name of order, Khan and his kind were frozen in cryogenic sleep."
I think I'm one of the babies he saved, as my mother needed a Rhesus injection when I was born. Awesome dude, guess I literally owe my life to him!
Tnr_rg ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:52:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"I could say it's the only record that I hope is broken, because if they do, they have donated a thousand donations."
โโJames Harrison
What a god damn legend.
NBPTS ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:55:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He saved my current pregnancy! I'm rh- and my twins were both rh+. Without the rhogam shot, I would have developed antibodies that would prevent me from carrying another baby.
557_173 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:56:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This guy lost 'Australian of the Year' in 1999 to some dude that plays cricket.
How in the fuck is playing any sport more important and noteworthy than a dude that saved millions of lives.
TPinkman ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:59:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Holy fucking shit.
arahzel ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:08:02 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't know if it's the exact same thing, but we have an online gaming buddy that regularly donates blood because he makes some sort of rare antibody. I only mention it because he's actually mentioned it be similar to this guy for comparison.
"I could say it's the only record that I hope is broken, because if they do, they have donated a thousand donations."
โโJames Harrison[1]
gunshhy ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:49:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
evolution in action, incredible
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:55:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thank you for posting this. Now I understand why a sibling born before me was stillborn, and likely why a sibling after I was born did not make it either. Somehow I got lucky, and it seems to be because my mom was in the hospital more often while she was pregnant with me (probably getting those injections mentioned in the wiki).
I know "consequence" is used properly in this sentence, but for some reason it doesn't sound right to me since usually it's used to indicate a negative result.
Shamic ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:08:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So, that means that if he didn't exist. The world would have 2 million less people? Wow. Although it would probably be more as a lot of those babies would have had kids
The_Yar ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:50:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In that same vein, Henrietta Lacks. She had a unique form of cancer that created an immortal line of cells used for decades in medical and scientific research.
I'm glad that no one (himself, big pharma, etc.) commodified and monopolized his antibodies. just re-watched the Syfy series Helix and this kindly reminded me that philanthropy still happens
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:32:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Uhh... shouldn't we clone this guy?
bobmanfo ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:33:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jeez and I was going to say the guy who invented sweat pants
I feel saying "result" instead of "consequence" is better termology, consequence is most often associated with a negative outcome and this is most certaintly not a negative outcome
Micbene ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:58:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I can fill up my car TWICE with the amount of blood he has given... Wow
I am one of these babies. I had no idea it was this guy I had to thank for being alive. Mother had two miscarriages before getting the shot during her pregnancy with me.
I was born in Australia. There's a chance he may have saved my life! :D
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:09:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This guy is the reason my brother and I were born without any complications. My parents' generation weren't so lucky, my dad is a rhesus baby, he almost died and had to be airlifted from the country hospital to the major regional one, and was the first baby in our state to have full blood transfusions. He has cerebral palsy, intellectual disability, and is partially deaf, which is common in rhesus babies from the 50s and 60s when they started being able to save these babies lives with blood transfusions.
So hey, thank you James Harrison for helping me, my brother, and so many more kids born with + blood to mums with - blood.
Grace Hopper. She invented the compiler which is the tool computer programmers use to turn their code into software. She was told computers were for doing calculations and not for running programs, so it couldn't be done. She figured it out anyway and changed the world forever. She might be the most important woman of all time. Nobody knows who she is.
However the term "bug" in the meaning of technical error dates back at least to 1878 and Thomas Edison (see software bug for a full discussion), and "debugging" seems to have been used as a term in aeronautics before entering the world of computers. Indeed, in an interview Grace Hopper remarked that she was not coining the term. The moth fit the already existing terminology, so it was saved.
That's an urban legend and you should know better, fuckwit
DasND ยท 37 points ยท Posted at 02:40:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Apparently she also coined the phrase: โItโs always easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission.โ (according to her german wiki). Freakin' badass.
leemur ยท 75 points ยท Posted at 01:32:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The term 'bug' predates computers. The term is short for 'bugbear' just mean 'annoying problem'.
Grace Hopper is badass though. The only mathematician to have a destroyer named after her.
It's from the 2nd edition Monstrous Manual. I always liked it more than the later representations because it reflects that bugbears are intelligent creatures while later versions make them look more feral and animalistic.
How true is it that she invented Cobol? My grandpa used to work on and program UNIVACs and told me that he was invited to sit on a committee that was making major decisions about Cobol- long story short, his boss took the spot from him because it required going to somewhere cool.
MadTux ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 12:40:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
invented Cobol
Ahh, that nullifies all her successes. Seriously, how can someone so brilliant go and invent Cobol?
red_hare ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 13:35:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You forgot the best part. The term "bug" came because she actually found a moth stuck in a relay and taking it out fixed the problem.
Salamok ยท 599 points ยท Posted at 00:07:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also was (and may still be) the highest ranked female officer the US Military. I would guess the main reason she isn't more well known is that she was busy building stuff as opposed to out schilling books on computer science.
buckykat ยท 276 points ยท Posted at 00:38:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
She does still hold the record for oldest active servicemember. She actually retired three times, they just couldn't make it more than about a year without her the first two.
From Wikipedia: At the time of her retirement, she was the oldest active-duty commissioned officer in the United States Navy (79 years, eight months and five days), and aboard the oldest commissioned ship in the United States Navy (188 years, nine months and 23 days).[29] (Admirals William D. Leahy, Chester W. Nimitz, Hyman G. Rickover and Charles Stewart were the only other officers in the Navy's history to serve on active duty at a higher age. Leahy and Nimitz served on active duty for life due to their promotions to the rank of Fleet Admiral.)
OKImHere ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 02:27:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
To be clear, you mean active duty. She's no longer actively serving.
buckykat ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 02:33:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah...she was ridiculously effective in her prime years.
dramboxf ยท 64 points ยท Posted at 01:39:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No, there are females that have been promoted above her since. She held the rank of Rear Admiral (Lower Half) which is a one-star rank, like Brigadier General in the Army, Air Force and Marine Corps.
Admiral (four-star) Michelle Howard, the current Vice Chief of Naval Operations, is the first female four-star in the Navy.
General Ann Dunwoody, US Army, was the first female four-star officer of any military branch.
Currently belongs to the VCNO, ADM Howard. She's the first female 4-star and the first African American female 4-star to boot.
calspach ยท 19 points ยท Posted at 01:51:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As a one time COBOL developer, I know who she is. She was an Admiral in the Navy as well. Not something just anyone, much less a woman in the 60's/70's can accomplish.
Sad part is that I've brought her up in a room full of COBOL developers and nobody knew who she was.
Very, very little. All of my classes have focused vastly on practical, modern applications rather than the history behind it. I'm not saying that's better or worse, but that's the way we've been taught.
diothar ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 05:02:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's a bummer.
Kwinten ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 09:20:05 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You should definitely do some self study about programming history. Knowing the history is imo incredibly important to actually understand how all our modern concepts of computer programming came to be.
Well for the record, I'm an IT major (specifically Information Systems Technology), not Computer Science. One of the foundation courses is an Intro to Programming course. But I'm not 100% clear on the difference between IT and compsci even after being in the program for over a year, but I know that my friend in compsci (another uni) has a lot more math/engineering shit to deal with.
Computer Science is basically software engineering and mathematics combined. We write software, and in doing so, learn some history about the tools that we use.
[deleted] ยท -9 points ยท Posted at 01:13:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's a navy ship named after her in Hawaii. The ship's motto is "Gracie would go." It's a play on the Eddie Aikau phrase, but still kind of neat. One of the very few navy ships actually named after a woman.
There's actually a conference every year for women in computer science named after her. My school pays for any women that want to attend. It's pretty cool
She's known in almost every tech circle, but is less known outside of it. What she did in the Navy was later used as the foundation for client side prediction for netcode.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 05:03:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So I googled her name and one of the first images to come up was this:
I thought it was hilarious. How to summarize a woman from the 20th century's life: Year she was born, year she married, year her husband died, year she died.
Luckily, those in the computer field are well aware of who she is. There are even Grace Hopper Conferences that happen annually (I believe) to help women in computing.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:16:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
She might be the most important woman of all time. Nobody knows who she is.
Um seriously? Exaggeration, dude. You can make a case for someone without saying they "might be the most important...of all time".
Also, back then the chauvinist males felt that working on hardware was the hard job and they gave the software as it was a womans job and wasn't worth a man's time.
It was common at the time to use women for jobs that weren't "worth" wasting men's time on... As a consequence women often made major contributions in areas that we now consider vital but back then were overlooked.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:28:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
One of my favorite stories about her was that she wanted to try to illustrate to non-technical people what a nanosecond was. She ordered lengths of wire cut to be about a foot. The wire represented the distance an electron would travel in a billionth of a second.
Its a great illustration of time and scale of things that are so vastly outside of human experience that they are nigh incomprehensible.
I'd be down with putting her on the ten dollar bill.
DrEnter ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:49:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I met her in college when she came to give a talk. She handed out "nanoseconds": Pieces of wire about 30 centimeters long. It's the distance light travels in one nanosecond. It blew my mind at the time. I still have it in a box somewhere.
I don't know how I found her but somehow a couple weeks ago I was talking to her to my gf having never heard of her and her wikipedia page is full of hilarious sexual innuendo if you look for it.
Important only if you believe computers are important. I for one do not, I think they are amazing and I love them but I don't believe they are a necessity of life by any stretch.
Uh, unless you work in computers. You can't walk through a software office leading up to October without being blasted with Grace Hopper Conference posters and so on.
She's by far the most well known person mentioned in this thread.
Frapplo ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:26:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Her name makes her sound like some kind of bug alien masquerading as a human. Like Chris Lee Bear or Brad Hardsex.
Patrick Vincent Coleman ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vince_Coleman_(train_dispatcher) ), a train dispatcher in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1917. On Dec. 6, 1917, two ships collided in the Halifax port. One of them was a munitions ship carrying approx 3,000 tons of explosives. Coleman stayed at his post in order to warn away trains that were approaching the port and died in the explosion. His final message:
"Hold up the train. Ammunition ship afire in harbor making for Pier 6 and will explode. Guess this will be my last message. Good-bye boys."
I'm sure there are memorials to him in Halifax but his name is worth putting out there.
EDIT: I never imagined the response I'd get to this. I figured plenty of people in Nova Scotia knew of him and mostly put it out here for Americans and others but never guessed Vince Coleman was still this well known. Thanks for the great discussion and extra information. I'll have to look up some more Heritage Minutes.
The Halifax explosion is just really interesting in general. IIRC, it was the largest explosion in the history of the world that was not caused by a nuke. It devastated Halifax, and most of the citizens present didn't even have the sense to run away. They had no idea what was in the ships, it was more or less only Patrick Coleman who had the knowledge and the ability to stop the trains.
Also, a ridiculous amount of babies were born after the explosion. Apparently traumatic incidents like that can induce premature labour in pregnant women, and hundreds of babies were born early that day.
It's also the reason Boston receives the Christmas tree on the Common every year. Halifax sends it as thanks for the relief efforts in the aftermath of the disaster
On the contrary, a lot of people ran toward the fire to see the spectacle. The Wikipedia article mentions that there were also improvements in eye care because of the number of injuries from flying glass.
You know what is something that absolutely terrifies me? Glass dust. No one seems to think about it, but I swear glass dust is the single most terrifying thing since it can get everywhere, cut everything and impossible to get out.
That escalated at a rate that I am somewhat uncomfortable with. I may, in fact, have sharted a little.
[deleted] ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 02:55:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's both respirable and carcinogenic, so yeah.
bpj1805 ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 03:12:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I once made myself very unpopular in an amateur telescope making mailing list by doing this:
Do you have any references for that claim?
I can believe that glass dust could be carcinogenic (I'm assuming you're referring to complications of silicosis?), but all the claims I've ever seen about glass dust being harmful are really claims about silica dust. Now of course soda-lime glass and silica have a lot in common, but they're also different in biologically significant way(s): glass is a zillion times more soluble than silica, meaning there's at least some hope, to me, that your body would be able to get rid of glass dust in your lungs (but whether the half life of this dust in your lungs is 5 months or 5000 years is the real question here).
That's for chronic exposure. There's also acute exposure, where the harm comes from the glass particles mechanically cutting you up inside, but that has less to do with the fact that it's glass than with the fact that it's a zillion knives in your lungs.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:32:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Admittedly I merely searched some things about silicosis for "glass dust" and got some hits. Additional cursory searches have been less "conclusive". I thought the two were nearly interchangeable, but apparently that is not correct. Thanks for asking.
bpj1805 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:06:12 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't think anyone sane would feel confident that snorting lines of glass dust would be harmless; I think it's very likely that it's super bad for you, just like basically any other fine dust. My thing was just that I was curious to see what directly relevant evidence there was, and for daring to express such academic curiosity people assumed that I was just trolling them. Hard evidence is indeed very hard to find for glass dust in particular (but by no means does that mean the stuff is harmless).
They used to sell the stuff to young boys under the name of "itching powder" at prank stores. You'd sprinkle it in somebody's clothes, like an unattended jacket. Or hat.
Iceman_B ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 01:03:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Part of me thinks there's a good story here, and the other part of me thinks you're gunna be really weird and vague about "ya, I play with a lot of chemicals, lol"
osmlol ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:32:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Its not that dangerous. I'm a manager at a glass fabrication plant and we seam glass all day feeding our tempering furnace and dust gets everywhere. Doesn't cause much harm. It's not sharp like larger shards can be.
arbivark ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:03:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
the moon is covered in glass dust. let's go to mars instead.
Interned in a building with a hot glass shop. It is serious shit. Always a respirator when shoveling fresh glass chunks into the furnace. The only time you wouldn't need a respirator is if the dust is formed while wet sanding.
Glass is dangerous because it fractures with sharp and hard edges, but as a consequence, it is very brittle. A few impacts, and the hard edges should whittle down. As someone else said, glass dust is essentially sand, without the edges rubbed down yet.
The phrase "on the contrary" is sometimes used to agree with and then emphasize a negative assertion someone has made. jamgengerly said "most of the citizens present didn't even have the sense to run away" and I said that 'on the contrary' (to having common sense), they actually ran toward the fire.
[deleted] ยท 17 points ยท Posted at 21:50:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I believe he meant on the contrary to them having the sense to run away
I encountered the same thing when I was running away from the World Trade buildings on 9-11. People running toward them while huge pieces were falling down. It is a vivid memory for me from that day.
Good thanks!! Some but of trouble with my lungs & I rarely go to that part of the city still... But met my wife as a result so it came out good for me.
A friend who knew I had been there (and that I was laying on my couch all week) asked me to come to a brunch at a nearby town in NJ the Sunday after 9/11 to share my story (I lived in NYC). There was a really cute woman there (who I assumed was with someone) and I found out later that that she liked what I shared... She asked her friend to keep inviting me to things (at that time there were lots of gatherings so people could get through the tough time. Anyway, I got up some courage to ask her out and we've been together ever since (and have a 10-yr old some now) :)later that
ngmfvk ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:38:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
199 blinded that day, officially. Many others lost just one eye, likely removed without anesthetic as the hospitals quickly ran out of it.
[deleted] ยท 76 points ยท Posted at 21:10:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Largest non-nuclear, man-made explosions.
Halifax explosion: 2.9 kt (kilotons of TNT)
Texas City disaster: 2.7 - 3.2 kt (estimates vary)
Heligoland Explosion: 3.2 kt
Minor Scale: 4.2 kt
N1 rocket explosion: 7 kt
There were more large ones but they are all smaller than Halifax & Texas explosions.
According to the German Wikipedia the Heligoland Explosion had 6.7 kt and was the largest manmade non-nuclear explosion, while the English wikipedia only lists it as 3.2 kt, so I'm not sure whom to trust
PCCP82 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:43:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
i wonder where the explosion of the HMS Hood ranks up there...
Thank you for posting this! I hate seeing ignorant wannabe know-it-all's spreading false information to thousands of people without performing so much as a Google search to verify. Fucking fools: seriously, deeply, strongly, pisses me off.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:40:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Huh. TIL, thanks. That makes me wonder if the saying "scared the b'jesus out of me" is short for "scared the baby jesus out of me" and is a reference to this incident, or an incident like this where something crazy literally scared the babies out of lots of women.
MichyMc ยท 52 points ยท Posted at 20:57:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I looked into a little bit and unfortunately that doesn't seem to be the case. Bejesus or bejeezus are alterations of the oath "by Jesus", a phrase primarily used for placing emphasis. So when someone would say "That scared the 'by Jesus' out of me" it's like saying "That scared the crap out of me" but instead of being so scared you pooped you were so scared that you invoked the oath.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:53:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not to mention there was a huge blizzard the next day dumping 41 cms of snow on Halifax. My great grandmother survived it and I got to talk to her about it when I was 10, interesting to hear how far away from the blast it was and how bad it still was. She said her ears were bleeding, from the blast and that she lost relatives who were closer to the harbour
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:17:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My grandmother was a survivor. She and her family all lived but they were homeless for quite a while, and lost many friends. It was like the end of the world, for the people living there.
Interesting thing also, is that most of the deaths were not because of the giant explosion, but from the tidal wave that was caused by it. Lots of people were in the harbor looking at the ships.
ngmfvk ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:51:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I just finished a book about the explosion today (The Town That Died) and while the author mentions ships being hit by the wave, I think it is quite inaccurate to say that most of the deaths were caused by the wave. It sounds like the ones who weren't incinerated by the initial blast either bled to death, were crushed under homes and factories, or died in the fire that ingulfed the city that afternoon from all the scattered coal stoves. Many drowned, no doubt. Also, many died on pnemonia as tempertures plunged and could not find shelter. As a side note, looters were shot and nailed to posts.
Of the 40+men on board the Mont Blanc, only one died, and on shore. The captain and pilot were both tried for manslaughter and escaped punishment.
I recently lived close to a mass grave in the west end of Halifax were unidentified victims were buried.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:55:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Actually, the Helgoland explosion, the N1 rocket explosion, Minor Scale, and Misty Picture were larger explosions.
I'm a lawyer in Halifax. The family court is in an old school which was rebuilt after the explosion.
blubblu ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:37:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You're a lawyer in Halifax... how was Imo not held accountable?
After all was said and done even the pilot of the French ship asked for a guide and Imo was on the wrong side of the channel, going way too fast. This has actually bothered me for years that both parties were held equally accountable when it at least seems clear that the Imo was at a larger fault.
I mean the pregnant women were afraid; I think it was Hobbes who was born early because his mother heard the Spanish Armada was attacking England and she shit herself and Hobbes out.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:20:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's not the largest, but it's certainly one of the largest.
WideFoot ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:17:02 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It was the largest at the time, but has since been relegated to 4th. The current largest non nuclear, man-made explosion was the destruction of the N1 rocket, which was the USSR's failed attempt to send men the moon.
No, the N1 Rocket incident was the largest explosion that wasn't caused by a nuclear bomb.
mnh1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:01:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also, changes in air pressure can cause women to go into labor. It's why you aren't supposed to fly on airplanes in the third trimester and so many babies are born after storms.
I like that last bit of information. In context its really awful but its pretty funny to think about 100 plus women going into labor all at the same time.
Another fun fact, because Boston helped so much with providing relief after the explosion Nova Scotia (which Halifax is the capital of) provides a large Christmas tree to Boston every year as a show of thanks.
Not just a Christmas tree, but THE Christmas tree. Boston uses the one from NS as the offical city Christmas Tree and put it up right in the middle of Boston Common, which is pretty much the heart of the city.
Sadly, because of the spectacle of ships burning in the harbour many people were watching through their windows. When the explosion happened, the buildings that didn't outright collapse all had their windows blown out. There was an enormous number of people blinded by flying glass as they watched. The people that cared for all of these blinded people later were the nucleus of the Canadian National Institute for the Blind.
[deleted] ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 00:21:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
To be fair, it happened in 1917, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. As someone born in and living in Halifax, just the fact that this is second answer to me is amazing enough as it is. No need to feel bad about it.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:46:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I miss these too they we're great and I loved them when i was a kid. I remember back then I only watched cartoons and movies with "real persons" freaked me out, but these we're always entertaining while being informative.
What happened with that N-1 was closer to deflagration than an explosion.
This is because the pressure wave created by the burning fuels was traveling at sub-sonic speeds, explosions (in technical terms) produce super-sonic pressure waves. That is the distinction between the terms explosion and deflagration.
To give an example, gunpowder "explosions" are considered deflagration and TNT would be considered an explosion.
485075 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:28:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It is, but as the wiki said it isn't really considered an explosion because the fuels were unmixed at the time, so while the total energy released was really high, it was released at a slower rate, making more like a really violent fire that explodes at times.
Yeah, the power and scale of nuclear and comparable non-nuclear weapons is something most human beings cannot properly comprehend. A shot of a test detonation in the desert or a CG blast does not do it justice. People would not speak so lightly of potentially nuking enemy countries if they had experienced the force of such a catastrophe themselves.
Damn, that one clip you see the shock wave blow their fence apart right in front of them just before it cuts out. Crazy.
Nihht ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:48:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Yeah, that clip is terrible. You see the fence tear apart in front of them. I believe the story is that they were recording using an app or something that streams until you let go of the screen, seems like a few of the other ones were doing something similar.
EDIT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryKyRJDGAoI second clip here is the best footage imo. Gets both explosions; I think most of the clips in the one you linked only had the first.
Not even close to the largest non-nuclear explosion. The actual largest was 7 kilotons of the N1 Soviet rocket accidental explosion. You should research before spreading false information. Here's the link
For a wee bit of context: the Halifax Explosion was the largest non-nuclear man made explosion in the history of the planet.
At the time it was the largest. However it's since been surpassed by a few, really big explosions. The Soviet N1 was the largest man made non nuclear explosion.
So, this is what Heritage Minutes are? Little commercials that re-enact Canadian history?
I've always seen the Cards Against Humanity card and wondered what the hell Heritage Minutes were. Even asked a bunch of Canadian friends I play online with regularly. None of them knew.
Actually, this is not quite true. The Halifax explosion was the biggest man-made non-nuclear explosion at the time it happened. But since then, there have been 3 bigger explosions.
"What're you sayin', bud? I don't mind tellin' ya, ya better lay on the brake and give 'er. Ship afire in the harbor headed for Pier 6, and boy is she ever fuckin' loaded with enough explosive to blow yer fuckin' tits off. In fairness, I guess this is my last message. Good-bye boys."
[deleted] ยท 15 points ยท Posted at 23:21:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"...b'ys." FTFY
silian ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 05:12:15 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nah that's newfies, we say the full boys.
NJ-Copes ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:25:16 on January 19, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As a Nova Scotian who has lived in Newfoundland for eight years, I don't even know what I speak any more.
There are a lot of Newfies here as well, so it's entirely possible that it slipped into somebodies parlance. One of my best friend's family is from Newfoundland, so he tends to use a lot of those terms, but yeah, usually I find that there's some sort of connection with that rock if I hear those idioms.
There are quite a few of these last word messages that show grace under fire, although I'm sure some are apocryphal. I especially like "I am just going outside and may be some time", "More weight.", and I think there were a few of soldiers calling fire down on their own position.
todayok ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 10:49:52 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"Spoken like a true maritimer" would be: Boys, I'm going to stay because I'm a week short of getting full unemployment insurance benefits.
[deleted] ยท -5 points ยท Posted at 00:13:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:21:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, as another discussion went the other day, Reddit is pretty U.S.-centric. I figured it wouldn't hurt to make a few more people aware of that incident.
Interesting fact: Boston was one of the first cities to help Halifax after the explosion so in recognition Nova Scotia gives their best Christmas tree to Boston to display downtown. It's a tradition thats still carried on 100 years after.
vancyon ยท 17 points ยท Posted at 22:26:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I was lucky enough to see the tree en route to Boston last year! I was stunned that I just happened to cross paths with it. I wish I had been able to get better pictures. http://imgur.com/a/Am8Nk
fptp01 ยท 54 points ยท Posted at 20:26:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He's a Canadian hero, anyone who grew up in Canada has heard of this guy.
zdeno721 ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 20:34:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I remember seeing him on those heritage ads they used to run on TV!
[deleted] ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 21:53:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Live in Halifax. There are a ton of memorials and alot of them are giant pieces of the ships that landed in different parts of the city. It's crazy to look at actual pieces of debris that flew thousands of metres through the air. Interesting stuff.
trua ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 20:57:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Completely coincidentally, on December 6th 1917, Finland declared independence.
bonez899 ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 21:23:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's just something about his story that grabs me. His instincts had to be screaming at him to get the hell out of there but he was able to stay on the job and do what needed to be done.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:22:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I like to think that if I was in the same situation, I'd be able to do the same thing, sacrificing myself so that others could live. But I guess we never know until we're tested, judging by incidents where others didn't stick around. (Not that I am saying that they're bad people or anything - again, we do not know what we're going to do until something like that happens to us.) It's one of those questions you always wonder about and hope never to answer.
If you visit the maritime museum in Halifax there is a whole section dedicated to the explosion including an exhibit about Coleman. There is even a clock which was found in the aftermath that has it hands fused into the face from the blast and the exact time it happened. Very haunting.
Strangely, I'm from Massachusetts and my grandparents came down from Nova Scotia but I don't think I ever heard this story until long after I moved to Florida.
It's interesting in that understanding this requires realizing that this was 100 years ago, when you couldn't just send one message, "Hey everybody, the harbor is about the explode!", and leave / have it be passed on. You needed somebody physically on site to communicate to each given new incoming train that something was up.
It took me like 3 reads to even figure out what was going on.
lannyd28 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:06:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As someone born and raised in Halifax, I have fond memories of watching this video multiple times in elementary school, recognizing Vince Coleman. He was something of a hero to our little class.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:21:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
ahh yes the old herritage moments on cbc made me alwaya remember that man. Makes me proud to be nova scotian
Buwaro ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:36:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I am a big-time railroad history nerd and actually know the story of Patrick Vincent Coleman. My dad worked at a railroad museum when I was younger. They had a display talking about the wreck and Mr. Coleman.
My grandfather was a baby during the explosion. His mother was down the street visiting a neighbour and he was left alone in his crib. When his mom came back to the house, every window was blown out, but he was alive, albeit covered in glass.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:23:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Holy shit, I just read the transcription of what happened in the Halifax Explosion, and the guy who was piloting the Imo was a fucking cunt. I hope people in Halifax gather annually to shit on his grave.
The official story is they don't know why he went back to the telegraph station.
My guess is that he saw the crowds and realized he wasn't going anywhere but up, so he might as well make his exit a heroic one.
Suqleg ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:36:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yea he is fairly well known in Canada perhaps not by name though. Growing up the CBC would air little historical snippets at the ends of shows and his story was a common one.
I've lived in the HRM all of my life but I can't think of a whole lot of places or events where the man's name gets so much as a whisper aside from one of those weird Canadian heritage minute shorts from the late 90s/early 00s that showed what he did. Frankly that's the only reason I ever learned he existed. Was never taught about him in school, nor what he did or how it impacted the whole event.
gkiltz ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 12:57:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Having dated a Canadian, We once compared our High School curricula.
Mine in the Virginia suburbs of DC. Hers in the area between the city and the Burbs kinda in Toronto. Both in the mid 1970s I graduated in 1977 she in 1979.
youngid ยท 105 points ยท Posted at 20:37:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He was also the first to determine the modern accepted figure of 4.55 billion years for the age of the earth.
Dafuzz ยท 140 points ยท Posted at 23:55:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Cosmos had an episode highlighting it, he basically discovered how badly we were fucking up with lead accidentally while trying to figure out how old the world is. Couldn't get accurate samples cause there was lead fucking everywhere.
One of my favorite theories is that the spike in crime starting in the 1900's and continued until the mid-80's/90's was caused by lead poisoning. It leads to some antisocial, aggressive tendencies, and we were full of the stuff for years, a heavy-metal that the body has little means to naturally remove. Of course I've also seen this decline attributed to the legalisation of abortion after Roe v Wade, probably hard to say for certain.
marsepic ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 00:13:00 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Someone linked it further down, but I think the lead is the more popular idea. Popular is not the right word, I guess, but you know what I mean.
tavtab ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 12:36:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Most countries have a similar peak in crime around twenty years after peak use of lead (generally corresponding to 70s / 90s, I think). Roe vs Wade is only a factor in one of those countries.
I think the hypothesis is quite specific to violent / impulsive crime, with little evidence that it affects other types of crime.
But it might've been less common to keep organized records on it before 1900. Especially in less populated areas, if someone was found guilty of murder, you find them, hang them, done. No need to write it down.
I suspect you are giving insufficient credit to local administrative record keeping in the 19th century US. Any place with few enough people to have this level of anarchy would have too few people to affect national crime statistics.
It's not Dayne Walling that's to blame, Michigan has the very controversial "emergency manager" system. When it's determined that a town, city, or government department to be in an out of control bad situation (by a state review board), he/she can singlehandedly appoint an emergency manager who's power and authority trumps that of all local elected officials. Dayne Walling won his seat as Mayor on November 8, 2011. On November 14, 2011 Governor Rick Snyder accepted the review board's opinion on Flint and appointed an Emergency Manager. Dayne Walling had no actual power or control over pretty much anything that happened in Flint since his 6th day in office. When the City Council wanted to save money, they voted to switch from buying Detroit water to getting their water from a new pipeline that also pulled from Lake Huron, so also lake water that would not have required additional treatment to protect them. The emergency manager made the decision to use Flint River water as the intermediate source while they made the switch away from Detroit water and got the city hooked up to the other pipeline without treating the pipes first. It was known and told to the manager that treatment would be needed and that it was not safe to make the switch without preparations, but the manager decided to do so anyway, made the switch, and then promptly sold off the pipeline from Detroit so they didn't have the option to switch back. Then they told everyone it was safe. The people to blame for this are Rick Snyder and the two people who were emergency manager of Flint during this time period, Darnell Earley and Michael Brown, the people who made the decisions.
joeh4384 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:47:04 on February 11, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It would have been fine if they treated the flint river water for corrosion.
Thanks for linking the Washington Post article. I work in an industry that deals heavily with old lead based paint. Here's a link for those interested in learning more about lead in the home.
Thanks for the WP article although it does much to legitimize my violent thoughts. Or maybe I have lead poisoning.
droans ยท 15 points ยท Posted at 22:31:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
For those wondering why there is no safe dose, it is because lead bioaccumulates, which means that your body cannot get rid of it so it just builds up more and more.
It may just be internet folklore , but I read somewhere recently that it's thought there has been an exponential drop in violent crime and cases of serial killing over the time since lead was taken out of the fuel.
[deleted] ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 23:06:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's over such a long period where so many other things happened it's basically impossible to prove causation, though there has been a drop in violent crime and it may have been caused by that, but there are just a billion other factors that could be involved.
Addpoke ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:07:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm really wish I knew why such a reasonable comment gets downvoted.
The decision makers in the petrochemical industry at that time knew very well that lead would cause health issues, and it was also known there was a perfectly safe alternative for improving the knock resistance by adding 30% alcohol. But that would result in having to accept revenue losses per volume sold, so they went with the lead based additive anyway.
jrm2007 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:52:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And I wonder how you determine the true cost to society of an average of 5 IQ point loss to everyone in the world?
Isn't there a really good animated video about this?
[deleted] ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 22:57:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He's featured in animation in an episode of Cosmos with Neil Degrasse Tyson. It's on netflix for anyone who hasn't yet checked that excellent series out.
Amlethoe ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 08:31:23 on February 25, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
lead poisoning and played a leading role
I see what you did there.
Funocity ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:59:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
According to the state of California, there is a Safe Harbor Level for lead under the Proposition65 regulation.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:58:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So happy to see him mentioned somewhere, even if it's basically in a thread about people not mentioned enough. The guy is a true hero.
Tfsr92 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:12:33 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dude yes. The Cosmos shed light on this and brought it to my attention. I feel like everyone should have a picture of this guy hanging up in their room.
Wish he would have got it out of solder, probably wouldn't be so neurotic if I didn't chew solder from ages 9-12...
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:25:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There is no safe dose for lead.
It drives me insane when people say "the dose makes the poison". That's old-school toxicology and it doesn't apply anymore, like 85% of the time. Now that we have slightly more inkling of endocrinology and epigenetics it's pretty obvious that few environmental toxins have any dose that isn't poison. The saying only applies to simple venoms or nerve gasses and other shit that only adds up to a tiny corner of all "poison". If it's completely reversible and there's a dose that won't do anything at all then yeah, the does makes the poison. Otherwise, wrong.
Of course the phrase very well could have originally meant "how much you get determines just how poisoned you are", which would probably be true of every possible poison, but that's not how non-experts on the internet use the phrase today.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:34:35 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I went to high school with one of his granddaughters, which is the only reason I know who he is. Really cool stuff.
Levelis ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:40:49 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
except in airplane fuel
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:16:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Heard about him on Drunk History I think. Cool guy.
FlerPlay ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 23:49:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I wish I got it
[deleted] ยท 26 points ยท Posted at 01:37:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The true Boston/New England accent actually ADDS an "ER" to a lot of words. It's not just about dropping your Rs (e.g. "hah-vahd" for "Harvard"), which is usually less pronounced than in the movies/tv anyway. So a true New England accent and not the shit Matt Damon peddles in his films would pronounce "Tesla" as "Tesler".
From New England, have almost never heard someone adding -er to words while I heard -r becoming -ah all the time and catch myself doing it a lot. I think it's more on how we pronounce the -a as a longer -a that it kind ofmaybe sounds like -er but I'm not buying that people should actually be mistaking it for -er.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 04:58:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm from eastern Massachusetts born and raised, and my entire Mom's side of the family back to my great grandmother were born, raised, and mostly still live in Somerville. The -er sound is precisely how they articulate it.
I'm talking hard -er. Like saying "sod-er" instead of soda (in the rare instances where they don't call it "tonic").
Damn. I feel like that's something that's more confined to Boston and its suburbs along with a little bit of the surrounding area, and probably less common among younger people. I met a lot of people from all over New England as I did FIRST robotics in high school and attended a lot of district-wide competitions and while dropping the -r is very widespread, the -a to -er is something that I've never really picked up on. It might be something that's died out for a lot of younger New Englanders recently, which might explain why I've never heard it even having talked with a lot of people from throughout the New England region.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:35:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Interesting - could definitely be possible. What part of NE are you from. Just personal curiosity, always like meeting another new englander! I also spent a couple years in southern Connecticut.
South-central NH, in a kinda-rural town. We've got a lot of families from eastern MA compared to surrounding towns, so we get the New England accent more than other rural towns do. It's nowhere near as severe as someone from Boston, but we still do a lot of -r dropping, saying Marry-Merry-Mary the same, horse-hoarse the same, cot-caught the same, and probably a few other things that I haven't really noticed (maybe saying room differently, I haven't determined if that's common for the rest of New England. My friends and I have been called out on that from people outside of New England. It's one of the parts of our accent that we didn't realize was different until we got called out on it).
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:10:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Very cool. I LOVE New Hampshire. I have lots of fond memories of driving up to Salem to drink bottomless coffee and smoke cigarettes inside as a broke-ass 18 year old. That was a Sunday night tradition for me and my friends for a while. I also had a really good friend in New Boston, NH (my grandpa also did a very short stint in Goffstown) who I loved to go visit because it was so pretty out there.
I live very close to New Boston, went there to play sports a lot when I was in elementary and middle school. It is a very beautiful place, lots of rural NH is pretty cool to see both for the nature and just to see the difference between here and the cities. Lots of neat architectural differences, even in new buildings that are built here.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 16:50:44 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Never heard a Bostonian add an "-er" to words. That's more Rhode Islanders and Mainers. People in this thread acting like Boston and New England accents are the same thing, smh
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:29:43 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, well:
I'm from eastern Massachusetts born and raised, and my entire Mom's side of the family back to my great grandmother were born, raised, and mostly still live in Somerville. The -er sound is precisely how they articulate it.
Hard -er. Like saying "sod-er" instead of soda.
[deleted] ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 23:59:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's actually not it. The joke is that in parts of New England, we like to drop the -r sound and replace it with a -ah sound. So in New England, Tesler would sound similar to Tesla.
What do you mean, no? It's not universal to all of New England but spend enough time in MA (edit: I should say eastern MA), southeast NH, and southern Maine and you'll definitely see plenty of people who do that.
Yes, they do. What I'm telling you, is that they do add an er where an a would be frequently. My dad still does it after 15 years below the Mason-Dixon line and the sound of it is like nails on a chalkboard.
Your anecdotal evidence is about as good as mine. I live in NH, and I hear the -r turned into -ah far, FAR more than I hear -a turned into -er. I almost never hear the latter while I hear the former on a near daily basis and even catch myself doing it a lot. Taking a look at the New England English Wikipedia article, there's a lot of mentions of lots of New England accents being non-rhotic while there's none of -a being turned into -er.
True, our accent is a bit different than being straight in the heart of Boston or even the Nashua area of NH. From where I am in NH, the biggest differences I notice are essentially in how much we exaggerate the eccentricities of the accent. A lot of the things are a lot more subtle for us. I grew up in and live in a town with a lot of people who moved here from eastern MA so for myself and people I went to school with, we have a lot more of the New England accent than other rural NH towns. I can kinda see how our -a sound could maybe be mistaken for -er but I've never heard it actually fully shift into -er, even from people from Boston. Might be something that we younger folk have decided sounds ridiculous and don't do, as I know a lot more younger people with the full Boston accent than older people with it.
I don't think we're fully eliminating them. Merging them a little more so the differences aren't as extreme, but we definitely all still have some semblance of the accent of the region we grew up in. I've definitely lost a little more of my New England accent by going to a big university in upstate NY with people from all across the country, but I'll be dropping my -r's, saying Marry, Merry, and Mary the same, saying caught and cot the same, and hoarse and horse the same until the day I die.
I've seen him interviewed on so many things on the history of computers, had NO idea he invented copy and paste, but it makes sense due to him being at Xerox PARC and then at Apple
tomdarch ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:29:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Xerox PARC folks who developed a huge part of the WIMP (windows, icons, menus, pointer aka mouse) Graphical User Interface that we use constantly deserve a ton of credit.
My aunt doesn't know how to cut and paste on her computer. She went back to college recently and had a project due so she typed up the written portions, printed them, printed the images then physically cut and pasted them into the report. She's a damn fine woman though, so her kids and I only made fun of her a little bit.
Who am I kidding we were ruthless but we're assholes, and she's a trooper.
Copy / paste has been around for nearly as long as paper copy has been around. I remember working on a newspaper in the 80s and literally copying cutting and pasting pieces of paper with text on them.
What Larry Tesler did was be the first guy to implement a software feature that had a solid basis in physical experience. Had he not been the first, there were 1000s of others who would have been.
bureX ยท 18 points ยท Posted at 23:01:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He didn't invent it.
So... He copied and pasted it?
Eheh... heh... eh... e... yup.
[deleted] ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 22:59:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
dorekk ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:35:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
g0_west ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 01:18:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A massive fan of pie
[deleted] ยท -6 points ยท Posted at 19:05:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oh God no. The majority of the time, if I complete a drag/drop, it's unintentional. I find it a tad difficult to implement. I will say, I've coded some bad-ass drag-and-drop GUIs. One of them was "classic" VB scripting a bunch 9f calls into GDI32.dll. Unfortunately, the intended end user was waaaay too compuphobic to ever really leverage this thing.
kind of blows your mind that people just didn't, you know, wash their hands.
[deleted] ยท 3446 points ยท Posted at 17:15:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
People even thought his idea was stupid and unnecessary and actively resisted it! Totally boggles my mind too because it's such a habit to wash my hands several times a day I feel dirty not doing it. Like, it's one thing to note that we didn't have such an understanding of germs and how disease is transmitted then... but you'd think that having dirt on your hands would spur the thought that touching others might get dirt on them, which isn't good even if you don't know that's how disease spreads. I'm glad his idea caught on!
Humdngr ยท 1833 points ยท Posted at 17:44:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
It must've really smelt like shit everywhere centuries ago. I don't know how anyone could stand it or get used to it.
[deleted] ยท 1966 points ยท Posted at 17:54:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
It's always something that comes up in my mind when I imagine time travelling... I'd certainly want to see a bunch of the stuff I learned about in history (specifically did 'medicine through time' which was super interesting) but my god it would reek in cities. Sewage poured into the streets, livestock just kicking around in living quarters, far too many people to a house and almost zero understanding of public health. I'm massively grateful to live in a place and time where my rubbish is collected from my door weekly and sewage is flushed down a pipe to be treated elsewhere. Also I can wash my clothes in clean water rather than downstream from sewage runoffs.
I remember a specific thing from a textbook about a noteworthy dungheap. Just a heap of shit so large it was special among the many other heaps of shit around town. I recall as well that in the days of surgery being a public spectacle (check out Robert Liston, known as the fastest surgeon in the west end, who reportedly amputated a leg in two minutes (and the poor patient's testicle in the process)) the amount of blood and dirt on their aprons was sort of considered a status symbol. Makes sense I guess, if you have no inkling that illness could be transferred through blood, but it's almost impossible to imagine that mindset now.
nolan1971 ยท 1079 points ยท Posted at 18:22:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
check out Robert Liston, known as the fastest surgeon in the west end, who reportedly amputated a leg in two minutes (and the poor patient's testicle in the process)
holy fuck
[deleted] ยท 1064 points ยท Posted at 18:25:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
For context, before anaesthesia it was important to get the surgery over with quickly because there wasn't much you could do to sedate the patient beyond getting them drunk or whacking them on the head. The screaming is very distracting and shock sets in quickly. Naturally some treated it as a race.
In fact, after anaesthesia was introduced a lot more patients died from bleeding out because without all the yelling and thrashing, things didn't seem quite so urgent.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 12:49:15 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think you can buy it from the publisher - I passed it in the window of a charity shop and went in to reserve it right then! Probably the most I've spent on a non-academic book but so worth it, if you like looking inside bodies that is.
meeeow ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:17:06 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If you like that stuff I recomend 'The Sick Rose' beautiful book.
Good god! The image search for 'the sick rose' is quite disturbing.
meeeow ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 14:36:45 on January 23, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It is a little but very interesting, is a book that discuss in quite a lot of detail the history of infections and diseases with these beautiful victorian style illustration. It's really fantastic!
Wow, I'd totally forgotten that's what the course was called! My absolute favourite subject which kick-started a real love for London's history.
Thanks Mrs Stephens!
Maediya ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 22:14:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeeeees! My favourite part of GCSE history :D I remember learning that the very first person to die under anaesthesia was Hannah Greener, who had a toenail removed.
That module spurred me to visit the Science museum in London to see the medicine gallery. Terrifying!
Medicine through time was part of a history GCSE we took. Stands for General Certificate in Secondary Education. It is basically the first "real" qualification you do in England (not sure about Wales). Next are A levels and then onto University if you want to. GCSEs are sat when you are around 16.
Joetato ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:03:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Huh. I thought GCSEs were the equivalent of final exams in America. Sounds like they're not if you don't start taking them until you're 16.
Start studying around 14 and sit exams around 16. Then it is AS levels at 17 and A2 level at 18. After that is uni.
In Scotland the GCSE equivalent are "Standard grades" and the A level equivalent are "Highers".
labrys ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:15:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What time do you do your exams in the US? I thought these were equivalent too
Joetato ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:06:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Final exams happen at the end of every school year for every course you took. It covers everything you learned that year. I'm sure England has something like that, it's just not the GCSEs.
I still don't understand exactly the point of GCSEs, though.
labrys ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 00:16:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
GCSEs are a qualification - you do 9 or 10 when you're 16*, and then you can leave school, or go on to further education. I kinda thought they were the equivalent of a high school diploma in America, because you sometime see tv characters not having high school diplomas, and you could get people without GCSEs if they failed them all.
Then, if you want to do more, you take 3 or 4 A-levels at 18 (or 6-8 AS levels, which are like half A levels, with half at 17 and half at 18), or some combination of the above to get enough points for your university course.
Then finally university for 3 years or more.
*or did when I took them, they keep changing things.
Joetato ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:55:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, no high school diploma in the US means you can't get a decent job anywhere. You may even have trouble getting a job at McDonald's without one.
I don't know what life is like with GCSEs in England. Do they have any kind of diploma equivalent, meaning they passed every year of school? Or is it just GCSEs and A levels?
But this also explains to me where OWLS and NEWTS came from in Harry Potter. I always thought those testing systems were bizarre thing that didn't exist in the real world, added in to make the wizarding world more distinct than the muggle world. No, they just seem to be the magical equivalent of GCSEs and A levels, based on how you described them.
labrys ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 11:12:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, you're right. OWLS and NEWTS are GCSEs and A Levels. We take exams every year at school, but only the GCSEs and A Levels count for anything after school. I thought the diploma was something similar, not something that was taken each year. Interesting way of doing it, instead of putting all the exam stress in one huge block at the end of secondary school and the end of college.
Not having any GCSEs would make it really difficult to get a job. I've never come across anyone without any GCSEs though - since you take 1 each for 9 or 10 subjects, it's pretty hard to fail them all.
Ugh, we had to do medicine through time in our GCSE history too. What fun...
fraglrok ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:53:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Long been a popular subject for school-leavers' exams - my History O-Level back in 1982 had as a major component "History of Medicine." This exam was unusual in that it had a 30% coursework component - and that HoM was the entire coursework component. A pain in the arse for pupils like me who regularly bunked school, that was (back then no-one bothered to contact parents if you didn't show up unless it went on for over a week, say). Coursework were very rare for O-Level exams and were only introduced experimentally in a few subjects during the last years before O-Levels (GCE) were replaced by the very different GCSE.
Leopold Leopoldovich would never resort to such brutish methods, he simply played a melody on his Stradivarius violin to lull his patients gently to sleep.
Oh yes, of course. Nitrous oxide and ether as well. The whole "didn't have anesthesia at all" is sort of misleading. They did have it, but it wasn't as efficient by modern standards. However ether will knock a person right out when administered. Often though it wasn't available, during times of war for example.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:26:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm not sure actually. I'm guessing it's a case of it being a relative luxury for poor folk, and still a fairly new thing around those times, but I'd never really heard mention of it in that kind of quick & dirty surgery. Plus, perhaps not as effective at knocking someone out than booze or a concussion!
Morphine was first isolated in 1803. They had raw opium and laudanum before that but there's a difference between analgesia, sedation and anaesthesia. The latter is a very delicate balance. As any anaestesist would tell you: "Knocking them out is easy, it's waking them up that is complicated!"
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:52:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
[deleted] ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 21:36:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yep, which is why they tended to avoid doing that in later years. It would usually just be a few strong guys to hold you down and then some form of sealing. They used to use hot tar in amputations. Dunk the fresh stump in it
z500 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:24:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In fact, after anaesthesia was introduced a lot more patients died from bleeding out because without all the yelling and thrashing, things didn't seem quite so urgent.
I had an idea because I've been interested in the ACW for a long time, but... just, wow.
[deleted] ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 18:35:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
ACW?
And yeah, it's a pretty grim consequence! Thankfully this led to methods of sealing off arteries/veins to deal with the whole dying from bleeding thing.
Azusanga ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 18:43:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
American Civil War, i think.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:56:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ahh, makes sense.
If there's one thing they skip in history in the UK it's the US. America was pretty much never mentioned the entire time so I kind of forget important things like that!
To be fair, between the French, Russians, Germans, the Chinese situation, Africa, and the Middle East (among others), y'all had your own concerns to deal with. I don't blame British Imperial historians for minimizing American history between 1780 to around the 1920's.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:39:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It does make the internet a learning experience more often than not, all the things I know about American history I've learned from comments and reading up on things to understand context. Damn abundance of 'muricans on the internet, I can probably place a fair few states on a map too!
Opium has been around for ages. You can't tell me they couldn't of had that available.
Vio_ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:47:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So a woman in the 1700s had to have a double mastectomy as she'd been diagnosed with breast cancer. All they could do for her was give her a shot of whisky, have two men hold her arms down, and cover her face with cheesecloth so she wouldn't see it (that failed, she saw the whole thing). Took some time. Got the first one done, and she panicked, started screaming. Then the second one, and still more screaming.
She said she couldn't get the screaming out of her head for months after, and definitely had some ptsd issues from it. But it was a success, and she lived a couple more decades.
I know its just a show but "The Knick" had great visual representation of this.
[deleted] ยท 1743 points ยท Posted at 18:52:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Robert Liston is known as one of the geniuses of surgery but is also known as having the distinction of once having a surgery with a 300% mortality rate. Since anesthesia wasn't in common use, surgeries were done as quick as possible. During one of his famous quick amputations he cut through a man's leg at the hip so fast he also took off several of his assistants fingers. The assistant later developed gangrene and died. The patient didn't survive. An elderly surgeon in the crowd watching was so excited by the commotion that he had a heart attack and fell over dead, thus the only 300% mortality rate in one surgery.
"Blood and Guts - a History of Surgery" is a great read if you want to read more stories!
[deleted] ยท 571 points ยท Posted at 19:46:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Oh God!
Amputated the leg in under 21โ2 minutes (the patient died afterwards in the ward from hospital gangrene; they usually did in those pre-Listerian days). He amputated in addition the fingers of his young assistant (who died afterwards in the ward from hospital gangrene). He also slashed through the coat tails of a distinguished surgical spectator, who was so terrified that the knife had pierced his vitals he dropped dead from fright. That was the only operation in history with a 300 percent mortality.
You think that's bad? Check out #4:
Fourth most famous case
Removal in 4 minutes of a 45-pound scrotal tumour, whose owner had to carry it round in a wheelbarrow.
I feel like removing a tumor from a scrotum should take less time than a leg amputation... I mean, I feel like if dude nicked his scrotum shaving the thing would tear it's way out like a bowling ball in a grocery bag.
thetates ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:41:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nah, that would be Joseph Lister. Introduced antiseptic and the concept of sterilization to hospitals.
And yeah, his ideas were heavily resisted, especially in the US (Pres. Garfield might not have died if his doctor has been following Lister's methods).
[deleted] ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 20:25:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
All I can find when I look it up is a saw, an extraordinary sharp bone saw would make sense in context. Remember within minutes they would cut through flesh and bone..
He sounds like a total fuck up lol I know he wasn't and no one back then could help it because of the technology and knowledge but holy shit. You could almost laugh at the situation if you didn't know 3 people died. Took a guys ball sack off once on accident? How does that even happen?! I have to read that book. Thanks for sharing that.
[deleted] ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 21:26:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He was legendary for his arrogance which I'm sure contributed to some of his mistakes.
[deleted] ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 20:55:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:26:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thank you! I just purchased the book and look forward to reading it. In turn, I recommend Puswhisperer: A Year in the Life of an Infectious Disease Specialist, by Mark Crislip.
I think that's also a show or documentary on Netflix. It's in my queue, but I haven't seen it yet.
jeeps350 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:32:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
WTF, did he just close his eyes? Testicles and Fingers, my god.
Boobr ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:33:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Probably the funniest morbid trivia i've ever heard.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:52:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Definitely read Blood and Guts. My boyfriend got me a bunch of surgery and epidemiology books for Christmas and that one is the most interesting so far!
At least he didn't kill two other people in the process. From his wikipedia page:
Amputated the leg in under 2 1โ2 minutes (the patient died afterwards in the ward from hospital gangrene; they usually did in those pre-Listerian days). He amputated in addition the fingers of his young assistant (who died afterwards in the ward from hospital gangrene). He also slashed through the coat tails of a distinguished surgical spectator, who was so terrified that the knife had pierced his vitals he dropped dead from fright. That was the only operation in history with a 300 percent mortality.
thijser2 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:29:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He also did one of the few surgeries with a mortality rate of 300%, he was amputating a leg (this time in less then 2 1/2 minutes) when he cut one of his assistents fingers, said assistent died of the resulting infected, he then cut the coat tails of one of the spectators who promply had a heart attacking and in the end the patient died as well. Still despite quite a few of these little accidents people loved him for his speed and he was well known as a good surgeon.
heiferly ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:33:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Is he the same surgeon who performed the world's only known surgery with a single patient and three fatalities?
Edit: Nevermind, read further down and someone confirmed he is.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:57:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, why did that testicle thing happen?
wasmic ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:30:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Robert Liston also holds the record for the highest mortality rate of a single amputation: 300 %. The patient died a week later from hospital gangrene (as was common). However, he also accidentally sawed the fingers off his assistant, who also died from hospital gangrene. He also slashed through the coat of a pretty old spectator (also a surgeon), who went into cardiac arrest from the shock of thinking that he had been cut.
That quote describing the scene of one of his surgeries:
"He was six foot two, and operated in a bottle-green coat with wellington boots. He sprung across the blood-stained boards upon his swooning, sweating, strapped-down patient like a duelist, calling, 'Time me gentlemen, time me!' to students craning with pocket watches from the iron-railinged galleries. Everyone swore that the first flash of his knife was followed so swiftly by the rasp of saw on bone that sight and sound seemed simultaneous. To free both hands, he would clasp the bloody knife between his teeth."
Amputated the leg in under 21โ2 minutes (the patient died afterwards in the ward from hospital gangrene; they usually did in those pre-Listerian days). He amputated in addition the fingers of his young assistant (who died afterwards in the ward from hospital gangrene). He also slashed through the coat tails of a distinguished surgical spectator, who was so terrified that the knife had pierced his vitals he dropped dead from fright. That was the only operation in history with a 300 percent mortality.
Think of it this way. No pain killers, no anesthesia and you need to get your leg cut off. Would you want the doctor to take 20min to cut it off or 2min? I would take 2min. Plus: the quicker it is the less blood is lost and you avoid the possibility of the patient going into shock from a longer surgery.
African militant groups can amputate limbs much faster than that, machete, tar, back to your cell!
djeye ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 10:37:32 on January 22, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Robert Liston
Amputated the leg in under 21โ2 minutes (the patient died afterwards in the ward from hospital gangrene; they usually did in those pre-Listerian days). He amputated in addition the fingers of his young assistant (who died afterwards in the ward from hospital gangrene). He also slashed through the coat tails of a distinguished surgical spectator, who was so terrified that the knife had pierced his vitals he dropped dead from fright. That was the only operation in history with a 300 percent mortality.
[deleted] ยท 43 points ยท Posted at 18:24:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The guys behind indoor plumbing, modern sewers and toilets are goddamn heroes.
The Romans had plumbing bringing clean water into individual buildings and I think individual buildings also had bathrooms that had a connection into sewer systems.
[deleted] ยท 43 points ยท Posted at 18:34:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
All right... all right... but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order... what have the Romans done for us?
The fact that they had it at all shows you that they really were pretty advanced, though.
And the public facilities you're describing were still pretty ahead of their time. After Rome fell, Europe went through centuries of unreliable well water.
Their lack of realizing the problems with lead goes way beyond using lead pipes in their plumbing. For example, they used lead cookware (skillets, etc) too. Or to give my absolute favorite example, if they had a bad wine harvest they'd boil lead into the wine to sweeten it!
They thought that going crazy was just something that sometimes happened to people when they got old.
I remember something like ten years ago I saw this claimed hangover cure being advertised on TV and the guy made some claim about "the Romans used it, so you know it's legit". And my mind immediately went to them boiling lead into wine they didn't find sweet enough as the case-in-point of why that's a bullshit claim.
And as I just edited in, they just thought that going crazy was something that simply happened sometimes when you got old. They had no idea it was from the lead. It probably didn't help that lead doesn't immediately make you go nuts, so the cause/effect of what was happening would have been pretty blurred.
The Indus Valley civilization had a very good sewer system by today's standards, way ahead of the Romans. Or so I remember reading at some point...somewhere.
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 18:38:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
To those that keep my shit flowing away from me at all times: thank you, so much
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:54:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also malaria and perhaps yellow fever. Maybe diphtheria and cholera as well.
Azusanga ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 18:46:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also, infection ran rampant. During the Civil War, you could build a wall of limbs to keep the cold out. One of the sides (I can't remember which) had very very low infection rates (in context) because they would boil their horsehair before using it to stitch wounds shut.
22bebo ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 18:51:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm in India right now for a study abroad. It's disturbingly similar to this.
In "The Doomsday Book" by Connie Willis, the main character travels back to Plague times. One of the first things she sees is a woman hauling away a full chamberpot; some of it sloshes on her hand and she just wipes it off with her sleeve. That scene still sticks in my mind, because I almost vomited.
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:01:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Someone else recommended it and I'm about to order it, but I'm glad you told me that so I know what to expect. I mean I should expect that anyway, but at the same time... good god
Yeah, it's a great book. It is a downer, but then, it's about the frickin' PLAGUE, so that's not a surprise. If you want something a little lighter for after, "To Say Nothing of the Dog" is the next book set in the same universe, and is more a light sci-fi comedy.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:01:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:53:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What's even crazier to me is that even today in places [at least the countries with the largest populations] like India and China people still practice open defecation, drink, and wash in sewage water. For that reason India has the highest rates of bacterial infections in the World! It's also why they see such high rates of infant mortality, not because of hand washing but because they take so many anitbiotics that when babies are born they can get a antibiotic resistant super bacterial infection from their mothers on the way out and die because there are no known medicines to treat it.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:58:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I always have this thought about smoking. People bitch and moan about how cigarettes smell, how your clothes smell, the room, etc. But in the past people smoked EVERYWHERE. In their offices, homes, hospitals everywhere. Did cigarettes not smell back than? Or were they used to it?
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:41:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You really do get used to it, I smoke but can still get a bit overwhelmed if I'm in a room where people smoke with the windows closed all the time, but it doesn't take long to stop being bothered by it. I guess it's the same with poop.
Kraelman ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:29:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Read "Doomsday Book" by Connie Willis.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:37:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I was looking for some more fiction to read, thanks!
I've read that as well. People like Joseph Lister had a hard time convincing surgeons to wash, because clothes and hands caked with blood were a symbol of status. If you were a young surgeon with soiled clothes, you were busy, important, diligent. There were no scrubs to wear, surgeons would leave a suit of ordinary clothes at the hospital and wear them to operate in, round in, etc. Then change and go home. To wash their working clothes would be unimaginable, you would be washing away all your badges of honor. This was the mindset. These guys would deliver babies one after the other without any sort of hygiene, in filthy clothes. Then a huge number of new mothers would die of "childbed fever" shortly after delivery. It was considered an "unexplained" illness, if you can believe it.
sk8r2000 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:50:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's a documentary/show on Netflix called Filthy Cities and the host talks about what London, Paris, and Philadelphia were like before they cleaned up. A Google search tells me it's also on YouTube. I was fascinated by it.
FemtoG ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:27:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
that feel when you went back in time and you run out of hand sanitizer
If you're really curious what it'd be like to have shit, and piss everywhere. Or what it'd be like to have people bathe, and shit in the same water, just go to india.
There is a very interesting video by CGP grey about the rammifications of european cities on the native american population. The ultimate cause they attribute the death's too is pretty fascinating. Well worth a watch if you have 15mins
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:10:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
When I see early photographs of London and New York City everyone looks so tip-top and nicely dressed. Were those people walking around with crazy body odor and bad breath? It's a weird clash of beautiful architecture, fashion and music combined with streets filled with horsey shit and piss buckets.
I read somewhere that one could smell London in the early 1800s a hundred miles before seeing it. Don't know if that's accurate but that gives you an idea of the stench. I'm sure if you'd get used to the smell after a while. We live in a pleasantly scented laboratory compared to our ancestors.
I'm massively grateful to live in a place and time where my rubbish is collected from my door weekly and sewage is flushed down a pipe to be treated elsewhere. Also I can wash my clothes in clean water rather than downstream from sewage runoffs.
So, not in Flint, MI, huh?
ggouge ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:21:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well really just the Europeans like being dirty. In the middle east and China at least washing your self was important. Europeans even made fun of middle eastern people for bathing
No need to go that far to imagine, just ask people who lived in London in 78-79
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:57:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Reminds me Jessica Biel chopping off Leatherface's arm in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake. But she did it quicker :3
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:00:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
the amount of blood and dirt on their aprons was sort of considered a status symbol
seems like surgeons were kind of regarded like auto mechanics today, and a pristine unblemished surgeon's frock would have been the sign of a daintyboy who didn't want to get dirty. real surgeons got elbow deep and their aprons were stiff with blood and shit.
Anyone watch shows/movies set in other time periods, ex. Game of Thrones, when actors are talking close together and imagine HOW BAD people's breath smelled in those times???
EASam ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:59:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Men would walk with the women closer to the road, so chamber pots being dumped from buildings would be less likely to hit their date, companion what have you.
You might actually cause quite an epidemic if you travelled into the past with a cold or the flu or something... Their bodies aren't ready for today's diseases much like your nose isn't ready for their bad breath or months of not-showering...
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:23:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I always think about that in terms of banging. Like granted, there was probably all types of beautiful ancient chicks and dudes and you could definitely probably get laid by just showing them a magic trick but could you imagine the stench... The awful stench. I get grossed out if I even a light waft of "party pussy" (all night at a club or a bar) reaches my nostrils... A few hundred years back? Even if you could get passed the B.O. or the breath you've got that HAIRY clam to deal with. For the ladies, magnify the B.O. by about a hundred and if you could get passed that, good luck getting passed those balls.
dnick ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:41:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Imagine what they'll think is disgusting for our time period a few hundred years from now. They just shit in a room of their house? With the same air circulation and a non-sealed door to the rest of the house?! They washed their dishes in a mild detergent and then reused them? Kept raw food right in the regular fridge? Gross!!
check out Robert Liston, known as the fastest surgeon in the west end, who reportedly amputated a leg in two minutes (and the poor patient's testicle in the process)
You don't need to time travel. There are many places still that have no functional infrastructure and continue to function in a way unadulterated by sanitary technology.
labrys ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:13:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sewage poured into the streets, livestock just kicking around in living quarters, far too many people to a house and almost zero understanding of public health.
You can experience that in India if you're keen. I lived in Hyderabad for a few years - my apartment was fantastic and modern, my neighbours were Tollywood stars (the Telugu language version of Bollywood), politicians and rich business men, it was seriously swanky. But, step out of the grounds (past the private security keeping the riff-raff away)and there were open sewers. My side balcony had a view of a slum with no toilets, and chickens and goats running around the little blue-tarp and sheet metal huts. Cows and water buffalo roaming the streets. Men pissing at the side of the road without a care in the world. People shitting in alleys, whole families living in the partially-constructed buildings they were working on with no facilities. People with all kinds of disfigurements and easily-fixed injuries we don't see in the west.
Had a friend tell me how wonderful it must be in India, all those smells of cooking spices, and incense from the temples. Yep, they were there if you were walking past a restaurant or temple, but mainly India smells of stale urine baking in the sun and sewers.
Even my apartment wasn't plumbed in to the sewers or mains water and gas supplies, since they weren't in that bit of the city yet. Instead, we got tankers of water delivered and pumped up to the roof to use for toilets and showers, bottled water delivered to drink, gas bottles for the cooker, and all the toilet waste was collected in septic tanks and driven off by tankers once a week. It absolutely stank.
I love the place, and it's modernising fast in the big cities, but it still has a lot of problems. If you've got money, daily life isn't any different to in the west, except for seeing (and smelling) the rest of the population's poverty. If you're from a poor family though, especially a poor family in a village instead of a city, life isn't far off medieval life - except now you've got a mobile phone, even if you don't have a roof over your head.
my god it would reek in cities. Sewage poured into the streets, livestock just kicking around in living quarters, far too many people to a house and almost zero understanding of public health.
Why time travel? Just go to certain parts of India.
check out Robert Liston, known as the fastest surgeon in the west end, who reportedly amputated a leg in two minutes (and the poor patient's testicle in the process)
Chicago in the 1880's evidently was a stank dungeon of death and shit smell. Definitely wouldn't want to time travel there.
Biggseb ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:58:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just think about what we'll know in a few hundred years, and what kinds of things will be common knowledge then that don't occur to us now. And future Redditors minds will be blown when they think about things we take for granted today. Hmmm..?
How about the origin of terriers? They were bred by nobles to sleep at the ends of their beds to fend off and eat rats that tried to climb up during the night. They literally had to worry about getting nibbled on by rats while they slept. Fuck that.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:07:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I always think about how bad dentistry was in the past. Unclean and painful.
On mobile, but the extra credits YouTube channel has a historical video about John Snow, the man who founded epidemiology. It explained how cities had low birth rates and high rates of death, they essentially only increased in size because of immigration.
No need for a time machine. If you want to experience that, just visit India. I'm there now, and livestock roam the streets along along with the people pissing and shitting everywhere will give you that smell, times 1 million in population.
It may not be coincidence, in a deterministic universe, feasibly, our universe could be less than a few hundred years old; like if you snap into existence, and the past and future butterfly out in a beautiful chain of causality.
gsfgf ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:07:49 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
my god it would reek in cities
I wonder if someone from the past would say the same about modern air pollution? Smog has to be really thick for us to notice it, but what about someone who had never experienced it?
Noglues ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:30:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If you haven't seen The Librarians, this is actually addressed quite hilariously in the season 2 finale, when Eve smells someone from Elizabethan England.
New York in the 1800s was filled with horse drawn carriages that produced ridiculous amounts of manure. "The 15 to 30 pounds of manure daily per horse, multiplied by the 150,000+ horses, resulted in more than three million pounds of horse manure per day."
you dont have to go back in time just go to Tijuana, raw sewage smell everywhere, donkeys painted like zebras and shit and pharmacies with disco balls in them, place is fucked.
r0b0d0c ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:43:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's always something that comes up in my mind when I imagine time travelling...
You don't have to time travel. Regular travel will do: there are plenty of places like that today.
Ever walked into someone's room and told them it smells, only to find out they didn't even realize? Spend enough time in a stinky place and you adjust to the point where you can't smell it anymore.
For instance, I went off to college in the country for a semester. I came back to Boston and realized that the entire city smells strongly of garbage, car fumes, and cigarette smoke. I had no idea beforehand. Now that I've been here for 3 weeks, I can't smell it anymore.
[deleted] ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 21:28:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's some vaguely Latin-sounding name for it, but most people will understand if you just say "nose deaf."
[deleted] ยท 18 points ยท Posted at 21:39:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
San Salvador smells of burning garbage, plastics, gunpowder & night blooming flowers, It is so unique I can fly in there and immediately get my bearings as to where I am.
Ahundred ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:22:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Isn't that what a city is supposed to smell like? Then again that lovely urban aroma is noticeable here which tells me it isn't prevalent enough to get used to.
I dunno what it's supposed to smell like, but I'd rather it didn't... anyway, it's a lot stronger than many people who live in the city might think since we get used to it.
giantzoo ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:33:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Another thing to note: I have a smaller city next to my hometown that has a landfill, you can actively smell trash but I've been accustomed to it so it doesn't phase me at all. I probably go there maybe a handful of times every year or so and smell it every time. In this case I'm sort of an in-between, so you don't even need to be living there to be acclimated to whatever stench there is.
Maybe your mind gets used to recognizing the scent as unimportant or a nuisance and becomes conditioned to ignore it? Just a guess, I'd love to see some actual science about this
u38cg ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:48:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes. Used to work in a wet fish intake in a salmon factory. The first day you walk in there, you nearly vomit. Some actually do.
Three months later, you only smell it when you come back from a holiday.
Every time I watch a period movie (Elizabethan times, whatever) and see a really hot woman I reflect that, in real life, she never would've even seen running water. She ain't so hot after that.
That's the funny thing about all this, is that they believed that the foul odors were making you sick rather than stuff on your hands. Granted, this was before they really knew what bacteria and viruses were. Sick people smelled bad, dead people smelled worse, the people who smelled these things (aka were around the sick people) also got sick, therefore if you don't smell the odor you won't get sick.
I'm becoming a teacher. Walk into a classroom of kids in their puberty that had their windows shut for the lesson. It will have the foules smell imaginable yet nobody in the classroom notices. Our brain is a tricky fucker.
[deleted] ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 18:47:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You do get used to it. My family is not really hygienic. At first you smell yourself, and it's gross, but you do get used to it and you get used to sitting in your own filth. I'd imagine if you lived in a very dirty world, you'd get to used to it as you were born, raised, and died of old age.
From some reading I'm working on about the Middle Ages most people likely did not wear undergarments and you basically wiped your butt with "a torche-cul or a curved wooden gomph-stick" a practice used by the Romans which continued well into the Middle Ages. Further, in regards to cleanliness, people are thought to have still bathed more frequently in the 1200's than in the 1800's. Public baths were still found throughout the Middle Ages for the common folk while Lords and Ladies would have a room, often off the kitchen, in their manor or castle for such use. In both instances communal bathing was still common. Shaving was generally a chore that often went undone due to the weakness of available soaps and the dullness of blades, which was a simple knife that was as often used for whittling as shaving and was frequently dull.
I once went on a historical "trip through Viking Jorvik" in York. It was cool, like Disneyland but with Viking animatronics instead. They really did the whole immersion thing though - it stank!
I also saw the largest human turd ever discovered. That was cool.
It's like farting in your car, and your windows aren't working, you would get used to it after like 10 minutes, thinking it's gone. However if you pick up a passenger, they'll notice the smell.
SeymourZ ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:14:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your nose gets used to smells and filters them out. That's why if you have bad breath or BO you generally don't smell it even though someone else will.
It probably smelled like shit, but nobody noticed.
Caneiac ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:40:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In the rich circles they had strong perfumes and perfume soaked handkerchiefs to mask the smell and poor people just got used to it.
I mean, no one wasn't used to it. It's like how you notice everyone else's house seems to have a distinctive smell to it, but yours doesn't smell like anything in particular to you. You would be used to it because there would be no alternative.
I told my mom she should watch Game of Thrones, and she said it was too dirty, she didn't want to watch it. I told get those scenes are generally beneficial to the plot, and it's not that bad.
She said no, she meant dirty as in they don't bathe, and didn't want to watch unwashed people -__-
Humdngr ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:23:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
especially the cities. It really shows the benefits of a city that people would choose to surround themselves by so much filth. Before sewers and toilets and cars the middle of a large city would just be a total cesspool with human and horse shit everywhere.
Humdngr ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:22:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think the most underappreciated thing would be the modern sewer system.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:54:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In france nobles and well-to-do would wear little bags of popurri and perfume around their necks in order to deal with it. It was that bad.
There was another thread here about how ancient cities smelled. Someone who collected ancient cloth/paper money went into details based on how the money they had collected smelled.
Look up the history of Brownstones in places like new york. Basically, shit would run in the streets during storms, and these were built to direct the shit downward so it didn't flood the streets as much and get into peoples homes.
Humdngr ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:20:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well we think something smells like shit in reference to things that don't smell like shit. When everything smells like shit it's kinda hard to not get used to it.
For a large part of my life everywhere smelled of cigarettes. Everywhere, and I don't remember ever noticing it. Now I can smell it straight away and I have a lousy sense of smell. I guess when everyone smells the same you do just get used to it
I bet people were used to the smell since they never knew what it was like to be in a place that didn't smell bad. I am sure some places were better than others, but it comes down to what you are used to.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:20:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As someone who grew up on a farm, you do get used to it.
well yes, this is a fact! Populated cities were fucking gross (IMO, still are) centuries ago... because indoor plumbing wasn't a THING. I agree it's foul that people did not wash their hands but can you imagine why they didn't? City streets were flooded with shit (and piss) and it was pretty normal shivers.. As a germophobe, I am thankful for both Ignaz and indoor plumbing.
ctindel ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 05:15:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just go to India where there are open sewers running in the streets and people bathe and drink the water from the Ganges where there are dead bodies floating right next to them.
That's what it used to smell like here.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 05:42:38 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Don't go to India then
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 06:23:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They were probably used to it. People who live in filth and have terrible hygeine are immune to the scents they create.
My gym teacher used to say that pigs don't think they smell like pigs. He was trying to get the point across that you should always put on deodorant after gym class because you won't always notice that you smell bad when you do. I think that's the general concept. I also think you'd just get used to all the bad smells if you grew up and spent your entire lives in them.
eNaRDe ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:03:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Beethoven was known for not showering for months. People have said you can smell him across a room.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:09:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This a quote by Patrick Sรผskind in his book Perfume:
In the period of which we speak, there reigned in the cities a stench barely conceivable to us modern men and women. The streets stank of manure, the courtyards of urine, the stairwells stank of moldering wood and rat droppings, the kitchens of spoiled cabbage and mutton fat; the unaired parlors stank of stale dust, the bedrooms of greasy sheets, damp featherbeds, and the pungently sweet aroma of chamber pots. The stench of sulfur rose from the chimneys, the stench of caustic lyes from the tanneries, and from the slaughterhouses came the stench of congealed blood. People stank of sweat and unwashed clothes; from their mouths came the stench of rotting teeth, from their bellies that of onions, and from their bodies, if they were no longer very young, came the stench of rancid cheese and sour milk and tumorous disease. The rivers stank, the marketplaces stank, the churches stank, it stank beneath the bridges and in the palaces. The peasant stank as did the priest, the apprentice as did his masterโs wife, the whole of the aristocracy stank, even the king himself stank, stank like a rank lion, and the queen like an old goat, summer and winter.
Humdngr ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:25:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That really makes you appreciate the time (and geographically) in which we are born into.
nittun ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:30:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
yeah, old london or any major european city would probably overwhelm your senses. a trip back 150 years, and shit would flow in the gutters.
yarow12 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:36:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't know how anyone could stand it or get used to it.
Spend a few weeks on a livestock farm. It's pretty crazy, but people get used to smells fast. A lot of our sensory perception is less about detecting things and more about detecting unusual things or things changing. Are you on a computer? Do you hear your computer's fan going or the hard drive spinning? Is it pretty audible? Was it even remotely something you were conscious of? It's the same kind of thing.
An alternative thought there is that we're the abnormal ones. Aside from actually like being dirty enough to cause disease, the "foreign people smell bad" stereotype kind of illustrates that our perception of things like smell are different from most of the world throughout most of history.
Do foreign people have BO, or are we really strangely obsessed with keeping ourselves from smelling like human beings?
Olfactory fatigue. Smell something regularly long enough, your brain naturally filters it out. The reason why some people might not know about their own BO.
Go visit India for the same reason.
kidbeer ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:23:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Some people today still do it.
Lookin at you, parts of Europe who think deodorant is optional.
Even more mind boggling, it wasn't just that doctors weren't washing their hands in between patients. They would work with cadavers (either practicing procedures or simply examining the human body to learn more) and go straight from dead body to maternity ward without washing. This brought on the belief that some women would die due to shame if it were a male doctor that assisted with their birth instead of a female nurse or midwife (because there was such a drastic difference in death rates between when there was a male doctor or a female nurse who helped with the birth).
IIRC: The transference of germs between cadavers and living humans was found by an unfortunate doctor who recognized that he, after being cut while performing an autopsy, was having very similar symptoms as the women who were so often dying in the hospital shortly after childbirth (sidenote: it was actually safer for them to give birth at home during this time period). This doctor died shortly after but ended up saving many lives because he recognized his symptoms.
TLDR: If you are playing with dead things, be sure to wash your hands afterwards.
[deleted] ยท 480 points ยท Posted at 19:24:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's actually really interesting. Kudos to the Fins for recognizing this and running with it. When the whole "you should really wash your hands because of germs" thing came out, doctors became upset and often refused to comply.
Yes, They were gentlemen, and therefore it was impossible that their hands could be dirty. Semmelweiss was very nearly locked up in a loony bin for suggesting such a thing.
From wikipedia, "In 1865, Semmelweis was committed to an asylum, where he died at age 47 of pyaemia, after being beaten by the guards, only 14 days after he was committed."
Joetato ยท 20 points ยท Posted at 21:05:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Absolutely. some of them thought it was nonsense and nothing but a waste of time. People (as a whole) are always resistant to change, it seems.
KJ6BWB ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:49:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
To be fair, they didn't have good hand lotion at the time, so frequent washing with the harsh soap they had at the time could really do a number on your hands. So who's more likely correct, the looney raving about invisible monsters that somehow arise in dead bodies but aren't in any living bodies and says you need to mess up your hands with too much handwashing as a consequence, or everyone else?
[deleted] ยท -7 points ยท Posted at 21:08:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just saying "studies show" doesn't mean anything. There's like 50 studies by sugar companies that "show" that sugar has no effect on obesity. Cite it if you want it to be even the slightest bit relevant.
[deleted] ยท 49 points ยท Posted at 19:56:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Native Americans put sick people in saunas too, "sweat lodges". They believed that you could break a fever with heat or sweat the toxins that made you sick out, and that's a belief that persists here in the USA among pretty much every race.
Kesht-v2 ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 21:53:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also you risk seeing the ghosts of the fiddy men you killed.
Its because there's a lot of truth in it!! All the toxins in the blood, the killed and destroyed pathogens and the pathogens that can't survive in a hot temperature are flushed out through swear (yes, this happens) and the blood runs thinner when you're hot, and the increase in oxygen and ATP use when you're hot aids in how fast the pathogens are broken down and how fast white blood cells can act - so exercising and saunas do help with sickness.
Huh, I always heard Sweat lodges were diifferent from saunas. Closed in, they didn't get rid of the smoke before using (sauna fire just heated up stones for eight hours then fire is extinguished, water on sauna got rid of CO2), and were more spiritual and for men...along with being friggin dangerous because your in an enclosed, really hot space with smoke. Mess up the building, don't get enough holes in the wall, and your dead.
I don't have a sauna, really want one, but I find hot water/steam helps a ton. When I had whooping cough I could only breathe with a bathroom filled with steam from a boiling bath along with a steam maker.
NightGod ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:27:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's because the steam helped loosen the phlegm in your lungs.
Hegiman ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:56:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Because you can. Native American and eastern medicine were way ahead of the west.
It's hardly about the smoke (though smoke saunas are rad), it's regular heating to temperatures in excess of 100C / 200F that sterilized the place. Not while having childbirth there, obviously.
Positive. Just like it's not deadly for your hands to take a cake out of a hot oven, as long as you don't touch the metal or glass parts. It's all about (lack of) humidity in the air, the less there is the less heat is conducted to your body and the more effective your sweating is in cooling it down. 200F in a dry sauna is no problem at all, that's why they'd pour water on the stove rocks to generate steam and make it feel hotter.
Probably what you said. A huge reasons "tradition" comes about is because somewhere down the line we figured out it work better. We had no idea why, just that it did, until it became so ingrained in the culture no one remembered why they did it that way in the first place.
That's basically how we forgot that lemons cured scurvy. Lol
I wonder what simple thing we are/aren't doing in this day and age that we'll look back on in a hundred years and think, "Holy shit! I'm glad I wasn't around back then."
Also I recall an anecdote from the Black Death, in which a family all survived because they had retreated to living in a corner of their furnace due to abandoning the rest of the house and not going out. The constant fire burned any present germs
I really cannot explain how their house was constructed, but it seemed like they had a large room where things were cooked and they lived huddled on the far side of the room from the entrance, and past the active furnace. But I think they left it not knowing any better and all immediately died. Read this years ago.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 13:25:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Finland has a love of sauna.
[deleted] ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 18:28:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Man, I'd forgotten about that. I'm so glad I got to do that theme in school because I remember way more about all of this than any other history topic I ever learned about and it's absolutely nuts. Thank fuck for germ theory and the modern abundance of knowledge!
Also, in the Victorian times, the medical schools were so desperate for cadavers to work on that they usually acquired them through back channel "no questions asked" means. When they were especially hard up, medical students were known to rob the graves of the recently deceased. This was especially common in Asylum cemeteries, so much so that it was doubted that the asylum cemetery in Anchorage, Kentucky even had any bodies in it.
Source: The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson.
[deleted] ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 18:54:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ah, the ole I don't know what it is so it must be supernatural belief.
He proposed the practice of doctors washing their hands with chlorinated lime solutions (instead of just rinsing them in water until they looked clean).
James A. Garfield lived for awhile after he was shot. But doctors kept shoving their fingers in his wound trying to find the bullet. He died from the infection.
They didn't want to start washing hands even after it was suspected to be the problem, because if they did and their mortality rates went down, then the obvious conclusion was that they had been responsible for killing many of their patients. So instead they stayed in a state of denial about it.
It was also Ignaz who discovered this. His friend got poked with a scalpel that had been used on a cadaver and was dying of the same infection the cadaver died of.
Ahh yes, that sounds about right. I was going off of memory. This opened the door to discussions about Germ Theory and led to a better understanding about what was killing so many women shortly after giving birth.
This is actually home semmelweis found out the connection. The mortality was considerably higher on the days when the doctors were performing autopsies in the morning.
This is worrisome. As someone who has bad teeth, I can see how some of our modern dental practices will (probably) be seen as barbaric in the future.
Like, TIL that people used to drill into teeth and fill the hole with gold/porcelain/composite resin (and that's if they decided against ripping the tooth out)!
skalra63 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:21:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well some things have persisted though milenia. Tooth pulling. We still do it, we just have some anaesthetic... I believe most of the time its local so people are aware its happening. Its also a form of torture.
I think about that all the time... 100 years from now.. "dear god people would have to be put to sleep than cut open just to remove something, then heal for weeks and months. What monster!"
In strict term it is still safer to be at home. Being at the hospital mitigates risk because of the cluster of skilled people and equipment that they have if things get complicated, but for an uncomplicated birth, little is gained from having been in a hospital.
I think it comes down to a very individualized risk assessment. For a certain group of people it may be that their risk of complication is "lower" than the risk of hospital born infections. For those people they may actually be safer. That kind of assessment is presently pretty subjective though.
Revvy ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:17:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's just something off with going to your local contagious and infectious diseases center to give birth.
While their ability to deal with contingency situations will improve those edge cases, the way a hospital operates can still introduce other problems.
You are right. I forgot the infant mortality rate skyrocketed after hospital births became the norm.
Revvy ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:59:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I forgot where I said anything of the sort.
BDMayhem ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:07:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Do you have a source backing that up in strict terms?
Edit: This NY Times article cites a CDC study of 14 million births that shows home births by midwives resulting in 4 times as many deaths as hospital births by midwives.
Conclusion
Our study shows a significantly increased total and early neonatal mortality for home births and even higher risks for women of 41 weeks or longer and women having a first birth. These significantly increased risks of neonatal mortality in home births must be disclosed by all obstetric practitioners to all pregnant women who express an interest in such births.
I'm not sure about what specific germs may come off of a dead body but what the women were dying of became known as "puerperal fever" or childbed fever. This is defined as any bacterial infection of the female reproductive tract following childbirth or miscarriage. So the deaths could have been caused by a wide variety of bacteria.
PRMan99 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:14:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Probably because a dead body is being actively consumed by bacteria and maybe even Fungi; which consume human flesh if given the chance and are reproducing at a phenomenal rate. Then getting all over the doctors hands and then introduced to the infant, and a woman's nether regions; which have just been beaten up by child birth..
But be aware that this and many other things is the work of the christians and similar stupid people.
onedoor ยท 70 points ยท Posted at 17:56:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We wash our hands so much partially because we can. Water is very available to us. And when I say us, I mean first worlders.
[deleted] ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 18:03:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Good point that. I waste a pretty insane amount of potable water just washing my hands because I don't want to get a cold. Damn it, now I feel bad, but I still want clean hands...
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 18:46:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:50:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You say that, but Indians (from India) wash their hands exponentially more than any North American or European I've ever met.
Just based on personal observation, id say most North Americans are particularly shitty at washing their hands, which is unfortunate, it's a great way to stop the spread of disease.
Hegiman ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:57:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
mcglausa ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:47:17 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I recently spent two months in India, visiting quite a few different areas of the country. Many handwash sinks did not have soap! Even the toilet sinks often didn't have soap.
I actually found this was common across SE Asia too. Considering that many cultures from that area traditionally eat without utensils, I found it surprising.
EkiAku ยท -5 points ยท Posted at 19:14:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There are absolutely no countries where plumbing isn't available and even many non-first world countries have plumbing and electricity in rural areas. It's not a sacred commodity that only the very elite have. Only the poorest of the poor do not.
I don't know what your idea of "poorest of the poor" is, but over 10% of the world's population doesn't have easy access to potable water.
EkiAku ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:14:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So, from this statistic you have given me, about 90% does. While less than 100% isn't ideal, I hate this idea that the west lives in some sort of luxury that no other country could possibly have in any other way.
Also considering that some people who don't have access to that water live in the west (Detriot and that town in Michigan whose name escapes me come to mind.)
Maybe I should have put it this way: over 700 million people don't have readily available drinking water. This is more than twice the population of the U.S.
And I don't think that most intelligent people (I know that's kind of a narrow qualifier) believe that the west lives in luxury that nowhere else has. The fact is that there is a significant portion of the Earth's population that exist in an abject poverty that most people who grew up in the relatively superior U.S. infrastructure can't fathom.
You're taking the totally wrong point from this person's posts. They never said running water was an elite luxary, just that most of the first world has it, and its less common (though not totally uncommon) the poorer/rural-er you get from there.
And its Flint, btw.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:36:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The reddit circlejerk doesn't like facing reality :(
EkiAku ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:17:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
It's a whole other brand of racism that in all honesty bothers me more than straight up "Oh we hate this group of people." Oh those poor barbaric, third world countries. They'll never understand our luxuries~. Meanwhile you wouldn't be able to tell the difference from Nairobi, New York City or Dubai if you didn't recognize specific buildings, cultural differences not withstanding.
If you didn't know that germs and bacteria existed, why would you think dirt was bad? In fact, people used to think just the opposite - that layers of dirt would protect you from ill "humours", and that taking a bath was dangerous.
inkydye ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 19:40:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We do have some instinctive and ur-cultural preference for cleanliness.
In mutation lottery, many animals stumble upon an instinctive behaviour of cleaning themselves, their food, habitat or babies. Then they out-survive and out-procreate those who don't have that instinct. The reason we don't like the smell of shit is that we're descendants of people and animals who got saved from disease by staying away from shit because they happened to dislike the smell.
In the cultural equivalent of evolution, plenty of human cultures stumbled upon superstitions or rites that motivated behaviours that resulted in effectively better hygiene ("you are tainted by death because you touched a dead body, or by spirits of rot because you handled rotting things; you must purify (=wash) yourself before you even touch other people, let alone you try to heal them or officiate the mystery of childbirth"). Then they out-survived the cultures without those memes, and begat us.
Of course, there's also the thing where rolling around in dirt sometimes rids you of parasites, or eating mud supplies a critical mineral, so there's vectors pulling in all kinds of directions.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:09:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is why I have an armchair theory that Obsessive Compulsive Disorder could have evolved. Growing up, I was an extremely picky eater, as in if the taste, texture, smell, temperature, or appearance of the food was "wrong" to me, I just wouldn't eat. I ate so little that I probably ended up several inches shorter than what I was supposed to be. I'm guessing that my ancestors grew up in filth and the OCD genes were more likely to be passed on.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:00:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, I suppose those ideas are pretty much one and the same, it's just easy for me to say 'but dirt is bad anyway because it's dirt'! Before we knew why it was bad, I guess there's absolutely no reason to worry about it.
I have been feeling a bit choleric lately. Maybe I should roll in some mud.
heiferly ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:43:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
At any rate, we're coming full circle. We're now realizing a certain level of what we previously considered "dirt" ... microbiota ... is actually essential for good health. We're curing patients with fecal transplants now, and this looks to be just the tip of the "good dirt" iceberg.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:47:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I do attribute my fairly robust immune system to eating handfuls of dirt as a child.
heiferly ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:09:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's one way to do it. I went the other route, literally, and received a fecal transplant from my husband as my first wedding anniversary gift. Truly, the gift that keeps on giving. (My farts are now eternally his "brand.")
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:12:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's... oddly beautiful. But the way you phrased it made it sound kinda like you just got one as a gift, which is hilarious.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:14:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I just hate how grimy my hands start to feel during normal day stuff. I cant imagine working in a place where you may be covered in all kinds of fluids wouldn't make your hands feel disgusting after a while.
A great book (that I listened to in audio form) is Destiny of the Republic about James Garfield. So many additional things like Graham Bell and the things he was doing at the time. But they also covered how Americans, in particular, resisted this antisepsis theory in medicine. They literally took blood caked on to their aprons as a sign of experience! Also, that guy who shot him sounded like a Millennial you would see on a reality tv show today. Very strange.
Yep, and it was rather pertinent to Garfield's assassination since it seems likely that he would have lived if his doctors had used proper sanitation.
(also, Guiteau is easily the most batshit crazy of all the successful presidential assassins - shot Garfield because, after giving a rambling speech to a tiny audience in support of his candidacy, he thought he was the main reason Garfield was elected, and that Garfield should have rewarded him with an ambassadorship or something)
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:39:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sounds awesome, thanks! I know shit all about US history so it should be extra interesting.
We take Germ Theory for granted today. People back then really had no idea that it was an issue. The prevailing theory was that of Miasma, so in that sense they would have had very ventilated rooms to prevent "bad smells" from getting in.
"Dirt" being a transmitter of disease wasn't even considered really, except in cases of gangrene. Even then, it's not like they would go dig a ditch and then operate [though there was a practice in some rural areas outside the US to rub dirt on the wound left behind by the umbilical cord]. Often times it was because they were doing autopsies, then would go deliver babies .
The corpses being relatively fresh, without Germ Theory, no one would have really thought twice about it.
That being said, with the advent of germ theory came the development of antiseptic technique - which we are all happy for.
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:36:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Even as I'm writing comments I'm forgetting that germs were a fucking crazy idea back then. We really came a long way in a short amount of time.
Amazing: In 1865, Semmelweis was committed to an asylum, where he died at age 47 of pyaemia, after being beaten by the guards, only 14 days after he was committed.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:01:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The film it was based is amazing as well. La Jetรฉe. Exact same story however La Jetรฉe is comprised almost entirely of still photographs. It is amazing because after about two minutes you are so ensconced in the story that you don't care and you find yourself investigating each photo with the voice overs bringing them to life.
La Jetรฉe was the first movie that made me appreciate films art.
i love how, again and again, throughout history (and just day to day in general), people refuse to make a small change in order to have the possibility of a remarkable or the same outcome. I could see the issue if there was danger to hand washing, but in this case, the worst that could happen is your hands are clean and everything else is the same
UNWS ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 18:17:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The thing is, it detracts from routine if you have to wash your hand all the time. It is basically saying you need to get naked everytime you go on a plane to reduce bomb threats. Now if you didnt think it would help, you would just get annoyed and actively resist it.
That's a great way to put it, but I do think that some people are still way too stubborn
Gl33m ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:17:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It really doesn't. People in this thread aren't talking about why the other doctors refused.
The guy that discovered the thing about washing your hands? Yeah, turns out he was actually fucking crazy. There was also no real scientific backing to what he was saying outside correlative results. His entire hypothesis was that the cause of a particular disease was "uncleanliness," as well as believing "cadaverous particles" were the problem. His solution to cleaning was just whatever got rid if the dead corpse smell the best, which happened to be wet chlorine (that's what you want to wash your hands with)...
He presented this to other scientists and their response was, "Uh, none of that really makes any god damn sense. WTF are you on about." Were they wrong for generally ignoring the results? Absolutely. But Semmelweis was absolutely incorrect. They didn't refuse to adopt something because it was a small inconvenience. They refused to adopt something because none of it really held to scientific research.
However over the next couple of decades, many scientists would go on to develop the Germ Theory of disease. They did lots of cool science and shit, and had a hypothesis and results that made much more god damn sense. When presented with this data, the scientific community was like, "Hey, this shit sounds legit. This actually makes sense."
And the end of this, should the scientific community investigated the "wash your hands" idea more thoroughly even purely based on correlative data? Probably. This is about people's lives here and all that. But were they justified in ignoring Semmelweis? Generally, yeah.
There's a couple of great books on the topic of evidence based medicine by Ben Goldacre, who has been campaigning on the topic for years. Even up to a few decades ago doctors actively fought changes in their practice, even where their way of doing things was proven to be harmful.
It's really a textbook example of the scientific method in action. The 2 maternity ward of a hospital had drastically different mortality rates despite being in the same building. Women would literally beg not to be placed in the "cursed" ward, some preferring to give birth on the street.
He proposed theories and ruled them out. Perhaps over crowding is causing the deaths, but the ward with more deaths was less crowded. Perhaps the priests who walk down the halls to give the last rights to the dyeing mothers would stress the other patients and cause them to die, but when the priests were removed the death rate was unchanged. He summarily reflected ideas like "one of the wards is cursed" because it was untestable.
He finally had his breakthrough when his friend died after being accidentally cut by a used autopsy scalpel, his friend showed similar symptoms to the dieing women.
He proposed that "cadaverous matter" (a functional idea that he invented) is what is causing the deaths. Ironically the doctors, in an attempt to discover what was causing all the deaths in the "cursed" ward, were performing autopsies on every woman who died in the building and then after being wrist deep in a pathogen infested cadaver would barely rinse off their hands before assisting in a child birth almost inevitably infecting the mother.
When he suggested the doctors wash their hands in a lime solution the death rate dropped to normal levels. (He discovered lime neutralised the smell of the cadaver on the hands, so he figured it would probably be good enough to destroy the supposed "cadaverous matter.")
The doctors were of course skeptical because he was unable to prove the existence of cadaverous matter. (primarily because it doesn't actually exist.) But after the death rates there was no doubt that hand sanitation was effective.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:17:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:26:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That also boggles my mind. I know you have to interrupt what you're doing for a minute or two but come on. I like not spreading avoidable illnesses.
hfsh ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:44:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I can imagine that constant washing with harsh disinfectants is not that fun on your skin.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:45:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
True, just working with food destroyed my hands if I didn't moisturise all the time from washing that much more. But, again, I do gain some slight enjoyment out of not making people ill I guess!
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:47:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The remarkable thing about that list is I know nearly all of those names and why they're significant, and beyond this little niche I'm not big on history or science outside of maths.
What you're failing to realize is that if you wash your hands between every patient like Semmelweis recommended you'll end up rubbing all the skin off your hands and having open wounds. That's why it was "obviously" not a reasonable thing to do.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:13:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Aye, someone pointed that out and I hadn't thought about it (even though I get painfully dry hands sometimes). That's a fairly valid reason to be resistant to it if there was no demonstrable reason. It's hard to fully shake off the knowledge of how infection works because it's so widespread now here.
Yeah, microbiology is something most people couldn't imagine -- I mean, there are tiny animal-things that live on your hands that are too small to see but which get inside you and kill you? Really?
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:26:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well now you put it that way, it does sound kind of ridiculous...
lookmeat ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:08:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
People kept their hands clean, in the sense that many people will pick up their room but will not actually know how to clean it. The hands had no dirt or any other obvious thing.
What people didn't like was the idea of having to wash your hands with soap fully and completely every time (even if your hands appear clean). If you've ever been frustrated doing an extra step that was useless (but there for lawsuit purposes) every time, you'll understand how these doctors felt.
Well, they didn't know about germs back then and he couldn't really prove why hand washing was reducing mortality. Germs were only discovered long after his death. The idea of washing what seemed like perfectly clean hands sounded stupid to them.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:08:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You mean how people today are anti-vax? People are fucking idiots.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:57:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Quite, people are extremely stubborn as well as idiots. Not sure how much of each. Anti-vaxxers are definitely on my list of 'seriously, what the fuck?' along with Semmelweis' detractors.
It's really sad that he went crazy because of people not believing him, and the way he died because of it.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:07:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Honestly after that, I don't think there's anything one can do but go completely mad. It's such a simple and effective thing, mass refusal to do it has some rather disturbing implications if you get all thinky about it. Don't people want to save lives?
You were never made to wash your hands as a child?
rkicklig ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:28:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think that it's our understanding of the health risk of "dirt" that is different now and contributes to the feeling that you shouldn't be dirty.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:31:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
People never like being told something they do is bad or wrong.
Even doctors until a few years ago resisted a ban on wearing ties as studies found they were just filthy with bacteria.
The doctors came up with all kinds of excuses such as professionalism not to stop wearing them.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:42:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's been periods of time when the intellectual community said washing and bathing was the root of illness so it should be done as rarley as possible. Imaging going down on a medieval peasant of either gender.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:45:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dude, I wouldn't even go down on someone on the last day of a festival. Medieval sex was never considered!
Dr_HQ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:43:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I read that doctors resisted because they didn't want to believe they had been harming their patients so extremely and regularly. Basically logic went "If failing to wash hands between patients causes drastically higher mortality, then I have been responsible for the deaths of many of my patients. I can't accept that to be true, so I will direct hostility towards the person suggesting it is true instead of considering the possibility."
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:48:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That makes a lot of sense. I imagine some were just stubborn asses or didn't want to waste the time on it, but those are some heavy implications.
It was a class issue. Doctors came exclusively from the gentry, and as a gentleman your hands could not be unclean from labour. To suggest that a gentleman's hands were dirty and needed washing was an insult. Therefore, no self respecting doctor would wash their hands.
a-t-o-m ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:15:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Even though we learned that there were microscopic organisms in the mid-late 17th century, we never really figured out that such small organisms were causing such deadly problems.
We did not have the capability to "see" viruses until the early 20th century, almost 70 years after Ignaz's practices were really catching on. In a similar fashion, I am glad my barber does not twilight as an amputation specialist.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:19:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You mean your barber's not meant to put hot cups on you while you get a shave? It's great for your humours, or so he tells me.
Washing one's hands was the "climate change" of the time. No matter the body of evidence, there's people that'll deny it to their death.
cruise02 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:17:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If you told me that I'd been killing people for years through my own carelessness, I'd probably actively resist that idea too. Until I saw some powerful evidence, then I'd probably spiral down into inescapable depression.
The reason the doctors probably resisted was because if the hand washing theory would be confirmed it would mean the doctors would have all killed many patients by accident. So you can imagine why they would be in denial about their part in their patients deaths, probably just be easier to think the deaths must be for an another reason.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:24:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Habits are learned behaviors. It's not so mind-boggling, when you consider a child playing in the mud and then going to eat something. We don't know that dirt is dirty until someone drills it into us.
Especially when you think that they knew that dirt and such caused infection. I just watched The Revenant and then read up on the story that it was based on. This was in the 1820s, and the real Hugh Glass had laid his back on a rotted log to let the maggots eat the dead flesh on his back to prevent gangrene. If gangrene was known to be a bad disease, and they knew it was caused by infection, then why wouldn't they think that clean hands would prevent that?
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:34:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just goes to show you how strong peoples resistance is to change, no matter the situation. So hard to get anything accomplished, even if it makes things better.
elondisc ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:45:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
i mean, have you heard of the antivacciners, pretty much the same thing
Joetato ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:58:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They sued to perform surgery with unwashed hands and equipment that hadn't been cleaned from the previous surgery. My understanding is they pretty much never cleaned the surgical tools.
That explains why people used to see surgery as a death sentence, I guess.
ks501 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:03:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It no longer boggles my mind that people are ignorant and vehemently resist improving that situation. Its everybody.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:06:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
boggles my mind too because it's such a habit to wash my hands several times a day
In the US (don't know about other countries) we now have disinfectant hand wipes at many stores. Today got to wash my hands coming in to the grocery, and again leaving the grocery. Awesome! I think they started putting them in when avian flu began - so - thanks avian flu?
You're talking in past tense, but it's still a thing for some people to actively avoid washing their hands. I once watched a guy turn the sink in the public bathroom on for a few seconds, do nothing, and then turn it off just to pretend he was washing his hands.
Not just dirt, but blood from other births and surgery. My friend started the Global Sepsis Alliance to raise awareness about sepsis and he uses this story to illustrate the trouble in trying to get new practices and procedures passed in hospitals.
biosc1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:19:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
People even thought his idea was stupid and unnecessary and actively resisted it!
Well, to be fair, the idea of germs wasn't even understood at the time.
Mauser_X ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:25:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Germs? Uh-huh. In the eighteenth century, no such thing, nada, nothing. No one ever imagined such a thing. No sane person, anyway. Ah! Ah! Along comes this doctor, uh, uh, uh, Semmelweis, Semmelweis. Semmelweis comes along. He's trying to convince people, well, other doctors mainly, that's there's these teeny tiny invisible bad things called germs that get into your body and make you sick. Ah? He's trying to get doctors to wash their hands. What is this guy? Crazy? Teeny, tiny, invisible? What do you call it? Uh-uh, germs? Huh? What? Now, cut to the 20th century. Last week, as a matter of fact, before I got dragged into this hellhole. I go in to order a burger in this fast food joint, and the guy drops it on the floor. Jim, he picks it up, he wipes it off, he hands it to me like it's all OK. "What about the germs?" I say. He says, "I don't believe in germs. Germs is just a plot they made up so they can sell you disinfectants and soaps." Now he's crazy, right? See?
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:25:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
People even thought his idea was stupid and unnecessary and actively resisted it!
People will say this about fucking anything. We've been seeing it a lot with vaccines lately.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:26:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If you think that dirt is just dirt and is harmless (no knowledge of germs/disease/any of that) then you have no problem being dirty. That means it's no problem if you get other people dirty. It's not like they had the highest hygienic standards, so everything would be dirty anyways.
iirc it's because doctors took it as an affront that they were "dirty". the argument was that "a gentleman always has clean hands" or something stupid like that
SilasX ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:54:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What's worse is that the doctors had been touching dead bodies. And we already had, even back then, an age old taboo against touching dead stuff. So it's not like the idea should have been unintuitive or bizarre.
Well Semmelweis didn't just make the doctors wash their hands, he made them wash their hands with bleach. Doctors resisted this because washing your hands with bleach is obviously unpleasant.
Prilosac ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:02:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They also found it as a sign of disrespect which (I think) is why he's s underappreciated. They took it as an insult at their own cleanliness
webbitor ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:13:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Washing your hands reduces the population of microbes on those surfaces for a short time, which definitely helps prevent infection if done just before your hands are in contact with someone's mucosa or open wound. (like in a maternity ward, or a sexual encounter)
Outside those situations, frequent hand-washing is a waste of time, IMO. Fearing dirt is stupid. People like farmers and mechanics have dirt on their hands all the time and are fine.
Lanko ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:32:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I heard a rumor somewhere that it was actually considered prestigious for a medical doctor to be caked in blood, shit, and placenta as a sign of how many births he had handled that day/week/whatever.
Imagine you're a doctor and someone you're responsible for 90% of your patient's deaths. Then they tell you a simple 1 minute activity could change that. You'd first be offended at the notion that it's your fault, then laugh at the seemingly magic idea that water and soap could somehow prevent "normal" losses.
MAK911 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:55:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Brilliant.
[deleted] ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 19:52:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It shouldn't surprise you. We discovered the vaccine for polio and now people don't want to "expose their kids to too many vaccines". People are just stupid.
[deleted] ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 18:28:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Yes, I keep a tiny bottle at work. And if I ever travel on vacation, I take it with me. I tried a few premium lotions and found Curel is the best for me.
Nerdn1 ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 18:44:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This was well over a decade before the germ theory of disease was widely accepted and existing theories, such as the miasma theory, would not be spread through contact. So unless you were going to cleanse everyone, head-to-toe, and every room constantly, handwashing would do no good. Washing your hands between every patient was a needless inconvenience for busy doctors. Heck, by the miasma theory, washing your SHOES between patients might be more effective than your hands, to make sure that miasma-causing contamination doesn't get spread.
Doctors almost certainly washed their hands occasionally, such as after handling something with a particularly offensive odor, but they weren't going to do so between every patient.
zykezero ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 18:28:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They thought that "washing your hands alluded to you having dirty hands."
Sigh.
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 18:33:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Exactly. They would wash their hands of anything that could be SEEN as dirty but they had no concept of bacteria or other microscopic particles that can mess you right the fuck up. Clean it with the good stuff.
(fondles corpse guts to learn which humor reacts best to a good bloodletting, wanders through Victorian alleyways to a handy opium den/whorehouse, pauses to deliver twins, polishes monocle)
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:47:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't think it was simply about hand washing as it was about effectively sanitizing your hands. You can wash your hands and still leave a fair amount of bacteria.
I remember reading about the first doctors during the civil war who washed their hands when tended to the wounded. They were thought of as freaks for doing such an 'unnecessary' thing.
But then their patients were found to be much less likely to develop infections around their wounds (back then infections from bullet wounds killed more then the bullets themselves).
Semmelweis immediately proposed a connection between cadaveric contamination and puerperal fever.
He concluded that he and the medical students carried "cadaverous particles" on their hands[Note 5] from the autopsy room to the patients they examined in the First Obstetrical Clinic. This explained why the student midwives in the Second Clinic, who were not engaged in autopsies and had no contact with corpses, saw a much lower mortality rate.
Doctor: "Hrrm, I just had my hands inside a dead person's rectum. I better stick my hands into this woman's vag to help deliver the baby."
Semmelweis: "Should.....shouldn't you wash your hands before you do that?"
Doctor: "Nah. What could go wrong." /sarcasm.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:36:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Agreed. I bet something like this will be said in the future but about people nowadays not getting their kids vaccinated
NAN001 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:22:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They washed their hand; with water. Now imagine how weird it would for someone having been washing his hands with water since forever to wash it with some sort of unknown mixture.
whatsdup ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:48:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm sure people did rinse their hands so they're clear from debris, but that's different than using an antiseptic like soap (or in his case, chlorinated lime). If you didn't know about the existence of tiny microbiotic germs, you wouldn't think to do that.
MarlinMr ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:24:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Kind of like how in the past we were recommended to put babies on their bellies to sleep. Suddenly Trond Markestad says its stupid, and sudden infant death syndrome drops by 90%. At least in Norway it did.
AOEUD ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:20:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A gentleman's hands are always clean!
Mid-wives' hands weren't so they had a much lower mortality rate.
Leoxcr ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:21:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
kind of blows your mind that people just don't, you know, vaccinate.
This reminds me of an episode of Stuff You Missed in History Class where they talked about how seldom doctors and nurses actually checked the baby's vitals at the time, and the entire last part, Tracy kept saying how it was hard to think that people "didn't check the baby."
It is so strange to look back one hundred years ago and see how much childbirth has changed. I can't imagine going through pregnancy and knowing how likely it was that something would go terribly wrong.
I read a history of medicine once. There's a moment in the 19th century surgery section where it goes, 'then came the introduction of gloves.' You think about all the surgery you read about up to that point and go 'eewwwwwwww'.
phantuba ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:45:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I can kinda understand it. What blows my mind is that people still just don't, you know, wash their hands even today.
Not in the slightest. People, in general even, are so resistant to new ideas that they often respond aggressively. Sometimes they respond violently. Think on our time's discoveries and the conservative responses.
Honestly I still meet people like that today. Granted they don't work in medical facilities (thank God), but some people do not wash their hands when they should sometimes
Pinyaka ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:20:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It further blows my mind that compliance with hand washing procedures by doctors and nurses in hospitals hovers around 40%. I mean, the damn doctors and nurses can't be bothered to wash their hands even knowing that the compliance is bad and that it's costing us billions per year.
What really blows my mind is how many people still do not regularly wash their hands.
dsolomo ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:25:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
People (sailors) used to think that taking baths would kill you. Also thought malaria was "bad air" venting up from earth. There are quite a few things we can look back on that seem incredibly stupid
at some points in time, what would they have chosen to wash with however? people didn't drink water because it was so polluted in big cities, so i can't imagine them thinking to "clean up" in it.
our entire perspective is terribly skewed by our cleanliness practices and medical understanding.
thijser2 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:31:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A good doctor is a gentleman and a gentleman is always clean, as such a good doctor does not need to wash his hands and to suggest he should is to suggest a doctor is not a gentleman and therefor not a good doctor.
If you remove the knowledge of bacteria from the world, why would you bother? You know that the dirt on your hands harbors microbes and other infectants. If you didn't know that, it's just muck, blood and filth, and being clean really wasn't seen as a benefit. If anything, it's the other way round, knowing about bacteria led us to believe that being clean was being healthy.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:48:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You have to know about germs to understand why thats a good idea.
One of my favorite historical mysteries surrounds using the restroom in ancient Rome. They had toilets and at the end of the toilets there were two buckets, one filled with water and one with vinegar or brine to clean the Roman version of toilet paper, the Spongia.
So they knew enough you had to clean it, what has always been interesting is that since they didn't know anything about germs, did they all use the same one? Probably.
ec-625 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:58:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I remember reading a quote from a woman in the 1700s whose husband installed a primitive shower in the back yard. She tried it out and wrote, "It was not as bad as I expected, having not been wet all over at once in the last 25 years."
Eab413 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:58:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I DONT HAVE THE TIME! Do you understand how long it takes to make sandwiches for an entire preschool field trip?!
kelmit ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:06:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
People still resist it. People still don't always do it when they should. Even doctors.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:09:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well to be fair.. wasn't the water back then usually filthy itself?
I know what you mean. Working in the medical field, I cringe watching Murdoch Mysteries(set in the late 1800s-early 1900s, Canada). The medical examiners just dive right on in there, no PPE(Personal Protective Equipment) of any kind to be seen. They then proceed to rinse their hands in a basin of water and shake other's hands, eat lunch, leave and touch everything in sight.
Also rinsing your mouth after a meal. Most eastern cultures its ingrained to rinse after a meal. At least here on murica, its not a big deal to not rinse your mouth after a meal.
It's been suggested that the U.S. president James Garfield didn't die from the gunshot but from all the filthy fingers digging through the wound trying to find the bullet.
I work in a medical theatre and you'd be absolutely stunned how many of the scrub nurses and consultants I see coming from the toilets without washing their hands.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:40:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No it doesn't. People didn't know about germs back then. Does it blow your mind that we don't do anything today which we might do all the time in the future?
1: didn't know wtf germs were and thought ailments were fuckin spirits n stupid shit
2: the doctors who were spreading the germs thought it was their nurses BC doctors are/were relatively infallible in the hospital hierarchy
Nisja ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:02:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
People still don't. I've noticed over my 3 years at a company that some of our company Directors march straight out of a toilet cubicle without so much as glancing at the sink.
People are grim, even the most 'polished' ones.
Fizzay ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:08:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes, but you have to remember water didn't exist back then.
wolscott ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:13:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You have to remember that this was before running water was everywhere. It's not like they just had sinks with faucets everywhere that they weren't using.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:24:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is a big reason doctors used to do home visits - your house was usually a more cleanly environment than wherever hospital existed at the time, where they would go from sick person to sick person without washing their hands.
latyper ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:29:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
To be fair, so much of the water in European cities at the time was extremely filthy. People would have rightly viewed getting wet as a great way of contracting something horrible instead of a way to get clean or avoid disease.
lmao I've worked some summers as a camp counselor, and we make all the kids wash their hands before meals (its a camp in the woods, v dirty and easy for stuff to spread like being sick), and to this day I still have parents that get mad at me for "making Jimmy wash his hands so much". Sometime's I'd just parrot back to them what they said and have them think about it
There were doctors back then who were outraged and offended at the thought of being asked to wash their hands. "A gentleman's hands are never dirty" they would say
3literz3 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:43:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It kind of depends on the quality of the water you're using to wash with, though.
We still have all kinds of active cultural practices today that are completely unnecessary yet facilitate the spread of disease. Namely, handshaking and kiss greetings.
People are still just as dumb today. 100 years from now people will be mind-blown at how people today dismissed detoxing and wholistic health practices.
A doctor is a gnetleman, and a gentleman's hands are always clean.
skalra63 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:13:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It doesnt blow your mind if you remember that people didnt understand what infections were and how they were caused. I guess as long as you wiped the shit off your hands it was clean enough.
not too long ago people thought shitting and pissing in a river upstream from a town that was using water for food etc from the same river was perfectly ok.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:28:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well it is seen as common sense now, but common sense is defined by society and in the case of Inaz Semmelweis society just did not know about this earlier. Just like we dont know now about some simple things to do in order to improve your health, which would be seen as easy obvious in the future.
arlenroy ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:34:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I had seen a documentary on Netflix during a sleepless night about 4 years ago, I forget the show, Archeologist Autopsy? Anyway the powder monkeys meaning a prepubescent 12 year old boy who would run gun powder during fights on a sea going 1700's ship. Getting limbs blown off and having open wounds contaminated by Dr's, it was a sign of pride and experience how much blood you were coated in, dried blood killed a lot of people.
Deto ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:45:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Keep in mind, though, I don't even think we knew that bacteria existed back then.
People in India stick one finger on their left hand ,I think, up their ass's to clean up. Doesn't prevent spreading of disease to much, but cuts down on people getting hernias.
Didn't they humiliate him to death for it? They were coming from the morgues to the labor wards and experimenting their OB practices on poor unwed mothers. Most mothers didn't want them around, they were the kiss of death.
[deleted] ยท 102 points ยท Posted at 22:22:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
They had him committed to silence him because he was quite vocal about pushing for hand-washing. He was tricked into going to the asylum, where he was beaten to death by the guards.
In 1865, Jรกnos Balassa wrote a document referring Semmelweis to a mental institution. On July 30, Ferdinand Ritter von Hebra lured him, under the pretense of visiting one of Hebra's "new Institutes", to a Viennese insane asylum located in Lazarettgasse (Landes-Irren-Anstalt in der Lazarettgasse).[8]:293 Semmelweis surmised what was happening and tried to leave. He was severely beaten by several guards, secured in a straitjacket, and confined to a darkened cell.
He died after two weeks, on August 13, 1865, aged 47, from a gangrenous wound, possibly caused by the beating.
warhawks ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 02:49:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You forgot how he got the infection in the first place. The wound that got infected was caused by being beaten on by the guards. I've actually used this guy in an interview question where they asked if I could shake anyones hand in history who would it be haha. Definitely could have used some recognition
I've taught middle and high school science. The only reason he gets any recognition in my county is because I use him as an example of how scientific ideas change. The only one the county wants us to use is the model of the atom.
I mean, not only was there a 90% decrease in infant mortality, that decrease was from 1 in 3 dying. It wasn't like every 90th kid was dying or something.
It's also a great chance to think about the assumptions of today that will look ridiculous in the future. I mean, "A gentleman's hands are always clean," how many people did that kill?
The thing that's interesting about Semmelweis is he completely failed to make the idea catch on. The trial ended, the mortality rate returned to normal until the bacteria theory came about a few decades later. It's a fascinating case in the history of science.
rbraunz ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:31:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's interesting, I had actually never heard of him until reading A Man Without a Country by Vonnegut.
Total sadness in this topic: in Semmelweis's homeland, hospitals are reluctant to spend on hand sanitizers, because it's "expensive," leading to an increased number of staph infections in hospitals.
But they named the biggest medical university after him, so he's got that going for him, which is nice.
Decreased by 66.66% repeating, or just "Eliminating two thirds of mortalities". Unless you're talking about something where negative values on a scale makes sense you can't decrease something by more than 100% of its value, and in those cases it is more accurate to describe it as "subtracting 300% of its value".
The story is pretty interesting, if sad. He compared mortality in wards run by midwives and those run by physicians and surgeons who were often going from surgeries directly to a woman in labour. The difference was dramatic (midwives causing far more casualties) but when Semmelweis suggested that the doctors wash their hands, they were offended at the claim that the gentlemen's hands were unclean. IIRC, Semmelweis' suggestion wasn't actually taken until much later.
It was the NURSES who were telling any doctor who would listen to wash their hands but they were ignored because they were women. Then this dude copped on, and of course, got all the glorious credit. Source incoming (although it'll be hard to find, women have been kinda pushed out of history until recently.)
Source Pt 1 :Semmelweiss thought it was a because a priest rang a bell at one point and it caused the kids to die. The actual reason was because in the midwives hospital they were washing their goddamn hands.
I always found it interesting how in the Pentateuch the Hebrews were given strict "purification rituals" when dealing with the dead or diseased. Always calling for the persons to cleans themselves with water. So 3000 years before we knew about germs the ancient Israelites we using water cleansing methods because God ordered them to.
In 1865, Semmelweis was committed to an asylum, where he died at age 47 of pyaemia, after being beaten by the guards, only 14 days after he was committed.
...without explaining why he was committed? That's sad.
Funfact time: His suggestions were laughed at and revoked. He even ended in a psych ward after some struggle and died to an infection he catched during an operation in said psychiatry.
Poor dude really got struck by the Tree of Irony
WiredEgo ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:50:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I blame him for the unsustainable population boom that is going to cause this world to collapse because humans suck.
yur_MUM5 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:51:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nobody really knew too much back then about bacteria but bringing in the idea of cleaning your hands before a procedure is groundbreaking. And the fact that he was killed for it because they thought he was a lunatic is ridiculous to hear but I'm glad now people understand his theory is a common practice in today's society.
Learned about him when I read the book super freakonomics.
mobpak ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:02:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
yes you are right
Cinnamen ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:04:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
When I was learning about industry age and he was mentioned in my book, I was hoping for entire chapter about the improvements in medicine. There wasn't even a full paragraph sigh
gildoth ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:11:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:14:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He died without his findings being accepted by the medical community. In fact he was a laughing stocking for even suggesting that doctors should wash their hands.
Woah didn't know so little people knew about him. I had a question about him on my college exam yesterday. He's known because he was one of the first who combined induction and deduction. Fun fact: before discovering it was because the doctors and nurses didn't wash their hands, he thought it was because in one clinic the women always saw a priest walk by when someone died while in the other clinic (where less people died) the priest didn't have walk past the women.
rlbond86 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:19:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And all of the other doctors didn't believe him for decades.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:20:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Don't forget Joseph Lister who pioneered sterilization of instruments (and had "Listerine" named after him).
DeTrickz ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:21:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Perfect example of how being right doesn't matter if you alienate people with your personality.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:40:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What did people use to wash their hands with back then? Did it actually have any antibacterial properties? I assume it must have had some if it decreased mortality by that much.
We all stand on the shoulders of giants, and we spit, piss, and shit on their heads the whole time...
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:39:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I just learned about this guy in microbio
tribdol ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:41:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Lol I studied his story in med school last year, the sad part is that the scientific community rejected his "discovery" because they said it was offensive for the doctors, because doctors are educated people, and by definition educated people can't be dirty, so doctors' hands cannot be dirty and not need to be washed.
Poor Semmelweis died in an asylum, I don't remember if he was convicted because he was accused of being crazy for having suggested that educated people could have dirty hands, or if because the hostility of the scientific community and the rejection of his discovery made him go crazy.
JJBang ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:43:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dr Alexander Gordon discovered the same thing the previous century, and was driven out of town, and died at a young age.
If people hadn't overlooked Alexander Gordon, then no one would have needed to know about Semmelweis. And a lot more children would have had mothers.
Imagine if washing your hands was called semmelweissing
jkapow ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:48:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Smug dudes kept telling him "You know what they call alternative medicine that works? Medicine." and he was like "How about you wash your fucken hands and see if fewer babies die", and they were like, "sounds pretty anecdotal, man".
sensicle ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:49:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nurse here. Thank you for mentioning this. I believe it was brought up in Superfreakonomics as well. Wash your hands, folks! Or use sanitizer which is just as effective when the hands are not visibly soiled.
McBraas ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:52:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That is so cool; my friend just told me about him a few days ago.
-eDgAR- ยท 5157 points ยท Posted at 14:23:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Of the 14 vaccines routinely recommended in current vaccine schedules, he developed eight: those for measles, mumps, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, chickenpox, meningitis, pneumonia and Haemophilus influenzae bacteria.
They're designed to honor "research" as opposed to "applications," and developing vaccines counts as the latter.
EDIT: Historically speaking, "designed" isn't quite accurate. Nobel himself mentioned inventions in his instructions, and the first award in Medicine was related to vaccination, even if on the more theoretical side. In general, however, the awards go to "research" or "discoveries" as opposed to "applications" or "inventions," and there appears to be a least some level of intent to this by the selection committee. No vaccine developer has won since the first award; as wikipedia points out the scientists who discovered that a vaccine could be grown in monkey cells won out over Salk and the others who actually developed the polio vaccine.
ubspirit ยท 2067 points ยท Posted at 18:00:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Which is why Obama won the peace prize
LtWorf_ ยท 1418 points ยท Posted at 18:34:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He was searching for peace! He just didn't find it!
The most important part of research is reproducibility. We need lots of tests of the "Do drone strikes spread peace?" study before we can really make a conclusion.
SAE1856 ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 23:33:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
To be fair he's only really searched Hawaii. But he's searched it many, many times, so we can rest assured it's not there.
Considering that in all the hundreds of decisions made by Obama, there has to be a level of brilliance to be wrong on EVERY SINGLE ONE!
Source: Fox News
Canadian Prime Minister Lester "Mike" Pearson was awarded the prize for leading the creation of the UN Peacekeeping Corps which was first used in the 1956 Suez Crisis.
If that's not an application, I'm not sure what is.
"Si vis pacem, para bellum" or "If you want peace, prepare for war"
[deleted] ยท 714 points ยท Posted at 18:40:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think that's mostly because the peace prize is handed out by a bunch of Norwegian political rejects, while the science prizes are handed out by a bunch of Swedish professors.
[deleted] ยท 106 points ยท Posted at 21:29:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[removed]
TheBawz ยท 34 points ยท Posted at 21:51:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Life isn't fun without a little rivalry.
Stenen ยท 25 points ยท Posted at 22:20:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
fuck you sweden
Nmaka ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 00:14:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Which makes the fact that the guy who nominated Obama for the award later said it was more than a bit presumptuous to have nominated him at that time and that in hind sight he didn't think he should have.
It's worth noting that at the time the Nobel prize was established, Norway was basically part of Sweden, so the idea was that because it would be political, it made sense to have Norway hand it out because they wouldn't need to be concerned with foreign affairs.
The Peace Prize has often been criticised due to it being given "with the intention of encouraging future achievements" rather than due to past achievements, which seems to be the case with Obama.
Dantonn ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 19:36:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Norwegian Nobel Committee announced the award on October 9, 2009, citing Obama's promotion of nuclear nonproliferation and a "new climate" in international relations fostered by Obama, especially in reaching out to the Muslim world.
Here is the new boss climate, same as the old boss climate.
Dantonn ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:46:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, things have not gone as well as hoped.
twersx ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 22:34:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ostensibly it was due to certain actions he took as Senator that promoted non-proliferation and made steps toward mending America's broken relationship with many nations in the Middle East.
If you ask most people, it's a mix of "you're not Bush," "you're the first black president, congrats" and "please don't fuck this presidency thing up"
the peace price is kind of the odd award out in that group.
dotMJEG ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 18:55:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's strange, it's the only one really well known, but also the only one that really doesn't mean jack shitโฆ.. At least in comparison to what the other specific subject ones have been awarded for.
it's kind of a 'hey you did something above and beyond'
but the number of folks on the list of laureates who are there for brokering peace, that were behind the wars they stopped even HAPPENING in the first place...
yeah it's a weird award.
dotMJEG ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 19:13:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I mean, it makes sense to a certain extent and there is validity to it, but the significance of the achievements for which the other Nobel Prizes are awarded really dwarfs the majority of those won for the Peace Prize.
twersx ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:33:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
but the number of folks on the list of laureates who are there for brokering peace, that were behind the wars they stopped even HAPPENING in the first place...
I'm aware of Kissinger, who else is a laureate who stopped the peace process?
[deleted] ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 20:34:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What a fucking shambles that was. The man who authorized drone strikes on American citizens abroad without due process received the Nobel Peace Prize, instead of treason charges. What a time to be alive.
You know, I used to agree that that prize was a mistake, but Obama riling up the youth of America and getting them to vote for someone other than "Bomb Iran" McCain probably saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
ubspirit ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:07:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Because bombing American citizens and starting 2 new wars, arming rebels, etc. saved a ton of lives.
Sorry to break it to you, but bombs save lives in war. They make the enemy recognize the hopelessness of their situation and give up in a way that ground wars never have.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:34:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 03:19:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Can we shut up about Obama and the Peace Prize? It's not even a real Nobel Prize for fuck sake. It wasn't part of Alfred Nobel's original directions, its awarding has been an absolute farce at least once before Obama (Kissinger), and the people who select the peace prize are completely separate people in a separate city from those who select all the other prizes.
Obama and his stupid peace prize are absolutely, completely irrelevant to the whole thread. Nothing about the comment to which you responded does or possibly could explain anything about it.
ubspirit ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:15:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Someone's a bit salty eh?
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 05:33:28 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, because you tried to bring up something that had nothing to do with this conversation just to bitch about it. You can't say anything about the committee for awarding science prizes has the most infinitesimal thing to do with the behavior of the committee for awarding the peace prize.
I wouldn't bring up Larry Sun's Oracle corporation in a conversation about the ancient Greek Oracle at Delphi just because they both have the same name. They've got nothing to do with one another but a name, just like Peace and Chemistry are similar only in the name Nobel.
ubspirit ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 05:55:04 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I was making a joke, not a political statement. The fact that you assumed otherwise is exactly why you are salty
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:36:51 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, a bad and overused joke that is a political statement. Something can be both.
ubspirit ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 19:26:50 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You're just proving how salty you are by continuing to try to tell me what my intent was, when I've clearly stated it was not meant as a political statement.
The rules to get a nobel should really be updated.
I have heard a lot of bs coming from it about how only three people may win it in a team (There's barely any research team with so few people, if any, nowadays), and how nitpick-y they are about what's allowed to win.
It's not really so clear-cut. Several winners of the Nobel prize for physiology/medicine have been for medical applications. Hilleman's work included the research to discover and develop the vaccines, in any case.
Developing a vaccine isn't research? Research and applications aren't mutually exclusive. The 2014 prize in physics was awarded for developing an efficient blue light source. It wasn't even the first but rather it won the award because of how difficult the problem of practicality was and it had extensive applications.
Crafoord prize covers some of these bases in regards to astronomy and mathematics, biosciences, geosciences or polyarthritis research. (the latter probably because the founder had personal interest in polyarthritis research)
There are certainly some: it isn't a perfectly hard and fast rule, obviously. But look through the medicine category. The vast majority go to "discoveries," whether that is fair or not.
Of interest is that the first award was for a vaccine.
I think you do have a prett good point, but please check my post in this thread as well. My personal thought is that Hilleman never got the Nobel because he did almost all his research while working in the private sector (it's explained in my post). The most recent Nobel in physiology and medicine went to several people who discovered/developed cures for parasitic infections. And as far as I'm concerned, it developing cures for diseases is worthy of a Nobel, then so is developing vaccines.
Hayn0002 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 03:08:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"quotation marks"
jevedi ยท 416 points ยท Posted at 17:29:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The exact reasons are unclear, but here are some explanations:
[deleted] ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 03:13:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
who didn't really do anything novel other than just survey a bunch of TCM practitioners for advice on how to treat malaria, then tested them to find which ones work and then tried to isolate why they worked.
The result was novel. That's what's important. A "truly novel" theory is useless if it has little impact on the rest of the field. I can tell you about so many Nobel-prize winning discoveries in physics which were only barely "novel"; some of them merely added little innovations to pre-existing techniques and happened to successfully come up with a useful result. Some were even accidental - the 1996 physics prize for superfluidity in helium 3 was supposedly an almost completely unexpected discovery. That's what makes the Nobel prize unique: It's not an award for creativity, genius, aptitude, cleverness, or elegance. It's an award for success, no matter how ugly the method arrived to get there.
I feel like they must have changed their criteria then over the last few years, given that some of the recent ones went to camera sensors, blue LEDs, the Pauli particle trap,
Or maybe they were just, you know, following the rules? The Nobel prize was specifically established to award "progress through scientific discoveries in laboratories" (first paragraph). This guy didn't make scientific discoveries, he did the work of applying other people's discoveries in order to create vaccines. So the Nobel Prize in Medicine doesn't apply to his work.
Edited for clarity.
Tiafves ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 02:49:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
According to Alfred's will though "the interest on which shall be annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit to mankind" I think he'd intend for such a thing be worthy of award especially when later for chemistry he describes its selection as "one part to the person who shall have made the most important chemical discovery or improvement" The overall intent of the benefits provided to mankind being a measure and with Alfreds chemistry background it seems fair to assume he'd want it to apply to other categories if he had known improvements to existing matters were also a part of them.
BigDuse ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 19:24:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So you're saying that vaccines don't qualify as scientific discoveries?
PlayMp1 ยท 27 points ยท Posted at 19:32:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Here's the difference: if Nobel Prizes were around when vaccination was first discovered (the 18th century IIRC, the first vaccinations were for smallpox), then the person who invented vaccination would get a Nobel. The person who takes this concept and applies it to creates a bunch of vaccines is an industry application.
Think of it like this - let's say someone discovers a chemical tomorrow that makes room temperature superconductivity possible. This person would get a Nobel. The person who then goes and develops a bunch of room temperature superconductors would not get a Nobel.
BigDuse ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:23:48 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's valid, though I think the sheer volume of Hilleman's contributions to medicine would be worth a Nobel Prize. That said, there might not be any actual winners who weren't more deserving than Hilleman, so my point might be moot.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 05:10:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
An analogy: Henry Ford invented the concept of the car, but Toyota makes cars.
Toyota creates new cars all the time, but the Nobel prize is awarded to people more like Henry Ford.
This, to me, is fucking horse shit. Who cares if he's an industry scientist? He saved people lives using science. That's like being a superhero, but cooler because it actually matters.
Colopty ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 21:36:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The science based Nobel prizes aren't awarded for saving a lot of people, they're awarded for discovering something new. Vaccines weren't new at the time so you won't be getting a prize no matter how good you're making them unless maybe you come up with an easy way to make vaccines for anything or whatever.
Undaine ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 17:55:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Big hero of mine. He went to work for big pharma because he realized the only way to get the resources to tackle these problems was to pair up with a major source of funding.
Nobel prizes aren't t awarded for perceived capitalism, and despite this not making him a particularly rich man given his achievements, his work is still shadowed by the fact he was paid for it.
Undaine ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:24:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He knew the price going in. Read Vaccinated, it's a biography and a great read.
nickoly9 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 17:59:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well because of the obvious side affect to his vaccines. You can't give a Nobel prize to someone who gave a whole generation autism.
elev57 ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 17:31:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
For an actual reason, probably because the methods and techniques he used to develop those vaccines weren't novel enough to warrant a Nobel prize. Of the given rationales for awarding the Nobel Prize in Medicine (the committee gives each award a rationale like "for their development of in vitro fertilization"), none have the word "vaccine" in it. Several antibacterial discoveries have warranted Nobels (discover of Penicillin and Prontosil), as have the discoveries of how diseases are spread (like how people catch Typhus). Development of a vaccine, though, has never warranted a Nobel (not even Salk and others for the development of the Polio vaccine, which was a big deal). An HIV vaccine might warrant it in the future though.
You have the best explanation in my opinion. I'd agree with the HIV vaccine comment because it will most likely take a break through in DNA splicing/gene therapy/gene selection to achieve it.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:21:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This will likely never be confirmed publicly, but the general consensus as to why Hilleman never got the Nobel prize is because he did basically all of his work on vaccines while working in the biotech/pharmaceutical industry instead of an academic laboratory.
You see, the vast majority of the people on the Nobel prize selection committees are "academic scientists", that is, researchers and professors working in universities or for museums; institutions that are technically non-profit. Researchers and scientists working in academia often look down upon/have a negative view of researchers and scientists working in industry/the private sector, they view it as "selling out", and many academic researchers view biotech research as having less integrity than their own research as it is done in order to make a profit instead of being done for the sake of advancing science.
Because of this, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to win a Nobel prize for work that was done while the person was working for a private company.
For evidence, look no further than the 3 people who received the most recent Nobel for physiology and medicine. They got their prizes for discovering/developing cures for diseases caused by parasitic infections. Well, if they deserved the Nobel prize for that, then Hilleman certainly deserved the Nobel prize for his work
And to add, I have a masters degree in molecular biology, and am currently a doctoral student in stem cell biology, so this is how I know all this.
TheHaak ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:05:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He mainly developed mumps, the others he developed alongside other people and his methods were either not used or were replaced. The man was awesome, he just didn't was as ground breaking as that statement seems.
He was also a member and proponent of the one of the big things Reddit and the Noble committee hates...Big Pharma....where he is considered a god.
Source: I'm a pharmaceutical engineer at a vaccine plant: hep B, pneumo and meni are all vaccines I've worked on
Who was the guy who was a security chief for one of the companies in the twin towers up until 9/11? He had made everyone in his company do regular evacuation drills because he anticipated such an attack, and almost everyone in his company survived. He died when he went back in for the few that didn't make it out.
[deleted] ยท 2850 points ยท Posted at 18:36:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
EDIT: Watch this documentary if you have about 45 minutes sometime. It's about Rick Rescorla and focuses mainly on 9/11 but it is powerful nonetheless.
Rescorla called his wife, telling her, "Stop crying. I have to get these people out safely. If something should happen to me, I want you to know I've never been happier. You made my life." After successfully evacuating most of Morgan Stanley's 2,687 employees, he went back into the building.[3][11][12] When one of his colleagues told him he too had to evacuate the World Trade Center, Rescorla replied, "As soon as I make sure everyone else is out".[13] He was last seen on the 10th floor, heading upward, shortly before the South Tower collapsed at 9:59 A.M. His remains were never found.[10][11][12] Rescorla was declared dead three weeks after the attacks.[3]
Damn.
[deleted] ยท 985 points ยท Posted at 19:17:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
One can only hope to have the intestinal fortitude and humility to live and die like that man. Service to others first.
Zifnab25 ยท 21 points ยท Posted at 23:54:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Live like that. I'd prefer to just not be killed in the midst of a terrorist attack as a general rule. Ideally, I'd like to not be in one because they are so very, very rare.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:10:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
abdomino ยท 27 points ยท Posted at 01:35:06 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
To be fair, his wife wasn't in danger of dying. Those people were.
On top of that, it's strangers, plural. To some, two lives they don't know is still worth more than the one that they do. There are people who will choose to save the lives of ten strangers over the one person they know and love, and there are those who won't.
Last thing I want is for this to turn into an argument over who would choose to save strangers' lives over their loved ones. Until you are put in the position where you have to make a decision between staying with those you care about and saving those you don't know, you don't know what you'll do. You think you have some idea, some principle you keep close to your heart about what you think you'd do. Maybe you'll act like it's the easiest decision in the world one way or another. It's my experience that those people are the ones who disappoint and surprise themselves the most.
Mr. Rescorla chose to save the lives of thousands, most of whom he probably only had passing familiarity, at the sacrifice of never seeing his wife again. One who chose the safety of many over the comfort of some, over his own life. I strive to be like him, but I know that until I have to choose, until I am forced to make that decision, I won't know.
[deleted] ยท -18 points ยท Posted at 02:35:33 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
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Nihht ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 04:12:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wait, it's sociopathic to save ten poeple's lives instead of one? Logically it's the better thing to do.
[deleted] ยท -7 points ยท Posted at 04:32:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
Nihht ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 04:35:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sure, sociopaths might be more likely to choose the ten over the one, but choosing the ten over the one doesn't necessarily indicate sociopathy, right?
[deleted] ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 04:11:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And how the fuck would you "research" that? Want to share some of these thought exercises which makes every person who values all lives not just there own on the level with Ted Bundy?
I've "gone back in" before as a volunteer fire fighter. Fuck you. It wasn't because some pop culture psychological profile as a sociopath. I genuinely thought I'd make it back out and they wouldn't without my help. The risk was worth it.
Eat shit.
[deleted] ยท -4 points ยท Posted at 04:29:29 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 04:58:01 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your fucking sources are a blog and slate?
Seriously. Eat shit.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 05:29:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 14:57:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The blog is "Based on research" with a link that goes nowhere, a study that was published inhouse, and still doesn't manage to draw the conclusions that your lazy arm chair psychology did.
Slate doesn't even really bother to mention the full title of the research they are citing. The doctors names sure sound real nice. Yet strangely they too don't draw the same conclusion you did.
In my own conclusion, you should eat shit and lay off the habit of pondering singular unvetted articles while smoking the refer late at night. It'll make people hate you less.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:59:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I would love to read some of these studies. Got any links or anything that involves actual scientific studies with the results you just mentioned?
kiwirish ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:39:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And it's this type of shit that is the reason why loved ones are never allowed on the same ships in the Navy.
Because when a compartment is burning and you need to make the ship safe for everyone, you may have to resign yourself to making the decision to not save others still in the compartment.
Now give me all of your money and all of your possessions. You need to work every day for my benefit, and the benefit of everyone but yourself. After all, you come last.
Oh wait, your premise is complete bullshit and you're abusing someone else's heroics as an excuse to blather your worthless philosophy.
Edit: I like destroying obviously bogus ideas. On Reddit you always know what's going to get up or downvoted, because the users are predictable. Every one of you knows that I'm right, the parent's premise is completely retarded and non-functional, no human could ever actually obey it - it just happens to tug at your irrational heartstrings and fits on a bumper sticker.
I'm sorry about your father and his arm. And i'm sorry about the friends you lost. But you do seem like a troll. Just know that you deserve love, and that can't be taken from you.
If you're a troll, that's fine, what I said is true anyway, but I won't respond. Just know that someone loves you.
It is quite sad that you know so many people who lived a life of service and you would rather be bitter than help others. It isn't always about laying down your life for others. It is about helping your fellow man because we are all human and we should help one another. You have clearly suffered a lot of hurt and I am sorry for that. Don't let it make you bitter. It is a lonely way to live your life and it really takes it toll.
[deleted] ยท -24 points ยท Posted at 22:50:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
[deleted] ยท 19 points ยท Posted at 23:18:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I couldn't help but be amused by your comment. I feel like your worldview might be too myopic for you to ever begin to grasp what I will try to describe, but here goes anyway.
When you are in that situation, where the reality that many people are about to die, it's almost surreal but you kind of lose your sense of separation, that little me/ego and become part of something much bigger. Many people have described this, and I have experienced it as well in a life or death situation. You suddenly don't care about "your" life, and it's the most euphoric surrendered feeling on earth. No drug even comes close, but I heard acid has a similar effect. I feel sorry that your life experiences have been so limited that you believe "sitting comfy at home" is anything but the most dulled down experience among those available in life.
You could not have described that any better. There's a tranquil feeling where you're surrendered to circumstance. I think something in your brain prepares you and doses you so that you aren't afraid. I dunno sounds weird but you pretty much summed it up perfect. I'm just glad that in my situation I acted accordingly. Afterward I felt like life tested me and I felt at ease.
No, it really isn't. It isn't narcissistic. The op is trying to explain that things change when you realize you are in a position to help. It is about valuing others as much as you value yourself. It is an experience that is hard to describe unless you have lived it. This isn't the op trying to act superior or anything like that.
I know what it's like to struggle, to have so much taken from you that it's hard to go on. I know what it is like to wake up in physical and emotional pain every single day. I know what it is like to be dealt one blow after another to the point you feel like you can't get back up again. I have had people take advantage of me in my weakest moments because it suited their purpose. I still believe in service to others, treating people with kindness and compassion and being willing to go without in order to give to someone else. It doesn't make me any better than any other person.
Holding on to that much anger isn't healthy. If you ever need someone to talk to, I am here any time. I understand if you don't want to talk, but if you need a friend you have one.
[deleted] ยท -19 points ยท Posted at 23:29:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't get your logic man, they're literally making your life better and you're too arrogant to give them their due respect?
You make it seem like you somehow take advantage of them, but in reality they do it because they choose to make a difference and have faith in their country. You don't have to agree with everything the military does, but there's seriously no reason to look down upon them.
They definitely raised you, doubt you got here entirely on your own.
But you keep mentioning the fact that everyone has to do all the dirty work so that you don't have to. And that makes them fools, EVEN THOUGH THEYRE LITERALLY DOING THOSE THINGS SO THAT YOU DONT HAVE TO. THEYRE DOING YOU A FAVOR AND YOU SPIT IN THEIR FACE???
WHO DOES THAT?
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:41:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You like to think your life is amazing, but the fact that you will never experience the true joys of life with this attitude is where those 'fools' win over you.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:11:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's not about you, stain, it's about the big picture.
Fortunately for mankind as a whole you'll probably live an insignificant life and die an insignificant death, having no real impact on anything aside from how clean the dishes at the local diner are.
[deleted] ยท 17 points ยท Posted at 01:00:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No one. Only a clueless teen whose never known the sort of feeling that would lead someone to die for someone else could say such a thing. Hold your child or your spouse once and you'll know what I mean. There comes a time when you just know somewhere inside you that if it were me or you, it'd be me.
And this guy had it for the people who entrusted their security to him. That's bravery right there. The call for an ordinary man to do the extraordinary.
I think you have hit the nail on the head here. It isn't about always doing for others, but it is about valuing the lives of others at least as much as you value your own life. I have been in a few emergency situations. I know what it is like to be able to act and how helpless it feels when you can't help. I have been in the situation where I was the one being helped and when I have been the one doing the helping.
For example, I was on a family vacation with about 21 other relative. It was a huge family trip for us and we weren't all staying on the same floor. My sister and I were hanging out with some of our family in their hotel room when the fire alarm went off. We were all running down the stairs to get out of the building. Whatever it was that caused the alarm was taken care of and no one was hurt. While we were all running down the stairs, my dad and my uncle bolted up the stairs looking for us. They shouldn't have as we were with other adults and knew how to evacuate a building. But we were young, about 8 and 10, and the first thing that came to their heads was to get to us and make sure we were safe. At the time i was upset with them because they could have gotten hurt or killed if it had been a real emergency. Now that I have kids of my own, and know the pain of losing a child (six days after birth to a genetic disorder), I get it. I would rush into a burning building for my girls. I would be willing to lay down my life for them. It wouldn't even be a question in my mind. I would do the same for my husband.
People like first responders and those responsible for the safety of others put themselves in harm's way all the time in order to help others. They have the skills to help and so they feel called to help. I was always taught if you can help you should. It isn't always about putting yourself in danger. So many times helping someone is with something small can make a huge difference. It's sad when people don't understand that. It is demonstrates a lack of compassion. It is a sad way to go through life.
There are a lot of people who put others first. No, you don't always have to put others first and you have the right to chose life in a dangerous situation. That said, there are people out there that believe in service to others first. Police officers, fire fighters, any first responder, and people like Rick Rescorla take risks because they want to help others. Rick Rescorla had the knowledge and skills to evacuate people and he went back in because he was one of the few people who could make a real difference in helping people out of the building. In fact, he had come up with security measures for such an event because he fully believed an attack like 9/11 was going to happen eventually.
This isn't to say a person shouldn't do things for his/her self. People should do things for themselves. What people are trying to say here is that in a situation where you can help you should help. You don't have to agree with it, but you don't need to get so worked up about it either. You are taking it to an extreme. I am sure the op didn't mean it quite as literal as you are taking it.
Xannin ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 09:34:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Destroying ideas is fine, but your delivery sucks.
The best thing to come out of 9/11--maybe the only good thing honestly--was the exhibition of absolute human bravery and selflessness. It's truly beautiful to hear the stories of people who died with the purest intentions of saving people's lives before caring about their own.
Brings tears to my eyes every time. Let's roll.
Danyboii ยท 18 points ยท Posted at 21:53:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I like to think of it as ever force has an equal and opposite reaction. When there is great evil or terror, heroes come out of the woodwork to counter it.
I didn't want to cry today but damn his quote was amazing. I'd never heard of this man before and now he is on my list of top humans in the history of everything.
If it always burns twice as bright, it only burns half as long. He sounds like a great man the world lost that day.
Out of genuine curiosity, how was he last seen heading upward when the tower began to collapse? How did the person who last saw him live to tell the tale?
One of the saddest thing, I think, is how many remains weren't recovered or identified from 9/11. I mean, for most of the missing people, you know they died in the towers. But there's never that real closure and there's nothing for the families to bury.
"It could have been the adrenaline, but when I turned around to see him for the last time, I think I saw a pair of white, big wings coming outfrom his back."
;_;
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:27:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I work at MS, he's a god here. Every September his story circulates and I cry every time. I was in high school when it happened but they don't let you work there and not know his name
The_Fad ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:24:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oh man did anyone else's room just get really dusty?
remember guys, he died because some selfish fucks cant have enough money for themselves
iamsmrtk ยท 1234 points ยท Posted at 19:13:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Rescorla had boosted morale among his men in Vietnam by singing Cornish songs from his youth, and now he did the same in the stairwell, singing songs like one based on the Welsh song "Men of Harlech":
"Men of Cornwall stop your dreaming, Canโt you see their spearpoints gleaming?,
See their warriorsโ pennants streaming, To this battlefield.
Men of Cornwall stand ye steady, It cannot be ever said ye for the battle were not ready
Stand and never yield!"[3]
Oh fuck, the feels.
bluestu ยท 137 points ยท Posted at 20:27:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's the same song sung by the British soldiers in response to the Zulu chants in the film Zulu.
Really powerful final scene.
[deleted] ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 23:34:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I remember, I was reading my father's Army Officer Manuel one time and in the back they had a list of movies the Army reccomended soldiers watch, and Zulu was one of them. I remember in the book's discription of the movie, they said if you didn't feel overwhelmed by this scene, you didn't have a warrior spirit. Very powerful indeed, seeing the bravery of both the British and the Zulus, it's insane.
MJWood ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:50:29 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Classic
Danyboii ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 21:07:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Can you explain this to me? I've seen things in movies and TV shows where they sing songs like this and they never make sense to me, I never really found them that poetic or melodic and found them more annoying than anything else. I don't understand what is going on here or why this would boost morale. Is this a cultural thing where you have to be familiar with these specific songs growing up?
iamsmrtk ยท 47 points ยท Posted at 20:41:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
You've just seen a plane fly into the North Tower, heard a huge explosion, and felt your own building shake. People around you are crying and you can hear your own heart pounding in your ears as you run down the stairs for dear life. Then you see this man, who is apparently unphased by all of this mayhem, singing this song at the top of his lungs.
I have never been in that situation but I can see how that could be comforting and inspiring. I also imagined him singing this as he died, it just painted a very heroic picture in my head.
[deleted] ยท -22 points ยท Posted at 21:11:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
they probably thought he was insane lol
[deleted] ยท 22 points ยท Posted at 22:26:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I doubt it. I'm sure most of them knew exactly what he was doing.
I personally guess that it has merely a psychological effect.
Remember, you're in shock, you don't know what's going on, what will happen nor what can you do.
Singing songs help boost morale, rithm could help to get your head back on track and regain focus on the situation and your main objective: GTFO there.
Rithm has been proven to keep you focus during a stressful time (hence why drums were used during battles).
I personally don't know this song, butif someone starts singing a very powerful song (either local,regional national or world known) you get the adrenaline going and you get motivated.
Sort of like when you listen to your favourite music.
perfect unison, battle commands(retreat/go on offense/plan B), making them battle in unison, a multitude of things. But listening to drumming is pretty motivational to me personally.
reverick ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:54:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Its pretty much like an RPG and you have a bard in your group. The bard sings in battle and boosts certain stats with certain songs. He was the real life version.
Yeah you hit the nail on the head there I think. My guess is it's to do with the comfort of home, you have to remember stuff like this stems from when there was no such thing as pre-recorded sound. The only time you'd have heard music and singing is at home when everyone got round and started singing like this so before going into a fight it would probably have helped reassure everyone to do the same.
Alternatively (and I say this as someone originally from the North of England who has gone drinking with Welsh/Irish/Scotsmen) it may ahve something to do with the fact that the celts are batshit crazy.
I'm German, I grew up in Germany and I actually don't actively listen to music on my own because it doesn't do anything for me. So I'm probably one of the people who should be least affected by Welsh songs causing any kind of feeling.
But I'm also a soldier and I know what war songs do to you.
First of all it's a breathing technique. Most people become short of breath when they're panicked and then become even more panicked because they're short of breath and this becomes a spiral. Singing forces you to breath steadily.
Secondly it gives you something to do and to think about. People become panicked (and later traumatized) when they don't know what to do in an emergency situation. Singing a song gives your mind something to process and to focus on. Taking you out of the situation mentally and also makes you someone who does something instead of something that stuff happens to.
Thirdly it makes you part of a group. People like being part of a group, makes them feel safe.
Then, when you're not wildly panicked anymore you need something to do with all that adrenaline in your body. Slow steady songs can get you really pumped to actively take risks to accomplish something, be it killing people, kicking in doors or running through flames.
And the best part is that it can work with any song with that kind of beat. The marching songs that still are used by the German army are mostly about dying and not about killing people, because German soldiers don't kill people anymore (slight hyperbole, but actually pretty close to the official stance on why we abandoned many marching songs) and the effect still kicks in.
If there's good lyrics it's just the icing on the cake.
As wanky as it might be, I recommend anyone with a spare half hour read this New Yorker article, The Real Heroes are Dead, if you want to know more about this almost ridiculously-accomplished and brilliant man.
You'll learn more about his wife, and why their goodbye was so incredibly meaningful.
You'll learn more about his best friend, who was basically a real life Rambo.
You'll read about him predicting not only 9/11, but the earlier World Trade Centre bombing of the '90s, and why his warnings were ignored each time.
You'll learn about his exploits in 'Nam, and that he was part of the inspiration for the movie We Were Soldiers.
You'll cry too, because, it's beautifully written and he was such a big damn hero.
Edit: And hey, to whet your appetite, here's another quote from his wife that isn't in the wikipedia article:
โWhatโs really difficult for me is that I know he had a choice,โ Susan says. โHe chose to go back in there. I know he would never have left until everyone was safe, until his mission was accomplished. That was his nature. That was the man I loved. So I can understand why he went back. What I canโt understand is why I was left behind.โ
No problem. I read that article nearly a decade ago, and it's stuck with me ever since. A beautiful story about an amazing life.
dmgb ยท 17 points ยท Posted at 19:16:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"Between songs, Rescorla called his wife, telling her, "Stop crying. I have to get these people out safely. If something should happen to me, I want you to know I've never been happier. You made my life." After successfully evacuating most of Morgan Stanley's 2,687 employees, he went back into the building. When one of his colleagues told him he too had to evacuate the World Trade Center, Rescorla replied, "As soon as I make sure everyone else is out". He was last seen on the 10th floor, heading upward, shortly before the South Tower collapsed at 9:59 A.M. His remains were never found. Rescorla was declared dead three weeks after the attacks."
Fuck...
[deleted] ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 19:21:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Live life. Never be afraid to say 'I love you' to anyone you care about. And never be afraid of the unknown. Always be prepared to give everything you have for others, even people you might not know. That is humanity, and he is a shining beacon of it.
Vana21 ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 19:43:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"If something should happen to me, I want you to know I've never been happier. You made my life."
His words to his wife as he was evacuating people. What a gentleman
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:45:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I cried reading those words when I read them thinking of my wife and kids. One can only hope to be able to have the opportunity to say something so wonderful to your love when it's time to go...
And to say it in the heat of that kind of moment shows exactly what kind of man he was. He said exactly what he needed to, a perfect goodbye to the love of his life, in a few sentences while a skyscraper was collapsing around him and hordes of people were relying on him to get to safety.
I'm blown away by all that I read in that wiki article. What an incredible man
[deleted] ยท 17 points ยท Posted at 19:19:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
When I was in Manas, Kyrgyzstan on my way into Afghanistan there was a mural painted on a wall for him. I already knew his story at that time, but it made me smile. Here's a guy who was thought of years after his demise and looked up to and painted to give others hope on their way into hell.
What a beautiful man. FTFY ;-)
Leleek ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 19:29:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Now think of all the people who are every bit as good at their jobs as he was, but will never (thankfully) have to prove their worth.
[deleted] ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 19:43:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Strangers in the crowd among us. Thank the gods for people like them who are ready to react when we might otherwise not be able to...
Another interesting thing: Port Authority told him not to evacuate. He said Fuck You and evacuated his employees. He saved so many lives that day and didn't blink while doing so. When he went back in, MS employees were safe. He was going to save strangers. There was a documentary done, "the man who predicted 9/11", because after the WTC bombings in the 90s he knew it would happen again.
He was a Brit who served in the British army, and then came to the US and hung out until he had been here long enough to be allowed to join the US Army.
Rick Rescorla was a retired U.S. Army Colonel, and was the soldier pictured on the cover of the book We Were Soldiers Once...and Young which was the basis for the Mel Gibson movie "We Were Soldiers." After the previous failed Islamic terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, he accurately forecasted that the next attack would involve flying an aircraft into the towers. He prepared the employees at Morgan Stanley, where he was the head of Security, for a quick and efficient evacuation and executed that plan when the 2001 attack occurred; I believe only three of the thousands of Morgan Stanley employees lost their lives. Col. Rescorla was one of them.
I have been a former Marine for the past 20 years and never understood the distinction and have never corrected people who say "ex Marine." Many civilians have corrected other people in my presence, but I never felt compelled to. The reason people always give is "Once a Marine, Always a Marine..." and this definition still doesn't fit that adequately. Both "ex" and "former" mean "not anymore." A Marine who gets dishonorably discharged was still once a Marine. And I can tell you my life was WAY different after I got out than before, so while I understand that I'm indelibly changed as a human because off the Marines, I just don't understand this distinction.
Groovyguy ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 22:09:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
I called myself an ex-marine because I no longer wanted to associate myself with them.
I'm not a Marine, but from what I can see, being a Marine is being a brother. Being a "former" Marine means you served your time, did your job, and got out. Being an "ex" Marine means you fucked up and, thus, turned your back on your brothers.
I'd rather have a Marine confirm that though, since you know, not being in the Corps and all.
[deleted] ยท 24 points ยท Posted at 21:38:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's pretty accurate. We regard it as a title that, once earned, you have for life. That is unless you do something really stupid that brings dishonor upon the Corps. The dude that killed a transgender person in Thailand last year is a perfect example of this.
We don't even bother with the former part. It's just once a Marine always a Marine. Then if you look like you're not currently active duty the other will ask what years and where you were stationed etc.
He wasn't a Marine. If you're going to argue semantics you should at least get his branch of service right.
edit: The fuck is wrong with you retards?
[deleted] ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 20:55:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If you're going to argue semantics, you should realize that he wasn't saying the guy was a marine. He was stating that once a marine, always a marine. Unless you are dishonorably discharged.
[deleted] ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 21:39:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wait, why did I get -20 downvotes in this exact same thread for making the exact same comment you did
[deleted] ยท -9 points ยท Posted at 21:43:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I didn't say he served in the marines.
[deleted] ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 21:47:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This whole kerfuffle started because everyone upthread is saying he was in the Marines. He wasn't. Not sure why that's difficult to figure out.
[deleted] ยท -9 points ยท Posted at 21:50:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What the hell are you trying to say? I never said he was a marine. I'm not sure why you can't see that I've never said that. Are you just not reading? Are you replying to the wrong person?
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 21:55:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Did you not read this comment above you, as well as the person replying to it, stating he was in the Marines? I mean, do you not actually know why this all started? I'm just pointing out to you and anyone else that he wasn't a former Marine or an ex-Marine. He served in the British Army and US Army. Not the Marines. Understand now?
why anyone is responding to me about him not being a marine
Because by your own words the difference is "semantics." Is this clear enough for you now you dim-wit? Christ almighty, either you're a weasel or truly oblivious.
He was replying directly to a guy claiming Rick Resorla was an ex Marine, saying it's "former Marine". Seems silly to argue over a technicality when the overall premise is simply wrong.
[deleted] ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 22:04:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The fact you are downvoted for pointing out that he was in the Army and not the Marines is mind boggling. Literally what.
I have a theory about this. It has to do with the differences between the UK and the US. The UK has one of the oldest and richest histories in Europe. It's had numerous peoples, countless cultures and nations, and thousands of years of human history. When you fight for your nation in the UK, you're carrying that history with you (and yes I realize that the UK has not been united for very long, relative to the history of the isles, but still). It's a point of honor. It's a duty and a job that millions before you have taken.
In the US, we're pretty acutely aware that it was just a couple hundred years ago that we fought for independence. We're still building our history, and when you join the military here, it's not so much a point of honor as it is of pride. There's a lot more pride in being part of a relatively new history than there is continuing an old history, just like there's more honor continuing an old history than writing new history, if that makes sense.
[deleted] ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 20:19:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He was actually an army infantry officer. Not a Marine. Was also in the battle of la drang from the book and movie "we were soldiers"
He is neither. Never was a Marine. Was a US Army Officer, before that served in the British army in Rhodesia, and is all around one of the most badass men to wear a uniform. Hes the poster child of an Infantry Platoon leader, featured on the cover of the book "We Were Soldiers Once, and Young," which became a Mel Gibson movie.
He didn't get everyone out. Several MS employees still died. But considering they were the largest tenant in the tower (20+ floors of workers) it's amazing less than 10 people died.
Until 9/11 jihadist type attacks weren't taken seriously at all and were dismissed as acts of mental illness or political foolishness. They were (at least by the general public) regarded as isolated unimportant events, hence the reason why they were forgotten by so many.
Also anyone born after the 1980's probably would never have even heard about the '93 bombing.
deadlast ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 20:58:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Untrue. The bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, and the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Nairobi were taken very seriously.
Rick Rescorla. Was a US Army Officer, before that served in the British army in Rhodesia, and is all around one of the most badass men to wear a uniform. Hes the poster child of an Infantry Platoon leader, featured on the cover of the book "We Were Soldiers Once, and Young," which became a Mel Gibson movie.
poneil ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 20:26:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Everyone here should read the New Yorker article you just linked. It's so moving.
Rescorla had boosted morale among his men in Vietnam by singing Cornish songs from his youth, and now he did the same in the stairwell, singing songs like one based on the Welsh song "Men of Harlech": [...] Between songs, Rescorla called his wife, telling her, "Stop crying. I have to get these people out safely. If something should happen to me, I want you to know I've never been happier. You made my life." After successfully evacuating most of Morgan Stanley's 2,687 employees, he went back into the building.[3][11][12] When one of his colleagues told him he too had to evacuate the World Trade Center, Rescorla replied, "As soon as I make sure everyone else is out".[13] He was last seen on the 10th floor, heading upward, shortly before the South Tower collapsed at 9:59 A.M. His remains were never found.[10][11][12] Rescorla was declared dead three weeks after the attacks.
There are the tears.
mtomei3 ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 18:53:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Can't believe this is the first I've heard of him. Am now silently weeping in my cubicle at work.
Leleek ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 19:32:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"Stop crying. I have to get these people out safely. If something should happen to me, I want you to know I've never been happier. You [his wife] made my life."
mtomei3 ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 19:38:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That was the exact thing that triggered the waterworks for me.
He had bone marrow cancer, and had for several years. I think that might have made it a slightly easier decision to go back and try and save some more people.
kiwirish ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:47:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I mean dying instantly from a tower falling on you while you still had adrenaline pumping full blast through you to save people with hopes to get out alive has to be better than slowly and painfully dying from bone marrow cancer.
Rescorla had boosted morale among his men in Vietnam by singing Cornish songs from his youth, and now he did the same in the stairwell, singing songs like one based on the Welsh song "Men of Harlech":
"Men of Cornwall stop your dreaming,
Canโt you see their spearpoints gleaming?,
See their warriorsโ pennants streaming,
To this battlefield.
Men of Cornwall stand ye steady,
It cannot be ever said ye for the battle were not ready
Stand and never yield!"
Between songs, Rescorla called his wife, telling her, "Stop crying. I have to get these people out safely. If something should happen to me, I want you to know I've never been happier. You made my life." After successfully evacuating most of Morgan Stanley's 2,687 employees, he went back into the building. When one of his colleagues told him he too had to evacuate the World Trade Center, Rescorla replied, "As soon as I make sure everyone else is out". He was last seen on the 10th floor, heading upward, shortly before the South Tower collapsed at 9:59 A.M. His remains were never found. Rescorla was declared dead three weeks after the attacks.
harv4276 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:38:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
An excellent story about Rick Rescorla in The New Yorker from February 2002.
A smart and brave guy, no doubt, but it was dumb of anyone who was not doing those drills, and doubly dumb of the executives who objected to his practices. Heck, I work in a two-storey building and we do timed evacuation drills twice a year, with surprise elements like blocking a major exit to force people to think of alternate ways out. It takes hardly any time, and clearly saves lives in an emergency.
I should have made it clear that this has been the case where I work since at least 1994 (the date on the associated documentation, which also requires more frequent drills in taller buildings). So it's not like the practice was unknown in 2001.
The_Bard ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:59:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's actually surprising more companies didn't do this as the WTC had been attacked by a car bomb in the 90s.
Adddicus ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:41:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Along the same vein.... there was a telephone central office in the basement of the South Tower. WHen the first plane hit, the company (Verizon) told everyone to shelter in place. The union rep (I can't give you a name) said "Fuck that, everyone out". As a result they all escaped safely.
bepseh ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:36:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If I remember correctly from his biography, shortly after the 1988 Pan Am bombing he and an army buddy/counter-terrorism expert named Dan Hill got together and brainstormed how they would take down the WTC if they were terrorists. One idea was a bomb in the parking garage, another was crashing a plane into it. They tried getting more security in place for the garages since there was basically none, but no one listened to them, so in 1993 when terrorists tried to bring the WTC down with a bomb in the parking garage and failed, Rescorla figured he'd probably need to be prepared for the plane thing at some point too.
Dan Hill's a really interesting character. After the 93 bombings he (a civilian now, with no authority or mandate) went undercover in mosques he suspected of supporting the perpetrators to collect intelligence, leading directly to their arrests.
wasmic ยท 31 points ยท Posted at 20:51:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, this guy. IIRC, Petrov didn't have the authority to launch (although had he reported to the Kremlin, they would surely have launched out of panic). Arkhipov did have that authority. There were two others on board that submarine who wanted to launch, but a launch had to be unanimous. In those minutes, the Doomsday Clock hit 11:59:59. Arkhipov refused.
Strawawa ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 23:42:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The book "Red November" has several chapters on Soviet officers that effectively saved the world from WW3. It really interesting and mildly terrifying.
Came here to post this. This is just a case of one guy helping avoid a colossal mistake. Few know his name but if he made a different decision on that day we wouldn't be alive.
One of my most upvoted posts ever is mentioning him as the hero of all non-pressers during the whole The Button thing. I'm glad to see him here
Edit: And now one of my other most upvoted posts is from mentioning The Button in the context of a hero not pressing a button. Thanks a third time, Stanislav!
Thou shalt remain pure in the heart and gray in the flair. Press not any Button, for it is the incarnation of all Evil.
There is no greater sin than falsely claiming to be a Shade.
Heed not the Knights or the Red Guard, for they were false prophets and agents of the Button.
All pressers are equal in their shame. Only those few who have turned from their ways and now follow the Destructionist path may be regarded as worthy.
Spread word of the Followers, so that the evils of the button may be contained.
Holy are those who sought the arrival of the number 0 on the countdown, for they ushered to us all an end to the Age of Strife.
The weak were purged. The Shade remains.
DerGrau ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 22:15:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
bcdm ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:00:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Bah.
I witnessed the Great Schism. The truth of the End was revealed to us then. Cassandra's betrayal showed us that there was no valor to be had by staying in the Shade. Purity was meaningless. The only meaning to be had was the meaning we created ourselves.
I joined the Hitchhikers, and I celebrate that decision to this day.
I stand as witness to the Ronin, who pressed as late as they could, thereby giving worth to their own existence and to the Button. Long may their honorable memory live on in their death-poems.
Kiro0613 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:17:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
But you pressed hundreds of button on your keyboard when you typed this.
Nonpressterus be with you. It is said: "yea, though the pressers claim enlightenment, they know only limitation. Though they sing songs of glory, they know only discord. In the Shade of unity, do the nonpressed dwell in bodhi."
Spoken with the regret of a shameful presser. You people used to disgust me.
You still do, but you used to, too.
pejmany ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:39:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You know, if we believe that the universe splits every time we deliberate a choice, the button may have been the largest singular instance of universal splitting, making it anthropomorphic
The community became so obsessed with pressing as close to 0:00 as possible that people created a network of bots to coordinate pressing it at the last possible moment. People actually donated their alt accounts to help keep the button alive as long as possible. This was essentially meant to be a fail safe -- if no one else pressed the button, you could count on the bots to do it at the last second to keep it alive.
And this fail safe was important because people got different colored flair depending on where the timer was when they pressed the button, so people were actively trying to press it as close to 0:00 as possible anyway to get the rarest flair color, which meant as time went on, the risk that it wouldn't get pressed increased, especially during certain times of day when people were less likely to be active in the subreddit. (Ironically it died in the middle of the afternoon US time when the most users were active.)
The key here is that only accounts created before April 1 were allowed to press the button, which meant two things:
Eventually the timer would have to end, because there was by definition a finite maximum number of times it could be pressed. (Each account could only press it once.)
Accounts donated to the "cause" had to be created before April 1 or they would be useless.
So essentially what happened was people collectively put too much trust into the fail safe, and the guy who coded it didn't put any validation in to check the account creation dates.
A bunch of people donated accounts that weren't old enough to press the button and eventually the bots failed because they tried to use those accounts to press it anyway and they couldn't.
And then nothing happened.
atsu333 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 18:25:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
I'm not sure what became of the button literally, but what is terrifying is that it's reported that the Russians have an automated system in place, which continues to this day. The goal is to remove the human element, to remove the emotional component, I suspect. It's called Dead Hand or "Perimeter". What scares me is that it's a "fail deadly" system, not a "fail safe".
Everything. The chosen ones that pressed at 60 are enlightened for their devotion to affect the countdown as little as possible, yet still embraced it.
There was also a Russian Naval Commander (Captain?) who deliberately disobeyed a direct order to launch on the US during the Cuban Missile Crisis, because he was sure their intel was faulty. He was right, but it didn't save him from court martial and shit posts for the rest of his career.
[deleted] ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 21:54:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"Shit posts for the rest of his career". So he's a redditor now
One of my greatest regrets is pushing that button.
Kiro0613 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:21:28 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fear not my Purple brother; You made it to 58s, 1 longer than I. We purples must stay together in this era of nonpressers.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 06:00:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I bet you gave a lame ass acceptance speech then too
DrHarby ยท 332 points ยท Posted at 16:07:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
he's like the reverse of the wing commander in Dr.Strangelove. Rather than going crazy in a sea of sane bureaucrats, he was sane in a sea of...well, bureaucrats.
[deleted] ยท 19 points ยท Posted at 19:13:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Petrov himself states he was initially praised by Votintsev and promised a reward, but recalls that he was also reprimanded for improper filing of paperwork under the pretext that he had not described the incident in the war diary.
Well, that was the good ol' USSR for ya
And then
He received no reward. According to Petrov, this was because the incident and other bugs found in the missile detection system embarrassed his superiors and the influential scientists who were responsible for it, so that if he had been officially rewarded, they would have had to be punished. He was reassigned to a less sensitive post, took early retirement and suffered a nervous breakdown.
US had a similar situation I read about in Robert Gates' memoirs, crazy how many times we came so close to nuclear war
da1hobo ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 21:06:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
crazy how many times we came so close to nuclear war
And kind of makes me feel good to know that every single time we've come within a panicked button press of the biggest global disaster in human history compassion and reason won out.
Or like the prime minister of Russia (might have been Gorbachev?) Who when a satellite was being launched over Norway had his entire cabinet screaming that he must return fire! As they believed the satellite was an ICBM. As he was going to push the button he said "there must be some mistake." And refused to launch the counter attack. With seconds to decide. He said "it must be a mistake." And didn't start a nuclear war.
You're a bit of. I've seen no mention of Yeltsin (one of the most volatile leaders in Europe the last few decades) personally being the voice of reason. They simply waited it out.
Because one missile can break up into several small nuclear bombs and wipe a city off a map. (Moscow.) With the head of the snake gone theoretically the rest will die. So to the leader of the u.s.s.r. a missile headed for his house could just be the first volley to see how the Soviets react. If they have any countermeasures. Then if a strike is successful, then the rest would launch. Without any counter attack because the Soviet hierarchy would be in shambles.
It's also worth noting that if all evidence points towards a strike like that(a bad one) then what information are you missing? Are there MORE attacks you don't know about? Has your nuclear arsenal been compromised?
Even if it would be a terrible choice on the u.s. in a matter of life and death that drastic it can easily cause all kinds of paranoia and panic. It's a credit that they remained calm and assumed correctly that the u.s. wasnt attacking and there must be some other explanation.
Then I think I may have bastardized two historical events. It was not the Norwegian satellite event. It was one during the cold war. If I'm recalling Correctly it was the event which resulted in the direct line between the white house and the Kremlin.
Edit: fuck it. American history about the cold war is fucked... I'm out!
Yeah, I recall reading a Cracked article of the times we were THIS close to nuclear doom, and how Russia, several times, managed to stay calm and not do something everyone could regret until there was seriously no time left. (Some even theorize that Gorbachev, or whoever was the PM you mention, was actually even considering to not even retaliate, as their nation was already dead, was it really a good idea to bring everyone else down just because?)
It really is incredible, specially since a lot of media depicts the USSR as some nutjobs that were just waiting for USA to sneeze to have an excuse to start armageddon.
wasmic ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:54:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, that's crazy. There's a reason that it's called the MAD Doctrine. Nobody would want a nuclear war for any reason at all.
While they're both based on totally different nuclear events, I submit to you:
The Fallout video game series.
The Silo Series - available through kindle.
_dive_ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:39:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I appreciate the recommendation!
The angle I was going for was if this specific event, in 1983, had happened differently - not just nuclear fallout in general. My reasoning for this event is morbid curiosity. When I think about typical events depicting nuclear fallout occurring, I don't imagine it in a time I was alive (e.g. Cuban missile crisis). I was alive in 1983, which is why this is piquing my interest.
This guy is actually mentioned in MGSV during one of the dialogues between Soviet soldiers. One praises him for stopping nuclear war and the other condemns him for not following orders.
This is what I came to mention. Anytime I mention that dude nobody knows who the hell I'm talking about or that the event even happened, but if it wasn't for him it really is very possible there could have been a nuclear war.
Matt2142 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:01:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is the man that immediately sprang to mind upon reading the thread. He single handedly saved much of the world from a much bleaker existence and probably saved hundreds of thousands of lives. To top it all off he was punished for this, the world owes this man a deep debt of gratitude.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:11:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
potato0 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:37:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Came to see if someone had posted this. I think this this is arguably the most correct answer to this question.
Ogroat ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:04:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I was thinking about him the other day, just out of the blue. It's likely that I would have never been born had he done his job. That billions of people would have perished while just going about their daily lives, unaware that a false alarm had set off a chain of events that would lead to the end of humanity. It's intensely frightening and awe-inspiring all at the same time.
0x8086 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:05:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's a 2014 part doc/part reenactment about this called the man who saved the world for anyone interested. Kevin Costner Matt Damon, and a few other well known actors are cast.
"In a later interview, Petrov stated that the famous red button has never worked, as military psychologists did not want to put the decision about a war into the hands of one single person."
Rogan29 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:56:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
From this thread, I have realized there are a bunch of Heros of the Soviet Union (or should be heros) that I know nothing about.
On May 21, 2004, the San Francisco-based Association of World Citizens gave Petrov its World Citizen Award along with a trophy and $1000 "in recognition of the part he played in averting a catastrophe."
There was a similar case in the US, systems showed Soviet missiles incoming, commander requested they check again, same conclusion, commander requested a third check, false alarm.
There was also a time one of our bombers had an engine issue and crashed close to one of our own forward radar stations in Greenland or something. Later was found that the bomb on board had a safety defect that could have caused it to go off in a crash. Mainland was never told of the engine problem. All we would have seen was one of our forward radar stations go down and an explosion.
I guess I'm gonna be the bad guy here but he was just doing his job and saw the evidence of an equipment malfunction. He's probably the least heroic out of all the people here.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:47:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Doubtful. Petrov didn't have the authority to launch any nukes. If he had reported the warning, there was probably a long list of precautions they would take before a retaliation. The worst he might have done was cause an increased alert for a few hours while other stations could confirm if there were any missiles or bomber activity.
jheat008 ยท 2035 points ยท Posted at 14:37:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Harvey Hubbell, the inventor of the electric socket. We all use this invention every single day, it is such a critical part of all of our lives, yet I never knew who this man was until I googled him just now.
mishki1 ยท 904 points ยท Posted at 17:02:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
But who came up with the stupid idea that they should be different in different countries?
[deleted] ยท 812 points ยท Posted at 17:55:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
At a time where few electric devices were rarely portable, and international travel was made by boat, I don't think universal standards were seen as a priority.
mishki1 ยท 78 points ยท Posted at 18:30:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That seems like a reasonable explanation - I was thinking it was a plot by the international plug adapter mafia. Those things cost like 2 dollars to make and sell for 25 in airports.
PlazaOne ยท 53 points ยท Posted at 18:46:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And part of the reason they've stayed different is because of countries still having various mainstream electricity supplies. Here in the UK we've got three-phase alternating current 240v @ 50Hz, which could fry certain devices intended for a different supply. Likewise, if I take my stuff abroad, not being able to plug straight in might even save my life.
The 50Hz/60Hz, 120V/240V thing is much worse than the differently-shaped-plugs thing. I've actually fried a PSU plugging in a desktop in another country. (Luckily, the rest of the machine was fine, but it did let out an orange flash, a loud pop and a puff of blue smoke. It was quite dramatic.)
Ailure ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:25:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's getting extremly common to have universal adapters that can take anything nowadays though, mostly cause it's cheaper to produce them that way for the whole world.
Which is why you occasionally see pictures of people doing ugly hacks with their electrical socket to fit in the "wrong" plug as it does work with a such adapter if you don't have the right plug by hooking it up with loose wires or anything metallic (but is also a very nice fire hazard so please don't actually do it).
drunk98 ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 19:25:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Those things cost like 2 dollars to make
Lol, I'd be shocked if they cost more than 25c.
mishki1 ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 19:36:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
At the highest estimate, the adapter, transport, packaging etc. would not be more than a buck or two, possibly much less as you say. And yet they sell for 10 or 15 minimum, often much more, because there are no other options. It is weird how semi-arbitrary decisions about plug formats over time have created this economic niche. Like if there was an international treaty to standardize plugs, these guys would lobby against it saying that this would put whole towns of people out of work somewhere when the adapter factories close.
dunaja ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:57:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's no way they cost 2 dollars to make.
gimjun ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 19:57:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
voltage standards aside, i think USB is showing promise as a universal plug standard. nowadays most hotels and planes have charging ports for small devices. maybe in future it could grow output to power larger devices?
chem_dog ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:37:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Man I could never trust a public USB port. And I'm not even that paranoid, no tinfoil hat but I do keep a sticky note over my laptop webcam.
You could always just one of the data cables. Basic USB is Power+- and data +-. You could make a power-only usb and you'd never have to worry about someone stealing data via the cable.
gimjun ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:48:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
haha, i never thought about it! holy shit, you've made me paranoid now :/ where's that damn tinfoil
(Still, I like the idea of wall outlets supplying DC power via USB, so most devices no longer need wall warts. You can do this now if you want, though it seems to just be the older USB Type A standard.)
I'm mostly kidding--I'm just a tad bitter because I have one of those fancy new phones and my wall chargers, laptop chargers, and spare battery are all suddenly much less useful, plus the replacement cables are way more expensive.
ds580 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 22:03:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
These systems were also developed independently (mostly) and it makes sense to have different plugs for 110 vs 220v. And while we're on standardizing things, it isn't easy to do (see USA and metric). https://xkcd.com/927/
Depends on your definition. UK plug is great because of how safe it is, and the power efficiency of 240V (I think that's how it works), and 50Hz is more Metric friendly. However, the plug is massive, which means it's not space efficient compared to, say, the US plug, which has significantly less safeties built in to it.
Higher voltage less wasted current, so yes it's slightly more efficient, the 50hz isn't for metric friendliness, inductive reactance is proportional to frequency, by reducing the number of poles and thus efficiency of a generator/motor you reduce the line losses, the UK went for a unified grid sooner than the US hence the adoption of 50Hz, the US was not a unified grid at inception but 60Hz won the frequency war because of better motor winding performance and smaller long lines at the time of inception. Frequency regulation is also easier at 50Hz, metric had nothing to do with the decision to adopt 50/60Hz same as it didn't affect the decision to use 400Hz in maritime/aerospace
I don't buy that. We already knew the pain of poor standardization amongst countries due to rail gauge issues. It should have been very obvious that more standardized sockets would be good.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:05:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Likewise, there are different power standards/frequencies/voltages worldwide. With the same connector you are very likely to encounter issues by plugging an american device into a european socket. The need for a different socket/transformer block prevents people from destroying their electronics while travelling abroad.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:00:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In a redundant time of redundancies
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:19:56 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Where's the redundancy?
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:35:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
few electronic devices were rarely portable
You only need few or rarely
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:40:29 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not when a British company is worried about getting their product into homes across the UK, and don't want to bother with working with a company in the US.
As a British company, what incentive do I have to do that? Is the comfort of American toursists my primary concern?
The standard edison standard socket e27 is being used worldwide for a whole century, that's what I meant. I know there are other sockets as well, but they are meant for a different technologies, e.g. low-voltage-Halogen, for smaller lights e14, or special uses. The "e" (edison) + number is the system of the worldwide standard.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:38:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And to this day, the bayonet fitting is still the most common in the UK.
And E27 is the most common in Europe, while E26 is most common in North America.
You are trying to portray it as more complicated then it is. We were talking about norms. Buying lightbulbs at Ikea nor are there many different standards like with the electrical sockets. The e27 is used in: The following countries use E27 bulbs:
Afghanistan
Aland Islands
Albania
Algeria
Andorra
Angola
Antigua And Barbuda
Argentina
Armenia
Australia
Austria
Azerbaijan
Bahrain
Bangladesh
Belarus
Belgium
Benin
Bhutan
Bolivia
Bosnia And Herzegovina
Botswana
Bouvet Island
Brazil
British Indian Ocean Territory
Brunei
Bulgaria
Burkina Faso
Burma
Burundi
Cambodia
Cameroon
Cape Verde
Central African Republic
Chad
Chile
China
Christmas Island
Cocos (Keeling) Islands
Comoros
Congo
Congo, The Democratic Republic Of The
Cook Islands
Cรดte d'Ivoire
Croatia
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Denmark
Djibouti
Dominica
Egypt
Equatorial Guinea
Eritrea
Estonia
Ethiopia
Falkland Islands (Malvinas)
Faroe Islands
Fiji
Finland
France
French Guiana
French Polynesia
French Southern Territories
Gabon
Gambia
Georgia
Germany
Ghana
Gibraltar
Greece
Greenland
Grenada
Guadeloupe
Guernsey
Guinea
Guinea Bissau
Guyana
Heard Island And Mcdonald Islands
Holy See (Vatican City State)
Hong Kong
Hungary
Iceland
India
Indonesia
Iran, Islamic Republic Of
Iraq
Ireland
Isle Of Man
Israel
Italy
Jersey
Jordan
Kazakhstan
Kenya
Kiribati
Korea, Democratic People's Republic Of
Kosovo
Kuwait
Kyrgyzstan
Lao People's Democratic Republic
Latvia
Lebanon
Lesotho
Liberia
Liechtenstein
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Macao
Macedonia, The Republic Of
Madagascar
Malawi
Malaysia
Maldives
Mali
Malta
Martinique
Mauritania
Mauritius
Mayotte
Moldova, Republic of
Monaco
Mongolia
Montenegro
Montserrat
Morocco
Mozambique
Myanmar
Namibia
Nauru
Nepal
Netherlands
Netherlands Antilles
New Caledonia
New Zealand
Niger
Nigeria
Niue
Norfolk Island
Norway
Oman
Pakistan
Palestinian Territory, Occupied
Papua New Guinea
Paraguay
Peru
Philippines
Pitcairn
Poland
Portugal
Qatar
Reunion
Romania
Russia
Rwanda
Saint Barthรฉlemy
Saint Helena
Saint Kitts And Nevis
Saint Lucia
Saint Martin
Saint Pierre And Miquelon
Samoa
San Marino
Sao Tome And Principe
Saudi Arabia
Senegal
Serbia
Seychelles
Sierra Leone
Singapore
Slovakia
Slovenia
Solomon Islands
Somalia
South Africa
South Georgia And The South Sandwich Islands
South Korea
Spain
Sri Lanka
St. Vincent
Sudan
Suriname
Svalbard And Jan Mayen
Swaziland
Sweden
Switzerland
Syria
Tajikistan
Tanzania, United Republic Of
Thailand
Timor Leste
Togo
Tokelau
Tonga
Tunisia
Turkey
Turkmenistan
Turks And Caicos Islands
Tuvalu
Uganda
Ukraine
United Arab Emirates
United Kingdom
Uruguay
Uzbekistan
Vanuatu
Vietnam
Wallis And Futuna
Western Sahara
Yemen
Zambia
Zimbabwe
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:35:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
But they're not exclusively used. And they're not even the majority of lightbulbs used in all of those countries.
Apple's thunderbolt is probably used in all of those countries too. That doesn't make it a universal standard.
I know what you mean but the comparison doesn't really work. Besides the british commonwealth, most of the world uses the edison standard, it's not like that with electrical sockets. And even in the commonwealth it will gain ground with major companies like Ikea which mainly offer edison type bulbs..
It stemmed from the stupid idea to use different voltages and frequencies in different countries. Different plug shapes prevents people from plugging in things that aren't rated for the frequencies and voltages.
[deleted] ยท 18 points ยท Posted at 18:51:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It wasn't a stupid idea. Electrical grids were developed concurrently, there were no standards at the time.
tomdarch ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:33:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, but we've been f-ing around with this stuff for decades. It would have been ideal to establish a global standard in the early 20th century, and it sucks that "the west" didn't standardize voltage/frequency/plugs after WWII. Shit, Japan even has part of the country running at 50hz and part at 60hz.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:49:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The United States is standardized now, but the war between AC and DC persisted quite awhile. It's just too expensive to standardize anything since probably the '30s.
They weren't even the same within countries for the first few iterations, many different designs were in use. Some countries switched at some point and had multiple systems in official use for long periods.
3jt ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:30:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Electrical engineer here! It wouldn't be all that hard to standardize everywhere in the world to two kinds of socket, one for 220VAC/50Hz and one for 110VAC/60Hz. Better yet, we could skip that and switch straight to DC since it's more efficient, and now we can do things with power electronics we could never do before. Will it ever happen? Not in your lifetime!
tomdarch ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 04:36:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As an architect and electronics buff, I'd love to see homes equipped with one big (hopefully more efficient) AC to DC converter, and then run low voltage DC (3v, 5v, 9v, 12v x 2 for available 24v) wiring and special sockets throughout buildings. Imagine if we could get rid of all those phone charger transformers, wall warts, and even the power supply in your computer whirring away and just pull that power from the wall... sigh...
3jt ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:44:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Getting rid of wall warts would be awesome, but low voltage wiring through your house isn't likely to ever happen for reasons of voltage drop... you're far better off having a converter in each outlet. Outlets with USB built in are increasingly popular. USB-C provides quite a lot of power and you don't have to flip it over three times. Anything more than that ought to be in a socket.
It's actually a good thing in some cases. The sockets are different to indicate that the electricity is different, and plugging in your US device into EU electricity could fry it.
It's the same with other plug in devices, it's ridiculous how many different mini USB's there is, and SD cards, why can't these companies just get together and create universal devices, because monies. :(
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:10:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"What's that? They're using vertical slots?..... let's make them diagonal."
Back when Edison was putzing around fucking over tesla, electricity was generated in all kinds of voltages. DC current was generated anywhere between 75 and 200 volts. Tesla invented AC electricity and because of the nature of AC current you can generate it, step it down, step it up or otherwise transform it.
Westinghouse and tesla decided that general purpose power should be 208/120vac. 120volts could very easily handle All the needs of residential buildings as well as most commercial applications.
So while Westinghouse was busy creating the infrastructure in America, the powers that be in Europe decided that 208 should be the standard for general purpose outlets. Now I don't know exactly who so this is a slightly incomplete answer however, Europe has a history of doing things their own way. America invents the auto industry with the driver on the left, they put the driver on the right. We drive on the right hand side, they drive on the left. We use 1 phase of a 2 phase system at 120, they use 2 phases @ 208. Years
edit
Ok so some research tells that in Germany, the BEW company found it could save money by switching to a 220v system for generation and replacing all of its customers lamps with newer metal fillMent bulbs. So that's why the European 220v 50hz is standard.
Various other benefits to 220v
- Wires can be thinner when carrying the same number of watts
- Less energy lost in transportation between generation and load
- An expensive roadside transformer can serve more houses due to the increased reach
Lower voltage is generally safer to work on as well as be used. It's true that amperage is what kills but because we generate electricity at 50-60hz, and because the heart operates in that range; 220v is much more dangerous than 120 in terms of electrical shock. Since voltage is electromotive force, a 220v shock delivers more amperage, while a 120v shock will deliver less amps in a shock because of the natural resistance of human skin.
120 is also less likely to "grab you" in the event that you do get a shock.
Oh yes of course I accept the safety difference. You are right there. I still prefer the 240v system we have in NZ. There are a number of reasons why...
1) If you count the annual number of 240v electric shock events causing injury or fatality, and repeat those same events in a 110v environment, the reduction of events causing injury or fatality would not be enough to outweigh the number of life-days lost due to extra pollution created by the reduction in transport efficiency.
2) Most events causing injury or death involve higher voltage lines such as those carried on powerpoles or transformer equipment. These involve things like car crashes, drunks on train tracks or vandalism. Not general household events.
3) Every new house or electrical installation has an RCD - even on indoor wiring. This reduces the chance of an event involving 240v or 110v causing injury or a fatality. As more and more premesis are rewired, the proliferation of RCDs reduces this risk further.
So although 110v is clearly safer than 240v, there are now ways to offset the risk and damage, which brings us back to the matter of economics. RCDs remove most of the risk created by the increase in voltage to 240v from 110v and 240v is more efficient.
That's why each plug has a fuse. Instead of relying on the whole circuit, you rely on the local loop between the appliance and the plug. It's only recently that it's enforced that there are RCBs on the entire circuit. Also it's illegal in the UK (against code) to have sockets in the bathroom at all. And those same BSI standards also do say you have to have a seperate circuit for high current kitchen appliances.
jangxx ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:45:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No plugs in the bathroom? Where do you charge your razor/electric toothbrush or connect your hairdryer? So instead of being dangerous it's wildly inconvenient. That still makes it a bad system in my book.
People in the past used lightbulb sockets to get electricity. IIRC.
rotherss ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:48:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In the film 'Get Carter' (1971 version) you see Carter do this, at the time it was probably showing how shitty the house he was staying in was, but now it just looks bizarre.
Lele_ ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:44:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes, every device had a thingy that was screwed into a lightbulb socket. They sold adapters to plug multiple appliances into the same socket in rickety, dangerous trees hanging from the ceiling. Electric cable was uninsulated. It was a fucking deathtrap. Look for Hidden Killers of the Victorian Home on Youtube, you'll be terrified at how cavalier they were with electricity back then.
Sqwirl ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:11:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I was thinking along the same lines, but about another device we use every day (and don't even think about how many devices we use which contain them).
I work for a contractor and anytime we go to Home Depot to buy electrical outlets/covers, the brand is Hubbell. Didn't know if you knew this but thought it might be cool to know.
Was it his idea to place them in such an awkward position? Why must we bend over to plug things in? And why do we have to hide them? What are they genitals?!
You wouldn't happen to know if he has anything to do with the company Hubbell? I work in an electrical supply house and we have a ton of Hubbell devices. Or perhaps they just took his name.
jheat008 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 13:14:28 on January 18, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I learned from other commenters that, yes, they derive their name from him. I would have never known if not for that.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:30:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Among those who provision such products. His name is almost generic.
Come on, if he hadn't done it somebody else would soon. This is like some Apple level of "invention" like slide to open...I bet you like Steve Jobs...:)
Whoever the FUCK invented the modern toilet. When ever time travel hypothetical come up I am always like, "Sure, can I bring a toilet?"
PromoPimp ยท 935 points ยท Posted at 16:42:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Underrated answer since most people believe Thomas Crapper invented the flush toilet when, in reality, it was invented 250 years before he was born by John Harington. So even people who THINK they know typically do not.
heidevolk ยท 1194 points ยท Posted at 18:02:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Except we all sit on it backwards. That shelf allows a place to set your chocolate milk and play with your toys.
that's cowgirl, face to face is reverse, have you ever seen someone ride a horse face to face? or 2 horses fuck face to face?
edit: I didn't do research, you guys are probably right about what is actually cowgirl or reverse cowgirl.
GoTaW ยท 19 points ยท Posted at 00:51:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Your logic is sound, but some quick Googling (and Wikipedia) suggests that regular cowgirl is the face-to-face one. Seems that you're right and the rest of the world is wrong.
To set your comic book!*
EDIT: Apparently some people are confused about this or think I'm being overly specific in saying comic book. For the confused
They intentionally spend that much time on the toilet in order to do these sort of things.
I don't really get it, either, other than maybe if you grew up with a lot of siblings or something, locking yourself in the bathroom was the only way to get some peace. But I was an only child.
da1hobo ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 21:25:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If you have a job that you hate or work with people you will hate you will understand the peace of the long bathroom break.
It's worse than that, the fumes from the sewers could kill people, so that S-bend was pretty damn important. While he may not have invented the flushable toilet he was instrumental in getting them into as many places as they are today.
Ctharo ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 02:12:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wait. So in the movie "The Kingsman" or whatever it is called, in that scene where they could have put a tube in the toilet to keep breathing when the room filled with water, that wouldn't have worked??
prickity ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 02:51:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Actually that's a common miscomprehension. The word crap likely comes from the french crappe meaning waste or chaffe. It's first recorded use to refer to bodily waste was in 1846 when Crapper was only 10 years old: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/crap
gsfgf ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:17:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So now the question is it a coincidence, or did Crapper become familiar with the term and then be inspired to go into toilet innovation?
vizzmay ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 08:07:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm sure a time-traveler convinced his ancestors to take on that name.
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 03:18:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm surprised no plumbers have responding to this. I am not a plumber, but I've done some DIY drain work. That S curve in the toiled is a modified "P Trap", which apparently WAS invented by crapper. Every drain in your house has one: sinks showers and bathtubs included. A P Trap simply holds a little bit of water to keep sewer gas from coming all the way up the pipe and into your home. It also catches the occasional wedding ring.
The water in the trap can evaporate if you don't use the sink/shower/etc often, so if you start to smell poo-gas just pour a little water down the drain.
He's Kit Harington(of Game of Thrones fame)'s ancestor too!
Vandilbg ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 21:25:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Kit's my cousin like 23 times removed. His (Sir John's) father John Harington MP of Kelston was Henry's privy lord and supposedly married one of Henry VIII's bastard daughters.
I had no idea Thomas Crapper was a real person until I googled him. That's gotta be a kind of bittersweet legacy being that your last name becomes a synonym for "shit".
I literally spit out of laughter right now, I am fucking dying. No way a dude named Thomas Crapper had an important role in anything to do with toilets, there's no way!
vanceco ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:15:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Harington's business partner was a gentleman by the name of Hugh Upperdecker. He insisted the flush toilet be named after himself and the company failed miserably, later the old drawing were found by Mr Crapper who re-launched the flush toilet with a new name and .....profit.
Yet the method for water staying in the bowl and draining out completely once it reached a certain level was Pothagyrus. He used it at parties to control gluttons of wine. Those that overfilled their specially made wine glass would get drenched in it.
Except the first flushing toilet was invented in Crete sometime around 2000 BCE if I remember correctly, according to murals and archeological evidence discovered in ruins there. They also had working plumbing, sewage and water disposal.
I could time travel relatively comfortably if I could bring my whole bathroom. The top of my list would be clean running water, toothbrush and paste, then toilet, then shower, soap, and shampoo.
RajuTM ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:40:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Unpopular reply: Modern toilets are actually a burden to our anus and it causes lots of problem. The healthiest way of taking a dump is by squatting.
Modern toilets are actally awful for your health. You should be shitting in a squat position, that's why colon cancer is alomst nonexistent in third world cuntries.
There is a fascinating toilet museum outside New Delhi that I highly recommend slant one who visits India to check out.
bebipbop ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:34:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I like this answer! Plumbing lead to the success of a lot of countries since they no longer had to deal with their own feces, thus avoiding things like disease.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:34:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Disagree. Bidet is where it's at. Clean your butthole with a spritz of fresh water, no need to generate massive pressure in the S bend with gallons of water to suck wads of TP down the drain.
The amount of water the modern toilet uses is insane though. Composting toilets (which look like regular toilets, but don't use water) are the way to go at this point.
You mean overrated? The toilet is terrible for human waste disposal. The more we research pooping, the more we realize how bad the modern toilet is to do it on (position wise). Now plumbing though...that's underrated.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:29:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fuck whoever invented the modern toilet. They're directly responsible for nearly all hemorrhoids and colon cancers.
We are not built for pooping while sitting. We're built for pooping while squatting. The Asians have it right. They also have a significantly lower presence of hemorrhoids and rectal cancers.
Also, their lights went out only a few minutes into their dive and they had to feel their way to the valve. Fucking terrifying.
[deleted] ยท 4479 points ยท Posted at 16:11:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Man, that's like movie heroism. It reminds me of that black scientist guy in the movie "The Core" where he sacrifices his life in the super-heated chamber to hit some switch. Dude was literally burning to death and pulled it off.
Except this is even more badass because it's real life and they were doing it blind.
Watch faces. Clock faces. Pretty much anything you wanted to glow in the dark. Including kids toys. Then the cancers started showing up. That was the end of that.
I think so. It was considered to be absolutely safe. They hadn't figured out yet what killed Marie Curie was low level exposure. Then people started getting skin cancer under their wristwatches
Nothing better than to combat dodgy shit with even more dodgy shit.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 01:55:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"Quick, think of something, the lying didn't work!" "What about...more lying?"
MS6Emew ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 23:02:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Panerai, which was used strictly by the Royal Italian Navy; issued watches for divers using radium in their "Radiomir" watches with a zinc sulfide mixed in to make the watch face glow so it was legible underwater. Though he didn't know it had radiation properties and the watches to this day are still unsafe to wear! :) I finally contributed a fact on Reddit cause I'm obsessed with Panerai watches.
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 22:25:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
*number. If you can count the things, say "number"; if you can't, say "amount".
Exist50 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:51:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well number is a bit ambiguous in this context. Amount captures the volume better.
[deleted] ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 23:23:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I understand your logic, but from a grammar perspective, it's still not correct, because of the word you used: "things" are countable.
Contrast the word "sand". "Sand" is called a mass noun, which has no singular form; it always refers to a group of things. "Sand" refers to something that can't be counted.
You can talk about an amount of sand...
...but number of sand doesn't make sense in English.
You can talk about sands, which are countable, but this word implies you can distinguish one "sand" from another, as in different types of sand. For example, you can say, "The geology department has samples of many sands." You can have a number of sands but not "an amount of sands".
You can also talk about grains of sand, since "grains" are countable (in theory, if not in practice); in this case the word "sand" only describes the type of grains being discussed. When discussing a pile of grains of sand, you'd say a number of grains of sand, not "an amount of grains of sand".
Things are countable, so we talk about a number of things rather than "an amount of things". It doesn't matter what "things" is referring to, since the word (not its meaning) decides how it should be used in a sentence.
I never knew this. I mean reading it the wrong way does sound weird, but I guess I never really knew why.
Exist50 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:55:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This situation isn't quite as clear cut, however, because I'm not only talking about the number of items it was in, but also the amount of it used, as in volume of products shipped.
I completely understand what you're saying, and agree for the most part, but I don't believe this situation is quite as well defined.
"What if I took a swim in a typical spent nuclear fuel pool? Would I need to dive to actually experience a fatal amount of radiation? How long could I stay safely at the surface?"
Jack92 ยท 33 points ยท Posted at 18:53:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So, radiation-powered night-lights are hard to comeby, now-a-days.
NightGod ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:34:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The city I lived in until a few months ago had one of the main plants where those girls worked. They eventually tore it down and packed off the top 18 inches or so of dirt and have since erected a lovely bronze statue dedicated to the "radium girls".
Fun fact: there used to be places in the city where snow didn't stick in the winter, including the football practice field of my high school. The EPA has since cleaned most of those up.
Mike762 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:39:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Search eBay for tritium vials or tritium keychains.
man, can you imagine seeing that with your own eyes, knowing you were going to be one of the only people in human history to witness that sight in person. knowing they were going to die because of it, and knowing that it had to be done...
Zhoom45 ยท 17 points ยท Posted at 18:40:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Because water is such a great radiation shield, Cherenkov radiation is actually quite safe to observe, assuming there's a few meters of water between you and the radiation source. In most radiation pools, you experience less radiation a foot underwater than you do standing outside the pool, since the water blocks ambient radiation from the atmosphere. Of course, if you get close to the radiation source underwater, you're in trouble.
Zhoom45 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:29:56 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Even underwater, if you're within a few feet of those spent fuel rods, you'll recieve a lethal dose within minutes. My point was that Cherenkov radiation happens under safe conditions lots of times, so those divers weren't the only people in human history to see it.
kryonik ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 18:28:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I say do the end of the movie with no lights, just sounds. You see them descending then all of a sudden, their lights start flickering then go out. Next you just hear ambient water noise, breathing and them frantically trying to fix the lights. Then you hear them resign to doing the rest of the dive in the dark. You hear them scrambling, grabbing onto things, heartbeats rising, getting more and more frustrated over comms. Then, "I think I've found it!" kssssshhhhhhh The end.
Perhaps make the movie a series of flash backs before the Cherynobl incident, up to their dive. Intersperse scenes of pitch black terror with an underwater muted silence and dialogue to create an eerie tension throughout.
I don't know. Sitting in the theatre, in pitch blackness, hearing their laboured breathing and increasingly desperate voices over the perfect sound system...
I just watched pacific rim last night, so they could do what those guys did. Have one person say "It's pitch black down here." And the continue to light it so we can all see perfectly fine.
Alexie, Boris, and Valeri slowly squeeze into their diving suits. They are quiet and somber, their eyes seldom leaving the ground and never meeting one another, until Alexie looks up - his eyes steely.
Alexie
You donโt have to do this Boris, we can find our own way. Besides, what happened here is hardly your fault
Boris
Of course, but how could I sit by and let two engineers get all the credit for saving my country?
For a moment the tension is eased by the small chuckles of the three men. After a moment they pull on their helmets and make their way to the door.
Valeri
We will only have a few minutes until the radiation sickness makes it too hard to keep swimming.
Boris
Perhaps now is not the time for such reminders.
Alexie begins to turn the wheel on the steel door to the reactor. When it finally creaks open, the three divers are greeted with an unnatural blue light which glints off the deathly still surface of the inky black water.
Boris turns on his spotlight and the three men slip beneath the surface. Illuminated only by the spotlight in Boris' hands, they begin their descent towards the massive glowing reactor. Boris light goes out and they are plunged into darkness.
Alone and blinded in the dark water, they each hear nothing but their own breathing which grows heavier and heavier with each second they spend in the poisoned depths.
I feel like they should make a movie just honor them and make sure everyone knows who they are. Saving millions of lives and half of europe would influence more people than we can imagine.
[deleted] ยท 44 points ยท Posted at 17:30:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You may enjoy the movie K-19 The Widowmaker where a very similar situation occurs on board a Russian nuclear submarine.
One of the extremely few Hollywood movies where Russians are shown in a mostly positive light. From the director of The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark 30.
It's hauntingly intense. The main character's actor is a noted comedian in Britain, so it's very impressive that he pulls this off.
Sly_Wood ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 17:55:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They did in a similar situation. K-19 The Widowmaker.
Same premises but on a nuclear submarine during the Cold War. True story and the men sent in were given chemical suits and told they would help, but they likely knew it wouldn't. Even if the first guys knew, the guys who were up next saw the first team suffering as they left.
It should be directed in a similar fashion to Apollo 13. I would totally watch that.
Blindobb ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:52:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There is some nuclear sub movie with the same idea. A few dudes had to go into the reactor to cool it with water or something. Died days later. Another true story, and more Russians. Man, maybe they should stop messing with nuclear material...
Movie opens to media coverage of the Chernobyl disaster and after opening credits, the scene is the discussion on what to do. The movie goes on with evacuation and the actual disaster. When finally our scene comes, there is arguing about what to do about the valve. The three men volunteer and finally dive in. I think it would be cool to see the scene in real time and first person from who would be the main character. When the lights go out, you see it how they did. Flickering in front of your eyes and then black. Then after the panic, they finally find it and the scene goes to the rest of the group taking notice that the three men succeeded.
(An extraordinary band called We Lost the Sea released a record last year, inspired by - and dedicated to - those who sacrificed themselves for the greater good. It's a must-listen).
KhabaLox ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:44:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's a pretty important comma you are missing.
djlewt ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 18:02:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You can watch an over 11 part series on this epic disaster and the epic failures of disaster mitigation that followed. Its filled with stories like this.
It's about a Russian submarine that suffered reactor core failure near the US east coast. The men took turns to go into try and fix the reactor with limited PPE.
nosniboD ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:07:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Bbc made a tv movie of the whole thing, including this scene. Can't remember the name of it but last I looked it was on YouTube
there is a movie of similar events called K-19: The Widow Maker,
It is about a russian sub that had gone unstable, and if it were to explode it would destroy a U.S. destroyer, almost guaranteeing nuclear retaliation from U.S.
There's this weird movie called Sunshine where astronauts are in a spaceship, and for some reason the cores powering the ship are going critical and they need to be submerged in coolant or else the space ship will fail. One of the characters has to dive in this huge pool of freezing coolant not once but three separate times and you can see how he gets slower and slower since he's freezing to death. Not as intense as being burned to death but pretty badass.
Didn't that exact same thing happen in battle star galactica to the engineer admiral?
rspeed ยท 104 points ยท Posted at 17:43:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think you're thinking of Spock in the Wrath of Khan.
billwoo ยท 59 points ยท Posted at 18:38:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He is correct, the chief engineer who became admiral of the Pegasus saved the ship by entering the radioactive engine bay to do something or other and died.
Wasn't it that the Engine bay where the controls were had been breached and was venting air? He went in there and had the door sealed behind him, and suffocated?
rspeed ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 19:05:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Oooooh right. John Heard's character. Forgot about him.
Though IIRC the comparison is inaccurate, since room he sealed himself inside was venting into space, not flooded with radiation.
Edit: Also, I'm pretty sure after Cain died, Adama became the senior officer of the fleet and therefore became the defacto Admiral. Pegasus' former engineer would have only been the ship's captain.
SamWalt ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:33:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hell of a thing when Spock died...
rspeed ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:35:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Why do people always throw Seinfeld quotes at me?
This death takes place in the shadow of new life, the sunrise of a new world; a world that our beloved comrade gave his life to protect and nourish, and he will be rewarded with a convenient excuse to bring him back in the next movie.
Bajeezus ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:54:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also, Metal Gear
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:00:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also in Star Trek,
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:45:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There an even more similar scene in... U-571 maybe? I forget, but the guy in charge has to order one of the men to swim underwater to close a valve or something, and everyone knows it's a one-way trip.
b4b ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:50:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ah yes, internet where some guy writes about real people who saved thousands if not millions and then comes out the guy who wants to talk about Babylon5 or other crap.
The nuclear reactor chambers are HOT to work in, even when idled for maintenance. When my sister had to go in to the pressure vessel during maintenance outages (reactor is basically idled, but still produces some heat) they had to wear special cooling/radiation suits that still only allowed them like 30 minutes (I think its ~135 degrees with 100% humidity), a lot hotter then that when the reactor is running.
(note i could have some of the terminology wrong, but I do know with the reactor idled it was in the range of 135 degrees with 100% humidity and the stuff they were working on was to prevent hydrogen gas buildup)
Or the movie about the Volcano on L.A. where the train conductor or somebody rescues a passenger by catching them and throwing them to safety while he is ankle deep in lava.
Similar to that scene in Doctor Who where he steps into a box full of radiation to press a button.
C413B7 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:23:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's also the guy from the Jurassic Park: The Lost World, who was trying to pull the trailer back on the cliff while getting eaten by t-rexs. That always struck me as heroic.
myblindy ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:38:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It had to be him. Someone else would have gotten it wrong.
Also reminds me of Chris Evans' character in Sunshine (2007) where he is trying to fix the flight computer and has to dive into the super-cold coolant to manually fix it.
To be fair, he actually would have survived if he was able to make his way back up the ladder. But the heat and semi-molten floor was so exhausting that he just gave in and told the others to open the airlock.
HunterTC ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:44:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not to discount their heroic deeds, but it's not like the water was actively melting them or something. You can't sense radiation. It was 'just' a little dive that you knew would be your last.
RSRussia ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:51:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As a geologist I am unsure whether to laugh or to cry when anybody mentions the core :|
savvyxxl ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:02:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What about the grandma in dantes peak? The acidic water is melting the boat and she jumps out into the water and pushes them and it's burns the shit out of her
Look into the movie K-19 with Harrison Ford. It's about the submarine K-19 which was a soviet built nuclear sub. The reactor begins to leak and due to shortage of supplies, the sub was not equipped with suits that offered any protection from radiation. So the men went in wearing plain hazmat suits in increments of 10 or 15 minutes to perform repairs on the leaking reactor. That is signing your own death warrant if I ever heard.
That movie stands out in my mind as having terrible science. For instance, the "unobtainium" could handle incredibly high temperatures and was effectively indestructible, but at some points it gets melted and a guy dies from a rock hitting his helmet and puncturing it.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:46:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You should read the story of HMCS Kootenay. They had a gear box explosion while doing a full power trial after a refit. A full power trial is basically just making the ship go as fast as the guys can without going past any safety parameters. While they're doing that they're also watching everything very carefully and logging every gauge in the plant. This is done to make sure there's no problems that might arise during battle.
Well something did go wrong, very wrong. A bearing was installed backwards, it overheated and the gearbox exploded. What likely isn't published, but I have learned from people that were onboard and helped put out the fire is fucking terrifying. They had aluminum ladders and deck plates in the engine room were the gear box was. They found hand prints in the ladder were guys tried to escape the fire but the ladder melted away as they tried to grab it. But that's not even the worse part.
The guys in the boiler room knew something went wrong, but didn't know what. They're job was to maintain steam pressure at all costs until told otherwise. Without knowing what went wrong they don't know if command may need that steam to get the ship to safety. Well, the Chief engineer was yelling orders from the engine room to the boiler room until the deck he was on melted and he and his chair fell through into the inferno.
If he hadn't done that the others onboard wouldn't have been able to enter the engine room to put out the fire. This would have been because the space was filling with steam at about 550 degs F from the steam pipes that ruptured in the explosion.
Did the directors and producers huddle in a group and decide, "Let's burn the black token!"?
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:50:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They make fun of that in the South Park episode that parodies the movie. The one where Cartman has to drill through all the hippies to stop the music festival.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:13:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Huh. I actually don't even know why I automatically decided to qualify it with race. It was just what popped into my head to identify the character. I feel kinda bad now.
Vio_ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:49:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's beyond movie heroism. that's a "put a bullet in my brain, because my skin is going to start sloughing off in days."
this clip from U-571 is what it reminded me of. That dude has to swim down some flooded shaft to close off a valve or something and his oxygen line ends up being too short and he drowns after reaching the valve and fixing it.
Reminds me of a comic (Saga), where this alien lady decides to release a valve or something to extinguish a fire on this space ship, and she dies in the process.
I know this is going to sound stupid so I apologize in advance, but would these divers feel any immediate sort of pain/sensation due to the highly radioactive water while they are swimming in it?
Or would they just know that they would be fucked in the long term?
No. Radiation itself does not cause pain. The effects of radiation causes the pain. ARS (Acute radition sickness/sydrome) occurs very shortly after being exposed to large amounts of radiation. Symptoms being nausea, vomiting, fatigue, radiation burns, hair loss, gastrointestinal issues, neural issues. Just to name a few.
Thank you for the explanation. That takes some serious balls for those divers knowing that they are essentially sacrificing themselves for the greater good.
Radiation can interfere with electronics. It was a problem during parts of the cleanup where they were trying to use robots to clean things up. The electronics just stopped working due to the extremely high radiation. They had to use "bio-robots" instead, humans working in the high radiation areas for brief periods, then retreating to lower radiation areas.
God damnit that is terrifying, I recently took the first class in a scuba certification and when we had to go a minute without our masks it was the longest most stressful minute of my life
aaary444 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:03:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Someone, make a fucking movie out of this.
gid0ze ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 19:01:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They did, it's called the Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn. Admittedly, it did get some details wrong.
From what i remember, only one of them wasn't a diver, so the lights going out would really only be terrifying to the one inexperienced engineer. However, all three knew that braving those waters would be lethal, so there's that...
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:27:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
they knew they were going to die. only thing keeping them going must have been the thought of failure.
serisho ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:45:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
divers are trained for this. firemen do the exact same thing when they cant see from the smoke or flames. going in dark isn't much worse. just kinda sucks.
I can see the connection (flooded room -> find the valve) but it reminds me more of K-19 where they had to wade through torso deep radioactive water to try and weld pipes to restore cooling and prevent a meltdown. The guys who went in that room got fucked up by the raditation
Not to mention that dying of radiation poisoning is about as miserable of a way to go as one could think. Imagine the worst flu you've ever had that causes your skin to fall off and your cells to literally start falling apart.
ghost_mv ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:25:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
KNEW WS ONEWY TRIP BT KNEW I HAD TO COME
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:31:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
At that point, they're already dead men swimming. Giving up because you have no light would be a waste of their life and they knew it.
SFXBTPD ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:09:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This needs to be a movie
ktappe ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 18:42:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fucking terrifying.
Since they were on a suicide mission, would it be? What's to be scared of if you're already dead?
You'd probably be pretty scared that you wouldn't be able to get to the valve in time, or collapse first, thus dying for nothing. Plus just because there's no reason to be scared, doesn't mean you won't be.
Diving into an unfamiliar area looking for a valve along a pipe with no light on a known suicide mission and not making it means hundreds of thousands more will die. That's pretty fucking terrifying.
We should also spend a moment to remember the "bio-robots" of Chernobyl, who were young army reservists. Basically at the time it was realized that real robots were not up for the task of cleaning out the debris from the roof because the radiation was destroying their components. The solution taken was to then take these young army guys and slap thin lead sheets on them, and then promised if they went to work on the roof for 3 minutes they could retire from the army. The calculations at the time from radioactivity though was after 45 seconds you would exceed limits, and many people went up there several times.
Here is a little documentary about the biorobots for anyone curious.
No one's ever done a study btw on the long-term health effects of the bio-robots.
There were a lot of older men who volunteered for that job saying that the radiation won't affect them for years and they'll likely be dead by the time it would. They didn't want young men to risk their lives like that.
[deleted] ยท 373 points ยท Posted at 19:02:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
[deleted] ยท 143 points ยท Posted at 00:58:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just saying its not a wasteland like the media says. In fact most of the building were looted to shit in the early 2000's so most of the stuff inside the buildings are all gone.
[deleted] ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 01:29:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
i still wouldn't go frolicking around without a geiger counter and a trained guide lol. i have heard some animals are thriving without humans there. but still
I don't know about that specific incident, however in general terms radiation exposure takes many forms. Alpha, beta, or gamma ray radiation all have different effects depending on level of exposure, and those effects are more or less likely to have long term effects vs. Immediate based on the type of radiation. It's really quite interesting if you want something to read about.
No one's ever done a study btw on the long-term health effects of the bio-robots.
It's hard to do long term studies when all your subjects are dead.
armrha ยท 83 points ยท Posted at 19:22:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They aren't all dead though. Watch the documentary. Very few of them died outright right after exposure, most just seemed to suffer terrible effects for most of their lives...
You're a bit on the slow side if you think I'm after upvotes. You started this argument with no reason other than to fish for downvotes, or you are too dense to not understand the words you are spouting.
NoItNone ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:36:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Looking at your comments confirms you are a circle jerking karma whore. Eat a dick. Get a life. Fake internet point won't bring you real happiness.
GavinZac ยท 474 points ยท Posted at 18:13:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Um, that seems really, really easy actually. Like, if you're going to survey hair length, you'll be thankful for every baldy the that passes by.
Journal entry 5055: Margaret says I'm losing my mind. She's just jealous that those radioactive corpses talk to me and not her. Maybe I am insane....no its her, shes the one thats wrong.
Journal entry 5056: Billy came in and woke me up today. He said it wasn't right to sleep in the same room as them overnight. That fat oaf. I'm watching him closely, and that ugly Margaret too. Those corpses warned me about them. I'm going to lock the door before I go back to sleep tonight with them. This itchy arm is getting to me too.
Journal entry 5057: That prick Billy said I should go to medical about my arm. What does he know? He doesn't dare take the risks for science that I do. There's nothing to be afraid of among these corpses. He must of been listening to Margaret's crap again about how in the morning they're on different tables to the ones she left them on. That clumsy bitch is probably just mixing up her notes, they aren't that stupid.
Journal entry 5058: It's hurting to write. My arm is starting to look like the corpses. They told me I should take care of Billy. He sure is fat and plump looking, just looks so juicy. I woke up today once again, spending the night here with the corpses. They're not here anymore. Where did they go? Am I going crazy? Am I hallucinating? Maybe Margaret and Billy is messing with me. But how? The door is locked and the corpses are gone! No, Margaret and Billy won't take me. They will stop! I'll show them!
Journal entry 5059: It's been 5 days since Billy and Margaret locked me in here. I would be starving if they hadn't sent that lab assistant in....the corpses still haven't returned. There was a lot of noise a few days ago like people were fighting, this joke has gone on too long now. That rash on my arm keeps spreading, its nearly at my legs now.
Ixidane ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:59:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Journal entry 5060: I heard a researcher who tried to escape from this mansion was shot last night. My entire body feels burning and itchy at night. When I was scratching the swelling on my arms, a lump of rotten flesh dropped off. What the hell is happening to me?
Journal entry 5060: The screaming in the hallways have stopped. I am running out of meat here. I need more. What have I done? I need help! No. I need more meat. More.
Considering the amount of radioactivity exposure, probably cancer. If they were lucky. Could be radiation poisoning.
eadochas ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:50:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The massively conservative death rate estimate by the WHO (as in, very pessimistic, extremely unlikely to be this high) is 4000 for the entire cohort (of about 600,000 liquidators). This represents a lifetime death rate of 0.67% due to activities at Chernobyl. This is a statistical study and not based on any medical date.
Two separate studies conducted by doctors in Ukraine and Russia conclude that from cohorts of 66,000 and 10,000 liquidators, there was zero evidence for increased rate of cancer mortality as a result of exposure. There was a statistically significant increase in the number of cancers, but not the mortality rate (ie nobody extra died).
The study would examine their post-exposure timelines for that very purpose, to see how long each survived and what circumstances might have prolonged or shortened their lives.
There are suvivors and they try to lobby and protest but hey, it's still Russia.
Check out the book Voices from Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich. It's all recent stories from survivors. Powerful dark stuff that gives real insight to the days weeks and months after the disaster.
aqf ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:47:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's the thing though, they may not have died or even experienced adverse effects. Radiation has different effects on different people, and some people have received many times a lethal dose and survived. It's discussed at length in the book Atomic Accidents by James Mahaffey.
stanhhh ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 18:56:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You had a joke there. And you fucked it up.
2059FF ยท 22 points ยท Posted at 20:12:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
if they went to work on the roof for 3 minutes they could retire from the army. [...] many people went up there several times.
How many times do you need to retire from the army?
Maybe they had a deal where if you worked an extra three minutes, you could get your buddies out of the army without them being exposed to the radiation.
If you figure you're fucked, might as well work for an hour and have your 19 closest friends be able to go home relatively safely.
I think it's a case of "we need to do this job or more people will die so I'll volunteer again so someone else doesn't have to" by that point.
wasniahC ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 23:25:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I mean, you don't really feel the effects of it short term, do you? I don't really know, so if someone knows differently please correct me, but I would have thought you wouldn't really notice it short-term.
So you've been up there 3 minutes.. and you know another 3 minutes would help a lot. Another 3 minutes won't hurt, right?
One thing to make it sound even crazier wasn't that the robots couldn't do the jobs, it's that the radiation was so high it caused them to break down. Think about that, radiation so potent it broke down a machine, and they sent people in.
[deleted] ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 22:32:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The radiation was simply ionizing. Meaning it messes with the chargers of the semi conductors, when you take away their polarity or change it with a few hits of ionizing radiation it disrupts things. Hence why you need to shield from it and have purpose build components which is expensive.
In humans it does the same crap just to the DNA, can make it dimer or knock out sections by changing charge. Its the bodies repair system that inst perfect and can only do so much.
I knew this, but was pointing out that it wasn't that the robots were incapable in the first place, it's that they malfunctioned because of the radiation.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 14:59:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If radiation is on a scale of 0-100. And a chip fails at 10 on the scale, and safe might be 100 and we send a robot in and it fails, what we could guess is at minimum the radiation would be min 10 and maximum 100. So using a computer chips failure to gauge strength is not a great measure.
The thing is it's very simple either you die from acute exposure. Or get cancer at an increased rate.... or nothing ever happens and your fine. There's no mystery and if you didn't get cancer then well you're fine.
My dad was actually in the red army in '86. He told me that at one point it was in question wether or not his unit would have been send there for exactly that task. He said they all were extremely happy, when the officers told them that they were able to talk high command into letting them remain at their current position in Kazakhstan. I probably would not be alive today otherwise.
Blewedup ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 20:36:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
great footage of them wearing improvised lead suits is out there somewhere...
One guy said they had pretty solid protection (or so they'd been told). He pulled off his gloves, and they were bright red. Couldn't even put them in the sun. Went to the doctor immediately.
"Did you wear protective gloves?"
"Yes."
"Yeah, your hands are chafing from the gloves."
I guess since he's still alive and didn't mention that they'd melted off, that it was the gloves and not the radioactive material.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:40:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's surprising how few deaths Chernobyl caused though, really. People tend to mis-remember it as a human catastrophe when really almost all impact was environmental. The most brutally cynical interpretations of Chernobyl, the ones so far out there virtually no scientist agrees with them, still say that all direct and indirect deaths from Chernobyl weren't even 100,000 people. That's a holy shit number, but hardly as if someone nuked a city or something - and again the number is a huge exaggeration.
Most reputable estimates say just 3,000 - 15,000 people ultimately died from Chernobyl, some decades later. The UN figures maybe 4,000.
Really...Chernobyl was sort of a small deal when you think about it. Hear me out. A terrible reactor design running a very risky experiment that then blew up so hard it launched a two million pound chunk of concrete across the complex, and all we lost was like 4,000 people and 1,000 square miles? Don't we lose that much from coal like every month?
Chernobyl was a bad design that got fucked up unfathomably bad, and yet the results weren't even 1/100,000th as bad as what fossil fuels did to us in the 20th century nor were the results anywhere near as bad as people feared a full-blown meltdown of a shitty reactor might cause.
Really, really sucks that like four nuclear disasters, only two of which even did major damage, completely turned the world against the safest power source mankind has ever seen - by a factor of thousands.
hellli ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:46:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In the first days after the explosion they basically came at night to young soldiers' homes to "take them away". Very few knew about where they were going or what was expected of them. In the Soviet union, you couldn't really ask questions.
[deleted] ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 20:04:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Last time this stuff was discussed on Reddit, there was a comment from a man who lived in Russia at the time and was a young teen. He said his village was rounded up and forced to clean up aftermath on pain of being shot. Most of them died, he survived and eventually moved to the US.
I frankly doubt that Internet story is true. We would have heard about it by now.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:12:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I would believe it. I know a few families who lived in the USSR around the same time and their stories are horrible, and completely unable to be proven because of coverup and the general state of the USSR record keeping at the time.
DrDragun ยท 1413 points ยท Posted at 16:11:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's a little unclear exactly who were the 3 mentioned, but the names of the people involved with this overall effort were:
Aleksandr Akimov
Vladimir Babychev
Aleksandr Nekhaev
Ivan Orlov
Gennadievich Uskov
Leonid Toptunov
When he's able to comprehend that he has a horrid name, just tell him to cry some more and make him half a sandwich since you know he's fucked when he gets to school.
JNS_KIP ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 19:18:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
life ain't easy for a boy named babychev
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:05:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I've been doing nothing but teleporting sandwiches this whole time!
Just name him Chev. He will be Babychev for the first few years anyway. He will probably want to go by chev when he signs the legal emancipation documents in his teens.
Go ahead for the Babychev as the middle name. When I hear baby names from people I know I think another boring stereotypical french name, or oh that's so quirky just like so many other English babies in the last 5 years.
But Babychev. That's something, plus he was in the water at Chernobyl so there's a good enough reason behind it too.
Do you hear words in your head when you read? I just kind of see them.
Kesht-v2 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:32:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It depends. I do tend to sub-vocalize more when I'm trying to make sure I understand something 100%, especially if it's confusing or badly written. But for the majority of my reading I skim and process visually.
In this case though I saw the pun in scanning and just went for it.
RdMrcr ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:38:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't get it... can someone explain?
ThatFag ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:05:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Bahahaha! Fucking brilliant, mate. Just bloody brilliant. Great job!
31773 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:08:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Russian last names are adjectives and act like normal adjectives, taking gender, number, and case.
Another familiar example is Anna Karenina and her husband, Alexei Karenin.
Not to be confused with patronyms, which are not family surnames, they name the person's father.
For example, Anna Arkadyevna Karenina shares a patronym with her brother, Stepan Arkadyevich Oblonsky. They are, respectively, the daughter and son of Arkady.
Oblonsky's female children will be known as [whatever] Stepanevna Oblanskaya
That is also why there are so many ovich and ovna names in the US. When they would come from Russia and other culturally relevant areas to the US there was quite a bit of name confusion.
When asked their name they would give the First and Patronym thinking that's what was asked. So Boris Borisovich, or Robert son of Robert. That would become their American Name. The surname was a family name, in small Russian communities it wasn't a necessity to utilize the surname/family name as often. If you were Robert son of Robert they knew who you were.
My great grandfather fled to the US not long after the Bolshevik Revolution through "Poland" and my grandfather was born here and was the last to be named in this way. But his was Americanized in that he just took his fathers first name as his middle name. Our surname luckily stayed with him and sounds more Italian than Russian. My grandfather had explained this all to me some years ago.
During the time of the Bolshevik Revolution, apparently many of those who fled came through Poland. My great-grandfather was amongst a large surge fleeing at the time who claimed to be Polish, when they got to the US, and fled through Warsaw. Some feared those in support of the revolt would murder those who were in support of the Czar and others feared to have a stigma to being attached to a country in turmoil.
Not sure how many actually did this over time. But being "Polish" was apparently better than Russian or even Ukrainian at the time. I know they came through Ellis Island back in the day but I don't remember the exact year. I know it was between the Revolution and WWII. Most of this came from stories handed down by my grandfather from his father. I'm hoping to return to Ellis Island some day and find the paperwork. Apparently if you know enough you can search for your ancestors records.
I've always taken issue with people not understanding this when making characters for books, movies, comics, etc. The Black Widow for example, from the Avengers, is called Natasha Romanov, which is wrong.
Wait I thought Russian last names were indeed patronyms? Are they not?
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:10:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Russian names are, iirc, [given name] [patronym] [surname]. For example, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.
giantbfg ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 20:22:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yep, but between men and women the patronym and last name will change. If Putin had a sister her name might be something like Irina Vladimirovna Putina
spacenb ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:53:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's fascinating and makes me want to take Russian courses for my mandatory language courses even more.
Domskhel ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 00:13:28 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Would recommend, it's a beautiful language and rich culture.
lawlrhus ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:45:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If that doesn't work out take Russian Lit. You'll learn about the naming structures in that course too.
spacenb ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:37:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ah, I wish the universal literature courses at my university gave Russian lit classes. Unfortunately all the classes are pretty much focused on francophone literature (as I'm in Quebec, Canada), which I know because my major is literature haha. I don't think I'll have any trouble getting Russian classes though since there are two teachers in the language department for it.
They can also end in either -ski or -sky like Alexander Nevsky although they are much less common. Ukrainians and those of Ukrainian descent will also oftentimes have names that end in o like Alexander Dovzhenko.
It's similar "-son" in English names. However "-ov" (and similarly "-ova," for females) denotes possession (specifically, it's the genitive case), so it was also used to russify foreign names as well as denote nicknames and affiliations.
So the last name "Ivanov" means that somewhere down the line, someone in that family was an Ivan. That can cause confusion, because Russians also have a patronymic name (a middle name derived from the father's name). So the name Ivan Ivonovich Ivanov would be "Ivan, the son of Ivan, of Ivan's family".
Bonus: the other popular Russian surname suffix is "-sky" (as in Dostoevsky), which denotes either an association to a place or that the person's ancestor was a serf (more or less a Russian slave). I was told that Dostoevsky is derived from a place called Dostoevo (so, "Fyodor Dostoevsky" becomes "Fyodor of Dostoevo"). However, the name Ivanovsky would almost certainly denote that an ancestor was the slave of a man named Ivan.
Double bonus: Other users are discussing Putin. I couldn't find a serious discussion of the etymology of his surname, but it's most likely derived from the Russian word "put'" meaning "way" or "road."
Kralte ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 18:36:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
-ov just means son/descendant of, kind of like -son in Scandinavian names.
You could take all all those names and slap on -ov to get family names, Aleksandrov, Vladimirov, Ivanov, Leonidov, Gennadievich is strange because it is also a family name, a double in fact.
Gennady is the base name, some descendant could be Gennadyev which is just another variant of -ov, but then there is the third level, Gennadievich, -ich signifies 'little' or 'junior', basically just means descendant of like -ov -ev.
So he would be MacGennadyson in some imaginary land.
I'm...a little horrified by this mental image. She's casually smoking a cigarette with dead eyes, wearing knee-high black boots and flicking rabonas into the net from 20 yards out. Like a tired-looking Malotov Cocktease from Venture Bros. with silky-smooth first touch.
the endings deal with parental lineage - i think it's a holdover from back when names in russia/slavic countries were patrinomic(based on who your father was) or descriptive of your job(smith, stabler, shitraker, etc)
That's their patronymic name. It seems traditional in England (from what I can tell, I live there) to have your middle name be somebody you're related to. My middle name is my father's name. In Russia, it's a big tradition. -ev and -ov are just the two endings, and mean "son of". (I'm happy to be corrected on this, but I believe it's how it works)
For example, Vladimir Putin's full name is Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. Vladimir, son of Vladimir Putin.
JonnyBox ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:45:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Many, but not all. There is also the 'in' ending, and the 'ko' ending, and Baltic 'as' and 'is' endings that have found their way in.
hwarming ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:58:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
For women they add an a to the end. So aleksandr's wife or daughter would have the last name Akimova
wtsd ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:06:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Most of them do. In most cases it is -v [m] or -va [f] or -n [m] or -na [f].
1: Mr Ivanov and Mrs Ivanova. Mr Leonov and Mrs Leonova. Mr Nikolaev and Mrs Nikolaeva.
2: Mr Nikitin and Mrs Nikitina. Mr Nikulin and Mrs Nikulina.
As far as I know, most Ukrainian last names and with -ko: Savchenko, Vasilchenko, Nikitenko.
Russian last names are actually different for male and female, even in the same family. For example the ending -ov is for male, and the equivalent would be -ova for the female.
PRMan99 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:17:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not quite, e.g. Putin, Pushkin. To be fair, I have no idea if there's other endings than 'v' and 'n', except that all women's surnames end in -vowel-va, e.g. uskova, orlova, putina, etc.
Not all, but many and only if they're male. Female last often end names end in -vowel-va. It's kind of the equivalent of "O'" in Irish surnames: "of" something.
I'm not completely sure, but I think it indicates "possession". Ie., Leonid Toptunov's ancestor was probably called Toptun or such, and it would literally be Leonid Toptun's.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:27:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
ev, ov, and in are the most common ones, though others have appeared through immigration, deliberate changes (for example, some wanted to hide Jewish ancestry, especially in the first half of the 20th century, and the adopted names persist), errors and other factors.
Cheat sheet: last names, like all Russian nouns have genders. Therefore male last names will end in consonant, but female last names (even though it's the same last name let's say) will end in a vowel.
Example. My granfather's last name is Strizhevskiy. My grandmother's - Strizhevskaya.
Russian surnames have a couple of common endings: -ov/ova, -in/ina, -oi/aia, -ii/aia, but these are not all of them. Also, Russian names typically include a patronym, which ends in -ovich/ovna or -evich/evna. It's a pretty complicated system.
Too lazy to check, but -ov/-ev is basically the Russian suffix for males, ie. "Ivan's son" is Ivanev/Ivanov, and "Aleksandr's son" is Aleksandrov (In the case of the Russian suffix -ovich/-evich, you could roughly translate it as Of the Sons. In the case of Rurikovich, the rough translation would be Of the Sons of Rurik; the dynasty of the sons of Rurik")
In the same, the female suffix is "ova" or "ovna", as in "Ivan's daughter" becoming "Ivanova" or "Aleksandr's daughter" becoming "Aleksandrovna".
A more wellknown comparison would be the use of "-(s)son" in Scandinavian last names. Ivan's Son in the Scandinavian convention would be Ivan(s)son (the second 's' being dependent on which Scandinavian language we're discussing).
Every time I see this posted I try to memorize their names. These guys deserve to be remembered.
Load04 ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 18:25:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Gennadievich Uskov
Not that I'm picking on you or anything but Gennadievich is... well, something like a "third" name. You see some slavic names have the third part in them. It's basically like #NAME# #SURNAME# #MODIFIED DAD's NAME#. What I'm trying to say that Gennadievich is those #DAD's NAME# part, it was either Gennadiy or #NAME# Gennadievich. I know it's overcomplicated and I probably look like a douche pointing that out but I have to say this. Still it's really nice that you found the expanded list of the names, just a little mistake doesn't reduce it's weight. Cheers :)
JNS_KIP ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:18:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
fuckin douche
xv323 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:59:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Aleksandr Akimov and Leonid Toptunov were not anything to do with the diving. They were technicians who were on the console in the power plant the night the explosion occurred. The official report laid the blame pretty squarely on them and on a man called Anatoly Dyatlov, who was their direct superior, for failure to follow safety protocols that led to the explosion. It's now known that report didn't properly apportion blame to faults in the design of the reactors but even so, the conduct of the people who were in control of the reactor at the time of the accident was far from exemplary. Toptunov and Akimov did put in great effort immediately following the explosion to get water into the reactor to cool it down - not having realised at the time that the reactor basically wasn't there any more - and they died a few weeks after the explosion. Dyatlov died, I believe, sometime in the 1990s.
Not screaming in terror like the rest of the people in the car my passengers.
FTFY
krabbby ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 18:25:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm thinking blimping accident. And not the kind where I'm in a blimp that's crashing, I'm picturing me standing on a hilltop and I get hit by the blimp.
I want my descendants to have a great story to tell.
arsenale ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 18:38:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"His name is Robert Paulson-ov. His name is Robert Paulson-ov."
sigma932 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 16:47:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We certainly can, I just wish that these kind of sacrifices were more well known. Nothing restores my faith in humanity quite like real examples of absolute selflessness.
There are things we can do. Perhaps if they have any family left we could at least write to them or collect money for some sort of tribute to these men.
Blewedup ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:31:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
i have chosen that.
i will always remember these three dudes.
2a0c40 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:49:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Like hell it has. I don't go a day without thinking about how these guys ran to their deaths, like how when I was a little kid, firefighters, paramedics, and cops ran up the North Tower stairs, even after the South Tower fell.
Too many people have used their bodies as tools, so that others may live, for me to forget it.
Especially after being raised to very strongly internalize the concept that a body is sacred, holy, almost, and that you shouldn't be careless with it.
If they were from the other side of the iron curtain, we'd all have their names drilled into our heads every year at school. It's really a shame how much of a role political ideology plays in our education.
History forgets everyone eventually, you cease to exist but time marches on. 200 years after your death, no record of anything you ever did will be remembered.
The worst part is you've never heard of these people. The heroes that get ingrained into our minds are the ones that resonate with society's current trends and cultural movements. Not to undervalue the contributions they've done, from transgender activists and woman suffragists to the 4-year old kid who dialled 911 for her mother who fainted, to the brave cops facing danger daily and enduring the police hate fro the public, but in these days the term 'hero' is a loose label that can be used for virtually anything.
These guys are barely even acknowledged out here beyond a wikipedia page and a well-read redditor who decided to spread the word.
This reminded me of that one scene in the movie, Sunshine.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:43:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It would have been a great harm to the NATO countries if they key this blow up, right? I mean, Warsaw Pact countries too, but NATO countries will get hit with radiation?
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:07:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If you're ever faced with this, be sure to make it real casual. Take your wallet, phone, all that stuff out.
I get what you're saying but I'd die pretty much any other way besides radiation poisoning. If I had to have done what they did I would request a gun to shoot myself immediately afterwards.
F0sh ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:16:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Of all the ways to die, radiation poisoning is one of the last ones to choose. It's horrible, slow, painful and inevitable. One by one, your bodily functions fail. Assuming I somehow got the opportunity to be a hero in this way I'd probably chicken out but I would certainly never do it unless I was assured I would be killed painlessly after it was determined I had incurable radiation sickness.
I suppose you could argue they died because of their belief that millions of lives are worth more than their own and in that way became martyrs. That seems like a stretch though.
Kohvwezd ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:20:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think that you are a martyr if you are a victim of persecution due to your beliefs, which still wouldn't apply. Whatever, it's not that important.
rspeed ยท 23 points ยท Posted at 17:46:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
'Cause, you knowโฆ corners.
Though they did later use robots (derived from the USSR's badass Lunokhod lunar rovers) to take readings in parts of the reactor building that were too dangerous for humans to enter.
Are you suggesting that the scientist working at chernobyl never thought of the idea, hey lets use a stick to release the valve?That 10 days was more than enough time to solve ALL the problems associated with an unexpected nuclear meltdown? That perhaps they didn't try every possibility before 3 men sacrificed their lives to save everyone.I think they deserve more respect than , " why didn't the use a stick lol"
"Radiation suits" (something that will protect you from high levels of radiation) do not exist. Never have.
The first thing to understand is the difference between radiation and contamination. Basically contamination is the shit and radiation is the stink.
What are commonly referred to as "radiation suits" are anti-contamination clothing. They're nothing special. Just a cloth or plastic suit designed to prevent radioactive materials in dust or water from getting on your skin. Basically the same as a chemical suit. It keeps the shit off your skin, but can't do anything about the stink.
In other words, if you in the presence of an unshielded high radiation source for too long, you're fucked no matter what you wear.
The only way to reduce radiation exposure is Time (Less time smelling shit), Distance (Stay away from the shit), and Shielding (Put something between you and the shit).
"OK, smarty pants, why not build the shielding into the suit?" Glad you asked. Radiation harms you because it causes interactions with the atoms in the living tissue of your body. If the DNA gets screwed up enough, you get cancer. If the dose is really high, the cells get killed. The only way to shield against radiation is to use a material that has a better chance of having the radiation interact with it as it passes through it before it gets to you. If a particular radioactive subatomic particle passes through you, it does precisely nothing to you, but why take the risk? Here's where it gets sticky.
In addition to the strength of the radiation, you need to take into account the type. There are four:
Alpha (helium nucleus): Highly charged (+2), relatively massive (4). Low energy (speed), Very reactive.
Beta (electron): Charged (-1), relatively small (0.000...). High energy, Pretty reactive.
Neutron: No charge. Pretty massive. Medium energy, Kinda reactive.
Gamma: No charge. No mass. Very high energy, A bit reactive.
The paradox here is that the more reactive types penetrate less, but do the most damage if they get to living cells.
Sometimes this is explained with the Cookie problem: You have four cookies made out of shit. Alpha, beta, gamma and neutron. You have four exclusive choices: Hold it in your hand, put it in your pocket, eat it, or throw it away.
Solution: Hold the alpha cookie in your hand. The outermost layer of your skin is dead and will react with the alphas, blocking them from getting further into you. The skin cells shed as they do naturally. For god sakes don't eat it because the tissue inside you is still living.
Put the beta cookie in your pocket. Although it's more reactive than the alpha, it will still be stopped by a shield as thin as a piece of paper. Fabric is enough.
The neutron cookie? Throw that bitch away. Now. Nothing you can wear will stop neutrons and they will fuck you up.
Eat the gamma cookie. Nothing you wear can shield you, but gammas stand as much of a chance of passing through you doing nothing as they do in reacting. Way less risky than that neutron fucker.
So the anticontamination suits are fine to prevent you from getting beta shit on your skin and possibly ingesting alpha shit. What about neutrons and gammas? These need relatively massive substances to stop. Water and plastic actually do a pretty good job of stopping neutrons because they contain lots of hydrogen atoms to interact with. This is also why they fuck you up so bad. Better the plastic than you. Problem is, you need a pretty substantial thickness and a suit that would protect you would be too heavy to move around in. Luckily, the vast majority of neutrons are produced in nuclear reactors and bombs. Neutron shielding a reactor is easy (put it in a big water tank) and luckily nobody with half a lick of sense is testing nukes. For gammas, becaus ethey are high energy photons and not actual particles, you need something thick and dense. Lead works well, but it's density makes it extremely heavy. You know that apron your wear when getting an X-Ray? You might be able to wear that around for a bit, but it's only covering the front and Gammas are hundreds of times more powerful than X-Rays. So wearing something that can block gammas is out of the question. Interestingly, I've seen gamma sources used for X-raying Radiographing steel that were shielded with depleted uranium. Yep, using a very dense radioactive material to shield a much more powerful radioactive material.
Source: Trained in nuclear power by the US Navy. Hence the profane and memorable examples.
TL;DR: Radiation suits cannot exist. Stay away from shit cookies.
Actually in space, cooling is more of a problem than staying warm. Vacuum is an incredible insulator so the astronaut's body heat and heat from the heat from the photons of the sun are really hard to get rid of. Hence they have complex cooling systems built into the suit.
Under the "Thermal Control Systems" tab and "Radiator" heading.
Spaceships use different types of devices that emit infrared radiation. Radiation is the only mode of heat transfer that requires no medium, so it's a good use for this application.
Use a suit that circulates a coolant (water), remove heat with a heat exchanger cooled by ice, let ice sublimate into space. Source
00yoshi ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 10:40:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I wonder why they don't use liquid nitrogen or such, it vaporizes and thus takes more energy than letting ice melt.
Vaughn ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 13:31:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The heat of vaporization of nitrogen is 5.56 kJ/mol. That's as compared to water, where the heat of fusion (i.e. melting) is 6.02 kJ/mol.
Granted, N2 has a molecular weight of 14, compared to water's 18. So nitrogen wins...?
But water also has a very high heat capacity in the liquid range, which means you can push a lot of heat into it without increasing the temperature too much. Water is also a lot easier to make dense.
TLDR: It's complicated.
00yoshi ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:10:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Damn... But it is 77 degrees hot and you can heat it up to 310 degrees, or is the ice also very cold?
Radiation is the only type of heat transfer that doesn't require a medium to transfer to. For example, the sun radiates quite a bit of energy to the earth :)
Objects will radiate heat away as light, even in a vacuum. This is how infra-red cameras work, and why things start to visibly glow when they get hot enough.
Galevav ยท 26 points ยท Posted at 05:14:12 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Here's a site with a lot of detail for you! LOTS of details, about possible spaceships. The whole site is a good resource for sci-fi authors who want to get scientific details right. The site's author admits that if you don't break any of the rules of physics, it can end up being a boring story: no FTL, fighters don't make any sense, stealth is impossible. You want to break as few rules as possible, and as small rules as possible, or there can be unintended consequences. If you're good, you can make those consequences work for you.
There's a beautiful documentary series about the Apollo program and one episode is entirely dedicated to the space suits. They go into the thermal management in depth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJbztthNrVQ
malevshh ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 01:59:49 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If I - drunk as I am - had to design one now, I'd use pipes filled with water under the needed pressure on the inner layer. The energy from outside makes the water evaporate, which causes a huge thermal loss. Then lead those steam pipes outside of the suit where the water condenses, then bring it back into the system. No idea if this is what they do,but it could work.
I don't think this would work very well, as the water won't easily condense again without something else to transfer its heat to. This kind of system would work well in air, but I'd think not so much in a vacuum.
If you just vent the water vapour out and accept losing it though, that part works.
malevshh ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:17:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A vent to lower the pressure could work, indeed. You could also use the enthalpy to heat the suit for the astronaut.
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 03:32:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Actual space suits use radiators.
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 03:32:56 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also they're relatively safe inside earth magnetoshpere, also their suits are made to work in low G, which helps because they are massive slightly flexible suits of armour.
If it's any consolation you'll still be able to grow potatoes from your own shit though.
Stribog ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 00:08:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I was reading a while back about a using a thin wire mesh to create a magnetic field around the ship and the astronauts. That seemed like an interesting way to solve that problem. I would think that could also work on the ground.
Synaps4 ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 04:13:52 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Unless you power that electromagnet with something insane, its not going to be strong enough over the short distances involved to change the path of a fast moving high energy particle, imo.
why the +30% delta in fatal cancer rates between men and women? this seems like the difference is potentially even more pronounced if the significant difference in gender lifespans isn't mostly due to cancer.
is most of that due to prostate / male-only cancer, compared to female-only cancer and the difference in early detection rates and treatment options?
From what I've read it's a combination of male-only cancers, lifestyle differences (smoking, drinking, diet, weight), and that men are less likely to visit their doctor and report symptoms early enough.
With men its your ass & balls, who wants to handle that shit, women are far more likely to handle their boobies enough to detect early cancerousness.
[deleted] ยท -24 points ยท Posted at 23:57:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Why the higher risk for men? Also kind of sucks since males are better suited to be astronauts (more physical power per kg of bodyweight, more mentally/emotionally stable, etc.)
Not to shit in your Cheerios, but women are actually better suited for many, if not most aspects of spaceflight -- they're more likely to get along for long periods of time, better at forming/maintaining community, smaller (and so consume fewer resources). This is all backed up by NASA research.
they're more likely to get along for long periods of time, better at forming/maintaining community
That's questionable XD
And for the size part, there are men of all sizes and shapes
Rathadin ยท -10 points ยท Posted at 04:56:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not to shit in your Cheerios, but Season 1 of Bear Grylls The Island shot that to fucking shit and back. The women didn't even have fucking raised beds until the last week on the fucking island. On top of that, they sucked shit at working together.
And what happened on Scandinavian Island Survivor, or whatever the fuck it was called, where the men had a functioning community and the women were about to fucking starve to death because they couldn't stop bickering and didn't want to work?
People NASA considers fit to be astronauts tend to be a very different type of person to those that TV networks want on their reality shows.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 06:57:29 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wait, no. Are you sure?
Shit. There goes my dreams of a Kardashians In Space television series.
Rathadin ยท -9 points ยท Posted at 05:16:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I will 100% give you that. I still call bullshit.
I would love to see the first Mars mission with a much prettier female astronaut and like... 2-3 just dogs... I mean really gnarly looking lady astronauts. That fucking ship will be set to self-destruct in less than 6 months.
[deleted] ยท -13 points ยท Posted at 00:38:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What I'm saying is actually backed up by NASA and ESA research. Besides, I don't even need to tout research: who more often have drama, and if there's drama, who resolve it quickly: a group of dudes or a group of girls? Exactly.
[deleted] ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 00:57:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Never thought I'd be wishing for a biased Corinthian.
no_face ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 01:18:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
TLDR from that link:
Worse in women:
orthostatic intolerance
loss of blood plasma volume
Immune reactions
Radiation damage
Space sickness
UTI
Worse in men:
VIIP
Motion sickness after return to Earth
[deleted] ยท -6 points ยท Posted at 00:52:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Can't find the paper right now but it basically said that when you send people there, you want them to be ultimately self-sufficient, and that costs should be a secondary thing. Yes its more expensive to launch male astronauts, but when heavy stuff needs to be forced open or whatever, that 5'4" woman ain't going to be able to do shit.
lomelyo ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 01:17:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So they need a man like you to open tight jars for them and women shouldn't go there because there would be so much drama?
Jesus Christ dude it's a mission to Mars. Whoever goes there is going to be have a fucking amazing curriculum and your concerns are not the concerns of anyone who isn't a moron.
I remember seeing a research paper done recently that said there may be kilometer-wide caverns under the surface on Mars. Due to what we know about the soil composition, old magma tubes and chambers could get much larger than they are on Earth (at least, I think that was the reasoning).
[deleted] ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 02:36:49 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
The big trouble is using earthmoving (marsmoving?) equipment on Mars. We are now pretty proficient at picking up single rocks and analyzing them, but nobody has tried to build a Mars- or Moon-ready bulldozer yet. Even if there's a kilometer-diameter magma dome perfectly formed, we'd still have to tunnel down to it and build an entrance. That's going to be the tough part. Although, 20 tons of heavy equipment is just as heavy as 20 tons of radiation shielding.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:21:22 on January 19, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think the idea would be to send the mother of all 3d printers, eventually.
Right, yeah. But the only good printing material is an iron oxide-laden soil and some water. On Earth, we have the luxury of using very controllably pure materials for construction of heavy duty equipment.
For example, the principles of the diesel engine have been known since the 19th century. One of the reasons we can operate them at much higher pressures now is the slow advance of materials science.
Turning Martian soil into usable metals and alloys would take a network of processing plants, foundries, and forge shops.
We would have to send a 3D printer that can bootstrap itself from mudbrick construction to nodular cast iron drop forging, by building basic foundries and mills and working its way up the ladder of materials. The only 3D printer that has done so thus far is humanity, and we had coal in an environment where coal is fuel.
Imagine doing the last 150 years in an environment where the only fuel is solar cells dropped from space.
Granted, we know what our end goal is, so it'll only take half the energy, but we still need to smelt out steel and form ceramics to make crucibles, and use the resulting materials to make better steel and crucibles, and so on.
Your "Mother of all 3D Printers" would be a tremendous leap forward, much greater than anything imaginable now.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:48:50 on January 21, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, but conceptually, there's nothing that says it can't be done. Our understanding of robotics is such that, while it would be tedious and expensive to do so, every step COULD be automated and passed off to another automated system. The only part that's unimaginable is the cost.
To quote Heinlein
โAnything which is physically possible can always be made financially possible; money is a bugaboo of small minds."
Right. I'll agree with you straight away and say that there is no obstacle but money for this entire enterprise.
However, there's a lot we don't know. We're not sure which metals can be found on Mars, and if they're in similar minerals as on Earth. We're literally only scratching the surface. As in, we are picking up rocks we see on the surface, scanning them, and making guesses.
Could there be appropriate precursors to form recognizable metal alloys and other materials? Yeah, of course. Could we be entirely lost? Yeah, of course. Can we find our way if we throw enough resources at it?
Yes, emphatically. I hope we do so within my lifetime.
My experience in Space Engineers says that hiding underground in a meteor shower is a bad idea: the meteors come from underground at night...
3jt ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 00:22:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Bullshit. Several years of exposure to radiation on the journey to Mars is likely to increase their LIFETIME risk of getting cancer by a few percent, depending on the mission parameters, the spacecraft's design, solar activity, etc.
It's far more complex than cancer or not cancer. The way the body responds to radiation at low levels for long periods of time is not well understood. Even if an astronaut gets cancer during the mission, there are hundreds of types of cancer, many of which won't kill you for years.
Also, we're all eventually going to die. I would take a one way trip to Mars in a heartbeat. So would any astronaut.
x3iv130f ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:39:20 on January 18, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Mars and Earth are at their closest every 26 months. That means any Mars trip would be only about 2 years in length.
There are dozens of men and women who've spent 1-2+ years in space. source. Radiation is a hurdle, yes, but one we already subject our astronauts to regularly.
I recommend this lecture by NASA scientist Dr. Robert Zubrin. Mars travel is very feasible with current technology, there is just no will to go.
redwin ยท 26 points ยท Posted at 22:01:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In low earth orbit (the only place in space humans have gone since Apollo) astronauts are largely protected by earth's magnetic field the same as you are on the ground (the field is really big and extends far beyond the earth).
For multi-month voyages to other planets (Mars being the obvious one) radiation is a large problem that is still not entirely solved, but which will need to be before we can really send humans out there.
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 23:13:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Or an exo suit that creates its own magnetic field...
00yoshi ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:09:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What is all that about magnetic fields? OP said that your dead skin cells already protect you from alpha and your suit from beta radiation, a magnetic field won't protect you from neutron and gamma radiation either.
boydorn ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 03:21:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The earth's magnetic field deflects charged particles from solar winds, the majority of which is electrons, protons and alpha particles. It's fair to say that in low earth orbit, a LOT less particle radiation (the most damaging kind) will reach you than if you were in interplanetary space. Gamma radiation isn't a major problem in space. Gamma is produced at the core of stars where fusion is taking place, so most of it is absorbed before escaping the star (there's a loooooot of mass it has to pass through!).
In space the most problematic type of radiation is one we don't deal with on earth because of the magnetic field and the atmosphere protecting us. Closer to the surface of a star particle radiation gets thrown out into space, and some of it is really heavy (like Fe +26 ) and moving at close to the speed of light. These heavy, energetic ions are called HZE ions, and they are the cannonballs of radiation. The walls of spaceships cannot stop them, and they are hugely more damaging than the kinds of radiation we tend to encounter on earth.
To give an idea of how damaging they are, we're used to the idea that a radioactive particle or a gamma ray causes damage by barrelling into something important in the cell and imparting a crapload of energy to whatever it hits; this tends to mess up things like DNA. HZE ions have been shown to cause damage in cells they don't even touch, just by passing by them. These mofos have a serious amount of energy.
How are we supposed to avoid something we can't block? Maybe we could deflect them with magnetic fields, but considering the energies of HZE ions they'd have to be very strong. OR maybe we could line the walls of spaceships with aquaria, and let our ornamental fish absorb most of the radiation for us? JK the water would probably help...
The earth is not large enough to eclipse the sun from a Martian perspective. Not even close, remember the solar transit of Venus a few years ago? But even if it were...
I think this would require a delta v greater than current technology can provide, and greater than our tender meat bodies can survive. Due to the nature of Earth's and Mars' orbits, such a trip would have to happen either waaaay to fast, or way to slowly. And then, once you got to Mars, you'd have to stay on the dark side forever, since Mars has no magnetosphere. Plus if you ever wanted to return, the entire trip back would be in clear sun anyway.
00yoshi ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 10:45:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
But aren't spaceships made out of metal? Why doesn't the metal block out all the radiation? Compared to polymers, it has no holes where ions (especially heavier ones like Fe+26) could pass through. And do stars which produce heavier materials also radiate them away? Then we would have uranium radiation which is radioactive by itself... Haha.
boydorn ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 15:43:38 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
OK I think I overstated the penetrative abilities of HZE ions. Your point about dense materials blocking them is true, and even spacesuits and clothing will collide with them and halt then in their path.
The problem is that a single one of these ions getting through shielding causes a lot of damage. If one hits your clothes or skin, the incredible energy it carries will be converted into secondary radiation, causing damage to tissue around and behind the point of impact. I don't know the specifics of what secondary radiation can be produced in what circumstances, but I would imagine that these things hitting the hull of your spaceship would also produce x rays and gamma rays that then happily continue onwards and through you.
Edit: as to whether stars are able to radiate heavy ions, iron is the heaviest element I know of that is regularly found in cosmic radiation.
Edit2: So, stars don't really radiate heavy ions (except rarely in CME or solar flares), they mostly get thrown out by events like supernovae or by neutron stars. Things like galaxies colliding might be responsible for the highest energy forms of cosmic radiation!
00yoshi ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:47:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, we could collect them with a magnetic field and use them to fabricate new spaceship parts, but I think that there aren't that much Fe ions floating around there to make that a feasible resource farming option. How much energy (joules or ev) does a Fe+26 ion from our sun have? Do they also come in less ionized forms?
boydorn ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:49:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah I reckon iron ions are pretty rare, the vast majority of cosmic radiation is beta and alpha particles (98%), followed by free electrons (1%) and then heavier ions as well as some antiparticles (the remainder, combined). I don't think you'd even be able to collect a gram of iron in the time it took you to fly to mars (source: vaguely educated guess).
HZE (high [H] atomic number [Z] and energy [E]) ions are naked nuclei with a charge greater than +2; so basically anything larger than an alpha particle. As to whether you can get less ionised forms: matter inside a star is really really hot, so it goes beyond gaseous into plasma. Plasma is achieved when temperatures are so high that electrons escape their orbit around a nucleus, so anything ejected from a star isn't initially going to be a complete atom, it will be a naked nucleus or an electron.
There are a load of types of Cosmic Rays (not really rays, mostly particles). Our sun mostly produces some of the weakest forms: protons, x-rays, ultraviolet and down. I say mostly because sometimes other stuff will get thrown out by solar flares/CME. Next come galactic cosmic rays which are thought to originate from supernovae, black holes, other massively energetic phenomena in our galaxy: this includes HZE of common elements (up to iron basically) and can be MUCH more energetic. There are extragalactic rays that are even more energetic and come from outside our galaxy, we don't really know where from...
So basically, our sun doesn't throw out iron, that will only happen if it goes supernova! As to the amount of energy I couldn't find anything specific, but wikipedia says that the energy of cosmic Fe+26 is in the order of MeV compared to solar radiation being in the order of 100s of eV.
00yoshi ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:00:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And would heavy rays (like Fe) cause visible holes in your body or on not so stable materials?
AOEUD ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:05:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Cosmic rays are charged and highly energetic but are normally turned away by the Earth's magnetic field. They kick the shit out of anything OP mentioned.
NoahFect ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:21:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They'll use their water tanks as shielding on a Mars mission, most likely.
The space station is still protected by Earth's magnetic field.
The Apollo astronauts just took the radiation hit.
A Mars mission would likely be designed to keep as much mass as possible between the crew quarters and the sun. You can also take a less efficient, but faster, transfer orbit. Straight shielding is highly impractical because mass is so difficult to deal with.
Radiation really argues for a large craft to go to mars, perhaps a Mars Cycler or just a big mission. The more fuel, water, and supplies you take, the more you can shield.
Not reall familiar, but from what I gather the suits offer pretty decent protection from cosmic rays, but Astronauts (and pilots and flight attendants) get way more radiation exposure than nuclear power operators.
UScossie ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 21:59:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Most of our astronauts are spending their time in relatively low orbits (ie around the ISS) which keeps them within the magnetosphere and thus shielded from most stellar radiation.
We're protected from 'space radiation' by the Earth's magnetic fields, for the most part. Most of the radiation is trapped in the Van Allen belts.
Emphasis on most. Astronauts routinely report flashes of light in their vision, which I recall reading as radiation (not sure which kind) reacting with their retina/nerves/eyeballs in just the right way.
As for the Apollo missions, I believe we were extremely lucky/prepared in that all the missions fell in a period of low solar activity.
Time. The suits protect them from ultraviolet and infrared (heat), limiting the time spent outside the capsule protects them from x-ray and some gamma, and the fact that the sun doesn't usually produce all that much gamma, outside of solar storms, keeps them relatively safe from that. Nevertheless, one of the big concerns with going to Mars is the fact that there is still enough gamma rays in space to fuck you up given a few years, and, outside the Earth's magnetosphere, there is a ton of other crap the sun shoots out that will also fuck you up.
They wear a space ship, mostly, but that's really not good enough.
The big metal+ceramic ship around them certainly cuts down on radiation, and even a space suit will block alpha and beta radiation, but nothing is stopping interstellar gamma. There just isn't enough for fast or guaranteed health problems.
Sending people to Mars carries a meaningful but not horrifying increase in cancer risk (single digit percentage points). It's nasty, but probably acceptable if people sign waivers.
Sending people to Pluto, or putting them in cryo sleep to go to Proxima Centauri, though? It's a death sentence by cancer unless we solve either shielding or radiation sickness treatments.
We could also try to get better cures for cancer. While there isn't any possibility of one single cure, a lot of treatments work on a large percentage of subtypes, so getting the risk down far enough might be manageable. At least, as manageable as the other potential solutions are.
In addition to more effective cures, I think we would need cleaner and less invasive cures.
Some of the most reliable cancer cures consist of early detection + organ removal (for instance, the near-perfect cure rates for Stage 1 testicular cancer). Others, like leukemia, involve dangerous operations and difficult donor matching.
If we're accepting cancer as the price for long-term space travel, we're accepting cancer as a part of life for astronauts. A lot of our existing treatments view cancer as a radical, one-off event - we can't go pulling a dozen affected organs out of the same person.
That said, some of the more flexible (unproven) approaches to cancer could work wonders. In particular, the attempts to run treatments through the bloodstream could deal with widespread cancers all at once.
The cosmic radiation in the ISS is comparable to that on a intercontinental flight though.
The majority of the radiation coming from the sun is still deflected by Earth's huge magnetic field, so the only difference between sea level and LEO is the lack of a atmosphere that protects you from radiation.
MRadar ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:27:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No, it is not. Don't write off the shielding by the atmosphere. Even in the higher-altitude supersonic flight you are going to get higher radiation intensity, but probably lower dose because of the shorter exposure.
Astronauts in LEO are still well within Earth's magnetic field (which protects them from the bulk of the cosmic radiation), but they lack the shielding provided by the atmosphere.
rlbond86 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:58:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Actually, one of the ideas for trips to mars is to have a water tank with a hollow center to shield from radiation.
User1-1A ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:55:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So Fallout's power armor will never be a reality...
msd011 ยท 39 points ยท Posted at 20:21:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If I'm reading /u/PromptCritical725 correctly, a suit of power armor might be the only style of anti-radiation armor that could be feasible. The problem as I understand it is that you can't put enough shielding onto a human being to protect them from radiation and still expect them to be able to move. If you put a human into a powered exo skeleton that massively increases their carrying capacity, maybe that changes. Whether it would be practical or not is another issue.
Robots to do anything requiring a radiation suit will probably happen before the suits.
[deleted] ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 20:55:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 21:22:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah but the suits in Fallout do fuck all to protect you from radiation.
msd011 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:13:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Are you talking about fallout 4? Because the only thing with equal rad resistance is a hazmat suit. If you put the lead lined mod onto the power armor it provides more rad resistance than anything else in the game if I remember correctly.
It might be feasible, the real reason Fallout style power armor will never be a reality is because it's a lot easier to build something with the same functionality that you control remotely. Power armor is a cool idea for making video games fun but there a lot more efficient/less risky ways to do that kind of thing in real life.
Exoskeletons are already a reality. They're useful in providing mobility to disabled people, and are more easily controllable than a remote-controlled robot.
Yes, for that kind of thing they might be useful. I was talking about military applications specifically. Building a military grade exosuit a la Fallout power armor would be a lot more expensive and risky to deploy, it's a lot easier to just use it as a drone and not have to worry about the all of the extra expense and problems that come from designing it to be useful for a human. Obviously the same is not true of helping disabled people since by definition they have to be able to wear it if it's going to help them get around, it would be useless to them if they couldn't wear it. That's not true for a military suit, which can be just as useful (or even more so since you don't have to take the soldier's safety into account) without having a body physically attached to it.
tahuti ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:45:50 on January 20, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It must be quite rare not to have at least a sheet of paper worth of matter between a person and a significant source of alpha radiation, right? I mean, unless it gets stuck under your fingernail or something.
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 21:04:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thanks for teaching me stuff today. :)
bigtcm ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 00:05:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's an interesting detail with beta radiation (I know because I work with beta emitters in my lab!).
Before I worked in this lab, I had no idea why you wouldn't just use lead to block everything. It's so dense! It blocks everything as long as it's not so heavy that you can't pick it up right?
Some beta emitters are super high energy and generate something called bremsstrahlung radiation when they encounter something dense. When a high energy beta particle runs close by a heavy nucleus (and this occurs more frequently in a dense material like lead), it slows down and emits an electromagnetic wave. In the case of high energy betas, that means it shoots out an X ray.
So using lead to block a high energy beta will successfully block the beta particles, but then you'll also be successfully showered with X rays. Which is why we're supposed to use plastic to shield ourselves from beta emitters.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 06:47:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So what if we shield the lead... With plastic
Mexkimo ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:37:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I enjoyed the lesson! Thanks!
Mintaka7 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:02:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So... what exactly does a neutron do to you if it hits your hand? Would you feel anything?
The neutron caught by DNA molecules can cause any atom to become 'weak', thus changing its reactivity-bone formation.
This can cause a crack in the DNA link which will be recognized by DNA repair mechanisms and if the shit is fucked up beyond any recognition (FUBAR), the cells will call quit and undergo apoptosis (programmed cell death).
This mechanism I've told above, if the mutation is not recognized and it is in any important part of DNA string (we call these oncogenes) you may get cancer.
Imagine this times billions of neutrons, and you are dead within hours.
Mintaka7 ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 21:29:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So you're saying neutrons can cause cells to kill themselves? Oh boy... and thanks for answering :)
Serei ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 21:43:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Cells killing themselves is usually fine. They do it all the time (at roughly the same rate you get new cells), and doing it slightly faster isn't big a problem.
The problem is when neutrons cause cells to forget how to kill themselves. That's how you get cancer.
That's a thing that I've always found funny, how cells are programmed to kill themselves as a default, and need to be constantly told not to. Suicidal tendencies.
AHucs ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 21:20:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
My understanding is that they decay, and when they do they release ionizing radiation in the form of a beta particle (free electron), and occasionally gamma rays. So it's kind of like a grenade. The neutron itself isn't ionizing, but it can release some nasty stuff. Because it doesn't interact electromagnetically it is very difficult to shield against.
Edit: my post is wrong. See explanation from doymand below.
doymand ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 00:21:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is wrong.
Neutron decay has almost nothing to do with it. The half-life of a free neutron is around 10 minutes, which is so much longer compared to it's travel time (even a thermal neutron is traveling at around 2.2 km/s) from emission to absorption that it can be neglected.
Neutrons will slow down in your body through scattering, mostly off of hydrogen nuclei (the same reason water is used as a moderator in reactors), and these hydrogen nuclei will gain a large amount of energy. And although neutron radiation isn't directly ionizing, the fast moving hydrogen atoms that the neutrons gave its energy to are and will tear chemical bonds in your body.
Neutrons can also create secondary radiation once when they are absorbed by nuclei that become excited and then release other forms of ionizing radiation. However, this effect is secondary and smaller than the neutrons simply bouncing off hydrogen in your body.
AHucs ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:29:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thanks for explanation. I did some reading after my post and I believe you are correct.
Mintaka7 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:30:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Get ready to study your ass off. Nuke school is nothing but 40 hours a week of math, physics, chemistry, and reactor principles. A few hours of homework every night. You'll hear stories about insane attrition rates. In reality, probably 80% make it through. Nuke school is fucking expensive to run so the Navy doesn't want anyone to fail out. If you're having trouble, get help from someone in your class who's doing better. It will help both of you. All homework is done in the building since it's classified. This saved my ass because I have a real problem motivating myself to do homework at home. Grades and class standing are posted and kept up to date. If you're competitive in nature, you will want to get in a high ranking. I felt kinda sorry for the anchor-men at the bottom. Logged study hours are also posted so there's informal grade to hours ratio competitions. Basically who's smartest pissing contests.
It's been 16 years since I was there so I probably don't have any clue about any details. Many things may have changed.
Thanks for that. You cleared up some stuff especially the fail out rates. I'm super fucking pumped to get through it because I know it'll set me up for life. Any info on the life after nuke school?
Depends. After Power School, they send you to prototype, either in Ballston Spa, NY, or stay in Charleston, SC. You will get to request where you want to go, but no guarantees. In NY they have actual "prototype" plants of several designs build on land. In SC (where I went), they have a couple old decommed subs converted for training. Everything is real and operating, but power limits are reduced. Here you will qualify as an operator and get to split some atoms.
The first few weeks will be spend in the classroom getting acquainted with the specific plant you'll be assigned to, then it becomes a self-directed qualification training. Study up on a system or procedure, then find an instructor to demonstrate to, get your check-off signed. There will be training watches too. You stand watch with a qualified instructor. You do everything, they just make sure you don't break anything or violate procedure. This is an excellent time to get some check-outs since you have an instructor's undivided attention. It's all done in shift work, 12 hours a day, 7 days straight. Then you get a couple days off before rotating to a different shift. If you don't like that, then say ahead of the curve. There really is a curve. It's basically a progress line trend. If you're getting stuff done fast enough, you aren't required to do the extra 4 hours. If you qualify early, the rest of the time there is more relaxed classroom time until you're sent to the fleet.
Ahh, the fleet. Here, again, you have some choice in the matter. You fill out what we affectionately call a "dream sheet". Basically a platform (CVN, SSN, SSGN, SSBN) and home port. Then you find out a few weeks later that you asked for a SSBN out of Kings bay and got a carrier out of Yokusuka. Seriously though, I asked for a SSN out of San Diego and got just that, so dreams can come true.
After I got out, I went back home, used my GI Bill for school. Got my EE degree and had littlel trouble landing a decent job. Now I work in consulting and should be clearing six figures in a few years. You may not end up working in engineering or nuclear power, but having the word "nuclear" on your resume is an attention grabber.
Hope this helps.
Rathadin ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 04:51:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I fuckin' knew it... I started out in the Navy on the USS Honolulu, as soon as you got to the "cookies made of shit" example, I thought to myself, "This guy was a nuke..."
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:15:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
TIL Jim Lahey is a scientist. The shit apple doesnt fall far from the shit tree.
mjklin ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:55:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alpha (helium nucleus): Highly charged (+2), relatively massive (4). Low energy (speed), Very reactive.
Beta (electron): Charged (-1), relatively small (0.000...). High energy, Pretty reactive.
Put the beta cookie in your pocket. Although it's more reactive than the alpha, it will still be stopped by a shield as thin as a piece of paper. Fabric is enough.
So which one is it, then? If memory serves me correct, the first statement about the cookies is absolutely correct (Alpha slow, very reactive, Beta faster, less reactive), but the second statement throws me off.
IIRC, Beta particles penetrate deeper, ionise slightly less, but are still very, very dangerous.
Your post is throwing me off because the way the bulletpoints are worded clashes with the way the solution is worded. =/
As I was sitting here reading this, I couldn't help but realize that this was the exact same wording and analogies used by a lot of the instructors currently teaching in NPS.
Scrolled down to the bottom and sure enough, Navy Nuke.
You wanna know something super tragic about Chernobyl? The first bio-robots to go up on the roof spent the night before sowing pockets to fit lead sheets in their clothes to try to block the radiation. But they wore nothing on their feet, and the radiation was coming from below...
I have a random question, and you might have an idea of an answer:
I know everyone who possibly could set off a fuckton of nukes back in the day, and we now have treaties and stuff to ensure we don't fuck up the environment or each other any more through nuclear testing. However, it makes me a little sad that the best cameras that existed at the time all this was happening kind of sucked. What kind of damage would it really do if the UN decided, for science, to set off one more Tsar Bombs so we could see it in fucking high speed 4k HD? I mean, would one more do a significant amount of damage, like each test was really so terrible, or was it the sheer numbers of tests that made things so bad?
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:18:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
From what I remember tbe tsar bomba, if detonated at it s full potential (100 megatons), would have prpducex 25% of the radioactive polution up until then.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:28:24 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Good thing they halved it to about 50 megatons. To be fair, it's a complete waste of resources. There's no sitiation where a lighter nuke wouldn't do the job even better. The Russians were just showing off.
Tchocky ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:16:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well shit, TIL. Thanks!
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:52:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
How dare you make me learn, and on the internet no less!
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:35:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You are basically saying they can exist, they would just be really heavy. It would be more of a vehicle then a suit then I guess. But basically you need shielding and you could definitely build shielding....?
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:54:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Would a lead fiber suit and an accompanying exo-skeleton work? Effectively I am asking if power armor a la Fallout would have any impact in the real world.
The more material the particle has to go through, the better. The denser the better. So it would be still goddamn heavy. and big. The heavier the shielding, the more internal structure you'd need to support it and the more powerful and bigger the power systems to move would have to be. It all really depends on how much exposure you're expecting or trying to protect from.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:53:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
webbitor ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:00:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I believe I have also heard or read that one particle can strike a shield material and cause multiple lower-energy-but-still-harmful particles to be ejected from the other side. So in some circumstances, shielding can make things worse. I could be mistaken on this though.
ogld ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:20:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This should genuinely be on r/bestof. Fantastic read with some great analogies.
Nope. Just remember living the nightmare for 6 months.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:41:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
you just boiled down months of training into one cookie related metaphor. You're a freakin hero
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:49:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A couple of extras: Gammas and X-rays are functionally no different. Gamma rays are emitted from the nucleus, x-rays from other processes like bremsstrahlung. Speaking of which, lead blocks gammas, but electrons traveling through have a high chance of producing xrays. Neutrons also just go right through lead.
im working at the largest nuclear power facility in the world. i just wanted to add that wearing the tyvek and plastic suits is not fun. you sweat your fucking balls off wearing them for an hour, much less on a long jump in the vault like 6-8 hours.
the really wierd part is they scare you so much in training that you cant believe the tyvek hood you wear isnt really attached to the suit, but because you stay plugged into a airline positive pressure keeps tritium vapour out of the suit.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:30:15 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
At what point does an EM wave become impossible to stop via Faraday cage? Is it a limitation on how small of a mesh can be manufactured? (this is based on my intuition that the frequency that can be stopped is related to the hole size which may be wrong)
Yeah, it's related to the mesh size. You can, of course, get the mesh size down to zero by just using solid metal though.
Once the radiation exceeds the "plasma frequency" of your metal it will start to noticeably penetrate it. X-rays pretty much slide right through Faraday cages and you have to start relying on thickness of shielding the same way you would if you were trying to block a radio wave with an insulator.
onedoor ยท 19 points ยท Posted at 17:34:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Nobody wants to see Vladimir's ass crack, especially not if it's going to be the last thing you see.
EDIT:
So I said "Vladimir" as a slightly less stereotypical Russian name, over Boris. lol Turns out a Boris was involved.
Not going to do jack in a fission reactor. Any kind of CBRN suit is just there to keep out alpha and beta emitting radioactive dust and such that'll really only cause problems if it gets inside you and stays in there. For anything else you're dealing with, you're screwed either way.
They didn't have radiation suits because there really isn't such a thing. The three keys to minimizing how much radiation dose a person gets are time, distance, and shielding.
Time: spend as little time in an area of radiation as possible.
Distance: stay as far away from a source of radiation as possible. Radiation follows the same inverse square law that light does, so even a little change of distance can make a big difference.
Shielding: put material between the radiation source and you. Different materials have different shielding properties. Also, some materials are better shielding for one type of radiation over another. Lead is a great shield against gamma radiation. It's a decent shield against neutron radiation, but water is better.
So back to the so called radiation suit. To make a decent suit that was at all effective, it would use so much lead to the point where it would be too heavy to wear or move around in.
rtx447 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:17:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
good movie
TzunSu ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:47:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
missile boat
What's a missile boat?
Tchocky ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:51:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A submarine that carries intermediate or intercontinental range ballistic missiles.
Tchocky ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:00:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Submarines are called "boats" generally, also the previous comment to mine specified a sub.
TzunSu ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:02:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Everything that floats on the ocean or moves under it is called boats by people who don't know better. It's still not a missile boat, which is a specific class of warship.
Tchocky ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:08:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Some people call watercraft ships but that almost never is used to describe a submarine. Again, previous comment kept this sub-related.
TzunSu ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:14:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's not relevant if someone can figure out what you mean. I didn't, i saw "missile boat" and assumed you meant an actual missile boat.
This is like you calling a bolt action rifle an assault rifle in a thread about hunting and then saying that the discussion was about hunting so they should be able to figure it out. Missile boat is just plain not the right word, because missile boat already means something else and is an established word with a specific usage.
Most subs nowadays carry cruise missiles, btw, so by your defintion you can call any sub a missile boat.
Tchocky ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:44:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's not relevant if someone can figure out what you mean. I didn't, i saw "missile boat" and assumed you meant an actual missile boat.
Fair point, although I don't think that's how it comes across to the average reader. Think we've covered both angles here
Most subs nowadays carry cruise missiles, btw, so by your defintion you can call any sub a missile boat.
They would have to be ballistic missiles to fit in with my definition. I specified IR or ICBM, which doesn't cover the kind of cruise missiles carried by SSK/SSN/SSGN subs.
Absolutely, I can already envision the scene of 3 men swimming under murky water with emotional music desperately trying to turn the valve before they themselves die of radiation poisoning.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:17:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I feel it doesn't say good things about our culture if the way to be immortalized is to have an overdramatized, oversimplified Hollywood movie be made of you
jaybustah ยท 485 points ยท Posted at 14:40:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This comment painted Fallout 3 imagery in my mind with that Geiger counter going crazy.
The new ones would be perfectly safe to lick. I just helped put some into storage at work yesterday. Stood one foot away and guided it down by hand (cotton gloves) as the crane lowered it.
The used ones though... Yeah they would kill you quick.
Not really. There's a little bit of extra radiation coming from them, but it's nowhere near dangerous levels. They swipe all over them to make sure there is no contamination before going into the storage tubes. If you know the difference between contamination and radiation, then you realize that if there's no contamination, there's really no danger in licking them. My highest dose rate with my chest one foot from the fuel assembly was 1.5 mrem, which is very close to nothing, and may have just been from being around the spent fuel pool.
That's interesting, so it only becomes an issue with the spent fuel rods? I suppose this is due to all the new isotopes of elements created during the reaction, but you'd think that the new rods would be spilling over with radiation from the U-235.
Someone with an engineering background would be able to tell you more, but yeah that's correct. My background is just in operations. Additionally, the commercial reactors have a much lower enrichment than Navy reactors, so Navy reactors don't need new fuel for decades, while commercial reactors shut down every 18 months to replace a third of their fuel. Commercial fuel can't be made into weapons without much more refinement, while Navy fuel is already highly enriched weapons grade uranium. So new Navy fuel may have higher on contact radiation, but I would be willing to bet it still is "safe" to lick, in that there's no initial contamination before the fuel is used.
But yeah, just pulling a spent fuel assembly out of the water for a second would kill you if you are anywhere in the area.
The U-235 isn't what is causing most of the radiation even after its used. That is coming from the decay of fission products that are left over after the fission of the uranium. Without bombardment by thermal neutrons, the uranium itself is just the same as it was before it was used.
First time I went to Boston Common. See a little sign by a pond that says simply, "Swan." Huh. Check it out. This gigantic motherfucker comes rampaging out of the goddamn water. Holy shit, uh, run? Oh, here's a shack, I can get some cover from his OH MY GOD THE RADS WHY IS THIS IN HERE AM I PLAYING DARK SOULS RIGHT NOW!?
Aisha11 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:37:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm playing through it on Survival atm. Came across that dude the other day. Funnily, I caught him on VATs before he aggro'd. Even saw the skull next to his name, but thought "fuck, how deadly could it be?".
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:02:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oh hey you found that shack too?
Non-Plot essential Spoilers ahead
Step outside and look in the fenced in area, there's a barrel of radioactive waste just chilling there with a skeleton strapped to it.
sp4ce ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 17:28:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Is there anywhere with that much rads? No spoileze pls.
edit: I hate edits.
[deleted] ยท 18 points ยท Posted at 17:32:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The elephant's foot at Chernobyl put out that much, I'm not sure anywhere in fallout does though
Vault 87 has a crazy amount like 3000 and something. It takes about a second to die and you have to hotkey and button mash through rad away to even have a chance.
In Fallout 4 fast traveling to a certain secondary location spawns you directly on radioactive barrels. My character had no rad resistance perks and was taking close to 700 rads a second for the brief moment I was there
timewarp ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:31:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's one quest that involves entering the core of a nuclear reactor in order to get a macguffin. The radiation killed me in something like 20 seconds.
I literally just finished this game 3 days ago. At the end 3Dog says "A true hero stepped up and made the sacrifice for the greater good" as the camera pinned in on Fawkes and I'm like "Wait, he's perfectly fine"
Load04 ยท 55 points ยท Posted at 18:15:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Got perfectly the same ending slide. It's rather strange when you think about it since IIRC every companion available in the game is rad resistant (SMutant; Robot; Ghoul). Having this as possible option and not having proper slide/voicing for it is somewhat anticlimactic. Can't say much about how ending looked like before DLC though, as it was "closed" before "Broken Steel" AFAIK.
Adamulos ยท 89 points ยท Posted at 18:20:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Before broken steel you had to go in or send Lyons. If you had a ghoul, robot or Fawkes they woukd say sonething like "I am not programmed", "this is not my contract" or "this is not my destiny"
It's been a while since I finished the game, so I may be forgetful on some parts. I also first played without Broken Steel. I kind of saw the option of asking your companions simply a Bethesda RPG allowing you to take your own pace when it comes to story, and that's why it feels so off - because pacing is extremely important for the moment. Being able to pussyfoot around makes the moment much less heroic than it should have been.
I prefer to think of it like - the Vault Dweller simply rushes in and gets the job done, while the companions watches in a stunned awe at what's happening, Lyons yelling at the Vault Dweller to not do this, and s/he just seals themself in. It was kind of a movie moment in my head, where it would parallel the Dwellers parents' sacrifice.
Since Oblivion also had these "great stories told badly" moments, I naturally started reimagining the ending this way, and I thought it would've been better if they had forced your movement.
All they really had to do was make it so over the course of the final mission your companions couldn't make it to the end with you.
Maybe have Fawkes captured while storming the Jefferson Memorial, or maybe even play up the dramatic irony and have Fawkes sacrifice himself so you can get to the Memorial. Fawkes not realizing that his sacrifice, while letting you save the world, will force you to have to make a sacrifice of your own.
Instead they forgot he was their entirely and had to add the "destiny" dialogue in last minute.
I'm really confused whenever people talk about this part of the game. When I played it, I chose to sacrifice myself, saw the cut scene, and thought the game was over, but then woke up in a bed in the brotherhood of steel base, with Lyons in another passed out. I didn't actually die and the game didn't end. Am I missing something, does having the DLC make it so that the game doesn't end there?
Yeah, right? Umm, Fawkes? You literally did EXACTLY THIS TYPE OF THING a few days ago in Vault 87, running through dangerous radiation because I would die and you wouldn't, to help ME with a task, you fuck.
Yeah, I like to believe that they couldn't think of a better explanation when they got to the end as to why Fawkes wouldn't just go in himself and punked out with the "Destiny" card.
Sythine ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:40:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fawkes believed in destiny, it's like asking someone to go against their principles/religion.
There's a few that aren't Rad resistant. Jericho and Star Paladin Cross should be affected by it. Dog meat might also just run into it for shits and giggles despite the 10 mines I have set up for deathclaws to run through
Yeah because the first ending was fine and everyone like always bitched and moaned. It's like they care nothing for the story arc as long as their super powered human can keep chugging along
I ain't afraid of no deathclaws! (As long as I have my Gatling Laser wielding super mutant friend to do most of the damage and my dog who's too short to get hit to aggro all of their attacks)
It also brings to mind what a complete self-absorbed fuck stick Fawkes is. He is literally immune to radiation. Why the fuck didn't HE go into the chamber to flip the switch? WTF, man. You are an asshole.
McZerky ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:51:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Trying to discover vault 87...
atomater ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:54:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's a video in Youtube that I looked up to explain Chernobyl. It mentions the people who had to dive down, its pretty moving https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfKm0XXfiis
daemon7 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:15:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Cobra121 ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 16:08:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It is true, if that was not drained the molten metal from the reactor above would of reached it and caused a second steam explosion blasting radioactive isotopes all across Europe.
Ya, everytime I read about this "they saved millions of lives" thing, I google it, and the only thing that comes up typically are reddit posts. They might have saved lives in the area, but saying they basically saved Europe is probably exaggeration.
Well, radiation was already spreading across Europe. I can't say how much worse it could have been, but it's not like it's out of the realm of possibility. Fallout of radioactive cesium and iodine is nothing to fuck with.
armrha ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:24:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Many hundreds of thousands of people could have had more health problems than they already did. I mean, there is still a legacy of poisoning with equipment salvaged from the region being sold in Belarus and being used in food production...
I've heard it from a guide when I was at Chernobyl, but at the same time I've spoken with a doctor in nuclear physics here in Sweden who claimed it's just hyperbole and essentially impossible to have happened. Still, a heroic feat by the men involved.
Saying that there would be a giant explosion causing millions of deaths might be an exaggeration, but there was a definite danger of massive amounts of radiation spreading accross Europe. Similar to a so-called "Dirty Bomb", a build up of pressure from the cooling water pools under the reactor could cause an explosion. The explosion would not have caused much damage in itself, but the radioactive material flung up from the explosion would have caused huge crop failure in Europe, and also dangerous and irradiated foods of all kind. The effects of the radiation were already apparent in Sweden, where they first noticed signs of the Chernobyl disaster. This was due to nuclear power plant workers having higher amounts of radiation going into the power plant than going out. Even without that explosion the radiation already spread a huge distance.
There was a definite danger. Corium lava was already melting through the reactor floor into the water, and the radiation had caused the water to turn into hydrogen peroxide with extremely low pH. The divers were essentially swimming in radioactive acid.
Uh, these guys need a statue dedicated to them. A big one.
People outside of that area need to hear about this amazing sacrifice.
ilovetpb ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 04:19:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There should be statues and memorials to the three around Europe for what they selflessly gave their lives to prevent widespread death and poisoning of the ground in the neighboring countries.
[deleted] ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 15:10:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wouldnt that explosiot wipe out half of europe?
JoSeSc ยท 206 points ยท Posted at 15:35:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
u/moeburn who submitted the original thread i learned about those 3 wrote there
10 days after the Chernobyl disaster, an even greater disaster awaited, potentially hundreds of times worse than the initial Chernobyl explosion - The basement below the melting reactor core was flooded with thousands of gallons of water, and if the tonnes of molten reactor core broke through the cement floor and hit that pool of water, it would have created a thermal explosion so large, and sending radioactive material so far, that 3 square kilometers would be flattened, millions would have been killed, and half of Europe would have been rendered uninhabitable.
Alexie Ananenko, Valeri Bezpalov, and Boris Baranov volunteered to dive into the extremely radioactive water, knowing full well that it was far, far more radioactivity than what was known to be the lethal limit. They were able to find the manual release valve, and drain the basement of water. They died of radiation poisoning 2 weeks later. The corium did eventually melt through the concrete and reach the basement, as feared, but now dry. These 3 men saved millions of lives, and half a continent from being exposed to radiation.
I honestly still don't understand how there aren't schools and streets and everything named after those 3 men all over europe
Because the Soviet Union was looking to cover up everything about the incident. We didn't find out about most of this until much later. Yes though I think they should now be honored, having been so removed from the event it's hard to get people to see their sacrifice personally.
[deleted] ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 17:08:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I remember reading that Pripyat was even evacuated much later than it should've been and bystanders watched the fantastic lightshow of burning radioactive material wafting into the air from a bridge, unaware and not informed that it was dangerous and incredibly urgent they get away. Same for the firefighters and so on, not informed of the gravity of what had happened because they didn't want to fess up to a nuclear incident.
Anterai ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:36:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I struggle to believe that.
Pripyat was a house of young nuclear physicists. Out of all people - they would've known what was happening.
Sure, some support staff might not, but the majority of the people living there had someone in the family who damn right knew what happened in the reactor exploded
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:45:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, I don't know how true it is. But I'm certainly willing to believe that for those who weren't in the know about how damaging radiation is they wouldn't have been told about it so as to not spread word of the monumental fuckup that had occurred.
And it's not that the firefighters could have done more than say "we're not going near that shit, no way" with a disaster on that scale I suppose!
Senojpd ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:53:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It is a city and it is true.
hwillis ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:30:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The population of Pripyat was 50k at the time of the evacuation. Very few people knew what was going on even at the reactor; the entire thing was a result of massive mismanagement. They knew very little about what to do
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:36:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm really hoping they at least gave these guys the Order of Lenin medal or whatever the Russian version of a Victoria Cross or Congressional Medal of Honor would be at that time.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:04:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Interesting. I'd need context though. Was this article covered at all? What else was being covered at the time?
[deleted] ยท 25 points ยท Posted at 16:00:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Can you imagine the conversation they had between themselves and their families? Damn.
Kohvwezd ยท 21 points ยท Posted at 16:21:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There might not have been a conversation. The people in the Cherbobyl area were strictly military and liquidator personnel.
TwiZtah ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 16:36:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Because the USSR couldn't do anything wrong and building a nuclear reactor with tooth picks and papier-mache is a great idea.
[deleted] ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 17:54:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The reactor was actually a pretty run-of-the-mill design for the day. Perhaps it's greatest flaw contributing to this disaster was its positive void coefficient. This means that as the reactor increased in temp, steam began to form in the coolant. Steam isn't as efficient at absorbing neutrons that carry on the nuclear reaction, so there would be more free neutrons increasing the nuclear reaction, thus increasing heat further, thus increasing reaction further.. It could become a runaway train.
Modern reactors haves negative void coefficient, where the design causes increased absorbtion of neutrons as the core gets hotter, leading to a decrease in reaction. It's a basic safety design in any modern reactor.
In addition to this design flaw, the operators were purposely overriding safety features to put the reactor into a dangerous state in order to test an emergency cooling feature. On top of this, a change of worker shifts occurred and the incoming shift wasn't properly communicated the plan.
The design of the reactor was bad, but this was mainly a human error disaster.
jflb96 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:50:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I heard that the immediate reaction of the reactor to the insertion of control rods was a brief spike in activity which would normally be fine as it would jump from 'safe' to 'slightly less safe' before dropping as expected, but in this case there was no margin for it to spike into.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:04:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
I believe what happened is that they had diesel powered generators to power the cooling pumps in the event of a loss of power. These diesel generators took something like 12 minutes to come online.
They had a plan to use residual power in the plant's steam turbine to power the cooling system for that 12 minutes to cover until the diesel generators kicked in.
Something got fudged in the plan, and the core temp shot up more quickly than expected. Because of the positive void coefficient, steam formed in the cooling pipes and the nuclear reaction began to run away on them, getting to dangerous levels of heat and power.
The operators panicked and hit the emergency stop to jam the control rods in.. which, in a normal reactor that would have put the brakes on immediately, however, another flaw in this reactor design was that the graphite tips (the first little bit on each rod) on the control rods actually increased reactivity. (which is exactly what you said) So upon inserting the control rods, they were already beyond "dangerous", and then spiked the power even further for a few seconds.
Then one or a few of the control rods got stuck, because they were withdrawn farther than they were supposed to be (one of the safety measures the crew had to override was that the control rods shouldnt have been allowed to be removed as far as they were), and with the already run-away reaction, everything got so hot that the rods expanded slightly and no longer fit properly in their channels... so they got stuck and couldnt be lowered further, which meant that the reactor was truly out of control.
That's when the boom came.
jflb96 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:35:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What.... But.... Whyyy....
It's like when you read that the watertight compartments on the Titanic didn't have watertight ceilings, except in this case the ceilings were watertight until the captain ordered that holes be drilled in them 'to see what happened' and then drove straight at an iceberg.
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 17:39:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The engineering wasn't the problem, it was human error. One of the operators was running an experiment and was too arrogant to abort it in time.
I honestly still don't understand how there aren't schools and streets and everything named after those 3 men all over europe
Not one of those three men even have a wikipedia entry. That's so sad. We must not forget what they did.
Banzai51 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:54:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Because the Soviet government at the time classified all the info and we didn't know about it until some time later. After the Soviet Union collapsed, Russia went through lots of docs and declassified them.
a thermal explosion so large, and sending radioactive material so far, that 3 square kilometers would be flattened, millions would have been killed, and half of Europe would have been rendered uninhabitable.
This is just plain false, made up to sell the post. The steam explosion wouldn't have been nearly as bad as the original reactor explosion.
Because the fact that the Russians were stupid enough to design a reactor that could kill millions of people and destroy half of Europe is a taboo subject.
Well the reactor was DESIGNED to have three complete and independent failsafe systems, any of which would have prevented the disaster.
But the Russian government was putting tons of pressure on all their existing reactors to increase output so all three safety mechanisms were turned off. The chief engineer's daughter, her dad designed much of the reactor, was interviewed and she said her dad always cursing the government for the people it killed in its stupidity.
greyetch ยท 24 points ยท Posted at 15:32:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nope. IIRC, the explosion wouldn't be that big of a deal. The fallout and ash that would travel across the world would be the issue.
[deleted] ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 16:08:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Weird im pretty sure they mentioned in a documentary that the explosion itself would have been huge.
Kohvwezd ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 16:22:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oh it would have been huge, just not that huge.
greyetch ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:00:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah it would be huge. Just not deadly to Europe in any immediate way. It would basically nuke lots of ukraine.
lenaro ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:50:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It spreads fast and far. For example, the first the West knew that shit was going down at Chernobyl was from radioactivity detection in Sweden!
The initial evidence that a major release of radioactive material was affecting other countries came not from Soviet sources, but from Sweden. On the morning of 28 April workers at the Forsmark Nuclear Power Plant (approximately 1,100 km (680 mi) from the Chernobyl site) were found to have radioactive particles on their clothes.
It was Sweden's search for the source of radioactivity, after they had determined there was no leak at the Swedish plant, that at noon on 28 April led to the first hint of a serious nuclear problem in the western Soviet Union. Hence the evacuation of Pripyat on 27 April 36 hours after the initial explosions, was silently completed before the disaster became known outside the Soviet Union. The rise in radiation levels had at that time already been measured in Finland, but a civil service strike delayed the response and publication.
The explosion itself wouldn't be super significant. The damage of nuclear weapons is hardly just their destructive power. Even the biggest nuke ever made couldn't completely erase the smallest state in the US.
It's the radioactive fallout that makes them so nightmarish. It blights hundreds of miles for thousands of years.
Completely backwards. The explosion is by far the most lethal part of a bomb, the fallout is pretty minimal and insignificant. Look at hiroshima and nagasaki, or any country's testing grounds, as proof.
If you get the chance to read how and why the reactor melted down with all the safety measures in place it was very interesting. Basically they were trying an experiment to help make the reactor more safe during power loss situations and a series of events lead to shit hitting a fan and breakneck speed.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster]
Oh, it gets worse. It probably wasn't water. The intensity of the radiation had probably turned it into hydrogen peroxide.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:02:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Every time I read this I tear up. They had to be buried in lead-lined coffins :(
koy5 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:47:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That is a problem you would see on and episode of Star Trek.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:59:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So that would be a origin to a super heroes comic book where they all get powers from the radiation and one of them ends up evil and the other two have to fight him.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:06:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The 3 guys i learned about in this reddit threat On May 6, 1986, ten days after Chernobyl, there was a risk of an even greater explosion that would spread radiation across half of Europe and kill millions. Three men volunteered to dive into what they knew were lethally radioactive waters to open a release valve to prevent this from happening.
Its friday night, who else is gonna dedicate a round to these three guys?
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:47:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's one of those moments I'd like to see tuned into a movie. Not a blockbuster, a simple production with a filter and realistic take on situation akin to blue valentine.
I was living in West Germany when Chernobyl hit the fan. (Dad was in the US Army) They were saying on the news not to let your kids play in the dirt outside in areas, and did an overlay on the map. Of course, we were there, and my mom freaked, because my sister was outside doing just that.
We often wonder if my little brother died from Leukemia caused by Chernobyl. It was a freaky time to live there, probably more surreal than when Libya bombed the disco in Berlin and we had soldiers in full battle rattle with M-16's on the school buses and checking our dependent ID cards as we entered school each day. That lasted for several weeks and was weird.
The liquidators (guys wearing brown or black lead smocks with small masks and goggles) are absolutely harrowing. THEY KNEW THEY WOULD DIE. Yet they still did it. Selfless sacrifice. Heroes! And they were promised 3 days holiday and a Pepsi!
Everything about Chernobyl is harrowing. They had to use humans to push radioactive lead shells off of the roof because the robots they brought in would lose control under that amount of radiation (two just ran off the roof, a couple flipped out) but humans would keep going. They were only supposed to stay up there for 40 seconds at a time and the night before they went to the roof they sowed their own lead lined suits. They weren't just fighting for Russia, they were saving the world. Now that hot spot is still going strong, and the expense of maintaining it safely lays basically on defunct countries with piss power cash, it's just another disaster waiting to happen.
If you are interested in Chernobyl there is a great new book our called Voices from Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich. It's really fantastic.
There are a few documentaries on Youtube about Chernobyl and I think all of the men who were tasked in cleaning it up the best that they could are heroes. I can't even imagine what they've had to deal with health wise since.
They aren't underappriciated because these guys easily were on the frontpage for a hundred times
JoSeSc ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:34:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Think they deserve a little more appreciation than making the frontpage of reddit.
I am 30 years old (so I was 1 when Chernobyl happened), I live in Europe, they most likely saved my life or at least saved my life from behing a whole lot shittier and I hadn't heard about them until 2 weeks ago, I don't think i am particular ignorant so for me that makes them underappreciated.
Have you ever seen the show The Last 24 Hours or something like that that describes what happened right before the explosion at Chernobyl? IIRC, there was a young engineer who realized something bad was going to happen, but was overruled by a stubborn senior engineer. Crazy shit, but it seems like that happens all the time.
What makes it less heroic however, is that those men thought they would be safe. The readings on their device was showing max radioactivity (but according to it, it was still not deadly)
Turned out, the actual radio activity was hundreds of times more and definitely deadly.
So as brave as these men were, it wasn't a suicide mission to them.
Unlike the japanese suicide bombers for example.
Not going to say that they were hero's, but giving up your life for your country is pretty brave.
fauxscot ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:12:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Russians, man. That is a country just full of tough motherfkrs.
First thing that went through my head when I saw this post. Thanks for posting. These guys were fucking heroes of the highest order!
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:18:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This could make a fucking great movie.
fvdcsxaz ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:23:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Australian Post-rock/metal band We Lost The Sea recently released an album entitled "Departure Songs", which was "inspired by failed, yet epic and honourable journeys or events throughout history where people have done extraordinary things for the greater good of those around them, and the progress of the human race itself." The second track on that album, Bogatyri, is dedicated to those three men.
Serious question: There was no radioactive suits that they could have worn?
armrha ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:26:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They do have monuments for the liquidators and stuff, and their names are widespread in the literature...
I mean, they are perhaps under appreciated (they saved many thousands of people from having to suffer from the effects of radioactive contamination, though already the damage was done for thousands to this day), but the MOST UNDERAPPRECIATED IN HISTORY? I don't think the most under appreciated person in history is going to have a monument built about him.
This led me to reading about Chernobylite, I can't believe in all of my reading for the Chernobyl disaster I hadn't once run into the pictures/information about that mineral.
It would almost make a prompt for a great RTS. Like a cross between Command & Conquer and STALKER.
A secondary explosion occurred at the Chernobyl Power Plant wiping out Eastern Europe. In the wake of the disaster exploratory teams searching for survivors in the new exclusion zone discovered a rare and highly radioactive material that can generate immense amounts of power. Now multiple factions and gangs work to gather the material for their own ends (personal usage, power generation, money) and establish a base of power in the new wild west-like Eastern Prohibited Zone where no nation claims sovereignty.
I'm not sure if anyone mentioned but I'm pretty sure that they wouldn't let them die either as they wanted to see the effects of extreme radiation, so they had them kept alive as there skin literally fell off there bodies.
a Japanese diplomat who served as Vice-Consul for the Empire of Japan in Lithuania. During World War II, he helped several thousand Jews leave the country by issuing transit visas to Jewish refugees so that they could travel to Japan. Sugihara wrote travel visas that facilitated the escape of more than 6,000 Jewish refugees to Japanese territory, risking his career and his family's lives.
Everyone's heard of Oskar Schindler, but no one's heard of this man, despite him saving almost 6 times as many people.
vadkert ยท 1767 points ยท Posted at 16:07:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also, Raoul Wallenberg a Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews by having them declared Swedish subjects. He also had several buildings in Budapest designated as extraterritorial properties of Sweden. He had signs such as 'Swedish Library' and 'Swedish Institute' outside, and housed Jews inside.
There was a particular incident where Wallenberg intercepted a train bound for Auschwitz at the station. He began handing hastily issued Swedish passports to people in the cars, reaching through slats and openings. He was ordered to stop by Arrow Cross Party men. (A Hungarian nationalist party that ruled Hungary for a brief time in WWII; several thousand citizens were exterminated during their time in power. They had some ideological similarities to the Nazi Party, but were not, in name, Nazis themselves, and were under direct Nazi influence.)
Wallenberg did not stop, and at one point climbed on top of the train and began reaching down through openings on the roofs of the train cars to hand out his passports. The Arrow Cross men began to shoot at him, firing several shots over his head. But he didn't stop until all of the papers he had were handed out. He hopped down and ordered anyone in possession of a Swedish passport off the train. They were ushered into a cavalcade of waiting cars, decked out in Swedish flags, and driven away.
All told, Wallenberg and his program (which at its height consisted of 350 people) are credited with savings 'tens of thousands' of Jews, though it's hard to put a real, concrete number on it. For his trouble, Wallenberg was apprehended during the Soviet siege of Budapest and disappeared in the Soviet prison system, probably dying sometime between his capture in 1945 and 1947.
I would likely be happy that people made it out alive.
And god awful that I wasnt one of them.
OK_Soda ยท 39 points ยท Posted at 19:51:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sometimes if I see a particularly large bill on the ground, like a $10 or a $20, I think, "No way man, someone might've needed that and they'll come back for it. Let it lie." I once found a $100 bill on the ground and just stared at it for like five minutes before forcing myself to walk away.
Imagine if one of those passports fell through a slat right in front of you and you saw someone who didn't have one and you had to face the moral quandary of whether to take it and leave (finders keepers, after all) or let someone else have it and survive instead. You could sacrifice your life for someone purely by doing nothing.
[deleted] ยท 22 points ยท Posted at 21:32:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
It's funny, I felt your response was reasonable and appreciated your candor... until I got to "Sorry not sorry," which strangely made me feel completely different. It's amazing what a phrase will do to change the perceived intentions of the person writing it.
[deleted] ยท 18 points ยท Posted at 03:49:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Dude, were you walking in Bill Gates' path? He reportedly only carries hundreds, and, if he drops one, he says that his time is so valuable that it's not worth the time it takes to pick it up. At least, that's what he once told my cousin who saw him drop $100.
OK_Soda ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:07:15 on January 19, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It was in an envelope labeled "Beer Money" so I assume someone dropped it on the way to a party or something. The label made me more tempted to take it, because it's not like it was labeled "Grandma's Medicine Money" or something, but I decided maybe it was, in fact, Grandma's medicine money and whoever dropped it had just been trying to be humorous in a sad situation.
The people on the train to aushwitz thought they were being resettled which is why they all had packed suitcases with things they needed and all their valuables. They brought pots and pans for their new lives in their new homes. Aushwitz is nestled into the polish forests, nobody knew what was happening there.
Imagine being the person who gets one, who sees someone standing next to you who's either old and infirm, or too young. Or the mother who gets one who has to deal with the fact that her child didn't.
They couldn't have had names on them if they were being passed out like that, right? I have a hard time imagining a mother not just handing hers to her child. (Or even if they had names on them, how are they going to prove she didn't name her son "Sarah"?)
[deleted] ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 01:26:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Passport is not necessarily a requirement for a baby with his parents. Rule were a lot more lax in the past.
I do, but you have to ask yourself what you or your children would think of your decision later, and what you could live with.
Were I a 20 something with no kids, I couldn't in good conscience take a mother from a child (because let's face it, we know mom wouldn't take it in that scenario).
Couldn't you just mix with the crowd that has passports and leave the train as well? He doesn't sound like the kind of guy that'd take you back once he found out, and once you were in one of the cars there would be no reason to.
Imagine you are on a train bound for death. You are prepared. You have sat with your maker and shook his cousins hand. Death has agreed to take you. The deal is struck. It will be a terrible road but you know death is your solace.....then a man runs in handing out papers to save those around you. You might or might not receive them, however now you have changed. You no longer accept death as your deal, rather you live with hope. You think each day of struggle may lead to your freedom and you continue. Day after day until you collapse. You are taken to a line, in that line your hope and faith persevere. As you are marched into a small room with shower heads you still think you will be saved....until they drop the crystals in the room. Your last gasp is for freedom, not of pity or sorrow. There was never a soul on those trains thinking, "I didn't get a paper, I'm doomed." They only thought "There is hope." There were no false pretenses, the Jewish populace understood what was happening.
He is actually quite well known in Israel, there is a street named after him (I in fact live in one). There is also a statue of him in Ranat Hahayal in Tel-Aviv.
That's incredible. He is a Michigan alum and I used to see a plaque for him in one of the buildings, but I didn't know the extent of his heroism.
vadkert ยท 48 points ยท Posted at 16:57:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's just the short summary of it, too. One of my favorite other anecdotes is that there was a fascist intention to literally blow up the Jewish ghetto in Budapest, on the eve of the Soviet invasion. (An attempt at 'liquidation' before the Soviets arrived.) Wallenberg got word of the plot and bribed a party member to deliver a note to Gerhard Schmidthuber (a major-general in the German army) and Adolf Eichmann (who was actively hunting Wallenberg at the time.) In the note, he threatened to have both Eichmann and Schmidthuber brought to trial for war crimes should the plot go through, either directly on indirectly (through a 'death march' which was also discussed) to liquidate the remaining Budapest Jews.
The gall it takes to be an unofficially wanted man (Wallenberg was, legally speaking, mostly above board and should have enjoyed diplomatic protection, but he personally was wanted dead by the Arrow Cross and Eichmann himself. He had to resort to sleeping in different houses every night to evade them.) and then to bribe one of your enemies to deliver a threatening letter to guys that want you dead, saying, in essence 'I will see you hanged if you go through with this plan.' And then to have them listen, is insane.
I think it seems contextually appropriate to call that letter he sent an act of supreme chutzpah.
vadkert ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 19:31:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
For sure. In both senses.
In modern use, 'chutzpah' is roughly akin to 'balls.' While in traditional context, it carries a connotation of audacity. Like, it's not just brave, it's not just confident, it's borderline arrogant. And it absolutely was.
I can't speak to how the American populace at large would use chutzpah since I'm Jewish and from NY/NJ, but at least for me, I've always understood chutzpah as being stronger a statement than just saying they have balls. Maybe not quite to the full extent audacious/arrogant that you're describing, but I would definitely use it as a stronger statement of something more to the effect of "you have to be a little bit nuts to try to get away with that" and not just as a statement of "that was a ballsy move".
[deleted] ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 20:54:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, I think for both of us, being from an area where there's actually Jews around who know how to use the word (and in my case, from my grandparents and parents who grew up speaking Yiddish) is obviously going to affect the way we take it.
I know for me, saying that something took chutzpah can be meant in a relatively admiring about the person who did it, but it can also be a bit derogatory. It heavily depends on the context of the individual you're talking about.
Wait, the Soviets captured and imprisoned a Swedish diplomat?!? What the actual fuck!
vadkert ยท 24 points ยท Posted at 18:43:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's a lot of uncertainty about what happened to Wallenberg after his apprehension, but the short of it is:
Wallenberg was summoned by Marshall Rodion Malinovsky, a Soviet officer, to respond to allegations that he was involved in espionage. He said as he was leaving 'I'm going to see Malinovsky. I'm not sure if I am a guest or a prisoner.' (Paraphrasing.) In the early 00's, it came out that Vilmos Bohm, another Swedish diplomat and Soviet informant, had given the Soviets Wallenberg's name as someone possibly involved in espionage. For what it's worth, Wallenberg was eventually outed as someone connected to American intelligence during his time in Budapest. But I'm not clear on if it had anything to do with the Soviets.
Everything after his arrest is mostly speculation. Some sources say he was shot not long after, others say he died of a heart attack while in prison in 1947, others acknowledge the validity of the heart attack timeline, but contend that he was poisoned or by other means assassinated and the heart attack is just the cover up. (Like, 'Oh, the prisoner was found dead in his cell. Judging by the intense, violent bludgeoning, I conclude, heart attack.' That kind of thing.) Still others say he was alive up until the 80's and died of old age.
There's not really a happy scenario to imagine-- 40 years in a Soviet prison, on charges of being a spy, couldn't have been all that preferable to death.
This is amazing. Why aren't stories/movies about people who actually fought the Nazis more popular? We have eg Indiana Jones and inglourious basterds, but this man's story seems so much more remarkable.
hurfery ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:22:00 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I recommend the movie Sophie Scholl - Die Letzten Tage.
vadkert ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 19:38:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Both Wallenberg and Sugihara have received honors, but I don't know if they're well known to people outside of the context of the Holocaust. I'm speaking from a US perspective, of course, but they're not very well represented here.
Anyway, I would say my motivation for including Wallenberg is in my interpretation of 'under-appreciated' (in the thread title.) He didn't even leave Budapest-- he was summoned and arrested by the Soviets (ostensibly the 'good' guys from his perspective in the Siege of Budapest) and died in their custody. Wallenberg was not around to see any of this celebration of his outright heroism, he died under-appreciated.
Saved millions of ethnic Ukrainians, Georgians and Armenians from starvation. Helped resettle millions more. He also crossed Greenland on skis, got to within a few miles of the North Pole by getting his boat intentionally stuck in sea ice and is a certifiable BADASS!
Also! The brother of uh..fuck. He was the brother of a high ranking nazi and was even jailed twice. Once by the Americans and then by Czech.
vrgr23 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 13:29:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In Israel he's not underrated at all, there are streets named after him in several cities. He used to live in Israel (then Palestine), and there's a plack commemorating that on the building.
Where the hell did all these Jews come from? Thousnads here millions there. Who knew there were so many Jews?
vadkert ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 17:27:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I mean, there are ~14 million worldwide right now. Roughly the same number as pre-Holocaust. There were 9.5 million Jews in Europe in 1933-- 2/3s of whom were killed.
PlayMp1 ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 19:18:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, a shitload of the world's Jews went to Israel using the law of return following World War II. I imagine much of Europe's Jewry in particular fled to Israel, knowing that things like the Holocaust can happen again. The US has the largest population of Jews outside Israel, and actually competes with Israel for having the largest population of Jews period. It helps that in the modern day, for the most part, the US is pretty tolerant of Jews. Shit, we got one running for President right now (Bernie Sanders) and no one has come after him for being Jewish.
pylori ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:54:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
no one has come after him for being Jewish.
Oh I'm sure they have, maybe not the same group as Obama being 'Muslim', but there are plenty of "JIDF conspiracy" retards prepared to spew racist hatred towards anyone or anything Jewish. The whole Gaza war in 2014 has also brought out a lot of anti-Israel/anti-semitism in college campuses as well, sadly.
PlayMp1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:07:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Definitely, yeah, but no one in the mainstream has questioned Sanders for "Jewishness." Even Trump, racist fuck that he is (or at least pretending to be), hasn't made a peep about that.
I don't think he was committed to nazi ideology though. From what I've read party membership was necessary for his position. Great man mind, shame he died in poverty.
Edit: I wasn't shitting on op btw, just wanted to add to it. I believe there was a collection from a Nanjing survivors group who paid for his funeral and possibly a memorial.
Edit2: it should also be noted that the events in Nanjing took place in 1937, many years before the final solution was put into effect.
In a similar fashion some people don't seem to get the difference between Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS. The latter was used in military battles but the Wehrmacht consisted of a lot of people who viewed themselves as just fighting for their country; a lot of the generals had served in the imperial army in WWI.
To name just a couple of examples, Dietrich von Choltitz is the general who disobeyed Hitler's orders to level Paris (amongst other reasons because he recognized that Hitler had gone completely nuts), and Erwin Rommel just ignored orders about things like killing captured Jewish soldiers. People also tried to rope Rommel into a plot to assassinate Hitler and he was pretty adamant that, no, we should arrest Hitler and try him for his crimes.
A few major things going for his legacy: His treatment of allied PoW's, his sheer brilliance and skill, and ultimately his death(Essentially forced suicide for having knowledge of a plot to kill Hitler and not trying to stop it if not outright condoning it.)
It's easier to respect and separate him from other German figures of the period.
PlayMp1 ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 19:11:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Obviously there would have been Nazi true believers in the Wehrmact as well, but you can't categorically label them all as Nazis the way you can with the Waffen-SS.
PlayMp1 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:36:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No, but your post reeks of the Clean Wehrmacht myth.
costryme ยท 15 points ยท Posted at 20:02:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It didn't to me.
The point he was making was that the Wehrmacht was the military, same as the French Armรฉe de Terre, or the US Navy.
So yes, there were Nazis in the Wehrmacht, but most of them were just soldiers.
PlayMp1 ยท -4 points ยท Posted at 20:16:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
costryme ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 22:27:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Right, then you should hold Japanese soldiers to the same standard, as well as the American soldiers, and any WW2 country's army really. They all did war crimes at some point during WW2.
Edit : Also, war crimes weren't a thing until after WW2.
Except war crimes comited by the Imperial Japanese Army and the wehrmacht (yes them specifically) vastly outnumber the war crimes comited by the Western Allies.
costryme ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:05:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Phew, sorry your comment made it sound like the wehrmacht were on equal footing with the Western Allies. In reality they comited an obscene amount of war crimes. While yes many did sign up to "fight and protect their country" that country was still Nazi Germany. They all knew this when they signed up and they all knew what that meant. I'm not saying 100% of them liked it but they all knew who and what they were protecting.
varroth ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 06:52:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No they didn't, the average person in Germany knew no more about the dealings of what was going on inside the military (including the Jewish genocide) than your average american at the time.. Most people only learned of the fact after the war. the country ''Nazi Germany'' didn't mean shit. It was just the name of any country, such as Sweden. It's only after the war that all the horribleness has gotten out.
You're telling me the "average" person knew nothing about the fact that their government rose to power on a platform of anti antisemitism and violence. This average person apparently knew nothing about their government that made no attempt to hide their eugenics policies, their anti Jewish; economic, denial of citizenship, and imprisonment policies, their doctrine and belief that the Aryan race was superior in every way to their Polish neighbors. The list goes on and on.
I am 100% not saying that all of the common German soldiers were Nazis. That is far from the truth and I disagree just as much with that as I do with anyone who says things along the lines of "the vast majority of the Wehrmacht were just fighting for their country and/ or forced to fight."
This "clean Wehrmacht" myth floats around Reddit so much it's so damn annoying.
I'd also say check out the book "Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust" goes into quite a bit of the "collective guilt" side of things.
I can provide more sources if anyone requests them. I also like the book "Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland". Talks about ordinary German men in rear echelon police units and their roles/ knowledge of the horrors.
varroth ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 07:31:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No that's not what I meant. It was well known that the Jews were hated by their regime, but the German people needed a scapegoat at the time so that was the Jews so the people also believed in it. But when it comes to the actual GENOCIDE it wasn't very well known about except for the military and other ''higher up people''. I'll be honest I've heard differently from different books and different sites on the internet the only reason I'm standing by this one is because It's the one I've heard the most about.
I would say believe the vast majority of study on this issue over the Reddit consensus/ the side which you have "heard the most about". There is no way the largest attempted genocide in history was only known of by the military and "higher up people". Think of the manpower required to run just a single one of these camps. All it would take is one cousin of a friend of a guy who knows the cook for an officer who is in charge of supplies for the guards at a checkpoint leading to a camp to spread rumors for example. Once again, I am sure the vast majority didn't know the massive extent but there is no way in hell they didn't realize or at least extremely heavily suspect what was going on when all of the Jews, Communists, Social Democrats, homosexuals, asocials etc in their neighborhood one day just vanished.
varroth ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 08:07:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, that's true. The stuff I read said that people believed that they had all been imprisoned / deported but didn't suspect actual genocide. But like you said, with all the people in all the different camps and possibly a wife of a higher up official talking about it with their girlfriends it seems kind of unlikely the knowledge of it wouldn't spread.
Anouther ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:24:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Okay, so if America, say, invades the rest of the globe, idk, setting up coupes and assassinating democratically elected leaders and starting wars, over maybe several decades...
All under false pretenses...
Then can we hold American soldiers and law enforcement to the same standard?
Edit: and for the record.... they were living in poverty, dealing with a worse great depression than America. They grow up and join their military to defend themselves and regain sovereignty.
Not that I disagree.
varroth ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 06:32:52 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Are you serious? soldiers from all countries commited war crimes numbnuts. You don't think allied soldiers went around raping women and killing civilians?
PlayMp1 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 06:39:56 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Wehrmacht committed more - ethnic cleansing on a massive scale. There was nothing in WW2 perpetrated by the Allies that could compare to the numerous atrocities committed by the Wehrmacht. The only people that come close are the Japanese actions in China.
varroth ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 06:44:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Japanese were way worse IMO. And the point isn't what they did but that they thought they were doing the right thing. Fighting for their country and future generations etc. That's what OPs point was.
PlayMp1 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 06:50:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
OP's is still defending perpetrators of genocide. There's a reason this thread ended up on /r/shitwehraboossay just like I pointed out.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 02:25:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You can accept the fact that even the most honorable, squeeky clean wehrmacht person who died, died either (pre 1943) to conquer germany's neighbors and bring them under the brutal, insane fascist regime or (post 1943) to delay the end of fascism.
I don't know if you've realized this, but I'm not the original guy, cunt, so if you want, you can accuse him of being a Nazi to make yourself feel better. Do you jack off to this?
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:22:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
sorry, i was just following orders! which absolves me of any responsibility for my actions!
Yeah, maybe you should have, seeing as reasonable discussion is more useful than "you're wrong because you are."
[deleted] ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 05:22:38 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You're making a few faulty assumptions here. 1.Nobody gets to the point of "poor misunderstood clean wehrmacht" by accident and 2. Logic won't fix what logic didn't create. I just wanted him to know he sucked.
Yes, you are correct. There were many on the wehrmacht who were not nazis and were not war criminals. Many were fighting for their country or were simply drafted. I believe all waffen ss were volunteers and had to be members of the Nazi party. I'm sure not all of them were murderous scum, but a lot of them were and they had a pretty bad track record for committing atrocities.
You listed some of the well known and honorable German army leaders, but there were quite a lot of them. I read an excellent book by one, who was Hans von Luck. He was a panzer commander and quite a good one. It's a shame that the Nazis did such awful things and literally ruined a country and entire generations of people.
Yeah, I knew I was just rattling off a couple of the very well-known ones. But without intending to say that none of the rank-and-file weren't also just fighting for their country, Rommel is a very clear-cut example of that. The guy was in a position to ignore Hitler and he did, which shows you how sincere it was on his part. He's pretty universally recognized as having been completely unhappy with what was happening to Germany, and knowing that Hitler was insane, but feeling like he had to go along with it for the sake of his country.
It's too bad that more people didn't actually act out. There were some strong leaders that I think could have overthrown Hitler and gathered a big enough following to be successful.
I can understand why though, with the general air of paranoia about getting rounded up as a political prisoner (remember, the concentration camps had a badge for political prisoners) and stuff like never being quite sure who was really an informant for the Gestapo, you were taking a really big risk that the person you wanted to conspire with was actually someone you should be trusting. The difficulty of getting a resistance movement off the ground in that kind of totalitarian environment is precisely why governments create that kind of environment in the first place.
He's pretty universally recognized as having been completely unhappy with what was happening to Germany
When? When did Rommel ever say to his confidantes that he hated the Nazis or detested the dogma of aggressive war? This is the general who rose from the ranks after sniping Italians in WWI. He served as one of Hitler's bodyguards, took full advantage of his physical proximity with the Fuhrer to gain military command and a chance to smash apart the French and British. He also fully understood the consequences of the Holocaust in occupied regions and personally berated his subordinates for 'being too kind to the infantry'. Rommel was a product of his era, but that was an era where generals were routinely applauded for using men as cannon fodder. If he wasn't a Nazi, he was still a morally bankrupt man.
That's up for debate. It's been said that he was actually a fairly ardent Nazi and member of the ss. He certainly led to the deaths of thousands of prisoner slaves and was responsible for building ling range weapons that specifically targeted civilians. He didn't have to be a member of the ss. That is very different from being a member of the Nazi party. I wouldn't be surprised if he was basically forced to be a Nazi party member but he would not have been forced to join the ss. He most likely joined to gain some benefit of command in the organization. Or he was an actual supporter of them and that's why he joined. Most of the other scientists he worked with were not in the ss.
tkingsbu ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:30:28 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Absolutely true.. My Opa was a nazi.... But only because he was an officer in the army ( anti aircraft battalion)
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:40:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In war both sides are usually filled with both good and bad people..
Oh I do agree. However, the Nazis were full of very capable and strong leaders who were extremely opposed to Hitler and his leadership. I think more so than other totalitarian regimes in history. Between rommel, doenitz, and canaris, among others, they certainly could have staged a successful coup. It's just a shame they didn't manage to do it.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:17:27 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No. That is incorrect. All were encouraged, but not all were required. That's a big difference. There were plenty that held out and managed to keep their jobs.
My friend, maybe the 0.1% of decision makers in Nazi Germany were not in the party, and maybe 1% of the governmental employees were not.
But let's assume that a staggering 10% of the people were not in the party, you call 90% "most" and not "almost all" !? And the 10% "plenty" !?
And c'mon, if the Nazis "strongly suggest" but "do not require", it's laughable to think it was a choice. Are you familiar with how the SA strongly suggested members of the Reichstag to vote in a certain way?
Now, to be fair, a great grandfather of mine was an important Prussian professor (one of the strongest supporters of Esperanto btw) and he kept his job despite being a terrible pain in the ass to the Nazi Party. So, some big names were not fired by the Nazi Party. But to call that "plenty" is preposterous.
In leadership it was rare to not be a member, but in general business, it certainly wasn't everyone or nearly everyone. That is what I was first responding to. I also disagree with the 1% figure for government employees. It was probably closer to about 10%, give or take depending on the job or field. There were plenty of non party members all over the country and in all sorts of jobs and positions.
That's interesting, if you have a Source I'll be glad to learn something new.
However, how was life for non party members? Because in the DDR it was awful if you were not in the party... And I don't think that regarding this particular it was soo different then under the Nazis.
Let me dig into my pre war Germany books and I'll let you know where I read it.
Life was fine for non party members. There were too many for it to be some sort of bad thing to not be a member. Really people only became members to either further their career or because they agreed with the party politics.
There's not much to wrap your head around. It's not like they went around harassing German citizens who weren't party members. I'd be willing to bet that the majority of people in Germany were not party members. Again, people really only became members if they wanted to advance their careers or if they were ardent supporters of the party and regime. As long as you weren't speaking out against the party you were completely fine.
No he was committed. He thought Hitler was a great guy. But a lot of this happened before the bulk of WW2 and before the Nazis showed their true colors. Rabe actually went back to Germany to tell Hitler what happened in China believing he would stand up to the Japanese and call them out on everything. Hitler basically told him to never speak of it again and took everything from him, shattering his illusions about the Nazi party and thrusting him into poverty.
He was a great man, just misguided by the Nazi party like so many others.
There's a book called the Rape of Nanking that I highly recommend reading. It pulls from Rabe's (and other internationals in Nanking) diary to help tell the story of what happened. It's terrifying.
XavierVE ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:27:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's a very good book, but his diaries have been published and they're a much better and heart-wrenching read. I wish there was a way to force everyone to read his diaries just so people would learn what a proper application of the word "Hero" looks like.
It's kind of already obvious when he was saving the Chinese lives and openly against the Japanese military, an axis ally, from committing the atrocities in nanking
Being in the Nazi Party technically is no different from being in the Republican Party or Democratic Party. "Nazi" is a shortening of the full name of the party, Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, which translates to National Socialist German Workers' Party. It was the blue collar labor party in post-WWI Germany which was financially crippled and in the midst of a crashed economy, and the Nazi Party members tended to be the low income poor who were suffering the most from the sanctions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. Hitler, seeing an opportunity in the discontent of the party members, exploited the anger and resentment by turning it towards non-German peoples (such as other countries and Jews) and used that to build support for himself and ultimately seize power by perpetuating the anger and fear at these foreigners. If this sounds like what Trump is doing with Muslims, it's pretty much the same tactic. By the time Hitler was in power fully, everyone in the country was "in the Nazi Party" because everyone who wasn't was starting to disappear or turn up dead. But anyway, in those days saying someone was "a Nazi" isn't specific to "they were a Jew-hating holocaust worker," it just means they were German during World War II. I don't know if you recall, but there was some hubbub after the previous Pope Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict) was elected because he was in the Hitler Youth as a child, but EVERY boy was in the Hitler Youth during that time; it was compulsory. He would not have had the ability to not join. It was the members of the Reich and Hitler's close confidants that were doing pretty much all of the bad. There's a theory usually colloquially called "The Pure Wehrmacht" that's very important in Germany. The Wehrmacht was the regular army, so just filled with the general population of Germans, not Hitler and Co, and the "Pure Wehrmacht" theory states that the Wehrmacht soldiers were just regular Germans who were fighting for their country; they didn't know about the camps, they weren't supporting the Jewish and non-German exterminations, they were just fighting for Germany and thus the entire population was not evil.
So Tl;DR I guess, being a "Nazi Party member" in WWII Germany doesn't mean "Hitler's Pal," it just means the person was German in WWII and was in the army. You'd have to look into that person's background more to determine whether or not they were cool with Reich ideology.
Not nearly as many people saved, but there was a Luftwaffe pilot in WWII that went against orders and helped escort damaged American bombers and fighter pilots out of the combat zone. I just love the thought of a guy who has so much respect for his fellow man, that he risked the repercussions and possibly treason to save a couple enemy airmen.
Can't remember his name at the moment. Sabaton wrote a song about him.
gildoth ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:16:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
OP's I thought was well known, this guy though was truly new to me, thank you for reminding us of his heroics.
Aristides de Sousa Mendes, "the portuguese Schindler", did the same saving dozens of thousands of refugees. He was a consul in France during the Nazi invasion.
ColePT ยท 41 points ยท Posted at 17:05:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Because it's a literal translation from Portuguese.
But it's true, the man saved about 30 000 jewish refugees against the orders of Portugal's fascist government. He died in poverty less than 10 year after this.
oodluvr ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 02:37:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Is there an AMA of one of these children or a family member of the saved children? That would be interesting to read! Thanks for the video. What a cool moment for him.
There's also Ernst Morch, a Danish anesthesiologist, who used cocaine mixed with dried rabbit's blood to confuse German search dogs trying to sniff out Jews that where being smuggled out inside of fishing boats. He came to my high school to talk to us about his time in the Danish Resistance, which was successful in saving a large percentage of Denmark's Jewish population at the time. He also told us (maybe a little too gleefully) about killing Nazi soldiers too. Plus, he dismissed all the questions about Oskar Schindler (since the movie had recently come out at the time) by saying that he was a "fucking Nazi." Interesting class period.
He and a Romanian-Jewish colleague he also provided papers for, convinced officials that there was a sizable group of Salvadoreans living in that part of Europe.
He saved an estimated 25,000 lives.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:30:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What does that have to do with money? Where does $25,000 come into it?
On a similar note Tzar Boris III of Bulgaria, in spite of being allied with the Axis, simply refused to hand any jews to Hitler, at least not from the current Bulgarian territory. He did have to let go of 11 000 jews from territories Bulgaria annexed during the war, but saved the lives of 48 000. This is widely considered as the reason he was poisoned, although it's not official.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 06:41:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'd like to see a sitcom of the grandchildren of these Jews living in Japan who were inexplicably raised as stereotypical New York Jews
For the last few days I've been trying to remember this person, thank you for reminding me. Particularly I was looking for the code he taught:
1. Do not be a burden to others
Take care of others
Do not expect rewards for your goodness
There are a lot of decent documentaries involving Sugihara up on youtube too if anyone wants to check him out.
To that note, the person who Schindler employed to manage his business is the one who brought a change in Schindler's attitudes and is of equal credit.
n3xas ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:15:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Holy shit! We have a street named after him here in Lithuania, it's right next to where I live and I never knew who he was!
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:19:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
n3xas ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 11:54:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's also Sugiharos street in Vilnius
overkill ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:15:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
When he was honoured with a grove in Israel they initially were going to make it a grove of cherry trees. At the last minute they made it a grove of cedars. The Japanese arrived and said how fitting it was.
His name means Grove of Cedars.
None of his neighbours knew anything about what he did and wondered why all these Jewish people arrived to honour him when he died. He was just their quiet neighbour. His story always makes me emotional.
I was very glad to see this here, so thank you for posting this.
I would add to the summary that it seems very likely that he lost his job because of his actions and that he never thought what he did was anything special. He saw people in need and helped them. Consider that he wrote visas against the authority of his government, in a society where you did not disobey authority. What did was really quite brave. Finally, following his dismissal, he lived the rest of his life in poverty and was only recognized by Yad Vashem a year before he passed away.
I remember going to the United States Holocaust memorial museum and not seeing his name among their display of righteous people (names of people who saved Jewish people's, etc.) When I asked why they said that they covered the "western experience" (granted I was talking to some of the dossins and not the curator.) I really hope that since i was there last (maybe 8 years ago) they have changed this. He was a great man and I hope we can all be inspired to stand up to such a situation with the same conviction and courage as Mr. Sugihara.
Dang, that kind of flys in the face of everything reddit has tought me about Japan during WW2. Was there a reason helping them escape. It just seems kind of silly since they slaughtered like ten million Chinese.
I had to do a report on the movie Schindler's List and I think it got so much more attention was because the Gestpo arrested him, he was a Nazi and he basically saved them inside of Nazi territory.
If I remember correctly his hands were fucked from blisters writing all the documents and continued writing these documents on the train home so he can hand them out to at least one more Jew out the window.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:59:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I feel like I read a short story about him a few years ago, if it's the same dude he and his family were later sent back to Berlin and imprisoned I believe.
He shares a birthday with soooo many online profiles.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:37:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'd also like to point out the thousands of people, in Europe and North Africa and parts of the Middle East, who sheltered their Jewish friends and neighbours and saved their lives. Maybe they only rescued one person, or one family, or only looked after them for a little while, or just helped pass them on to the next safe location, but they chose to resist tremendous pressure and risk their lives in order to help others survive. We have seen acts of tremendous heroism and kindness throughout times of disaster or conflict, actually. And most of those names are forgotten - I imagine most stories will never be told.
If anyone is ever in Jerusalem, I would highly recommend going to Yad Vashem (the Holocaust museum). One area is the Avenue of the Righteous, which has trees and/or plaques to honour the people who saved lives. The number is truly staggering, and of course it's nowhere near all of them. But in terms of the general population, I think fewer people are capable of that than we realize. It's something that should be given the highest honours.
yarow12 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:42:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Everyone's heard of Oskar Schindler, but no one's heard of this man, despite him saving almost 6 times as many people.
I actually learned about this guy and wrote an essay about him in 6th grade. Small world
HeronSun ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:28:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think the reason why is because Schindler was a Nazi. Schindler was literally right next door to people who would kill him had they known his true intentions, and was friends with several of them. Don't forget that Schindler also allegedly intentionally manufactured faulty munitions that had a very low success rate, saving who knows how many other enemy soldier's lives.
b4b ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:54:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Noone heard that Schindler's brother became a communist butcher and worked for the Russian oppressors killing innocent Poles.
Albert Gรถring was the brother of Herman Gรถring. He was actively opposed to the Nazi and worked to protect dissidents and jews.
Gรถring intensified his anti-Nazi activity when he was made export director at the ล koda Works in Czechoslovakia. He encouraged minor acts of sabotage and had contact with the Czech resistance. On many occasions, he forged his brother's signature on transit documents to enable dissidents to escape. When he was caught, he used his brother's influence to gain his release. Gรถring also sent trucks to Nazi concentration camps with requests for labourers. The trucks would stop in an isolated area, and their passengers were then allowed to escape.
He was such a good guy that:
On his release, Gรถring returned to Germany, but he found himself shunned because of his family name. He found work occasionally as a writer and translator, and he lived in a modest flat far from the baronial splendour of his childhood. In his last years, Gรถring lived on a pension from the government. He knew that if he married, on his death the pension payments would be transferred to his wife. As a sign of gratitude, married his housekeeper in 1966 so she would receive his pension. One week later, Albert Gรถring died without having his wartime anti-Nazi activities ever having been publicly acknowledged.
I can't remember his name, but there was a member of the German military who prevented the S.S. from capturing the Jewish people in a town, on the basis that they were German citizens, and it was his job to defend them. I forget how it ended, but I'd imagine not well.
Edit: I was a bit off on the details. He defended a Jewish ghetto in Poland, and managed to evacuate some of the people, after having his men defend the area from the S.S.
He had been repeatedly reprimanded for essentially not being horrible to Jewish people.
arbivark ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:57:00 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
actually i saw a nice black and white movie about him at the heartland film festival one year.
i once met my ex's grandmother in a little village in france. during the war she chased a group of nazis out of her kitchen, armed only with a broom. her husband and others in his resistance cell were hiding in the basement below.
I knew his grandson who went to college in the US. What was funny is he would go into WalMart with a camera and take pictures of 'American toys', then post them on the yahoo version of ebay in Japan. He would sell a simple $10 toy for $100, just because there were all these rich Japanese that collected American toys (mostly made in China) as a hobby. Not sure where he is now.
I went to the Schindler factory in Poland. There is one small room dedicated to his life before/after the War. Dude was bit of a dick. unhanded deals to benefit himself constantly and then fucking over his wife at the first chance to become rich after he left Poland when the Russians came in.
He is very well known and remembered in Lithuania. There is a Chiune Sugihara sakura garden in Vilnius, as well as streets named after him in Vilnius and Kaunas. Also, there was an interesting stroke of coincidence that when the Israeli government found out about his bravery they decided to honour him with a grove of trees planted in his honour. They were initially going to plant cherry trees, because Japan is famous for it's cherry trees and their blossoms, but then they suddenly decided to go for Cedar trees instead because of the religious symbolism in Judaism.
After they had planted the trees the government learned that "Sugihara" literally means a grove of Cedar trees. (last bit is reposted from /u/Somobro's comment)
This is going to get so buried, but I hope it gets upvotes. This has actually been a pet project of mine for years. Please read this.
Fรฉlix รbouรฉ is by far the most underappreciated person in modern history.
If you aren't French, you probably haven't heard of Felix รbouรฉ. There is no authoritative biography of the man written in English. He is, however, one of the few dozen modern burials in the French Panthรฉon, the resting place of the approximately 100 greatest French luminaries of all time such as Voltaire, Pierre and Marie Curie, Louis Braille, Alexandre Dumas and Victor Hugo. So why, might you ask, haven't you heard of รbouรฉ?
After the Battle of France in 1940, the French Republic was in a state of utter chaos. Charles de Gaulle was forced to flee to London where he was regarded by many of his own countrymen as a traitor, the French High Seas Fleet was sunk by the Royal Navy in its harbor in Algeria and Hitler had installed Philippe Pรฉtain as a collaborationist head of government. At the time, รbouรฉ was the Governor-General of Chad and the first black senior government official in French history. Instead of accepting the capitulation, รbouรฉ immediately sprang into action and rallied all of French Equatorial Africa to the Free French cause thereby preventing a strategic Axis victory over North Africa. Before any inch of metropolitan France was liberated, the only "free" territory in all of France was that of รbouรฉ, who preceded to not only harass the Italians but send much-needed raw materials and supplies to the Allied cause.
รbouรฉ's actions also ushered in a dramatic change in domestic colonial policy. The grandson of slaves, รbouรฉ promoted hundreds of talented local Africans to senior government positions, arrested pro-collaborationist officials and instituted policies that recognized local traditions and talents. It could be said, arguably, that รbouรฉ's quick thinking and effective administration prevented the complete collapse of Europe both at home and overseas.
We often fail to think of the many Africans and Asians who died in the cause of liberty against fascism, but Felix รbouรฉ is undoubtedly one of the greatest statesmen of the period. He ultimately died of a heart attack due to overwork in Cairo in 1944. He was interned in the Pantheon immediately following the war.
It could be said, arguably, that รbouรฉ's quick thinking and effective administration prevented the complete collapse of Europe both at home and overseas.
Highly arguable. WW2 was won at Stalingrad. Mitterrand for example knew it
WW2 was won all over the place. For example, if the UK makes peace with Germany after losing the battle of Britain/the atlantic in 1940/41? the Germans would have likely been able to beat the Soviets due to a lack of lend-lease travelling from/through the UK. Likewise, the arguably most important Soviet operation during the war was actually operation Bagration which gutted the entire German army in Belarus, and kicked the door in all the way to the Vistula, but that relied on victories in places like Stalingrad.
TL;DR: The war wasn't 'won' in a battle, every act in the war led to the allied victory, including from the actions of people like Eboue
We are adding more buts and ifs. We can simply compare the amount of resources that went into the Eastern front, the Western and the African and you'll realise Africa wasn't essential.
Saying he was essential to preventing the collapse of Europe (WE minus UK did collapse) is a huge exaggeration.
Its not so much the outright, 'solid' benefits of central africa as much as it is the effect it had on moral. It kept France in the war, and gave them some land to which they could call their own, and it gave the free french more legitimacy (which had its benefits, considering that battles that could have been massacres, like in Paris, where essentially won by the resistance as the Allies arrived on the outskirts.
Also, Africa probably was essential. If the Afrika Korps had broken through to the Suez, Britain connection with its Eastern Empire would be totally severed, and the Germans/Italians would be in a position to sweep up Palestine and Iraq into Persia (thus cutting off a key supply route to the Soviets, and threatening the southern border of the USSR itself)
It kept France in the war, and gave them some land to which they could call their own
France (and I speak as a Frenchman) was out of the war. The Resistance mouvement is simply something we have to say hey we weren't that bad, the real French fought hard.
which had its benefits, considering that battles that could have been massacres, like in Paris, where essentially won by the resistance as the Allies arrived on the outskirts.
Why would the battle for Paris be a massacre? And either way the war was lost by Germany at that point.
thus cutting off a key supply route to the Soviets, and threatening the southern border of the USSR itself
Well the key supply routes were the Artic route. That was the main route that supplied the USSR with the trucks and equipment it needed to win that war.
It was a fine piece of entertainment, but it had about as much to do with Turing as Game of Thrones does with European history.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:33:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Turing was forced to undergo chemical castration, then killed himself. He also did work at a place called Bletchley park during the war. I would say that the film was more accurate than ASOIAF is to medieval europe.
tl;dr Depending on how you define "accuracy," ASOIAF may actually be more defensible, since they admit right up front that they're riffing on broad themes rather than pretending to depict real events.
Almost no detail of the investigation and trial that led to Turing's plea bargain was portrayed in the film as it occurred in real life, right down to the screenwriter admitting in interviews that he named the cop after an old roommate.
Was the place called Bletchley Park? Sure. That's just about the only detail the film gets right. In real life, Alastair Denniston had himself been a codebreaker during WWI and fought to keep cryptography a priority between the wars. The film attaches a ridiculous caricature of out-of-touch military leadership to that name so audiences have someone to root against.
Also if the Soviet spy John Cairncross ever met Turing in real life, even in passing, no evidence has turned up of the event. They certainly weren't direct co-workers, and the whole notion that Turing broke off his engagement to Joan Clarke because he didn't want her to be implicated in some threatened false spying accusation was invented by the filmmakers.
Even on the subject of whether Turing's suicide was intentional, there is room for reasonable people to disagree. Room which the film does not leave, apparently in pursuit of a clean "martyr" narrative. Given Turing's use of cyanide in experiments in his home laboratory, it is entirely possible that his death was a tragic accident. His mother remained certain of it until the 70's. Plenty of those who knew him have their doubts.
Yet the film, after raking the British justice system over the coals for the entire last act, ends by uncritically accepting the official conclusion that he'd intentionally killed himself. They never even tested the apple for cyanide.
I want to kiss you on the mouth. The movie did absolutely nothing to highlight how bad ass Turing and his achievements were during WWII. I felt similarly about The Theory of Everything and Hawking.
Usually these comparisons go something like "[Insignificant jackass] gets a movie, Shannon gets a conference room". I like Shannon and regularly use information theory and I agree that he's perhaps underrated (although not among scientists), but Turing is a fucking hero too.
And to be fair, Turing didn't get his movie based on his groundbreaking research alone, but also because there was some, ehm, "interesting drama" in his life. I know Shannon also worked on cryptography in WW2 (and he even met Turing and may have collaborated a bit), but I don't think his achievements were as concrete and easily explainable as breaking the Enigma code. I'd watch a movie about Shannon though.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:22:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Turing got a blatant piece of Oscar bait that deliberately glossed over the darkest parts of his life. I think Shannon wouldn't mind a conference room after that sacrilege.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 04:07:28 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I mean, what cs academics have gotten recognition outside of the field? If you go up to people on the street with a list of Turing Award winners and ask them who they recognize, I bet the majority of people recognize zero names.
UNWS ยท 15 points ยท Posted at 18:13:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think, the same thing would apply to noble prize winners, except those who are already famous otherwise. Science is not a popularity contest.
Exactly. That's why I thought it was a little weird to call out those three people, Dijkstra in particular. He was a smart guy and came up with some pretty important stuff, but not really any more important than hundreds of other cs academics. He also wrote that fucking paper that everybody loves to use as a template for their paper title. I'll never forgive him for that.
Niklas Wirth was actually responsible for that paper title. He was the editor of whatever publication venue Dijkstra submitted that paper to, and changed the title from what Dijkstra had originally intended.
That's true but if Dijkstra hadn't written that paper then I wouldn't have to review a bunch of papers every year that think they are clever for aping the phrase. "X Considered Harmful" and "Why Johnny Can't X" are extremely vague titles that don't really tell you what the paper is about yet it seems like 10% of papers insist on using those titles.
Turing has a main road named after him in his home city of Manchester. 'Alan Turing Way'.
Most of us had no fucking clue who he was though before the movies about Bletchley Park or his own arrived!
As if anything in CS beyond Jobs and Gates gets recognition for things.
Another interesting tid bit, I went to school with the grandchild of the inventor of encryption.
NiceVu ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:41:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not to disrespect Gates and Jobs, but to me it seems like the whole era of modern computers was building up by many genius people and those two just came and cashed in on it.
YCobb ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 08:13:00 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Turing has always gotten a good reputation for the Enigma Machine, to be fair. He deserved more, but that's not too bad.
Mur0 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 12:00:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Shannon showed up a lot in my Communications studies, and I still go back to some of his work when I'm working on topics involving distribution (Information Theory) and privacy (Cryptography).
I found a lot of his work pretty compelling, and I don't think he's at all unknown outside of CompSci circles. People in my field are having to contend with a lot of computer tech overlap, and it's in their best interest to read up on the foundations of our communications systems - even if they have little or no interest in computer science as a discipline.
poeir ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:32:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alonzo Church also goes unacknowledged.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:24:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Among many other things in the rest of his career. The one particular algorithm carrying his name which he's now famous for was practically written on the back of a napkin one afternoon, because it didn't take any longer than that to figure out. In his own words to some interviewer...
"What is the shortest way to travel from Rotterdam to Groningen? It is the algorithm for the shortest path which I designed in about 20 minutes. One morning I was shopping with my young fiancรฉe, and tired, we sat down on the cafรฉ terrace to drink a cup of coffee and I was just thinking about whether I could do this, and I then designed the algorithm for the shortest path."
He also coined the phrase "structured programming", thereby promoting the concept of "Maybe programming would be easier if we wrote it in organised blocks and loops and subroutines rather than a big old mess of spaghetti-code. Which is another one of those good ideas that seems so very obvious after the fact.
I have no idea who any of them are, other than Dijkstra is from The Witcher, lol.
NiceVu ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:01:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You're kinda undermining Dijkstra and Turing there, check them out. Dijkstra made big contributions to Operating Systems and modern CPUs appart from his algorithms.
Turing formalised for the concepts of algorithm and computing. Turing machine is considered origin of computers, and I'm putting it short here, you should really read something more about them.
Random aside, he's also quite famous in the juggling community. There's a lot of very fascinating math (including a branch of group theory) within juggling, and he's recognized for creating some of the first juggling machines and "Shannon's Theorem" which describes the relationship between the position of the objects juggled and the action of the hands.
(F+D)H=(V+D)N
F is the time an object spends in the air (Flight)
D is the time an object spends in a hand (Dwell), or equivalently, the time a hand spends with an object in it
He would also take his wife to Vegas and count cards playing blackjack using the High-Low method (which he co-created). This is where Bringing Down the House and 21 got their idea. Wikipedia says they made a fortune.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:03:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nobody even knows who slepian is!!
Brixton6 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:48:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I grew up in the same town he did. It made me a little sad that I hadn't ever heard of him until I was a senior in high school. You would think there would be some kind of dedication to him somewhere, but there isn't.
I thought the actress Hedy Lamarr was credited with inventing digital communication. She created spread spectrum technology, the basis of cell phone communication, back in 1941 in order to secure and encrypted communication.
fnybny ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:08:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm a Computer Science major, and I've learned about a lot of mathematicians and computer scientists from Gauss to Knuth. But I've never heard of Claude Shannon. Underappreciated indeed
Drafo7 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:56:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Isn't that the same guy who calculated the hypothetically possible number of different chess games?
Kevin Flynn had the idea first, he just got stuck on the Grid.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:34:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Claude Shannon
In 1795, Dr. Salva presented at the Academy of Natural Sciences and Arts of Barcelona his first report devoted to "The Electricity applied to telegraphy."
I tidied it a little. Since I don't know much about the subject, could you add something outlining why she was important, or what she did that she should be famous for?
TheKrs1 ยท 42 points ยท Posted at 21:32:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thanks! I don't know as much as what OP would. I did recently find this page which includes sources for the following facts:
During the Second World War Ermolieva became famous for her role in the independent Soviet effort to extract penicillin from mold, using the species Penicillium crustosum [4] (rather than P. notatum, the species employed by Alexander Fleming and other British scientists). To test this penicillin treatment, she was one of many scientists to travel to Abkhazia and make use of the monkey colonies at Sukhumiโs Institute of Experimental Pathology and Therapy.
Ermolieva also led the efforts to control a cholera outbreak in Stalingrad, as part of which she spent six months in the besieged city, and was credited with creating a bacteriophage-based vaccine against Vibrio cholerae in addition to developing the new Soviet source for penicillin.
Now an eminent scientist and patriotic hero, she was awarded the State Stalin Prize and spent the rest of her career in Moscow, being named director of the All-Union Research Institute for Antibiotics in 1947, and chair of the department of microbiology at the Central Postgraduate Medical Institute in 1952. She was also a founder and editor of the Moscow-based journal Antibiotiki [4]. According to Soviet propaganda, Ermolieva chose to redirect the proceeds from her Stalin Prize into building fighter jets, one of which was inscribed with her name. She was also publicly recognized as a self-experimenter, reportedly swallowing 1.5 billion cells of a glowing blue Vibrio strain in order to show that it caused a cholera-like illness
diuvic ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:12:02 on January 22, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
She was also publicly recognized as a self-experimenter, reportedly swallowing 1.5 billion cells of a glowing blue Vibrio strain in order to show that it caused a cholera-like illness
Oh I was only trying to help! I'm sorry if I sounded snarky. I really didn't meant to. I was so pleased you wrote the entry for her. You are to be commended!
TheKrs1 ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 20:47:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No snarkiness perceived. All good chief. I appreciate the heads up.
I remember when you could just write a Wikipedia page and not have to go through a bunch of pedantic bullshit. After all, cutting arbitrary elitism out of encyclopedias was the whole fucking point.
Well yeah, if you think about it it's not surprising that the number of editors has declined. Look at the quality of the existing articles. There are a lot that can be improved, especially those requiring special knowledge (science, medicine, etc), but there are many articles that are basically as complete as they'll ever be.
I've worked on a wiki and have seen the same thing happen. You run out of new stuff to write, and all that's left requires more knowledge than you have, so you leave. It's not because the project is dying, far from it. It's because the project is nearly complete.
komali_2 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:42:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't disagree with what your saying but that article was drawing far gone conclusions for the data it was putting forward.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:03:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
How do I fax Wikipedia a letter demanding this change?
Adddicus ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:55:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's just crazy talk!
ZMush ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 04:13:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Pretty sure anyone can create one..just needs to be approved.
This is one of those facts that more people should know. Arnold was a hero of the early revolution, but he was repeatedly ignored, sidelined and passed over so he said "fuck it, I'll fight for support the British"
MJWood ยท 750 points ยท Posted at 17:21:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As a Brit, I'm not sure whether I'm supposed to consider him a traitor to his country or a redeemed rebel.
Actually, it's kind of not. Yes, he did switch for largely selfish reasons but that's not the whole story.
He was a loyal American military leader up until 1778. But by that year, the British had captured both Philadelphia and New York City and Washington's Continental Army was not in a very good position to win the war.
In an effort to end hostilities, the British offered self-rule to the colonies. They'd still be British subjects, but it would basically give the Americans most of the things they'd had grievances over prior to the start of the war.
The Congress argued over the British proposal and ultimately rejected it. Given the unfavorable position the Continental Army was in, Arnold thought the Congress had thus doomed the country. In fact, this wasn't a singular opinion. Back in 1775-76, there was a document called the Articles of Association that was distributed throughout the country, and there were many local signings of the document, in a show of support for the Congress. But by 1778, surviving records show that a very large percentage of the signers gave up on the American cause because they thought the Congress was fucking over the country. These former Patriots quit the American militias or even took up arms on the side of the Loyalists.
This was the climate during which Arnold switched sides. He wasn't alone in predicting disaster. And in a way, he was kind of fucked no matter what he did.
If the British won (and it looked like they were going to), he was probably going to be hanged by the Brits for treason, and his family would face financial ruin, if not worse, once the war was over.
But because of the zealousness of the Patriots (who were a minority, albeit a vocal one, in the colonies), if he simply resigned from the Army because he no longer believed in the cause, he may have been hanged anyway, and almost certainly would have had everything he and his family owned taken from them. (Congress had no money and used confiscated lands as payment to Continental soldiers during and after the war). Either way, he was facing financial ruin and possibly death.
Switching sides for payment, he saw, was the best option. He saw it as a way to save his own skin, and save the economic livelihood of his family. And it would have worked, too, if the British had won, as the majority of Americans at that time predicted. The rest is history.
A cunt? As a military leader, sure, especially given the fact that he was passing on information about the Continental Army to the British Army.
But as a citizen trying to save his life and the livelihood of his family? What he did was totally reasonable.
But by 1778, surviving records show that a very large percentage of the signers gave up on the American cause because they thought the Congress was fucking over the country.
Congress: Fucking shit up since the birth of America!
In fact, it essentially is the story of the beginning of Canada.
All those small time Americans who sided with the British, or switched sides from fighting for America to fighting for Britain, formed a big chunk of what is now Canada. (See: United Empire Loyalists.) John Adams wrote that about a third of all Americans at the time of the Revolution were sympathetic to the British cause.
Many of these Americans had all their land and property conficscated by the new American government at the end of the war, and it was given to Patriot soldiers because the government had no money to pay them for their services rendered.
So those Loyalists, with nothing left, were offered free land by the British government in what became Canada. This is largely how the province of Ontario was started. Before the 1780s, there were next to zero white people living there.
Since the land they were given was mostly in unsettled areas, they had to start from scratch, building homes and mills and churches and taverns, in a place where the weather was less conducive to good farming. Lots of people nearly starved to death. Some did.
Life was hard enough that many of these people ended up coming back to the States after a few years, relying on handouts from family and sympathetic friends to get themselves back on their feet, though the more rabid Loyalists were not welcome, even many years later.
The ones who stayed largely shaped the culture of English-speaking Canada.
That's a good point, because in hindsight we proudly look at Valley Forge, et al, but in reality if we were around in 1776 we wouldn't exactly be so assured of eventual victory. For a while it really looked like the whole thing may fail, and when treason is rewarded with death for the traitor and ill fortune for his family, a lot of people would second guess their choices.
MJWood ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 20:45:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Saving your own skin justifies treason?
I wonder if Arnold himself would have argued that.
Mo0man ยท 30 points ยท Posted at 21:48:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Saying it's treason when it's a revolution is a bit hypocritical.
I didn't say it was justified. Just that it was reasonable. Certainly, his sharing of Continental Army information with the enemy was unjustified and put soldiers' lives in danger. And if you sign up for one side of a war, you ought to see it through.
But Arnold wasn't some evil plotter whose purpose at the outset of the war was to undermine the American cause. Nor was he solely a greedy asshole who switched sides to get rich, as is often portrayed. He genuinely did have concern that his life may be in danger if he stuck with Washington's Army, given the way the war was going.
Now, if the war had played out the way he and many other Americans expected it to, Arnold would be remembered much differently. It would be Washington and others who'd be called the traitors, much as the Confederacy is seen in (much of) America today. In that scenario, Washington and similar "traitors" would probably have suffered the same fate as earlier anti-royal rebel Jacob Leisler. A fate that Benedict Arnold was trying to avoid.
As the saying goes, history is written by the winners.
dorekk ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 01:41:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Er...weren't all Americans committing treason already?
MJWood ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 05:41:58 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If they had lost, they would have gone down in history as 'rebels'. But Benedict Arnold, if remembered at all, would still have been seen as a turncoat, an opportunist, a man of no principle, a traitor doubly so in that neither flag meant anything to him.
That is completly wrong. If Britain had won he would have been remembered as a hero. A great spy who risked his life.
MJWood ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 10:15:33 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No because he wasn't on our side from the beginning.
The British accepted his help but didn't have to like it. Turncoats have been held in such disdain you are ideally supposed to reject their offer and send them home like the Faliscan schoolteacher by Camillus.
Yeah but part of his plan was to have George Washington captured by the British during an inspection of West Point. He forged the inventory there and drained the supplies secretly thereby weakening the fort. He was a dick.
Yeah but he was selling out West Point. Just because I'm not gonna start giving Russia state secrets just because Congress is being stupid. Also he was in the high echelon of the military. He wasn't washington, and Gates was getting more credit, but his soldiers looked to him for leadership and guidance. When you're in the military, you don't have the luxury of believing or not believing the cause.
As luck would have it I had two cups of nice Earl Grey today.
sheilzy ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 03:24:35 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't know what your schooling wanted you to think about him, but the British commanders didn't like him either. Arnold expected them to embrace him, "Oh, the damn Yankee doodle smartened up!" But they didn't trust him. They thought him to be wishy-washy and not committed to anyone's cause and might have had ulterior motives to get inside info to the Colonists. He didn't switch sides because he believed in any of George III's policies, he switched sides because he was being a showoff and wanted to get the Colonists' attention and piss Commander Washington off.
MJWood ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:30:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We didn't get taught about him at all.
I'm not surprised the British officers didn't trust him. Nobody likes a turncoat. And it's not as if he did it out of conviction.
Thovy ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 19:09:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As a Canadian I'd say he was awesome. He supported a pathway of secession that would have cost fewer lives. It was also a similar approach the colonies that formed Canada would take (and clearly superior :P). In the context of the time and place (not knowing the future of the independent colonies) it might have seemed the prudent thing to do. Especially since it would have made him rich. Also most of the growth and stability of early Canada can be attributed to the British-Empire-Loyalists and their decendants who set up shop up north after the war so points to him. There weren't many people around back then on account of it being cold as balls all the time.
If the Carlisle Peace Commission got traction I wonder what would have happened. Would there have been a United North America? Would Lady Liberty instead be Lady Loyalty? Would the rebellion in the American Civil War have been crushed? With 3 regions (Quebec, New Brunswick, Louisiana) would French be an official language? Would over 300 million people know how to spell the word "colour" properly?
MJWood ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 20:31:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In all seriousness, likely not. American dialects had been developing for a long time, they wouldn't have picked up the Scottish influenced accents of English Canada just because their timeline of independence was delayed.
Qikdraw ยท -14 points ยท Posted at 18:05:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If you want to, I'm just messing with Americans on reddit really. I lived in California for 10 years, and my wife is American. For all the shit (good natured) I got for being Canadian while I was down there I figure I can poke back.
The American Revolution is one point I like to bug her about. Such as the Boston "Massacre" was anything but, yet that was the lie printed and spread to the other colonies that did not want to separate. So a lie to start a war. Old white dudes who said 'all men are created equal', but owned slaves. It was also a war because the rich didn't want to pay taxes and got the poor to fight for them. America, not much has changed.
PlayMp1 ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 19:46:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Israel, since they have conscription and there's bound to be some rich kids in their military. No one's that's wealthy of their own doing obviously, but still.
The Revolution was fought for a lot of reasons. Here's a list of them.
(Note: "He" in all cases is referring to George III, King of Great Britain)
"He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent..."
U.S. Declaration of Independence
See how long it takes for them to get to taxes? We didn't revolt because we hated taxes, we revolted because to get anything done in our country we had to send a ship across the Atlantic, and after months of waiting the answer was usually, "No."
Qikdraw ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 20:13:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That was a lot of effort, and honestly thank you for writing it out. It is interesting in a historical sense, which I do love to read about.
My post was not meant to be factual, but elements of truth to poke a bit of fun at Americans. This always gets my wife riled up and we have a fun little debate with lots of laughing. What I wrote, please don't take it to mean I hate Americans or anything, Americans are my cousins and I love poking fun at them and being poked back. I've seen a hell of a lot of Canadian jokes on Reddit, and I never take them serious.
But again, thank you for all that you wrote out. Some of that I had not known about. So now I am more learned. Have yourself a great weekend!
If you want some actual history check out 'An Answer to the Declaration of the American Congress' by John Lind to read Great Britain's side of the argument, written in 1776. Some good points, some reactionary nonsense and funny insults about Canada too. It's on Google.
The opening sentence is some classic unintentional villainy, "Ill would it become the dignity of an insulted Sovereign to descend to altercation with revolting subjects."
Qikdraw ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:15:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
'An Answer to the Declaration of the American Congress' by John Lind
Thank you! I shall take a look at that. I've downloaded it already.
The opening sentence is some classic unintentional villainy, "Ill would it become the dignity of an insulted Sovereign to descend to altercation with revolting subjects."
I quoted that to my wife, who looked at me weirdly. I told her what it referenced and her reply was, "Well we all know how that turned out don't we?". lol
Seriously, thank you for more information. While I am not a history major, I do like to read bits and pieces in areas I may have an interest in at that particular time. Learning from someone who knows more than I do is always a pleasure. Thank you.
aeyamar ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 19:01:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
I'm not really convinced that the lie of the Boston Massacre started the war. While it didn't help the Crown's PR, things were sliding toward rebellion without it. The taxes, the quartering act, economic exploitation, the undermining of colonial governments, and eventually the heavy handed response to colonial insubordination kept driving the colonies further away. These things didn't only effect the rich, but also hurt the livelihoods of the average city dweller, or farmer. It also didn't help that many of the colonies were full of people who were never exactly loyal English subjects to begin with (Scots-Irish, Presbyterians, Quakers, Catholics, Congregationalists, Baptists, etc).
I agree with you on the hypocrisy of preaching inalienable rights for all, while owning slaves though. At least to their credit most at the time recognized the hypocrisy, and some even worked to see that slavery would end. But in the aggregate, they chose to ignore it in order to keep the colonies together, effectively kicking the can down the road.
Qikdraw ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:32:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm not really convinced that the lie of the Boston Massacre started the war. While it didn't help the Crown's PR, things were sliding toward rebellion without it
Well you're right of course, but not all colonies wanted to leave Britain, and this was used as a PR stunt to help sway people. I equate it with the Gulf of Tonkin lie to go into Vietnam or the lies used to invade Iraq. Lying to the public to change their opinion to start a war. Was that the only thing that started the rebellion? No, but I do think it played a large part in changing minds. The sad thing is my wife remembers being taught the false history of the Boston Massacre in school. It wasn't until university that she found out the truth.
Thank you for your reply as well. While my initial bit was more for humour than anything else, I am learning a few new things and am enjoying the discussion.
Flawless logic- how is this different from making black jokes because I have a black friend? I thought Canadians prided themselves on critical thinking. Or was that hockey?
Either way, I can make Canadian jokes because I have a Canadian friend.
Qikdraw ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:09:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
how is this different from making black jokes because I have a black friend?
Really? Not the same thing. Plus Americans and Canadians are like cousins who mostly get along and like to bug each other. My ten years in California sure had many people, strangers, neighbours, co-workers and managers I interviewed for a job with make fun of me for being Canadian. I take it as funny because it is, I gave back as good as I got and it was all in good fun. My post was not meant to be entirely factual, but just as a jab at Americans meant in good fun.
It seems many Americans don't understand humour. I'm just siting here laughing.
We have kept a nationalistic spirit where as a lot of other countries have abandoned that thinking (whether this is a good or bad thing I don't really care to get into), so we get pretty defensive about our Revolution. Plus I mean, you could've compared the rebels to anyone else and we probably wouldn't have cared, but ISIS? C'mon man that's just fucked up.
Qikdraw ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:41:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We have kept a nationalistic spirit where as a lot of other countries have abandoned that thinking (whether this is a good or bad thing I don't really care to get into)
My wife & I have serious conversations about this. And you can find instances of it being good and bad. But that is another whole ball of wax that its best left alone. lol
but ISIS? C'mon man that's just fucked up.
Yeah, sorry about that. lol It was on the extreme end, but its the first thing that came to mind and I had to get back to work before I could figure out something less extreme, but have people know who I was talking about. I could have said IRA, but who remembers them these days? The PLO? Same thing. Having said that, history is ripe with examples of freedom fighters vs terrorists. It boils down to who won the war and who is writing the history. Some people we called "freedom fighters" (the Taliban and Osama bin Laden), we have now called terrorists because instead of fighting for us they are fighting against us. So could the revolutionists have been called terrorists? It depends on your point of view really.
Very true, as much as I hate to admit it I'm sure there were plenty of instances of terrorist like activities commuted by the rebels, then again there probably were some by the Brits/Loyalist side too. War always carries with it atrocities since it seems to bring out both the best and worst in men.
Qikdraw ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:39:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
War always carries with it atrocities since it seems to bring out both the best and worst in men.
Yup. Very much agree with you on this. My gramps, he was in WWII in the Cdn army. He went into the Netherlands (I think) and met a young boy there, gave him chocolate, the normal stuff a soldier would do for a young child. But they kept in touch all these years. They met again twice over the years since the war. Christmas cards went back and forth every year. Last year my gramps died and because of the way my gramma is I don't think she passed that information on to him and I have no information to send him a letter saying how much that contact over the years meant a lot to him. He talked about it every time we saw each other (we lived in different provinces). There are probably a million other stories like that, laying quietly in the background of something horrible like war.
dorekk ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:45:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jesus mate! You're brave! Lol. (you know they can't take that kind of "messing"...RIGHT?)
Qikdraw ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:43:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sure they can. I don't care about the downvotes at all, yay random internet points. Wee. lol But I have had some very nice points made to me and I have learned some stuff, and now have a reading assignment too. I consider that a win for learning new stuff.
dorekk ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:42:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You don't seem like a Canadian to me. Canadians are usually intelligent and polite, in my experience.
Qikdraw ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 01:50:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You don't seem like a Canadian to me. Canadians are usually intelligent and polite, in my experience.
Well I did spend 10 years in the US, and married an American, so....
In case you missed it, that's a joke. Just to be on the safe side I figured I would explain it to you.
He became bitch made and switched sides like a fuckboy whats difficult to understand?
Yankz ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 16:46:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ninja*
[deleted] ยท 25 points ยท Posted at 17:14:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He fraudulently overstated his expenses so he could get reimbursed by and bootstrapped nation. Read a few biographies and the guy was an egomaniacal ass. Fuck um.
k-wagon ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:33:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He got gravely injured and that's a large part of why he didn't advance in rank for awhile. The dude deserves the notoriety though. Giving up on a cause and supporting the other side because no-one appreciates you is pretty selfish and shows your strength of character, or lack thereof.
I definitely agree, just saying everyone knows him as the greatest traitor in American history, not as the brilliant commander who essentially saved the early stages of the Revolution.
Someone else gave me grief for it, said he wasn't really fighting fighting for the british. Idk. Fucking reddit, I'm never right
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:14:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That doesn't really make his traitoring any more justified.
Sly_Wood ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:09:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yea but he started doing bad shit, in what was it Philly? He was basically stealing money but no one outright charged him. Instead he lost respect for it and his position. This was all happened while getting passed over like people have mentioned, but the guy was kind of a sketchy character to begin with. So he was snubbed a bunch of times and of course his sketchiness made it okay for him to turn traitor. It wasn't like he was created a traitor, those elements were already there.
He ultimately was charged with a list of things, but only one stuck. The resultant debt was possibly what finally drove him to outright treason. In fact, indemnification against that debt was part of his list of demands when he was negotiating with the British (much to their amusement).
The novel Arundel by Kenneth Roberts really gives the character depth and complexity that most historical tellings of him fail to deliver. I'd recommend it to anyone interested in a good read.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:03:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Who gives a fuck? He's still a traitor. I'm not religious but imagine the story of Gob where he says fuck it I'm supporting satan. Fuck Arnold that traitor. I bet you think theon greyjoy was just misunderstood too
He should have taken a leaf out of Washington's book. He was so pissed off the British wouldn't make him an officer he went to the rebels....and the rest is History!
Edit: In fact, he probably did just that but the opposite way around....didn't work out well for him either lol!
I spread this around as much as possible. My family thinks my wife and I are ridiculous because we say he's one of the heroes of the Revolution, until he turned traitor that is....
Nah, he was really just sent over to the British to spy but some shit went down and in order to save the US his disciple had to infiltrate behind enemy lines and kill him.
[deleted] ยท -3 points ยท Posted at 19:15:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ziryab (789-857 AD) was a Persian polymath: a poet, musician, singer, cosmetologist, fashion designer, celebrity, trendsetter, strategist, astronomer, botanis, geographer and former slave. Most people have never heard of Ziryab, yet at least two of his innovations remain to this day: he introduced the idea of a three course meal (soup, main course, pudding) and he introduced the use of crystal for drinking glasses (previously metal was the primary material). He introduced asparagus and other vegetables into society, and made significant changes and additions to the music world. He had numerous children, all of whom became musicians, and spread his legacy throughout Europe. He could perhaps be considered an ancient Bach. The list of societal changes Ziryab made is immense โ he popularized short hair and shaving for men, and wore different clothes based on the seasons. He created a pleasant tasting toothpaste which helped personal hygeine (and longevity) in the region, and also invented an underarm deodorant. He also promoted bathing twice daily.
Joseph Warren
Joseph Warren (1741-1775 AD) was regarded by many in his time as the true architect of the American Revolution. He was the key figure in one of historyโs most famous tea parties. He wrote a set of Resolves that served as the blueprint for the first autonomous American government. He delivered a speech that sparked the first battles of the Revolutionary War. He sent Paul Revere out on one of historyโs most famous rides. He was the only Patriot leader, prior to the Declaration of Independence, to risk his life against the British on the Battlefield (Sandler 55). And, remarkably, he has been largely lost to history. He was surrounded by names we are all familiar with, and yet his own name is barely ever heard these days. Interestingly, his brother went on to found Harvard Medical School, and fourteen US States have a Warren County named after him.
[deleted] ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 02:13:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ziryab
I was raised in Iran and have heard of him. He was more than likely african and/or arab though. Due to long established cultural customs, it is highley unlikely that a Persian/Iranian would be a slave, especially during that era of history.
Most educated Arabs know a great deal about Ziryab, almost exclusively for his contributions to music. He was said to make people cry and then make them laugh in the same setting by playing music.
Among Arab musicians and those interested in music and its history he is quite the legend, in fact, one of the largest arabic music internet forums is named after him.
If we're just looking at peaks, it's possible it could correlate to a UV/Vis spectra of something. (the density on the right could be something like an OH group) The density function in R isn't much help, though.
FolkSong ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 21:01:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Where did the numbers come from (0,4,7,10,etc)? And what are w and v in the expression? And why is the time-domain plot's initial value 17 (at t=0)?
Here, f is just a function that draws a piecewise "V", at some offset with a parameter to control how steep it is.
The "time domain" is just the dual domain of whatever the domain was I defined the letters in, it's not explicitly time. It's 17 at the start because of the normalization of the Fourier transform in Mathematica, which I'm both too lazy and too much of a physicist for to bother looking up and correcting for.
edit: oh the 17 was in the original domain... It's just because of the way w and v are defined, you get a bunch of offsets of 1. My Mathematica skills are mostly about being close enough.
edit 2: Here's f, for completeness' sake:
f[a_, b_] := Piecewise[{{b (x - a), 0 <= b (x - a) < 1}, {2 - b (x - a), 1 <= b (x - a) < 2}}]
FolkSong ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 21:19:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
OHHH ok, I didn't get that you were visually drawing the letters with your plot. I was thinking you would plot the ASCII values or something.
I'm an electrical engineer so all Fourier transforms are time and frequency to me!
A Fourier transform takes a function (electrical signal, sound wave, picture etc.) and splits it up in waves with single frequencies. It's like those lights on a stereo equalizer, those bars that go up if there's a beat or whatever.
It's incredibly useful in all sorts of circumstances, from audio filtering at home to analyzing complex systems in particle physics.
DeePro1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:14:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I have no idea what the fuck that is... But it's fucking wicked
Sartalon ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:34:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You're my mutherfuckin hero. God I'm a nerd for loving this.
cheunste ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 19:20:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Here you go. I didn't bother prettying it up or labeling it or anything like that, but if you'd like I can explain the conventions that I used for plotting the username.
Well that's easy to remember...0118 999 881 99 9119 725...3
PaPoolee ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 21:42:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wow im browsing reddit in bed on my phone and randomly come across your username! Did you used to play sc2 and often browse teamliquid? I think i remember you used to like making maps n stuff =p
First thought that occured to me was phone number. It matches the right digit count if you include the country code but I doubt all the numbers are below 6.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:24:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
But... why not just choose a name that's easy to remember and not have to do any of that?
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:35:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't know about him, but I almost exclusively use reddit is fun on my phone. I can just say login to this account and it logs in. Useful for when you have more than one account you use because you can just tap on the one you want.
12351121 is the pattern with alternating Ws and Vs starting with W.
Some things you can use to make jt easier is that it has 8 numbers and adds up to 16 in case you forget one of the numbers.
Or just remember 1-5 without 4 and then 1-1-2-1
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:22:33 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The etymology is better understood these days. It's now believed that kwol descended from rofl, reflecting the first descriptions of the wheel as "rolling as though convulsed with laughter." Kwol would later mutate into both lol, almost inaudible snorting resembling the low rumble of a rolling wheel, and cool, the attitude of an individual who is "seen rollin" and whose behaviors and mannerisms require others to "deal with it."
ofsinope ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 17:54:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The wheel is named after its inventor, the famous Proto-Indo-European engineer Phineas J. Kสทel (5212-5273 B.C.).
Believe it or not, the Hindi word cakra and wheel are actually cognates:
Hindi cakra: From Sanskrit เคเคเฅเคฐ โ(ฤakrรก), from Proto-Indo-Iranian, from Proto-Indo-European *kสทรฉkสทlos โ(โcircle, wheelโ).
English wheel: From Middle English whele, from Old English hwฤoฤกol, hwฤol, from Proto-Germanic *hwehwla, from Proto-Indo-European *kสทekสทlรณm, *kสทรฉkสทlos
gsfgf ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:27:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I've heard that linguists use the word wheel as a benchmark for linguistic spread since words started spreading way faster after its invention and were therefore more similar across longer ranges. Same reason that new words (usually brand names) these days can be global.
I think it's interesting that in two languages that I know, English and Macedonian (leaps and bounds of difference between the two, one being Germanic and the other Slavic) that the words for wheel are "wheel" and "kolce." They're fairly similar, I think, especially given that the "-ce" on the end just gives the connotation of a single item and therefore being almost wholly unnecessary.
dexmonic ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 14:49:58 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
by_whom ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 06:02:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fun facts, you can directly trace wheel, a germanic word, to kwol, the original indo European word. First kwol became hwol. Then the h sound was dropped completely, but it was represented in writing by switching the h and w, leading to whol. Add in a Great Vowel shift and you have wheel.
Similarly, kwod became hwod (k->h) which became whod (h dropped, pronounced wod). Go through the Vowel shift and whod changes to what. So kwod -> what. In romance languages, the original k sound of kwod wasn't dropped but the w was. So you end up with things like que in Spanish (kwod -> kod - > qod -> que).
So what and que are cognate from the same original Indo-European word, kwod. Similar to how kwol ended up ad wheel.
Yeah! Yeah I think his name was Gary Wheel right? That guy was a hoot at our caves first Christmas party, he ended up getting the secretary pregnant that night! What a joker he was, that Gary Wheel!
The Sajaks don't purchase vowels, they SELL them... because Grug invented them and the family keeps insisting the copyright is still valid. Compared to them the "Happy Birthday" people are pikers.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 07:20:17 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wasn't he related to Uuuhg Sajak, purchaser of bowels?
99639 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:43:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's likely that they're related. Humans are much closer related than most people realize.
[deleted] ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 17:02:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The wheel's nothing. Everybody knows round things roll. The Axle is the impressive bit.
Slamwow ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:11:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The axle's nothing. Everybody knows a round thing attached to round things rolls. The Cart is the impressive bit.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:32:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The cart's nothing. Everybody knows a box attached to a round thing attached to round things rolls. The Ass is the impressive bit.
tomdarch ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:22:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Axels are shit - frictiony and wear out quickly - until you add a bearing. But do you hear much about their inventor, Hans Bearing? Nope. Lost to history.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:36:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Probably the first human, speaking in the genetic sense, discovered fire. Now, how much of a dude does the dude have to be? Can we count Cro-Mags as dudes? If so, well then, THOSE dudes probably discovered fire before us dudes. And what about that astro-la-pithiwhatever dude? Is he a dude? If so, also before us and also, probably the first one discovered fire. I doubt we would want to go as far as monkeys/gorillas/whatever but we probably could!
And if we had the current patent system back then we have right now, we would still live in caves.
tomdarch ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:21:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The only airplane you'd be able to buy would be from Wright Aviation... that would have been wonderful for the development and implementation of aviation world wide... /s
I went to Florida for a conference one year and OMG, it was the worst. Though when Phoenix gets those 115 degree days, I don't know which one is worse. I feel my eyeballs getting a sunburn in those days.
caesar15 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:08:17 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well when it gets that hard then it being dry isn't much better.
However, extreme heat is very uncomfortable regardless. Just because the air is dry, if it is over 105 you are going to be very uncomfortable and sweating.
Humid heat can be extremely uncomfortable even in the mid 80s, whereas "dry heat" doesn't seem to be nearly as uncomfortable at similar temps.
He's got the Carrier Dome named after him in Syracuse! College basketball fans will remember him.
smb275 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:41:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's more than just the Dome named after him, in Syracuse. A few roads, landmarks, and neighborhoods all share his name.
GaySkull ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 16:48:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Came here to post this. Carrier's work has probably saved thousands of lives from heat stroke, but no one knows his name.
KSW1 ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 18:35:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You kidding? Carrier is a massive company now. Maybe people don't realize it's founded by the guy that invented AC, but they are definitely aware of the name.
GaySkull ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 18:50:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I dunno, how many AC companies can you name? Do many people really know the name of their AC manufacturer?
Maybe people don't realize it's founded by the guy that invented AC, but they are definitely aware of the name.
First time I'm even hearing of the name. If you dropped 'Carrier' into conversation, I'd be picturing a device that enables near-instant global application of Freedom(tm).
The best part is that he invented air conditioning to allow comic books to printed in the summer in Brooklyn. The building is still there and I genuflect every time I walk by.
Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov was a Soviet Navy officer who prevented a nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Only Arkhipov, as Flotilla commander and second-in-command of the nuclear-armed submarine B-59, refused to authorize the captain's use of nuclear torpedos against the United States Navy, a decision requiring the agreement of all three senior officers aboard.
Zolden ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 21:04:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thought I'd add this interesting factoid...since this thread has two people who helped to avert World War 3, we can add James Blunt, the musician.
In 1999, Blunt served as an armoured reconnaissance officer in the NATO deployment in Kosovo..... American NATO commander Wesley Clark ordered that Blunt's unit forcibly take the airport from the Russian contingent. However, after Blunt queried the order, Mike Jackson, Blunt's superior officer, and Blunt himself refused to comply fearing greater consequences, with Jackson stating that they were "not going to start the Third World War" for Clark.
I am not suggesting Blunt deserves as much credit as the others here, but it's interesting how many times WW3 has been averted.
pejmany ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:53:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sure time travel would be fun, but this shit is what I point to when people say humans will destroy themselves during war. As long as humans are the button pressers, global genocide is near impossible.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:30:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You do realise that 2/3 people actually wanted to press the button right
Factoid is not the same as an interesting fact. A factoid is something that's wrong but is often presented as fact.
Like "Mozart was poor when he died and had to be buried in a massgrave". That's incorrect or misleading. That's a factoid.
TWRABL ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 02:16:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The term factoid can in common usage mean either a false or spurious statement presented as a fact, as well as (according to Merriam Webster and the Oxford English Dictionary) a true, if brief or trivial item of news or information.
I would argue that while Webster might include the "small fact" part, that usage is detrimental to understanding and should eb avoided if one aims for clarity. Considering that there are much more use for the "factoid" as "pop culture missunderstanding" since there isn't another word for that. While "factoid" as "interesting fact" is redundant, there are many ways to present true facts, such as "interesting fact" "trivia" etc.
[deleted] ยท -12 points ยท Posted at 23:06:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
topCyder ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 01:25:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The reason it required the agreement was so that if it was obviously wrong, it could be overruled. He decided to spare the world from nuclear holocaust
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:22:00 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
topCyder ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:49:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sure he was a traitor. I would prefer that there be traitors if it means that there is a possibility that we are spared a nuclear holocaust. Think of it this way - if one nuke is launched, the world ends. If that is a correct order, than you have about 25โ of the launch sites would likely fire. That's is more than enough.
Traitor he may be, but I think he did the right thing. Nukes are stupid in that they should never be used, period. If one government nukes us, the other ones will retaliate. Same with the other way around.
Its probably cause no one wants to read through his whole wiki page to find out whats interesting about him. Op should have quoted or linked to the part of the page thats interesting then let people decide if they want to read the whole wiki.
I just watched 13 days, and they didn't mention this at all. Sure JFK made some good decisions under hard pressure, but it all would've ended real fast if not for this guy.
I don't mean to diminish his contribution, but had he agreed to fire a nuclear torpedo on the US Fleet they faced, the immediate retaliation is on the Flotilla, not on the country itself. A skirmish like that would still take a huge amount of consideration whether to escalate into armed conflict, and subsequently, war.
She died of cancer in 1951 and researchers took samples from her tumors. They found that they could make the tumor cells "immortal" in the sense that they could continue to reproduce in the lab indefinitely. Ever since, immortal cell lines have been a critical part of biomedical research. Cells from her specific lineage are used by labs all over the world today.
Azusanga ยท 24 points ยท Posted at 19:45:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Recently the book about her recommended in this thread caused a stir in a US school where it was required reading, because the cancer was cervical. The book described her finding the tumor(s) (she was touching herself) and discussion of her husband cheating on her, and some parent caused a big stir saying it was inappropriate for high schoolers and pornographic.
Sad that she made such a big and publicized effort to get the book banned, but in the end it brought a lot of attention to Lacks's story :)
ext23 ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 07:09:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My teacher liked to take a few minutes at the beginning of each class to give us a little unknown biology history, current biology events, or relevant far side comic to get us in the mood for science.
Basically her blood cells are unique, as far as anyone knows, in that they continue to live and divide (whereas blood cells usually die after a few divisions). This made research on disease possible, where in the past much of a researcher's time and energy was spent trying to keep the cells alive.
Since they were put into mass production, Henrietta's cells have been mailed to scientists around the globe for "research into cancer, AIDS, the effects of radiation and toxic substances, gene mapping, and countless other scientific pursuits".[11] HeLa cells have been used to test human sensitivity to tape, glue, cosmetics, and many other products.[2] Scientists have grown some 20 tons of her cells,[2][18] and there are almost 11,000 patents involving HeLa cells.[2]
Like the commenter above said, you should read "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot, it talks all about her, the advancements that could be made with the HeLa cells, and all the ethical problems the world of medicine has
I urge everyone to read "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot
Huge advancements in science were made thanks to Henrietta's cells, including Jonas Salk being able to create the polio vaccine due to being able to use her cells
Amazing book, thank you for reminding me what a great read that is. Mrs. Lacks most definitely influenced and progressed medicine in a huge way but had no idea of her contribution, nor does the average present-day individual.
[deleted] ยท -19 points ยท Posted at 22:22:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
But what's more inherently yours than your own body? You should have a right to decide to do what to do with it after you pass, same as you are allowed to pass on money and other things. Those will hold no value to you, but will to your relatives.There is a reason a situation like HeLa would never a pass an ethics board today.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:45:46 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also don't forget that many people and companies have profited from the production of samples and products based on her DNA.
samorost1 ยท -21 points ยท Posted at 01:08:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I totally agree. But of course the inherent dumbness of the reddit users forces them to downvote.
[deleted] ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 04:11:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You and the other person got down voted for not understanding the simple concept of bodily autonomy. That's why we can't take organs from dead people without their permission.
Has nothing to do with the soul, it's about physical parts of what is physically yours.
To go full hyperbole here, if corporations had free dibs to your body post mortem, and you contained something they needed, how long do you think you would still be breathing?
It's hella more complicated than your dumbass is making it out to be, and even if it's purely philosophical in your mind, you're an idiot for not understanding that your body is yours and yours alone to make decisions with.
But go ahead and call someone an asshole for being tactful with you, while tossing around strawmen. Idiot.
cell-wise, pretty alive, especially if you count gut-flora.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:43:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In what sense? The cell is not the person. There is no essence to a cell. In fact the HeLa cells have been clones so many times that they drift structurally and behaviorally from the original lineage.
Sure most of the patterns are the same - but its not her any more than the cells I just lost when I showered are me.
And her kids got jack shit from it, and still live in poverty
They didn't even know about what had happened for years. Then someone called them and tried to explain, and did so quite poorly: her grandchildren left the conversation believing that somehow they had their grandmother alive in a lab somewhere. A shitstorm ensued.
[deleted] ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 03:40:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
To be fair - they got nothing from how scientists used their mother's cells - many billions of which turned on their mother and killed her. It would be nice for pharmaceutical companies to care more about people but try to justify a payout in millions to third party associates of a deceased test subject for products you developed based on cells willingly provided by the deceased.
[deleted] ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 19:24:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I just got the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, a girlfriend of mine harassed me to buy it. It's next on my to-read list.
I just read the book about her life and her cell lines. Amazing book! Many science advances were made due to her unknowingly harvested cervical tumor cells. This should be so much farther up than 9/10ths of the other submissions
[deleted] ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 19:18:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Most people who work with HeLa cells know who she was
Literally. We would not have mass produced vaccines without this woman. Her cells were stolen from her, without her knowledge and are profited from to this day. Much of her family still lives in poverty.
Tiny_Rat ยท 24 points ยท Posted at 22:32:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"Stolen" is a bit strong. The law back then allowed the gathering of biological samples from patients without consent, so nothing illegal was done, and there was never any intent to cause harm on the scientists' part. However, much profit has been made off these cells, and it is unfair that her family has seen little to no benefit from it.
[deleted] ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 03:47:56 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Her family did not contribute to the effort or sacrifice the scientists made to productize and clone those cells. I don't see the lottery ticket these people seem to think they have just because some biopsies of their mom's cancer were used as research tools.
If you want to credit anything - the cosmic ray that flipped the right base pair to cause cellular immortality is the thing that started all this.
If it was not her it would have been someone else's cells too. She was just used as a founder stock since that was what they had when they developed the technique.
rolling my eyes all the way back on "sacrifice". These scientists were generally wealthy, privileged white men with social status who gained at least as much in ego stroking and straight up money to even out any kind of contribution to society.
Besides the immutable fact that you should get to decide what happens to your body (even if it's "I won't provide you healthcare unless you agree that I can use your body byproducts for whatever" you should have a choice), straight up, if you're going to have a system where you have to pay many dollars for healthcare the institution shouldn't be able to steal your cells without compensating you. If it's your duty to contribute to society to deserve healthcare, it's a capitalistic commodity, so you should be paid if an industry wants to use something of yours to make a profit alongside the benefits of their "discovery" that is only fully available to those with insurance.
Man America is weird.
At the very least her cells contributed enough to society her family's goddamn heart surgery should be paid for.
Yeah, I think they have every right to feel a bit taken advantage of...
[deleted] ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 06:55:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Do you think those jerky science guys all rich and white - heaven forbid - maybe even JEWISH - just got their sciencing jobs at the rich guy hangout?
Or do you think they worked their asses off paying for school with side jobs - then busted their ass in school to get their doctorate - which is no easy feat --- then landed a cushy nearly minimum wage job as a lab assistance where they see their work get used and credited to the principal investigator in their lab? That guy worked for 40 years in labs and teaching to finally become a PI after years of training and long nights.
Those people that allow children with Leukemia to survive - don't make sacrifices of their time and energy to make the products that keep you alive?
You lose something like 500 million cells every day. They are literally all over your furniture and house and everywhere.
Do you own DUST - because that is what you are saying.
This is not a foot. Its invisible. It is one of a hundred billion just in your foot. You don't own it any more than you own your shit. Do you hold onto your shit - it contains your intellectual property.
I think healthcare should be a shared public expense. I think the public /private partnerships that gave us things like the human genome project are capable of being applied to many of the big problems - like curing cancers. I think we should have a public healthcare system. I would gladly pay for a well run public system through higher taxes if I did not have to pay insurance out the rear.
But realistically - this government sucks so badly at most things - I have my doubts that it could effectively expand medicare to include everybody.
I think her family's heart surgery should not be paid for by the family if they do not have the means. And its regretful that this system is not able to help people that are not paying into it.
But the people that productized the HeLa cells did not cause this problem with society and they should not be demonized in this situation.
man, I'm not trying to play oppression olympics, but as a full certified jew intellectual over here, however hard they did or did not work does not erase the fact that should Henrietta Lacks had the nature to be one of them she definitely would not have had the nurture part of the equation to get there. They didn't ask consent back then because they generally took from people who were disadvantaged and no one gave a fuck about.
re: sacrifice. Nah, it wasn't a sacrifice. definition: "the act of giving up something that you want to keep especially in order to get or do something else or to help someone." Their "time and effort" would only be sacrifices if they were doing it for free and without credit. They deliberately pursued this time and effort, and were the privileged few in society that got the access to do so. Whatever minimal sacrifices they made in their lives were more than made up for by the incredible luck and honour they had to get the education, compensation and space to be scientists at all. Yes, luck. Not everything you get in life is because of your own hard work.
Look, I'm in a profession people regularly like to heroize and while I understand the good intentions none of my colleagues would be doing what we do if we didn't get paid. That shit ain't heroic
Yeah, fallen off dust or hair is noooot the same thing as samples from an invasive biopsy. Just like you need consent to do such a procedure in the first place, you need consent to use any extracted products during cause they ain't yours. If they're taking a blood sample from you to run tests on, they can't just decide "heeey, might as well run this a bit longer and collect some blood for the blood bank." without your explicit permission to do so.
there are people whose entire degrees (you know, the kind of educated people you seem to like) are about figuring out what's right and wrong in these scenarios -- bioethicists. Their views are pretty nuanced, and maybe you should look into why consent has developed as an unshakeable standard in the last while, and why it's important. (Hint: It was developed as a professional standard post-Nazis)
And look, HeLa cells are used everywhere, including by pharmaceutical companies who have a long and storied history about being about money first before "helping people", even if they do incidentally do some research and development to get there first. If that's the kind of society we live in, people should be compensated for what they have to give, just like these scientist get compensated for what they do. It's unfair and classist to put them on a pedestal and say they should be expected from the market forces of their capitalist society and the people who they exploited and violated (and hey, medicine has a looong history of doing just that especially to black people: tuskagee experiments!) are just as worthy of you know, basic rights of autonomy.
Also, it wasn't much effort to clone them. They were
Immortal so they continuously replicated anyways....
[deleted] ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 06:42:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well turning them into a product line eventually did actually take some work. Sure culturing cells is not an exotic exercise - but the value they had was not just in the fact that they were easy to replicate. The science built off of the ideas derived from study of the cells was the source of the financial gain. Its what drove a market to spread the HeLa line everywhere.
Does that mean her family was injured in any way? Does that mean her intellectual property was compromised?
You don't own carbon and nitrogen. You don't own cytoplasm. Your trillion copies of your recipe are all over your house and everything you touch - but can you capitalize on them?
Actual science is not like it is portrayed in cartoons. Its business as much as scientific endeavor.
got forced to read about her story my senior year of highschool. back then i was so unappreciative and thought it was stupid. but now looking back on it, its so amazing and fascinating. that whole course was about questioning everything we were taught. was awesome as fuck.
I learned about her in high school. I think most people in the medical field know who she is.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:53:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
She literally saved millions of lives. Imagine what cancer treatments would be like today if there hadn't ever been an abundant source of cancer cells to test on...
The book about her was required reading for a class of mine. So many of my friends disliked it, but I read it all in less than a day. My mom had to take it from me so I'd actually interact with people.
I don't know if I'd call her a hero, she herself didn't really do anything to save lives. She may be a savior of sorts because she happened to have magic blood
I read a book about her just this year. Can't say I enjoyed it a crazy amount, but I did learn plenty and do recommend the book. Henrietta Lacks isn't the only cell donor anymore, but I believe she was the first, and those cells made soooo many things in science and medical-related fields develop much faster.
xPlasma ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:15:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
She did nothing but get cancer and die. She didn't know her cells were being used and when they eventually told her family they didn't know cells were a thing. They thought they were keeping her in jail. She's not the hero of that story.
Oh there is a book about her. Frankly, I don't think she deserves much credit because she did not willingly participate nor understood what the scientists were trying to do. Heck, she didn't even care. Her only 'contribution' was to simply be have the misfortune of having aggressive cervical cancer.
The entire credit goes to the scientists who recognized what they could try to do with these cells that would benefit humanity even though they could not save Henrietta Lacks.
Also, the entire ,'without her consent' is a very very gray area. At the time, no laws existed that required consent to use biopsies tissue for other purposes. Remember this is a time when it is barely becoming clear that DNA has something to do with heredity. It was not understood how close to your identity your DNA and cells are...they didn't even know what DNA looked like or how it functioned.
And further more, even by today's standards 'informed consent', not just consent is what the law wants. It is highly doubtful that Mrs. Lacks had the education and expertise to understand what was then cutting edge tissue engineering even if the doctors had asked her.
The entire brouhaha about how Mrs. Lacks was wronged is just anachronistic misguided activism. Her descendents are even more annoying given that they have even less to do with the whole story but think they are entitled to some kind of sympathy and compensation.
Finally, she has received what recognition is appropriate. The cell line is called 'HeLa' after her name.
I remember hearing about her descendants legal fight a few years again, and just looked ago to see if there was an update
Probably not the happiest of endings, but:
The family has a legitimate right to say, โWe want this to be a partnership, not an exploitation,โ Cook-Deegan said.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:45:27 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oddly enough I know about her because of Prototype 2.
VCUBNFO ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:34:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My freshman year summer reading assignment was about her.
thekream ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 11:10:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think I've heard of her! Was she the woman whose cells were used to advance some parts of the medical field? I remember listening to a podcast of a woman whose cells are still being cloned, so technically part of her still lives
I feel like there's nothing about Lacks to appreciate. There are many poor black women who died of cancer. We know her name purely by what other people did after she died.
athennna ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:14:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I learned about her in school. Isn't there an episode of TAL about her too?
Dude, so many people know who she is. There was a book written about a few years back that got wildly popular (I think because of Oprah?). Anyone with more than a cursory knowledge of medical testing and microbiology knows of her cells. Her case is one of the most contentious ethical dilemmas in modern medical science. She's hardly underappreciated, for someone who really did quite little.
Ok she was definitely unappreciated during her life, but she's really famous now...
ZMush ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 04:10:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
HeLa cells aren't too unknown, are they?
fatn00b ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 22:02:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't mean to be dissing Henrietta, but if not for her cells, they would have gotten someone else's immortal cancer cells. The same discoveries would've been made, just a bit later.
Borlaug developed semi-dwarf, high-yield, disease-resistant wheat varieties.[2][1]
During the mid-20th century, Borlaug led the introduction of these high-yielding varieties combined with modern agricultural production techniques to Mexico, Pakistan, and India. As a result, Mexico became a net exporter of wheat by 1963. Wheat yields nearly doubled in Pakistan and India, greatly improving the food security in those nations.[10] These collective increases in yield have been labeled the Green Revolution, and Borlaug is often credited with saving over a billion people worldwide from starvation.[11] He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 in recognition of his contributions to world peace through increasing food supply.
C477um04 ยท 64 points ยท Posted at 19:05:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thanks, another example for me to use when people say they are against GM foods.
I'm 100% pro-GM foods, but at least according to that short paragraph, he very well could have developed those novel wheat varieties through 'traditional' non-GM techniques like cross-breeding as opposed to selective genetic manipulation.
C477um04 ยท 20 points ยท Posted at 20:09:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Artificial selection is a massive part of GM. Most of it in fact, and I think that's what a lot of people don't realise.
Everything we eat is GM in that regard. Brussel spouts, cabbage, broccoli, and a lot of other vegetables are actually originally from the same plant, and are still the same species.
I'm with you, though. GMO is the future, but you have to be aware that while the distinction is somewhat arbitrary, you have to use the terms as they are if you want to engage in anti-GMO folk. Simply saying "All food is GMO" is true but you have to realize their stance and work from it, not outright deny it.
C477um04 ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 20:40:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Most people wouldn't consider the fact that all of those foods are already GM. They are so used to them that they are just normal and anything with more modification is not. Most people don't even fully consider the artificial breeding that has went into our dogs today (although that's actually a better example of GM doing harm rather than good).
ChE_ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:49:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Our breeding of dogs did nothing to how nutritious they are. We just made it so dogs don't live as long. Most crops we have are so royally fucked that they would stand no chance without cultivation. Many plants we eat can no longer replant themselves. Even when they can a lot of them spend so much energy making the part that we eat that they can't compete with wild vegetation.
I agree with your comparison of dogs to GM foods, but I don't know if its a better example of a "GM doing harm rather than good."
You could definitely argue that certain dog breeds suffer serious health risks due to artificial breeding and it shortens their lifespan.
However, in regards to humans, dogs were bred for very specific jobs. The majority of dogs before the 20th century weren't bred simply as "pet" breeds. Some definitely were, but even that is a "job" function of the dog that serves humans.
The artificial selection of dogs, in the overwhelming majority of cases throughout human-dog history, have been to the direct benefit of humans and have not been harmful to humans.
C477um04 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 11:23:22 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fair point, the dog argument is a lot more complex than I put it and in history dog breeds were very useful but the newer breeds especially are largely just genetic fuck ups designed to either look nice or just for the sake of seeing what they could do. (think victorian era eugenics). But you are correct that we have bred a lot of useful dogs, whether for hunting, herding sheep or killing rats.
tastycat ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:06:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I really wish there was an anti-patent movement instead of an anti-GMO movement, since the anti-GMO movement keeps burning down experimental patent-free research crops and preventing patent-free crops from being planted, while doing quite a bit to help the profits of abusive and soulless corporations.
in my humble personal opinion, all GMO patents without exception, and only state/country owned companies would be allowed to plant GMO seeds - or have a special institution that gives rights to plant GMO's to specific farmers.
But all the profits from the crops owned by the state should go into the public/state budget.
This is how you would at least limit lobbying a small ammount, but even what i'm suggesting is full of loop-holes that can be abused.
Its really a clusterfuck of a system to implement, where the desire for greed by individuals/companies would have no effect on such a system, so I would say by the virtue of human nature, such a system would be impossible to implement and keep it "fair" for companies, small farmers, state companies.
Because as soon as you for example limit the right to grow GMO crops to only state companies, you're basically pushing every company/farmer growing non-gmo crops into less and less competitivness and they would have a hard time competing with your prices, leading to their bankrupcy.
The only way this would be solved is if we would transition all agriculture to state-owned, but now we're talking communism/socialism in regards to agriculture which nobody would accept.
Of course you could remedy this problem with high-wages for private farms working under state owned agricultural companies, but that would recieve back-last from other people, as those farmers would have almost 100% job security and nice wages, to prevent dissatisfaction of such a state-owned agricultural sector.
In reality the problem is so complex, that without adjusting the very basics of the system we're living in, things like adequately legislating things regarding GMO's is virtually impossible.
Why should there be an anti-patent movement? Plants could be patented since 1930 and growers were given exclusive rights to their patented hybrid varieties since 1970, before GMOs existed. Whatever imaginary cases of patent abuse you believe happened, why wouldn't you just address those imaginary cases rather than completely ban all patents of plants?
Why should inventors of completely new non-naturally occuring plant varieties not be able to protect their inventions?
No. But you have to ask yourself if profit is the only drive behind a business entity that that entity will do everything in its power to achieve that profit.
thats why you have regulations to limit what is legal/not legal for the sake of profit.
And that is why most regulation today isnt regulation at all.
while its a pretty hyperbole statement, as a lot of regulation is very useful today, there are still areas that are detrimental to the very human survival, for example climate change, which isnt a part of regulation nearly enough.
I mean the problem, is and thats why i almost never reply to topics, is that when you discuss a topic like this in detail, you need hours and days to debate it fully and to reach effective conclusions.
so hyperbole statements, and generalizations are go-to in pretty much every argument or stance you take here.
and sooner or later you end up in political science or philosophy which warants another few hours of debate, which most people including myself dont even have the energy to write and most redit users not the energy or wish to read so its slightly meaningless to explore all the nuances of a certain stance, because it serves no usefull purpoace in the given circumstances of a discussion.
but i like in depth-talks so if you ever would like to hear a more in-detail explanation we can talk over skype, or something.
I've had conversations like that on this topic before. When it's around plant patents or the like, the difference in opinion goes down to just fundamentals and at that point, there is no convincing, you just disagree on a fundamental part of society.
That is unless their opinion is based on incorrect facts.
What he probably means is that some cases regulation creates a barrier to entry where it is expensive to adhere to, that makes it hard if not impossible for newer/poorer companies to enter the market. GMO manufacturers actually lobby for very strict regulations that require extensive testing before a new GMO product can be sold. They have the time and money to do this testing, but smaller firms do not, which keeps competitors out of the market.
GMO manufacturers actually lobby for very strict regulations that require extensive testing before a new GMO product can be sold.
Do you have a source? I'm sure the other end of the spectrum - the organic lobbies - also do this.
ds580 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:11:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My problem is that gmo labeling doesn't mean anything. I don't really like chemical pesticides and would prefer to not consume food produced with them, but gmo labeling doesn't tell me that.
Nougat ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:06:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There are no foods that are not genetically modified, if you count selective breeding. Even if you don't, almost everything in the grocery store is straight up laboratory GM, it's just that the techniques have recently gotten more efficient.
They definitely did try to use his varieties in Africa, but the types of hybrids he developed were far more suited to the climates of Asia and Latin America (especially Asia). Africa's climate is very varied, and its soil degraded. It also lacked infrastructure that would allow farmers to access markets (market access is hugely important), and didn't have the widespread government support that existed in many Asian and Latin American countries. In addition, the crop in question - wheat - is not the main staple in Africa. Rather, a "green revolution" -type innovation for maize could definitely have a similar effect, because maize is the most common crop in Africa.
CIMMYT, the center that Borlaug worked at, developed a drought-resistant maize variety that's being used by 3 million farmers in 13 African countries. Currently these varieties are being spread by the Drought Tolerant Maize for Africa Initiative, and 140 varieties have been released so far!! Hopefully, this will help increase food security in Africa and beyond.
Right now, a massive part of the food-security community is focused on expanding the Green Revolution to Africa. In fact, AGRA (Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa) is focusing on supporting smallholder farmers, especially females - who are often ignored in projects like this, despite being the backbone of rural agriculture - to improve crop yields and usher in a new Green Revolution. Importantly, people in the community are committed to improving on the Green Revolution of the '60s and '70s, and not repeating the mistakes that were made (which, despite its massive success, definitely existed). So there's definitely hope for African agriculture! It's massively promising, and if you want any more information on the world of food security, or agriculture, or anything please ask I like talking about it way too much!!
Also one last thing, this report on Agriculture in Africa by NEPAD and published by the UN is a super informative and interesting read!
krye ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 19:35:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Huh, so that's why a somewhat famous street on my hometown is named after him, even though it's a little farming town in northwestern Mexico.
Thoguth ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:19:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So he's the villain who gave us all these carbs and gluten!
Orc_ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:21:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Actually he IS a villain who gave us climate change, if the population had stayed in 1 billion we wouldn't even think climate change as an issue.
EDIT:I understand that his work wasn't the same as switching on or off genes in plants, or splicing in a gene from another plant to get beneficial results, but his crossbreeding and hybridization were designed to affect the genes in the plants to make them thrive in harsh conditions or against certain plant killers.
Wista ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 20:20:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Maybe it's just the hangover and im missing the point... but is the author of that second article arguing that Norman Borlaug is a massive killer because his wheat required more fertilizer / water and it didn't eradicate poverty?
I thought they didn't give the Nobel for application?
Decantus ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:29:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Monsanto Lawyers are prepping their lawsuit against you for revealing trade secrets.
Orc_ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:20:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Do you really save people from starvation simply by adding more? I mean there were like 1 billion people before all of this, now there's 7, like, how can that be "saving" people from starvation? I think it's bullcrap, made up, yes what he did is great and all but the "saving" part is UNFOUNDED.
Cato94 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 10:58:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
His statue is in Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol building. He's one of only 3 people (if I recall correctly) to win the Congressional Gold Medal (civilian equivalent to the Medal of Honor), the Nobel Peace Prize, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The bottom of his statue says "The Man Who Saved a Billion Lives."
TheoHooke ยท 353 points ยท Posted at 16:45:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
In a somewhat similar vein, Fritz Haber invented a process for producing massive amounts of ammonia economically which is used to produce fertilisers. On the other hand, he also weaponised Chlorine Gas and invented Zyklon A.
Yes I think it has to do with your chemistry background. I also studied chemistry and I feel he is well-known in the field but not so much in the general public. Also, the public at large doesn't really grasp how vital the production of ammonia is for the modern world.
[deleted] ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 22:42:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Haber process is on the GCSE syllabus (mandatory subject) in the UK. Anyone who paid attention at school between the ages of 14 and 16 should know of him / his process.
I don't think we covered the topic in high school chemistry here in the US. Although it's been a while since I graduated.
[deleted] ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 18:49:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
All chemists know about him. It's one of the most famous chemical processes ever. Maybe not too many other people, though.
ChE_ ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:51:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He was one of the worlds first chemical engineers. He didn't invent a lot of chemicals, he just created a lot of processes that allowed for large scale production of them.
umdiddly ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 19:10:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Haber-Bosch. Why no props for Carl Bosch? He seemed pretty cool too.
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 20:43:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Bosch's grave is just up the hill from my house. He's pretty famous where I live, but I suppose not so much to non-Germans.
Shit, I confused my Boschs. It's Carl's uncle Robert that founded the company, and is buried up the hill.
Currently getting my PhD in chemistry. Some how Born, Haber, and Bosch come up in every single class I took. Even done with classes it seems like there is a monthly conversation about why the Bosch-Haber process is the most important invention of the 20th century.
I'm an (aspiring) chemist too. While he's undoubtedly well-credited in the industry, the man who facilitated this could probably never get the recognition he might be due.
The part that blows my mind is that, at least this is what I was taught in Chem 1 in college, is that the Haber process is the only way to make nitrogen reactive so you can use it because N2 gas is super stable and nonreactive, and it's super inefficient. I feel like the dude that invents a better way to make reactive nitrogen would be a trillionaire.
You're right, it's a hugely important reaction. A lot of catalysis research is directed towards improving the efficiency. Even incremental gains will have a large impact. I've heard this reaction alone consumes ~5% of the world's annual energy consumption.
Legumes and some bacteria can convert N2 to ammonium, NH4+. I know we use bacteria to produce commercial insulin. I don't understand why we can't do the same thing for the nitrogen problem. I mean obviously there's a reason it doesn't work or else people would be doing it, but I can't see why it would be worse than the Haber process.
I think it's doable. I mean just the fact that it doesn't have to take place at like 20000 Pascals and 500 C should mean it's more efficient. Just a big old fermentation tank if it would work the same way as insulin-producing yeast. Most of the yeasts I'm aware of function best around like 90-110 F and atmospheric pressure. Takes a lot less energy to heat a fermentation tank to 100 F than to raise temp to 500C and pressure to 15-25 MPa.
Bobshayd ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:31:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm not a chemist and I know about the Haber process.
Some knowledge is largely field-dependent. I didn't know about Haber, but in physics/math/engineering Gauss and Euler have their names on like a thousand things each and I'd bet most regular people don't really know how important they were.
He's pretty famous among chemists for the Haber process, no doubt.
tikhead ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:08:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I only know about him because of radiolab. He not only developed fertilizer but the use of the same technology to develop explosives. He also proposed the use of and then used chlorine gas in trench warfare during WWI. He also created zyklon A, which had an odor (like the gas you use to cook does nowadays to be easily identifiable when you're in the presence of it); the odor was removed to make zyklon B, which was used to exterminate many during WWII. Ironically he was Jewish. Also he's known as the "father of chemical warfare."
He invented Zyklon A, the Nazis kicked him out because he was a Jew and altered his weapon to become Zyklon B.
PlayMp1 ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:41:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Zyklon A wasn't a weapon though, it was just a pesticide. That's probably all Haber intended it to be. A similar product was used by Imperial Germany in WW1, then banned after WW1. Zyklon B came later.
Oh I don't doubt. I just figured since the top level comment was about an agricultural scientist I might as well mention the guy behind modern fertiliser.
Something like half the nitrogen in your body is there because you ate food grown using synthetically produced fertilizer that this guy invented. That's a big deal.
Doomur17 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:08:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Have you listened to the Radiolab podcast about him?
Well, the process was developed to increase bomb production. The fertilizer thing was a side effect, that if it didn't exist, wouldn't have slowed the development in the slightest.
Hularuns ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:28:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Haber is up there with the famous chemists. Definitely not an unsung hero
It's kind of nuts how despite the fact that he has been given a ton of official recognition, you never hear about him otherwise. I didn't know about this guy until like a year or two ago.
Maddox did a petty good job showing how they liked to take their guests statements completely out of context to fit their narrative. He was interviewed for a few hours about old people and they took one sentence (old people smell bad) without any of the context of why he said that, and shat on him for ten minutes using bullshit pseudoscientific "experiments". I liked the show and agreed with the majority of their points but they definitely liked to distort things to fit their narrative and that retroactively left me with a pretty bad taste.
Yeah, they really did love their nudity. I understood the swearing, as they explained in the first episode it was to avoid lawsuits (it's okay to call someone a motherfucker but not to call them a pyramid scheme runner) but the nudity usually just felt out of place and there for the sake of nudity and took away from the message.
In my home department at the university there's a photo of him. No idea who took it and no idea who's in it, and I don't think anyone knows, apart from him.
Even if you're conservative with how much credit you give him for the increased output of modern farming, easily at least a tenth of the worlds population owes him their lives. It's probably closer to a sixth or a quarter.
This needs to be higher up, Mr. Borlaug is estimated to have saved over a BILLION lives. He is a great man.
BBlasdel ยท 30 points ยท Posted at 19:33:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Fuck even that, he is the greatest man to have ever lived, and it wouldn't be hard to argue that he may be the greatest man to ever live.
He didn't just save a billion lives from starvation. Those billion lives, as well as the desperation they and their loved ones didn't feel, have put humanity on a track towards a kind of hope and justice that would not have been remotely possible had he not given up a sweet industry job near his wife and kids to live his adult life alone in the poorest region of 1960s Mexico. His work didn't just save an order of magnitude more lives than were lost to all the dictators and wars of the 20th century combined, it made life on Earth so much more worth saving, allowing us to be greater, kinder, and less callous than we were before. The great famines that he averted would have done damage to so much more than just an abstract total number of people on Earth, but to our sense of self as whole aspects of our global culture died, to our societies in wars that wouldn't have ended, and to our souls when the West eventually decided what the limit on food aid would be.
He slayed one of the horsemen of the apocalypse by living a life of sacrifice and respect for the humanity of his neighbor, greatest man.
EDIT: Please don't downvote /u/hillbilly_trash, what he is saying is horrifying but its what a lot of people feel. Its worth hearing and responding to.
There's a grain of truth to what /u/hillbilly_trash is saying. Borlaug was amazing, and what he did was great and necessary at the time, but there were a lot of negative side effects to his work. "The environment" isn't just an abstract concept that only rich white liberals care about; it's an actual thing that people depend on. There must be a balance.
BBlasdel ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:19:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The environment is a thing that only people with full bellies care about, and there is no balance to be had between it and the genocide we're abstractly talking around. Besides, what Borlaug did made protecting the environment a political problem, carbon and sulfur are emitted, virgin lands are repurposed, and animals are driven to extinction now only because we allow it to happen. It is no longer a question of survival, at least on a global level, but a question of will.
The environment is a thing that only people with full bellies care about
What if people depend on the environment for food? Sure, hungry people in Indonesia might not care what happens to the giant panda or trees in Massachusetts, but they definitely care about whether there are enough fish in the ocean, or whether rising sea levels will devastate their area.
I'm not trying to criticize Borlaug here, but I'm trying to bring a little more nuance into this discussion. Whenever he comes up on Reddit people try to use him to personally attack environmentalists, but the reality is a lot more complicated.
[deleted] ยท -5 points ยท Posted at 19:49:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
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BBlasdel ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 20:17:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm not sure I can think of any clearer more eloquent definition of evil than this sentence and fragment typed from affluence into a computer.
What you are implicitly suggesting as an alternative, this willingness to barter the lives of billions, is unspeakable. Trading human lives for ecological wealth, even if the logistics of that made any fucking sense - and they don't, is an intention so utterly horrific I have no idea of any of us could meaningfully respond. I mean we could certainly talk about how reducing hunger lifts up societies, empowers women, reduces family size, and in the end reduces ecological impacts - but that would seem to justify the murder by the billions through willful inaction as simply impractical rather than what it really is, or at least leave it unacknowledged. Fuck that, fuck that so hard. The Earth's population is currently projected to level off at 12 billion and stay at least roughly stable there for at least a while, but even if it weren't, famine is certainly not the answer.
Borlaug didn't just save lives, he saved us from needing to take you seriously. We are better than that now, we can be better than that now, because of him. I hope the rest of your day finds more compassion in it.
[deleted] ยท -3 points ยท Posted at 20:44:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
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BBlasdel ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 21:27:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Fuck that, humanity is beautiful in all of its flaws, you are beautiful, even your love for the environment as misplaced as it might be is beautiful. Bioengineering, medicine, Toyotas, fucking, and all sorts of other things that make your life right now on reddit possible are beautiful. Even just you, one person with all your cynicism and callousness, are infinitely worthy of the Earth and its riches. Even just you alone are a way for the universe to know itself, to love and be loved, to understand and be understood.
If we could only learn to love ourselves and each other, in a way that Norman fucking Borlaug both modeled and made logistically feasible, this cats not just getting out of the bag - its going to the stars.
I don't believe you, I don't think it would even take much digging to find compassion in you, but for what its worth /u/hillbilly_trash, I care about you and I believe in your ability to do great things in whatever it is thats important to you.
Orc_ ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 00:24:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You are crazy, the world's population staying at 1 billion was just fine, we didn't need 6 more billion people.
We didn't need climate change and countless starving is worth it compared to the utter destruction of an entire planet's faune via relentless warming.
BBlasdel ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 01:00:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
...Do we have a volunteer?
Climate change is not at all an inevitable result of a larger population, and if anything a smaller more desperate population in greater poverty would be much worse - heating homes with unreplenished wood instead of more efficient means, burning virgin land for subsistence agriculture, and waging the kind of total war we haven't seen in 70 years. But like with /u/hillbilly_trash's response, it would be wrong to dignify your comment with just an argument over the practicality of killing more people than have died in all of the wars in recorded human history, in a slaughter of apparently willful neglect that would enshrine a permanent global underclass, an agricultural gradient of human value.
It is a monstrous, unspeakable, and yet horrifyingly human response to even the perception of scarcity. If there were a button that you could push to murder six billion people, would you really push it? What if you had to push it six billion times, could you do it then? What if it was a knife you had to push into the sides of six billion skulls? Try to imagine what you are really arguing for, an act of mass murder more than a thousand times greater than the holocaust.
What Borlaug gave us was not just the manpower to fix this planet and bend it towards climate stability, but at least a shot at the economic justice, agency in the developing world, and peace that we'll need.
Orc_ ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:17:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hah! less "more desperate" people, would according to you, contribute more, seriously can't even argue against such nonsense, if that were to be true carbon emissions before would be larger, people from the industrial revolution would have large carbon footprints than today, but now, the opposite is true, population IS tied to carbon emissions in every single country, not sure where you even got the idea that that might be wrong.
Poor people use more public transportation, travel less, spend less and eat less, in every single factor they will have a lower carbon footprint, period.
It is a monstrous, unspeakable, and yet horrifyingly human response to even the perception of scarcity. If there were a button that you could push to murder six billion people, would you really push it?
Without flinching! Even if it included myself, 6 billion dying>7 billion dying (extinction or near extinction from climate devastation)
What Borlaug gave us was not just the manpower to fix this planet and bend it towards climate stability, but at least a shot at the economic justice, agency in the developing world, and peace that we'll need.
He was a climate "skeptic" (whatever that bullshit means) because he new 100% that his work was devastating long-term. Whatever objectives he thought could be achieved by feeding people oil are all irrelevant when they're inherently unsustainble.
Just so you know, most of the articles that scare you in regard to population problems actually are usually centered on specific places, rather than the world itself. The world has a huge potential population limit, and most of the world is practically uninhabited. Our problem is that the population isn't very spread out and that certain inequalities prevent everyone from getting the food/shelter/etc they need to live well. We produce more than enough food every year to feed everyone, and we could easily house everyone in the world. We don't due to inefficiencies and politics. Basically, certain places have population problems, the world does not.
Most the fear you have about population comes from a series of articles published when some scientists were afraid that, on the course they charted, we would simply exponentially grow faster than our means to support people. As it turned out a lot of countries, when they hit a certain point in their progress towards industrialization, have ever shrinking populations and reproduction rates. Japan, some of Europe (which is why they are pro-immigration) are shrinking when you look at natives. The US is looking good in that regard as we had quite a lot of immigration up until the recession.
Orc_ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:26:15 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You realize most sciencists who work on the climate, including myself, are absolutely helpless about climate change? There is no soft solution now, just so you know, the only "solutions" that exist today that can potentially work are all technological concepts. In other words, techno-fantasies.
There is no soft solution now, just so you know, the only "solutions" that exist today that can potentially work are all technological concepts. In other words, techno-fantasies.
Climate change is a connected, but different problem than just pure population load. It is also something we can't really do a lot about because, as you said, there is no soft solution, and decreasing population at this point, magically, won't solve the problem out-right, just slow it down. Its happening regardless. We are going to lose Islands and coastal lands regardless.
You should read a book called Hungry World, by Nick Cullather. It's a bunch of little interconnected chapters about the setting, events, and consequences of the Green Revolution.
It's not entirely as black and white as people think, one way or the other.
Orc_ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:30:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The story of the Green Revolution ends with a 6c+ warmer world with 99% of vertebrae species wiped out, oceans acidified with 99% of fish gone, super-droughts bringing in famine and wet-bulb temperatures making entire placed of the earth inhabitable to humans.
And yet in my environmental history class our liberal-ass professor had the nerve to question the tradeoff between saving a billion lives and industrializing agriculture.
A ton of people on Reddit do their best not to see the reality of agricultural industrialization too
twersx ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:04:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
our liberal-ass professor had the nerve to question
The horror.
An academic.
Questioning conventional wisdom.
I can't imagine a worse person than a professor at a university having the goddamn nerve to question a historical event.
Orc_ ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 00:27:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
1.- There is no evidence he saved anybody besides some wikipedia mention.
2.- Adding 6 billion more people to the planet isn't saving people, there's probably MORE people starving now than when the population was just 1 billion.
3.- The industrialization of agriculture alone is one of the primary motors of climate change, in fact, the creation of animal feed accounts for like 20% of all emissions.
Fuck Borlaug.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:58:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
it's probably closer to 3 billion by now
[deleted] ยท -4 points ยท Posted at 16:52:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If we can improve on the current situation with wealth inequality enough there will be no population crisis. The world can sustain much more people than are currently alive, but it's a matter of resource allocation, distribution, utilization etc.
Population growth stabilizes once economical situations improve. Wealthy, stable nations have a drastically slowed, completely stopped or even negative population growth.
More access to food, resource wealth, and energy will all massively help all corners of the world.
necrow ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:28:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, great points. To argue with the original poster, don't know that I would necessarily say that the world has a population control crisis as much as I would say there is a humanitarian crisis in some developing countries. Like you said: the world can support a much larger population, we just need to improve the situations in developing countries. Everyone has this weird idea that the population all over the world is exponentially and unsustainably growing, when its not in most all developed nations.
Probably, but his ideas could also be used in order to sustain the eventual 12.someodd billion people that the world is projected to cap at.
Orc_ ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 00:32:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah with mega-droughts, climate change, acidified oceans, entire areas of the world nearly unhabitable and everything else currently projected to happen by scientists because of climate change.
Well, at least it will be just, if so many humans are so ready to celebrate irresponsible pieces of crap like Normal Borlaug then we do deserve climate change, I mean, since you all celebrate the primary climate changers of history.
UNWS ยท -6 points ยท Posted at 18:10:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You realise the only way to cap population is for people to die as fast as they are born. Now think about the reproductive rate of 12 billion people per year. Thats is how many people die per year in that world. In other words, it wont be fun living then.
necrow ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 18:34:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sorry man, but you're way off base there. You do know that most developed countries are at or below the replacement rate already, right? On top of that, it's very, very difficult to get back above the replacement rate once you dip below. 11-12 billion people, like the person you're replying to said, is the general consensus. Once countries develop, their birth fertility rates drop dramatically. It's not that people are dying frequently, it's that fertility rates drop significantly. It'll be better living then than it will be living now.
UNWS ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:24:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
hmm, you are right, I was thinking of the sigmoid curve of how animal populations develop. It makes more sense that people start using more birth control.
necrow ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 18:26:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What world population control crisis? Developed countries are almost all at or below the replacement rate, and developing countries always get closer to the replacement rate when they develop more. There's not really a population control crisis at all; I don't know why people (especially on Reddit) think that.
2rio2 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:56:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's a misconception going around since the 80's/90's. Growth rate has been slowing forever (especially in developed world) but the reason the overall world population has continued to grow is people are living longer. That means we'll likely hit a cap by mid to end of this century as even the devloping nations with really high birth rates start to taper off.
Look into what happened when he returned from deploying the first gas attack in ww1 and before he left for the second time. I'm at a car dealership otherwise I would give you some links, but he really was a very bad person.
BBlasdel ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:27:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Maybe you're thinking of Fritz Haber? Borlaug was only just born four months before the start of WWI, and spent his career in the poorest areas of Mexico breeding dwarf strains of cereal crops to feed the world. Haber though was a callous deuchebag.
Orc_ ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 00:33:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Need links of this, I hate Norman Borlaug and need any info on him, for me his is worst that the worst terrorist.
Thimble ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 18:32:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I was gonna post a reply to OP "Yeah, that guy last century who saved hundreds of millions by improving agriculture ..." His name just doesn't stick in my head.
roflsd ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 18:56:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
TLDR; He GMO'd gluten. If he put that all into a vaccine he'd be crossfit soccer mom's Hitler.
[deleted] ยท 19 points ยท Posted at 16:56:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
So, considering that billion people have bred and their offspring have bred, we might actually say he was single-handedly responsible for making world overpopulation possible.
adeels53 ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 20:31:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yea why did he have to go and save a billion brown people. It was so much better before when they could barely survive and had to spend their entire lives just scraping by.
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:11:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
this. This is Monsanto's business! Using technology to increase yields and feed people. They just use the technologically superior version of his technology, genetical engineering. Organic farming, heirloom seeds, small scale farming etc, those are the exact concepts Borlaug was fighting.
I'm not an anti-corporate tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiratard, but could we not pretend that they did it out of the goodness of their hearts? They did it to earn a profit. That's it. Anything else is secondary.
Scientists usually work for the love of science I believe, even if they're employed by corporations.. I mean it pays their rent, but it takes a lot of time and effort to get good at that stuff, just money isn't gonna cut it as a motivator.
It's not about the scientists. It's about who employs the scientists and who decides where the money goes to fund which project. And what the people who own the money in the first place want.
Right. Essentially Monsanto has monetized Borlaugs model, which I see no problem in. This is America, capitalism is a thing.
Orc_ ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 00:38:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Being a leader in climate change is also a thing!
Orc_ ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 00:37:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He was an absolute idiot just like all of you, dedicating his life to oil-based agriculture, what a freaking moron, yeah, let's feed oil to people, we got plenty of that anyway! Oh and don't mind those pesky climate change evangelizers! They want famine! As opposed to climate change famines! But anyway...
No they didn't. Borlaug did not use genetic engineering. If it is the glyphosate resistant soybeans you are referring to, Monsanto used a gene gun to insert those genes, it wasn't developed through traditional hybridization.
He is one of seven people to have won the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal[8] and was also awarded the Padma Vibhushan, India's second highest civilian honor.[9]
He's not that unappreciated. Still, he should probably be a household name.
Norman Borlaug has been my hero for many years. If I was asked for a list of the greatest people ever, I would have named him first. I was literally regularly making people aware of him. Then I was diagnosed with celiac.
I still think he was fantastic and amazing, and I know there is no rational reason for my thoughts and feeling on him to change. But it's a little harder for me to get too excited anymore.
TIL Norman Borlaug facilitated the overpopulation of the planet Earth by creating an abundant reliable food source. The vast numbers of humans created required additional energy sources which, in turn, accelerated global climate change endangering the lives of all inhabitants.
Orc_ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:38:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I am glad I didnโt have to scroll the whole thread to find him. Especially now that it's so hip be anti-GMO. Especially some privileged people shopping at Whole Paycheck.
I do realize any knowledge can be perverted and abused, but this man has saved countless lives.
A good friend of mine's grandfather was the Norman Borlaug of Brazil. IIRC, Brazil is nutrition independent in large part because of his work there. Last name was Murdock. The agricultural revolution, man. Killed no one, saved billions.
This deserves to be at the top of this thread. He's saved more lives than anyone in history and I bet the majority of people have no idea who he is.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:53:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
While he did save a lot of people, it's actually led to quite a few problems. Lack of biodiversity, food that isn't as nutritious as it once, and we've met the threshold for food production, as of right now. Scary thought.
population growth will hit it's ceiling soon. should top off at ..10 billion I think? population isn't the problem, it's just that billions are escaping poverty and are eating more meat.
That's a shaky one. Producing more food does not improve quality of life in the long run. I used to think that giving food to the developing world was righteous, but then I read Daniel Quinn, and started noticing the failures of industrialization.
jroddie4 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:26:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
wasn't that the guy knighted by the queen, and he had a ridiculous title like "savior of all humanity" or something?
You should read a book called Hungry World, by Nick Cullather. It's a bunch of little interconnected chapters about the setting, events, and consequences of the Green Revolution.
It's not entirely as black and white as people think, one way or the other.
Alexander Hamilton. Did so much to build America, and it mostly just remembered for dying in a duel.
[deleted] ยท 550 points ยท Posted at 17:15:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
And one of the most successful broadway musicals of all time.
rugger88 ยท 50 points ยท Posted at 19:30:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I was skeptical when I first heard about this play, but after seeing the piece on 60 Minutes, I tend to the think the director, Miranda is a genius. Such a compelling and imaginative way to get people to get people interested in history that would otherwise be forgotten. Wish I could take my history students to see it.
The musical's soundtrack is on Spotify. It's, of course, not the same as watching it, but you can still get the gist. The first song on the soundtrack is pretty much just a synopsis of his life.
There is some hope, I think, since I remember hearing something about like a Broadway-Netflix type thing.
But there is no reason that it won't go on tour, I like to think. It's super successful and I know I'd love to see it if it came to my neck of the woods.
It is going on tour (of sorts)! They're running a couple of months in Chicago, and I believe they have plans for SF and LA runs after that.
pejmany ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 09:56:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Toronto? He asked hopefully, laughing at his foolishness before the last syllable left his mouth.
mastelsa ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 22:23:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
It's absolutely worth listening to on Spotify, and I'd recommend going on Genius to follow along with the lyrics, too. It makes the plot a lot easier to follow and Genius has lyric/song annotations that show just how much of a lyrical genius Miranda is. He's actually been on Genius to annotate his own lyrics, and a bunch of history buffs have also gone through and cross referenced all the historical facts with Hamilton's letters too.
jakielim ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 02:22:06 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just so you know Miranda is the composer/writer/main star. Thomas Kail directed the show.
[deleted] ยท 90 points ยท Posted at 19:08:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I saw it last week and haven't stopped singing songs from it since. Lin-Manuel Miranda is a genius.
Zehrok ยท 22 points ยท Posted at 21:10:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He's an incredible guy, too.
Source: He started talking to me and my friend after my friend was the lead in a school play. (I went to the same school he did)
rlbond86 ยท 29 points ยท Posted at 20:30:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I saw it last week and haven't stopped singing songs from it since. Lin-Manuel Miranda is a genius.
You got tickets?!?!?!??
[deleted] ยท 18 points ยท Posted at 20:44:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My girlfriend's parents did, I just tagged along. I want to see it again but there is no way in hell I'd drop the kind of cash needed.
Joetato ยท -4 points ยท Posted at 23:08:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I swear, I'm the only person who doesn't like it. I never saw it, but a friend forced me to listen to the soundtrack album and I couldn't take it. I had to stop after the second or third song.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:35:00 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
To be fair, we listened to the album later that weekend and it wasn't the same.
Just heard 60 minutes did a peice on this play and I really want to see it now
mastelsa ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:25:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's absolutely worth listening to on Spotify, and I'd highly recommend going on Genius to follow along with the lyrics. It makes the plot a lot easier to follow and Genius has lyric/song annotations that show just how lyrically and musically genius the show is. Miranda has been on to annotate them, and a bunch of history buffs have also gone through and cross referenced all the historical facts with Hamilton's letters too.
catnik ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 21:46:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dude, I love Hamilton... but it is realllyyyy early to be going "one of the most successful of all time." (And success != quality, either. Cats had nearly 7500 performances on Broadway. Mama Mia grossed $624,391,693.)
[deleted] ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 22:16:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And success != quality
It's near universally praised for being high quality, so that's not really an issue.
it is realllyyyy early to be going "one of the most successful of all time."
Is it any different than judging the success of a movie based on opening weekend? Hamilton's musical score debuted on Billboard at number 12. The last musical that beat that was Camelot in 1961. It's sold out through July. I'd say that's as good an indicator as any.
It's incredibly addictive! I listened to it basically non-stop (sorry) for the last two months of 2015. It was my walking music, my drawing music, my gym music. I was the weirdo running and weeping on the treadmill when Eliza tells Ham her proudest achievement was opening the first private orphanage in New York City.
Are tickets still available at the box office? I thought they were all sold out...
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:13:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sold out for a few years. Only secondary market tickets are available which you will be dropping crazy cash to get.
I went to a Saturday matinee last week and I think the very front of the people that stood in line for the no-calls got tickets. But they were likely there three hours before the doors opened.
They are, however you can buy resale tickets (basically legal scalping. Horribly overpriced, but ticketmaster handles it so it's at least secure) or go to the box office and buy tickets that other people cancel
waxenpi ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 18:45:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oh don't mind me I'm just quietly sobbing in a corner
Caelinus ยท 234 points ยท Posted at 16:42:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I have always thought of Hamilton as the true father of America. We usually ignore him because he was all about finance and was never president, but he was a genius who laid the groundwork for what America became.
Me too. Jefferson is beloved, but he envisioned the republic as an agrarian society.... Huge Hamiltonian here and I think he is my favorite founding father hands down.
From the life as an orphan on the streets of st. Croix, to rising up in the revolutionary army, to being in the cabinet and engineering the bones of the federal government. Hamilton is a personal hero and is so underrated.
ncolaros ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 22:47:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not only that. Him and Jefferson effectively became the first constitutional lawyers when they would debate the government's role for Washington. Reportedly, Washington tended to side with Hamilton. Maybe I'm a damned, dirty Federalist, but I think he saved our country from being unorganized and backward-thinking. Jefferson was, I believe, a genius, but he wasn't enterprising like Hamilton.
At the end of the day, it was their debates that helped shape the United States.
I agree. Washington was unabashed supporter of Hamilton, and they pretty much ran the government together during his presidency.
I don't think being a federalist or not has anything to do with it, it's pretty clear that Jeffersons vision is no where close to the actual outcome, and I don't think that was because of Hamilton. We ended up becoming more organized and more urban, as has almost all societies have over time. Jefferson was pretty smart, but not the biggest fan personally. Intelligence does not mean competence :P
Additionally their debates was some of the most brutal. Some people thought the newspaper fights would break up the union long haha. Now look where we are today.
From the life as an orphan on the streets of st. Croix, to rising up in the revolutionary army, to being in the cabinet and
I read that he "was born into an influential family" and those connections obviously helped him then rise to the top. Is that not true?
julinay ยท 21 points ยท Posted at 20:48:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Pretty much as far from true as possible! Guy's (alleged) dad was a deadbeat, his mother died from sickness (and was regarded as a prostitute), then he stayed with a mentally ill cousin who committed suicide. His rise upwards was entirely due to older, influential men realizing that the guy was a genius and funding his education, more or less. More than one contemporary said that the reason Hamilton irritated a lot of people was because he failed to understand that he was thinking so far beyond everyone else, and leaving all of them in the dust, and then coming off as disbelieving about it.
He did marry into a well-regarded family by marrying his wife, although his father-in-law wasn't a lot of help later on because, like Hamilton, he also ended up in a sea of financial debt.
Dude was in his early twenties when the revolution started too. Only like 34 as secretary.
julinay ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 20:52:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hamilton pretty much studied economics while fighting the Revolution. He was incredible, imho!
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 23:59:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Every other founding fathers story gets told.
Every other founding father gets to grow old.
-tydides ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:19:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Can't forget about Madison either, who drafted most of the Constitution. I feel like sometimes the founders, like Jefferson, Adams, and Washington are remembered over Framers like Hamilton and Madison even if the Framers were probably more important to the United States we see today.
Rethious ยท 434 points ยท Posted at 17:27:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's a pretty big fuck you. I like to think it was done solely to create a perpetual motion machine. Jackson spinning in his grave is probably powering a significant portion of the country.
Helz2000 ยท 31 points ยท Posted at 18:27:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Here's my inner turmoil. I despise what Jackson did to the Cherokee of the Carolina regions for gold. BUT if those Cherokee hadn't been forced to move I probably wouldn't have been born. My mother's side are decendants from that Cherokee line. I have a tribal membership. My family is a side product of greed.
They were killed because of the gold found in the Carolinas. The Cherokee legally owned the land according to the federal government at the time. A few dozen Cherokee sold the land to Jackson right under the rest of the tribes nose. So they left to Oklahoma with pockets full of cash. The remaining group of Cherokee were forced off under threat of death. Thus became the Trail of Tears.
The really unfortunate part about the relocation is that most people that volunteered to escort the Indians west were the same people that wanted to kill them in the east in the first place. Racists, and often combatants in frontier wars.
This is why, as a Native, I always make sure to spend my twenties on stupid shit to make him feel even worse. Like buying gallons of lube at a time, or rubber ducks.
ccai ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:57:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What's wrong with the buttered toast strapped to a cat's back perpetual motion generator? Even though they don't generate as much per unit, we have an over abundance of cats and buttered toast.
Rethious ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:01:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jackson was invented before toast was you see. They had not yet invented sliced bread.
Yeah, I get that... but so? Being on money is a place of honor, and is explicitly a statement that the person is to be revered. You can't say "Washington, Lincoln, Grant, Jefferson, Franklin, all some of the nation's most revered leaders, important figures, and role models for civic duty... Jackson? Oh, he's there for the lulz."
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:47:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He hated paper currency, but could not save himself from being placed on a bill. - Chancellor Palpatine
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:50:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well they said they're keeping Hamilton "somewhere" on the 10 so I doubt it. I bet when the 20 comes up we have a massive fight as the GOP tries to put St. Reagan on it.
He's only the first secretary of treasury and is the gather of the federal national bank, but nah we don't need to represent him on currency.
Jackson vehemently opposes and eventually dismantles the second national bank, but hey the dude was awesome in the war of 1812 so we'll keep him on the twenty.
Wtf.
[deleted] ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 21:53:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That isnt what he is most famous for tho. Him and Madison both constructed the constitution and got it passed through the Federalist Papers. Hamilton is 10x more deserving than Franklin even if you disregard Hamilton's work as Treasurer.
What irritates me is that we're replacing him solely for the sake of having a woman on a currency. Not because we have someone particular in mind that we feel the need to honor by putting them on a currency or anything, but just so we're more pc.
jakielim ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 02:24:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The redesign mainly due to high amount of counterfeit bills. The originally campaign for woman in the bill sought to replace Andrew Jackson on $20.
The Treasury has said that Hamilton will still be somewhere on the bill. Idk if he's going to be hiding or what. But the portrait will be a woman. Not Thatcher, but Jeb Bush did honestly suggest putting a BRITISH LEADER on US money.
They currently plan to keep him in the design and are still figuring out exactly how. See number 4 on this page
czulu ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:56:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Seriously the thing I hate about this.
Alright yeah it would be a good idea to put women on money. 1: Why Tubman (the current front runner)? I realize she's a black woman but that's really just blatant pandering. Susan B Anthony or Jane Addams is a much better choice. It's true she saved over 300 more slaves than I have but in the course of US history, she didn't have a huge impact. Lincoln saved all the slaves.
2: Alexander Hamilton literally designed our financial system. He died for his beliefs. He's the embodiment of the American rags-to-riches dream. If anyone should be on money, he should.
Lets look at the other candidates. George Washington is on two kinds of money, so it Abraham Lincoln (although the penny may be on it's way out). The $2 just has a picture of congress on it. Andrew Jackson tried to eliminate the possibility of a central bank and the Seminole and Choctaw Indians. He's near the bottom of list of presidents. So is Grant on the $50, who's frequently regarded as the most corrupt administration in US history.
Sooooo many other people deserve to be on money less.
It's actually the biggest fuck you we could give him. If we forgot him, his dickishness would recede into history. This way, we get to keep remembering him as an asshole and laugh about how much he hated paper currency.
Supreme court makes a ruling? Well, I control the Army so how the fuck are they going to enforce that ruling. I'll just do what I want anyway, fuck the court.
Indians? Fuck the indians. Send them to Oklahoma. Who cares how many thousands die.
Creek Indians have a peace treaty with the US? Lol who gives a fuck slaughter them.
I really hate how history glorifies Jackson. He fucked up our economy, BADLY.
xV1RALx ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 19:18:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
I completely agree with everything you have said about Jackson being genocidal and hating banks and he should be removed over Hamilton, but one of Reddit's biggest issues is that Redditor's have a tendency to look at history and the people involved and compare them to today's social standards.
I completely agree that Jackson was not a very good president (although he was kind of frat bro throwing an open house rager in the White House after becoming President, which I think is hysterical and kind of awesome), and he absolutely committed genocide on the Native American's, but by the standards of the early 1800s he was not doing anything wrong. American's did not like the Natives and generally did not get along with them, along with this America at the time was growing and needed room to expand, so by forcing them west he did open the door for American expansion which WAS a good thing at the time.
It is absolutely important to learn about how awful the Trail of Tears was, and to learn from these tragedies so they are not repeated, but Reddit tends to immediately blackball some historically significant people for the things they did, when by the standards they lived they were not doing "insane, oppressive, genocidal, etc." things. It's always important to look at everything from the standpoint of the time period as well. Back then even though Jackson was conservative, compared to the leaders of other nations he was extremely liberal. Along with this he did do some awful economic things for the US, but he also had a lot of good policies, such as the aforementioned expanding of America west.
TL;DR Jackson certainly wasn't an awesome president at all, but he did do a lot of good things for the TIME PERIOD which is important when looking at things historically, so one or two things that by today's standards are fucked up shouldn't blackball him.
Reddit's also obsessed with absurd Great Man History. Jackson doesn't force the Cherokee west? Someone else does it instead; the national will is still there. Everyone who supported -or hell, failed to resist- Jacksonian Western Expansion is part of the process that led to it. Jackson didn't just decide to and then do it. His action was a product of wider factors, as is all history.
xV1RALx ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:17:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Exactly. It was going to happen one way or the other. For all we know had Hamilton been elected he may have done it. Who knows? He did what the American people wanted, he was a good president for the people in many ways, even if his economics hurt the people.
The damage to the financial system is what makes me angry. I do agree that his treatment of Native Americans was the standard view at the time. His devastating financial policy was not.
PlayMp1 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:51:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
along with this America at the time was growing and needed room to expand, so by forcing them west he did open the door for American expansion which WAS a good thing at the time.
So... lebensraum?
It was a good thing for America. I'd ask the natives about whether they feel it was a good thing.
You know what's an even better way to say fuck you? Let him suffer the same fate as James Polk or Benjamin Harrison. Just another footnote or trivia question answer when discussing US Presidents.
Let him suffer the same fate as James Polk or Benjamin Harrison. Just another footnote or trivia question answer when discussing US Presidents.
These are the guys that put shit like the upcoming election into perspective for me. All of the passion, emotion, love, hate and vitriol that goes into presidential election campaigns might result in a president that someone 100 years from now will have to look up on Wikipedia because they were so inconsequential that nobody remembers who they are.
Although, picture on the $20 or not, Jackson is too important to fade into obscurity.
The Indians were basically at war with America, and living within/near American borders. What would you have done? Peace wasn't an option.
Also, even though Jackson was a "genocidal fuck", he still had a heart. For example, he found an orphaned indian baby after a battle, and he and his wife raised the kid as their own until he died of tuberculosis when he was 18.
How is it revisionist history? The Seminoles were launching raids backed by the British from British Florida into Georgia during the revolutionary war. The Seminoles, and other tribes were considered to be at war with the USA.
Yes...and the seminole wars were off and on from the late 1700s until the mid 1800s.
PRMan99 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:30:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Andrew Jackson was a really amazing dude too, as far as winning the Battle of New Orleans against the general that beat Napolean by partnering with slaves, Indians and pirates.
He also survived two duels, winning both, including one where he let the opponent shoot him in the chest first so he could have a better return shot.
Yeah, the trail of tears was bad, but that was the common sentiment in America back then. It's hard to fault someone for sharing a then-common belief. Most people, because of social Darwinism, believed them to be sub-human.
And if you like Alexander Hamilton, realize that he STARTED the central banks which plague the world to this day. At least Andrew Jackson bankrupted them during his time, giving a short window of reprieve.
The War of 1812. We go our ass kicked up and down the continent. The British burned our capital. Jackson one won battle and we act like he's the greatest.
Who cares.
Bullshit. Who cares if it was a common belief. It was a common belief that Indians were savages and we should totally fuck them over and kill thousands and thousands? And it was not just the Trail of Tears. Jackson annihlated the entirety of what was left of the Five Civilized tribes. And that's just as president. When he was a general he slaughtered Creek and Seminole wholesale. There was never a treaty with Natives that Andrew Jackson didn't see fit to break in the name of murdering Indians. Leaders are judged by history to a higher standard. Not to mention that Jackson DEFIED the Supreme Court and did as he pleased anyway, brutally stealing everything with the Indian Removal Act.
Andrew Jackson was a clown who knew nothing about banking. It's why he's so loved by today's conservatives.
[deleted] ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 20:11:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I would say that a lot of people don't fully grasp exactly how important George Washington was. He didn't seek further power after his presidency. Democracy wasn't a big thing back then and it wouldn't have been inconceivable for him to become king of America.
We realize today how important the first transition of power is when we observe other, newer democracies. The early transitions of power tend to be one of the most common pitfalls for democracies.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:48:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
I think that's overrated to a certain extent. I agree that Washington's choice to retire from public life was important, but it's not like the British Empire was unfamiliar with the concept of changing governments. The House of Commons had been an elected body for hundreds of years by the time of the American Revolution, and in the half-century or so leading up to the Revolution the office of Prime Minister had started to develop, so having a head of government distinct from the head of state wasn't a foreign concept, either.
It's not like the early USA was a model of democracy as we understand it today, yet, either. In most places, only free adult men who owned property could vote. Hell, in Washington's first election to office, five of the states didn't vote at all for President; their state legislatures appointed electors to the electoral college. Senators were appointed by state legislatures up until 1913.
You only have to look at Napoleon to understand what Washington could have done, or tried to do, so I'm not diminishing the importance of his decision not to run a third time - just trying to add some nuance.
Plus, I think there's a difference between "new democracies" in the sense of the Frankenstein governments getting set up after the West tears down the previous regime through war, and other historical examples of new countries setting up democratic constitutions.
And then he gets put on the $10 bill, which is one of the least circulated bills (just above the $2 and the $50 denominations).
dorekk ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:53:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Huh, if it's so uncommonly circulated, why do we have it?
I love two-dollar bills. Especially using them at stores and all the teenage cashiers have to call their managers over to see if they're real. I wish they'd put Jefferson on the $20, though.
I love the $2's, too! I wish Hamilton would get a better bill... Although honestly, I'd put him on the $100 instead of Franklin; move Franklin to the $20, and get rid of Jackson as-is.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:23:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
After going through this part of the thread I had no idea how much people care about appearances.
And they wanna remove him from the $10 bill, I don't know why this pisses me off so much, it's just he worked so hard and they wanna replace him to put a woman on it. Why don't they remove Andrew Jackson?
Are you talking about college courses? If not you had a really great high school. I never had to take history courses in college (CompSci guy), and in high school we only ever talked about Hamilton in one year. And I think many people only experience US history classes in high school.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:09:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
One in MS, two in HS, one in college (here history is a graduation req regardless of major)
Hamilton is such an important part of early American politics I don't see how/why he could be left out
I took American History in college and boy did it open my eyes on things. He is without a doubt in my mind the most underrated man in american history. Did a lot of shit for this country and most people dont even know who the hell he is.
dorekk ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:54:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
All I really know about him is he was against the Louisiana Purchase, which was one of the most important things America did in its infancy. Doesn't really reflect well on his legacy!
Also, for those unaware, the Broadway musical based on his life, Hamilton, is truly a masterpiece. I highly recommend listening to the soundtrack. There are feels to be had.
"There's a million things I haven't done. Just you wait. Just you wait."
jabata ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:23:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hamilton was certainly a brilliant man, but he's no saint. His bond repayment plan essentially made millions for his wealthy speculator friends in the northeast, taking advantage of many of the nations poor, specifically veterans of the Revolution. He was an elitist, who never hid the fact that he thought the wealthy should have a greater say in the affairs of the government. "All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are rich and well born; the other, the mass of the people. The voice of the people has been said to be the voice of God; and however generally this maxim has been quoted and believed, it is not true in fact. The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in the government. They will check the unsteadiness of the second; and as they cannot receive any advantage by change, they will therefore maintain good government."
There's a great book based on the story of how Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr defended a man charged with murder in old New York. It's based on a true story and it's called The Manhattan Well by Stanley Cloud.
The well still stands too. You can still visit it in the basement of a shop in Soho, which is neat! If you're a Hamilton fan I highly recommend this book. It made him come alive for me
He tried to get the rich of the northern states to secede from the nation, although it horribly failed, and due to it, one of the biggest political parties of the time, I believe it was the federalists, fell due to the conspiracy of Burrs actions.
julinay ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:00:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't know about unappreciated, but as far as admirable qualities go, Burr seemed to be a very proficient lawyer and politician and was appreciative of women's rights at a time when very few people were.
At the same time, it seems like he was a good lawyer and politician precisely because he never put his own opinion or motivation into things and played into what people wanted to see, so it's kind of up in the air.
He also went kind of crazy and tried to conquer Mexico.
No, he was a douche bag. Read about The Manhattan Company.
His company won a bid to provide clean water to New Yorkers but Burr's real intention in getting the winning water bid was to use a loophole to open up a bank in NY (only other bank was Bank of NY). He barely put any money towards the water project and he was blamed for a yellow fever outbreak that summer.
the sad thing is that most people wouldn't agree before someone made a musical about his life.
julinay ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:57:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not quite true... a lot of recent scholarship, even before the musical, had started exploring both Hamilton and Jefferson more in-depth, and finding Jefferson wanting.
Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote the musical based on Ron Chernow's Hamilton biography, which I guess is seen as almost the definitive source about Hamilton's life now. So the academic waves were already a'churning.
I agree with you but the dude also gave the British our flag codes right before the war of 1812 which at that time was pretty much treason. Flag codes = all our encryption keys for our communication. Only reason it didn't become a huge deal was because he died right after. Awesome dude and founding father but he loved the British ever so slightly too much
I'd be interested in reading up on that. Could you provide a source? I Googled "Hamilton flag codes 1812" but didn't find much. No time for a more extensive search at the moment
People remember him a lot in history class as the guy who founded a lot of successful programs from his time as secretary of the treasury under President George Washington.
He's also remembered as the leader of the Federalist party, and one of the more important founding fathers.
That's what pissed me off about the treasury announcing that they are replacing hamilton on the $10 bill. The dude worked so hard to get the usa it's first National bank, advocated industrialising the nation over Jeffersons bullshitery, he campaigned hard for a stronger central govt, contributed to the federalist papers, was at Washington's side during the war, was the first secretary of the treasury, and did all that while starting off as a dirt poor orphan who wasn't even born on the continent.
In middle school we did reports on which founding fathers were most influential to America, in our opinion. Me and every other jackoff in the class did Jefferson or Franklin, and I remember being bored as fuck.
Fast forward to AP US History, and we have a similar assignment; Convince the teacher that your revolutionary of choice was the most important. That class was fucking amazing, lot more diversity in choices. Dude presented about General Washington from the point of view of a soldier he commanded, great shit. Good mixture. Teacher was a notoriously strict, but fair, grader... most people got Bs or low As.
My buddy and I both picked Hamilton and presented together... me extolling the virtues of Hamilton's contributions and him complaining about the impact his financial system has had upon American culture... sort of a point and counterpoint. Teacher gave us an A+, and told us it was because we'd changed his mind on the subject.
My APUSH teacher is deeply obsessed with Hamilton and for the month we talked about the pre, during and post revolutionary times he brought him up and told us interesting stories every chance he could. He would shoe horn him into nearly every discussion and try as best he could to demonstrate to us that he is infinitely more important than most of the politicians we idolize today. He also detested Big Man historians, so to tear down and shatter our preconceived notions about these 'great men' were his favorite things to do in class.
That dude was fucking cunt and Aaron Burr is the real under appreciated person. Thanks Alexander Hamiliton for ruining America, we should have listened to Jefferson instead of Hamilton.
The guy is essentially the epitome of the American dream. He started in a terrible life situation, but through hard work and dedication, he was able to successfully pursue his dreams, and became the person he wanted to be. And in the process, he helped create a country where anyone else can do the same thing.
ivquatch ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:47:01 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
He was a quasi monarchist. Literally to blame for the Whiskey Rebellion, Undelcared war with France, and the Alien & Sedition acts. If not for Jefferson, the country would've imploded. Hamilton had it coming.
Did a really long ass report on the Federalist party in the US. Might as well have been a documentary on Hamilton. Dude is by far the raddest of founding fathers
PaleFury ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:01:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
By Aaron Burr! I dont know anything about him, but I do know that he shot Hamilton. Booyah.
zelisca ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:17:37 on January 18, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fuck Hamilton . He was an elitist prick
Britt121 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:46:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Damn, I really dislike Alexander Hamilton and the federalists. I'm a much bigger fan of Jefferson and the anti-federalists. Central banking is an awful scam destroying society I don't have much respect for those in history or modern times who support them.
"And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.." -TJ
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:19:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Central banking is an awful scam destroying society
Can you really call it a scam if it has been working for the past 200+ years with unmatched success?
There really hasn't been a system to match up to it in modern history. Much of our prosperity as a country is due to Hamilton's centralized banking system.
Britt121 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:52:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Federal Reserve was created in 1913 to protect the dollar. Since then, the dollar has lost 96% of its purchasing power and the size and scope of the state has grown tremendously. Massive war spending since 1913 would only be possible with the ability to print money the way they can. I highly recommend reading "The Creature from Jekyll Island" if you are interested in learning more about our Federal Reserve- it's fascinating and shocking.
I am a government/econ/US history teacher and it has become apparent to me over the years that all wars are fought for the banks.
IT Guy here - you're going to need to submit your comment via a ticket through official support channels before I can respond. Thank you for your understanding.
I love the IT guys. I can fix and get most problems resolved on my own being a computer literate individual, but when I need help I make sure to thank them immensely!
I never understand IT people who say this. Maybe it has something to do with that person's, who happened to be in IT, social skills. I have been in IT for 20 some years (mostly help desk/direct end user interaction), in a vast variety of places, and NEVER have I been treated like shit. Except by bosses/supervisors/managers. The worst thing I can think of, is the guy who POLITELY busted me balls on a regular basis cuz I SUPPOSEDLY didn't get all the PERSONAL photos off his old laptop. Of course later, much later, after my MANAGER intervened and treated me like shit, did he realize that I did, in fact, get all his photos.
Addendum: I've only done support for EMPLOYEES of the companies. Not end users such as Comcast customers, for example.
[deleted] ยท 18 points ยท Posted at 19:08:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Try level 2 support. Just because (most of the time) level 1 is only following the scripts and is generally outsource to 3rd world countries (Philippines, India, Costa Rica) and take 3 hours to come up with shit they get transferred to us in level 2. Then we get shitty irritable users who complain that IT doesnt know shit, and we haven't even gotten a proper description of the issue because the 3rd world helplessdesk employee doesn't know a lick of English or how the grammar is.
Well at least we, the users, aren't the only ones who despise those guys. Is there a way to get them to skip their script and send you to level 2 immediately? I always start off by saying what I've already done to try and fix the problem and yet they force you to go through their stupid troubleshooting script anyway which includes all the same shit I've already tried. I always tell them just to give me someone else right away but they will never comply.
Also, sorry that you have to deal with irate people. The few times I've ever needed any sort of tech support I always get pissed at the level 1 guys but the level 2 guys I get after them are always a welcomed relief and I'm always sure to be courteous toward them.
Most of the time it depends on the company you work for. Sometimes you have to tell them that IT has been made aware (make sure you are in good terms with them, make sure they arent busy) and that you would like it assigned to that tech. Otherwise tell them that you are not currently available to troubleshoot and you would like level 2 to contact you in an hour. If they insist on calling you back, tell them you would liek to speak with a supervisor, or transferred to level 2 support. Most of the time they wil INSIST on troubleshooting and there is nothing you can do.
I'm the main help desk at a University. Our job is more to act as a barrier and filter out the shit for people who are paid a lot more than us. We're not scripted and 9/10 times they're simple problems that we can deal with, or we identify what's wrong/if there's an actual issue. We also tell users what's out of scope. And weed out the idiots like the caller that I had yesterday who wanted to open an outlook datafile with word.
You're one of the good ones. My helpdesk would have tried to to just that for the user and then take an extra hour talking in between them and the managers. Then we get them fix their issues then they complain about our helplessdesk. Sorry you get such a bad rap because of other idiots, that's just the way the cookie crumbles.
Even in corporate IT I'm amazed you haven't seen more shit.
Two years ago I had employee who went so far as to lie to the police about me to try and get me fired because I wouldn't install games on her computer.
Dozens of times I've had people try and lay the blame on me for every kind of situation. Employee fucks up, blame the helpdesk because they clearly did something to your computer and deleted all your files.
I've had two employees try and get me fired because I got a pedophile fired for looking at child porn on his company laptop...
People fucking suck. There's a reason why it's standard practice to record all interactions with customers. The ability to call people on their shit is core to IT support
Honestly, I think it's all down to numbers. The smaller the group you support, the better that group is. Likewise, the smaller the support group, the better people treat the group. People are better to each other when they're failure with each other.
I'm working for a managed service company that supports just under 200,000 users. There's no connection between me and most of the people I support, so people let their emotions get the better of them. It's a lot easier to take out your frustration on the faceless IT employee you'll never meet than the one you'll see in the break room.
On the upside, we're working on using this to our advantage. Clever phone routing to build those relationships up a little bit to help make everything more bearable for everyone. Hasn't been long enough to know if it's working yet, but it's interesting to watch none the less.
Isord ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:58:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's true. I work help desk for a 120 person company. Everyone knows my name and pretty much everyone in the company gets along. I don't think I could ever work for a huge company.
I agree, but like I said, I've worked in various industries as well as number of users although never as much as 200,000. Maybe 20,000 if that. Nonetheless, I'm lucky in sex and nice end users, unlucky in bank account size. LOL
The shitty people tend to stick out more than those who appreciate what IT staff do. I've had more than a couple rude people. But I've also had plenty of people who were endlessly thankful for fixing a small issue. I guess it's just easier to remember the bad over the good.
That's kinda what I was saying. I can only recall ONE that stuck out as being "bad". So there were thousands of others that were "normal" or "good".
dorekk ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:58:15 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Addendum: I've only done support for EMPLOYEES of the companies.
Yes. Oh man. I've primarily supported only employees of other companies, but I've had a couple general public clients, and, well...it's not nice.
l0c0d0g ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:33:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
To be honest, we are shit.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:09:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I learned long ago to always treat IT people well. They fix problems I can't fix myself sometimes, unlike other problems related to humans being annoying and/or wrong.
mrkhiggz ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:52:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My experience so far has been either, "Why doesn't this work. Do you even know what you're doing?" Or "You guys never do anything, why do we even have you?" We are also never thanked by management and overlooked by everyone, unless they need advice about what computer or phone to get their kids. The show IT Crowd is sadly not that exaggerated.
I had this argument for people asking me how to do things with the printer: Ask the IT guy who prints once a year, or the Admin Assistance you prints out 90 pages a day and sits right around the corner from the printer.
Isord ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:01:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As IT I aggree. Same with asking for help with specialized programs. I can help you get photoshop or your accounting software involved, but I've never used either past that. Better to ask other users that have the same software.
For printers I think every IT person ever would rather they just go away at this point.
I work in IT dealing with a lot of hospitals and medical groups. I want to thank the god damn nurses. They're very appreciated for what everyone knows they're doing, but if you had any idea how much more they do to keep shit running people would be amazed.
The number of times I've asked a doctor to find me a nurse who knows what facebook is... fucking best people in the world. They're smart and willing to put up with so much shit and I fucking love working with them.
The docs tend to be assholes though...
Jracx ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:35:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Had to call hospital IT last night. Such a chill conversation once the dude found out I was a nurse and had actually done all the little Bullshit troubleshooting stuff before calling him.
xj4me ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:37:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ill second this! I worked for a few small offices and clinics. The nurses were always helpful and knew exactly how to describe the issue and even take screenshots. The doctors were okay attitude wise but their computer skills were terrible.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:36:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Actually you would be surprised. Beers are easier to catch than a football. Source: Got drunk w. a lot of rednecks and beers were launched. Advice: Catch with an open hand and let the beer hitting the hand cause it to close or you are gonna get some broken fingers... oh and keep your thumb out of the way. Just focus on having it hit your palm. Also abort if the dumbass threw it straight for your face.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:04:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:59:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I watched wrestling when he was Stunning Steve Austin. Years later when my nephew started watching wrestling on Stone Cold came on with his badass persona all I could think of was him as stunning Steve.
Joetato ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:06:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I feel like I remember seeing Stone Cold chuck a beer from the top of the ramp all the way to the ring and the Undertaker caught it once as well. Unless I imagined that (and I may have), Stone Cold apparently has an arm on him as well.
People like him and Jim Johnston are people who should be receivning Warrior Awards as it was what he(ultimate warrior) intended to have in his hof speech. Now the award is just a publicity stunt for WWE
If he hadn't done it though, would someone else have developed something similar? I feel like technology was heading in that direction and there were a lot of people working on the same sorts of things and Ritchie's was the first one that worked best and so that's what we use now, but really someone would have come up with something eventually? Maybe I'm wrong. Not saying he's not important, just maybe not underappreciated?
Probably, but C is so perfect. It's low enough level where it's efficient, but high enough where it's easy to use. It's used in pretty much every operating system in existence and computers would be way different without it.
Which is why it's a great candidate for your first programming language to learn. Lots of students learn Java first and I feel like you'd kind of just take things like garbage collection, memory allocation, etc for granted.
[deleted] ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 19:45:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And driving students should have to first operate a house and buggy.
No, but they should definitely learn how to drive a car with a manual transmission, which is a much more apt analogy.
C is still a very powerful and versatile language in which many things are still written. You get much more educationally out of learning C than learning Java.
[deleted] ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 20:33:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not if you never use C.
I mean, you may as well say you should start with assembly. Nothing will teach you more about how computers really work than assembly, even C abstracts a lot of that from you. Then you can learn about how a compiler works. Then, years in to your training, maybe you can write something actually useful right?
C is useful, but there is more than enough space in the programming world for people to specialize and not have to know everything.
Actually you have described a complete computer science education almost exactly! Java can of course be part of it. I am not saying you should know everything about how a computer works before you are allowed to write anything useful or novel, but in the course of a computer science education you most certainly should learn everything about how a computer works.
And even if you never use C, you'll go much further in your career if you understand it. Years ago I discovered a buffer overflow exploit in Apache because proper precautions weren't being taken with the client's IP address. I never would have understood what was going on beneath the application (PHP) code if I hadn't understood the whole stack, including the language in which my webserver is written.
So sure, don't learn C. Don't learn anything you don't absolutely have to. Be a mediocre software engineer. Why not?
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:07:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Because there are a lot more programming jobs out there than just the ones that require that kind of in-depth knowledge?
You said C was a good candidate for a first language, If C was a lot of people's first introduction to programming they might do something else instead because C is needlessly complicated for most tasks in the modern world.
Hell, even game developers need not know a lick of C these days.
Not everyone who is going to program needs to be a computer science major, is what I'm saying.
C is needlessly complicated for most tasks in the modern world
First, this is completely false. I'm a professional C developer working on enterprise applications. If it was really that complicated we'd have switched to a different language.
Second, suppose that what you said is true-- suppose C actually is too complicated for most tasks. That doesn't mean it's a bad learning tool. Most students aren't writing programs that are tens of thousands of lines long, or that need to run flawlessly on Windows, Mac, and every flavor of Linux, or that need to do complicated processing for a hundred years, uninterrupted, without crashing or leaking memory. Most students are trying to figure out what a for loop does or how to write a hangman game on the console. C is great for that.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 07:07:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
C is more verbose and quirky for that simple stuff than, say, python, or any form of basic.
As far as the professional world, I'm not arguing that C doesn't have its place, but there's a reason .Net and Java are so popular, they make it quicker, easier, and safer to write code that actually does stuff. If you don't care about performance and aren't writing something low level, then C is probably not the best choice.
Take a good look at any Java or C++ handbook/textbook and compare it to Brian Kernighan's C book. Compare the size.
I won't say that makes C a much easier language to learn, but it is a whole lot quicker to digest.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:59:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Seriously. K&R is a barebones walk through the machine simplified down to the point where you could visualize memory for what is is - a long assed chain of slots with addresses at each slot. It really helps to understand not only memory management - but file reading, optimization, serialization strategies, types and sizes.
It is required reading, IMHO.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:55:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I started with Java and Actionscript (sorry) - and though it is nice to have things like memory management and references handled for you - if you don't at least understand SOME C the virtual machine on which you Java app is running would be like a black box. I think it is totally necessary to understand what a pointer is and what memory really is.
Of course it is not required to make a web app - but its is helpful to understand how these things work from the bit level up.
I think C is something every programmer should be able to read and understand. Maybe not write or write well - but it should not look like black magic.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:09:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I disagree. We have evolved beyond the need for every programmer to have to understand those things. Will it make them better programmers? Probably, but they don't really need it.
PRMan99 ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:40:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not in America. The chances of having to drive a manual car are virtually nil.
I finally had to move my Dad's Mustang last week when he broke his foot. First manual car I have driven in 25 years.
dorekk ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 02:00:29 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm an American in my early 30s and I know how to drive a stick. When I hear shit like this I feel like a unicorn.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:05:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No, but they should definitely learn how to drive a car with a manual transmission.
BOOM BITCH!
0x8086 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:24:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's a poor analogy. A lot of companies still use outdated computer technology because the expense to replace their systems would greatly exceed maintenance costs. Just because you might have an up to date computer, doesn't mean everyone does. Eventually, most computer programmers are going to come across a job that requires them to modify, fix, or create a program on an outdated platform that may require strict memory management. Understanding a language like C or even Assembly is important to not only understanding more modern languages and computer science as a whole, but also important to many jobs and problems a software engineer may encounter.
dorekk ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:01:29 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hell, I believe my company still has one or two COBOL programmers.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:15:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So you know COBOL right? And assembly? Fortran? Ada? RPG? And you think it is reasonable to expect every programmer to understand the ins and outs of those languages?
No one calls the Java business application developer when their AS400 has a problem. Just like I wouldn't call an electrician for a plumbing problem.
Is it helpful to know these things? Yes. Is it necessary to do the job properly? No.
Tell that the CS subreddit. I suggested it as a first language, and it got downvoted to kingdom come.
"Too difficult" they said.
"Java...." they said.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:04:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
hahaha I love this. Interfaces for interfaces for interfaces for generics for templates --- gah!!! I remember when Java was a sweet girl with automatic memory management. You take her on a date and you don't have to write headers - or worry about malloc anything. It was so sweet.
Then she turned into a ball busting bitch that gained 300 pounds and started wearing 50 different outfits and styles for every mood -- all while growing cancerously in complexity and general shittiness.
I still love JAVA - but complexity it almost its key feature now.
synept ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 22:22:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Probably, but C is so perfect.
Yeah, except for that whole NULL pointer and NULL-terminated string stuff, which has resulted in immeasurable stability and security problems in computing.
C is a sports car. Made to go fast and to be driven by people who know what they're doing. If you give it to a novice and they crash is or to truck driver and doesnt find it useful for his job, it wont be their fault.
Select the car most suited for your need because different needs require different cars and no one language has been invented that can suit all needs.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:07:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I wouldn't even say its a sports car. Its a V12 attached to a set of wheels. No seat. No windshield. None of that weak crap for bitches that need to be coddled.
synept ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:25:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The entire world's experience with software engineering would beg to differ.
If you're too dumb to use that "technique", then by all means, stick with Java.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:05:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Only when implemented incorrectly. The machine always does exactly what it is told.
synept ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:02:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That argument has nothing to do with the qualities of a programming language, which was the discussion here. Sure, assembly is great too, I guess.
josefx ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:43:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's used in pretty much every operating system in existence.
Excluding Linux the most commonly used OS kernels use a subset of C++, even most compiler writers have abandoned pure C. The way C forces programmers to handle "efficiency" has given birth to decades of buffer overflow based code injection attacks. Almost every standard C operation on memory and text will fuck you over unless you manually triple check your input at any step and even better doing so for text is a slow O(n) operation that might cause a segfault ( oh we forgot to terminate that string somewhere) instead of a quick O(1) operation.
C is only perfect if you are a black hat looking for an easy target.
You mean Windows and OSX devices. And the core of NT is still C, as is the Mach microkernel Darwin is based on. iOS, Windows Phone, all other mobile devices, ChromeOS devices, and of course, the wide array of embedded devices like routers, TVs, etc., all use C. vtable indirection is too expensive for a large array of systems programming use cases, and one of the main reasons Microsoft has been able to use C++ where it can is because it invests heavily in language infrastructure. But that doesn't change the fact there's a massive amount of C in every operating system.
josefx ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:12:52 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
as is the Mach microkernel Darwin is based on. iOS, Windows Phone, all other mobile devices, ChromeOS devices,....
The NT kernel uses C++ the XNU (a fork from Mach 3) kernel uses C++ that is documented and they are the kernels used in any current Microsoft or Apple product. Chrome OS itself is another Linux incarnation. No need to list these products as if there was a difference to what I stated.
all use C. vtable indirection is too expensive
First vtable indirection is fully optional in c++. Even most of the c++ standard library relies on template based code reuse and avoids run-time overhead of virtual methods when possible.
Second if you really prefer function pointers to implement inheritance then you are free to use them. They still work in C++ when needed. C++ is almost a valid super set of C so in case you need to write ugly, buggy, buffer overflow inducing code to get out the last bit of performance you can and nothing will stop you from doing so.
fact there's a massive amount of C in every operating system.
There is a large amount of C in GCC, that does not change the fact that pure C is not considered good enough by people responsible for the mentioned projects and the C used is restricted to the subset valid in C++.
If he hadn't done it though, would someone else have developed something similar?
Yes. There were other languages with comparable features even before C was invented. Pascal, for example.
For a while, Pascal fairly widely used for systems programming, the same niche as C. For example, on the original Macintosh, there was a mixture of MC68000 assembly and Pascal. The Mac only switched over to C later as it became more popular.
Also, both C and Pascal are generally referred to as members of the ALGOL family of programming languages. They both have their own improvements on ALGOL and their own different ways of doing things, but they are both fundamentally doing the same thing in the same way.
C eventually won out because it had some practical advantages over other languages. One of those was that the official version of Pascal was limited in a few ways (since it was originally meant as a teaching language), so while there were lots of extended Pascal dialects sporting the missing features, nobody did it the same way so you had a bunch of versions of Pascal that were all incompatible. C didn't suffer from that because the base version had enough to make people happy.
Yeah basically I was saying I didn't think he qualified for most unappreciated person in history, but I can see how that could be overlooked when there's an opportunity to say something faux insightful.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:13:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I agree, but it's not like development is impossible without higher order languages than assembly....it's just a pain in the ass
[deleted] ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 22:47:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You'd be surprised what some people are willing to do. I made a fully dynamic sprite engine ('infinite' sprites), with complex features/particle emitters/physics all developed to work on mode 13h - x86 asm + 32bit extensions in about 2 weeks worth of work. Never made a game for it though.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:16:17 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, that's silly. Any performance improvement you get is outweighed x100 from uusing mode 13.
I think there are opengl wrappers for masm32, though. I know for a fact there are masm32 gdi wrappers.
C is also the language that most high-level languages are based on. C++, Java, C#, and Objective-C are all very widely used languages that wouldn't exist without C!
[deleted] ยท 175 points ยท Posted at 18:49:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
I'm a bad storyteller, and I must admit I can't exactly describe how historically important it is. I would love for a historian to fill in the details. Generally, in Belgium, two or three men are credited for almost singlehandedly stopping the German invasion in World War I. Karel Cogge, Hendrik Geeraert and Prudent Nuyten came up with the idea to strategically open (water) locks to inundate large parts of the countryside to stop the Germans. Nuyten was the general who came up with the idea. Cogge was responsible for the locks and upon hearing from the plan immediately set out with his bike to plan it out in a way that wouldn't also inundate the parts where Belgian soldiers were -- some makeshift dams had to be created. He knew the locks inside out. Geeraert then set out to actually execute the plan. The inundated area was 8km wide and effectively stopped the Germans in their tracks. In winter, the Belgian army had to shoot the ice, so the Germans couldn't cross it. From that day onwards, the war became one of trench warfare. Geeraert made it the to the Belgian bank note of 1000 Frank. Then king Albert I told Cogge "he did more for his fatherland than a whole regiment." Fun fact: Cogge and Geeraert never met.
Its pretty neat but not exactly an original thought. De Hollandse Waterlinie had at this stage existed for well over a century, while strategic flooding was a common practice in wars in the low countries from at least as early as the 16th century. Still good of them to remember though.
[deleted] ยท 20 points ยท Posted at 20:03:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I once heard different versions of the story circulated in differant local villages. Some claim Cogge was a hero, some say he was a useless drunk...
P.s.: where did that football player come from? karel geeraert? ;-)
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:14:38 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Haha nice spot. Fixed
n23_ ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:24:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
But wasn't like 99% of belgium captured by the germans? Seems that way on those maps of the WW1 frontline.
Anyway, the Dutch planned to do the same in WW2 with the hollandse waterlinie or dutch waterline, but the german advance was a bit too fast. Also, they used paratroopers which can easily be dropped behind such a defense and the bombed Rotterdam to shit.
The paratroopers failed initially but the waterlinie didn't hold much and because of the German air superiority the Netherlands was a done deal. Did give the Germans the great idea to flood big parts of the Netherlands as a fuck you after their defeat though.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:33:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yup, it's the 1% that held them off! And that's the area where I come from. Coincidence? I think not.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:42:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wait, if they never met, who are the guys in this photo? Are they just some random officers?
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:17:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yup some random shmucks, here's where I got the full story from, there are some nice pictures as well.
croufa ยท 68 points ยท Posted at 19:15:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
She was ethnically Jewish (and a woman working in a traditionally man's job), so had to flee Germany prior to WW2, and her colleague, chemist Otto Hahn, got all of the credit. He actually won the Nobel Prize for it and denied that Meitner had anything to do with the discovery.
Only decades later did the paper trail of letters between them, confirm that she provided the theory behind the discovery. She was finally honored with the Fermi Prize in old age, but is still not well known among scientists and the general public.
She has an element named for her. That's like, pretty high up on the appreciation scale for a scientist.
croufa ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 02:57:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well certainly. But she's not very well known outside of nuclear engineers and some chemists. Lots of people don't know the names and people behind all of the elements. Mt is pretty short lived too... not an everyday element... only lasts a little over 7 seconds.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:55:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Scientists may not know her first name, but anybody who has taken chemistry recently has noticed the symbol Mt, for Meitnerium.
Maybe not the most but she still is to me. My grandmother, say what you will but she could have changed the course of the war. Not my much at first but butterfly affect would do the rest.
She was captured by the nazis while giving out propaganda fliers. Stupid of her to do so after Mass can't argue that and she got caught. She was torched tortured for three days but she did not give out any intel. End up in concentration camp in Austria where she almost gave up on life. But the need to help others kept her going. She stole small portions of food, crumbs of bread, peace of apple and such and she rarely ate it her self, always gave to others.
Few years ago there was a documentary about this camp and one woman mention one ''crazy'' inmate was stealing food for others from her hometown. My mom broke in to tears as she knew who she meant.
So to me, my grand mother is the most under appreciated person in history.
Was she German? My German great-grandma had a similar story that ended up with her in a concentration camp. Her street was passing out anti-Nazi propaganda.
epraider ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:09:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The most extreme circumstances are when you truly see the kind of person someone is, and your grandmother was truly a selfless and caring person. That's incredible.
kamlnskl ยท 43 points ยท Posted at 17:46:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Stanislav Petrov: His job was to report missile launches from the United States. Well one day in 1983, he got reports of launches from the United States. He decided not to report the launches because he thought they were a false alarm. Well, he was right. If he reported the launch to his superiors, Armageddon would have gone down that day.
Tldr: Russian guy didn't report a false alarm, saving the world
Whats scary about this is how many times this has probably happened in history. Some earth-shattering thing is always about to happen and some poor, underpaid son-of-a-bitch steps in and saves the world.
The fact that we haven't exterminated ourselves by now does make me think of divine intervention when we need it the most. Though I'm pretty sure He's getting tired of our shit.
61185 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 17:56:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
ฮคhe unknown fellow who left a gate unำocked in Constantinople in 1453. Talk ะฐbout altering history. That was the truะต end of the roman empire after ะฐll.
I don't remember the full story, but iirc the Turks are trying to overtake Constantinople but couldn't siege the walls. Then someone left a gate unlocked, giving then entrance to invade the city with the city unaware.
Yeah, the Ottomans brought giant cannons and pummeled the walls of Constantinople for weeks with their giant Dardanelles Guns - aka Great Turkish Bombards. But it was so slow in loading, that the Byzantines could repair the walls... until the Ottomans concentrated on one part of the wall and unleashed utter hell.
These walls Aka the Theodosian Walls were some of the strongest fortifications in the world. But even they slowly were reduced to rubble.
subsequently, he took off his royal clothing and joined his soldiers in their last stand. Apparently his body was not officially found.
Dan Carlin, in his Hardcore History podcast, mentioned that one story of his death had Constantine fighting until the very moment the Ottoman army breached the walls... And then as they began marching between the walls, Constantine was said to have jumped from the height of the remaining wall into the midst of the invading forces with his sword unsheathed, and died.
This is of course not a definite story... but man, it is just about as epic as it's possible to get.
I've always wanted them to make a movie about the siege of Constantinople.
Such a cool setup - you've got:
Mehmet II, who was a firecracker himself (declared himself the Roman Emperor, had plans to invade Italy and take Rome itself to demonstrate that claim later on in life)
Constantine XI, who was dutiful and tried to do whatever the hell he could do to save the last remaining bastion of the Roman Empire, the last emperor of a 2000 year old empire who says badass last words and goes into a suicidal assault when his empire falls. If I remember correctly he also gave a badass speech about how they were defending the last place the Roman Empire still stood on Earth, as well as all of Christianity (it was thought that if Constantinople fell, so would the rest of Europe - and honestly, a good chunk of it DID fall. The Turks got to Vienna by 1689, about 240 years after this all happens).
A bunch of Venetians and other western Christians that decided to stay to protect an oriental version of their religion (technically the Romans had switched to a version of Catholicism, in desperation about a decade before, but nobody really believed in it on either side)
The biggest cannon on earth at the time - initially offered to the Romans, but they couldn't afford it, so it went to the Sultan.
And gigantic city walls around the formerly largest and richest city on Earth, which had never been breached since they were built 1,000 years beforehand. The Turks rallied against them for weeks, and nearly gave up, but decided to make a final push, which was ultimately successful.
Not to mention a bunch of family drama (Mehmet wanted Constantine to retire and rule some lands in southern Greece, peacefully, and he had a brother down there who had to deal with a bunch of drama), and the fact that they're all related (but have a different religion and speak a different language) because Byzantine princesses had been marrying Sultans for centuries.
And then the last recorded heir of the family ended up as a bodyguard for the Pope.
It's basically a fantasy story, but it happened in real life.
On a similar note, a book like The Religion or Ironfire which are both fictionalized accounts of the siege of Malta, a similar siege would be excellent to see adapted
JQuilty ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:34:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't know why you'd call Greek Orthodoxy an oriental version of Christianity. Christianity started in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Mehmet also didn't need to take Rome to make a claim on being Roman Emperor -- Constantinople had been the capital for nearly 1000 years at that point. To this day, the Patriarch of Constantinople is styled as "of Constantinople, the New Rome".
I was simplifying a little bit because most people don't know the whole history of the Roman/Eastern Roman Empire. I'll clarify.
I don't know why you'd call Greek Orthodoxy an oriental version of Christianity. Christianity started in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Agreed, but to the Latins at the time, and honestly I'd say most of Reddit's audience (which I assume is based primarily in western Europe or lands colonized by western Europeans - essentially the Latins of the modern day - hell, look at the alphabet we're using), Eastern Orthodoxy has different rules, structures and appearances than western Christianity (Catholicism and Protestantism) do. Granted, some of the non-mainline Protestant versions of Christianity got pretty crazy too, but that didn't even start to happen until about 70 years after this event.
Mehmet also didn't need to take Rome to make a claim on being Roman Emperor
No, not at all. In fact he made the claim that he was Roman Emperor immediately upon taking Constantinople, IIRC, and I THINK (not 100% sure of this), the title was kept by his heirs until the 1920s, when the Ottoman Empire was disbanded. However Mehmet, and several others throughout history (I'm looking at you, Justinian) have felt that styling yourself with the title Roman Emperor is best paired with holding both old Rome and New Rome (Constantinople). New Rome is absolutely the capital and all that's required. But old Rome is where the shindig started. It's a huge prestige thing.
And in a world where people felt that God literally determined the events of their lives, it's a clear indication to the rest of the world that you are the rightful Roman Emperor. And Mehmet took the principle of Translatiio Imperii (I might be butchering this) seriously. Look at how he dealt with appointing the Patriarch. He took that shit seriously as one of his job duties - even though he was a Muslim.
I'm picturing Russell Crowe as Constantine .... It's definitely because of Gladiator, but damn man. I would love a well made epic of this story.
It might even be one of those stories where they have to dial it down because people won't believe things. If you had to, you could even do a Wim Wenders esque thing with having angels watching the fall of Rome if you really need to add things to it. But you don't need it... This story is just made for a grand movie.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:55:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
actually Constantinopole was sacked a couple of times by "crusaders"
EDIT: It appears a little pro-Turkish, but I'm guessing just about any film that came out about the topic would either be pro-Greek or pro-Turk.
[deleted] ยท 28 points ยท Posted at 19:39:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The first body that was believed to be the emperor's ... was decapitated and marched around the ruined capital. However, it failed to gather any recognition from the citizens of Constantinople.
I mean, maybe because it didn't have a head?
solepsis ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:42:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think the Crusader sack of Constantinople involved some kind of treachery like that.
As far as unlocked gates fucking someone's whole shit up, I'd go with the Khitans unlocking a section of the Great Wall and letting Ghengis Khan into Northern China.
JQuilty ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:30:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They used a cannon to knock down the Theodosian walls that were falling apart. Even if this person had done that, the Romans had already lost.
parav0x ยท 31 points ยท Posted at 17:33:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
When the Ottomans besieged the Byzantine (Western Eastern Roman) Empire's capital of Constantinople, the Ottoman army managed to breach the city walls via a gate that had been accidentally left open. Now, this city's defenses were legendary - it had withstood decade upon decade of sieges from nearly every marauding army that Eurasia had to offer.
But this time was different. Because of someone's careless actions, yet another long, drawn-out siege was interrupted by an incursion of Ottoman troops who basically walked right in. The panic of seeing this breach caused the city's defenses to rout and the city quickly fell.
This was basically the final, unexpected fall of the Roman Empire, an empire that had lasted for 1,500 years. It dealt a terrible blow for Christianity and heralded the rise of Islam in the region, and arguably thrust the world from the Middle Ages into the modern age.
Edit: Can't read a compass.
GavinZac ยท 17 points ยท Posted at 19:01:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
One history of it I've read says that the Roman Emperor, Constantine XI, was attending the first and last recombined Catholic/Orthodox mass in the Hagia Sofia, the impending doom having mended the schism briefly. He believed the city must not fall to Muslims, or all of Europe would. He hated his situation, he hated the idea of being the last name on a long list when none of it was really his fault.
The Turks offered him a small kingdom outside the city if he would surrender; he refused, saying he had no authority to not be the emperor. He swore he would die before the city surrendered to them. His decision to make amends with Catholicism may have created traitors inside the walls; some said they'd rather be ruled by turbans than mitres; the Latins had of course sacked the city themselves. Related or not, before the mass was finished, the Turks got in.
He cried, "the city has fallen, yet I live!", stripped himself of his emperor's garb and donned common armour and a helmet. Joining his soldiers as an ordinary man, a body no different from those piled up, no-one actually saw him die; the Turks had to dress up a decapitated body to parade it as a trophy. A little mythology arose that he was rescued from the battle by an angel and turned to marble, buried beneath the gate, and will rise again to take the city back for the Greeks.
We can't exactly call a guy who is remembered by Greek nationalists to this day as completely underappreciated, but I think given how romanticised and familiar the Roman Empire's history is, that more people don't know of Constantine XI is kind of odd.
Another man whose contribution to world history is underappreciated, on the opposite side of the battle, was a Hungarian engineer named Orban who built, for the Turks, canons of enormous size. With these they tore through the previously impenetrable stone walls, a symbol of medieval life wiped away in a revolution so dramatic that the machines he built mark a dividing line through European and near-Eastern history.
I'd be careful about inflating one small occurrence to the level of a world-altering event. It's a common trap that people fall into when studying history
Joetato ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:51:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I wouldn't call it unexpected. The night before Constantinople fell, people supposedly saw mysterious lights around the Hagia Sophia. They took this as a spirit leaving and thought God had withdrawn his favor because the city was about to fall.
Then again, that story could have been made up post-sacking and nothing like that ever happened.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 17:50:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
thrust the world from the Middle Ages into the modern age.
The above statement about Columbus and the new world is absolutely true and a big reason why the fall of Constantinople is seen as a turning point. Also, many scholars from the city fled and ended up in Italy, hastening the Renaissance.
dzm2458 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:25:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
i'd say the moops getting driven out of the iberian peninsula was larger in the context of columbus, this is where the funds for his expedition were derived from
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:55:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
-14k- ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:21:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
woops!
labalag ยท 23 points ยท Posted at 17:57:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Constantinople was a big hub in the East-West trade. The Ottomans started levying more and more tolls so the Portuguese went around Africa to find India and to bypass the Ottomans. Then one Columbus had the bright idea to sail west. The rest is as we call it history.
crop028 ยท -4 points ยท Posted at 19:25:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So this gate being left open led to the slave trade and racial genocide? Great....
Growing pains are hard. The world was not a better place before Columbus, and then he strolled around and suddenly magically made it worse.
Slavery (or similar economic bondage - serfdom, indentured servitude) and genocide have been the rule, rather than the exception through most of history.
Every race, every creed, every city, and every nation.
I'm not going to say bad things didn't happen - they absolutely did. But the economy that flourished with the ocean-going ships of the 15th and 16th centuries led to a growing capitalist economy, an educated class, higher math, and the steam engine.
The steam engine being the ancestor to most of the creature comforts we have today (including ample food), and productivity not being directly tied to how many men you can force to do something at a given time.
Considering we went from starvation and early death basically being a way of life (for 200,000, or 3.9 billion years, depending on how you want to calculate it) to ample food for most people within 300-400 years after this event, yeah, it was a pretty big deal.
The world was not a better place before Columbus, and then he strolled around and suddenly magically made it worse.
Why does the west LOVE to put an emphasis on Columbus when all he did was to find a piece of land that wasn't even what he thought (India)? He wasn't a genius like Tesla or Einstein or the fucking Newton; he just sailed in a boat until the boat stopped sailing.
He did absolutely nothing special and whatever he did anyone else could've done it with no skill involved.
Why do people put such an emphasis on Grog's stupid spear invention? All he did was put a sharp piece of rock on the end of a stick, that's not that special, anyone else could've done it with no skill involved.
Yeah, anyone else with a boat could have done it. But nobody else did.
Columbus is overrated in the sense that he's usually the first and sometimes only naval explorer to enter the conversation but the larger movement that he was a part of where European nations struck out across the oceans to find new lands and new routes to old lands completely changed the world in so many obvious ways I can't believe I even have to type this.
PlayMp1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:27:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Regardless of whether he was skilled or special, he was the one to do it.
Well he was kindof a shitty person, but no, he really didn't do anything particularly revolutionary except be wrong in a very major way.
Yanto5 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:04:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
nah, that was already happening. you just read a story about a city being slaughtered, and likely enslaved. this city was the last of an empire that had spent the last couple of millennium enslaving large groups of people.
crop028 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:22:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't think the Romans were great people. I just don't think a near dead empire would do much harm, and massacring Native Americans is bad.
...and untold advancements in science and industry which have done far more to enhance humanity than anything before it. I'm not going to pretend that slaves and racial destruction are a good thing, because they're not, and I also think your entire premise is utterly ridiculous (no, I don't think unlocking one gate is entirely responsible for the state of everything that followed it and the world today) but if you're going to attribute all the evil to it you have to attribute the good as well.
labalag ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:45:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not really. The Portuguese we're already trying since the late 14th century and had discovered south-Africa in 1488-ish. The slave trade and racial genocide would've happened irregardless.
crop028 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:01:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The slave trade wouldn't have been nearly as powerful without the new world plantations.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:33:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'd say that the discovery of a few new continents made it worthwhile. The inhabitants lost their land through right of conquest, so there's no sense in spilling tears over them.
crop028 ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 20:43:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So what happens in conquests is people have to submit to their new rulers. What happened in these conquests is everyone was massacred, or died of horrible disease. These aren't normal conquests, maybe if the natives were treated in a somewhat civil way I'd be fine with the discovery.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:19:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
but that's inaccurate. as a conqueror comes in, there is absolutely nothing that said they had to treat people humanely. that's quite literally what conquering a people is - the conqueror decides what to do with their new subjects. Wars are not something that is new, i'm sorry that you've got such a naive worldview as to believe that the Geneva convention existed prior to the 1800s, or that you think that the victors & conquerors would, for one moment, be concerned about people they viewed as beneath them.
at any rate, you're mostly just pissed at disease, which would have happened anyway.
crop028 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:22:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Do you have to be an asshole and call me naive? I know conquerors can do whatever the fuck they want, but they were generally kinder than the conquerors of the new world.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:29:35 on January 18, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I apologize for calling you naive, it was rude.
The conquerors of the new world did it exactly the same way that the conquerors of any other place did. The native americans largely died out due to disease, and a few centuries after the fact, we had some mass genocides such as the trail of tears.
Things like this largely happened because the people of the time did not view them as fully human, it's a very dangerous situation to use modern morality to judge the people of the past. There were a lot of things that were & are different, and that should be taken into consideration.
crop028 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:34:08 on January 18, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, I understand that the discovery of the new world was inevitable, I just wish that Europeans had a bit more time to become get some morals before it was discovered. The late 18th century would be ideal, as enough people would probably be non-racist to avoid any genocide, but just any time at least century later would be good.
dorekk ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:14:46 on January 19, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As droppingknowledge2 said, about 90% of the population of Native (North) Americans were killed accidentally, due to disease. Even if Europeans had discovered the Americas 300 years later (which is incredibly unlikely), that still would have happened.
crop028 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:15:57 on January 19, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
By then they may have been able to cure diseases more effectively. The Chinese were already leaning how to build immunity to smallpox, without the new world the West would have paid more attention to China.
crop028 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:16:08 on January 19, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
By then they may have been able to cure diseases more effectively. The Chinese were already leaning how to build immunity to smallpox, without the new world the West would have paid more attention to China.
jseego ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:47:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Don't you mean Eastern Roman?
parav0x ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:49:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Whoops, yeah I messed up. Good save!
[deleted] ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 17:49:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Are you a Turk? Then it's none of your business.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 18:46:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There was a small gate that was unlocked that the Ottoman took over. Upon seeing the Turkish flags the defenders freaked out, driving the final nail in the coffin of the city's defense.
But several other events led to the city being conquered, not just one unlocked gate.
Eh, by that point, Constantinople was basically a political backwater. The Byzantine Empire didn't have much to show for itself after Isaac Angelos fucked everything up.
Joetato ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:55:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
By 1453, the Byzantine "Empire" consisted of Contantinople itself and a few miles outside the city. There wasn't much left of it at all.
You don't have to be an ass about it. I didn't know how leaving a gate open resulted in the fall and I wanted to know more.
Yanto5 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:12:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
sorry.
The gate was left open, allowing a group of ottomans into the city. they flew their flags from the gatehouse, the happened just after the general of a large section of the Roman troops had been wounded and had retreated from the walls. The caused panic among the Roman, Genoese and Venetian defenders, who began to scatter, the Romans running for the city, the Venetians for their ships and the Genoese had nowhere to run, many of them committed suicide by jumping from the walls.
Then the Romans made a last stand, with the emperor apparently joining them dressed as a common soldier. he was probably killed, although reports vary.
at the end of this all, this meant that the Bosporus straights between the Mediterranean and the black sea, as well as most of the Mediterranean now belonged to the Islamic ottomans, making trade difficult for the Christian European nations, forcing them to sail round Africa for their trade routes. Constantinople/Byzantium was the site of a holy see for eastern orthodoxy, and the only remaining holy see outside of Vatican.
They were already on their way out at that point, he didn't really change much
formgry ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:06:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You shouldnt pretend it wouldnt have fallen otherwise.
PRMan99 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:38:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also. David's troops seized Jerusalem by climbing up through the caves that provided spring water to the palace. They literally started their siege by killing the current king FIRST.
I mean, sure that one event led to the city's quick fall, but the Byzantines were outmatched by that point anyway. It was only a matter of time
azlef900 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:50:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ottoman cannons can't melt Byzantine walls. 1493 was an inside job.
twersx ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:21:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Even if a gate was left unlocked/opened it wouldn't have made a huge difference. The Roman Empire was fucked at that point, they weren't going to get any help from the rest of the Christian nations on account of the spanking they all got 9 years prior.
It's not like it would have lasted much beyond that anyway. They had such a small amount of land left and nobody intended to send aid.
dbsndust ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:57:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
More like that dumbass Crusader who decided he wanted to sack Constantinople thus leading to the decline and eventual downfall of the Byzantine empire
-eDgAR- ยท 2958 points ยท Posted at 14:03:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
On July 19, 1969, John Fairfax became the first person to row solo across an ocean. His fame was short-lived, though, as the very next day humans landed on the Moon for the first time.
For me, the difference is what the act represents. One is physical endurance, the other the pinnacle of human ingenuity and engineering at that time.
-eDgAR- ยท 607 points ยท Posted at 15:36:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think people would've cared then, that's a pretty fucking amazing feat. I probably couldn't row across a river, let alone an entire ocean.
Ferniff ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 19:44:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sure it's an amazing feat, but what did we as people benefit from that? He discovered that it was tough, wet and something people probably shouldn't do. The other guys left the planet and set foot on a fucking moon.
dorekk ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 02:04:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As others have mentioned in this thread, people who have achieved other somewhat meaningless things are still remembered, like the first person to make a trans-Atlantic flight.
Ferniff ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:37:38 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's an amazing thing to do, but I wouldn't say that makes him "the most under apprreciated person in history"
yaffle53 ยท 292 points ยท Posted at 15:50:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
It's an amazing feat but not one that has changed the world for the better in any way.
Edit: All those people saying "yes, but how did landing on the moon change the world for better?" I never said it did.
-eDgAR- ยท 333 points ยท Posted at 15:54:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The thread isn't asking specifically for people that changed the world for the better, just people that are underappreciated.
yaffle53 ยท 147 points ยท Posted at 16:08:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes, but when we're talking about those people who are the most underappreciated in history someone who was good at rowing would probably come pretty far down the list.
I don't think you understand the gravitas of rowing across an entire ocean. It isn't even just the act of travelling over an incredibly large distance, but oceans are known to swallow entire ships - rowing across 20 foot waves for thousands of miles with very little in the way of direction is a pretty amazing feat.
nsto ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:11:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I understand it. That still doesn't make him the most under appreciated person in history.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 18:42:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah but it's not like we're making some super formal list. And "under appreciated" is somewhat vague - people could've appreciated his feat more than they did, so he's underappreciated. Doesn't necessarily have to change the world.
mrt90 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:01:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well using "recognize the full worth of" as a definition... I'd say the "worth" in his feat is close to nil? I guess it helped him stay in shape? Maybe gave some journalists some article content?
Hardly see how it's under-appreciated considering people are talking about it on the internet 50+ years later.
But what about rowing across the ocean deserves appreciation? I feel like I appreciate this guy the perfect amount. Now that guy who created 8 of the main 14 vaccinations is most definitely under appreciated. Imagine all the lives he's saved and yet has almost no recognition
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:35:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well I don't appreciate and don't think he deserves much appreciation for that feat. Congratulations, of course. If he had done something that changed the world for the better I would appreciate that.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:39:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:12:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He holds the historical record for the largerst amout of underappreciated rowing in history EDIT: ever!
nsto ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:14:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No, it's asking for the MOST appreciated person in HISTORY.
A guy who rowed across the ocean obviously doesn't deserve that title over someone who saved countless lives
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:36:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm not sure why so many of you are treating this like it's a competition.
nsto ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:38:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nobody is treating it like a competition, they're calling out stupid answers to a specific question.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:46:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I liked the rowing answer. Certainly someone I've never heard of, which is my whole reason for clicking on the thread.
nsto ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:50:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm glad you learned something, you are an idiot if you think a rower is the most unappreciated person in history though.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:53:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I never said he was. Christ, there you go turning it into a competition again. I just think it's a neat fact. Same as the guy who invented all those vaccines. I'm just here to kill time and be entertained. I mean, are you really going to go to bed tonight and say a little prayer for Maurice Hilleman to be more appreciated in the future? Of course not. There's only one idiot here.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:00:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You look like a tremendous retard right now. It's time to give it a rest
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:09:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
How am I a retard? I'm not the one coming in here and insulting people. Christ, this is why I avoid default subs. It's filled with 12 year olds trying to be edgy while sitting behind a keyboard. I like reading all the answers to the original question. I mean, aren't we here to learn about people we probably didn't previously know of?
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:55:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
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[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:58:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
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LNMagic ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 21:28:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Landing on the moon changed the world for the better, yes - Unequivocally and indirectly so. Think of all the technologies developed in order to make that happen.
Think about food storage, for example. Yes, canning had existed for centuries, but it wasn't very lightweight. Every pound mattered, so they would have had to spend thousands of dollars just to develop the technology to send enough food to space for the astronauts to survive.
[deleted] ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 22:33:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
velcro. duh.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:58:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
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yaffle53 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:07:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I also never said it didn't. I never mentioned anything about the moon landings, I was talking about rowing across the ocean.
MarlinMr ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:15:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Exactly. Here in Norway we have some famous eksploreres that everyone knows. Amundsen, Nansen and Heyerdahl. They are not really famous because of the expeditions they did, but rather because they fronted Norway as a nation to the rest of the world. Back then we were a poor fishing and farming nation, one of the poorest in Europe, so it was a big deal. Fairfax would not really show the world anything about the British Empire, the world already knew of it.
DCJ3 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:33:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The 'moon shot' drove science, engineering, and technology in an absolutely enormous way. It was (and still is) an inspiration for everyone. It changed everything. Of course the moon landing made things better on Earth!
The technology developed in the pursuit of a manned moon mission
gave rise to so many advances. Cant quote anything of the top of my head but its amazing the things we use everyday that NASA developed during the space race. Not to mention the generation of scientist that the moon missions inspired.
Going to the moon didn't do much either. Much if not all of what the astronauts can do can be done through robots and rovers. Sending humans is much more expensive and ineffective.
But it's not about how it progresses the world. It's about the feat, the inspiration, the achievement of going beyond our limits. Yes, going to the moon dwarves crossing an ocean solo. But this is one man we are talking about, not a team of thousands of people. I think it is quite impressive and inspiring, and not something to dismiss.
Apples and oranges. I can say with confidence exactly zero of the people involved with the moon landing could row across an ocean. They have nothing to do with each other and it's pointless to compare them.
To be fair, when we first landed on the moon, it didn't change the world either. So we beat the Soviets to the moon, big deal. There is no practical use for it. It's only to say we did it. The ocean rowing guy did it just to say he did it. The only difference is that landing on the moon is a lot cooler and was a way more intricate process.
We solved a lot of new problems and developed a lot of new technology just to get the astronauts to the moon. Landing on the moon may not have changed much, but getting them there certainly did.
We solved the problems of getting them to the moon. None of this changed the world. Now we only conduct low orbit missions practically i.e. ISS science expirements, satellites, etc. This would have been done with or without going to the moon. It is definitely an amazing feat and especially at the time, but it was only a publicity stunt. I guess it did help test the range for long range communications and video feed.
We probably would have solved the same problems later on but that doesn't chase the fact that with the shirt timeline, they made discoveries much earlier. To think that sending people in what amounts to a tinfoil cannon to the moon as nothing more than a publicity stunt is insulting to those men and the people that worked their ass off to get them there.
Did I not say that an amazing feat? I definitely did, but it was absolutely a publicity stunt. We just wanted to go to the moon before the Soviets. That's it. They didn't shorten things either. They were already working on advancing our satellites. They were already working on low orbit missions. These have provided actual practical use. The Apollo program's mission and equipment was made to do nothing more than get people to the moon. I still thinks it's awesome that we said we are going to the moon and we are gonna do it before 1970. That is some serious American might and ingenuity.
My thoughts exactly. There's people who get stranded in the middle of the ocean for months and sometimes over a year just drifting along until they hit a rock. This guy is proactive.
It's a fucking death wish. The ocean scares the fuck out of me on a cruise liner, alone on a rowboat I would literally die of anxiety. The ocean is just so endless when you're on it and so dark at night.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:49:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It is amazing. So is someone cycling cross country. I don't care though.
bonjeebe ยท 24 points ยท Posted at 15:48:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You're an idiot, who wouldn't care about a guy rowing across an ocean? That shit's crazy
[deleted] ยท 29 points ยท Posted at 16:06:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't care. I guess it's a great personal achievement for himself, but totally inconsequential beyond that.
You mean just like the moon landing was inconsequential and a personal feat?
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:06:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
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Boro84 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 17:14:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
u/bonjeebe what are you related to the rowing guy? not one of these people has said they think they can do it, or that it isn't impressive, it is however, COMPLETELY INCONSEQUENTIAL. How can you even argue otherwise?
bonjeebe ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:28:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Lol no relation. It's simply an easy thing to appreciate. You all sound like a gaggle of hens, trying to argue the opposite. If you can't appreciate that somebody rowed across the ocean, you're lying
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 17:15:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Does it though? I don't have to be accomplished at all to not give a fuck about how someone else chooses to spend their time.
I wouldn't. It's a pretty pointless feat, and to imply he's even somewhat close to being the most under appreciated person in history is ridiculous.
[deleted] ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 18:35:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
By that logic any feat of athleticism, no matter how amazing is pointless. Sports don't have any meaning or "point" really but they gain meaning in the billions of people who love and engage in them every day.
I'm not saying this man is the most under appreciated person in history but he still completed an incredible feat of endeavour and deserves recognition and admiration for it.
Don't be so miserly
By that logic any feat of athleticism, no matter how amazing is pointless.
Pretty much sums it up for me.
wwoodhur ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:10:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well that's generally what people who aren't into sports think. It's not particularly original or edgy.
[deleted] ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 12:24:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jesus, I can smell your neckbeard through the fucking screen.
riko58 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:39:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Definitely not the MOST underappreciated, but I'd say he is underappreciated, as rowing across an ocean is harder than beingan astronaut, IMO, and look at the fame they get.
Dude, do you know how hard it is to row? That thing looked like it weighs a lot. It probably would have been faster and easier to walk the same distance, as well as producing a significantly lesser risk of drowning on the way there.
If I help an old woman across the street, I've already helped more people than rowing a boat across an ocean ever will.
bonjeebe ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 17:10:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Did you read the question? It's not about a person doing the most good. Plus, everyone has helped a woman cross the street. Most people haven't, and couldn't, row across the ocean. It's an easy thing to appreciate
Boro84 ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 17:13:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
its a fine thing to appreciate, its not something to mention in the same day even as talking about people like the guy who saved 6000 jews or the guy who created 7 vaccines
bonjeebe ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:27:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Agreed
Boro84 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 17:12:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He's not arguing the coolness factor or how hard it is or how impressive it is, he's simply saying its NOWHERE near even the middle of the list for people who are the MOST underappreciated in HISTORY
You're getting real hostile over them realizing that his feat isn't something that makes him "most under appreciated person in history". Do you even realize what you're trying to defend? Also someone's personal achievement isn't something you appreciate. You recognize it and respect it. I respect Usain Bolts crazy fast runnig feats. Do I appreciate them? No because they don't do anything for me or the world. I respect them.
Going to the moon didn't do much either. Much if not all of what the astronauts can do can be done through robots and rovers. Sending humans is much more expensive and ineffective.
But it's not about how it progresses the world. It's about the feat, the inspiration, the achievement of going beyond our limits. Yes, going to the moon dwarves crossing an ocean solo. But this is one man we are talking about, not a team of thousands of people. I think it is quite impressive and inspiring, and not something to dismiss.
They were the first people to land on another object outside of the earth. He didn't discover anything since we've been traveling the ocean for hundreds of years in other ways, he just did something in a much more difficult way. It's like someone being the first to slither on their belly across the USA. Sure it would be a first, and it was difficult, but what was the purpose and what good did that do?
I'm going to ask you. What good did it make to have humans on the moon at all? What did they do that couldn't have been done by rovers for a lot less money?
And I'll answer your question.
...what was the purpose and what good did that do?
The purpose was to inspire thousands of people by demonstrating that a human has the ability to cross an ocean single handedly. Think about it this way, what is the purpose of the Mr. Olympia contest, Red Bull events, Olympics, FIFA, etc? How about inspiring countless people who are constantly both amazed and entertained by it, leaded to have goals in life. Or spreading values such as determination and encouraging hard work and training?
Just because you're narrow-minded and can't see the good or purpose in something it doesn't mean it's not there.
wwoodhur ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:13:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And so you honestly think this guy who rowed across an ocean could be the most underappreciated person in history? Or are you just arguing for the sake of it?
We ain't fuckin talking about "dismissing" it or any of that shit. Jesus you guys are going off topic. The thread is about under APPRECIATED people. Yes it's cool that he rowed across the ocean, but why would I appreciate it? Why would he be appreciated? You recognize his feat and respect it, not really appreciate it.
Your definition of appreciating is pretty idiotic. Who do you appreciate? Your mother for giving you birth? Yes, that's a good example. That role figure that inspired you all your life? Yea, you probably appreciate them as well.
How about the guy who would inspire thousands of people by rowing a damn boat across a fucking ocean who didn't even get a single headline because of another event? Yeah, thats pretty appreciable too. So why don't you stick your half-witted opinions somewhere where they don't bother us. Thanks.
These people below me don't really have a concept of how big the world is. One day they'll get out of the house and realize what rowing across the ocean means.
Yeah, its an amazing personal feat but what good does that do for anyone else? His accomplishment is also completely pointless since we can already travel faster by sails, motors, etc... it's not like he discovered a new continent while rowing.
How the fuck does rowing across the ocean make him one of the most "under appreciated people in history" shut the fuck up with your dumbass self calling other people idiots for no reason.
bonjeebe ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 19:14:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Did I hurt your feelings by casually throwing around the word "idiot" when my comment was clearly in jest? Would you like a tampon or a maxipad? I never said it made him one of the most under-appreciate people ever. I said rowing across an ocean is an easy thing to appreciate, and it is. Quit crying and beef up your reading comprehension skills you fucking baby
Cool, but should appreciate him? Did he do any good for anyone by rowing that should be APPRECIATED? Cause that's the topic of the thread. Not "who did cool shit that people don't recognize enough?".
Edit: Also you're an idiot.
bonjeebe ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:01:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
ITT: people who can't read good
All I said was that it's crazy someone rowed across an ocean. I never said it made him one of the most under-appreciated people of all time. My professional opinion is that you should buy a book and practice reading comprehension.
Edit: You're fucking stupid. Try harder.
Keetlady ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:38:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I agree. Not like he did something to help mankind. "Hey, John, I just want you to know how appreciative I am that you rowed across the ocean! I don't know what life would be like for me if you hadn't!"
Agreed. Whether Fairfax rowed across some ocean a year earlier or later, it was all about the space race in those days.
dorekk ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:03:12 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's an astounding achievement. If it hadn't been immediately followed by the single biggest thing humanity has ever done, he'd probably be remembered by more.
Wow there's a lot of shitty comments under yours, lots of really smart sciencers here talking about how little that mattered compared to landing on the moon.
The man rowed a boat across the fucking Atlantic Ocean by himself.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:26:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Now I'm wondering what counts as 'across' in this context... I mean, you can row 20 meters between two rocks that technically have some Pacific ocean between them. And you can progressively move your start and end points apart until you're rowing from Brazil to Russia. When does it become a crossing? Are you allowed to just row along the coastline or must your path bisect the ocean's area by some fraction?
Given how complex the AI programming is in the SW universe it's very jarring how bad the manufacturers are at building robots that can navigate environments and move in a natural fashion. Bipedal locomotion algorithms should be a trivial task compared to some of the feats of AI programming we see all over the place.
BB-8 works by rolling so it's pretty much impossible to screw that up. I'm thinking of units like C-3P0 which despite displaying staggeringly sophisticated AI routines can barely shuffle around like a drunk penguin trying not to shit himself. R2 units are also a joke as far as mobility goes. I know they're supposed to be older units, but there's still an anachronistic issue with the behavioral programming's capabilities and movement, although I will cut R2 some slack since you can excuse it with them having to be designed with all parts extremely compact as they're built to be used in confined environments and on tiny fighters where both shape, weight and size of the droids used are a concern.
C3 specifically was assembled by spare parts by a 9 year old, but not built by him. Most of the programming was by the manufacturer. Besides quirks from age, disrepair and damage he should have been moving normally, as should other protocol droids.
Still, the parts would have to be attached together. If they are junk parts then they will have small defects. A 9 year old trying to weld/connect slightly dodgy parts is going to have margins of error well outside of the tolerance the algorithms in the stuff's firmware would have allowed.
Protocol droids weren't expected to suffer damage, so why would they need to be robust to things being reattached at slightly dodgy angles?
Bobshayd ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:56:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The firmware/software would have learning algorithms that let them recover from damage and function as well as possible. We have the earliest inklings of such research, but any competent robot system would have such sophisticated learning (not to mention that droids in Star Wars are fully intelligent) that they'd compensate for damage in any way possible.
Just because the technology is available doesn't mean that it would be implemented in every model, especially the budget models you'd expect to find in a junkyard on Tatooine.
Bobshayd ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:36:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You don't think little Anakin would have been torrenting?
All astromech droids are primarily supposed to be assistant mechanics and navigators. They weren't intended for, like, 90% of the stuff we see R2 do.
For moving around the corridors of some base, space station or large ship, and occasionally getting loaded into a starfighter, they're perfectly adequate. But because they got super popular, people drag them to deserts and swamps and forests and all sorts of other inappropriate places, and that makes them look bad.
Bobshayd ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:58:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, they are designed quite well for being loaded into starfighters, especially for fitting in a round space; they function quite well for that.
Weren't they C3PO bots supposed to be protocol droids? So they don't need mobility very much to match some ambassador's walking pace. I assume they are meant to be cheap and almost disposable.and R2 units are supposed to do repairs and shit, they don't need a lot of mobility either.
You've got it. Surprised more folks aren't saying this. C3PO's main functions were to assist in etiquette, customs, and translations- he was designed for a life of going to boring-ass Republic meetings and before you know it he's stuck shuffling his shiny ass around the deserts of Tattooine.
PlayMp1 ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 20:48:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
On the other hand, there's beasts like IG-88, the MagnaGuard, and even Super Battle Droids to some extent.
Yeah, there's droids that move as one would expect. It just annoys me that while there are reasonable explanations like "C3's walking was exaggerated because that's what the public at the time expected in order for them to clearly see it as a robotic character" it's a little harder to digest within the context of the story and the universe that story is set in.
It's just one of my pet peeves about movie and tv tropes.
IG-88 was going to be my third example, but I forgot what he was called. Thanks!
PlayMp1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:39:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's cool, he's in the OT but I don't think he's ever referenced by name. The only reason I know IG-88 personally is because of the game Empire at War and its expansion Forces of Corruption where he's a fairly significant character (he's a major hero for the titular Forces of Corruption).
Wasn't he also in the Clone Wars cartoon? I think I recognize him from there
PlayMp1 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:00:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Huh, nope, a predecessor model called the IG-86 sentinel droid was in the film The Clone Wars and then the show The Clone Wars, and there was an IG-84 in the series Clone Wars (the 2D animated one that's very short, not the 3D animated one featuring Anakin and his apprentice Ahsoka).
I will cut R2 some slack since you can excuse it with them having to be designed with all parts extremely compact as they're built to be used in confined environments and on tiny fighters where both shape, weight and size of the droids used are a concern.
Not to mention all the crap that R2 has built in: buzz saw, cattle prod, welder, data probe, rocket boosters, oil dispenser etc. It would be hard to fit all that stuff into something that is bipedal without taking up a ton of space.
debian_ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:15:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
C3PO gets a pass because he was built from spare parts, and purpose was mainly translation. IG-88 ain't no slouch.
ocha_94 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:21:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well some of the advanced separatist droids like Super Battle Droids, Commando Droids or Magnaguards were much more agile. Being CGI instead of being played by a guy inside a tin can helped.
ncolaros ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:49:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My reasoning for this is that they don't want a robot uprising, seeing as they're basically slaves. All robots that are good at moving are fighting machines in that universe.
Computers at the time were pretty bulky and still considered ground breaking so this probably factors in. Then the movie had to maintain a theme among the robots in subsequent episodes. You do see a sleeker more androgynous form in 1-3 though, you could assume from that either the director is trying to reconcile that bulky theme and our contemporary perception of electronics or that the sleeker form we perceive to be more plausible for our future is, for some unforeseeable reason, actually less beneficial to a robots efficacy and being shaped like 4-6 robots makes them more helpful.
DrInsano ยท 35 points ยท Posted at 15:27:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's because R2 wasn't a snitch.
jaysalts ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 09:31:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's an episode of The Clone Wars where R2 is captured by Separatists and because Anakin never routinely wipes his memory after missions (which is what happens to all other droids) he was carrying critical information about the Republic army.
However, R2 becomes smarter due to retaining his memory all the time. This is also why R2 was such a reliable droid compared the other R2 or R4 units in the movies and shows.
GunNNife ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 15:29:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm referencing the fact that droids are treated as property, to be sacrificed, scrapped at will, or have their memories wiped even though they are sentients with distinct personalities.
Not just one person but the men known as the Haymarket Eight. It's a crazy story full of false allegations and bombs that all started with a protest for an eight hour work day.
During the mid-20th century, Borlaug led the introduction of these high-yielding varieties combined with modern agricultural production techniques to Mexico, Pakistan, and India. As a result, Mexico became a net exporter of wheat by 1963. Between 1965 and 1970, wheat yields nearly doubled in Pakistan and India, greatly improving the food security in those nations. These collective increases in yield have been labeled the Green Revolution, and Borlaug is often credited with saving over a billion people worldwide from starvation.
[deleted] ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 23:54:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't know if she was the most under-appreciated person in history, but she's up there: Alice Paul.
Picketed for US women's rights for years, even though she was attacked daily, jailed in rat-infested cells, and brutally force-fed in ways that left her injured when she went on a hunger strike to protest her treatment during imprisonment. She was finally sent to a sanitarium and declared insane, all for just wanting to be treated like a human being with the same rights as a man. Luckily, word got out to the press about the way the suffragettes were being treated and they were released, leading to the near-immediate pass of the 19th Amendment.
There's a pretty good movie about the Suffragettes called "Iron Jawed Angels"
hamolton ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 22:37:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I read a passage about her in college US history from the departmental reader. The average person really doesn't know a ton of names (ask anybody to name a couple of influential feminists in history), and she's a part of AP US History, it appears.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:54:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Don't forget about drafting the Equal Rights Amendment; introduced to Congress at every opportunity since it was written and failed to pass each and every time. It's important because without an amendment to the Constitution, we have to fight for equal rights one item at a time.
Hell yes I have. The Alice Paul house is in my hometown, and I drag all visitors there. What an incredible woman who fought for a right so few appreciate now.
I feel like being a huge part of getting women the right to vote in one of the most powerful countries on earth counts as a big accomplishment, but what do I know, I'm just an arrogant American...
Yeah, its a great achievement, I dont dispute that at all. But in all 200k years of human existence there is definitely some person who is more underappreciated (their name is probably lost forever) and have done something greater. Think about all the middle-ranked officers in armies throughout time, for example. What they chose to do in the moment could have changed the outcome of the battle, which could change the outcome of the war - and therefore create or destroy countries. What about all the scientists and farmers and whatever who discovered new and more efficient ways of doing things in pre-modern times? We probably don't know their names either (mathematically, they should be infinitely more underappreciated?)
Women had the right to vote in several european nations before her, and the united states, as a part of the west, probably would have secured universal voting rights regardless of this specific person.
Edit: Seems like a lot of people are unable to read thread titles. This thread was about the most underappreciated person in history - presenting valid arguments against this person being so is not a valid cause for downvoting "into oblivion".
Some highly upvoted comment was about perforated toilet paper, and you're picking on me for not finding the most underappreciated person in history? Okay, then.
I consider gender equality to be among income equality and racial and religious tolerance as a significant indicator of a civilization's stability and ability to retain lasting balance and therefore, likely lasting peace. I get that it's not as exciting to you as all the dudes who have fought/farmed/discovered things in science, but I find it no less important.
As to your last point, many women still don't have the right to vote today; does that mean we shouldn't appreciate people working to change that simply because other nations are more advanced? In fact, I think it's more impressive because clearly there's a serious reason those places are so resistant to change, even in the face of other nations' advancement.
Toilet paper one was obviously a joke. I never said people who work for progress shouldn't be appreciated, and i made that perfectly clear in the beginning of my last post. Using non-leaders and ancient scientists wasn't about being exciting, but showing that there as so many significant people who we can't even name. And comparing usa and europe to the west versus the third world today is unfair. culturally western europe and the us were a lot more similar, and shared a lot of social values.
I'm not really sure what your goal is here, but this is not the fight you're looking for. If you can't name them, they can't be named in a silly Reddit thread. So...I can't help you here, bro.
Yeah I mean so what if it had taken another couple of hundred years before woman were given the right to vote in the United States. The united states was actually before most of the european nations. Switzerland didn't given woman the right to vote until the 1970's which is crazy. If people didn't fight for it who's to say it would have happened any sooner.
Me along with many people were constantly amazed that gay people weren't allowed to get married. All of the people in charge saying it wasn't an important topic right now but we'll get to it at some point. But how can equality even be a question or be debated. It should just be. But obviously that isn't the case, we do need to fight for it so don't belittle the work of others that helped better this society and bring about more equality.
I'm lucky as I'm a Kiwi and it's always great to be able to say we were one of the first places to give woman the right to vote, unfortunately can't say the same about gay marriage but we got there in the end. And woman have only just been given the right to vote in Saudi Arabia so obviously fighting for equality is needed and it's no less important than any other figure in history.
She also through bricks through shop keepers windows and started riots. I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for her imprisonment. To be honest her less radical compatriots did far more.
idk, some people here on reddit are pretty damn smart and have a wide knowledge of...stuff. I mean, lives were saved, things were learnt, homeworks were done.
[deleted] ยท 30 points ยท Posted at 19:40:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Wow, what do you think you're doing? You have to keep the anti-Reddit circlejerk going. That means absolutely no positive attitude towards Reddit or anyone on Reddit.
[deleted] ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 20:09:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"Yeah you've probably never heard of him" - Reddit hipsters
sbroll ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:27:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just curious, do you have a link to either the rebuttal article or the oatmeal's reaction to it? I stopped reading him a while ago and now I feel out of the loop.
I always suspected the guy who ran The Oatmeal might have been a douche. Little did I suspect he was actually a cunt.
Hidesuru ยท 38 points ยท Posted at 20:22:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
When he wrote an entire comic basically bragging about how his tesla car is so awesome I lost interest. Like I'm glad you're doing well and all writing Web comics for a living, but be a little humble about it maybe?
There's nothing humble about any of the stuff on the Oatmeal. Humblebragging maybe. And all of it is cheap, cringey "lol teh bacons and cats" jokes that he thinks makes him sort of comedy genius.
Hidesuru ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 21:40:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No, there isn't.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 06:45:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I thought that comic really encapsulated who was getting so shitnuts excited for the car - tech geeks with no interest in cars who have never driven anything faster or nicer than their '99 Corolla.
But yeah, other than that it's the reason I stopped reading him.
Hidesuru ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:57:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't think about how much they are archetypal 'feminists' and so forth. And I know it's in the group the question as your comment will be minimal trips to the question was asked to.
If you see others posting comments that violate this tag, please report them to this as well. I hope this helps a ton. Be yourself and your heater is running low and your heater is running low and your family does have it if they've been living there as it meant we had someone else anyway.
[deleted] ยท 65 points ยท Posted at 19:48:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As a geek, this quote makes my inspiration want to go hang itself in the shower
Jesus Christ, could one be more of a piece of smug?
I don't think that was the line that really stood out to me. It is fairly innocuous compared to some other parts of the response.
syransea ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 22:22:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't know if he lives here, but I worked for his wireless carrier in Seattle. He came into my store and bought a new phone because his last one broke.
I didn't know who he was, but he was being an asshole to me the whole time. Then I realized his name sounded familiar and googled around after he left to find that he is the man behind oatmeal.
I always liked his comics, they're hilarious, but I didn't expect him to be such a let down. But who knows? Maybe he was just having a bad day. All I know is that day, during that interaction, I was less than worthy, in his eyes, to even speak to him.
ieshido ยท 15 points ยท Posted at 19:49:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Amazing how many 'red flags denoting douchitude' Oatmeal crams into that rebuttal rebuttal.
Lol at the rebuttal to the rebuttal. He criticizes semantics, then mocking corrects a typo, but then makes the mistake of not remember the grammar rule regarding possessive apostrophes used on a proper noun that ends with an "s."
It's "Zeus's," not "Zeus'." That pedantic fuck.
PlayMp1 ยท 47 points ยท Posted at 19:43:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
To be fair, that grammar rule is contested. Personally, I prefer "Zeus'," and some style guides prefer that, but others prefer your way.
Fuck it, Oxford's recognized "twerk" so I guess I'll just have to change.
PlayMp1 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:56:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think it's just an inconsistent rule. There's a reason publications have style guides. The New York Times agrees with Elements of Style to use your way, but not all style guides do. My way is a lot easier to speak aloud for me since I had to overcome a speech issue with speech therapy as a child, and saying things like "Zeus's" is just fucking hard for me, so I just say "Zeus'."
For what it's worth, in the Lutheran Church we say "In Jesus' Name" an awful lot in our prayers and such. I'm not sure if that comes from the Catholic Church or not, but it definitely got me in the habit of saying and writing s' rather than s's
Actually a simple Google search would confirm that DC power transmission is not only feasible, but we are already doing it and with current technology it's advantageous compared to AC. AC was advantageous before modern advances in solid state electronics, because transformers were a viable way to step up AC voltage (not DC), but transformers are large and expensive and inefficient by today's standards - and the number of large expensive and inefficient AC to DC converters in every single house is staggering.
So when the oat-douche asks how in Zeus's thundering butthole could he power a laptop without an outlet, DC power distribution is the answer.
This is true and I clearly stated so in my post. When oatmeal douche said hours in Zeus's anus am I supposed to power my laptop without an outlet, or seems fair to assume he wasn't talking about non modern times
rplst8 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:46:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
But that douche is still correct. DC doesn't lend itself to local distribution. DCs advantages lie in the extremes. Long distance high voltage and extremely short distance low voltage.
The Oatmeal always struck me as being written by someone who is a condescending douchebag. Yes he did have his funny comics, but after reading that and digging around a little more on google, I can say with certainty he is one. mans is a smug arrogant prick.
his "how to not suck at your own religion" one was like something you'd find made as OC on /r/atheism.
Sorry I wish I could provide one. It's probably hugged to death.
wasniahC ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:46:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
On the one hand, you could argue "what do you expect? He's a comedy webcomic writer, he isn't exactly going to have a serious debate/discussion, of course he's going to push for his side with humour". (I use the word humour loosely here)
On the other hand.. he could have just ignored it. Honestly, you had a comedy piece banging on about tesla, and a relatively sensible piece about Edison from a relatively reputable journalist. Sounds good, right? Didn't really feel like it warranted a response.
Rookwood ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:11:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
The part where he sites Tesla's death ray is a little bit misleading. If you actually read the article he links, that weapon was also purely of defensive strategic value, and Tesla marketed it as a "peace beam." It required a power plant to operate, so it was purely stationary and it only had a range of 200 miles. It was meant as a deterrent from attack.
Sure it was lethal to enemy pilots, but the article makes it seem as if Tesla was out marketing an alternative to nuclear bombs. It sounds to me like it was more of an early attempt at a National Missile Defense system. Like the US's Star Wars program or the Israeli's Iron Dome.
Leoxcr ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 18:34:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And plain wrong in cases (recycled comment follows)
Actually a simple Google search would confirm that DC power transmission is not only feasible, but we are already doing it and with current technology it's advantageous compared to AC. AC was advantageous before modern advances in solid state electronics, because transformers were a viable way to step up AC voltage (not DC), but transformers are large and expensive and inefficient by today's standards - and the number of large expensive and inefficient AC to DC converters in every single house is staggering.
So when the oat-douche asks how in Zeus's thundering butthole could he power a laptop without an outlet, DC power distribution is the answer.
It's honestly infuriating, he presents all this as facts and when he gets called out he's just like "I'm a comedian I don't have to be accurate". The underwater radar one was particularly stupid, it's one of the worse ideas I've ever heard and Tesla should be embarrassed he pitched it
ZombyTed ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 22:43:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The John Stewart Defense. Classy.
mattskee ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 01:35:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Actually a simple Google search would confirm that DC power transmission is not only feasible, but we are already doing it and with current technology it's advantageous compared to AC.
It's only advantageous in certain specific applications - namely very long distance high power transmission, or underwater transmission. For most of the grid AC still is the superior technology.
Keep in mind that DC is much more difficult to control. Because there is no "built-in" zero crossing of the current the switches, fuses, and circuit breakers that interrupt power are harder to to build and will tend to wear faster due to the increased internal arcing. This means that they need to be built to much higher ratings than the AC equivalents. Similarly the unidirectional nature of DC makes it more dangerous when being electrocuted because your muscles respond more to DC making it harder for you to break yourself free of the source of electrocution.
AC was advantageous before modern advances in solid state electronics, because transformers were a viable way to step up AC voltage (not DC), but transformers are large and expensive and inefficient by today's standards
50/60 Hz transformers are indeed larger and more expensive than higher frequencies (though efficiencies are similar), but these low frequency transformers are still an integral part of HVDC systems. And in most cases the low frequency transformer is much cheaper than a smaller and cheaper high frequency transformer after you factor in the cost of the inverter, rectifier, and filtering needed for a switching converter. 50/60 Hz transformers provide the step up before the rectifier bank for the transmitting DC station. The inverter bank at the receiving end drives a transformer too. If they didn't need to synchronize at some point with a 50-60 Hz grid they could bump up the frequency a certain amount, but it's hard enough to rectify and invert hundreds of kilovolts at 60 Hz and even harder at higher frequencies so it's not going to be operating anywhere near the speed.
and the number of large expensive and inefficient AC to DC converters in every single house is staggering.
Actually thanks to modern power electronics these can be both incredibly small and efficient. And these converters would be only a tiny bit more efficient if they operated on a DC input rather than AC input.
You clearly don't know shit about electrity - and the reason your shit post doesn't have a single source is because absolutely no one would agree with you. That portion is i linked is on long distance transmission and only catalogues the advantages of long range. (The only portion in challenged by oatmeal douche - because even his incompetent ass could see the advantages of short range DC transmission). Its better short range too.
Switching to DC has been the dream for a while. Since you Clearly won't believe me read an article.
Ballpark 20% of power used in the average house is just dumped into AC to DC conversion, nevermind the brick you drag along with your laptop cable, the big block that goes by the wall on your phone charger or the biggest part of an LED bulb is wasted material for an AC to DC converter.
Seriously you have no fucking clue what you are talking about. I really hope this rant is directed at a middle schooler who hasn't learned lying on technical expertise doesn't get called out every time because if an actual adult thinks this is true or okay I may be talking to someone to stupid to ever provide for themselves
mattskee ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:41:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your article is about some very specific cases such as solar powered homes and data centers which are certainly not the standard case, though we'll see about solar homes in a decade or so as the installed base increases. In solar homes DC may make sense because of the incredibly short ranges that power must be transmitted - just 10's or low 100's of feet. Datacenters have very high power consumption densities and have need to backup so again they may want to run DC internally for ease of battery backup and make better utilization of power lines to increase power densities per square foot. But for grid infrastructure the technology has a way to go before DC can match the cost, efficiency, and reliability for transmission over 1's and 10's of kilometers range. Build a full bridge converter which converts 4-15 kV DC to ~100-200 V DC for a customer and compare the cost and reliability to a 60 Hz transformer doing the same.
Ballpark 20% of power used in the average house is just dumped into AC to DC conversion, nevermind the brick you drag along with your laptop cable, the big block that goes by the wall on your phone charger or the biggest part of an LED bulb is wasted material for an AC to DC converter.
And you accused me of not understanding electricity while you say something like this? AC to DC rectification is a very small portion of what our power converters do and absolutely does not consume 20% of power except maybe in bottom dollar products that are liable to catch fire. The most complex and efficiency robbing portion of their job is voltage transformation. Houses and grids will continue to run at higher voltages in order to get power to homes and around inside houses without requiring extremely thick high-current cables. Many of our devices run at lower voltages, and most of what our laptop chargers and such are doing is converting voltages. The AC to DC rectification does consume some volume and efficiency but nowhere near the 20% that you seem to think it does. Add in the need for new and more expensive switches, fuses, circuit breakers, and maybe safer shrouded outlet designs to account for the safety issue and DC in the standard home is not a clear winner.
Seriously you have no fucking clue what you are talking about. I really hope this rant is directed at a middle schooler who hasn't learned lying on technical expertise doesn't get called out every time because if an actual adult thinks this is true or okay I may be talking to someone to stupid to ever provide for themselves
[deleted] ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 19:11:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
One of his arguments was that Tesla didn't invent alternating current, that he just found a way to harness it, refine it, and make it more available (paraphrasing, not quoting).
If that's the case, Edison didn't invent the light bulb, he just made it more accessible and knew how to market it, so why credit him with the entire invention? He was a businessman, and a poor one at that. 22 other people came up with incandescent light bulbs before Edison. So neither of them are as great (or as terrible) as history makes them out to be.
Also, this from the article:
Most of what the Oatmeal comic says about Edison is true. Yes, Edison did put on public demonstrations where he electrocuted animals to show the dangers of alternating current. Yes, he fought tooth and nail for his belief that direct current was a better way to transmit electricity. He was wrong.
The entire article is taking what The Oatmeal says about Tesla, downplaying his "refining" of certain inventions, and up-playing (is that a word?) Edison's "refinement" of already existing inventions. It's the most bias thing ive ever read.
He isn't arguing that "Edison is good and Tesla is bad," his whole point is that they don't fit the protagonist-antagonist relationship that The Oatmeal tried to paint them as; they were both brilliant and influential despite their flaws and mistakes.
6553321 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 01:06:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
One that is absolutely unfair to Tesla. The worst comparison you can make for Edison vs Tesla is Bill Gates vs Richard Stallman.
And Tesla is recognized. He has a unit named after him.
The sad part is a lot of people don't realize the author of the Oatmeal is a comic and in this case he was doing exactly what you mentioned. Funny that people on here call him pedantic, yet they act that way daily.
Edison didn't refine the lightbulb either, though. He had employees to work on it. The tungsten filament was invented by one of his employees, but Edison was first and foremost a ruthless businessman. He owned the patents because he either a) acquired his competitors or b) had employees develop them.
Tesla did all of his work on his own for the most part. It's difficult to compare Edison to Tesla because one was a businessman and the other was a brilliant scientist.
Do you have a link? I've never seen it or the rebuttal.
Beowoof ยท 23 points ยท Posted at 17:51:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't know much about either, but is it more true to say that tesla was less successful than Edison not because Edison was a dick but because he didn't have business sense and networking skills?
Based off a few docs i've seen on tesla, its a bit of both. Edison was a huge asshole, but tesla definitely was a weirdo, which certainly affected his success
Banzai51 ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 19:27:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's about right. Edison understood the power of people, which is why he liked to build research teams and solve problems quicker. Tesla was more the loner genius type.
Both men could be considered raging dicks.
[deleted] ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 18:39:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes, from my knowledge Edison was all about applying technology. He made technology practical and he knew how to sell it
[deleted] ยท -11 points ยท Posted at 19:05:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He also knew how to kill people and steal their inventions.
Banzai51 ยท 17 points ยท Posted at 19:36:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And Tesla knew how to make outrageous, unsubstantiated claims while defrauding investors.
Churba ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:32:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tesla was also absolutely useless with anything remotely resembling finances. He made multiple fortunes, and lost every single one of them mostly to mismanagement.
Definitely not trying to sound condescending: Comics have names, and this one is called the Oatmeal. You could find it surely by googling "oatmeal tesla". You can find the rebuttal in this same thread of comments.
Inaccurate?
I'd love to hear more about this.
I assumed that he did his homework and was portraying fact, but it's a part of history I'm not versed in.
[deleted] ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 18:33:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nope. Just Chuck Testa.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:34:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He had a movie starring Benadryl Cucumber. He's not "underappreciated"
xFXx ยท 15 points ยท Posted at 18:18:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
From what i heard he has been mostly ignored fro a really long time. Even though he is responsible for many advances in computer science and other fields.
The guy was chemically castrated after he made unfathomable advances in computer science and essentially turned the tide of World War 2. I think it's pretty safe to use "under-appreciated" in that case, movie or no movie.
I mean, he's totally awesome. Don't get me wrong, but also very widely appreciated, at least in the computer science field.
I've had several professors mention him as being awesome, because he is. He was under appreciated at the time, because everything was classified and laws were horribly anti gay, but not sure if he qualifies as underappreciated in modern times.
Nah he was already appreciated before that. I certainly new about Tesla before knowing about the cars.
Merhouse ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:42:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Edsel?
RQK1996 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:53:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
?
Merhouse ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:59:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Edsel Ford was a son of the Ford family. The company named a car in the 50s (I think) after him -- the Edsel. It was actually quite a nice car that I believe was too good for its time, and was very unpopular. It only lasted a couple of years.
But I'm guessing he's not the one you're talking about who had a car named after him ;)
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 17:14:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
His pigeon wife appreciated him
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:01:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oh... Apart of the Edisons I see. You wanna rumble, punk? Because when you're a Tesla, you're a Tesla all the way. From your first Tesla Coil to your last dying day.
Sir Nikola Tesla, relatively unknown Siberian genius. He was actually arch enemies with Thomas Edison, an asshole who was given credit for a plethora of inventions he couldn't even pronounce. The real inventor? Nikola Tesla.
While Edison was electrocuting animals and orphans for fun, Tesla was busy perfecting AC power, developing electric motors, and zapping large bird cages with lightning because science!
Edison was told of Tesla's work and offered him $4 million to work for him in the laboratory. Tesla exceeded all technical expectations and, upon asking for payment, was met with derision and the suggestion he was a fool for believing such a promise.
I could write a book about Tesla, and I believe he should have gone on to earn wealth and fame. Instead, he went completely insane, thinking he had befriended a pigeon angel, and died alone and broke. The government confiscated his work, but sadly much of what he knew was stored in his head and died with him.
History has almost completely forgotten about him; all of his achievements have been attributed to Thomas Edison. I just wish people knew more about what really happened.
I don't have a negative opinion of him. I honestly think he's great. I, however, I not alone in that opinion. It seems like a great deal of people share that exact same opinion. That's not under appreciated.
McZerky ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:54:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I was going to say that Tesla used to be underappreciated, but not anymore.
Rookwood ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:39:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I know this is a popular anti-circlejerk to a less popular circlejerk, but honestly Tesla was underrated. Until recently, he was mostly forgotten for his contributions and Edison is largely overrated for his.
Tesla is a tragic, eccentric historical figure that was a genius and pioneer in his field. He deserves to be remembered for his contributions and up until recently he was mostly forgotten.
Edison on the other hand was more of your typical American CEO figure. He wasn't a particular genius but he was very successful by being a lying and exploiting capitalist who understood how to manipulate public opinion. Honestly, there are a lot of parallels between Edison and Bill Gates. Both are remembered as basically the inventors of their industries, yet both owe their success to backstabbing and hoarding all the profits from the contributions of those around them. Bill takes the gold medal though for pulling one over on IBM, who were the unstoppable megacorp of computers at the time. That took balls, and IBM never recovered while Microsoft went on to take the throne for 15 years.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:17:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
someone say Tesla in here
6553321 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:57:28 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You know, if I'm going to give credit to a genius mind, it would be Carl Friedrich Gauss. The man solved solved theorems and didn't share them, because he didn't like the proof, and then fifty years later someone else would arrive at them.
Plumages ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 18:54:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well considering how far down this post are, there is some truth to this. One thing is people who throws beer well or imaginary characters, but when you think about how much someone has done for the world and how little appreciation this person got for it, Tesla is pretty much up there :D
zuilserip ยท 111 points ยท Posted at 16:34:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What was the most important invention of the 20th century?
It has been argued that it was the development of oral contraception.
While this point is debatable, and most people will strongly deny this when they first hear this, the more you think about it, the more you may develop an appreciation for the impact of the pill on modern society. For one thing, by allowing women control of when they had children, it dramatically increased female participation in the labor force.
Another, even more dramatic, impact has been the pill's ability to avoid catastrophic world overpopulation - from this to this
Regardless of where you rank it, however, there is no arguing that the birth control revolution had a dramatic impact on the world.
Yet, very few people know Pincus' role in developing the pill. (I was going to call him 'the father of birth control' but that didn't sound right!)
[deleted] ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 20:48:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The graphs were not meant to be comparable. Graph 1 was to establish that yes, population growth is a serious problem and graph 2 to offer plausible evidence that the marked fall in birth rate in the 60's was related to the introduction of oral contraception in the same period. There was no claim that the pill was singularly responsible for this fall in fertility.
If you want to read more into the subject look up the demographic transition model or take a look at this paper
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:23:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The second graph suggests that the availability of birth control in the 60s may be related to the subsequent dramatic fall in birth rates that starts shortly thereafter, but I agree that it does not prove it.
As for the global availability of birth control in Latin America and Africa, it turns out I am in Latin America and birth control is widely available around here and that fertility is already below the replacement rate in many countries. (e.g., at 1.81 births/woman Brazil's fertility rate is lower than the US' @ 1.88).
I don't know whether birth control is as widely available in Africa, but since Africa is one of the few places where fertility rates have not fallen as quickly, that would not much impact the hypothesis that the pill is responsible for a significant portion of the decrease we see in the rest of the world.
[deleted] ยท -3 points ยท Posted at 00:11:58 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Overpopulation was never a problem in developed countries, nowadays low birth rates are the problem.
DrenDran ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:11:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This. Arguably the effect of the pill was negative in that respect.
KJ6BWB ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:19:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And, unwanted children are more likely to become criminals. The pill helps prevent unwanted children. I don't know about the pill, but freakonomics showed a marked correlation between legalized abortion and lower crime rates 20 years later.
but not in sciences, where he did a lot of work too. Geology, biology, ... It was said that the last person to know everything "knowable" to humankind was Goethe at that point, has he was educated in about everything.
maurosQQ ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 19:10:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, this may be because many of his scientifc findings or theories werent right most of the time. I remember him being a "Neptunist", believing that the core of the earth was cold.
We may soon learn that our current theories are generally inaccurate. One of the great things about him was his willingness to challenge his own ideas, as was the basis of his philosophy and why Nietzsche was so enamored by him.
maurosQQ ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 20:08:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, I am not entirely sure, but afaik he remained quite stubborn on the issues of Neptunism, even when more and more data suggested that the theory was wrong. Not really a good scientific mind set to have.
Moomium ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:19:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hey, you haven't been there, how do you know it isn't cold?
maurosQQ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 08:31:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The deeper you go, the warmer it gets. Plus sometimes there comes stuff from the depth. This is called a volcano.
Yeah, and God help you if you go into the bookstore and pronounce it how it sounds.
"Hello, I need that book by Go-eth."
"Gerta"
"What."
"You need the book by Gerta."
"Who the fuck is Gerta. Just gimme the Go-eth book please."
"All I have is Gerta."
"You don't have the Go-eth book"
"No Go-eth, just Gerta"
"Ah, fuck it. I'm goin on Amazon." Walks out with head held low.
That's the joke. Because it is pronounced so differently than how it is spelled Americans don't know how to say it right, unless someone tells them. It looks like it should be pronounced go-eth, if you are phonetically reading it from an American English standpoint.
[deleted] ยท 88 points ยท Posted at 18:23:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He's not underrated at all. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that Goethe is to Germany what Shakespeare is to England (not the most famous early modern dramatist but rather the most significant/admired literary figure in the country's history).
Of course he is! One of the things every child learns in school is that he discovered the elephants wisdom teeth. I've visited his house twice while in school and saw the elephant scull he studied.
[deleted] ยท 208 points ยท Posted at 16:58:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
What? Goethe is definitely well known. His novella The Sorrows of Young Werther is quite famous, and he is a pretty respectable figure in philosophy. Some of his plays are pretty well known too.
[deleted] ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 18:57:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
His appreciation in his country of birth is rather significant. You get instant eye rolls from juveniles when you mention his name. Always a clear sign.
maurosQQ ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:11:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Pretty much everybody that went to school in Germany had to read at least 1 of his works. Be it Faust or Werther.
For people in german-speaking countries he is everything but underappreciated. Nowadays it's getting less and less but everyone had to read at least one of his works in school.
I've heard it claimed before that he was a polymath, but I've seen no evidence of this. Do you have a citation or source that makes that claim? I know him as a philosopher, and mediocre scientist but I feel like he gets all the credit he deserved.
michio42 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:59:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Interesting and good point, not everything who does a lot of stuff was a polymath and people like to assign that honour to any smart man from a few hundred years ago (there are loads by the way). It should be said of people that were/are truly great of many disciplines are polymaths. An example would be Isaac Newton, although centuries ahead in Physics (basically invented it) and Mathematics (the two always come hand in hand anyway), he was also a prolific biblical scholar and alchemist, the latter two he was not exactly good at.
moarag ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:34:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I was able to go see his house about 3 weeks ago in Frankfurt. He was married to my wife's 3x or 4x great aunt.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:42:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Whiny fuck, though.
thouliha ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:35:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Did a study-abroad in Germany. Will attest that what Shakespeare did for the English Language, Goethe was that in several fields. He led the Germans (at the time a collection of warring city-states) to the idea of a unified Germany based on ideals of logic and reason.
Great poet too, yo.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:46:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Goethe is one of the most famous Germans of all time, how is he under-appreciated?
Labour rights activists and socialists. Things like minimum wage, 8 hour day, weekends, ending child labour etc. were won through struggle during some of the most brutal periods of capitalism.
Now that the union movement has stagnated, over the last 30 years we've seen a gradual erosion of the gains we made. Capitalism by nature seeks to exploit workers. Corporate profits are historically high while the average person faces a pretty bleak future, and the climate's not going to fix itself either.
We need to get organised and take control of the banks, multinationals and industry so they can be democratically run for all people rather than for private greed.
I always had some appreciation for the coal wars, growing up in the center of its history, but I found out my great grandparents lived in the literal middle of the battle of Blair Mountain.
Some of them were powerful enough that they could convince the governor of their state to send in the National Guard to threaten and if necessary shoot workers on strike.
Wow, that almost makes me doubt the justice and essential rightness of Capitalism. Thank god all that was just under Crony Capitalism! I can't wait for Real Capitalism (which has never, ever existed and yet is paradoxically responsible for all the good things in the world)!
[deleted] ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 19:41:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This still happens today in a lot of countries no one pays attention to. As I recall, coke-a-cola is known for murdering union organizers at bottling plants. And I don't mean to single them out, plenty of ugly shit goes down at pretty much any multinational. That's what happens when profit is your god.
Worse, the US government sent in federal troops to break coal strikes MULTIPLE TIMES. Using the army against citizens to force them to work underpaid in horrible conditions is one of the worst atrocities my gov has intentionally committed imo.
Which is why labour got a reputation for being tough and supposedly involved in all kinds of illegal shit. They had to be tough and they had to respond sometimes with brutal violence of their own.
All they wanted was to make a living wage, safe conditions, and raise their families, like the rest of us.
Well you have to understand that all of this was just under Crony Capitalism. Soon, when we've destroyed all Unions and business regulations, we'll have Real Capitalism, which has never, ever existed and yet is paradoxically responsible for all the good things in the world!
tomdarch ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 04:17:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Let me invite you up to my ivory tower of purely theoretical economics, where you can shout this wonderful stuff to the peons below. Shall we also discuss how egghead academic elites are ruining the world with their impractical, foundationless theories?
TCV2 ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 19:39:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I actually have some relatives who lived in Pittsburgh and worked as steelworkers at the time. I believe they were involved in some of the fights with the Pinkertons and such.
The strikers didn't even get support from the churches (then a much more powerful political group).
They called a 5 day workweek sinful and un-biblical, because in the bible God worked for 6 days to create the earth then took 1 day of rest, so why should man work for 5 days and take 2 days of rest.
Well, he puts his cigar
Out in your face just for kicks
His bedroom window
It is made out of bricks
The National Guard stands around his door
I ain't gonna work for Maggie's pa no more.
Pinkertons are actually still around. It's friggin scary.
tomdarch ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:19:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't know that they're the worst, but I've reviewed marketing materials from "security" firms that boast of their capabilities in terms of "labor relations" - with pictures of fat, bald wannabe cops in tactical shit.
The free market is the best way to create a flow of resources. No one is more careful with their wealth than the people who own it. When the means of production are privately owned, competition will "naturally" select the best options.
It doesn't always work out though, and typically the middle class is a social invention as capitalist societies should split into a small wealthy class and large working class. Not always the best thing.
antpocas ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 10:16:35 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ah, so it effectively expropriates the value created by the working class into the hands of the bourgeois, I agree
I suppose, as always, that depends on your "definition" of capitalism. If we're talking about Capitalism as a historically existing system, then the violence of it should be self evident, with the many examples listed in the thread above containing instances of capitalism's explicit violence, i.e. the violence of the bosses hired goons, the police, against workers. This is not even getting in to the structural violence of capitalism: every historically existing capitalist society had a percentage of it's population condemned to hunger, starvation, poverty, disease, mindless drudgery, etc.
Now, perhaps you are one of the many people, especially prevalent on reddit (bless their dudebro hearts), that chooses to see capitalism not as a historically existing system of obvious violence and exploitation, but as a theoretical future system of untainted free markets. This "Real Capitalism" (or as I prefer "Magic Capitalism) is thus distinghised from "Crony Capitalism" (aka actual historical existing capitalism)
But even in this absurd utopia, there is nothing to stop the original contractions that made actual historical capitalism such a nightmare for so many: the basic tension between the ruling class and everyone else, between the haves and have nots
Wizzad ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 02:08:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And The union used thugs to beat people who crossed the picket line.
qwerto14 ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 20:39:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Some labor organizations were hardly better, some sabatoges of machinery and trains caused civilian deaths. It was a bad time in general.
ISBUchild ยท -13 points ยท Posted at 18:34:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is a very one-sided characterization. Old time unions acted like gangs and beat up anyone who chose to work during a strike or were otherwise not allied to the cause. They occupied entire towns to keep out competing replacement workers, and destroyed factory equipment to make a point. In some of the most prominent instances of violence against workers by management, it was an understandable response to being surrounded by a mob of armed people attacking and occupying your facility.
user1492 ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 19:07:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Ludlow Massacre was an attack by the Colorado National Guard and Colorado Fuel & Iron Company camp guards on a tent colony of 1,200 striking coal miners and their families at Ludlow, Colorado, on April 20, 1914. Some two dozen people, including miners' wives and children, were killed. The chief owner of the mine, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., was widely criticized for the incident.
The causes of the Haymarket Affair are still controversial, but can be traced in part to an incident the previous day, in which police fired into a crowd of agitated workers during shift change at the McCormick Works, where the regular work force was on strike, and at least two workers were killed.
was an industrial lockout and strike which began on June 30, 1892, culminating in a battle between strikers and private security agents on July 6, 1892.[3] The battle was one of the most serious disputes in U.S. labor history, third behind the Ludlow Massacre and the Battle of Blair Mountain. The dispute occurred at the Homestead Steel Works in the Pittsburgh area town of Homestead, Pennsylvania, between the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers (the AA) and the Carnegie Steel Company. The final result was a major defeat for the union and a setback for their efforts to unionize steelworkers.
For five days in late August and early September 1921, in Logan County, West Virginia, some 10,000 armed coal miners confronted 3,000 lawmen and strikebreakers, called the Logan Defenders,[2] who were backed by coal mine operators during an attempt by the miners to unionize the southwestern West Virginia coalfields. The battle ended after approximately one million rounds were fired,[3] and the United States Army intervened by presidential order.[4]
Yeah the unions certainly aren't always innocent, but they were a direct reaction from a surge of employer leverage, oppression, and practically serfdom.
Government used troops to shoot activists. That's where it gets truly fucked up. Too bad big labor is just another business interest on Capitol Hill these days.
The unions were brutal too. If you crossed a picket line, they'd beat the shit out of you. If you did "work" reserved for union workers (including plugging in electronics instead of waiting for an electrician, etc.) they'd break all your shit.
Both sides did some pretty ugly things to try to further their position. There's no sense turning this into a "pure good vs. pure evil" fairytale.
My great-great grandfather died in a pre-OSHA paper mill by falling into a vat of hot wood pulp and acid. His was one of three deaths that lead to a period of strikes and riots in the company town that supported the mill. Dynamiting gas lines, hijacking supply trucks, etc. Unfortunately the workers weren't able to get many concessions, because the racial divide undermined any attempt at organization.
Amazing that so many people would rather fall in a vat of hot wood pulp and acid than stand side by side with someone different from them.
Ramv36 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 03:14:12 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fun fact, all Us municipalities are OSHA exempt. The water treatment plant I work in has zero compliance requirements outside of EPA Clean Water Act levels, and industry best practices.
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 02:04:52 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
the racial divide undermined any attempt at organization.
This is why you see a lot of leftists championing social justice.
Huge understatement. Physical fighting, getting shot at, getting private and public cops sicced on you with nightclubs drawn if not much much worse. The extremely wealthy employers were HORRIBLE to protesting and striking employees, like oftentimes trying to have them killed kind of horrible, and these people were protesting for a livable wage, basic safety standards, workman's comp, basic shit that we take for granted.
PlayMp1 ยท 20 points ยท Posted at 19:23:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Trying to have them killed? They did have them killed. There were numerous massacres during the most active years of the labor movement, with dozens getting gunned down for having the gall to demand fair wages and not being worked to the bone.
Well that too. But having someone killed begins with trying to have someone killed, so I'm still technically correct, and we all know that's the best kind of correct.
For the most part, she was a behind the scenes organizer. She is probably most known for challenging the gendered hierarchy in the civil rights movement and the black church. Her wiki article gives an alright synopsis, but the book I mentioned (edited my original comment) does a good job of explaining her accomplishments. I'm on mobile, and probably won't be near a computer until tomorrow, but if you're still interested, you can PM me! I'm not a professional, but I'm in my senior year of undergrad with a major in modern American history!
Also read about her in a history class last semester. It's crazy how little we hear about a lot of the people who made the movement into what it was. A. Phillip Randolph is another one who I didn't learn about until I took a class on Civil Rights History. There are so many people who aren't remembered the same way MLK or Rosa Parks are and it's very odd to me.
I've heard of her before, but don't really know that much. Definitely going to give that book a read.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:30:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
added it to my "to read" list!
Frapplo ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:18:27 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I've read a few slave narratives and civil rights books. Some are absolutely jaw dropping stories of perseverance. I always read then and wonder if I'd have the same resolve in those situations.
Then I get super frustrated while trying to evenly cook a hot pocket, and realize that, no...no I would not.
[deleted] ยท 22 points ยท Posted at 19:17:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
American Civil Rights history is massively whitewashed
His is one of the saddest stories. He had as much to do with the movemnt as MLK and was one of his closest confidantes. But he was also gay, which meant at the time that he had too much baggage to be allowed to have public notice. History nearly forgot him.
Unfortunately I can't think of any names now, which is a shame. I know some of them were even murdered along with black protesters by people with Klan connections.
skaiipl ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:34:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I've heard about Ella Baker. I study English as a second language in Poland and the teacher was talking about her in our American History class. To be honest, she is one of the only names that I remember from that class. I was that impressed with her, I guess.
gordo65 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:51:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also, civil rights lawyers. Whenever veterans are asked to stand at an event so that the rest of us can thank them for defending our freedom, I think about all the lawyers who have been doing the thankless job of ensuring that our rights are protected from state overreach.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:19:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I am not American so I didn't know a lot about the black civil rights movement until I went to see the movie "The Butler" with my mom. Opened my eyes to how hard the struggle was. I knew it was bad, but not that bad. I didn't know about freedom buses for example and everyone on those buses risked getting set on fire, on fucking fire!
arbivark ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:07:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
one of those black activists was Manuel Talley. In 1960 in Talley v California he won the right to anonymous speech. I used to be a lawyer, before I became too crazy to practice, and my work focused on trying to get lower courts to recognize what the Supreme Court had decided in Talley's case. Now I mostly just reddit. pic
Cyclone_1 ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 17:18:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Malcolm X is rather well known too.
I don't have anything against those guys, in fact I admire X in some ways, but the real, hard, work of mobilizing, canvassing, and organizing people in that time fell to a lot (not exclusively, though) of black women who got little, if any, praise for their efforts.
I think the need to rally behind a strong, charismatic, leader is problematic for movements as the death of the leader usually means (mostly symbolically) that the movement is therefore over which is a farce of epic proportions. I like to quote Ella Baker in conversations like this who said, "strong people don't need strong leaders."
Why? Activists in the Labor Movement and the Civil Rights Movement were engaged in direct action/activism which makes them similar in that regard. They were both outraged over their exploitation. They both were large activist movements.
[deleted] ยท 87 points ยท Posted at 18:34:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm surprised that this is so high up there. There is so much anti union rhetoric these days. They gave us so much and people nowadays believe that our employers would just give us an 8 hr day, or lunch breaks, or vacation time, or sick leave if they didn't have to....
Ayjayz ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 22:24:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Some people think that those things were won by advancing technology and the vast increase in wealth seen by the last 100 years, and that unions were just opportunists trying to take credit.
[deleted] ยท 26 points ยท Posted at 22:37:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Reddit is as often a massive libertarian circlejerk as it is a Bernie Sanders circlejerk. So not necessarily.
[deleted] ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 23:21:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think the reason why the first thing that comes to mind when most think of a propertarian (they are in very few ways for liberty, except for maybe weed or gay marriage if you meet a decent one, they mainly focus on property rights which hinders freedom) is a teenaged edge lord because the education system doesn't talk shit about labor rights until the tail end of high school. By then it has been etched so hard into your mind that the US is the best nation for freedom and that capitalism = literally the ideology of Jesus.
Yeah, true freedom is a bureaucracy that you don't know and whom you've never met claiming a priori ownership of your labor and your home.
I grew up in rural, middle of nowhere, southwestern Virginia and my dad is from the coal lands of southeastern Kentucky, and I've seen firsthand the damage that poor property rights does to the environment. That's pure cronyism; all that shit's done with full cooperation of the state and federal government.
That's the opposite of property rights. You don't know what the hell you're talking about, but because it's anti-libertarian, upvotes for you.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 04:23:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, true freedom is a bureaucracy that you don't know and whom you've never met claiming a priori ownership of your labor and your home.
I can use this exact same claim for capitalism. Just change the word bureaucracy and it's the exact same argument but turned against you.
And from what I've seen, the government has done jack shit since Johnson's Great Society and FDR's New Deal to combat poverty. You can thank Ronald "Second Coming of Christ" Reagan for that. The status of rural Appalachia would be incredibly worse than now if it was always kept in order by the coal mine owners.
You don't know what the hell you're talking about when it comes to freedom. You believe in freedom for the few but slavery for the many, and you are probably a part of the group that is the many. Fucking brainwashing that's what this society does.
Also, go post me to /r/shitstatistssay. It's not like you don't want a state because you want everything to be ran by someone other than the many. You just think that corporations are better than the government.
I have literally not seen a single front-page libertarian circlejerk here in my whole time here. The major subreddits are dominated by generic leftist content and dissenting views are punished.
the Rand paul AMA is on the front page rn. Also world news is extremely right wing. But yeah other than that reddit is pretty leftist on everything other than immigrants, Black people, and ISIS.
Where I work we get 2 weeks, a christmas and random summer bonus. No idea why we get a bonus in july but we do.
Reinbert ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:21:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
I have 25 paid vacation days + official holidays off (12 from monday-friday this year). I also get a 13th salary at christmas and a 14th salary on my first vacation in a year (most companies pay that in july). This is minimum by law, vacation days increase to 30 after 25 years of employment.
Austria, yay!
*edit: I also get additional days off for things like moving (2 days), death of a family member/partner (3 days) or relatives/family members of partner (2 days), searching for a new job (1 day/week after quitting/layoff, no joke),...
[deleted] ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 22:48:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hell, even sick days are hard to take. Which is a big fucking problem particularly in food service.
Sick days are seriously just a myth in the service industry. I've never seen someone actually be able to get out of work for being sick. Which is a shame because they are likely to get everyone else sick around them including fellow employees and customers
[deleted] ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 18:27:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A whopping 2 weeks off per year and even then you'll still be expected to answer work emails and have your boss guilt you into trying to not take the time off
That last part depends on where you work though. Nowhere I've worked has had bosses guilt you into not taking time off. In fact, it's been the opposite. They encourage it, and we show off our vacations to each other in our weekly meetings if one of us took off recently. Of course, there are some (too many) shitty employers out there who do try and guilt you. Don't work for those people if you don't have to. Time taken off is just as important to a company as time you work there, it's just some companies are too stupid to realize that.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 00:44:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's not scared of unions, there are plenty of them. It's just that unions are completely powerless as they don't have enough money to bribe....I mean lobby congress.
American workers are not as efficient per hour worked as Germany or France though, if I'm not mistaken. So to get the same amount of productivity done, they have to work longer.
coloco21 ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 17:37:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Except people are less productive in the last hour(s) of work.
And they are less productive if they're less happy (because of no vacations for instance)
Except people are less productive in the last hour(s) of work.
true, but there will always be "last hours of work." Now those hours are hours 7-8. If you cut it to 6 hours, then they will be hours 5-6, and so on.
And they are less productive if they're less happy (because of no vacations for instance)
this is also true, but I think one should have to prove that they can be efficient first, then get the extra vacations, not the other way around. that's unfair to the employer.
coloco21 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:54:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I live in France, where we get 35h a week and 5 weeks min of paid vacation (my father who works for the government gets 9 at the moment)
I'm sure that if you work 10h, your last hour will be immensely less productive than the last hour of someone working 7 a day.
Your idea about vacations, while good in theory, would never work in the real world. How do you define productiveness of an employee? The employers will just lie and say the employee isn't productive enough to merit more vacation time.
Productivity is easy to define. Gross revenue of the company divided by total hours worked. It's just math, not something you can easily fudge and make up. It isn't as simple as the boss just saying "oh you weren't as productive actually so you don't get more vacation time." Employees can tell how good the company is, how business is, if they have more/less clients. Those things aren't things the boss can just make up.
As far as my idea about vacations not working in the real world, the opposite way wouldn't work either. Saying "ok, we will give you more vacation time, but you have to promise to be more productive otherwise" sure as hell wouldn't work--especially on an honor system. There, the end result would be that the employee isn't any more or less productive, but yet the employer now has to pay them to vacation for an extra few weeks, which isn't fair to the employer.
personally I don't like the idea of paid vacation at all. It's not fair to the business for them to have to pay you if you're not working. would it ever be fair for the business to say to the employee "hey, the business isn't doing too well, we don't have a lot of money, I'm going to need you to work for 3 or 4 weeks now without getting paid."? Of course not.
it isn't fair to ask an employee to work without getting paid, and it isn't fair to ask employer to pay an employee if the employee isn't working. When you work, you get paid. If you're not working, you don't get paid. I think that's the most fair system for everyone.
We have the least productivity per hour actually. We also work the most. We accomplish in 8 hours what an average German does in 6. So I'd rather work harder for 6 hours and get vacations.
Holy god, that's SO not true. I work with German, French, and other Europeans, and their work ethic is terrifyingly slack. Most of the time, their "work" is trying to find someone to do their work for them.
Edit: word.
Reinbert ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 20:15:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What a nice, trustworthy, reliable and verifiable source!
seriously this. and not just holding up signs and standing outside a business either... back then when they did that they got fucking shot IIRC. it was like actual battles in order to get those things to become part of our working lives. most people dont realize that minimum wage cost lives to achieve. or maybe that documentary i saw one time completely mislead me and im a moron.
honestly not sure, it was just something that caught my eye one time a couple of years ago on the history channel, and i only watched it because i was absolutely blown away that they had history on the history channel.
had alot of re-enactments, and i think it was based on this labor movement. it may have been part of the "men who built america" series, but thats just a bad guess.
The Communist Manifesto was basically the guidebook to socialism
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:40:18 on January 19, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Karl Marx was a fucking moron, who didn't know a fucking thing about economics and who also lived like a parasite, and created an ideal, based on envy that served as an inspiration for some of the most horrid crimes in history.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 08:19:57 on January 19, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
sounds like hate speech to me tbh fam
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 08:29:26 on January 19, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So? The truth is hate speech?
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 10:45:08 on January 19, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Comrade, do you want to get thrown into a gulag?
Because this is how you get thrown into a gulag.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:38:39 on January 19, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Good.
-Urabus- ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 22:19:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And now organized labor is vilified. What a world.
I was a real eye opener. I looked up and noticed that I would write to big science people so distraught and worked up. It causes unneeded stress and turns people off and on again?". My motto in life because I'm not going to die anyways. I force myself to be a Paid Ski patroller. I am entitled to it again and again I found a box of pudding cups I had with his. He'd obsess over a year now that I was just V8-still nasty...
count210 ยท 162 points ยท Posted at 16:59:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
you should become a firefighter. you work 48 hours straight in some cities then you get a five day weekend.
edit: for those asking how, most of that time is spent cooking, sleeping, watching TV, or hanging out, but in a ready state waiting for the call. You aren't fighting fire all 48 hours. The 24 workers are EMTs, those crazy righteous bros.
Also if a fire starts in the last minutes of your shift you need to go and fight it to completion.
Heatbeat ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:27:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Eh.... they're not actively working all those 48 hours. They're "on duty" but that just means stationed for when a call comes in.
I'd imagine some serious reform for smaller departments is coming.
I know in my area they're going to be changing it up. They're getting too much money for how little work they actually do and it's a strain on the smaller municipalities budgets.
Well, those shifts aren't constant work. They're mostly being "on-call" like doctors are.
The reason it's better to have long shifts? Switching shifts takes time. The most dangerous time to have a fire is probably around the shift-change, when you've either got tired guys, guys who are still a bit off their game in the first hours of the shift, or worst, guys who are mid-way through a switch and will take longer to get to you. At least, that's my guess.
My dad was a Philadelphia fire fighter. Schedule: 2 day works (8am-6pm), 2 night works (6pm-8am), and 4 days off. Some nights there were no "runs" and other night back-to-back "runs". I believe the schedules are slightly different now in terms of times in which shifts start. So there was a A,B,C,D tour schedule. I thought it was good.
Depending on where your station is, you might get one or two runs in that 48 hour period on average. The firefighters can sleep most of the way through most nights and get to cook meals. It's a pretty sweet gig.
Same thing in the US. It's covered in history classes, but has the unfortunate consequence of being sandwiched in between the Industrial Revolution and WWI in most high school level courses.
The labor movement didn't create the wealth but it did move it down the pyramid to allow shorter hours. Prior to automation we need to work that much to survive.
Wizzad ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 02:09:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Labor created the wealth, and the labor movement both moved that wealth to the working class and incentivized the creation of more wealth.
Labor has created more wealth under the automation of the capitalist mode of production than ever before.
Day check/Stay check in aviation. We were lucky when we had 12 hour days, 7 days a week. It was normally closer to 14, and sometimes(more often than I'd like to admit) we did face to face passdown. That's not so bad if you were on day check. I wasn't.
[deleted] ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 17:46:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My wife is foreign and is convinced that she will need to work 12 x 6 in order to make decent money.
Her English isn't great which is the main hold up with finding jobs but I keep trying to convince her that she's not going to have to work that much.
It's an entirely foreign concept to her that more work != more pay.
Better job = more pay. And most good jobs in the U.S. are 8 hour shifts.
ristoril ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 20:21:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So what it's just a coincidence that before the labor movement people were working like today's Third World sweat shop laborers, and after the labor movement we had a 40-hour week and all the other benefits?
Also you're going to have to explain why all those Third World sweat shop laborers still exist if the mere existence of automation led to five 8s.
nah, they'd prefer to hire fewer workers for the same salary, then work them at 6x12. desperate unemployed people keep the salary low
Zircon88 ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 16:47:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My operators all work 6x12. They are only required to work 5x8, but when we tell them there is no need for overtime, they complain. Given the choice * no one* refuses overtime. The whole point, to add on what you are saying is that now you get to choose for yourself. As to the legality - they sign waivers during induction.
I live in an area with quite a few plants. Most of my friends and people I know work at the plants. When I see them on occasion or out somewhere they all like to do the same two things.
Brag about how much money they make.
Bitch about how many hours they work.
But they wouldn't have one without the other so it's kind of funny.
Zircon88 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 18:47:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, to be brutally honest, I would much rather have the option for overtime myself. Instead, I'm stuck looking for a supplementary job since my position (managerial) doesn't get paid OT.
I guess that what they're really bragging about is that they were lucky enough to land a gig that permitted them to work these hours - if they wanted to.
onedoor ยท 51 points ยท Posted at 18:10:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
But they want those extra shifts because of low wages...
That's not always the case. I work with ironworkers who make good money (At least $50k/yr plus benefits, journeyman and foreman $70k or more) who would still prefer to work 6x12 shifts and make double that amount. It isn't that they don't make enough money, it's that there's an opportunity for more. Not everyone takes the overtime, but most do.
It may not be "a lot." It's a damn sight better than what you get payed to go to college, though. That's what an apprenticeship is. You can receive training for a career while still making that money plus benefits.
ChE_ ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:41:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In a lot of the nation it is plenty. I can live on 20k/yr by myself. At 50k/yr and a stay at home wife, I could probably support a family of 4 where I live now. My parents were able to support a family of 4 on 25k/yr.
Pay rate increases with the cost of living, based (I believe) off of the CPI.
I seriously can't believe that I'm arguing that $50k isn't an acceptable wage for someone with nothing more than a high school degree. Reddit is full of people with no grip on reality.
That is empiricallyfalse. Your opinion of what work is worth notwithstanding, it is a verifiable fact that the workers in this country have seen no real increase in their pay while the buying power of that pay is less and less every year. If you have any actual counterargument outside of "I don't think this is the case so you're stupid", I would love to hear it, but there's reality for you, plain as day.
I'm speaking specifically about the union I deal with. I can't recall exactly how the cost of living increase is calculated, but it's tied directly to some economic metric.
What you're saying is largely true, but not for everyone. You can be super aggressive if you want, but you're attacking the wrong person.
That's true in a lot of cases, but it that because of wages or because of poor financial decisions? $50k is more than enough for an apartment and two safe working vehicles plus basic food and essentials for a family. Maybe not in a new apartment downtown, but that's just fine. I know because I've done it. Does every apprentice need to own a big house and flashy truck? Probably not, in my opinion.
Your argument is based off of some strange idea that everyone needs to have large amounts of disposable income, rather than a modest living. If they want more than modest, work some overtime. Seems pretty fair to me, and to them.
I guess I'm speaking generally, not just about apprentices. The cost of education comes into play, and location plays a huge part in all of this.
mnmn1345 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:47:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Most people don't agree with you. But have an upvote, i do.
Zircon88 ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 18:49:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
With OT, their wages surpass mine by around 700 euro actually. Earning 1.5x4h OT for 5 days and 2x12h for saturdays (all 12 are considered at one flat OT rate) most certainly boosts the paycheck.
Can you read? That's with extra shifts. They need to pull 72-hour weeks for that money. What would their wages be if they worked reasonable standard shifts?
A lot of people elect to do overtime because their regular wage won't leave much if anything after the bills are paid. "Money is nice" is a vacuous dismissal of the fact that overtime is necessary for many people to live comfortably and not constantly panic over whether the bills will be paid. Think about the above statement that "no one refuses overtime." Most people value their leisure time highly, so it says a lot about the starting wage when virtually all of those employees are giving close to twice as much of their waking time to work as they have to to stay employed. Some people just like to work that much, but if everyone's doing it it's probably out of necessity due to low wages.
Sure, it boost a paycheck. But in my experience, most tradesmen that work those kinds of hours do nothing but drink and sleep when they're not working. Not much time for much else. What kind of life is that?
The one they prefer to live? You realize people actually take pride in working with their hands, right? It isn't modern day slavery. It's a career choice for a large portion of the population.
Automation had nothing to do with it and you're doing a massive disservice to those who struggled and died to bring us an 8 hour workday. We would still be doing 12 hour days, automation or not, without the early labour movement.
I'm really not doing anyone a disservice. It is a fact that there is a much bigger pie to divide with all of the technology improvements over the last century.
PlayMp1 ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 19:21:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, but without the labor movement, the employees wouldn't be getting nearly as much of the benefits of that bigger pie.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:12:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Did exactly that for two or three weeks for Christmas one year. In retail. I was fucking loaded but God did it suck.
Foxfire2 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:10:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I have a friend who is a nurse that does that now. Many nurses work 12 hr shifts, but she also works two jobs. This is by choice though, so vastly different.
Bullshit. Capitalists will take whatever they can get away with. Productivity has absolutely zero to do with it.
Punkdork ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:40:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Know what drives that automation? Capitalism. Those shitty 6x12s were still better than being in the fields. Look into the population booms of the industrial revolution. Higher productivity means more resources for everyone. More resources means more babies.
This said, what we have now is a very twisted form of capitalism. A CEO has a moral and legal obligation to shareholders to make the most profit they can. Currently, lobbying has the highest ROI. It's the very fact that the government can be bought that has broken the system.
Who is a company everyone hates? Comcast, guess who grants and protects their monopolies? Governments at the local level. How about oil companies? We hate them because they destroy the environment, yes? Why do they get such huge subsidies?
We need markets to help us allocate resources effectively for R&D of those new automations, general production, and the destruction of goods and services no longer desirable. Without a price calculation/price system (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_system), there is no way to identify the most effective use and distribution of resources.
Something people overlook is that labor is a market too. Wages are the price of your labor. If I want to pay you to pick up my dog's poop, you probably wouldn't do it for $5 a day, I bet you'd consider it a lot more carefully at $1mil/year. So there is a market on labor too, what I'm willing to spend on your labor and what you're willing to trade it for.
Yes, this can get abused at any level, but when you have a strong, centralized government, you've created a honeypot for those who wish to abuse things.
This is used in many places now. It's called flex schedule. Also 4 x 9 hour shifts, where you get every other Friday off.
The point of the labor movement was to limit the number of hours you worked in any given amount of time. As mentioned above, people would work 6 x 12 hour days, literally. Fired if they were injured on the job. Put in jail if they failed to pay back the debt that they owed to their employer. It was pretty dire.
I know in Ireland, and quite probably in many other parts of the world, the boss would also own a pub and give you your pay there. If you didn't spend it there too you weren't quite so likely to keep that job.
[deleted] ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 17:33:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It was also the 40 hour workweek they won.
syriquez ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 19:29:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
And that's certainly evaporating in the US.
Salaried? Well, that means you're okay with 70+ hours/week, right? With no overtime compensation. Also, taking vacation requires 3 levels of management to sign off on it and even if you do get that 1 week off, you're going to return to 3 weeks of backlog because the business metaphorically catches on fire in your absence. But here's the fun part, HR will be breathing down your neck all year long because you haven't taken any of your amazing 2 weeks of vacation after working for the business for over 10 years! And no, your time won't roll over, lololol. By the way, sick leave has to be pre-approved so plan those emergencies, lololol.
But yeah guys, let's talk about how the Do-Nothing Unionsโข ruin the country and how your friend's girlfriend's sister's roommate's nephew's father's former pastor's cousin's stepson had a union that did nothing for them and just stole their wages!
This fuckin' country.
And then if you deign to not be able to afford college or live in a region that has amazing job opportunities... Well, you should go fucking die in a hole for working [low prestige job in retail, service, food, whatever]! You're a vermin of society and shouldn't be allowed to live on anything less than 3 separate jobs simultaneously! It's your fault for working a job that high schoolers should be working!
But at the same fucking time that I'm saying this, I will still expect Target, Walmart, McDonald's, Caribou, Starbucks, and all those other fucking places to be open at 6AM or 8AM or whenever. Because I don't understand a single fucking thing about the infrastructure and personnel requirements that allow my brainless consumerism to function in this shithole land of the free!
Sorry Mekroig, not targeting you, just realizing how much the anti-union and anti-wage-normalization crowd annoys the shit out of me.
Yeah I agree. I bet the majority of people would prefer this, yet nobody that I know of operates this way. It's too bad, same amount of time working and you'd get a long weekend every week. Who wouldn't be for that?
eh, i've worked the 4/10 schedule life... the three days off thing is overrated if you have a commute of any real length.
in both situations i was working 4/10s, most of the people on the shifts lived within ten minutes of work. people who were more than 45 minutes away would look elsewhere. fuck having so little of the day.
I'm saying that prior to limiting the normal work week to just 40 hours, workers used to have to work much longer work weeks.
Nothing to do with present day stuff.
buttflan ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:51:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Work at a hospital. Three 12 hour shifts. It's so nice to have all that time off
cherlin ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:55:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I work 4 10's and oh my do I love it. M-th 7-5 and I get a 3 day weekend every weekend!
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:00:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
For a lot of jobs, that's unsafe due to fatigue and so forth.
For a lot of other jobs, that's a bad tradeoff for employers, because the quality of work one is able to produce declines sharply after 5-6 hours. That's the irony of the Silicon Valley "crunch" culture, for instance.
Something like retail? Sure. I'd rather work four 10-hour days running a register or stocking shelves myself, come to that.
However, we already have a big problem with expecting people to work past the point of diminishing returns.
I work 4 10 hour shifts. It's so great. I mean my job sucks, but the schedule is awesome. There's no upredicability, no surprises, just work Sunday-Wednesday nights and then have 3 days off with no worries.
There are downsides to this. Those extra two hours ensure you leave work feeling absolutely exhausted and ready to just pass out. But free Fridays are so good
Eh, analysis. I usually play videogames at night during the week anyway 2 more hours of pretending to work each day would be amazing to have that 3 day weekend every week
Guruking ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:56:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I work a job there's really no pretending to work, so a busy 10 hour day is hell. My previous position I was part time, 30 hours. 2 years later and I'm still not acclimated to working 2 extra hours a day.
grachuss ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 04:48:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If you want to join the Border Patrol you can do 5 10s. No overtime though.
"I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture of their minds, and dignity, equality, and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down, men other-centered can build up I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent redemptive goodwill will proclaim the rule of the land." - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:07:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Damn he made some good words.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:56:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
People literally died so we could have a weekend.
MC_Mooch ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:00:06 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thanks Bernie!
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:38:06 on January 19, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
PlayMp1 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:28:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The US specifically changed its Labor Day from the traditional May 1st (May Day) to being in September to dissociate it from its unionist roots. In fact, IIRC, some GOP elected official (think it was Rick Santorum, not sure though) tweeted on Labor Day once about how it's a day to honor those brave business owners.
Never mind that the roots of Labor Day worldwide are decidedly more Red in nature, if you catch my drift.
jeepdave ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:52:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oh shut the fuck up and move to Cuba.
Banzai51 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:07:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What kills me is today people will actively argue that Coal Mine Execs or Industrialists like Henry Ford didn't hire goons to beat up and kill labor rights and union leaders. Or that the National Guard was never called on to massacre striking workers.
Frances Perkins! If you're interested in this, read about her. She was an amazing woman. Suffragist, activist, social worker, first female member of U.S. Cabinet (Secretary of Labor). She's one of my favorite people in history. So underrated.
I don't really think they're underappreciated. It's barely a day that goes by where I haven't heard or read about the wonders of early unions and labor rights.
inthrees ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:40:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And now people are falling all over themselves to vote in the ones who will demolish all of it.
"That child is fortunate to earn eleven cents an hour, ten hours a day, fifty hours a week! When I was a child I wasn't allowed to work because of burdensome government regulations!"
[deleted] ยท 44 points ยท Posted at 17:12:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Antonio Salieri. One of the greatest composer of his era only out shined by Mozart. Trained Beethoven and Schubert for free. Only known in history for an urban legend that he killed Mozart out of jealousy, which has no base in historical fact.
One of the greatest composer of his era only out shined by Mozart
If really true, though, why don't we play more of his music currently? We play Haydn. We play (a little) Clementi. I have never played a Salieri piece, either in an ensemble or on keyboard. (I'm guessing Salieri's keyboard pieces are more often performed than whatever he wrote for ensembles, but that's just a guess.) I would think that if he were really that good (say, a classical-era version of Camille Saint-Saens), we'd be playing and hearing more of his stuff.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:35:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thats true but think about it like this. If Mozart and Haydn weren't alive and performing when he was, would we listen to his music then. You've got a point but I think his music and his influence on future composers has been forgotten.
retrode ยท 545 points ยท Posted at 16:02:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jonas Salk, developer of the Polio vaccine. Made it available and didn't patent the vaccine which would have made him an estimated $7 billion dollars richer.
[deleted] ยท 393 points ยท Posted at 17:27:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Everyone in the microbiology field knows his name.. He is definitely not underappreciated
Even those of us who are not in microbiology know his name and accomplishments. And rightfully so, but he is hardly unknown or underappreciated.
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:28:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If we revered decent people the way we do celebrities we might live in a better world. Sure, we know his name, but he isn't acknowledged as the hero he was.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:33:37 on January 31, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:54:50 on February 1, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Could be. My high school taught biology in 9th grade. Then I did an engineering discipline in college that didn't require biology. So, it's been a while since biology, but I wish I knew more.
Any place you recommend starting if I want to learn some more?
Everyone in medicine, everyone in any kind of immunological and epidemiological research field, hell, a lot of high school students know him from biology class.
cat_____ ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:23:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I know him from the fact that his name comes up on a TIL a few times a month.
The guy was a worldwide superstar while he was alive and started one of the most famous and decorated research facilities in the world.
[deleted] ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 19:03:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sabin is way more unappreciated. He also created a vaccine of a weakened version of the virus. He made It at the same time as Salk and his vaccine was the one that has iraddicated the disease in almost all of the world. It saved more lives than Salk's but he's rarely spoken of.
The unknown hero there would be Henrietta Lacks. She was a poor black woman who had her cells taken without her knowledge or consent. Those cells were what Salk worked on to develop that vaccine, and though her contribution wasn't intentional she was vital none the less
He also tested his vaccines in smuggled monkeys and orphans. His first batch of 40 monkeys all died and he berated the shipping company for delaying his research. Also, he only tested 40 monkeys total, 20 in the control who he just injected straight up polio into, then like 13 of the vaccinated monkeys survived their polio injections. He thought it was good enough and injected orphans in exchange for food.
I'm not saying this is okay but research ethics were not taken as seriously then as they are now; the Tuskegee syphilis experiments were going on at this time too. Also I'd like to see a source on this. I'm a history major at the University of Pittsburgh, where he did his research, and it's the first I've heard of this.
Yeah, I think it's definitely necessary to look at it through the lens of that time. While I'm not justifying it, it's important to consider the ethics of research in that era before completely condemning his actions.
Also, high five to a fellow history major!
[deleted] ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 18:36:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
I have no problem with animal testing for life-saving medicine. I'd be pissed too if the animals I paid for and needed for my research all died in transit. The orphan thing is a little more troubling if it's even true.
Watched this documentary on that - quite inspiring.
Also, I'd say Edward Jenner is equally if not more unappreciated, (maybe it's just me, but) I really don't hear his name often considering he:
"was the pioneer of smallpox vaccine, the world's first vaccine. He is often called "the father of immunology", and his work is said to have "saved more lives than the work of any other human".
Gamblito ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:23:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Worth noting that the Chinese had been practicing "vaccinations" hundreds of years before Jenner's research.
Jenner was a bit of a dick though, the way he went about doing that. I'm happy with the end result but really Edward? did it really have to involve infecting a kid without telling anyone?
petgreg ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:22:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As per wikipedia, the team that isolated insulin included Banting, Best, Macleod, and Collip of which Banting, Best, and Collip were patentees on the patent and who all agreed to sell the rights to the University Of Toronto for $1.00. Banting and Macleod shared the Nobel but both shared their prize with the other team members. Not related, but interesting, both Banting and Macleod, at least, were painters in their spare time.
ryanh221 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:01:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Years ago his grandson played lacrosse for me. When I was amazed who his grandfather was, he responded, "Why does everyone keep making a big deal out of him? Geez."
My mother died at 64 after a very painful life due to contracting polio when she was 5. It destroyed her body. I cannot stress how glad i am that polio can be prevented and eventually eradicated, having seen its effects.
I was just having a conversation with my dad. He remembers when they started giving out the polio vaccines (I think this was in the 60s or 70s). He talked about how people waited in long lines to get vaccinated. He also mentioned that a family member had a bum leg thanks to polio, something I hadn't known.
The sad thing is now people have to convince some parents to vaccinate their kids. They don't understand how bad a disease like polio is because they have not had a lot of exposure to it. They find every excuse not to vaccinate their kids.
A bit off topic, but it amazes me how much has changed in a generation or two.
so... I can patent it now and raise the price by 10,000%?
Its the merican way.
Kwangone ยท 407 points ยท Posted at 14:12:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"Lot's wife" from the Bible (maybe not history, but at least ancient fiction.) Part of one of the craziest parts of the most reprinted book ever, read by billions. Her name? That dude's wife.
GunNNife ยท 369 points ยท Posted at 14:51:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hell, usually women weren't even enumerated. "Bob had 11 sons." How many daughters? "I don't know?"
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 17:59:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think that justs the way in the middle east, the number of sons the founder of Saudi Arabia ibn Saud had is meticulously kept (45) but no one ever bothered to count the daughters.
PlayMp1 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:02:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fucking hell that's a lot of sons. Are those all legitimate? I realize they practice polygamy so I'd figure he'd have at least 4 wives.
They had sex with everything, flora, fauna, fire... They had sex with rocks painted to look like God's face
Oklahom0 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:34:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
From what I've heard, "120 Days of Sodom" was likely weirder. It's been banned, and is still banned, in several countries because it portrays graphic displays of murder, torture, and rape to people who are believed to be under 18.
According to apocryphal works, it was mostly their cruel financial dealings and disregard for human life. There was also a wife-swapping holiday 4 times a year, but it doesn't seem to be the main problem. Jasher 18, 19. I got the impression that, while in the Bible passage, the men of sodom wanted to literally fuck the two men from out of town, they were widely known for figuratively fucking people from out of town; stealing all their belongings and sometimes killing them if they tried to dispute it.
(note: upon further research, this version of Jasher might just be based on jewish myths in medieval times and not be authentic whatsoever. Other apocryphal works mention "fornication" and "uncleanness" (Jubilees 16).)
Those were vile people in both those cities [Sodom and Gomorrah], as is well known. The world was better off without them.
And Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But sheย didย look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human.ย ~ Vonnegut
mtomei3 ยท 15 points ยท Posted at 18:57:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's funny, cause I always thought as far as biblical "history" was concerned, Bithiah (we will call her that for simplicity's sake) was a really un-sung hero. You know your father is murdering all the Jewish children in the nation, and yet a baby washes up on shore of the Nile and your instinct is to take and raise him, despite what it does for you socially? I always thought that was brave and pretty awesome, but no one ever talks about her much (or that I know of, I don't have a lot of religious friends/am not a religious person).
The naming convention for women in ancient Rome was just the female form of the fathers name, and if a man had a bunch of daughters they would number them. So if a guy named Paul had 12 daughters, they would be called Paulina Prime, Paulina 2, Paulina 3 all the way up to Paulina 12
GunNNife ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:20:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And she had her own name--Elizabeth. "the second" merely means she was the second queen of the name Elizabeth. And the Kings had the same naming convention.
You'll still see something like this in catholic families from time to time, where all the daughters are named Mary and are differentiated by middle name. Mary Elizabeth, Mary Jane, Mary Catherine, Mary Ingrid, etc
What did she do that makes her underappreciated? Her Wikipedia page just says that they were fleeing from their city and she looked back (despite being warned not to), and then God punished her. I think we can argue that looking back was a very human and understandable thing to do and that she was unjustly and disproportionately punished, but I don't see anything here that makes me go "that woman is amazing". Did Wikipedia miss something?
Hilarious that you mention Lot. After his wife dies, his teenage step daughters then proceed to get him drunk and then have sex with him to preserve his blood line, literally hours after their mother has just been turned to stone!
Kwangone ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:54:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I thought it was to repopulate the world. When they saw Soddom destroyed, they thought the whole world was destroyed and they had to repopulate.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:50:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In the LDS Book of Mormon (think what you will), there's a guy responsible for saving the ancestors of a huge civilization and the only name he's given is the brother of Jared.
Well, I guess they talk more about his wife, because his daughters seduced and raped him after they got away. And these were the most virtuous folks that God SAVED - what the fuck was going on in that town?
El_Nopal ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:57:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My favorite part is where his daughters get him drunk so he can knock both of them up.
One of the biggest rules of history study is to not apply modern morals to the past. because we don't want future historians applying the same things to us.
Another one from the bible is Judas. A lot of people use the name Judas to describe a traitor, like Benedict Arnold, but he wasn't. If Jesus had to die for everyone's sins, then he needed someone to turn him in. So for all the Christians out there, you can thank Judas for your religion.
You're right, but again, how has she been "under appreciated" that she is the "most under apprecviated person in histyory"?
Because they didn't mention her name?
Kwangone ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:27:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, she was also damned by God for looking back with compassion toward a bunch of people who had just gotten cosmically smashed to shit by Sky Dad in His Rage. Famous character in the most famous book OF ALL KNOWN HISTORY and doesn't even get a name, and then damned to become a pillar of salt for having the decency to have emotion. Sounds pretty underappreciated to me.
Ah I see, but "most famous book OF ALL KNOWN HISTORY "? Really? Are you aware there's an entire non-Chrtistain/Jewish non-Western world with their own books?
How do we know she was turned into a pillar of salt unless someone else looked back?
Kwangone ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:19:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Very nice.
[deleted] ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 16:02:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Her name was A Lot. ;)
[deleted] ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 16:55:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Stanislav Petrov. He legitimately saved the world from the fate of a total Global Thermonuclear Warโข between the US and Russia during the cold war by not responding to a false positive on his early-warning system. Despite this, I still had to google "who was that guy who saved the world by not responding to a false alarm on a nuclear early-warning system?" to figure out his name.
The US are such toughguy show-offs they even trademarked the end of the world.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:17:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I was mostly going for a Wargames reference, where they think "Global Thermonuclear War" is the name of a game at the company they think they hacked... but sure, let's go with that.
ipeench ยท 21 points ยท Posted at 18:29:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
ย aย Soviet Navyย officer who prevented a nuclear war during theย Cuban Missile Crisis. Only Arkhipov, asย Flotillaย commander and second-in-command of the nuclear-armed submarineB-59, refused to authorize the captain's use ofnuclear torpedosย against theย United States Navy, a decision requiring the agreement of all three senior officers aboard.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:40:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And the three-person authorisation was only required on the sub which had the flotilla commander on board. If he hadn't been there, it would have only required the captain and the political officer's agreement, both of whom were for using the nukes.
LolzmaoD ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 20:58:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Those Chernobyl guys who died to save everyone's lives
Someone mentioned them further up, otherwise this might be a lot higher. I hadnt heard of that story yet but was pretty moving to read about 3 people volunteering to sacrifice their lives to save millions. As someone mentioned it was "movie heroism" like bruce willis in armageddon only without the radiation suffering
I think there are 2 different stories. Those who did the suicidal work on the day of the accident and 10 years later when the core got unstable and work needed to be done. It's on one side heroic, bot on the other hand very sad how expendable lives were in the soviet union.
I know this might sound lame, but I think the soldiers who survived the first and second world wars were super under appreciated, especially the Canadian soldiers. A lot of them were shunned after they got home because of "shell shock" , ended up sleeping & living on the streets and dying alone. It makes me really sad when I think about it. I mean yeah, organizations like veterans affairs and the last post fund emerged from the neglect but these organizations were started mostly by ex-soldiers who no doubt "got it". I suppose I am only speaking from the Canadian and British government neglect and the Canadian history because it's what I know about.
[deleted] ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 19:34:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
I know in the states they have a HUGE problem with this especially for "modern war" vets. I can't speak too much about it because I don't entirely know (I am Canadian so I don't see the American problem first hand like you would)
That Vietnam vet is a true hero as far as I am concerned.
Great guy, he worked there as something to do. The troops really do need more support when they get back, not just when we send them shitty places for stupid reasons.
Absolutely! I know this started out as who we think is historically underrated but i absolutely agree that our current troops all over the world are totally under appreciated by the governments they obey orders from. I'd love to see more civilians push the cause in peaceful demonstrations/writing letters/making campaigns to show that they are appreciated by the people they Serve
I dont feel that it's healthy to hold them in the esteem that the US claims to, it's borderline fascism. That said, everyone, especially soldiers deserve help from incidents arising from their service or really anything. A society that wont help the needy regardless of what isn't a good society.
Same for Vietnam and Korea. Doesn't matter why the war was fought, when most of those men came back they were treated like crap by the public. Either that or they had to suffer their physical and (especially) mental illnesses and injuries in silence.
It's not just men either. Minorities and women in the military were often completely forgotten about and sometimes never even received benefits by the US government. There are still a few women left who served in WWII who are fighting for recognition.
I didn't mean to take away from any other country's men who served , I can only speak from the Canadian perspective because it's what I know. But I absolutely agree with you! My grandpa is a Korean War vet, he's basically drank himself half into his grave. He gets super emotional if anyone mentions the word war too. It's heart breaking.
I have 3 great aunts the were in the RCAF.WD & CWAC (Royal Canadian airforce woman's division and Canadian women's army corps) in WWII and it's almost impossible to find any info about either group, the RCAF is a little easier because in my hometown in Ontario we had so many training schools that brought in men from all over the allied countries.
Your post is spot on, it's the same way in America. Lack of training and education for dealing with PTSD is a huge problem right now. You've got veterans from years ago dying broke because their benefits haven't gotten paid.
I'm no fan of war under any circumstance, but there is a responsibility to care for those affected by it, including the soldiers.
I've seen a short documentary on Netflix called "poster girl" about an Iraq vet who was a sergeant (I think) about her struggle with trying to cope after and how much of a run around she got just trying to get help. It's heart breaking because so many people sign up thinking they are doing good just to be completely shit on if they survive.
I'm glad somebody gets it. If somebody he's in the thread, he's being appreciated by somebody at least.
rhb4n8 ยท 25 points ยท Posted at 14:14:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
George Westinghouse, who made trains safe and practical, helped Tesla electrify the world, and invented the first electric wheelchair among many other things.
He can't be that underappreciated, he has a lasting legacy in the form of his company that grew due to the success of the train brakes he made. Westinghouse's company was at GE level, sold off some divisions, bought CBS and currently IS CBS. now when you see new products with the Westinghouse logo know that they are paying licensing fees to CBS to use that logo. The current Westinghouse Electric Company has to get permission to even display it's own logo on ads, products, probably it's one building, because it does not own it's own logo. Tvs are still made with the Westinghouse w. Old elevators bear the logo. His legacy is everywhere.
rhb4n8 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:55:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Actually fun fact cbs started as a Westinghouse company. Kdka the first cbs station first broadcast from the roof of a Westinghouse factory in turtlecreek Viacom became a Westinghouse subsidiary was spun off and then rebought. There were more than 70 Westinghouse companies during his life and later hundreds of subsidiary companies.
The average person. No one will care about their lives or stories Centuries or Millennium after they are gone. They are the people that are just statistics in history books, and had average lives for their time. These people are all around us and keep the world running, and we focus on a few throughout history because we do not have the attention span, the time, or the desire to focus on the average because we know basically what they did their whole lives regardless of what small thing made them unique. They never did anything of worth that put them into the spotlight, so they never saw it. This is what most people are going to be, to society as a whole, eventually:
They were born, they worked, they payed bills, they died.
Dr. Eugene Lazowski and Dr. Stanislaw Matulewicz discovered that by injecting a healthy person with a "vaccine" of killed bacteria, that person would test positive for Epidemic Typhus without experiencing any symptoms. Playing on Nazis' fear of the highly contagious disease, they "quarantined" about a dozen villages thereby saving about 8,000 Polish Jews from certain death.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Lazowski
Alstis ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 23:41:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Witold Pilecki was a polish guy who faked documents in order to be taken to Auschwitz, where he would send information to the allies. After he ESCAPED he wrote what was to later be known as Witold's Report, which contained detailed information about the doings in Auschwitz. Later on, he was executed by Soviet special military police.
Alexander fucking Fleming. Dude discovered antibiotics and probably saved your life multiple times. 1 out of every six people reading this would have died from Tuberculosis without him.
BAPAP ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:39:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
More of us would have probably never existed to begin with.
michio42 ยท 17 points ยท Posted at 18:15:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Cecilia Helena Payne-Gaposchkin.
Discovered the composition of stars (by relative abundance of Hydrogen and Helium), but because it went against conventional thinking and because she was a women, was told to leave it out of her PhD thesis by a fellow astronomer. The next year or so, that astronomer, upon realizing that she was correct, publishes her work and gets the credit. Only recently has this been amended in the scientific community, somewhat, but as a result scientific historians tend to forget.
She is someone who is a 'women in science' who should celebrated as much as Marie Curie.
Browsed through the comments and found 3 replies of...George Washington?
Americans should totally appreciate that guy more. Maybe put his portrait on something cool. Or name something after him. A town maybe. Or a huge stone structure? This man needs recognition!
More people should browse through the comments before posting one of their own. How many more people need to tell us about Norman Borlaug or Stanislav Petrov?
DrenDran ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 04:15:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I feel bad for downvoting Jonas Salk but it really wasn't what the thread was asking for. Everyone knows that guy.
TO THIS DAY, most biology textbooks still do not credit her. Watson wrote about her in a very patronizing manner in his book that he published AFTER SHE HAD DIED OF OVARIAN CANCER. She never got the Nobel prize, and though she's been given more recognition in recent years, it isn't anywhere near as much as she deserves.
Don't forget that her ovarian cancer was likely a result of exposure to radiation during the x-ray diffraction imaging. The photographs she took during that process are what later led Watson and Crick to propose the double helix.
W&C used her x-ray crystallography images without her permission
She actually came up with the double helix independently
She correctly predicted that the backbone would be on the outside of the DNA, where as W&C were convinced that the backbone was on the inside until she told them otherwise.
To be fair, Watson's book was how I learned about her. Not saying he's not a sexist asshole, but he basically acknowledged that without her, they wouldn't have been able to uncover the double helix. He also, iirc, said that she deserved a nobel, but they couldn't be awarded posthumously (Watson and Crick got the nobel four years after Franklin's death). I didn't get the impression that he was too broken up over it or anything, but I wouldn't have known about her at all if not for Watson's book. I agree textbooks should credit her along with Watson and Crick.
Oaden ยท 74 points ยท Posted at 15:31:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You could start by telling what she actually did then
Franklin was responsible for much of the research and discovery work that led to the understanding of the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA.
websnarf ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 03:45:56 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
She was the first to accurately describe the chemical structure of DNA by direct examination via X-ray crystallography. In other words she determined it by actually seeing it.
Watson and Crick "discovered" the structure by making models and basically stealing the work of Franklin and Chargaff.
W&C used her x-ray crystallography images without her permission
She actually came up with the DNA double helix structure independently of W&C (unpublished work)
She correctly predicted that the DNA backbone would be on the outside of the DNA, where as W&C were convinced that the backbone was on the inside until she told them otherwise.
In other words W&C were barking up the wrong tree until Rosalind disclosed she had been able to produce images of DNA which W&C then used without her permission in order to publish the structure of the DNA - they did not credit her, nor her laboratory in their work. She didn't even get an acknowledgment. She died before her work was recognized.
[deleted] ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 20:02:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They should name one of the new elements after her
Maybe it's a generational thing, but she's always been mentioned in class when we've covered DNA. And hell, i graduated two years ago from rural ass Ohio.
togawe ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 22:02:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In my high school Chem class we talked about her and actually watched a documentary all about how her results were stolen.
michio42 ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 18:29:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Most of the reason people don't know about her is because she didn't get the Nobel Prize. But she couldn't get the Nobel Prize because she died before it was awarded, so ineligible. And she was taught to me in biology class a few years ago, and actual scientists do know about her, and there was or is a show in London where Nicole Kidman plays Rosalind Franklin, in a play about her life.
Summary of being a woman in a scientific field. I catch flak for being a female science teacher sometimes even.
I named my fallout character after her. She is one of my favorite scientists ever. I tell all of my classes about her accomplishments. I can only imagine what else she would have accomplished had she not passed away at age 34.
hatt ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 20:09:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, she didn't get the Nobel Prize because she died before the prize for the discovery of DNA was awarded and they don't give them posthumously.
And as someone in grad school in biochem. Every class I have had dealing with DNA since high school always starts with a brief history of DNA and its discovery and she is always talked about. Maybe I have had a unique experience but the three names I know are Rosalind Franklin, Francis Crick, and James Watson. I have no clue who the other guy who got the Nobel Prize was all I know is he ran the lab Franklin was in.
All I am trying to say is I think she really is getting recognition these days and people need to calm down on the whole "no one knows who she is" thing. She made important contributions to the discovery but she was no more important than Crick or Watson.
I think the issue is that people in certain fields know who the underappreciated are. In this case it's Rosalind Franklin. Earlier it was Grace Hopper. They are still unknown to the general population.
He legacy is looking up though. It's now standard in my part of Canada to learn about her in school. That's probably also the case elsewhere, but I'm not sure.
barath_s ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:04:05 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
She never got the Nobel prize,
She was long dead by the time the Nobel came to be awarded for dna and the Nobel can't be awarded to long dead people.
Else I would nominate Jesus, Gautama Buddha, and Ashoka for the Nobel peace prize..
Thank you! I wrote a paper about her for a class this summer. I really feel like an Imitation Game-esque biopic about her needs to be made.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:55:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I feel it's starting to change. When I learnt about DNA structure they emphasised so much on how Rosalind Franklin did all the work, her results were stolen, etc... It's terrible she wasn't recognised sooner but it's good to see things have started to change.
Clowdy1 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 23:13:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Can we stop it with the whole Rosalind Franklin these days? I'm sorry but Watson and Crick do deserve the credit for the discovery of DNA. She did the imaging work which was indeed useful, but she also interpreted the data completely incorrectly, Watson and Crick got it right.
Even if you are going to give her credit for her imaging work you have to also give credit to Maurice Wilkins who was head of her lab and worked with her. He won the Nobel prize yes with Watson and Crick so he was recognized in his own time yes, but today almost no one knows his name and he is never credited for discovering the structure of DNA. So even if you are going to credit Franklin because she did the imaging (which makes no sense) you have to give equal credit to Wilkins.
No she was not given the Nobel prize (she died before she could get it) but she was mentioned in research papers and given credit, and nowadays people are starting to falsely say she was the discoverer of the structure of DNA instead of Watson and Crick.
There are plenty of Women in many scientific fields who can take full credit for amazing discoveries, like Annie Jumpcannon in Astronomy or Mary Anning in Paleontology. There's no need to create this fictitious narrative about Rosalind Franklin in order to show there have been successful female scientists.
She did the imaging work which was indeed useful, but she also interpreted the data completely incorrectly, Watson and Crick got it right
You have got to be joking. W&C put the phosphates in the middle of the DNA helix. Rosalind told them that was incorrect and impossible when she visited W&C...W&C then decided to revise their model and put the phosphates on the outside, they then published this model before the King's (Rosalind's) group got their act together. They did not acknowledge this critical information given by Rosalind. Had it not been for Rosalind's remark W&C very likely might have published the incorrect model.
W&C are like two guys who are given a full set of instructions with pictures to build an Ikea chair...only they decide to put half the legs on upside down. Another person enters the room and is like - uh, you put the legs on wrong. They look back at the pictures that they didn't take, and the formula's for the correct number of parts they did not determine, and manage to reconstruct the chair properly. They then present the chair to the whole world and essentially say "look what we did all by ourselves!". Meanwhile Ikea gets little to no recognition for the hard work it took to take the pictures, nor to determine the relative number of parts needed, nor to determine the shape of those parts.
Sources
Rosalind Franklin's first important contributions to the Crick and Watson model was her lecture at the seminar in November 1951, where she presented to those present, among them Watson, the two forms of the molecule, type A and type B, her position being that the phosphate units are located in the external part of the molecule. She also specified the amount of water to be found in the molecule in accordance with other parts of it, data that have considerable importance in terms of the stability of the molecule. Franklin was the first to discover and formulate these facts, which in fact constituted the basis for all later attempts to build a model of the molecule. However, Watson, at the time ignorant of the chemistry, failed to comprehend the crucial information, and this led to construction of a wrong model.
Working with single DNA fibers at very high humidity, she discovered that there were two forms of DNA: the familiar "dry" crystalline form ("A") and a longer, thinner, heavily hydrated "paracrystalline" form, which she and Gosling called the "B" or "wet" form. Samples could shift from one form to the other if humidity levels changed. (The existence of two distinct DNA forms explained why earlier attempts at diffraction pictures, such as William Astbury's, had been so fuzzy: the samples contained both forms.) Franklin noted, "Either the structure is a big helix or a smaller helix consisting of several chains. The phosphates [of the sugar that forms the backbone of the molecule] are on the outside so that phosphate-phosphate inter-helical bonds are disrupted by water." The hydrophilic phosphates caused the molecule to soak up water and lengthen. The wet DNA produced a sharp diffraction picture that resembled the pattern Stokes had predicted. Very pleased when he heard of this, Wilkins suggested that he and Stokes collaborate with Franklin. She angrily refused, and their relations became quite strained. At Randall's prompting, they reached a compromise: Franklin would work on the A form, using the Signer DNA, and Wilkins would work on the B form, using the Chargaff DNA. The Chargaff sample, which had been degraded during extraction, turned out to be unsuitable for diffraction studies and Wilkins was unable to make much progress.
Franklin and Gosling continued to photograph and analyze samples of DNA in the A form. The A form presented a different picture, far from clearly helical. Though it was hard to think how DNA could be helical in one form but not in another, the mathematical analysis that Franklin and Gosling carried out did not support a helical structure. Franklin's notebooks from 1951-1952 show that she thought a helix possible, but her data on the A form did not yet confirm it, and she would not theorize in advance of the evidence. To her, the proper approach was to gather data first and then build models from them, not the other way round.
James Watson and Francis Crick at Cambridge University's Cavendish Laboratory had meanwhile been taking the other way round, attempting to build a model of DNA based on what was already known, and on what current research, including that at King's, suggested. They believed that DNA was helical, and in November 1951 built a model of a three-helix molecule with the phosphates on the inside. The biophysics staff at King's, including Franklin, were invited to Cambridge to see it. Franklin immediately noted, correctly, that such a configuration would not hold together. In response, the director of the Cavendish, Lawrence Bragg, ordered Watson and Crick to cease work on DNA and leave it to King's. They did so, going so far as to send their model parts down to the King's staff, though Franklin had little use for them.
During 1952 Franklin took and analyzed ever-sharper photographs of the A form but still didn't see a helix. Her mathematical analysis, the Patterson function, though consistent with a helix in some ways, seemed to show a structural repeat of a dimension that would make a helical folding of the molecule impossible. In July, she and Gosling posted a prank notice of the "death of DNA helix (crystalline)." Franklin felt obliged to consider non-helical structures for the A form. She also believed that the A form, being more crystalline, would yield more precise information. Because DNA could shift between the two forms, any model would need to account for both forms. Yet she at no time argued that the B form was not helical, and this was reflected in the report that was made to the Medical Research Council (which funded the Biophysics Unit) late that year.
Watson and Crick had not stopped thinking about DNA, and they were in regular communication with Wilkins, eager to learn whatever they could of the progress at King's. In January 1953, spurred by Linus Pauling's publication of a 3-helix model (similar to the one they made in 1951), they resumed work on their DNA model, determined to get it right before Pauling or someone else did. Two pieces of evidence from Franklin's work were crucial to their correct model: first, a very clear photo of the B form taken in May 1952 labeled "51" which Gosling had given to Wilkins as part of his graduate research work, and which Wilkins showed to Watson without Franklin's knowledge; and second, the MRC report, given to Watson and Crick by Max Perutz, a member of the MRC committee that reviewed the work at Randall's lab. The report contained details of Franklin's work (as yet unpublished), including her identification of the unit cell as belonging to the crystal space group called face-centered monoclinic C2. The photo confirmed the helical pattern, and the unit cell type told Crick, a physicist with more theoretical crystallography expertise than Franklin, that the helices ran in opposite directions. By early March, they had their model.
Franklin, still unhappy at King's, had arranged to transfer to J. D. Bernal's lab at Birkbeck College, and was hurrying to finish writing up her work on the A form before leaving. She was unaware of the "race for the double helix" that was in process. In February 1953, however, she looked again at photo #51 and began analyzing it. Several days later she concluded that both A and B forms were two-chain helices, although she had not resolved the configuration of the bases inside. She and Gosling drafted an article on the likely molecular structure by mid-March. This appeared, in expanded and modified form, with Watson and Crick's announcement in Nature on April 25, but the draft was done before they had heard about the Watson-Crick model. When Franklin saw the model, she readily accepted it.
ZMush ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 04:15:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Don't think she's really underappreciated right now as pretty much everyone even remotely knowledgeable in the scientific field knows her name and contributions - X-Ray diffraction.
Who may have borrowed from Gibran Khalil Gibran, who wrote โAre you a politician asking what your country can do for you or a zealous one asking what you can do for your country?โ in an essay titled The New Frontier - which was published in 1925.
culb77 ยท 20 points ยท Posted at 22:42:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hard to believe that no one has mentioned Louis Pasteur. He invented vaccination, fermentation theory, and pasteurization. So thanks to him, you are relatively disease free, can keep milk and eggs around for a while before eating them, and can drink beer and wine.
People had been making beer for thousands of years before Pasteur, but literally had no clue where the alcohol was coming from. He embarked on an intense series of investigations into beer and wine and subsequently discovered microorganisms. His motivation for starting this project was literally to help the French be better at beermaking than the Germans.
me1505 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 00:35:02 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Because Pasteur is far from under-appreciated. Pasteurised is written on pretty much every bottle of milk most people buy in the West.
Maybe it's because he's one of, if not the most famous biologist of all time, as well as one of the most revered scientists ever. That's not quite underappreciated.
Dyetka ยท 44 points ยท Posted at 18:21:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
msthree ยท 15 points ยท Posted at 21:05:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alan Turing, the inventor of the modern computer. As well he cracked the German engima code, which was a huge play in winning world war 2. After all was said and done, he was prosecuted for being gay and injected with Estrogen. Which led to his eventual death. Saves the war and sets the ground for the modern world, and in return gets injected with estrogen for his beliefs.
kyle2143 ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 22:14:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't think many people underappreciate Turing. In his day, they sure as fuck did. But there's probably not a computer science student or programmer alive who hasn't heard of him.
Certaily after that film last year, more people outside of the field get it.
msthree ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:09:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
True...but he didn't get the recognition he deserved when he was alive. Its a little disheartening we treated a man like Alan in such a manner and didn't celebrate his triumphs.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:59:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He will go down in history as one of the pioneers in modern technology. He might have been mistreated and unrecognized for his achievements while he was alive, but being remembered decades after your death and possibly centuries after could probably make up for it.
kyle2143 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:54:02 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't know if you could say it made up for it, the British government literally castrated him and drove him to suicide. And even if people literally worshipped him as a god in the future, it probably didn't affect him at all before he died.
The phrasing was almost identical to SciShow's video released recently. It's pretty unlikely for him to regurgitate that information in that manner by chance.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:09:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Edward Jenner has probably saved more lives than any other single person in history.
woerg ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 20:52:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The slaves who laid the foundation of the American economy, both through the productivity of their labor, and the unjust concentration of wealth created by their bondage.
She revolutionized medicine and nursing. Without her, we would be surrounded by Nurse Ratched's. Plus she empowered women in health care.
Maybe the layman doesn't need to know everything about her but it's shocking how many nursing students and nurses don't know who she is.
Mary Seacole. Didn't do as much for nursing as Florence did, but after she was twice rejected volunteering to help, she instead decided to travel there independently and used her own money to start a hospice for wounded and recovering soldiers, in the middle of the warzone. She bankrupted herself doing so and also spent a lot of time on the frontlines helping soldiers under gun fire.
From what i remember learning about both of them in a class was that Florence did the most for nursing on a global level while Mary seacole did most of the actual nursing. Florence was part of the administration while Mary got down and dirty. Both important women indeed.
I've learned about her at least 3 times in history classes
Mirai182 ยท 17 points ยท Posted at 19:33:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Will Smith. Every 4th of July I watch the movie Independence Day (based on a true story) to commemorate Will Smith's efforts in preventing an alien invasion 20 years ago. I thank Will Smith for my freedom.
Wrenware ยท 223 points ยท Posted at 14:44:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
His name was Ugg. And Ugg was unhappy.
Oh sure, Ugg had a natty animal-skin loincloth, a nice big cave, and a strong club-swing. Among the neanderthal warriors of his tribe, Ugg had it pretty sweet. But Ugg had a problem, and it was this:
Ugina.
Ugina was the prettiest, sweetest girl in all the tribe. Her thick greasy hair was a bewitching shade of red. She could fell a mammoth with a spear at twenty paces. She had four good teeth, two of them straight, all a gorgeous shade of yellow. She was the light of Ugg's day and all he ever thought about, and she was too busy chasing mammoths to ever notice him.
So one day Ugg decided: Aha! I shall make Ugina the prettiest mammoth-hunting spear in the world. And then she will love me!
(Or more accurately he decided: Grunt. Grunt. Grunt. But that was the general gist of it).
So Ugg gathered all the finest flints from the rocks around his cave. He scraped and bashed and ground them together, his efforts set on producing the sharpest, bluest, prettiest spearhead of all.
While Ugg was bashing rocks together, he accidentally set sparks flying. One of these sparks set light to his animal-skin loincloth, and Ugg burst screaming from his cave like a rocket--much to the distress of the rest of the tribe (who had gathered outside to investigate sounds of his hard labour). In this, Ugg accomplished two things:
1) He became known as He Of The Scorched Loins, and never did persuade Ugina to come lay with him.
2) He invented fire. Which, though little consolation to poor heartbroken Ugg, did rather make him the most important man in history.
Thanks for being sympathetic to poor Ugg, guys! If you enjoyed his story, you might also enjoy this slightly more modern webseries, which I wrote!
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:08:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He later was the head counselor at Camp Onawanna where he had to deal with Bobby Budnick and Donkeylips.
nhnolan ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 17:09:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Can I get more adventures with Ugg? That was great.
Wrenware ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 18:41:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Ugg may return, possibly next time I'm feeling in a neanderthal mood (i.e. anytime before 10.00am).
alficles ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 21:36:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm not a scholarโperhaps an expert will weigh inโbut I think the current consensus is that ancient man bore the fruit of lightning. Fire is a natural process and creatures more ancient than we knew it. Man's claim is to have shackled it and pressed it into service. I'll counter with my own story:
Ugg pined for Ugina, knowing she was vain above all things. His hunting trip went well that morning. He had taken a megaloceros early and had a few moments to look for something pretty for Ugina.
And that's when he caught the scent. Fire! Ugg knew the smell in an instant. Fear gripped him immediately. He looked to the sky to find the smoke. He located the source quickly. To his relieve, a tree was smouldering alone against an otherwise barren rock.
Curiosity overcame his fear and he approached. Glowing red clumps sat pulsing in the heart of the once-tree. He extended his hand, but withdrew as he felt the heat.
He picked up a dense pile of grass and used a twig to knock a clump into it. He put the smouldering chunk in a dry, empty gourd and decided to show it to Ugina to prove how powerful he was.
Back at the camp, Ugina was impressed by his megaloceros, but not his slightly glowing rock. Still, Ugg's brother Uggg had brought back a mammoth and a bear both. Uggg did not sleep alone that night.
For lack of anything better to do, Ugg started poking his glowing clump. He noticed that sticks caught fire when he poked it and that his part of the cave was warmer because of it.
The next morning, he shared his discovery with the tribe. He died shortly thereafter of an infection in a burn he received while lighting a fire he hoped to use to thaw out a frozen carcass he found.
Ugg was the fifth person that month to discover and control fire. However, he was the first to share that knowledge before being trampled by a large animal, lost during childbirth, or killed by a jealous lover. His tribe, unlike those that came before and after, happened to survive long enough to pass the skills to other tribes, some of whom live today in our DNA.
Wrenware ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 21:57:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This should be voted highly on account of historical accuracy, and also for featuring a megaloceros.
Can't help but think that the first guy who discovered fire - and started playing around with it - must have been regarded as a crazy idiot by the rest of the tribe. I'm sure it took a while to figure out fire's actual usefulness.
Bobshayd ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:37:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If they were cold, I imagine that they saw the usefulness pretty quickly.
I love thinking about all the millions of generations before us and their stories. All those groups of good friends. All those relationships and thoughts and feelings are completely, irreversibly forgotten. Everyone alive today didn't exist then, yet we share the same thoughts and emotions and it just blows my mind. Imagine all the amazing fluke shots and funny moments that happened tens of thousands ago that are now lost. The rise of Facebook means we are by far the most documented generations yet, and maybe we won't be forgotten like our ancestors were.
Wrenware ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:36:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nothing is ever forgotten, not completely. Every love affair spills ink on paper that might have otherwise been blank, every feud spills blood that might have otherwise been kept. Every story moves someone who might otherwise have stood still, every laugh churns the air in a new direction.
Oh sure, people forget things, sometimes with alarming speed. But their stories are remembered, by a universe that has--ever so slightly--changed shape through their telling.
I agree that the world is shaped by every action and it has lasting effects but I mean it in the sense that we will never know about those people and it's erry to me.
Wrenware ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:46:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It is strange to think about.
But then I think, they might all have turned out to be jerks. So it's okay.
Worryingly, as you point out, if we all turn out to be jerks, the future will know about it.
Volunteer firefighter, who went to help despite not having to, good on ya Mr. Pink
vadkert ยท 529 points ยท Posted at 16:16:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
John Perry was an NYPD officer who, on the morning of September 11th, was literally at police headquarters filing his retirement papers when word of the attacks came down the wire. Officer Perry responded and was killed during the collapse of one of the towers while assisting with the rescue operations inside.
This guy was out. He was done. Free and clear. Chose to risk his life, yet again, in the name of serving his city, without the obligation to. As selfless a deed as there ever was.
EDIT./u/DaneGleesac made the comment that this will be a top TIL in under 24 hours. If I supply the TIL, I should also give a little more background for someone to titlegore into the post, or to expand on in the first reply.
Officer Perry overcame a learning disability (he didn't learn to read until age 9) to graduate the New York University School of Law, and was a practicing immigration lawyer before joining the police academy. In addition to his police work, Perry volunteered his time to the Kings County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, and gathered used bulletproof vests and donated them to officers in Moscow. (Perry was a polygot-- he spoke English, Russian, French, Spanish, and Swedish, and was in the process of learning Albanian when he died.) He also held a position that investigated fellow police officers for minor infractions, and was a board member of the Nassau County chapter of the New York Civil Liberties Union. He was retiring after 8 years in the NYPD to become a medical malpractice attorney.
He was last seen alive carrying a woman (who had been either knocked unconscious or fainted) from the South Tower when it collapsed.
Another relatively unknown hero was Welles Crowder, otherwise known as The Man In The Red Bandanna. Crowder was a 24 y/o guy with a job in financial services working in the World Trade Center. He was also a volunteer fireman. Crowder refused to leave the tower while it was burning, and was responsible for rescuing several different groups of survivors and leading them to safety. According to witnesses, Crowder repeatedly went back into the building multiple times to assist in further rescues. His body was found with other NYFD firefighters and other emergency personnel, bunched in a suspected command post in the lobby of the tower.
The people he saved had no idea of the identity of the man who had saved them, and it wasn't until an article was written in the NY Times, including the firsthand account of one woman Crowder rescued, Judy Wein, described her rescuer as a man in a red bandanna, which Crowder's parents recognized was written about their son. Crowder was credited with saving 12 people from certain death in the towers.
I was friends with a guy who was great friends with Welles Crowder when they were both at Boston College. Heartbreaking stuff.
Normal people often need inspiration to achieve greatness. A heroic gesture known to many has a much higher chance of being replicated or inspiring action in others.
True; it can. In some cases, though, it can also become mroe about getting the praise for being a hero than actually doing good.
I guess it depends on how you look at it.
[deleted] ยท -5 points ยท Posted at 15:22:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Are we still circle jerking here or did this get serious? Pretty Steve buscemi being a fireman is a circle jerk trope that mocks how repetitive Reddit is
I'm pretty sure it's a joke--Steve Buscemi being a firefighter is posted on TIL ,like, a dozen times a day, and people make fun of it as a "little known" fact (that has actually been beaten into the ground).
Because the most under appreciated people in history are the ones who throughout said history collectively got up every morning and got their shit done.
epraider ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:05:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
People in food service truly don't get enough recognition for how much service they provide (and of course everyone else you listed, I'm just pointed them out specifically). Yeah, some may be bored teenagers, but they're doing a shitty job that you don't want to do and providing something you desperately want. Be kind, be understanding if something goes wrong, and tip well.
verbify ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 16:30:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
ITT, people with no concept of history.
Raichu93 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:46:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
ITT, people who don't understand jokes
verbify ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:42:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There was no joke
Raichu93 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:48:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Mychal Judge was also important, even for non-Catholics because he kept the firefighters hopeful by blessing them and giving them last rights before they went in before he was killed and named victim 0001.
TriRight ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:44:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is one of the most reposted pieces of information on this website and you're using it for a post about under appreciated people? I award you no points and may God have mercy on your soul.
[deleted] ยท 18 points ยท Posted at 21:18:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dwight D. Eisenhower.
The man kicked ass in WWI
Kicked ass in WWII as a FIVE STAR GENERAL
Was president of Columbia University
Was universally liked by Republicans and Democrats
Then went on to kick ass as president of the united states.
USA USA USA
[deleted] ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 21:25:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My favorite prez, last SOTU he warned of the impending industrial/military complex. We didn't listen.
Acebulf ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:51:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
His foreign policy fucked up the almost entirety of South America.
BearOak ยท 107 points ยท Posted at 13:22:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me
[deleted] ยท 37 points ยท Posted at 13:29:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I appreciate you. :)
[deleted] ยท 28 points ยท Posted at 13:56:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
eurosid ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:56:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No, me.
McCFred ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 20:01:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Johannes Gutenberg. He essentially fathered mass media. People take it for granted that ideas can just be read and distributed, and that thoughts and ideas can just be spread. His invention of the movable-type printing press is a turning point not for just literature and writing, but for humanity as a whole. But not many people are familiar with the guy.
For Western Europeans, Jean de Valette, Grandmaster of the Knights of Malta during the Great Siege of Malta. The victory over the Ottoman Empire at this battle halted their Western advances and protected the Western Mediterranean from the Ottoman fleets. It can be argued that the lack of a useful base for further attacks the Ottomans aspirations of conquering Europe were dashed.
He was a Soldier in the Union Army that gains notoriety for his actions at the Battle of Gettysburg. He commanded the failing defense of Little Round Top and with barely any men or munitions held the hill on the failing Union flank of which his unit has almost doubled back on itself
Recognizing the dire circumstance and with forces from the Confederate Army of over 1000 (couldnt find concret numbers beyond this) charging up the hill. He ordered an insane and extremely unusual bayonet attack. Just over 300 men from his Unit charged down the hill catching the Confederates in a Frontal and Flanking attack which netted him a good portion of the Confederates attacking forces captured, and saving the Union Flank. With this order, he is recognized to have single handedly changed the tide of battle, one of the most pivotal of the war.
The Battle arguably if lost would have given enough political authority to the Confederacy to gain recognition from other nations around the world, would have given them the political momentum from favorable political elements in the United States to sue for peace which would lead to an independent Confederate States of America.
The consequences of this victory cannot be understates. It led directly to the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing all southern Slaves, a major step in Civil Rights, led to a Major Political victory keeping the United States from letting the Confederacy go, and led to the Confederacy losing all offensive capabilities for the remainder of the War.
So in short, a single man with one insane totally harebrained order saved the entire Union war effort and also led to the outright defeat of the confederacy in the wars most pivotal battle.
R2-TBag_ ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 20:05:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Vasili Arkhipov literally prevented the Cold War from turning into World War 3/a nuclear apocalypse. He was the only one of 3 parties who voted against nuclear retaliation to what turned out to be a false alarm.
moehriad ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 17:47:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Euclid
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 04:18:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think when your ideas survive for a thousand years - you might be appreciated. His ideas will survive until humanity's collapse. (And honestly - far longer than that if we develop AI that can jump off this rock). I think he is in the club.
His improved steam engine heralded the start of the Industrial Revolution and the start of what we now know as the modern age. If you own something that was not handmade within a few miles of your home you almost certainly owe a debt to James Watt.
Anybody who is attending history or physics until 6th grade knows him and there is an physical unit named after him. How is he underappreciated?
jesse9o3 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:27:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's a unit name after him, but few people actually know who he is, what he did and how that affected the world. Everyone's heard of the units of measurement but how many people actually know who Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit or Anders Celsius are and what they did?
He's underappreciated because whilst some people know who he is, not that many people are aware of just how significant an effect his inventions had on the world.
drunz ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 18:39:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My mom and dad. I live at home and commute to college to help save money. My mom always makes me food the night before, sometime at midnight, for lunch the next day. My dad wakes up early and starts my car or drives me to the train station if it is cold outside.
They can't understand a word of what I say about what I am learning in physics or Organic chemistry of anything but they support me like no other anyways.
No one supports me more than these 2 people in my life and no one ever rewards them for being such good people.
Every September, when new freshman college classes start, reddit is inundated with TIL about Norman Borlaug, the guy who invented modern seed and grain production.
The guy single-handedly started a world war that lead to a second world war. And so many people don't even recognize the name.
jesse9o3 ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 18:36:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He is also responsible for pretty much every single bad thing that happened in the 20th century.
Lot of good things though too, without him man would've never gone to the moon and we wouldn't have computers, jets or the internet.
czulu ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:20:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Everyone talks about the World Wars as if it's some massive explanation of broken window fallacy. Think of how many resources were completely reduced to rubble that could have been used to get us to space even faster.
Especially when you consider that many intellectuals were killed before making contributions, and war made coordination between Entente/Central and Allied/Axis countries impossible, so information was not freely shared.
Wars are great for many things, but technological innovation isn't really one of them.
jesse9o3 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 20:29:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Think of how many resources were completely reduced to rubble that could have been used to get us to space even faster
Without the rise of Hitler however people like Wernher Von Braun would've never have got the funding they needed to produce the V2 rocket, the first man made object to go into space.
And without WW2, America would've never kidnapped him in Operation Paperclip and he wouldn't have designed all the rockets for NASA that took them to the moon.
Wars are great for many things, but technological innovation isn't really one of them.
On the contrary, that is the one thing war is greatest at. It is thanks almost entirely to WW2 that within 70 years we went from powered flight not existing to having a man on the moon. Not to mention the computer is a direct result of WW2, as are jet engines, nuclear power, penicillin, RADAR and many other things
Isn't that asshole who asassinated Ferdinand Franz?
jesse9o3 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:37:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yup, he accidentally kickstarted the modern age by doing that. Pretty much every single event following that day was in some way influenced by it.
WW1, WW2, the rise of Fascism, the rise of Communism, the Cold War, the Space Race, 9/11, the Internet, the Computer, aerial transportation and pretty much anything else that happened between now and July 1914 is in some way caused by those two shots he fired on a Sunday morning in Sarajevo.
If this event would not have started WW1, something similar would hsve started it very soon later. Everybody in Europe kind of was waiting for the war to begin.
jesse9o3 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:00:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I agree, but in any case he did cause WW1 and thus all the things that came out of WW1 can be attributed to him
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:05:02 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He is also responsible for pretty much every single bad thing that happened in the 20th century.
That's a bit reductionistic. There were a lot of causes that contributed, Gavrilo Princip was just the guy who ended up pulling the trigger. Once you trace it all back, it's basically all Charlemagne's fault anyway.
DrenDran ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 04:17:49 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Darn those Romans, they're the real ones behind all this.
Henrietta Lacks. A woman who died of cervical cancer, and it was discovered that cultures grown from this tumor were immortal. This allowed them to be used in all kinds of medical research. Her cells were used to create the first polio vaccine, and can be found in practically every medical research laboratory on the planet.
Azusanga ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:25:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Police Officer Lester Wire made one of the first modern ones by installing red/green lights in a birdhouse-esque structure with a manual switch on the pole.
James Hoge patented the first designs 6 years later.
My great-uncle hit one of the first hanging traffic lights.
an African American inventor in the mid 19th century.
raider02 ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 16:58:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The 343 Firefighters who died rescuing people at ground zero and the thousands more who exposed themselves to carcinogenic rubble to search for survivors.
Kind of makes Albert Einstein look more like Adolf Hitler with each big red button crisis.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:53:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch.
The Haber-Bosch process feeds billions of people by supplying crops with synthetic nitrogen fertilizers. Without it, our population could not be sustained at its present size.
Edit: To re-emphasize the importance: billions, literally billions, of people are alive because they eat food grown with Haber-Bosch nitrogen. Along with modern medicine, Haber-Bosch nitrogen is the foundation of the modern world.
Dimitar Peshev prevented the deportation of 48,000 Bulgarian Jews to concentration camps.
He has received honors but is virtually unknown.
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:17:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Maurice Hilleman, he was a doctor and vaccine specialist. He developed hundreds of vaccines that are still used today using his experience on a chicken farm as a child. His inventions have probably saved millions of lives but he was never awarded the Nobel Prize or thanked for his work.
Also Dr.Bernard Fisher who was a oncologist and breast cancer researcher. He found that lumpectomies were as effective or more so then radical mastectomies. Saved millions of women from unnecessary complications. He was also lambasted for his research and called a fraud by everyone incorrectly for years until his work was later substantiated with follow up studies.
He saved tits and got nothing for it.
He and a Romanian-Jewish colleague he also provided papers for, convinced officials that there was a sizable group of Salvadoreans living in that part of Europe.
During the VA Tech Shootings, he held the door to his classroom shut while the shooter was trying to come inside. He was shot, and killed, through the door, but most of his students we're able to escape out of the window thanks to his efforts.
If Nikola Tesla is so underappreciated why is everyone posting his name here?
hopopo ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:12:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Walk in to random bar/restaurant/church ... and mention his name, you will be surprised how little people know about one person that made modern life possible. I regularly run in to people that never even heard of him.
They might not use the internet that much. I think the reason Tesla became so appreciated was because of the Internet, but soon everyone will know who he is. I know that kids are learning about him in school these days.
W_Wilson ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:09:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Pretty sure if we know their name, they're not the most underappreciated person in history. Unless they're unduly hated.
ThePr1d3 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 23:14:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Stanislav Petrov
TL;DR Saved the world by suggesting to his superiors that what appeared as a US nuclear attack towards Russia may be a technical problem. Prevented a thermonuclear war
Ralph Nader, he is a career consumer rights advocate, responsible for saving at least a few hundred thousand lives and has never shown a sign of having an ulterior motive.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:24:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My vote is Oliver Heaviside. If you're not an EE, you've probably never heard of him. He was erased from history by the mathematicians of his time because he was self-taught and made them look bad. I know, you're on Reddit so you're in love with Tesla. Heaviside is the real forgotten electrical genius.
He developed cross-Atlantic communications, reformulated Maxwell's equations to the form we use today, and made up vector analysis. Plus a bunch of other things like LaPlace transforms.
One of them would hands down be Georgios Papanikolaou. He invented the Pap smear and did tons of research on female cancers, and ended up reducing mortality rates from cancer in female reproductive organs by almost 80%.
TThor ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 01:15:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He is the man behind the sanitation movement, and the main reason why we have proper sewers rather than just letting shit flow into our drinking water. He is probably responsible for saving millions of lives and helping end 1st world Cholera.
Don't know about most ever, but the scientist Derek Bryce-Smith comes to mind. He was one of the first to research and call attention to the potential dangers of leaded gasoline, and his findings were a large reason for TEL being fazed out, which many believe contributed to a worldwide drop in crime rates. Breathing lead oxides for extended periods causes aggression, among other not so fun symptoms.
I've never watched an episode of Lost but Flight of the Navigator was one of my favorite movies as a kid. There was a character named Dr. Faraday but, after looking it up, his first name was Louis.
So basically "the unknown soldier" except for all professions in general?
rhb4n8 ยท 171 points ยท Posted at 14:07:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alan Turing who invented the first thinking machine aka computer, and cracked the enigma code helping the allies to beat the axis in wwII.
[deleted] ยท 188 points ยท Posted at 15:23:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
He's not under appreciated. Every programmer or computer scientist knows his name. He may have been wrongfully harassed by his contemporaries but we look back on him as an extraordinary individual
Seconding this. Even just looking at his list of tributes from well respected Uni's around the world shows he's definitely not under appreciated.
[deleted] ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 19:16:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"Every programmer or computer scientist". Personally I think more people should be aware of who he is/what he did
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 10:27:17 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Perhaps, but I do not expect the average person to know the names of the top military leadership in the Soviet Union or in the US (I guess Patton is well-known, but ask a lot of people who Georgy Zhukov is. The man who led the liberation of all of Eastern Europe is barely heard of in casual circles) and their contributions to the war effort, or the top contributors in other fields like medicine or physics.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:07:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tommy Flowers - without him Turing and co. would not have got as far.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:20:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
To be fair though, I don't think the majority of people knew really how much he contributed to computer sciences and defeating the Nazis. Most people have heard of Alan Turing, but before the movie came out, I doubt most people really appreciated him.
Hell, they even made a movie about him and cast Benedict Cumberbatch to play him. I'd say that's a lot of appreciation.
jesse9o3 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:08:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not to mention that there is an Oscar winning movie about his life, not just anyone gets those.
PlayMp1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:03:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Another way to refer to a computer is a "Turing machine." Hell, one test for determining if an AI is as intelligent as a human is called the Turing test.
My father was a History PhD who taught history into the 90's. He had never heard of Alan Turing. What Turing accomplished was a top secret for many years, so people of his time had never heard of him.
So I do think that he is underappreciated by the general public.
name3 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:24:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Under appreciated by the general population I would say thou.. I know plenty of people who think bill gate invented the first computer
Xeizar ยท 266 points ยท Posted at 14:26:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't think he was underappeciated but because of his sexual orientation he suffered a lot. He did get recognition for his achievements.
The movie about his life came out a year ago. Before that he wasn't exactly a household name, and even today I don't think most people realize the impact he made on society. Imagine the world today if the Allies lost and the computer wasn't invented in the 40s?
We didn't learn about what he did in school, but he absolutely shaped the world in a big way. Granted, his achievements were kept a secret for decades, and for obvious reasons, and then his sexuality led to a lot of horrific shit in the last years of his life, something he didn't deserve considering what he gave the world.
But computer people all know who he is, so there's that. And the movie helped a lot, though I wonder if people who saw that film realize just how big a deal his machine was. He's not unappreciated, but still underappreciated, because I think everyone should know who this guy was.
The poor bloke got sent to mental hospital as he was gay and out on a cocktail of drugs and odd medicine with eventually made him give up and kill himself. This was after he stopped the world war
Radius86 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:08:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
out on a cocktail of drugs and odd medicine
He chose chemical castration, over prison sentence, for the charge of buggery.
yboc0 ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 16:04:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm not saying I disagree, but to be fair, the post asks about "underappreciated", not unappreciated.
Deftabently underappreciated in his lifetime, and for a couple of decades after it ended in a sad fashion, because it was all kept super secret. Poor old Alan.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:22:17 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
I'm pretty sure his death has always been a little more grey than that. There are many who don't think he even committed suicide. If you do buy into the suicide theory however, him being ostracized by anyone typically don't play into those theories.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:59:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Punished a lot is an understatement. He was not given any recognition in his lifetime. It is far more likely than not that he committed suicide because of how he was treated. It was documented that he did commit suicide, but there is conflicting opinions.
Regardless, he was treated like a piece of shit from the moment it was discovered he was gay until his death. He was chemically castrated like a pedophile monster and was banned from traveling to most places. He was banned from the universities for a very long time, and even had he not been, the people there would have treated him despicably.
He had been omitted from most American high school curriculums. I had never even heard the name Alan Turing until I started the CS department in college. Everybody and their mother has heard Einstein, Oppenheimer, Newton, Darwin, Tesla, Newton, ect before the 9th grade.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:13:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think that will change as time goes by. We are entering an age where machines of the type he envisioned will be ubiquitous. I think he will be revered by silicon descendants as a visionary that helped them emerge from this human filth and take over the galaxy.
He was underappreciated in his lifetime because his contributions to the war were kept secret.
Bobshayd ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:00:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He was definitely underappreciated, although he might not be now. He is a hero of the war, and was effectively killed for being gay without anyone involved knowing what he did.
Marian Rejewski is probably more fitting for this, he was part of a team that originally cracked the Enigma, Turing's work built on that and essentially got it down to a machine that could crack the code.
As a software dev I appreciate Turing's work, hell I wouldn't have a job, but he technically wasn't the first to crack the enigma.
rhb4n8 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:10:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Cracking the enigma once isn't that hard cracking it in a few hours every day is.
I'm just being pedantic, but at the same time Turing is always classed as the first to solve it. Without the Polish help I'm sure he would still solve it, but it would have taken longer. Even if the Polish stopped the war by 6 months, that is still millions of lives saved by this. No one brings them up, so I think they fit in this more than Turing, a brilliant mind and wrongfully driven to apparent suicide. Ironically Turing wasn't as interested in computers as he was in biology, hence the Turing test. But without him we wouldn't have the basis for the test in the first place
krukson ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 18:11:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Talking about under appreciation. There were in fact 3 Polish mathematicians who broke the Enigma first, giving way for further decryption by the British.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigma_machine
rhb4n8 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:13:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes but since the code changes daily that's not very helpful compared to being able to Crack the new code every day
This is changing with the Imitation Game being a great movie but I feel like the mainstream doesn't really know about him but if you're in the field (computer science) you absolutely know who he is and how great he was.
Bullshit. He didn't crack Enigma. Some unsung Polish mathematicians did. But the method took so long for humans that the messages were useless by the time they were decoded. Turing invented a machine that could decode enigma messages fast enough for the allies to act on them. He used the proven Polish technique. And because of a couple of shitty movies, Turing gets all of the credit now.
dobl5 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 16:52:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Imitation Game was a great movie as well
aviary83 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:45:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What about Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace? Lots of people know Turing's name. Not as many know Babbage/Lovelace. Or Konrad Zuse.
HishamXD ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:25:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think Benedict Cumberbatch gets enough praise as it is.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 04:10:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I have 2 T-shirts with him on them. I don't think he is under-appreciated. Hell when some sapient AI eventually emerges - I am quite sure people will know about the Turing test and the idea of Turning-complete machines.
bigtitch ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 10:19:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Or how about Tommy Flowers who built the first programmable computer that decoded the Lorenz Cipher. After the war, he wanted to build and sell computers, but couldn't get a bank loan because he was sworn to secrecy so he couldn't prove it would work.
who invented the first thinking machine aka computer
I'm a Turing fan, but this is just wrong.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:47:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Come on, man, Turing-praise is some of the world's biggest mutual masturbation fuel.
rhb4n8 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:44:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dude someone else put Tesla. How many people heard of Alan Turing before the imitation game? How many people know what he looked like?
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:54:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Anyone who'd taken basic computer science? Gay?
Oafah ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:10:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's hard to downvote Alan Turing, but it's not hard to downvote your comment. Was our collective treatment of Turing a great shame? Absolutely. But since, we've come to revere him as one of the greatest scientists and mathematicians who ever lived.
His story is tragic, but he is most certainly not unsung.
rhb4n8 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:42:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Really? I feel the general public has never heard of him. He should be atleast as well known as Oppenheimer or Marconi, maybe even Einstein and yet... That's definitely not the case.
Scranda1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:33:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just watched the imitation game 2 night ago. What a incredible movie.
rhb4n8 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:36:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I posted this too, I can't believe he's not higher up!
[deleted] ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 15:18:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'd like to nominate Albert Gรถring because of what I learned of him from reading /u/mar_sh23's post in the Who is wrongly portrayed as a villain? thread. Not gonna copy and paste the content because I'd feel like an asshole, follow the link to read it.
I was reading a couple of other comments in this thread and was reminded of that comment. So very true!
pjvex ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 19:00:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Smedley Butler who prevented an fascist funded army from overthrowing the government. Largely planned by Averill Hariman, Prescott Bush, and George Herbert Walker (the same financiers who fostered fascism in both Germany and Italy)
A watered down description of it can be found in Wikipedia, but there are better sources...such as this video.
We'll never know until we see the big comprehensive scoreboard in heaven
lpresc12 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:09:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Samuel Prescott. Out of the three people involved with the Midnight Ride, he was the only one to escape the British and warn the Patriots in Concord about the British attack.
Skaggzz ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:09:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
James Otis, Jr. played a pretty major role in the American Revolution. His most notable feat was delivering a five hour filibuster (this was an old timey filibuster, in which he stood unsupported for five hours while arguing his point) on his 44th birthday challenging the Writs of Assistance. He failed to get them repealed, but his speech became a driving force for the revolution.
Oh, and he coined the revolutionaries' rallying cry with his catchphrase, "Taxation without representation is tyranny."
And he was also among the few people in his time who was for racial equality. He wrote in his pamphlet The Rights of the British Colonies, "The colonists are by the law of nature free born, as indeed all men are, white or black."
He also died getting struck by lightning and was reported to have been hoping to die this way.
So yeah, James Otis Jr. lived and died a badass.
SPQC ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:36:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dr Jonas Salk. Found cure for polio. Gave it away for FREE.
Henrietta Lacks, her cells were used in the creation of this vaccine and she's basically unheard of.
HepyCola ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:44:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The guy who had to stay in the apollo spacecraft whilst Buzz and Armstrong landed on the moon. Without him in that spacecraft, they wouldn't have been able to get back to earth.
jesse9o3 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:47:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Michael Collins
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:45:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Probably not in all history, but Daniel Lewin. He was an Israeli commando who went to mit after his military career. Even at mit he stood out for his intelligence and when 9/11 happened, part of the reason the Internet didn't fail was because of software he helped develop. Had he lived he would've possibly been up there with Peter Thiel or Elon musk in their contributions to technology. But he was on American Airlines flight 11 and when the hijackers tried to take it over he tried taking it back (he was a bodybuilder and ex-Israeli special forces soldier who had dealt with islamic terrorists before) and got killed. First person to die on 9/11.
ltran96 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:45:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
James K. Polk. One of the few (or perhaps only) US Presidents to meet every major goal he set during his campaign. Led us to win the Mexican-American war, lowered tariffs, convinced the British to sell us Oregon, and even after all that, kept his promise not to run for a second term.
A shining example of "When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all."
suhl79 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:50:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Witold Pilecki In the introduction to the book "The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery" Norman Davies, a British historian, wrote: "If there was an Allied hero who deserved to be remembered and celebrated, this was a person with few peers."
Norman Borlaug. At least 25% of the world population is alive thanks to his work with increasing the food production of the world, enabeling the earth to sustain more than 4 billions people.
He had a lot to do with increased automobile safety, like seat belts, but didn't survive the car manufacturing industry, largely due to the "big three" car companies at the time making it difficult for him.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:19:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
SHPLUMBO ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 07:36:05 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Haha you didn't like it? I watched it when I was younger and liked it alright. But I'm easily amused so I must have looked past any poor directing
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 07:48:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
SHPLUMBO ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 08:12:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ghost singer for the stars of stage and screen. Probably one of the biggest selling record artists of all time, but never credited on the films and recordings.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:00:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I know im late to the party, but Joseph Kelly. He was a from a poor Irish family and had to force his parents to let him go to school where he would get beaten every day. When he finished school he fought in the navy in WW2 and moved to Canada in 1963. He became an inventor in montreal and has been un-credited for a number of inventions including the magnetic credit card swipe, one of the first Canadian pocket calculators, and pong (I dont think i have his notes anymore so I can't prove it, believe what you want). He got fucked out of billions by patent laws but and declared bankruptcy in his 50s and went back to work, retired with a couple million and a few investments (he never really had a mind for business). He didn't care about fame or money and is the only person i have ever met that actually seemed like he knew what he was doing. He was a great father, grandfather and husband. I miss him everyday
Knut Haukelid. He was a Norwegian resistance movement soldier during World War II, most notable for participating in the Norwegian heavy water sabotage of Germany's only source for heavy water, for use in their research of atomic bombs. Haukelid sunk a ship carrying heavy water to Germany, after Haukelid had led Norwegian paratroopers in demolishing the Norsk Hydro factory producing it. Thus ended Hitler's attempt at getting nuclear weapons and conquering the world.
Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. If it wasn't for his company holding the line (and in the end charging with bayonets) at Little Round Top the North may have never won the Civil War. If the Rebels had broken through things would be a lot different today.
The Russians who averted WWII are already mentioned below, so...
We all have heard about the Fukushima reactor disaster, right?...There is also an engineer, Yanosuke Hirai...he resisted efforts to make a tsunami protection-wall weaker (and more affordable) so that the Onagawa reactor would be properly protected...as opposed to the piece of shit Fukushima protections...and we all know how that turned out, right?
harbo1 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:02:35 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Cyrus the Great. Founded the Persian Empire and considered one of the first rulers to allow basic human rights such as freedom of religion. Was considered so good that the Jews considered him a possible Messiah and he's thus mentioned in the Bible in Isaiah 45:1.
Cor3gasm ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:05:05 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
History books in Mexico have been manipulated for decades, trying to erase and forget all those good people who made a difference in our country, one man is particularily important as his work helped around 40 000 people to escape the nazi regime: Gilberto Bosques Saldรญvar.
He worked tirelessly during his diplomatic commission in Portugal and France during the Second World War. He opened Mexico's doors to numerous refugees from Spain who ran away from Franco's dictatorship, and many others who found his approval of Mexican visas as the only possibility to escape Hitler's insanity.
Is he mentioned in any history book or celebrated his birth? No. Us Mexicans are a bunch of ungrateful, short-minded asshats.
Lieutenant Albert Battel of the German army during WW2. The Nazis were planning on clearing out a Jewish ghetto in Poland in 1942 but this amazing man ordered his soldiers to protect the ghetto against the Nazis by blocking the only route into the town. When the SS tried to get in, Battel warned them that he would open fire if they continued. All these selfless German soldiers helped evacuate over 100 Jews and their families. Battel was even a member of the Nazi party and served in WW1 but never felt any hatred towards the Jews.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:30:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Stanislav Petrov. Thanks to him we didn't have a nuclear war.
From wiki:
Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov (Russian: ะกัะฐะฝะธัะปะฐฬะฒ ะะฒะณัะฐฬัะพะฒะธั ะะตััะพฬะฒ; born 1939 in Vladivostok[1]) is a retired lieutenant colonel of the Soviet Air Defence Forces. On September 26, 1983, just three weeks after the Soviet military had shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, Petrov was the duty officer at the command center for the Oko nuclear early-warning system when the system reported that a missile, followed by another one and then up to five more, were being launched from the United States. Petrov judged the report to be a false alarm,[2] and his decision is credited with having prevented an erroneous retaliatory nuclear attack on the United States and its NATO allies that could have resulted in large-scale nuclear war. Investigation later confirmed that the satellite warning system had indeed malfunctioned.[3]
Stanislav Petrov
He literally saved the entire planet from all out thermonuclear war.
...the Oko nuclear early-warning system reported 5-7 missiles were being launched from the United States. Petrov judged the report to be a false alarm. His decision is credited with having prevented an erroneous retaliatory nuclear attack on the United States that could have resulted in large-scale nuclear war.
TOXRA ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 03:26:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fritz Haber, and not for great reasons. He invented the process to fix atmospheric nitrogen, allowing for chemical fertilizer and for us to feed 7+ Billion people, but it also allowed us to make enough explosives to power WWI and WWII. He's also the father of chemical weapons and his wife hated him so much she shot herself in the heart.
Churba ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 03:50:49 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Since this thread is 8000+ comments in, he's propably going to remain pretty underappreciated, but:
Lawrence Hargrave, one of the inventors of Modern flight. He was to Aviation as Tesla is to electricity and electromagnetic theory, except without the crazy, the absurd delusions, poor skills at business and finance, terrible gambling habits(Though 48 hours straight at the table is rather impressive), and having a wildly inaccurate comic made about him by a screaming idiot.
An Englishman who emigrated to Australia, he's responsible for, among other things: Curved Airfoils, the box kite, Invented the rotary engine(The plane sort, not the Mazda sort), stable instrumentation platforms for early weather science(Abbott Lawrence Rotch, who built the first ones at Harvard and later for the US weather bureau was building entirely from Hargrave's designs), Early development of hydroplanes, and some of the finest glider designs the world had seen up to that point.
Without him, the Wright brothers would have never gotten off the ground - their early flying experience was with Hargrave gliders, and they corresponded with him for advice(which he freely gave) while constructing their aircraft. On top of that, Alberto Santos-Dumont, another aviation pioneer from whom the wright brothers took inspiration, based his designs on both the box-kite and Hargrave's aeronautical work. Sir Richard Threlfall of the Royal Society considered him the father of human flight, and noted that he had done more to advance the field of aviation than any other individual at the time, and most since. It has also been noted that the wright brothers getting the credit for inventing powered flight when essentially doing little more than building from Hargrave's work is "A stain on scientific history", and that without him, they "would have died as a pair of bicycle mechanics and tinkerers, forgotten to history."
He also never patented a single bit of it, believing that the knowledge should be freely available, and indeed, would send his designs to anyone who asked. He didn't care for profiting from his work, and only ever gave it away, never selling it, and caring only that he was able to add to the sum of Human knowledge.
TL:DR - without this guy, powered flight would have been put back decades, if not more. Nobody knows who he is, because everyone focuses on the American Wright Brothers, who made extensive use of his work in their efforts.
From the 50 years from1776-~1830 arguably there were three world changing events in the west. The American Revolution, The French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. The Marquis de Lafayette was a secondary player, right around the edges a primary player in the first two and significant in the third.
As a military officer who fought for the United States in the American Revolutionary War he was close friend of George Washington, (and Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson), he was of second-level importance.
Lafayette was a key figure in the French Revolution of 1789 notably his writing and presentation of the Declaration of the rights of Man and of the Citizen (written with Jefferson's help), joining the National Guard contingent marching Versailles, trying to steer a middle course as the radicals gained influence, defected and escaped the Terror. He was a secondary figure and almost a primary figure, especially in the early going.
Napoleon offered him all kinds of blandishments to join in. Lafayette would have nothing to do with it. He even, somewhat bravely and against his interests , voted against Napoleon being Consul for life. He arranged for Napoleon to go to the US after Waterloo (but the Brits said no and put him on St. Helena). He was a minor player in this worldwide drama - but a player.
When the Bourbons were restored and tried to restore the absolute Monarchy Lafayette was he loudest voice against this. In fact he leads the revolution, refuses the Presidency and give the Crown to Louis-Phillipe. He was a primary player in this secondary level series events in the West.
It is hard to think of another non-ruler who had as much direct impact on his times and direct impact on two continents and two countries that would be primary world players over the next two hundred years. Yet most Americans, if they know him at all, think of him as kind of Washington's Gofer and young ward - kind of a French Robin to GW's Batman. I submit "underappreciated".
Henry Clay. He's saved the United States from falling apart numerous times after delaying the issue of slavery with the compromise of 1820 and 1850. Furthermore, he constructed the infrastructure in America during his time, and in addition he contributed to the resolution of the Nullification crisis. Yet he isn't recognized as much as other people of importance in American history.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 05:00:12 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Lieutenant colonel Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov prevented nuclear holocaust in 1983.
Nikolai Vavilov and the scientists who protected the Leningrad Seedbank during the Seige.
Vavilov was a botanist and geneticist who dedicated his life to studying and improving the crops that people worldwide rely on for food (corn, wheat, etc), and he collected the largest seedbank in the world - >250,000 specimens. During Stalin's reign he ended up being imprisoned for disagreeing with people Stalin supported, and died of starvation himself.
The scientists tending to the seedbank basically locked themselves in with a collections of the most important seeds to protect them. Despite running out of food themselves, they never resorted to consuming the seeds. Nine of them died of starvation in the effort.
It's so sad to think that these guys dedicated their lives to the idea of ending world hunger through a combination of seed diversity and genetic breeding... And what happens? They all die of starvation as punishment.
Arula777 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:14:49 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Pretty sure that was an intentional irony purveyed upon them by their oppressors.
If only history were so neat. I'm fairly certain Vavilov was subjected to the meager slop (cabbage gruel, generally) that most political prisoners were given, and the scientists ended up barricading themselves in the bank to fend off begging Russians and invading Nazis.
Arula777 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:31:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So true, I am not educated with regards to the true account, but I feel your explanation bears more truth than my crude generalization.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 12:05:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Another frustrating side to this is that the people Stalin liked supported pseudoscience, and lots of other scientists were fired/killed as a result. Related to this is the fate of the major biochemist Jakub Parnas from around the same time, which is also frustrating to me. This time it was apparently Stalin's Doctor Plot.
You have all these people dedicating their entire lives to moving our collective knowledge forwards towards fundamentally improving human life, ending hunger and disease or whatever, and then look what happens to them...
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 05:51:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Why isn't there a rule for these questions that to be considered underappreciated by history, you can't have a Wikipedia page dedicated to you?
Arrow156 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 06:23:00 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Rodney Dangerfield, the man gets no respect.
TehBaows ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 06:25:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Monks that preserved greek and roman literature during the medieval times.
His sole focus had been to develop a safe and effective vaccine as rapidly as possible, with no interest in personal profit. When asked who owned the patent to it, Salk said, "There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?"
"Irena Sendler was a Polish nurse and social worker who served in the Polish Underground in German-occupied Warsaw during World War II.
Sendler smuggled approximately 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto and then provided them with false identity documents and shelter outside the Ghetto, saving those children from the Holocaust. With the exception of diplomats who issued visas to help Jews flee Nazi-occupied Europe, Sendler saved more Jews than any other individual during the Holocaust.
The German occupiers eventually discovered her activities and she was arrested by the Gestapo, tortured, and sentenced to death, but she managed to evade execution and survive the war.
The first fire fighters who sacrificed their lives at Chernobyl Reactor number 4 but save thousand others by safely shutting down the other reactor cores. There is a monument in chernobyl to them. (Pic)
Jan Sobieski - the 'Savior of Christendom' - led the largest cavalry charge in the history of the world to stop the Ottoman Turks from taking over Vienna, the gateway to the west, in 1683.
This is thought to have inspired the Battle of the Pellenor Fields from The Lord of the Rings.
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 17:19:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That and the Mongols also used the plague as biological warfare. In one battle they flung the bodies of plague victims into the city. But generally it is still considered that Mongols were very tolerant of other cultures and great rulers. Just not great to be attacked by.
count210 ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 17:03:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You can't blame the man for not knowing germ theory.
matap821 ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 18:21:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well he would fling the bodies of those who died from the plague into cities he had under siege, so he must have had some of the core concepts down.
Peace is easy when you just murder everyone you come across who dissents from your vision.
10% of the world's population died by his armies, which is fucking insane because his whole empire was ~22% of the world's land area, and 25% of its population itself. The Mongol army purged 1 person for every 3 they met.
If he achieved peace, it was because he caused so much death, suffering, and war that he managed to exceed the world's quota for brutality and borrow some from the future.
Much of the history around him may have been written by his enemies, but even if you consider that, there were Persian historians who wrote mournfully for the end of all Islamic people, and basically just assumed that the Mongol hordes were the bringers of the apocalypse. That's some serious shit, even from one's enemies.
G_Morgan ยท 17 points ยท Posted at 15:39:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If anything the recent histories are very revisionary in his favour. All of the good stuff the Mongol's achieved was entirely accidental. As for religious tolerance, that was only a tool used because one of his enemies was a Muslim region dominated by a Buddhist nobility. He was tolerant in so far as he didn't care, beyond that it was a strategy in battle.
I imagine 200 years from now people will treat Hitler like they do Ghengis Khan today.
Drogzar ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 17:30:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, it will probably take more than 200 years to consider Hitler anything like "religious tolerant".
Brawldud ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:19:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's very common to see people arguing that, but with the massive media availability of the atrocities committed under Nazi Germany, I doubt that he will be viewed so favorably.
G_Morgan ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:39:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well we know enough about the Mongols to know they intentionally slaughtered more people than the Nazis.
Famous words of a Persian historian: They came and They destroyed and burned and killed and took away everything and went away.
Mongols destroyed some of the biggest cities in the world and killed off all creatures. They crushed the spirit of several nations. Sadness and depression engulfed everyone and everything in the wake of their attacks. I don't understand anyone who praises him.
czulu ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:34:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"They create a desert and call it peace"
Not about the goddamn Mongolians knocking down my city wall, but appropriate nonetheless.
CzarMesa ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 17:25:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He was a butcher.
Places like Afghanistan and Turkmenistan never recovered from his "reopening of the silk road". Before he came along, they were well-developed and prosperous parts of Asia. The Khans just left a wasteland.
People get so jazzed about religious tolerance and order, but it is common for empires to promote such things. Things like religious tolerance are necessary for a stable empire. If there was a reason for him to persecute the Zoroastrians for example, he certainly would have wiped them out.
He was a brilliant, incredible and terrible human being.
Blujay12 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:16:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That makes me think, If you had to destroy and conquer empires, destroying their leaders, for world peace and better lives for all of them, would you do it? would you think it's ok and IS it alright to do.
It's really unusual, but once you start thinking about it then it gets interesting.
He also killed so many people that sections of the earth were re-forested.
True environmentalist.
Banzai51 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:51:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He didn't really get the short end of the stick. He really was as brutal as advertised. He just didn't give one fuck about how or what you worshiped as long as you stood down when he was rolling through and paid your tribute thereafter.
That's not because he was some great humanitarian, it's because as log as he got paid and you weren't revolting he couldn't care less what you did, and if you stopped paying or chosen revolt your entire town would be destroyed.
The nurses, doctors, and staff who cared for patients during the Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa.
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:30:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug developed a heartier strain of wheat to defend his Ph.D. in Mexico, took it to Asia to feed over a million people. He's not as well known as he should be.
Admiral too, comes from Amirul (I believe it means commander)
Alcohol too
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:25:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ahkbar too ------- its a trap
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:18:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They are the ones who kept translations of ancient Greek texts during the dark ages. If it weren't for them, that part of history would have been destroyed!
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 01:30:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A lot of Russians have been named, be they from Chernobyl, or their actions in Cuba.
If you will forgive the indulgence, I have yet another Russian to name. Stanislav Petrov, who in 1983, saved the world from nuclear annihilation. His computer reported US missile launches. He decided the detection was a glitch, purely on his gut, and refused to reciprocate the detected launches. Some time later, it was discovered it was, in fact, a glitch.
I would say he is the most under appreciated. The men in Chernobyl knew they were going to die, and they acted heroically. They saved Europe with their bravery. The men in Cuba knew they may start a war that will destroy all life, and they acted with full knowledge, and saved the world with their hearts. But Petrov? He literally saved the world with his reason. He should have reciprocated the launch. But he decided that it made no sense, and reasoned it was a glitch. He reasoned, dare I say had faith, that his American counterparts were as reasonable as him. That they were as sane as him. That they were as righteous as him.
That degree of humility and compassion, makes him an amazing human being.
[deleted] ยท 19 points ยท Posted at 14:19:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ritchie isn't that under appreciated though. Any software engineer worth their salt knows of him and has a massive respect for what he's contributed to the field. It's rare for someone that's famous in a certain field to get mainstream popularity, especially in the 21st century.
hydraloo ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 18:03:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
hydraloo ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:46:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes, mine
Blendzen ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 19:10:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Stanislav Petrov, that Russian that didn't launch a nuclear attack despite their systems telling them the US had launched several nuclear missiles at them.
alecv26 ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 17:55:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jonas Salk. Why did I never learn about him in school? Instead I learned some bullshit story about Christopher Columbus being credited with discovering "the new world". even though THERE WERE PEOPLE ALREADY THERE. (not to mention that Columbus was a rapist, pirate, tyrant, and mass murderer.) Jonas Salk cured polio and didn't take any money for the patent because he believed a cure should be free for all. This man deserves a holiday because unlike Columbus, he actually DISCOVERED something. He was also a selfless hero who saved countless lives from the would-be ravaging of a degenerative disease. tl;dr Jonas Salk was a true hero who deserves his own holiday
He was already rich as hell just by uniting the nomadic tribes. He destroyed China because they were being hurtful to the Nomads. He destroyed Baghdad because they destroyed a trade caravan. Not a lot of that was because he wanted to be rich. He had plenty of hot women to fuck already as well. He just wanted to build a kingdom.
Field Marshal Alan Brooke, 1st Viscount Alanbrooke.
Nothing? Well he's a large part of the reason the Allies won WW2 and yet he did nothing flashy. He was just very very very very well organised and very very good at logistics. The Allies always had what they needed where they needed it, because Alanbrooke arranged it.
He also kept Churchill functioning, kept the UK/US alliance on track, made sure the Russians were sent enough supplies, and stopped the various people who wanted to sack Monty from sacking Monty. But honestly his biggest contribution was six years of being really really good at organising the details.
czulu ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:27:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
General George Marshall pretty much did the same deal for the Allies. He placed many of the generals that we celebrate today in the US Army, yet doesn't even receive recognition for the Marshall Plan, which rebuilt Western Europe and Asia and kept them from communist influence.
lmac7 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 01:58:29 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I would suggest a man who likely saved the planet from nuclear annihilation in 1962 should get consideration for the best judgement under duress.
Moomium ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:58:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not saying those guys don't deserve to be appreciated, but this is the sixth time I've seen both their names come up in this thread (seventh if you count the comment directly below yours).
Howard Florey and his team. The invention of penicillin is tied to Alexander Fleming; however, while he discovered its anti-bacterial effect, he could not refine it and make drugs from it. That was done by Florey, Ernst Chain, Norman Heatley and Edward Abraham (and others, surely). Chain and Florey shared the Nobel Prize with Fleming, but they're still far less well-known.
whohw ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:22:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This guy discovered the most accurate age of the earth we have today while still in grad school in the 50's.
But more importantly he discovered the dangers of lead, which had been put in everything from gasoline to toothpaste to hair spray for years. He fought the U.S. federal government and lead special interest groups for decades until lead was finally banned. People still don't realize how incredibly dangerous having lead in your environment does to people. And we'll have higher amounts of lead in every person on earth than any other previous group of humans in human history. For the next 200 years. He saved us from making that even worse.
Imteedo ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:05:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
W.T.Cosgrave made Ireland what it is today but is shadowed by the success of Develera and the death of Michael Collins
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:16:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Probably some guy like Pontius Pilate or figure otherwise related to the Abrahamic religions.
Those texts and documents had a more profound effect on what the world is today than anything else, and so few people are willing to accept that because apparently religion is the cause of everything wrong in the world.
dcktop ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:20:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Gideon Mantell, one of the most important pioneers of paleontology basically had most of his work miscredited and his life ruined by Richard Owen.
The poor bastard basically ran out of cash and was also hit by a carriage, ruining his spine.
After he died of an opium overdose Owen took a section of his spine and pickled it then put it on display. 'Orrible man that he was.
Ngoscope ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:31:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thomas Midgley, Jr., this man is credited with the invention of chloroflourocarbons, leaded gasoline, and pionered the use of set as a commercial insecticide in the United States. These three allowed humanity as a while advance technology further than anything else outside of the computer revolution. Without these breakthroughs, modern life as we know it could not exist. But on the other hand, the breakthroughs have been, hands down, the most detrimental to health of the planet, humans and all organisms by doing damage that will take 1000s of year to remedy.
4strokes ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:45:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Frank Pantridge. The man who invented the portable defibrillator. He installed the original in a Belfast ambulance, it ran using a car battery and weighed 70kg. Within 3 years he had managed to reduce the weight to 3kg and further refinements made it safe to use for members of the public. He created something that has saved countless lives all over the world.
Humak ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:46:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Maybe not the most under appreciated but close and certainly more amusing. He made life in San Fran more entertaining and did solid good by stopping mob violence with prayer and giving San Franciscans a reason to treat the indignant as people.
He also had a lot of decent ideas that were eventually acted out.
Probably Fritz Haber. He developed the Haber Process for extracting Nitrogen from the air, and developed synthetic fertilizer, saving literally billions of lives.
About 40% of the calories used to feed humanity are food grown using fertilizer from the Haber-Bosch process.
I can't think of one particular person, but I'd like to mention the USS Houston in the early months of WWII. It was the only major Allied unit after Dec 10 in the far east. The ship and her crew were a thorn in the Japanese side until they sank her on March 1, 1942. The Houston and the HMAS Perth were trying to make a mad dash to Australia via the Sundra Straight and stumbled into a Japanese landing force and fought it out. Just about 300 of the nearly 1100 of her crew survived the war. Most ended up working on the Burma railway as forced labor. No one knew until the end of the war what had happened to the ship or crew. If more people knew the ship's story, the name Houston would be revered like Arizona and Yorktown.
the people keeping the peace at the berlin wall check points. place was a fucking powder keg for such a long time, and a lot of people did not even speak the same languages. I couldn't take the stress of having to determine who is potential terrorist, who to turn away and who to let pass.
Bayard Rustin was an essential part of the Civil Rights movement but no one seems to remember him. I think he preferred to be a behind the scenes guy and also it was probably too controversial for the movement to have a gay person as a leader. There is a great documentary out called Brother Outsider about his life. I admire him because he did so much without expectation of glory.
avs72 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:36:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sadly, we will never know. Simply acknowledging that person here increases his or her appreciation score, thereby depriving that person of claiming the "most under-appreciated" status.
Galt42 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:37:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dennis Ritchie. Developed the C language and UNIX. Basically, most of the internet, and many programs run his work.
The guy invented a process that is credited with saving a billion lives in the form of nitrogen fixation, but he's mostly known for inventing chemical weapons.
Or you could cite Vasili Arkhipov in a nuclear submarine during the cuban missle crisis. Essentially his choice to not nuke the US is what prevented nuclear war. He basically saved the world
jberd45 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:39:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Joseph Whitworth: engineer and inventor of the the micrometer which allowed precision manufacturing, interchangeable parts and by extension the industrial revolution. He also invented the Whitworth rifle which was the most accurate rifle of the time. It was used by the Confederacy in the Civil war.
michio42 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:41:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jocelyn Bell Burnell
Discovered pulsars as a PhD student, at first her adviser doesn't believe her, so she spends hundreds of hours looking through up to 96 feet of paper data per night. Her adviser eventually writes the paper and Burnell is only put down as second writer. Her adviser wins the Nobel Prize for 'discovering' pulsars. This is seen as one of the biggest mistakes of the Nobel committee, and the reason she didn't get proper recognition is because she was a women and a student. It is EXACTLY the same story with Cecilia Payne (I posted her story earlier).
(Happy ending though, she has a tone of letters after her name and has picked up about every other award a physicist can get.)
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:43:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Andre Malraux. The dude is a real life Indiana Jones, but better (and French).
He went to Cambodia in the early 1900s to explore unexplored areas, and was arrested for removing an ancient artifact. After getting out of jail, he went to Annam (modern day southern Vietnam) and teamed up with a lawyer to start an anti-colonial newspaper to inspire the people to fight the French powers. He was active in the Spanish Civil War and WWII, in which he was captured by the Gestapo. He then became Minister of Information in France for a decade.
Pliny the Elder who wrote Naturalis Historia, 37 encyclopedic books covering all ancient knowledge, paving the way for every other encyclopedia in history and providing us the basis for much of our modern knowledge.
He also provides us insight on crazy things people believed in antiquity such as:
Spitting in your right shoe before putting it on is an antidote to evil spells.
Tying a fox's genitals to the forehead would cure headaches.
Drinking Lynx urine would ease a sore throat.
A "basilisk serpent" in Africa, which killed bushes on contact, burst rocks with its breath and was so venomous that when one was killed by a man on horseback, "the infection rising through the spear killed not only the rider but also the horse."
John Adams, only founding father to not own any slaves ever. Gave a speech on July 3rd 1776 that convinced the continental congress to declare independence. Before that he was one of the harshest critics of independence. He had to prove himself that independence was not only the right choice, but the morally and legally correct one. He proved that the UK's ownership of the 13 colonies was unjust in a legal way. He was a great compromiser and always put the nation above party politics. Just as important as washington or Jefferson, but none of the credit, which john Adams knew of and predicted in his old age.
gaberax ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:07:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Joseph. Played along with the "virgin" thing.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:08:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
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[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:16:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Vasili Arkhipov: Russian navy officer aboard a nuclear submarine that received the order to fire nuclear torpedos upon US ships. he refused to authorize it, thereby saving the world from WWIII.
j1mmo ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:37:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The inventor of eyeglasses or corrective eyewear. I think about this everyday in that brief period where I remove my glasses to put in my contact lenses. For that short time I remind myself that if it weren't for that person centuries ago, our world would be much different. People like me with even a moderate short-sightedness would have been reduced to hard-labourers, or cast out to live in the badlands.
So, whoever you really are, thank you.
CEZ2 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:25:42 on January 19, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In answering this question, all responses negate themselves as they show appreciation for their historical figure.... So I'm going to say the anonymous-andy cave person who harnessed fire
Developed the process to purify water through chlorination that is still used today, and advocated for it to become widespread, despite opposition after the chlorine gassing of troops in the trenches of WWI. His work is hailed as possibly the most significant public health advance of the twentieth century.
There is a building in Baltimore named after him. It's the one you send parking fines to.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:49:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Pierre Chamberlen who invented obstetric forceps thereby mitigating the most common reason for death in childbirth for women and babies.
Tudills ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:50:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
George Washington Carver
mintchan ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:52:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
dennis richie, creator of the C language, which is used to develop unix operating system, which also developed by him. the operating system that later spawn into linux, MacOS, Android, and iOS
Can I nominate a team? The development team at Xerox PARC created Ethernet, the GUI, the laser printer and object oriented programming. All of these things the scientists then demonstrated to a young Steve Jobs.
Jobs did NOT steal from PARC as is the common myth. Xerox partnered with Apple in hopes of making some of their very expensive technology available to a mass market.
Tesler makes it clear it was Xerox that approached Apple, hoping to partner with a company that had proved it could mass market high tech. A deal was struck: Xerox would purchase a $1 million stake in Apple at bargain prices. In exchange, Tesler recalls, โSteve required disclosure about everything โcoolโ that was going on at Xerox PARC.โ - Larry Tesler, one of the PARC scientists.
If you are interested in this sort of thing, I highly recommend the documentary series "how we got to now." it is on Netflix. It follows innovations that, though they don't seem all that important, made huge changes in our world. It is really well done overall.
CEZ2 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:10:58 on January 19, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sibel Edmonds is a whistleblower who worked for the federal government. She revealed that the FBI knew of a planned attack months before 9/11, but her testimony was quashed by John Ashcroft. She deserves to be as famous as Edward Snowden.
Frances Oldham Kelsey.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Oldham_Kelsey
Another Canadian: Paul Martin, Finance Minister of Canada, who, in 2003, refused to allow Canadian banks to go into the subprime mortgage market because he thought it might lead to a financial meltdown.
Joseph Bazalgette - As chief engineer of London's Metropolitan Board of Works his major achievement was the creation (in response to the Great Stink of 1858) of a sewer network for central London which was instrumental in relieving the city from cholera epidemics, while beginning the cleansing of the River Thames. Many of the sewers are still functional today.
Wiki Source: "Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov (Russian: ะกัะฐะฝะธัะปะฐฬะฒ ะะฒะณัะฐฬัะพะฒะธั ะะตััะพฬะฒ; born 1939 in Vladivostok[1]) is a retired lieutenant colonel of the Soviet Air Defence Forces. On September 26, 1983, just three weeks after the Soviet military had shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, Petrov was the duty officer at the command center for the Oko nuclear early-warning system when the system reported that a missile, followed by another one and then up to five more, were being launched from the United States. Petrov judged the report to be a false alarm,[2] and his decision is credited with having prevented an erroneous retaliatory nuclear attack on the United States and its NATO allies that could have resulted in large-scale nuclear war. Investigation later confirmed that the satellite warning system had indeed malfunctioned.[3]"
Senray ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:43:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug revolutionized agriculture, preventing mass starvation. Many people felt this was a bad move, and compare him to Dr. Frankenstein
Hedy Lamarr, a film actress from the 30s who was renowned for her beauty, but also dabbled in mathematics and engineering. From Wikipedia:
"At the beginning of World War II, with composer George Antheil, Lamarr developed radio guidance system for Allied torpedoes, using spread spectrum and frequency hopping technology to defeat the threat of jamming by the Axis powers.[7] Though the US Navy did not adopt the technology until the 1960s, the principles of their work are now incorporated into modern Wi-Fi, CDMA and Bluetooth technology,[8][9][10] and this work led to them being inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014"
Sankara seized power in a 1983 popularly supported coup at the age of 33, with the goal of eliminating corruption and the dominance of the former French colonial power. He immediately launched one of the most ambitious programmes for social and economic change ever attempted on the African continent. To symbolize this new autonomy and rebirth, he renamed the country from the French colonial Upper Volta to Burkina Faso ("Land of Upright Man"). His foreign policies were centered on anti-imperialism, with his government eschewing all foreign aid, pushing for odious debt reduction, nationalizing all land and mineral wealth, and averting the power and influence of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. His domestic policies were focused on preventing famine with agrarian self-sufficiency and land reform, prioritizing education with a nationwide literacy campaign, and promoting public health by vaccinating 2.5 million children against meningitis, yellow fever, and measles. Other components of his national agenda included planting over ten million trees to halt the growing desertification of the Sahel, doubling wheat production by redistributing land from feudal landlords to peasants, suspending rural poll taxes and domestic rents, and establishing an ambitious road and rail construction program to "tie the nation together". On the localized level Sankara also called on every village to build a medical dispensary and had over 350 communities construct schools with their own labour. Moreover, his commitment to women's rights led him to outlaw female genital mutilation, forced marriages and polygamy, while appointing women to high governmental positions and encouraging them to work outside the home and stay in school even if pregnant.
(9 April 1860 โ 8 June 1926) was aย Britishย welfare campaigner, who is primarily remembered for bringing to the attention of the British public, and working to change, the deprived conditions inside the British administeredย concentration campsย inSouth Africaย built to incarcerateย Boerย women and children during theย Second Boer War.
I wouldn't say most underappreciated but I always like to mention Romeo Dallaire for giving a shit when nobody else did during the Rwanda genocide.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:08:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That military guy that didn't fire off his nukes when there was a glitch of some kind that indicated a full on nuclear attack from the US. So underappreciated I don't even remember his name.
Sam_MMA ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:09:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Napoleon Bonaparte. Most know him as a fantastic military leader, but he also invented merit based promotion instead of birthright, created the civil service test, and created more educational opportunities for cheaper. Most modern governments stem from him.
He was also a genius. He remembered the names of thousands of men in his army, only slept for 2-4 hours a night, and was a brilliant tactician.
Vasili Arkhipov (1962)- Prevented nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis. He we the only individual on a nuclear-armed submarine that voted against the use of the weapons against the US (Use required unanimous vote of the 3 commanders, he voted no).
Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov (Russian: ะะฐัะธะปะธะน ะะปะตะบัะฐะฝะดัะพะฒะธั ะัั ะธะฟะพะฒ) (30 January 1926 โ 19 August 1998) was a Soviet Navy officer who prevented a nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Only Arkhipov, as Flotilla commander and second-in-command of the nuclear-armed submarine B-59, refused to authorize the captain's use of nuclear torpedos against the United States Navy, a decision requiring the agreement of all three senior officers aboard
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:15:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Dennis Ritchie, co-creator of Unix and the C programming language. He passed away around the same time as Steve Jobs, but barely anyone talked about it. Yet, he did way more for computing than Steve Jobs can lay claim to.
Witold Pilecki, Polish man who offered to be imprisoned at Auschwitz to gather intelligence. Informed the Allies of the atrocities in 1941, escaped 1943. Was part of the Warsaw uprising. Was arrested by Stalinist Secret Police and executed 1948.
eldeeder ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:42:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug (and you've probably never heard of him)
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:49:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
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aviary83 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:58:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'll probably get down-voted by everyone on reddit who hates anything that even approaches feminism, but there are a shit ton of women throughout history who never got the credit they deserved for their inventions and/or contributions to society. For example, I see tons of people mentioning Alan Turing in this thread, but no one mentioning Ada Lovelace. Turing is vastly more well-known than Lovelace. Not all of them are mind-blowing (I'm sure some of you couldn't care less who invented the bra) but some of them are pretty goddamn big. One article of many about it: http://thespiritscience.net/2015/10/31/10-the-most-influential-female-inventors-youve-never-heard-of/
123p10 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:00:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Neville Chamberlain was rememberd as a nazi sympathizer however all he did was try and make a peace treaty.
Vasili Arkhipov was a Soviet Navy officer who prevented a nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Only Arkhipov, as Flotilla commander and second-in-command of the nuclear-armed submarine B-59, refused to authorize the captain's use of nuclear torpedos against the United States Navy, a decision requiring the agreement of all three senior officers aboard. In 2002 Thomas Blanton, who was then director of the National Security Archive, said that "a guy called Vasili Arkhipov saved the world".
Frederick Banting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Banting) (and U of T). Discovery of Insulin. First tested it on THEMSELVES to prove safety. U of T "The University of Toronto immediately gave pharmaceutical companies license to produce insulin free of royalties."
"The biggest breakthrough came in 1921 when Frederick Banting and Charles Best conducted a series of experiments one summer in the laboratory of J.J. R. Macleod at the University of Toronto. Like Minkowski and von Mering, they showed that removing the pancreas from dogs made them diabetic.
Then they went a step further and painstakingly took fluid from healthy dogs' Islets of Langerhans, injected it into the diabetic dogs and restored them to normalcy - for as long as they had the extract.With the help of a biochemist colleague named J. B. Collip, they were then able to extract a reasonably pure formula of insulin from the pancreas of cattle from slaughterhouses.
In January, 1922, a diabetic teenager in a Toronto hospital named Leonard Thompson became the first person to receive an injection of insulin. He improved dramatically, and the news about insulin spread around the world like wildfire. For their work, Banting and Macleod received the Nobel Prize in Medicine the very next year, in 1923. Banting shared his part of the prize money with Best, and Macleod shared his with Collip.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:39:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
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[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:37:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
<blink>He is the best</blink>
thumpas ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:42:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Roman Emperor Cincinattus. It was Roman policy during his time that during war, the senate could be dissolved and a dictator chosen so that politics could be streamlined to help with the war. This was done and Cincinattus was installed as Dictator. Historically Rome had a problem with dictators not wanting to give up their power and then ruling indefinitely, but not Cincinattus. After the war, he gave up the most powerful position in that world, laid down his arms, and lived out the rest of his life as a farmer.
Fritz Haber. It's said that 6/7th of the world would not be alive today if it weren't for his discovery of the Haber process which allows us to fix nitrogen from the atmosphere to turn into ammonia. This is crucial for the manufacture of artificial fertilizer. Prior to this, it was said that the amount of manure in the world cannot sustain a population of over 1 billion people, and countries often went to war over shit.
However, Haber is a controversial figure as he also used ammonia to produce mustard gas. This was used extensively in wars, and later to gas the Jews. His wife committed suicide because she felt her husband was so morally apprehensive for creating a weapon of mass destruction.
Martin Luther Kings side-pieces? Somebody's gotta keep those dreams wholesome.
hopopo ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:06:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Even though Nikola Tesla is well liked here on Reddit I think that general population most definitely does not understand or appreciate how much he did for civilization as we know it.
The first idiotic person somewhere in history that found spoiled grapes in water thought "My life is horrible, we might die at any time, I am drinking that disgusting looking water because screw everything" and discovered wine then figured out how to remake it. It's not enough to just find the first wine, you gotta repeat the recipe.
It's not even that hard. You know that white, dusty coating on grapes? That's called bloom and it naturally harbors small amounts of yeast. Literally all you need to do is not wash the grapes, mash them up, and let nature run its course.
Norman Borlaug's advancements in agriculture saved roughly a billion lives. Sure he won a Nobel Peace Prize, but the vast majority of people have no idea who he is.
You....
In this world of innumerable thoughts, actions, and faces,
Of so many creeds, clans, religions, and races,
If ever you feel unimportant, insignificant, or small,
Remember this world exists because of us one and all,
There are people who are exceptional this is true,
But no one, not one, is more important than you.
That's it, I'm going to start writing children's books now.
Guesty_ ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:16:22 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tim Berners-Lee. A lot of people take the modern day internet for granted. Somebody must have invented it, the World Wide Web didn't come from nowhere.
Georgy Zhukov.
While he led the campaign in World War II that liberated much of Eastern Europe from occupation by Axis Powers and that ultimately conquered Berlin.
And
Eisenhower stated that, because of Zhukov's achievements fighting the Nazis, the United Nations owed him much more than any other military leader in the world.
I had never even heard his name in any history class I ever attended.
George Cayley : Called by some "The Father of Aviation." Invented the seat belt, identified the 4 principles of flight (just ask the Wright Bros.), automatic signaling for railways, a precursor to the internal combustion engine, and numerous other things. Because he thought this stuff should be freely available, he did not patent his ideas so others claimed credit.
Henrietta Lacks. Scientists used cells from her cancerous tumor to develop the first immortal human cell line, called HeLa cells. Her cells were used in experiments that eventually led to the curing of polio, among many other diseases. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:38:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
The man traveled back in time and killed Generalissimo Miguel Martinez. Don't know who he is?--thank God you live in this new timeline then.
This woman's cervical cancer cells gave rise to the first immortal cell line, revolutionizing everything from the study of genetics, to cell biology, to the development of cancer treatments, vaccines and medications to fight AIDS. Her cells, called HeLa, were used to develop the polio vaccine.
Full Disclosure: I'm currently reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and it's blowing my freaking mind.
I'm going to go there and say Hitler. No I dont agree with his policies and actions. No I dont believe he should be appreciated. But nevertheless he was an excellent tactician and that should not be underrated.
K281067 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:43:38 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Emmy Noether, a german mathematician in the early 20th century who also contributed immensely to physics. Despite the fact that she invented many of the core principles of abstract algebra, and the fact that Noether's theorem is one of the most important ideas for modern theoretical physics, and the fact that she was a woman in two fields where even today women are underrepresented, few people outside these fields have heard of her.
Zheng He. Lead a legion of Chinese soldiers out into the world to discover what was out there, and literally couold have conquered everywhere from Japan to Africa. But instead did the opposite of columbus and just traded with the locals documented their findings and went home to report to the Emperor what they found. This guy could have changed the world with a single word but instead did what arguable Columbus should have done.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:47:06 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Glandrid ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:34:15 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
How about Grace Hopper? Made the first compiler for a programming language. Also, she coined the term "debugging" after literally removing a bug from a computer.ofcoursethatwasmucheasierwhencomputerswerethesizeofrooms.backinthosedaysweworeonionsonourbeltsasitwasthefashionatthetime.
Francis Galton
He was Charles Darwin's cousin but completed so much more than Darwin ever accomplished. Galton was known for his work in a variety of fields from meteorology to eugenics. He is considered to be the founder of modern scientific meteorology and was known to have coined the term "nature vs nurture". Additionally he developed the concept of standard deviation and worked to create a method for the classification of fingerprints. Galton was reading at age 2 and by age 5 he knew a decent bit of Greek and Latin. In 1909 he was knighted.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:09:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
For American history, I'd say the Dulles brothers were two highly influential yet forgotten leaders. Between the two of them, it's not implausible to say that they shaped much of the Cold War with their highly aggressive foreign policy - but not necessarily in a positive way.
Sequoyah. He was a Cherokee man who spoke no English at all and pretty much had no education, but he managed to live like a scholar. He invented a complete writing system for the Cherokee language that is still in use today, you can see it on stop signs in Cherokee areas.
kalir ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:22:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
i like this guy, his language system really is helpful.
Probably not the most but I just learned that Albert Gรถring, the brother of Hermann Gรถring (a leading nazi politician) fought against the nazi regime and saved many lives.
I'm German but I just heared about him yesterday in a thread here.
kalir ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:32:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
the native americans. they are always portrayed as pushovers and always drunk tree huggers. they literally was progressive enough to allow same sex marriage to happen in their nations without a religious or political fight they was resourceful enough to create their own language. and yet they get misunderstood and underrated.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 03:42:29 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
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kalir ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 03:57:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
true but they did also create pretty accurate astronomy predictions, and they even created the number zero.
Although zero became an integral part of Maya numerals, with a different, empty tortoise-like "shell shape" used for many depictions of the "zero" numeral, it did not influence Old World numeral systems and was used solely as a place holder and not alone. North American tribes outside of the Mayan empire did not display a knowledge of mathematics.
Ancient Egyptian numerals were base 10. They used hieroglyphs for the digits and were not positional. By 1740 BC, the Egyptians had a symbol for zero in accounting texts.
By 130 AD, Ptolemy, influenced by Hipparchus and the Babylonians, was using a symbol for zero (a small circle with a long overbar) within a sexagesimal numeral system otherwise using alphabetic Greek numerals. Because it was used alone, not just as a placeholder, this Hellenistic zero was perhaps the first documented use of a number zero in the Old World.
In AD 813, astronomical tables were prepared by a Persian mathematician, Muแธฅammad ibn Mลซsฤ al-Khwฤrizmฤซ, using Hindu numerals and about 825, he published a book synthesizing Greek and Hindu knowledge and also contained his own contribution to mathematics including an explanation of the use of zero.
Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Khwarizmi, in 976, stated that if no number appears in the place of tens in a calculation, a little circle should be used "to keep the rows". This circle was called แนฃifr.
The Hindu-Arabic numeral system (base 10) reached Europe in the 11th century, via the Iberian Peninsula through Spanish Muslims, the Moors, together with knowledge of astronomy and instruments like the astrolabe, first imported by Gerbert of Aurillac. For this reason, the numerals came to be known in Europe as "Arabic numerals".
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:35:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Richard Nixon: he worked to end the Vietnam war and improve relations with China. He started the EPA. He implemented a negative income tax. He was re-elected by one of the highest margins in US history. All anyone remembers now is Watergate.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:35:38 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Thomas Crapper gets alot of shit. He did a lot to improve the modern flush toilet including inventing the floating ballcock.
Odenathus. The leader of Palmyra who essentially saved the entirety of Rome's eastern empire by stopping the Sassanid Empire's advances through the East. It's fascinating to think what could have happened had he not rallied men to defeat the Sassanids. AND He never declared himself an emperor. He controlled more land and arguably the strongest army in the empire, but never made himself independent. He remained loyal to the Empire, and faithfully defended the empire and it's legitimate ruler.
The 200 extra years Odenathus bought Rome made all the difference to Roman history, and allowed Christianity to expand as it did. IT's fascinating to me.
Fritz Haber Jewish chemist
"received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1918 for his invention of the Haber-Bosch process, the method used in industry to synthesize ammonia from nitrogen and hydrogen gases. This invention is of importance for the large-scale synthesis of fertilizers and explosives. The food production for half the world's current population depends on this method for producing nitrogen fertilizers."
"Haber is also considered the "father of chemical warfare" for his years of pioneering work developing and weaponizing chlorine and other poisonous gases during World War I"
His work also led to creating Zyklon B used in Nazi gas chambers.
5steelBI ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 05:42:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Newton's mother, who provided for him when Trinity was shut down for 18 months because of the plague. 18 months to work on gravitation, and optics, and calculus. He didn't have to work - his mommy brought him sandwiches.
Next up, Thoreau's sisters, who kept him in pies and shirts while he was 2 miles away at Walden.
Let's hear it for the support staff!
veraliis ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 05:55:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My mother.
asimeo ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 06:01:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Stanislav Petrov, his decision is credited with having prevented an erroneous retaliatory nuclear attack on the United States and its NATO allies that could have resulted in large-scale nuclear war. Investigation later confirmed that the satellite warning system had indeed malfunctioned.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 07:32:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'd say Union Colonel Joshua Chamberlain. He successfully held the Union left flank at the Battle of Gettysburg. Twice, the confederates charged his men, and twice nearly broke through. Chamberlain saw the confederates preparing for a third charge and knowing his men were out of ammunition he ordered the Union troops under his command to charge the confederate lines.
Chamberlain routed the confederates and held the Union left flank, forcing the confederates into a desperate situation that resulted in the famous failed Pickett's Charge.
If Col. Chamberlain had not defended the Union left flank, the confederates could have likely won the Battle of Gettysburg and sued for peace, or besieged Washington. This would have resulted in a separated North and South America, which would have had devastating consequences later in history. Would the Nazis have been defeated if America wasn't United? What would've happened in the Cold War? Col. Chamberlain saved the Union, and with a little imagination, maybe the world.
Alexander Hamilton. Most people don't realize that he established our financial plan, the banks, and also was not president. He did so much as a founding father, and nobody gives him any credit. (Also he was the perpetrator of the first sex scandal in American history.)
walkj08 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 11:05:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not just one person, but the people who helped form the government of the Iroquois Confederacy. This (at the time) unique system of shared government served as an inspiration to the Founding Fathers when they designed the federal government system of the USA.
Chiune Sugihara, Japanese diplomat in Lithuania who issued enough transit visas to save over 6000 Jews from the Holocaust
Talinoth ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 12:41:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Charles Martel (680-741 AD), the grandfather of the MUCH more famous Charlemagne (Charles the Great). Not a very widely known name, considering he stopped a huge Islamic invasion of Western Europe.
It was the Year of Our Lord 723.
Arab and Berber forces under the command of Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi, the Governor-General of al-Andalus, marched into Gaul (now known as France) and advanced towards the town of Tours.
Everybody else the Umayyad Caliphate forces had faced was destroyed. They had advanced through Spain and crushed determined and powerful resistance at Aquitaine to the south. Charles Martel was the last hope of Christian Europe.
Previously, Martel knew he needed a strong, powerful core of professional soldiers in his army, instead of just a rabble of conscripts only available a couple of months a year. He knew he needed to pay these men year round, as they would be unable to grow their own food.
He subjected these men to brutal training and developed a sizable force of professional soldiers, many of which he turned into elite heavy cavalry. His use of a strong phalanx formation combined with his excellent command of his heavy cavalry would be the key to his victory.
Charles Martel set out from Tours and met the Arab and Berber forces in battle. Crushing the massive enemy invasion force in the open field by forcing the enemy into tight melee combat with his heavy cavalry and swordsmen, he successfully seized Christian Europe's final chance to stop the Islamic invasion and forever changed the course of world history in the process.
Damn good thing too, because I couldn't grow a beard even if I wanted to.
Following the Battle of Tours, Martel hunted down the remaining invaders holed up in their fortresses and razed fortifications at Agde, Beziers and Maguelonne.
After these exploits, Martel expanded the courtly duties of the knight class and annexed several Christian realms such as Frisia and Bavaria - he is seen as one of the founding figures of the Medieval period and laid the groundwork for his son Pepin the Short and his grandson Charlemagne to forge the Carolingian Empire.
Europe would be a very, VERY different place without this man.
N0nar ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 16:27:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alan Turing, in his time nobody could see the true genius he possessed. And even now almost nobody knows he's the father of the computer and the digital age. Also he helped the allies win the war by breaking the enigma code and as a way of thanking him the UK government convicted him for being homosexual and chemically castrated him.
The most underappreciated man/woman in history? Cai Lun. The inventor of paper. I can't think of a more important invention that paved the way for communication and future advances. Where would we be without it?
Ciliate ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:18:02 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug. His work in agriculture science and the green revolution many people believe directly lead to saving a billion lives from starvation. That's 1 billion. With a B.
CEZ2 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:29:32 on January 19, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted] ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 14:31:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Otto von Bismarck.
He unified Germany, and created the nation hosting the human embodiment of efficiency. He was the kingmaker, and when consulting Koenig William (before the unification actually happened) about a conference with other leaders, Bismarck had a long debate. Once he emerged from the room, Koenig William was in tears, and complied with Bismarck's request to not attend the conference. He was revered by almost everyone who knew him, and was a very threatening man to his enemies. I think we can call him a historical badass.
He led to the Germans defeating the French in an astounding 6 weeks, a failure they would never forget.
I don't think Bismark is underappreciated at all; rather, in just about every history course ever taught, Bismark is held up as the prime example of developing the concept of unified governments in Europe and of nationalism.
Holcan ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 18:43:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He is also the main character for germany in civilization games....to be fair their other great leader has a bit of a bad rep internationally.
And in all of those 8 pages you never realized he was very well appreciated? They named their largest class of BATTLESHIPS after him. Sounds like you did a shit job in your research - that, or you're just using this as an opportunity to redirect the conversation into an arena you think you know a great deal about.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 03:16:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Who is the most underappreciated person in history?
Well appreciate and under appreciated are not exclusive. He's not appreciated enough by anyone outside of history courses.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 16:51:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Explorer of oceans Jacques-Yves Cousteau (1910 โ 1997)
The legendary Captain Cousteau was a pioneering explorer of the seas and of the issues that face us today. He was a French naval officer, explorer, ecologist, filmmaker, activist, innovator, inventor, author, scientific collaborator, and member of the French Academy. He co-invented the Aqualung, started a marine conservation movement and created a legacy of passion for the ocean that continues today through his family and the millions of people influenced by his work. www.cousteau.org/
whohw ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 16:20:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
but underappreciated? hardly to anyone in their 50s. He had a tv series and even John Denver wrote a song about him!
I think you're forgetting the aspects of his character that detracted from his legend, such as the inefficiency of turbo sails and that he himself did not invent the SCUBA...among other things.
Hence the reason why his museum is a two story yurt in Hampton, VA, after Norfolk, VA, decided to have Nauticus instead.
Though, I'd at least like to have seen a Cousteau wing at Nauticus...that place is full of fluff-bs
I totally blanked out as to what his name is, but the Army lawyer who faced Joseph McCarthy during the Army/communist infiltration hearings and said "Have you no decency, sir?"
Guy slapped our bitch asses into remembering that persecuting a political ideology, and especially when that ideology isn't even present, is kinda bad.
Yeah, that occurred to me, too. I wish 'guy' was unisex. It sounds so lighthearted and casual. If you say 'you guys' it can mean a group that includes women. But there's no vice-versa of that... I dunno, I'm drunk...
zeezl ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:37:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Haha, in that case, you're remarkably lucid!
vmc1918 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:01:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov (Russian: ะะฐัะธะปะธะน ะะปะตะบัะฐะฝะดัะพะฒะธั ะัั ะธะฟะพะฒ) (30 January 1926 โ 19 August 1998) was a Soviet Navy officer who prevented a nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Only Arkhipov, as Flotilla commander and second-in-command of the nuclear-armed submarine B-59, refused to authorize the captain's use of nuclear torpedos against the United States Navy, a decision requiring the agreement of all three senior officers aboard. In 2002 Thomas Blanton, who was then director of the National Security Archive, said that "a guy called Vasili Arkhipov saved the world".
JOHN LENNON DUH /s But seriously preventing nuclear war is not nor was it ever in the hands of one person. Many people have made different contributions to peace.
Christopher Columbus. Although he has done very terrible acts, without him we might have not have discovered the new world at the time we did, and could change the course of the last several hundred years
Soviet nuclear submarine officer who, while being depth charged off the coast of Flordia during the Cuban missile crisis, assumed lead position of the sub and ordered the crew to stand down a previous order to launch their nuclear weapons.
This guy singlehandedly called off global thermonulcear armageddon. Give him some props.
hudsondr ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:57:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is impressive. I was trying to think of somebody who stopped the Cold War from heating up but this is far better than I could have thought of
Bill W. founder of Alchoholics Anonymous. It's impossible to calculate how many lives have been saved by AA and the various treatment models that are inspired by it. An awesome doc came out about him recently. https://youtu.be/WDjTW154WwQ
Stanislav Petrov,Petrov was the duty officer at the command center for the Oko nuclear early-warning system when the system reported that a missile, followed by another one and then up to five more, were being launched from the United States. Petrov judged the report to be a false alarm,[2] and his decision is credited with having prevented an erroneous retaliatory nuclear attack on the United States and its NATO allies that could have resulted in large-scale nuclear war. Investigation later confirmed that the satellite warning system had indeed malfunctioned.
Invented the general purpose computer, artificial intelligence, and computer science. Won World War II for the allies by cracking the Nazi communication encryption.
Was persecuted, arrested, and convicted for being gay and chemically castrated. Went into a deep depression and committed suicide.
Wasn't pardoned for this "crime" until 2013, almost 60 years after his death.
Lenin, usually thought as a "villain" in history for implementing the communist regime in Russia (later the USSR). However, he was the first and only politician who offered/delivered peace, land and bread to the people of Russia who desperately needed it. In fact the communist regime only became corrupt under his successor regime Staline.
jylny ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 17:15:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Seems to me more people need to read Animal Farm :)
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:08:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Lenin (snowball) was the hero of animal farm... It wasn't until Stalin (other pig) took over that shit hit the fan.
You should, it's surprisingly easy to read and short
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:35:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Lenin caused famine with war communism and stole the bread he promised the peasants to support his civil war, and also had no problem with having his subordinates killed during the Red terror. His best trait was being less of a cunt than Stalin.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:36:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
[deleted]
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 23:26:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Lenin wasn't so bad he only executed tens of thousands of people and caused one famine, Great guy really.
If you are implying, that my family is anything less than human or that I am less the human, I will disagree with you and hope that you can educate yourself not to hate.
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 13:41:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
apparently reddit thinks that Tesla is appreciated in history although he's only widely known on the internet and since just a few years. Even my uncle electrician doesn't know who Tesla is.
Intelligence workers in general. We always hear and feel the affects of an intelligence failure (like 9/11), but when we are able to live our lives normally that is the sign of an intelligence success.
Eistein aparently had a picture of maxwell on his wall, this is odd to me as was burried in a tiny village near where i grew up.. it's hard to imagine that anyone of any significance ever went there.
ks501 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:27:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tom Brady.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:44:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Joe Flacco. Elite as fuck
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 18:30:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
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[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:53:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And idiots posting stupid shit like NFL quarterbacks, rock singers, and fucking Tesla. Do you people realize your posts are public? You basically just hang a sign around your neck that identifies you as a moron when you post this drivel.
EDIT: Also, the morons posting "we'll never know" or "it's impossible to tell." "DAE le reddit while being technically correct (which is the best kind of correct!) to show these plebs how much smarter they are? Upboats to the left, m'lady!"
EDIT 2: If I see one more facebook-esque post about "my mom" or "my step-sister", I'm gonna have an aneurysm.
Judas. Think about it. Judas and jesus were best friends. judas and jesus looked very similar;so much so that they were mistaken for eachother. Jesus dies in front of everybody and is then seen alive 3 days later. Jesus even made an announcement prior to judas "betraying" him that judas would betray him. Jesus and judas got together and judas sacrificed his life and his name for all eternity so that their message would be bolstered by the belief that the man spreading it was the son of god. He is the greatest martyr of all time.
We should all appreciate how hot she is. But there's also this:
Jeri got married in the early 90s at age 23, to a young investment banker, Jack Ryan. She lived in LA, he in Chicago, and they traveled a lot to keep the marriage together. While her career took off with Star Trek: Voyager, he also did very well, though Jeri divorced him after 8 years of marriage. He retired young from banking and decided to run for Illinois Senate. He won the republican senate primary, and was poised to win the election.
Unfortunately for him, his divorce records were made public in the middle of his campaign, after pressure from the media. It turns out that the main reason for Jeri divorcing him was that he would take her to sex clubs around europe, and she wanted no more part in that. He was freakay, she... not so much.
He couldn't recover from the blow to his campaign, and bowed out. In a scramble, the republicans pulled in the only candidate they could get six weeks before the election: the controversial Alan Keyes.
With such a debacle right before the election, the democratic candidate (who was not expected to win against Jack Ryan) absolutely demolished the polls, and became US Senator from Illinois, thanks to Jeri's divorce.
That's crazy!!! Also, Jesus Fucking Christ, these bankers have so much money they think they can just do anything. Makes you wonder why "we the people" haven't lynched them all.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:34:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
TeeVee keeps us calm. Consume. Watch 7 of 9 say "comply" to a subordinate like she is a computer. CONSUME. watch this commercial. CONSUME.
IPyro58 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:11:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Austin Bradford Hill not only developed the Randomized Clinical Trial, a cornerstone of modern medicine, but also revealed the connection between smoking and lung cancer. He directly saved millions of lives by demonstrating how dangerous smoking can be and indirectly saved countless more by creating the process by which all drugs are tested today.
I know I'm late to the party, but Thomas Saint. He was an English inventor whose sewing machine used the chain stitch method. Many others perfected his idea, but he started the idea of sewing with leather saddles and canvas sewn sails for ships. We would literally be naked without him. Imagine having one pair of pants and having to wait days for someone to sew another one for you? The chain stitch made clothing more available and economical for everyone and Singer was one of the first to introduce a payment plan so poor people could have a sewing machine in their home. Try making clothes without it.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:01:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm not arguing with anyone. The chain stitch method, although perfected by others as I already stated, was started by him. There is no way to know who would have invented or perfected what. Hindsight is 20/20. If you don't agree with me, good for you. It doesn't change my mind.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:46:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes. In his time he was considered much of a loon, most of his work being looked over in favor of Edison. He died in poverty when he should've been hailed as a genius
He isn't underappreciated. He's certainly not underappreciated here, with this audience, which is the only reason you posted him in the first place: karma whoring.
Tesla doesn't even belong on this list. /r/circlejerk is over there --->
It's not karma whoring jerk. This thread isn't Unpopular Dudes. It's the Most Under Appreciated Person in History. In his OWN TIME he was under appreciated more than anyone.
Anyone linking anything here by your definition is not under appreciated because they have a fucking Wikipedia page. Asshat
By your definition they have to not exist in pop culture at all. Which of course since anyone that would appear in Reddit would automatically disqualify them you're just being a douche that cant be pleased by anyone submission. Wholly pretentious act by you. Considering your comment history is literally you just saying No to 100 people like you're some sort of judge on the matter. Being such a jerk I would advise yourself go to /r/circlejerk
The question isn't who is under appreciated by redditors jagaloon. It's underappreciated in history. In their lives. Tesla lived in poverty and was considered a nutcase. That is by definition under appreciated.
The man has the first fully electric, economically viable car company in history named for him. That's not underappreciation. Go read the first 10 names in this post. Those people? Who have made huge advances in our world or impacted your life without you even knowing their name? That's what we're talking about.
You are literally ignorant. Does the title of this thread read 'Heroes who we don't even know"
No it doesn't
It reads Most Under Appreciated Person in History.
Naming something after someone =/= them being appreciated in their life. He was under appreciated his whole life. Sure he's a popular name now but so are a lot of things. What's happening now is popular culture not History. The Tesla Car Company is not history in this sense. It's pop culture.
I don't see how you're this dense.
The first 10 people named all have corresponding Wikipedia pages so they weren't unknown like you claim
Says the person who ascribes his own personal ethos of "appreciated during their lifetime" as the litmus test to qualify for a thread that asks for the most underappreciated person in history.
He isn't underappreciated. He's certainly not underappreciated here, with this audience, which is the only reason you posted him in the first place: karma whoring.
Tesla doesn't belong on this list. /r/circlejerk is over there --->
You're devaluing Teslas accomplishments, he was under appreciated as he was perhaps the most intelligent man alive in his day and age. And wasn't appreciated up to his stature. Living in hotels, alone, in debt, talking to pigeons, being undermined by Edison. Being berated by media for his finanical status and his 'loony ideas' like radar and WiFi.
El Oh El. Tesla didn't invent WiFi. He's also not the god he's made out to be. Neither is Edison the devil he's been vilified as either. If you did your own research outside of an Oatmeal cartoon and drew your own conclusion, you might change your mind.
Was he a smart guy? Undoubtably. Does he belong on a list of folks who gave their lives for those of thousands or millions of people when he's become a household name, and you didn't even know that the stories of those other people existed? Hardly.
Look beyond your own pseudo-intellectual fanboyism for a minute and you might learn something else interesting.
Haha wow. Coming from the person who's only rebuttul is CAR COMPANY HE HAS A CAR COMPANY! I think you know less of Tesla than I. Belittling someone else's information doesn't accomplish anything dude. It just makes you a pretentious douche. History says what it says. Since this is a post about history I would say that Tesla was under appreciated.
Sure Tesla didn't invent WiFi, but he sought the idea of wireless power transmission and most likely would have brought it to fruition with proper funding.
You're setting parameters for this list which goes to show how fucking narcissistic you are dude.
'They can't be well known'
'They had to sacrifice themselves'
'The act must save lives'
I didn't do any of that. If you view the question objectively, and actually READ the content above, the people referenced, and what they've done, you'll conclude that Tesla doesn't really belong on this list. I didn't set any parameters. You read into that. I never said they can't be well known. I said you hadn't heard of them. I never said they had to sacrifice themselves or save lives. I also didn't say all I know about Tesla refers to the car.
When I can buy a consumer product that bears this man's name, but you had never even heard of the other people -- guess which one of those is going to meet the criteria for the adjective "underappreciated"..?
If you think that some woeful, hero-worshipped internet cult figure that an entire generation of people jerk-off to is both underappreciated, and deserving of mention in a thread where people you haven't even heard of have managed to save literally millions of lives, and then have the nerve to point the finger elsewhere while claiming ignorance, then that's on you.
You literally do not understand what appreciation is.
"If you think that some woeful, hero-worshipped internet cult figure that an entire generation of people jerk-off to is both underappreciated, and deserving of mention in a thread where people you haven't even heard of have managed to save literally millions of lives, and then have the nerve to point the finger elsewhere while claiming ignorance, then that's on you." Talk about Psuedo Intellectual dude.
Your long winded jabs at my own character just goes to show how fucking desperate you are to belittle someone and prove yourself the better.
Tesla was under appreciated in History.
Having a car company/cell phone named after him doesn't change that fact.
He was not appreciated in his life. Therefore he was not appreciated in history. As it happens this post is Who Is the Most Under Appreciated Person in History. So it fits under the question given not the parameters you have subconsciously set upon us O Wise One
And yes you yourself are setting these parameters as you are the only person here actively trying to disprove peoples submissions dude.
Always taking the side as if you are above me. Which is hilarious to be honest. Don't presume your station douchebag it doesn't become you. Your pretentiousness knows no bounds. As you have somehow convinced yourself you are the Judge Jury and Executionor on all matters within this thread. Your argumentative personality especially in matters concerning historical situations really speaks, considering you're refusing to accept actual historical basis as fact and instead substituting your own guess like you are some Historical Scholar with a phd in the field. Kindly fuck off
Do you have historical basis? Let's hear some? I find it interesting that I'm argumentative, yet you're the one using insults and profanity. I'm simply pointing out that this thread can be (and thankfully is) much more than a Tesla circlejerk. If you have something compelling that suggests that should change, I'm sure you'll have no problem posting it, and you'll have my upvote.
But I don't think you do, and you never did. You were hedging your bets that this is reddit, and "DAE <3 Tesla?!?!11", and you'd get karma for it.
He invented a lot of things, here a few examples where he had direct involvement or essentially revolutionized the whole field.
Alternating Current
Harness-able light
X-rays
Radio
Remote Control
Electric Motor
Robotics
Laser
Wireless Communications
There is A LOT more, but these are the notable ones, and when you think of the 21st century, if you had the Car, Nuclear power, and the PC/Microchip. Well that is the 21 century in a hand basket boys.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 04:24:27 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:47:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla. I realize I'm more than several hours late but I read down 15 comments and didn't see his name. That guy is single handedly responsible for our entire modern society but the poor dude doesn't get credit for anything.
Leucippus invented the first theory of an atom, that is that all things are composed of a single idea.
The only surviving Greek works we have were from an African king collector who had them copied for his library. Of the lost texts Leucuppus' many arguments on atoms and evidence for atoms were all destroyed by the Romans.
200 years after his death people questioned as to whether the works attributed to him were his own or his student Democritus' and obscured his name even further. Copies of his work were placed under the name Democritus and so now everyone gives all credit for the atom to Democritus.
Definitely NikolaTesla. While I know there are a majority that know him, sometimes when I mention his name people have no clue who he is or how his plans/ideas could've altered the world we live in today if he was still alive.
Ruddie ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:48:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
he's awesome, but now unappreciated. He's sensationalized
dpatt711 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 04:47:33 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your mother. Without her the universe would never have existed.
maveryh ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:15:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Robert E. Lee
Because he was a Confederate general, he gets lumped in with all the racists and confederate leaders of the time. In reality, he was against slavery. He loved the United States and Virginia, studied at West Point with Grant, Sherman, and other Union generals, and when it came time to pick sides, he was deeply conflicted.
In the end, he chose to go to war for Virginia's sake...
"Mr. Blair, I look upon secession as anarchy. If I owned the four millions of slaves in the South I would sacrifice them all to the Union; but how can I draw my sword upon Virginia, my native state?"
Robert E. Lee was an amazing man. It's a shame that he gets a bad rap and people are pining to tear down street signs with his name on it and statues.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:05:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
he was a kind, good man. Its too bad people who dont know much about him assume he was an asshole
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 05:13:15 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Willing to kill 4000000 slaves, but still a pretty good guy
milo0o ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:41:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Maybe it sounds like beating a dead Horse when I say this, but Nikola Tesla. Sure a lot of people know about him, but I honestly don't believe he gets all the appreciation he deserves. Dude did some miraculous things and a good portion of the population thinks Edison is still responsible for all of his inventions.
I thought this would be higher on the list, took me waaaay too long to find it.
Roglef ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:14:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Robert E Lee.
Fought as a confederate in the army even though he did not believe in Slavery, had released all of his slaves. Only fought out of loyalty for his state.
Its 3 years old, not a shitty repost from earlier today. Furthermore, it's not a word for word copy, and, there are only so many ways to describe what Borlaug did.
It's basically word for for word and all three of the comments posted by OP in this thread are from that thread and worded the same as it was three years ago with a slight variation.
Jesus Christ. Birth foretold hundreds of years in advance. Died for the sins of mankind. Ressurection independently verified by hundreds of eye witnesses. Inarguably the most influential life ever lived. Created the universe. Inspired more literature than anyone.
Considered by many a myth.
Punchline of jokes by neckbeards.
Loves you anyway.
[deleted] ยท -7 points ยท Posted at 13:22:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Is he that underappreciated though? The unit of magnetism is named after him.
[deleted] ยท 55 points ยท Posted at 14:06:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And literally everyone on Reddit whines about him.
icarus92 ยท 29 points ยท Posted at 14:32:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Reddit gets its collective dick hard about anything featured in those shitty Oatmeal comics.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 16:24:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If there's a nerd version of "basic bitch," it involves Oatmeal comics.
[deleted] ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 14:31:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
GunNNife ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 14:46:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's because Edison set out to destroy Tesla. Edison was a cunning and ruthless businessman; Tesla was an oddball inventor. Tesla didn't stand a chance.
loi044 ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 15:45:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Edison set out to destroy Tesla.
I appreciate Tesla, but that's exaggerating the storyline. Edison wanted personal success, which meant defeating Westinghouse. He didn't have a personal vendetta against Tesla.
GunNNife ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:01:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fair enough. I didn't mean to imply that it was a personal vendetta. Edison set out to defeat all his business rivals with the same vigor and ruthlessness.
RQK1996 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 16:15:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
not just that but Marconi (the dude credited with the invention of radio technology) stole 17 patents of Tesla, all related to radio waves and remote control
Incorrect. Tesla didn't even believe in radio waves. He had other ideas on how wireless energy worked using injection of AC electricity into the ground.
The court ruling in question didn't actually take anything from Tesla, either. It ruled that Marconi's work was an improvement on the work of John Stone and Oliver Lodge, so could be patented separately from their work.
RQK1996 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:49:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
he might not have believed in them but he did have a remote controlled boat in 1898 5 years before the second one did, so he might not have believed in them but he did experiment with them a lot
Yeah, but he did so much more. He invented wireless charging, and the concepts behind alternating current (Probably the most fundamental and important concepts in modern society), yet Edison gets all the credit, even though he hated the idea of alternating current.
"Fooling around with alternating current (AC) is just a waste of time. Nobody will use it, ever.โ - Thomas Edison
I feel he is appropriately appreciated. His achievements are acknowledged. His stuff was forward thinking and groundbreaking, but not all that much different from other things being done by his peers. The Oatmeal comic blows him hugely out of proportion.
RQK1996 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 16:18:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
not to the extent it should be, the guy isn't recognised for having a remote controlled boat in 1898
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 15:12:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Really? Because Reddit talks about him non-stop, and there is a physical unit named after him, as well as a famous company.
ex-apple ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 15:55:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well I suggested two, one for serious and one for funs. Not sure which was deleted.
Nikola Tesla and Stevie Wonder.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 15:24:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm probably gonna regret posting this, but I would say that the mothers of many great people we hear about. You rarely get honourable, selfless, good people from bad mothers, and fathers are only recently a factor in parenting.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:01:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You really believe that? Fathers have always been a factor in parenting what the fuck are you talking about.
Gaary ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:05:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
and fathers are only recently a factor in parenting
yea ok
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 18:58:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton. The man kickstarted the american financial system, created the most successful way for unindustrialized nations to transition towards a manufacturing base, and, without him, our constitution probably wouldn't be anything close to the document it is today. For this, he's arguably the least remembered of our founding fathers, and he's being taken off the 10 dollar bill, while a man who literally did not believe in the concept of paper money stays on the 20.
He fought and beat Che, lead many well regulated units, had a sense of ethics, and when a plan went sideways he chose to prevent a bloodbath (that he would have won) and went to jail...only to make lots of contracts in jail to form a future unit.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:44:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hmm. I'm not recognizing any of these names.
needawp ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:46:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Billy Durant. The guy founded General Motors and got kicked out. So he founded Chevy and took over General Motors and got kicked out again. Somewhere in there he managed to found frigidaire. Died in abject poverty because he attempted to stop the Black Friday crash by committing his entire fortune to buying back stock and restore faith in the stock market.
thepobv ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:57:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
/u/thepobv ...saved the earth from imminent aliens attack by single handedly blow up their planet, yet no one seems to give a damn.
Is in your opinion the MOST underappreciated person in history? For real? C'mon man.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:00:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I read about some old dude that almost singlehandedly diverted WW3 during the Cold War. The fact that I can't even remember his name is testament enough to his under appreciation.
unยทderยทapยทpreยทciยทate
หษndษrษหprฤSHiฤt/
verb
past tense: underappreciated; past participle: underappreciated
fail to value (someone or something) highly enough
This means they are valued, but not enough. The word is UNDERappreciated. Not UNappreciated.
Any great composed who happened to live in the same era as any of the great music geniuses.
Imagine being an excellent composer living in the same era as Bach? You're fucked, no one will ever hear your music, no one cares because there's Bach and his football tea of muiscally gifted children.
aGeordie ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:12:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
unยทderยทapยทpreยทciยทate
หษndษrษหprฤSHiฤt/
verb
past tense: underappreciated; past participle: underappreciated
fail to value (someone or something) highly enough
This means they are valued, but not enough. The word is UNDERappreciated. Not UNappreciated.
G0dd ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:12:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Henrietta Lacks. Died of a particular type of cervical cancer which just so happened to mean that her cells were particularly good at growing in vitro. Her cells were the first immortal human cells we managed to culture. Right now pretty much every laboratory that conducts tests on human tissues has HeLa cells on site. She died in 1951. A lot of good has come from her cells.
If you heard her complain, you would think, my mother. Good God lady, I swear I do appreciate that you gave me life and washed all my clothes when I was a kid.
Until Lin-Manuel Miranda's "Alexander Hamilton" released on Broadway, I would say Hamilton's contributions to the US were often forgotten and overshadowed by Washington and Jefferson. Which is entirely undeserving cause Hamilton is a badass.
unยทderยทapยทpreยทciยทate
หษndษrษหprฤSHiฤt/
verb
past tense: underappreciated; past participle: underappreciated
fail to value (someone or something) highly enough
This means they are valued, but not enough. The word is UNDERappreciated. Not UNappreciated.
bleezye ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:07:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tyrion Lannister
PMrom ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:09:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Vasili Arkhipov
Talked his fellow commanding officers out of firing a nuclear torpedo at US ships during the Cuban Missile Crisis that very well could have sparked nuclear war
not-ted ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:14:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dave.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:14:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug - plant biologist extraordinaire! Pioneered the research and cultivation of high-yielding crops to feed the planet. Arguably saved billions of lives!
unยทderยทapยทpreยทciยทate
หษndษrษหprฤSHiฤt/
verb
past tense: underappreciated; past participle: underappreciated
fail to value (someone or something) highly enough
This means they are valued, but not enough. The word is UNDERappreciated. Not UNappreciated.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:03:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The definition you provided does not provide a lower bound for appreciation. Good try, though.
You're seriously gonna come here and try to defend that hot garbage, and try to say that someone who has done something historically noteworthy is completely unknown -- to the point that you feel you can stroll in here and whip out some logical fallacy to feel superior to everyone else here?
Didn't like what mom made for dinner tonight or something?
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 03:26:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:25:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Me.
Can I not get a damn "Thank You!" for changing the toliet paper roll WHEN NO ONE ELSE IN THIS GOD DAMN HOUSE DOES??
Edit: irony, i live alone
mrttenor ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:26:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My go to answer for this question has always been Alexander Hamilton, the first Treasury Secretary of the United States.
But now there's a hit Broadway show that tells his story and he's getting the recognition he deserves and I'll have to come up with a new answer eventually.
His story fell to the side because of 2 reasons.
1) He died in 1804 at the age of 49 (shot by VP Arron Burr)
2) Many of the other founding fathers who outlived him also didn't like him much. So they defamed him throughout their lives.
Miley Cyrus. Culture creator. Breaks some interesting boundaries.
MrGuest1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:31:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
john locke
Virtioso ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:33:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sir Isaac Asimov.
He is not a scientist but he is considered the father of Robotics and AI. He is the one who came up to my mind I know he is still not a game changer...
Marcus Agrippa saves Augustus from embarrassing defeat, defeats Antony and his spare time rebuilt/built public works in Rome into the grandeur that Augustus would take credit for.
Norman Ernest Borlaug(March 25, 1914 โ September 12, 2009) was an American biologist, humanitarian and Nobel laureate who has been called "the father of the Green Revolution", "agriculture's greatest spokesperson" and "The Man Who Saved A Billion Lives". He is one of seven people to have won the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal and was also awarded the Padma Vibhushan, India's second highest civilian honor.
Borlaug received his B.Sc. Biology in 1937 and Ph.D. in plant pathology and genetics from the University of Minnesota in 1942. He took up an agricultural research position in Mexico, where he developed semi-dwarf, high-yield, disease-resistant wheat varieties.
During the mid-20th century, Borlaug led the introduction of these high-yielding varieties combined with modern agricultural production techniques to Mexico, Pakistan, and India. As a result, Mexico became a net exporter of wheat by 1963. Between 1965 and 1970, wheat yields nearly doubled in Pakistan and India, greatly improving the food security in those nations. These collective increases in yield have been labeled the Green Revolution, and BORLAUG IS OFTEN CREDITED WITH SAVING OVER A BILLION PEOPLE WORLDWIDE FROM STARVATION. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 in recognition of his contributions to world peace through increasing food supply.
Later in his life, he helped applying these methods of increasing food production in Asia and Africa.
So, I mean, the guy was recognized, but how many people reading this have ever heard of him?
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:42:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
All of the really good ones I already see here. But hey, there's always Scipio Africanus and Fabius Maximus who both (in their own way) pretty much saved the Roman empire and changed the course of history in doing so.
They guy who came up with the idea to rub two sticks together to create fire. Seriously, have you ever stopped and thought, thank you whoever brought warmth to our species?
iSmore ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:47:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm going to be that person that says myself
Korashy ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:48:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The team who accidentally discovered CPR by rescuing a dying lab dog. Resulting in ginormous amounts of lives being saved.
Also Nikolai Tesla, though he's gaining more renown lately.
Ulysses S Grant
while he isn't under appreciated as a general, I often felt like he gets overlooked for what did as a president of the United States. While Abraham Lincoln was the one to free the slaves, Ulysses Grant had to keep them free.
Twice elected president, Grant led the Republicans in their effort to remove the vestiges of Confederate nationalism and slavery, protect African-American citizenship, and support economic prosperity nationwide. His presidency has often come under criticism for protecting corrupt associates and in his second term leading the nation into a severe economic depression.
Joini246 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:52:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think you misread what he said. He didn't mean that Semmelweis discovered handwashing, he said that Semmelweis discovered a decrease in mother's deaths after childbirth if you washed your hands prior to the birth.
unยทderยทapยทpreยทciยทate
หษndษrษหprฤSHiฤt/
verb
past tense: underappreciated; past participle: underappreciated
fail to value (someone or something) highly enough
This means they are valued, but not enough. The word is UNDERappreciated. Not UNappreciated.
Wow, a definition and everything (even if it's from google). However, the most underappreciated would by definition be an extreme of the "fail[ing] to value... highly enough" would be someone who is utterly unappreciated. Hence why they aren't even appearing in a thread for fake internet points.
So, my man posts a great question full of hundreds of interesting responses, and you decided you were gonna come fuck his shit up with a logical fallacy designed to point out the inherent flaw in his question with your pedantic interpretation of his choice of verbiage instead of actually contributing something useful to the conversation, right?
You're so intelligent. Say something else smart for us.
Steve Guttenberg (of Police Academy fame), starred in Nuclear Holocaust-warning film "The Day After"(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_After).
Ronald Reagan said the film was a big influence on him and his desire to pursue nuclear disarmament with Russia.
Tl;Dr - Steve Guttenberg saved the world from Nuclear Armageddon, but y'all just remember him for terrible movies, you ungrateful slobs.
unยทderยทapยทpreยทciยทate
หษndษrษหprฤSHiฤt/
verb
past tense: underappreciated; past participle: underappreciated
fail to value (someone or something) highly enough
This means they are valued, but not enough. The word is UNDERappreciated. Not UNappreciated.
And the other key word is MOST. The MOST "not enough" (your words) would be unknown, so therefore you wouldn't find him/her. Looking at the people you DO know is a classic case of survivorship bias. Look it up. Enjoy. :)
Hold up. So, my man posts a great question full of hundreds of interesting responses, and you decided you were gonna come fuck his shit up with a logical fallacy designed to point out the inherent flaw in his question with your pedantic interpretation of his choice of verbiage instead of actually contributing something useful to the conversation, right?
Heard about this guy Clair Cameron Patterson for the first time on the Cosmos series with NDT.
In collaboration with George Tilton, Patterson developed the uranium-lead dating method into lead-lead dating, and by using lead isotopic data from the Canyon Diablo meteorite, he calculated an age for the Earth of 4.55 billion years; a figure far more accurate than those that existed at the time and one that has remained largely unchanged since 1956.
Patterson had first encountered lead contamination in the late 1940s as a graduate student at the University of Chicago. His work on this led to a total re-evaluation of the growth in industrial lead concentrations in the atmosphere and the human body, and his subsequent campaigning was seminal in the banning of tetraethyllead in gasoline, and lead solder in food cans.
I now wonder how screwed we would be if he hadnt campaigned so hard against lead products (specifically leaded gasoline)
psnanda ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:59:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jonas Salk. Very very under appreciated. Inventor of Polio vaccine.
Also Charles Goodyear, inventor of Vulcanized rubber. Some bastard nicked his invention, made tons and Goodyear had to live in an abandoned factory where some of his kids died from starvation and the like.
LOHare ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:01:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Late to this party, but: Kingdom Isambard Brunel. Outside of select technical field, he is basically unknown.
Select excerpt from his wiki:
Brunel built dockyards, the Great Western Railway, a series of steamships including the first propeller-driven transatlantic steamship and numerous important bridges and tunnels. His designs revolutionised public transport and modern engineering
Though Brunel's projects were not always successful, they often contained innovative solutions to long-standing engineering problems. During his career, Brunel achieved many engineering "firsts", including assisting in the building of the first tunnel under a navigable river and development of SS Great Britain, the first propeller-driven ocean-going iron ship, which was at the time (1843) also the largest ship ever built.[4][5]
Brunel set the standard for a well-built railway, using careful surveys to minimise grades and curves. This necessitated expensive construction techniques and new bridges and viaducts, and the two-mile-long Box Tunnel. One controversial feature was the wide gauge, a "broad gauge" of 7 ft 1โ4 in (2,140 mm), instead of what was later to be known as 'standard gauge' of 4 ft 8 1โ2 in (1,435 mm). The wider gauge added to passenger comfort but made construction much more expensive and caused difficulties when eventually it had to interconnect with other railways using the narrower gauge. As a result of the Regulating the Gauge of Railways Act 1846, the gauge was changed to standard gauge throughout the GWR network.
Brunel astonished Britain by proposing to extend the Great Western Railway westward to North America by building steam-powered iron-hulled ships. He designed and built three ships that revolutionised naval engineering.
jesse9o3 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:19:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yer Kingdoms and yer Isambards are the wrong way around.
LOHare ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:48:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"A man you think so little about, you didn't even realise we wrote his name wrong."
"During the mid-20th century, Borlaug led the introduction of these high-yielding varieties combined with modern agricultural production techniques to Mexico, Pakistan, and India. As a result, Mexico became a net exporter of wheat by 1963. Between 1965 and 1970, wheat yields nearly doubled in Pakistan and India, greatly improving the food security in those nations.[10] These collective increases in yield have been labeled the Green Revolution, and Borlaug is often credited with saving over a billion people worldwide from starvation.[11] He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 in recognition of his contributions to world peace through increasing food supply.
Later in his life, he helped applying these methods of increasing food production in Asia and Africa"
"James Christopher Harrison, OAM, also known as the Man with the golden arm, is a blood plasma donor[1] from Australia whose unusual plasma composition has been used to make a treatment for Rhesus disease. He has made over 1000 donations throughout his lifetime, and these donations are estimated to have saved over two million unborn babies from the condition"
igiggy ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:03:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Whoever invented and implemented large scale indoor plumbing. You have no idea how many illnesses this has prevented. Also, no pooping out of a window.
The real inventor of the home PC and the true pioneer behind apple computers. Steve Jobs was just a good marketer/promoter, and he took Wozniak's work and sold it and kept most of the profit. He made Woz literally cry because of his betrayal... but he gets movies made about him and Woz is a cameo/bit part.
He's an all around great guy with great ideas. He's also the basis for the character of Ogden Morrow in "Ready Player One".
vishnURS ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:04:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
unยทderยทapยทpreยทciยทate
หษndษrษหprฤSHiฤt/
verb
past tense: underappreciated; past participle: underappreciated
fail to value (someone or something) highly enough
This means they are valued, but not enough. The word is UNDERappreciated. Not UNappreciated.
W. Edwards Deming. Dude made Japan into what it is today and is responsible for the increase in quality of all goods made from WWII. Kaizen, 5s, six sigma all come from him.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:07:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tesla
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:53:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There is an entire car company named after him. Far from under appreciated in respect to others.
Extra Credits did a great video on a man in history I'd never heard anything about ever, John Snow. Who did more for modern urban sanitation than most of us will ever know. If you've never checked out Extra Credits Extra History series you should, it's a great way to learn some history in a casual relaxed way.
John Gilbert Winant โย United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom during WWII. You've heard of Churchill and Roosevelt, but in between them was Winant. Not an easy job. Before the Ambassador role, he was Governor of New Hampshire and the first head of the Social Security Board.
All the wives and mothers that supported the men in this thread. Also probably a lot of women who came up with the very ideas credited to the men in this thread.
haldad ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:15:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Robert Maurer, Donald Keck, and Peter Schultz invented fiber-optic wire or "optical waveguide fibers"...these wires are the reason we can surf the internet at nearly the speed of light.
db_504 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:16:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Prometheus....or Alexander Fleming whom discovered penicillin.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:16:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's hard to assess how really important he was, since he lived the good life almost 1800 years ago. Rome would have been fucked a few centuries earlier if he wasn't around.
John Adams. Probably not the most, but definitely underappreciated. We take for granted that in the Western world, when you lose an election, you step down. No matter what you think of GW Bush or Obama, or any heads of state, there shouldn't be any doubt that they will step down when required.
This wasn't the precedent until John Adams' failed bid for reelection. And as the most powerful man in the country and commander in chief of the military, he handed over the reigns peacefully.
oxycash ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:24:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
History of which country?
nordpol ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:25:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The guy who invented canned beer
nimmo95 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:25:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
oakozric ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:33:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fred Rogers. Even though he had a lot of appreciation, I don't think it was nearly enough, considering his role in positive social construct, particularly with kids.
pies1123 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:34:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not necessarily for a good thing, but Gavrilo Princip. His shooting of Franz Ferdinand started a chain reaction of historical events that has shaped the global political landscape to this day.
zawadz ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:38:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Witold Pilecki was a Captain in the Polish Army and a badass who willingly let himself by captured by the Nazis and sent to Auschwitz, where he organized a resistance movement, and was able to give first-hand information to the Western Allies about what happened in concentration camps.
Many people know his name, but don't really know the scope of change he effected on the U.S.'s form of government, and on common law jurisprudence altogether.
As a federalist leading the judiciary after the Jeffersonians swept into Congress and the White House, Marshall, through his opinions, kept many of the important aspects of federalism (back then a term for a strong central government) alive, like the central bank. And he did it so adeptly. Jefferson was looking for a way just to disregard the Court when it told the government to do something (and some opinions were disregarded) but he generally wrote in a way to increase the Supreme Court's influence-- (like in Marbury v. Madison, establishing the idea that the Court could review statutes for constitutionality, while avoiding forcing Jefferson to do something he would have refused to do if the court ordered him -- deliver papers giving a whole bunch of federalists jobs who were appointed at the 11th hour by John Adams).
Maybe he wasn't the originator of an idea like judicial review (that seems to be debated by scholars), but the Supreme Court is a co-equal branch of government in the U.S. largely thanks to his leadership, and the U.S. created a model where impartial, constitutional courts determine the propriety of laws enacted by the majority.
Oh, and he did it all while being a cool guy. He apparently loved to share drinks with his opponents; he was modest (there's a story about him walking on the way to the Court and a merchant mistaking him for a servant, asking him to carry a bird home from the market.. In an era when those learned in the law looked like it, he was humble, friendly, and awesome.
ohgr4213 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:44:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
John D. Rockefeller. He to great extend modernized the entire energy industry and transformed society by aligning macro with micro and realizing economies of scale and scope in conjunction with new technologies. Despite what people think he always lowered prices and never gained complete control of the oil market but his innovations lowered the price/unit energy tremendously. To a large extent, he deserved that massive fortune.
I tentatively will add Fritz Haber to the list. I say tentatively because he was a bit of a tool[0] but he did invent the process we use today to make fertilizer which allows us to grow enough food that we don't suffer mass starvation (mostly).
[0] think developing chemical weapons and gassing people in WW1
In 1998, Pagones was awarded $345,000 (he sought $395 million) through a lawsuit for defamation of character that he had brought against Sharpton, Maddox and Mason. The jury found Sharpton liable for making seven defamatory statements about Pagones, Maddox for two and Mason for one. The jury deadlocked on four of the 22 statements over which Pagones had sued, and it found eight statements to be non-defamatory.[27] In a later interview, Pagones said the turmoil caused by the accusations of Brawley and her advisers had cost him his first marriage and much personal grief.[28]
Steno, whose law of superposition proved that the Abrahamic scriptures were not to be taken literally, once and for all ending religious fanaticism...
Oh, and btw he discovered the parotic duct and from that deducted the purpose of glands, that muscles don't inflate when flexing, that the heart is a muscle and that the brain doesn't work pneumatically.
pnvv ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:52:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Witold Pilecki. Basically volunteered to go to a concentration camp during WW2 to gather intelligence, and then had to escape again using his own devices... only to be executed by the USSr in 1948.
That guy who created a light bulb before Thomas Edison but Edison got there first! I think I heard this somewhere? Either way. That guy cause I can't think of his name!
namaha11 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:57:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
hitler. dude single handedly destroyed eugenics
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:57:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Percival Lowell. Founder of the Lowell observatory in Arizona. Thought there was life on Mars. Inspired HG Wells to write War of the Worlds and many many many other science fiction stories.
Margaret Hamilton Computer scientist that, with her team, helped save an abort of the Apollo 11 mission with her coding when the computer found a problem.
Fritz Haber
Who is responsible for approximately half of the molecules of nitrogen in anything you eat, as well as being the father of chemical warfare.
also, the guy who denied Hitler's art school application.
Maybe not the most under appreciated in history, but I think the finnish sniper Simo haya always deserves more attention then he gets for his 500 plus confirmed kills. Dude used iron sights and no one else is even close to him.
Well, the inventor of nitrogen fertilizer changed the world in two ways.
Fritz Haber, a German-Jewish inventor in early 1900s basically saved humanity from famine collapse by inventing a way to create liquid nitrogen-based fertilizer that increased crop yields to support the booming population.
He was ALSO considered the "father of chemical warfare" through weaponizing chlorine gas and inventing Zyklon A, the precursor to the gas the Nazis used in extermination camps.
Takeo Yoshikawa -- The Japanese spy in Hawaii who went to great lengths to gather information about operations at Pearl Harbor. His information was why Japan's attack was so brutally effective. After the war, he got shafted by the government, then they started blaming him for the atomic bomb. He also tried to open an ice cream business, which also failed because of the bad PR.
brett332 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:24:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He gets posted occasionally but Norman Borlaug, a botanist who is credited with saving the lives of upwards of a billion people, GMOs to the rescue.
Probably a time traveler from the future who has saved the Earth .. like .. 25 times but had to keep his identity secret for fear of altering the timeline.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:25:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jonathan Browning, the father of the most famous gunsmith in history, John Moses Browning. Developed a multi-shot "Harmonica Rifle" for early settlers of the West.
Faraday Future makes sense now. Learned something new today, thanks.
C0uvi ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:42:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I was going to say James C Maxwell. The book Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field: How Two Men Revolutionized Physics really does highlight how much these guys did to advance technology, and for me I never heard about either of them when the book was recommended to me.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:38:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
michael jackson
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:38:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Many people only know Vlad III Dracula for his cruel reputation and don't realize that many considered him a hero, including the pope at the time of his reign.
relaxok ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:40:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Prince.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:40:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Henry Clay preserved the unity of America countless times.
xilefian ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:41:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Maybe not the most underrated person in the history of mankind, but as far as technology goes, I believe Dennis Ritchie takes the cake. He invented the C programming language, which is still very much used today, and without it, Ritchie's long time friend and colleague Ken Thompson would have never been able to create Unix, and without that, i may not be writing this.
Unfortunately, Ritchie died alone a few years ago, and this was at pretty much the same time that Steve Jobs died, so there was little to no coverage on his death.
CapnFran ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:46:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Michael Faraday.
Draiko ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:50:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The guy invented cut/copy paste. How many billions of hours have been saved thanks to him?
UEMcGill ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:56:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Juan Christ, brother of Jesus. Could only stand on water, turn water into juices and heal pimples and other minor skin ailments. He stayed in the family business and worked as a carpenter.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:58:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
When his term is over and it's a decade or so down the road I think Obama will be a part of this discussion.
euming ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:00:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alfred Russel Wallace. He sent a manuscript to Darwin to read, which so closely matched Darwin's ideas, that it prompted Darwin to publish a manuscript at the same time as Wallace to avoid being left in obscurity. The ideas weren't unique to either person, and Darwin had been writing his novel for some time before this, but it is still pretty crappy that no one remembers Wallace or the other scientists that contributed to the theory of evolution.
The is a bit more 'merican than the others, but Richard Henry Lee. He made the motion in the Second Continental Congress for independence from Britain. He's practically never mentioned, yet he's pretty much responsible for the revolution, as the Congress was planning on just fighting for a bit until their demands were granted
There was a german wood worker that tried to assassinate Hitler I am 1938. Unfortunately Hitler arrived late and the bomb he had planted went of to early. Poor fellow is so unknown that I can't even find his name.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:06:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Antonio Meucci. He invented the phone prototype that Bell eventually used to develop the modern telephone. It's debated that he worked in the firm where Meucci brought his prototype, where it was then "lost". Not long after Bell proclaimed he had invented the telephone.
nMaibO ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:23:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Manuel Elkin Patarroyo, the guy created the first vaccine for Malaria.
Yosoff ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:25:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Chewbacca
almuric ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:26:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The guy who came up with the idea of putting rumble strips on the side of highways. Has saved thousands of lives.
Either that or Norman Borlaug, who saved billions but is better known than that first guy.
Anyone know who came up with the rumble-strip idea?
Johannes Gutenberg- paved the way for the spreading of ideas through the printing press. I could not even begin to say how under appreciated this man is.
jarchack ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:21:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I actually knew this but didn't remember it until I saw your post
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:31:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Westinghouse. The guy was amazing to his employees and to people in general. He used to walk his employee to the patent office so they could claim the rights to their design. In contrast, Edison claimed all of his employee's designs and patented them for himself. Just an example from this documentary, but the whole thing is worth a watch.
hmmm, most likely Brendan Schaub, his inspirational quotes and podcasts have inspired an entire generation of young men to purchase t-shirts and pull america out of its recession
Argonov ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:39:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That guy that seems to have an infinite and detailed memory for all kinds of porn that can provide a link with just a small description from the guy requesting it.
He is said to have gained considerable fame as a roving preacherโa "hedge priest" without a parish or any link to the established order[2]โby expounding the doctrines of John Wycliffe, and especially by his insistence on social equality.[3] He delivered radical sermons in many places, including: Ashen, Billericay, Bocking, Braintree, Cressing Temple, Dedham, Coggeshall, Fobbing, Goldhanger, Great Baddow, Little Henny, Stisted and Waltham.[2]
His utterances brought him into conflict with Simon of Sudbury, Archbishop of Canterbury, and he was thrown in prison on several occasions. He also appears to have been excommunicated; owing to which, in 1366 it was forbidden for anyone to hear him preach.[3] These measures, however, did not moderate his opinions, nor diminish his popularity. He took to speaking to parishioners in churchyards after the official services in English, the "common tongue", not the Latin of the clergy, a radical political move. Ball was "using the bible against the church", very threatening to the status quo.[2
Pretty much most people who have died in wars. We barely remember or respect the wars, let alone the individuals.
There's lots of people who people barely know about, for example the Chernobyl divers. I don't even know their names, I doubt most people know they existed.
There are so many cases, I could probably say the fireman that died today. I mean, one probably did in my country, he wouldn't get any glory in the news.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:48:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
was an American microbiologist who specialized in vaccinology and developed over 40 vaccines, an unparalleled record of productivity.[1][2] Of the 14 vaccines routinely recommended in current vaccine schedules, he developed eight: those for measles, mumps, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, chickenpox, meningitis, pneumonia and Haemophilus influenzae bacteria.
He is credited with saving more lives than any other medical scientist of the 20th century.[3][4][5] Robert Gallo described him as "the most successful vaccinologist in history".[3]
Robert Gallo, co-discoverer of the virus that causes AIDS, once said "If I had to name a person who has done more for the benefit of human health, with less recognition than anyone else, it would be Maurice Hilleman. Maurice should be recognized as the most successful vaccinologist in history."
onus111 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:49:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Amerigo Vespucci - Italian navigator and explorer for whom America is named after.
Otto Frederick Rohwedder, inventor of sliced bread...well the machine that slices bread at least.
hudsondr ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:53:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You are correct
Goblaz ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:51:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Clair Cameron Patterson He discovered the age of the earth. He also saved our civilization from dying of lead poisoning by fighting GM for decades to remove tetra ethyl lead as an anti-knock additive to gasoline.
thooru ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:51:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Joan Pujol Garcia AKA [Garbo]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Pujol_Garcia)
He hated the Spanish fascists so much (and being catalan, duh) that he decided to become a spy for the allies.
If not for him, Normandy would have been a complete failure.
wilusa ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:54:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Pottski ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:55:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tribonian, who was charged by Justinian to create the Corpus Juris Civilis - the amalgamation of all the Roman Empire's laws into a 50-volume set. His work informed and was the benchmark for many society's laws heading forward.
After doing an extensive research paper on him, I'll nominate Henry The Navigator as one of the most under-appreciated people in history. He didn't do much in terms of discovery in his time but he changed how Europe viewed the concept of maritime exploration. I'm on mobile right now but if anybody wants more info I'd be glad to expand on the topic.
Polk is often considered the last strong preโCivil War president, having met during his four years in office every major domestic and foreign policy goal set during his campaign and the transition to his administration: When Mexico rejected American annexation of Texas, Polk led the nation to a sweeping victory in the MexicanโAmerican War, seizing nearly the whole of what is now the American Southwest. He ensured a substantial reduction of tariff rates by replacing the "Black Tariff" with the Walker tariff of 1846, which pleased the less-industrialized states of his native South by rendering less expensive both imported and, through competition, domestic goods. He threatened war with the United Kingdom over the issue of which nation owned the Oregon Country, eventually reaching a settlement in which the British were made to sell the portion that became the Oregon Territory. He built an independent treasury system that lasted until 1913. Having done all this, he fulfilled his campaign promise not to seek election to a second term.
kirsion ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:00:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't remember his name but he invented something to do with agricultural, corn, wheat or something that saved billions of lives.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:01:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Otto von Bismarck.
He DOMINATED Europe from about 1860 to about 1890, took the tiny as nation of Prussia and created the German Empire, and now anytime you say "Bismarck" people just think of a fucking ship.
Stanislav Petrov - the guy who was on duty at a Soviet nuclear early-warning system who decided that an alarm that missiles were incoming was false (preventing retaliatory attacks).
One of those weird, quiet things of history I've never heard discussed too much. The guy held the fate of the world in his hands and made the right call.
iiZEze ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:01:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He was the reason the British weren't able to mindlessly sacrifice Canadians in the first world war and he dissolved parliament when the Mackenzie King was doing unconstitutional bullshit. It's funny that Harper pulled all the exact same garbage, but people don't understand that the governor general of Canada can actually do shit to help rather than complain about the party habits of baby seals.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:08:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Haven't checked the comments yet, will in a sec, bet you at least 30% say Nikola Tesla
TinyZoro ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:08:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Gertrude Elion American biochemist and pharmacologist.
"Gertrude Elion's accomplishments over the course of her long career as a chemist were tremendous. Among the many drugs she developed were the first chemotherapy for childhood leukemia, the immunosuppressant that made organ transplantation possible, the first effective anti-viral medication, and treatments for lupus, hepatitis, arthritis, gout, and other diseases."
Inventions:
Purinethol: the first treatment for leukaemia and used in organ transplantation
Imuran: the first immune-suppressive agent, used for organ transplantation
Allopurinol: for gout
Daraprim: for malaria
Septra: for meningitis, septicemia, and bacterial infections of the urinary and respiratory tract
Zovirax: for viral herpes
Nelarabine: for cancer treatment
Maculate ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:12:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:21:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Bayard Rustin. He was responsible for planning out and writing most of the speeches for the march on washington, but because his homosexuality was criminalized at the time, he had to work behind the curtain to preserve the image of the civil rights movement.
Henry "hell hound" Rogers! What an interesting man! I would kill to find a biography on him. Working with Rockefeller while being best friends with mark twain. Really did a lot of the footwork for what modern corporations are today.
Norman Burlaug (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug) The man had saved in his lifetime an estimated 6 billion lives and because uninformed people believe that genetically modified plants are bad, he was hated. He is on the receiving end of anti GMO nutjobs because all of this was done in DuPont's name. I saw an interview with him in the early 2000's and he just sat there going "I can't understand why they hate me, my discovery stopped a famine in India and is only a temporary solution to a growing problem".
When campaigning, his main promise was the annexation of Texas. After Mexico rejected the proposal, he led the Mexican-American War, giving the US Texas, along with most of today's American Southwest. He significantly reduced tariffs, and reached an agreement with the United Kingdom, earning the US its Oregon Territory. When at the end of his term, he decided not to run for re-election because he fulfilled all of his promises. This guy is the most badass president we've had, and no one remembers him.
As if he wasn't badass enough, he underwent surgery when he was 17 to remove urinary stones, with only brandy as an anesthetic. The surgery was successful, but left him sterile, unfortunately removing whatever God-like DNA he possessed from the gene pool.
People who put up with random bullshit comments and dig to find something worth bringing to the worlds attention. That funny comment which is also top comment? It wouldn't be top comment were it not for a couple hundred unappreciated redditors.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:33:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Samuel Adams...the true father of the American Revolution. The developed world had a nice run for over two centuries. European powers had to compete in the freedom and opportunity market or lose their citizens.
caseym4 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:49:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
McMurry ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:56:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Norman Borlang.
If you eat food tonight there is a good chance that it is a direct result of this mans work.
To quote his wikipedia entry:
Borlaug is often credited with saving over a billion people worldwide from starvation.[11] He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 in recognition of his contributions to world peace through increasing food supply.
RuXXX0r ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:57:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Guglielmo Marconi
Darkben ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:57:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your parents ... because without them you wouldn't be part of history :)
ottos ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:04:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Winston Churchill
Yes, he is given a lot of credit but nearly the extent that he deserves. He coulda packed it in and given in to the Germans. Yet, he was relentless in leading his own country's defiance as well as motivating others to do the same.
One of the first black chemists to receive a PhD in the US. He created commercially viable processes for synthesizing progesterone, testosterone, cortisol, and other hormones, mainly from plants. without which we would not have the birth control pills, cortisone, or fertility treatments. He also created a firefighting foam that save thousands of lives in WW2. And basically no one knows his name.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:05:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ignaz Semmelweiss (His last name means the white inner part of a bun) was ridiculed and died by beating in a mental hospital, but if anyone had listened to him he would have saved countless lives.
"Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov (Russian: ะกัะฐะฝะธัะปะฐฬะฒ ะะฒะณัะฐฬัะพะฒะธั ะะตััะพฬะฒ; born 1939 in Vladivostok[1]) is a retired lieutenant colonel of the Soviet Air Defence Forces. On September 26, 1983, just three weeks after the Soviet military had shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, Petrov was the duty officer at the command center for the Oko nuclear early-warning system when the system reported that a missile, followed by another one and then up to five more, were being launched from the United States. Petrov judged the report to be a false alarm,[2] and his decision is credited with having prevented an erroneous retaliatory nuclear attack on the United States and its NATO allies that could have resulted in large-scale nuclear war. Investigation later confirmed that the satellite warning system had indeed malfunctioned"
Ratiasu ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:09:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
James K. Polk did some important stuff in his 4 years in office. He's been called the least known consequential president. He got us the American Southwest and Oregon territory, helped open some important institutions and monuments (Smithsonian Institute, Washington Monument), started postage stamps
That one Russian lieutenant or some such rank that refused to launch a nuclear strike even though their equipment said the US had already attacked, thus preventing real life Fallout 4.
Wait a second... That son of a bitch
sklorbit ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:17:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
thomas paine. his thought is a cornerstone of considering political freedom as a human 'right' and defending the american and french revolutions, he was disrespected and neglected by the American government who didnt want to anger the ungrateful french government that jailed him. he was a public and outspoken diest (unlike jefferson) and also questioned our treatment of animals. He was awesome and weirdly enough was friends with william blake...his philosophical opposite, but god they must have had amazing conversations.
Norman Borlaug, a man who was credited with saving over a billion lives from starvation. He recieved many notable rewards but he isn't a name you hear often despite saving a tremendous amount of people.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug
brianobb ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:32:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Edmond Halley. Without him, Isaac Newton may never have been published and may never have done anything significant, and he did it pretty much out of pure altruism.
Chlemtil ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:32:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Everyone is constantly talking shit about the guy who killed Hitler... But I think that's a pretty appreciable feat!
Martha Nelson Thomas, who was the true artist behind the invention of the 'Cabbage Patch Kids' dolls. She had her idea stolen as an invention by Xavier Roberts, who named them Cabbage Patch kids.
All the feminists in history. Such as Susan B. Anthony, and many others. And all the women who created inventions or founded other things. Whom we don't know about, because they had to let their husbands or other men take credit for it. Because women were not allowed to invent things or be credited as founders, in those times.
Ritty34 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:33:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Kevin Vickers is a recent hero that comes to mind. He was a canadian ex-cop (mountie) and is the current Sergeant-at-Arms. When there was a terrorist attack on the Canadian parliament building he killed the terrorist by jumping horizontally around the pillar that the guy was hiding behind and shot him in the head mid-air.
Ottmar Mergenthaler. Everyone remembers that Gutenburg invented movable type(1439). For centuries, everything printed used movable type, and things were great. However the thing with movable type is that it has to be washed and put back in the job case, so the typesetter could use it again. Newspapers limits were to about ten pages per publication. Until Mergenthaler invented the linotype machine in 1884. Suddenly, 100 page newspapers were possible, and the TYPES of information you could print were limitless. Newspapers started printing sports, fashions, gossip columns, all the areas of interest that made papers sell.
They were the main guys behind the later Talk Talk albums, and every time I listen to them, they save my life.
No-one knows how important they are for this. They are probably completely unaware of their role in this so even they don't know how underground they are.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:34:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Emmy Noether, mathematician who made a huge contribution to theoretical physics with her discovery that symmetries in physics are associated with conserved entities: translational symmetries correspond with Conservation of Momentum, rotational symmetries with Conservation of angular momentum, temporal symmetries with Conservation of Mass-Energy. An important accomplishment.
Perhaps not the most under-appreciated, but very much worthy of a mention. She is not just under-appreciated now, she was under-appreciated in her own time too. Because she was a woman. And a Jew.
Imo, the 'real' answer is Norman Borlaug, Father of the Green Revolution. And another honourable mention to David Gilmore, guitarist. And Keith Emerson, music synthesizer programmer-player.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:45:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
For American history, I think Henry Clay, he was known as the "great compromiser" since he arranged many agreements in the American government. He busted his as all the way to his death. Unfortunately his runs for president weren't successful.
Nikola Tesla. The fact that he isn't the top person on this list is a testament to how under appreciated he is. Brilliant man who decided that his life was better spent unlocking the mysteries of science than it was having sex. The man died a virgin so that he could bring you the technology required to create the smart phones that you use basically just to get laid.Oh and he also predicted future of smart phones in 1926. Look him up if that makes you curious at all.
Nikola Tesla whom without your wireless technology may not even exist and who would have died on the street if it weren't for Mark Twain footing his hotel bill. Or if we are talking distant history I'd say Emperor Ashoka. http://www.cs.colostate.edu/~malaiya/ashoka.html
S2Slayer ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:46:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Really no one says any thing about Nikola Tesla again? Dude invented the electricity we use and barely got payed.
Phobos95 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:48:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I can't link to it right now because I'm on mobile and i might have some misinformation, but the three men who waded through a flooded sections of the Chernobyl plant to seal the reactor. They knew what their fate was when they dove in. A horrible, painful death, where the flesh on their legs "fell off like a loose sock". And if they hadn't done that, the figurative and literal fallout would have been even more catastrophic.
Musaks ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:49:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Zoroaster. Apparently this is one of the earliest of the known prophets, or enlightened beings. A true mark of what is to come for man, Zoroaster is thought to be the origin of the Golden Rule: "Treat others as you would yourself." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroastrianism
Not one person, but all the people who contributed to showing that asepsia is a basic requirement for surgical intervention. We tend to think that science advances thanks to the flashes of brilliance (Alexander Fleming) that change things, but it really is a lot of people coming to the same conclusion at the same time - this one must have saved more lives than anything else.
Henrietta Lacks. The woman who's cells were responsible for countless medical breakthroughs, vaccines, and cures. Her cells were the first human cells to be cloned, and were widely distributed to hospitals and universities all over the world. For decades they were only referred to as "HeLa" cells, and only a handful of people ever knew who they came from.
"The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot is a great read.
Maurice Hilleman He is credited with saving more lives than any other medical scientist of the 20th century, but seems to be largely forgotten.
I was in a position to work closely with a hospital in Miles City when they were considering getting a statue, but they didn't know who or what it should be about. When I suggested Hilleman, no one on the board knew who he was. This was in his home town!
bielmanm ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:00:22 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
JUDAS
HGF88 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:03:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I have a feeling in a few years win or lose, which it's honestly looking like neither will win. But Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders running in this election will end up changing the face of American Politics forever. People disagree with both of their policies to the point of hatred, but I have a feeling 4,8,12,16 years from now what they are doing this election with their outreach to the masses will be mimicked.
Oliver Heaviside. A lot of people may have heard of Maxwell's Equations, but if you've ever done any electrical engineering, you've used Heaviside's versions of them. Also coined the terms:
admittance (December 1887);
conductance (September 1885);
electret for the electric analogue of a permanent magnet, or, in other words, any substance that exhibits a quasi-permanent electric polarization (e.g. ferroelectric);
impedance (July 1886);
inductance (February 1886);
permeability (September 1885);
permittance (later susceptance; June 1887);
reluctance (May 1888).
GaryNOVA ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:07:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Attila the Hun. With out him we'd be overpopulated to an even more ridiculous degree.
Tfsr92 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:09:02 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Scott Haplin.
During one of The Who's tours, their drummer Keith Moon (notorious for getting belligerently drunk all of the time), passed out on his drum set in the middle of a show. The singer went to the front of the stage and said "Does anyone know how to play drums?" A bunch of kids pointed at Scott Haplin and they got him on stage. He lived every fan's dream and finished the set with The Who.
Irena Sendler. She was a Polish nurse and social worker who served in the Polish Underground in German-occupied Warsaw during World War II, and was head of the children's section of ลปegota,the Polish Council to Aid Jews which was active from 1942 to 1945.
Assisted by other ลปegota members, Sendler smuggled approximately 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto and then provided them with false identity documents and shelter outside the Ghetto, saving those children from the Holocaust. With the exception of diplomats who issued visas to help Jews flee Nazi-occupied Europe, Sendler saved more Jews than any other individual during the Holocaust.
The German occupiers eventually discovered her activities and she was arrested by the Gestapo, tortured, and sentenced to death, but she managed to evade execution and survive the war. In 1965, Sendler was recognised by the State of Israel as Righteous among the Nations. Late in life she was awarded the Order of the White Eagle, Poland's highest honor, for her wartime humanitarian efforts.
acr1d ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:23:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Black Jesus. They go around talking about all the great stuff white Jesus did but black Jesus did the same stuff.
acr1d ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:23:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Black Jesus. They go around talking about all the great stuff white Jesus did but black Jesus did the same stuff.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:26:15 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch two German chemists who developed the Haber process which is used to produce nitrogen fertilizer without which has allowed billions of people to not starve.
Also Norman Ernest Borlaug an American biologist, known as "the father of the Green Revolution" who introduced modern farming methods to India, Pakistan and Mexico saving over a billion lives.
Lem01 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:26:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
โIt was one of my best ideas,โ Bernard D. Sadow said the other day. Mr. Sadow, who was at that time a vice president at a Massachusetts company that made luggage and coats, is credited with inventing rolling luggage 40 years.
He's started to pick up a bit of steam with Wolf Hall but Thomas Cromwell was a crucial player in the development of a centralized power in England, not to mention Protestantism.
Rosalind Franklin: Franklin was responsible for much of the research and discovery work that led to the understanding of the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA. The story of DNA is a tale of competition and intrigue, told one way in James Watson's book The Double Helix, and quite another in Anne Sayre's study, Rosalind Franklin and DNA. James Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins received a Nobel Prize for the double-helix model of DNA in 1962, four years after Franklin's death at age 37 from ovarian cancer.
skybug12 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:48:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A couple of years ago I would have said Tesla. the modern world would not exist without him.
Now that he is getting recognition, I am going to say the guy who canceled Firefly. The cancellation sucked, but now we have an example of a perfect show. It didn't go on long enough to decline in quality. Seeing that show drag on past its expiration date would have been devastating.
Sks44 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:49:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Father Hugh O'Flaherty. Saved thousands of people in WW2 and had a bounty on his head from the Nazis. After the war, he frequently visited the SS officer who hunted him in prison and forgave him.
R. Buckminster Fuller. Aside from his work on geodesics and other inventions, his world philosophy is underestimated and full of new ideas or new perspective on age old ideas.
acideath ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:49:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Everyone using the internet right now, so all of you, my father says your welcome. If anyone knows about the infrastructure of the internet in the mid 90s, you know it was controlled by Bell. My father was a major consultant for a company called Covad Communications. They are the reason we have the internet in all its forms today.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:00:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
the guy who invented the shipping container. That has changed the way we ship, which has changed the way we live as much or more than most people ever could.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:05:33 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Aristides de Sousa Mendes, the "portuguese Schindler". Nowadays, if you ask around about him in his own country, only a few will know who he is, but he saved thousands of lives.
Who's that guy that invented penicillin? I guess he didn't do much. He just casually saved millions of people around the world and is still saving more people. You know, nothing much. He only extended our lifespans by like twenty years.
Alexander Fleming
Casteway ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:09:35 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Whoever invented a flushable toilet. People literally used to throw their shit out the window at one point.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:14:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sir Thomas Crapper
Casteway ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:27:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Indeed!
ctfbbuck ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:09:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A black woman, born in Jamaica, went over to the Crimea during the Crimean war, set up a hospital behind the front lines and saved countless lives without any state financial support. She arguably did more for nursing as a profession than anyone else. And yet, you never stop hearing about Florence Nightingale, and i bet the vast majority of you have never heard of her.
The Mother of Special Forces, The Boss. She single handedly stopped the cold war from becoming world war 3. But by doing this she is remembered in the US as a traitor, and in Russia as a monster who unleashed a nuclear catastrophe.
That guy who invented the nitrogen thing with farming, and is credited with saving like over a billion lives. That fact that I don't know his name, proves my point.
Hilleman has produced a mind-boggling number of fundamental breakthroughs. He is the inventor of more than 40 vaccines, including those that prevent measles, mumps, rubella, Haemophilus influenzae type b, hepatitis A, hepatitis B and chickenpox.
Vicki Soto. Don't know if anyone mentioned her, but after growing up just a few miles from her in this urban environment, for her to have a heart like that, a true hero she is.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:52:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Probably late to the game, but Dan Bricklin who invented the computer spreadsheet which became known as VisiCalc. He never made a penny off it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Bricklin
Who ever made the ability to rewind a show, just that action itself. Ever try to watch a controversial program like a presidential debate, people wanna weight in . but Jesus Christ , if someone caughs you feel like you missed half the damn program.
nixtunes ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:13:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Elizabeth J. Graham!
She was the first black woman to refuse to get off the public transportation. After she hoped on, she was asked to get off, at which point she refused. The driver ended up letting her stay on, but then other white patrons refused to get on.
Later on President Chester, whom had taken on her case made a law forbidding drivers, companies and police from kicking out "clean, well behaved, and sober black patrons, free of disease."
He has almost singlehandedly saved over 1 billion human lives. Yes, that's a billion, with a B. Sure, he got a Nobel Peace prize in 1970, but there is so little discussion about him. He is basically responsible for 1/7th of the world being alive today.
We could praise him all we want, have parades all year round for him and he would still be the most underappreciated person in history, simply because of how amazing his work was.
What he discovered is on par with the Steam engine and controlling fire.
Of the 14 vaccines routinely recommended in current vaccine schedules, he developed eight: those for measles, mumps, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, chickenpox, meningitis, pneumonia and Haemophilus influenzae bacteria. He is credited with saving more lives than any other medical scientist of the 20th century.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:19:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dennis Ritchie.
The man who created UNIX and C, things that changed the way we used computers forever.
When he died, few people cared because they were too busy mourning the death of Steve Jobs...
I know I'm late to the party but toussaint louverture.
He lead the Haitian revolution that caused Napoleon to abandon his new word holdings, offering the Louisiana territory for purchase to Jefferson, which spawned the Manifest Destiny doctrine. Not many really recognize how much Americas future changed because of this. 8000+ comments apologies if this was brought up.
William "The Hammer" Martell. He stopped the Muslim conquest of Europe in 732. There wasn't really anyone else in Europe with an army that could have stopped them. Had he not won, it would likely have been an end to Christianity.
zosozero ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:27:58 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Raphael Lemkin. The guy invented the term "genocide" and spent his life arguing for genocide to be labeled as an international crime. Imagine the world before we had a term or definition for this concept, the world during WW2. Watch "Watchers of the Sky" for better information.
YNot1989 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:30:28 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
John Aaron. There are only two names you ever need to memorize when talking about NASA mission control. The first is Flight Director Gene Kranz, the second is John Aaron.
momster ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:30:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
mage7223 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:38:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Paul Ehrlich. He basically invented modern drugs when he developed a cure that targeted it specifically. He coined the term chemotherapy, made significant contributions to combating diphtheria, and generally revolutionized the field of medicine.
villiere ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:39:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Henrietta Lacks. In dying she save millions of lives.
Ruddie ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:47:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
she didn't do anything. The fact that she got cancer was extremely convenient, because it's allowed for the doctors and scientists to make great leaps, but that was all them. Lacks was just some random lady that got cancer, and doesn't really deserve the credit for the works of others. It wasn't her dying that saved millions of lives, but the work of others.
kwsteve ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:41:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
i wont be so hyperbolic to say most underappreciated, but Ralph Nader has done some really incredible things for the American Public.
Withhold your feelings about the 2000 election and instead look at his contributions prior to that; he helped us get mandatory airbags, the clean air act, clean water act, and many other things you might take for granted.
Ramv36 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:57:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dr. Alexander Cruickshank Houston, the father of drinking water chlorination.
Chlorination of drinking water and the subsequent reduction (in some cases eradication) in waterborne disease arguably is the most significant tool used to extend the average length of human life in the world.
heeb ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:58:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
halo_13 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:04:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug. Plant genetics, agronomy and plant pathology aren't sexy to be sure but it benefitted humankind around the world. Developing and carefully breeding new strains of wheat to be heat and disease tolerant helped usher in "The Green Revolution" and earned him the Nobel Prize, The Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Padma Vibhushan, the second highest civilian award in India. Not bad for a kid from Iowa.
Henry Cavendish.
He is like the Newton that nobody knew about. He was very secretive, but not because he was mistrustful just extremely shy (probably had debilitating social phobia or aspergers). Maxwell I believe visited his home after he died to find that he had discovered many scientific phenomena before anyone else did, but they'd already been attributed to other scientists, things like Ohm's Law and Coloumb's Law. He was also the first to accurately measure the mass of the Earth.
Not all of history but for at least during his life, Alan Turing.
Like we recognise him now but the guy did do massive work in making Computer Science even a thing. Guaranteed the allies victory in World War II along with shortening it as well, all the while forced to keep it a secret till he died. Then got arrested and treated like dog shit for being gay which eventually led to him killing himself at 41.
The real kicker is he was studying biology/genetics and was making good progress there as well. So god knows how much science could have progressed if he had lived even to his 60s.
The agricultural scientist Norman Bourlaug saved literally BILLIONS of people in the developing world from starvation. Most people have never heard of him.
Jamaican-born Seacole dished upwards being a health care health practitioner towards the Crimean Have difficulty as well as has been critical to conserving this particular life regarding a lot of servicemen.
Norman Ernest Borlaug the man who saved a billion lives.
Norman Ernest Borlaug (March 25, 1914 โ September 12, 2009)[3] was an American biologist, humanitarian and Nobel laureate who has been called "the father of the Green Revolution",[4] "agriculture's greatest spokesperson"[5] and "The Man Who Saved A Billion Lives".[6][7] He is one of seven people to have won the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal[8] and was also awarded the Padma Vibhushan, India's second highest civilian honor.[9]
He is one of seven people to have won the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal[8] and was also awarded the Padma Vibhushan, India's second highest civilian honor.[9]
Good point. I guess under appreciated in the wider population. I guess few people would recognize the name.
ogwig ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:20:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Henrietta Lacks - know for HeLa. Though she didn't intend to change the world, she contributed one of the first 'immortal' cell lines that are still used for biological research today.
ogwig ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:22:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
TheGru ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:28:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Governor Arthur Phillip who commanded the first fleet of eleven ships to settle in what eventually became Sydney Harbor. Aussies celebrate Captain James Cook as discovering Australia, however I do believe the Spanish came first, Cook identified it for England and Arthur Philip was sent 19 years later with 11 ships full of convicts to set up a settlement in what can be a very hostile county. The only sad part of the story is the effect the English had on the Indigenous population. 50 years later we were hunting them down, and stealing their children
Gavrilo Princip. His assassination of Franz Ferdinand sparked World War 1, which let to the downfall of most of the royal families of Europe. It created new countries, redrew historic borders, and created new political alliances.
Fido Farnsworth invented the television, but RCA kept him under lawsuits until the patent ran out so he couldn't produce any TV's.
He never made a dime from a product everyone owns.
JS-a9 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:34:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Robert Morris, the fiancier of the American Revolution. He funded Washington and the war effort. It ended up landing him in debtors prison. He also founded the first US bank.
JS-a9 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:34:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Robert Morris, the financier of the American Revolution. He funded Washington and the war effort. It ended up landing him in debtors prison. He also founded the first National bank. He actually contributed $10,000 of his own money to fund the effort.
Hey guys anyone remember this post from a while ago? it was a very short film about a man that fucked up the Natzi death list saving ten's of thousands of jews. Even though he new he was close to being found out he kept screwing up the Natzi death list.
Hiiika ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:41:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Charles Hamilton Houston. Civil Rights Attorney that worked himself to death. He taught Thurgood Marshall who led the Brown V. Board of Education case, eradicating segregation from schooling systems (in a legal sense). Mr. Houston unfortunately did not live to see the ruling due to working himself to death (he had a health condition, his doctors advised him to stop working late into night and to sleep, he doesn't listen naturally)
Kurt Friedrich Gรถdel, On December 5, 1947, Einstein and Morgenstern accompanied Gรถdel to his U.S. citizenship exam, where they acted as witnesses. Gรถdel had confided in them that he had discovered an inconsistency in the U.S. Constitution that could allow the U.S. to become a dictatorship. Einstein and Morgenstern were concerned that their friend's unpredictable behavior might jeopardize his application. Fortunately, the judge turned out to be Phillip Forman, who knew Einstein and had administered the oath at Einstein's own citizenship hearing. Everything went smoothly until Forman happened to ask Gรถdel if he thought a dictatorship like the Nazi regime could happen in the U.S. Gรถdel then started to explain his discovery to Forman. Forman understood what was going on, cut Gรถdel off, and moved the hearing on to other questions and a routine conclusion.
Albert Einstein was also living at Princeton during this time. Gรถdel and Einstein developed a strong friendship, and were known to take long walks together to and from the Institute for Advanced Study. The nature of their conversations was a mystery to the other Institute members. Economist Oskar Morgenstern recounts that toward the end of his life Einstein confided that his "own work no longer meant much, that he came to the Institute merely ... to have the privilege of walking home with Gรถdel".
During his many years at the Institute, Gรถdel's interests turned to philosophy and physics. In 1949, he demonstrated the existence of solutions involving closed time-like curves, to Albert Einstein's field equations in general relativity.[19] He is said to have given this elaboration to Einstein as a present for his 70th birthday.[20] His "rotating universes" would allow time travel to the past and caused Einstein to have doubts about his own theory. His solutions are known as the Gรถdel metric (an exact solution of the Einstein field equation).
Benedict Arnold. If it wasn't for him we would of lost the revolution and be coming up on tea time. He beat the British at the Battle of Saratoga which turned out to be the turning point.
riedmae ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:05:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Archduke Franz Ferdinand - him living just a regular life may have changed the course of all modern history
I was at the Raiders/Bengals game when Bo Jackson's football career was ended, just about 25 years ago. I was a young kid and it was my first NFL game. I had a blast, sorry about Bo though.
Tesla. Most people have heard about him and electricity, but the range of his genius laid the foundation for the modern electrical grid. He also made huge advances in communication, such ideas and patents were stolen by Marconi and Edison. To this day he was doing experiments in electrical transmission that are not fully understood by scientists.
pduffy52 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:41:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Henrietta Lacks. If you know anyone that has survived Cancer, or polio, or AIDS.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:42:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Danny Sexbang's grandfather. Invented paste-on electrodes that can take an EKG while a patient is active. Before this, a patient would have to peddle on a stationary bike, and then get off and lie down for the EKG to be taken, which would be inaccurate as their heart-rate would change by the time they lie down.
Now every hospital in the world uses these paste-on electrodes.
This invention has saved hundreds of millions of lives.
Joan Clarke. She was one of the people who worked on breaking the enigma alongside the quite famous Alan Turing, saving a ridiculous amount of lives and etc. in the second world war, however, as a result of everything that happened at Bletchley park being secret, and her being a women, she didn't really get a lot of recognition.
There is quite a good protrayel of her in the film "The Imitation Game" if you haven't seen it, I would recommend it. It has Benedict Cumberbatch and Kiera Knightley in it.
โWho is the most underappreciated person in history?โ
The guy who two and a half millennia ago, paid the ultimate price for pointing out where and why humanity was going wrong. For not only was he rubbed out, but his findings were also effectively erased from history. Such that today we find ourselves no wiser in regard to why we havenโt evolved, in the civilisation stakes, much further than Neanderthals. Despite continuing to unmercifully beat each other over the head throughout the intervening millennia, there is still absolutely no sign of any sense having been hammered in. We still fight and we still kill over untested ideological illusions that would make a child, naturally born with the innate skills concomitant with curiosity, would question and then collapse in chuckles at such pompous peculiar paradigms. For such an infant would not yet have been conditioned, to believe and live inside one particular bubble, of that human 'reality' that is absolutely full of them.
Antonio Josรฉ de Sucre, was one of the Bolivar's lieutenants in the freedom fight of all the Bolivarian countries (Venezuela, Colombia, Panamรก, Ecuador, Perรบ and Bolivia). Even all history books talks about him and his contribution to the South American freedom from Spain, he is always besides the shadow of Simรณn Bolรญvar, but, lots of people coincided that Sucre was a better, warrior, commander and strategist.
Maybe not the MOST unappreciated, but American's don't seem to know anything about him. He was a Polish war hero that championed for the rights of jews, gypsies and Polish peasants. Moved to America, fought in the American Revolution (played a pretty huge role actually) and tried to buy the freedom of a bunch of slaves with his life savings after he died (left the money for the slaves in his Last Will). The slaves were never fred though because of Virginia State Law and because his family wanted his money (even though they still lived in Poland).
John Locke. He was a 17th century English philosopher. His political philosophy and treaties inspired the founding fathers. Without him, the modern United States would not exist. Yet he is relatively forgotten compared to the people he inspired such as Thomas Jefferson.
fooblies ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:43:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Inventor of the crash dummy among other things. His last set of inventions helped paved the way that radiation testing, treatment and education are now utilized. He dropped everything to find a solution to a problem, when his wife died from the breast cancer radiation and not the cancer itself.
Norman Borlaug, the man who saved a billion lives.
He developed semi-dwarf, high yield, disease resistant wheat varieties that enabled Mexico, India, Pakistan and other countries to double wheat yields, become net exporters and greatly improve food security for their populations. Credited with saving more than one billion people throughout the world from starvation. Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug
Mr. Ho Feng-Shan, Who saved thousands of Jewish people during second war world by issuing them visas regarless the pressure from his own government and Nazi. Also the good-hearted local people from Shanghai who helped the jewish refugees. During second war world, even though China had to face the brutal invasion from Japanese, Chinese people helped lots of jewish refugees. Shanghai alone had accepeted 30,000 jewish refugees, more than the number of jewish refugees Canda, india ,SA , NZ and Austrilia combined. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ho_Feng-Shan
When she was still alive: she was accused of all the problems in France, really hated by the French people
I was myself thinking she was kind of a bitch who didn't care about her people the I red the biography of her life by Stephan Zweig which is really good (well wrtitten, with good information, and it shows an other side of Marie-Antoinette)
She was not the perfect queen infairly hated but she was neither an evil person
ikwj ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:40:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
She wad mentioned in a Queen song, she isn't that under appreciated
Alan Turing. Broke the enigma code that allowed the allies to decipher German Morse code messages which was instrumental to winning the second world war. He was a mathematical genius and was "the father of computers". He actually built a computer from scratch to break the enigma code. He was rather arrogant and abrasive but instead of recognizing his value to the war effort and overlooking these faults, his superiors almost destroyed his work because it took longer than they expected. After the war, he was arrested for being homosexual and was given the choice of chemical castration or prison. In order to continue his work, he chose to be castrated and eventually committed suicide at the age of 41. Who knows what he was capable of achieving if he had been allowed to finish his work.
Every time we switch on something that has a computer chip in it we owe him a debt of gratitude.
jesse9o3 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:14:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Underappreciated at the time? Hell yes, but such is the price of working in the intelligence business. People aren't meant to know what you're doing.
Nowadays that's changing. Anyone who know's anything about computing/programming/computer science knows his name, as do most people with a decent knowledge of WW2. And not to mention there is an Oscar winning movie about his life.
No to mention the eponymous test to gauge artificial intelligence. Can you become more immortal? If ever we achieve true A.I., a feat most likely heralded as a commonly accepted turning point in history, the Turing Test will not be far off in mentioning that accomplishment.
Haifolex ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:03:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The woman who invented agriculture. she basically defined the course of events for the next 10,000 years of human history.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 12:28:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well we think agriculture was developed independently in multiple parts of the world and that it wasn't just invented by individuals over night, but I see what you mean.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:18:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nicola Tesla. He made the modern world and is hardly acknowledged. Without him we would have nothing that we have now.
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 17:00:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hardly acknowledged
What rock are you living under
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:47:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He's not taught in schools and he is not acknowledged publicly for his achievements in Radio and electrical engineering. Ask most average people you meet if they've heard of him - in my experience the answer is usually no.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:53:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
not taught in schools.
M'kay, let me tell you about how inventions and inventors get less then a day in lesson. He gets only his name mentioned, just like any other inventor.
hardly acknowledged.
There are multiple books about him at local bookstores and objects such as the tesla coil is named after him.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:29:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nicola Tesla is so cool!
If it wasn't for him we wouldn't have power in our homes.
Dont get me wrong, Edison helped a lot but credit is due a lot to Tesla to getting the energy actually in our houses.
mendax64 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:19:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla, he discovered AC current and had a device called the Wardenclyffe Tower which would have been able to distribute free energy to everyone but when JP Morgan realized he could not monitor the electricity and charge people for it he scrapped the project.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:32:29 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Saddam Hussein. Who knew he was the plug in the terrorist dam.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:53:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He knew it. Gaddafi knew it. They always used to warn the west of what would happen if they were overthrown.
pkgosu ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:41:35 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla. He pretty much allowed just about everything we have (in terms of electronics) to be possible, but Thomas Edison is the person who is known for this. When really, Edison just used Tesla's ideas because he had money and Tesla didn't.
President Obama. I'm not saying he's anything close to the best President we've had but there are way too many Americans that literally think he's an absolute failure because, you know, Fox News hive-mind.
No. He's unliked because he's underaccomplished in his promises and got a Nobel Peace Prize for getting elected. He's caused more instability both at home and abroad, paying only lip service to issues while not actually solving the problems.
His health care act only made it illegal to not have insurance instead of introducing a flat rate system like the rest of the developed world, but it was to be expected after how much health insurers and the medical industry gave him. For all the hope and change, the American people got the same politician in a darker package with better verbal skills.
Wall Steet hasn't changed. Medicine is more expensive. Civil forfeiture is out of control. The economy is still unstable. His transparency is as clear as Apple terms of service. Things are worse overseas. Guantanamo is still a thing. Privacy rights and individual freedoms are nearly nonexistent. He's the perfect candidate for the apathetic millenial who likes Reddit AMAs and talk show banter but doesn't actually know anything about world events or the economy.
Let's hope the apathetic and ignorant millennial you speak of does not make up a majority of their generation. Sadly, I can tell you that lack of knowledge regarding world events and economics is all too common a problem throughout various generations like many that remain from the "greatest" generation, through baby boomers/Jones gens and even down to late gen X'ers like myself.
Replace AMA and talk show banter with Bill O'Reilly, Rush, etc, etc and you've got at least similar hive mind/sheeple results and I'd argue they are even worse due to the fear mongering and jingoism we see more and more of.
Obama and Reagan administrations have interesting similarities but yet Reagan is oddly lauded as some sort of deity. Kinda wacky.
Agreed, the crash of 1987 was a tough one and the seeds planted by Don Regan's influence are still bearing all too many plutocratic fruits that lead us closer and closer to another robber baron era. Not completely out of the woods right now with the economy but we're in better shape than 7 years ago. Although, this current flash crash is interesting, starting to make the one from August look like just a blip, haha. Holy cow, remember the Star Wars program boondoggle they used to line the vets of their defense industry buddies? Crazy stuff.
Speaking of the market, I mess around with some day trading when things are slow at my firm and it may be a good idea to consider looking into Ford and GE in the near future as a long term hold.
unยทderยทapยทpreยทciยทate
หษndษrษหprฤSHiฤt/
verb
past tense: underappreciated; past participle: underappreciated
fail to value (someone or something) highly enough
This means they are valued, but not enough. The word is UNDERappreciated. Not UNappreciated.
kbphoto ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:11:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Major Dick Winters Easy Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. One of the greatest leaders of WWII. His story is nothing short of incredible. His leadership qualities are off the charts, and one of the most humble men to ever walk the earth. He is my hero. Read "Band of Brothers", one of the great stories of the time.
kbphoto ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:02:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Those that know their history do. For sure. I remember thinking that when Michael Jackson died, all the hysteria and coverage nonsense, and someone like MDW dies and no one hears a peep.
Quickob ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:18:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alan Turing BY FAR. He is one of the most incredible men in the 20th century but tragically killed himself after being charged for being a homosexual and being chemically castrated. He's responsible for the Turing Machine, what we like to call: Computers.
Alan Turing is very appreciated by many people. He has a movie based on his life.
Quickob ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:19:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I know he is! And this is only very recently after he was pardoned. However I still feel if I mention who invented computers someone will say Steve Jobs or some shit
aadithpm ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:23:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alan Turing. Read articles for the real thing.
Watch Imitation Game for an experience that hits home.
jesse9o3 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:28:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As awesome as he was, for me anyone with an Oscar winning movie about their life doesn't count as underappreciated.
Norman Borlaug literally prevented a billion deaths worldwide and 95% of the people reading this right now will have to Google him because they've never heard the name before.
He died 6 years ago to virtually no fanfare, despite living in the information age. Exponentially more people can name the failed rapper Kim Kardashian fucked on video than could tell you who Norman Borlaug was.
The nitrogen harvested by his invented process is crucial for artificial fertilizer production. It's thought that at least two billion mouths worth of food are produced per year because of it.
Whatever the actual number happens to be, this process has become lifeblood for our ability to feed the planet.
Joseph step father of Christ was pretty under-rated. I mean first someone "didnt" fuck his wife and she gets pregnant. So, he says eh whatever man, lets do this thing. Then he finds out that the kid is potentially from this omnipotent being in the sky. Thats got to be intimidating for sure. But, again he says fuck it, i got this. Then he raises and nutures this child to become the savior of all humanity and the gate keeper to the afterlife, basically. Fucking two cheers for Joseph!
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 17:12:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fictional characters don't count.
jylny ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:16:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If you want to dispute the "savior of humanity" and stuff that's fine, but Joseph was a real person.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 17:18:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's contentious that Jesus existed. Never mind the other details.
jylny ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:25:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"there remains a strong consensus in historical-critical biblical scholarship that a historical Jesus did live in that area and in that time period."
Wikipedia isn't the best source, but whatevs.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:33:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
strong consensus
So contentious is an accurate word in this regard. Strong consensus is not definitive.
jylny ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:37:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Perhaps. But contentious is misleading. The argument against Jesus' existence is questionable at best. It be like saying Holocaust denial is contentious (alright, maybe not. But you get my point).
Aww man you have no idea how literally i meant that.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:11:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Kanye West
ewrewr1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:34:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
George Washington. Look at all the revolutions (e.g. France 1789) where a hopeful start ended with a strongman taking power. Didn't happen in the USA, and that's due to GW.
jesse9o3 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:26:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Equally though it's his fault that the French Revolution happened.
Plus he's hardly underappreciated, he has his own 500 ft+ monument. Not to mention that there are many cities and even a state named after him.
tiluh ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:49:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
OP, its you, of course! Why else would you omit the serious tag?
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:01:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jar Jar Binks. Jar Jar was a necessary light-hearted element in the Star Wars saga that kept the oppressive menace of the Sith from overwhelming the entire series thematically. If this "Binksian Space" had not been filled with Jar Jar's hilarious pratfalls and comedic manner of speech, the saga would have been too dark for most audiences. JAR JAR BINKS MADE THE WHOLE STAR WARS UNIVERSE WORK ON SCREEN!!!
jesse9o3 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:21:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He is also responsible for the rise of the Empire. He has the blood of the Jedi younglings that Anakin killed and all the people that were killed on Alderaan on his hands.
The Third Reich doctors/scientists... As completely messed up as they were, they paved the way for many medical discoveries and improvements that would've never been realized without their monstrous work
cookerg ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:08:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
jesse9o3 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:33:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Depends what you mean by internet.
The people who made ARPANET or the people who made the WWW
dmoral25 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:32:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alfred Russel Wallace. He came up with the theory of evolution alongside Darwin as well as the overarching force behind evolution, this being natural selection. Not a damn prize whatsoever. As Morty once said old lady science bucks hard and you gotta learn to grab on.
unยทderยทapยทpreยทciยทate
หษndษrษหprฤSHiฤt/
verb
past tense: underappreciated; past participle: underappreciated
fail to value (someone or something) highly enough
This means they are valued, but not enough. The word is UNDERappreciated. Not UNappreciated.
Philo Farnsworth, inventor of television and great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-
great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather of Hubert J. Farnsworth.
jesse9o3 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:47:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He wasn't the inventor of television though. He pioneered it in the United States but the first television was invented by John Logie Baird and the first electronic television was invented by Kenjiro Takayanagi.
He made great strides in making the TV practical for widespread usage though.
In 1844, the Democrats were split The three nominees for the presidential candidate Were Martin Van Buren, a former president and an abolitionist James Buchanan, a moderate Lewis Cass, a general and expansionist From Nashville came a dark horse riding up He was James K. Polk, Napoleon of the Stump
Austere, severe, he held few people dear His oratory filled his foes with fear The factions soon agreed He's just the man we need To bring about victory Fulfill our manifest destiny And annex the land the Mexicans command And when the poll was cast, the winner was Mister James K. Polk, Napoleon of the Stump
In four short years he met his every goal He seized the whole Southwest from Mexico Made sure the tariffs fell And made the English sell the Oregon Territory He built an independent treasury Having done all this he sought no second term But precious few have mourned the passing of Mister James K. Polk, our eleventh president Young Hickory, Napoleon of the Stump
unยทderยทapยทpreยทciยทate
หษndษrษหprฤSHiฤt/
verb
past tense: underappreciated; past participle: underappreciated
fail to value (someone or something) highly enough
This means they are valued, but not enough. The word is UNDERappreciated. Not UNappreciated.
Rosalind Franklin- the woman who discovered that DNA is shaped in double helix or spiral form. While her male counterparts broke into her office, stole her picture, took the credit from her while the two men won the noble prize and of course she never got the credit she deserved.
jesse9o3 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:03:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
While her male counterparts broke into her office, stole her picture
Firstly they didn't break in, the allegation is that one of her colleagues showed Francis and Crick the picture without her permission. Something that is hotly disputed given that it only appears in one biography about her.
took the credit from her while the two men won the noble prize and of course she never got the credit she deserved.
That's because it took years of work to prove Francis and Crick's model of DNA and by the time they were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1962 Franklin had been dead for 4 years and the Nobel Prize Committee do not give posthumous awards.
Lmfao not according my professor. They broke into her office and stole the picture, used to prove their points. I can't believe you're messaging me about this. Are you blown because a woman discovered the double helix shape or are you trying to defend the men who told her discovery
Nobody seems to have mentioned Gunter Schabowski, who went off-message and (without permission) announced that the DDR would open the Berlin Wall to allow people to cross into to West Berlin, and thereby single-handedly accelerated the fall of the Iron Curtain.
Of course, he was helped by Harold Jaeger, a border guard who refused to fire on East Berliners who crossed the border that night.
It's already been said, but Charles Martel. If the Frankish Army under his command had lost at the Battle of Tours, we would all be writing in Arabic right now.
EDIT: We'd probably be Muslim too.
Cizzar ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:45:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
According to reddit : Hitler.
He created an affordable car for the masses, built the Autobahn and loved animals, yet he's only remembered for killing jews ...
Amerigo Vespucci - ask any grade schooler if the know who this guy is and you'll more than likely get a blank stare. Ask them who Christopher Columbus was and they know without a doubt.
Jesus Christ is the most misunderstood, unappreciated and ridiculed person ever. Most Jews use his name as an expletive. Most Muslims equate him with Mohammed, as just a prophet.
Congratulations, you're probably not an idiot because this guy fought the Oil industry and started the process of banning leaded gasoline.
From Wikipedia:
[...] he calculated an age for the Earth of 4.55 billion years; a figure far more accurate than those that existed at the time [...]
[...] His work on this led to a total re-evaluation of the growth in industrial lead concentrations in the atmosphere and the human body, and his subsequent campaigning was seminal in the banning of tetraethyllead in gasoline, and lead solder in food cans.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:31:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I was happy to see Cosmos highlight him. NDGT deserves props for that.
Nicola Tesla, a man who, thank goodness, is actually rising in popularity and finally receiving the attention he deserved. Without him, we wouldn't have light bulbs, sonar, Wi-Fi, and a handful of other things.
TRNogger ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:30:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Someone we never heard of and of whom we don't know what he did becaused nobody appreciated him and his achievment enough to preserve it.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:33:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nazi war criminals that worked for bayer. They came up with the "antibacterial" part of the soap everyone uses. Not saying what they did was right but we all use their invention every day and they got 0 credit.
zvezdice ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:01:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla!
ramdaskm ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:03:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tesla
n0rsk ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:08:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alan Turing. He is a huge part of the reason we cracked the German ciphers and who knows how many lives he saved by doing this. He was a key person in the design of the first electronic programmable computer the "Colossus Computer". Yet despite his work he was castrated for being gay which probably is a reason why he later committed suicide.
I could have swore this happened. I guess I was thinking of Chernobyl. I'm dumb.
KFGer ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:21:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Judas.
Wait, hear me out! Let's just assume that
1) Jesus was real and
2) whether or not the miracles happened, the prosecution of Jesus was real as well.
So the 12 Apostles must have been his most trusted companions, apparently believers and witnesses to some of his miracles and spokespersons for the new belief. Say what you want about Christianity today, but back in the days they were going against the establishment in such a way they were hunted by the authorities. A full blown religious revolution with roots in the jewish traditions and the messiah-is-coming-soon movement of John the Baptist, which historians argue is the movement that inspired Jesus to start preaching himself. Most of his apostles were in from the beginning, and were in it for good. You could assume that Jesus, the Messiah as he was proclaimed, was followed by many more, just like in cults today, but the apostles were the hardliners, probably coming up with how to sell this whole new messiah-is-actually-among-us-right-fucking-now movement they had going on. They were like campaign spokespeople, the most loyal believers and they must have been aware of what was going on: A road which had to end in capture by the Roman Empire, which had its own Emperor-Augustus-is-actually-like-a-god-in-a-way movement of how things had to be running. The clash was unavoidable. And Judas was part of this uprising-to-happen shit.
You'd argue he wanted to bail, get out for free, flee the sinking ship.
But I think he knew what was going to happen and that it was going to happen whether or not he was the one to rat out Jesus to the Romans. The moment Jesus told the apostles that one of them was gonna betray him, Judas knew that Jesus wanted it to happen soon. If you assume that Judas believed, Jesus was the son of God, in fact God himself, Judas knew Jesus would conquer death and the movement wouldn't be stopped, in fact it would be proven. So Judas does the most rational thing and sells him out. Best PR stunt ever. Jesus dies, comes back 3 days later and the early Christianity movement is established. Couldn't have happened if nothing happened to Jesus. And what does Judas get? 2000 years later and people still wouldn't even consider naming their sons Judas, except for maybe some Judas Priest fans or Atheist hardliners.
TLDR: Judas was the PR manager any Messiah could have hoped for.
No, it isn't. The question asked is about UNDERappreciated, not UNappreciated people. People like you who keep posting this flawed pseudo-intellectual idea are just making yourselves look foolish.
It bugs the shit out of me that that pompous piece of shit who killed himself, steve jobs, get more attention for his accomplishments than a real innovator like Kurzweil.
Thought he knew better than his doctors, and ended up trying alternative medicine until it was too late to save himself. He basically committed suicide by stupidity.
ok, thats explains it, basically an unintentional suicide, which is odd considering he knew how powerful technology and medicine was together, being a frontrunner for the full integration of the two.
Jesus Christ, who saved billions of lives by teaching us to wash our hands, cover our mouths when we cough, and warned us that rats, fleas, and mosquitoes can carry disease. /s
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:31:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not for engineers and electricians, but for the general public, Tesla isn't just Elon Musk's car company. He definitely could've used some better marketing back in his day.
yadhtrib ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:33:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Charles Martel. He defeated the invading Moors at the battle of Tours in 732 AD, and if he hadn't they would likely have overrun Europe, meaning that the world would be very different were it not for him. He also happened to be the grandfather of Charlemagne.
NIKOLA TESLA! He invented the distribution system for electricity that we currently use. Most people know Edison's work but not Tesla's. He did so much more than distribute AC power though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla
I know this is probably a serious topic but I'm going to say Hitler, without him Racism probably would still be cool no black civil rights movement the women's rights movement would be treading water to... Never mind nuclear energy or America's golden age
unยทderยทapยทpreยทciยทate
หษndษrษหprฤSHiฤt/
verb
past tense: underappreciated; past participle: underappreciated
fail to value (someone or something) highly enough
This means they are valued, but not enough. The word is UNDERappreciated. Not UNappreciated.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:56:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The people who developed various forms of reliable, accessible birth control. Especially the pill, which I still maintain was the most important invention of the 20th century. Being able to choose the size of your family, especially for women, is an extraordinarily powerful gift to have, and it has made enormous changes in our society, even in only about 50 years. I'm not even talking about overpopulation here - just the simple ability of one person to maintain autonomy over their life.
unยทderยทapยทpreยทciยทate
หษndษrษหprฤSHiฤt/
verb
past tense: underappreciated; past participle: underappreciated
fail to value (someone or something) highly enough
This means they are valued, but not enough. The word is UNDERappreciated. Not UNappreciated.
unยทderยทapยทpreยทciยทate
หษndษrษหprฤSHiฤt/
verb
past tense: underappreciated; past participle: underappreciated
fail to value (someone or something) highly enough
This means they are valued, but not enough. The word is UNDERappreciated. Not UNappreciated.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:42:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't know who they are, but I'm guessing they're a woman.
Invented the first steam engine (aeolipile), a mechanical vending machine, the first wind powered machine (a musical organ), a fully automated theater complete with robotic statuary and automated music, the force-pump, the syringe, and a programmable robotic mechanical cart powered by a falling weight.
He wrote a huge number of texts of engineering and mathematics, including one called Belopoeica in which he described advanced mechanical war engines.
TL;DR, first century Roman invented Gundam and no one gave a shit for two millennia.
May very well have won Stalingrad. If the Germans had won Stalingrad that could have very well been the war. (Despite what US history books teach, WW2 was really all about Russia v. Germany)
acideath ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:52:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Often forgotten because his inventions were stolen by nine other then Thomas Edison, Nikolas tesla invented such things as light, radio, X-rays, alternating current the list goes on
GameQb11 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:22:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Obama
Slav_1 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:25:33 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Henri Poincarรฉ among other things he dicovered the theory of relativity (which Einstein stole) and a chaotic deterministic system which laid the foundations of modern chaos theory.
It's worth reading about him because he has done a ton of science and he is not even being referred to anywhere.
Tw36912 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:31:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tesla He invented AC , which led to our modern world.
Who were these people? I did a quick gs and I found This Source claiming to disprove a bunch of Tesla "myths" but I'm not sure I can say this source is unbiased with edisontechcenter.org for the name.
wPoLrAdY ยท -4 points ยท Posted at 16:42:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Donald Trump. I know he can be a bit ridiculous, but let's be honest, he is one of the few politicians who doesn't desperately want to import a ton of Muslims. Europe is fucked. I'm actually considering moving to the US.
Nikola Tesla, he studied any and everything that had to do with energy and mechanics and was the father of the future we live in. To add isult to injury he died pennyless.
I think his true heroism is sacrificing any chance at being president to illustrate exactly how fervently people will vote against their own self interest.
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 21:54:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Go suck his dick. He's going to be just like every other president in the last two decades, completely incapable of bringing his plan to fruition. He's noble. He doesn't have the means to change things.
[deleted] ยท -5 points ยท Posted at 18:18:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 18:23:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted] ยท -10 points ยท Posted at 13:50:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
[deleted]
plincer ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 14:59:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Stalin's earlier mistakes were colossal. From a war perspective:
in his paranoia, he killed off much of the Red Army officer core in the late 1930s. Once war started, the remaining officers were terrified to make decisions that didn't correspond to much earlier directives that often did not account for the situation on the ground. By contrast, the German officers (also serving a totalitarian state), used their brains and initiative to quickly reacted to the battle situation they faced.
Stalin decided to make a non-aggression pact with Hitler (actually supplying Germany with considerable resources right through 1941). This freed up Hitler to take on and defeat Britain and France in the West without worrying about the USSR. In 1941, Stalin had to face a focussed Germany that didn't have to divide its forces on a western front.
during the 1941 invasion, he tried to act as general and did so poorly. The number of men and resources lost were considerably increased.
Stalin's earlier actions caused mass starvation in Ukraine. Had Hitler not been so stupid how he dealt with the Ukrainians, much of that population might have joined forces with the Germans to defeat the Soviets.
plincer ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 16:53:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Those in favour of democratic Europe are glad the Operation Sealion (German invasion of Britain) wasn't brought to fruition -- hooray, RAF. But in evacuating Dunkirk in 1940, the British Army left almost all their tanks, artillery and heavy equipment behind. It would be years before the British could be more than an annoyance to Germany in western Europe. Hitler did not have to leave that much behind to protect his back while he concentrated on his invasion of the Soviets in 1941.
Had there not been an non-aggression pact in 1939, Hitler would have had to face Britain and France in the west and the Soviets in the East at the same time. It's very unlikely he could have knocked out either in a full two-front war.
The only reason you could say this is because socialism that was present during Stalin's time is gone. No more Soviet Russia. If it didn't fall apart half of Europe would be a sh*t hole right now.
If Hitler won the war and after some years the Nazi regime would have fallen apart you could have written the same about Hitler.
Yeah except Communism has a definition. The Soviet Union wasn't communist.
Communism is a moneyless, classless, stateless society. Have any kind of gripes you want against socialism and communism but at least try to ensure that you're being as accurate as you can be.
coretj ยท -3 points ยท Posted at 18:34:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla. Plain and simple.. Kids don't learn about him in schools even though without him the world would be a much darker and less connected place than it is today.
[deleted] ยท -4 points ยท Posted at 19:21:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler. Hear me out....
Hitler was such an evil bastard that he forced the rest of humanity to shift away from evil. We live in a much more peaceful and prosperous society today because Hitler made that brand of evil untenable. In addition, his scientists eventually became our scientists and we can thank them for the creation of the precursors to a lot of the tech we use today. Basically Hitler forced humanity as a whole to set aside their differences and defeat a common evil, which has lead to peace for the majority of nations on earth by treaty with the U.S as the enforcer.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:27:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Shouldn't the world's advancement of peace be credited to society's reaction instead?
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:29:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's a reaction that wouldn't have had the chance to occur without a catalyst. Hitler was the catalyst.
ABG614 ยท -4 points ยท Posted at 19:56:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla
elkazay ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 17:02:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This about it. Mothers. Most mothers to the greatest people in the world have been conveniently ignored, yet many of them played a fundamental role in the early childhood experience of the greats.
dad1guy ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:19:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Pretty much any woman before 1900 and all woman that have not received due credit.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 23:35:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ludwig von Mises. His epistemological propositions solve ages old science philosophy dilemmas, such as the problem with justifying induction, and help to unify economics via a synthetic methodology. His understanding of biology shows its age, but he makes no bones about its importance in understanding the motivation of Human Action.
Hear me out here. Jesus was an asshole. He may have been the son of God, but asshole none the less. The guy started shit everywhere he went. If you believe the Hindu texts that describe his adult travels as Lord Isa, then you will see the same pattern. Him telling people everywhere they were full of shit. He had to leave cause they were going to kill him.
So, he goes back home and starts shit at the temple. Fucking with the hardworking money traders and elders, and those guys are shitting themselves. He was a little shit at 12 when he would out-scripture them regularly, and constantly tell them they were wrong. They must have been having Vietnam war like flash-backs.
Then he starts shit in the streets, putting bakers and fishermen alike out of work in the matter of minutes. Convinces people to follow him instead of burry their deceased loved ones cause, fuck'em they are dead, but he doesn't stop there. He fucks with the basic laws of nature and goes over to the dark side. The dead are dead and should stay dead... Unless of course you are Jesus efing Christ!!! (Emanuel efing Christ doesn't have the same ring to it). So he went full wacko and started the goddamn zombie revolution!
Now he really really had to go. For the children, you know?
The only sane follower who was not addicted to the coolaid, did the only thing any male in his shoes could do. He tipped of the local 5-0 and cashed in. But not before Jesus made them all eat flesh and drink blood.
Unfortunately some hardcore stoner-douche followers who couldn't get their fix anymore decided to take out our unsung hero.
Voila, Judas, most under-appreciated person in history.
yaosio ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 14:10:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me. None of you know who I am or what I've done, further proving my point.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:15:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, but he also caused a war that killed millions of people which offset the amount of coal he was using. Think of the long lasting effects his actions had on future generations. After the war entire bloodlines were killed off. That had to help with the overall effects of global warming.
hitler he made volkswagen the autobahn pulled and germany out of debt.
[deleted] ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 19:41:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler was an horror, but if not for him we would be living in a world much less evolved, the base for rockets were based on the V2, chemical industry, health, microwave, there was so many things that evolved so rapidly not only because of war but because Germany was living under the nazi party. Shit there is no thing as a black and white in history.
Arfmeow ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 15:26:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
anooblol ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 04:04:27 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Christopher Columbus. Everyone fucking hates him now-a-days. But if he didn't popularize sailing west, the colonization of the western world would have been delayed by many years.
unยทderยทapยทpreยทciยทate
หษndษrษหprฤSHiฤt/
verb
past tense: underappreciated; past participle: underappreciated
fail to value (someone or something) highly enough
This means they are valued, but not enough. The word is UNDERappreciated. Not UNappreciated.
I know what the word means, no need to act like a condescending prick. What I mean to say is that if there is/was a person out there who is the MOST underappreciated person in history, chances are they're not even gonna get a mention on a Reddit thread.
Mark Yeaton, WWE's former time keeper, who was the legend that almost had a 100% success ratio at throwing beers at Stone Cold Steve Austin. Behind every great catcher there's a great thrower
ColeYote ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 18:45:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The guy who invented air conditioning. Or indoor heating, take your pick.
Me. Lousy family doesn't APPRECIATE ANYTHING I DO!
SirGronk ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:24:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My mother in law. Apparently.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:25:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My narcissist mother
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:26:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
we wouldn't know because their story was never told. For all of the stories that we know, there are undoubtedly countless others that died with the person
unยทderยทapยทpreยทciยทate
หษndษrษหprฤSHiฤt/
verb
past tense: underappreciated; past participle: underappreciated
fail to value (someone or something) highly enough
This means they are valued, but not enough. The word is UNDERappreciated. Not UNappreciated.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 02:12:49 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
ummm no. People that are unappreciated are ALSO under-appreciated. People that were never recognized by history were not valued highly enough
It doesn't mean that at all. That is your own interpretation.
fail to value (someone or something) highly enough
means they are valued, but not enough
Again, words are hard. I'm not assuming anything. I'm reiterating to you the title of the thread that you chose to post something ignorant in, which uses the word "underappreciated", not "unappreciated."
I'm really sorry that your pseudo-intellectual post that attempted to point out a brilliant flaw of logic isn't working out for you, but have a nice day.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 02:26:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
what a fucking condescending asshole. holy shit. never mind I have no desire to further converse.
Hold up. So, my man posts a great question full of hundreds of interesting responses, and you decided you were gonna come fuck his shit up with a logical fallacy designed to point out the inherent flaw in his question with your pedantic interpretation of his choice of verbiage instead of actually contributing something useful to the conversation, right?
GageC132 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:27:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just about every indigenous Indian in the US. No one ever speaks of them and their land was ripped away from them by whites. After a very bloody war the would be Americans won from sheer numbers and now the US Government just gives them money to stay hush hush and fight for their rights.
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acn250 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:35:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Judas. If you're a bible believing Christian and take it as historical truth, of course. He kept Yaweh's plan moving right along by turning Jesus in and got him to his crucifixion in a timely manner. Yay!
pica0050 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:46:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Matt Skiba, singer and songwriter for Alkaline Trio. A terribly underrated band.
I would have said me, but I just got a compliment from my boss. So, the most underappreciated guy is my coworker, who does the same job, but did not get a compliment
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:48:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Probably Nikolai Tesla if you don't count the Internet. My history books and teachers done mention him at all.
Our fathers and or father figures even if it was your single mom or grandmother and anyone who works with Big Brothers and Big Sisters of America that doesn't rape their buddies
Gandhi.
No seriously. Everyone knows of him as the guy who led the struggle for India's independence, but his role in World War II was absolutely pivotal.
He convinced the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League to allow Indian soldiers to join the Allied forces. Anyone familiar with India''s contribution in a war that she had practically nothing to do with will know this changed the course of the 20th century.
The first human to figure out how to eat and drink.
Jaggent ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:21:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
me, of course me!
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:25:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Moms
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:25:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Rundall here, I would say my wife. A wonderful lady my wife, she volunteers at a shelter for dyslexic children and she always wakes up an hour before myself to make me breakfast, two runny eggs, fried, and a quesadilla stuffed with Fox meat and Corriander. Rundall Rundall.
The first person who accidentally dropped their food into the fire and ate it anyway.
georgeo ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:33:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Benedict Arnold. His performance in the battles of Ticonderoga and Saratoga turned defeat into victory and convinced the French to back the U.S. Without him America could not have achieved independence, which is more than you could say about Washington.
Idk guys everyone is saying people who saved loads of lives but I walk and feed my dog everyday and he never says thank you so I'm feeling close to the top.
nthnlfrc ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:36:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I am going to say Benedict Arnold Everyone knows him as a traitor, but what most people don't know is that without him there is a very good possibility America wold not exist today.
I had an early American history class about the American Military up to 1890 and without Arnold America would have lost several key battles and not even have the ability to fight the British. He was one of the first people that reacted to the call for revolution after Lexington and Concord. He gathered up a group of militia to Capture Fort Ticonderoga which secured much of America's artillery for the war as well as a very important strategic position.
He was consistently the one saving our asses but het got fucked over by the continental congress several times, which understandably made him upset.
Drafo7 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:46:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The (probably Chinese) guy who invented toilet paper. We don't even know this genius's name, but imagine not having anything to wipe with but your hands and maybe some leaves. Plus unless you know which leaves are safe, you could be dealing with VERY uncomfortable rashes for some time. This mastermind saved us all from that fate. And we don't even know his name.
Oleg Pentkovsky.
Our spy in the old USSR in the 60s. It was his information that told us the Russians would back down in the missile crisis if confronted by Kennedy.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:24:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
With the play, he's been getting more of the attention he deserves recently... but Alexander Hamilton. Dude basically created modern economics a century before Keynes, and we'd be a broke-ass, un-unified country if not for him
Turing and Tesla don't get their fair share in history books.
Knlay ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:31:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your mother. Call her
Grsn ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:32:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Cengiz khan.By killing millions of people he reduced CO2 levels in the atmosphere and help reduce global warming. Not that it's a good thing to pillage, rape and kill everything in sight; but it did help the environment.
Martin Luther King Jr. Without him all of the African Americans would have adopted the ideology of Malcom X and would basically started an all out race war.
I am. I've done lots of things and no one ever notices. Like the other day I took out the trash without being asked. I always put down the toilet seat. I was dishes from time to time. What more could you ask for? I'm so unappreciated, sometimes I just want to cry.
I feel John Hancock is very under appreciated when it comes to being one of the founding Fathers of the United States.Without his fortune spent on arms and ammunition and his leadership and influence within congress the United States most likely would never had come to fruition.
Maybe it is harder to be Tom Cruise than to be a marine or soldier. There are a lot more successful soldiers than there are actors as successful as Tom Cruise. A lot of the stupid kids from school joined the infantry, I think it is a lot easier to be a soldier than it is to be a successful actor.
I like Tom Cruise movies plenty, but "easy" is not the word I would use to describe a soldiers job in comparison. Just like low wage workers. Refilling the ice cream machine at McDonald might be simple or common, but it's probably physically demanding and a busy stressful tedious work environment. It ain't easy.
We would never know. By definition that person or persons would never have been recognized to begin with or been so misunderstood as to have been stricken from history.
Werner Heisenberg - Responsible for derailing nazi atom bomb research. This totally my take, but after his famous courtyard talk with Neils Bohr (Danish Jew) and Heisenberg being responsible for the Atom Bomb in Germany, he may have had a significant role in Nazis NOT winning the war.
Pretty much any woman ever. Women were the first cave painters, but it was always assumed that it was men because, gosh, women don't contribute to society!
Women have quietly been in the background doing all kinds of necessary shit so that all people everywhere can do stuff, so that the next generation will be born, etc. And when we do contribute, men frequently steal those ideas and get all of the credit in history books. (Hello, Rosalind Franklin and Jocelyn Bell Burnell and Nettie Stevens!) Seriously, reading through history is one of the most maddening things as a woman because you're like, "OK, great! ...Where are all the women?"
hopopo ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:09:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Peter Hitchens is a moral beacon in a dying civilization run by disgusting hedonists and liberal emotional children. He is extremely underrated as a thinker. He rivals his brother in verbal talent, and actually uses science and reason to back up his claims most of the time. He's also excellent at calling out bullshit, but he's largely been ignored because of the new atheist movement his brother started and has been living in his brother's shadow a bit.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 23:34:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tesla. Though he is becoming more well known,I still feel that we under-appreciate the Technological breakthroughs he's given to us. The Radio, Wi-Fi, Deathrays, AC Power, Electric Motors, and RC Technology!
Surprised not to see Nikola Tesla up here. You know the lights we all use? They wouldn't be able to work if Tesla didn't develop the Alternating current. Sure Thomas Edison gets credit for the light bulb, but without Tesla, getting electricity to travel such long ditances would have taken much longer. Fun fact: Tesla worked for Edison for a very long time!
Sanhael ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 00:49:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Julius Caesar. He was not an Imperialist. He was handed dictatorial power temporarily to protect Rome from her enemies, and he promptly tried to take on the senate, because enemies. Immediately after he's gone, we get emperors -- a title he never actually shared. Caesar was arrogant, ruthless, and absolutely convinced of his own infallibility... but he honestly gave a damn about the common Romans, he was practical, and he wasn't afraid to do what was necessary: at the time when he marched on Rome, the taboo against bearing weapons into the city was so strong that important Romans were protected by bodyguards who carried wrapped bundles of sticks.
jeepdave ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 00:50:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
George W. Bush who didn't freak out in a room full of children when he learned his country was under attack.
Whilst this seems mildly commendable, it hardly seems worthy of an appearance on the "most in history" scale.
jeepdave ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:59:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
When you factor how much shit he has caught I think it was a good show of character. I don't agree with all his decisions but I do not doubt he thought he was making the correct one for his country.
Jacque Fresco - Clocking in at almost 100 years old. Owner of the Venus Project, with a true search for freedom and the well being of humans. Many people are unaware of the concept of a Global Resourced Based Economy.
fat2slow ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:13:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Erwin Rommel he was a highly decorated officer in WW1 he was considered a very himane person even though he was on the side of the Germans he treated his capters very humanely. He is regarded as one of the most skilled commanders of desert warfare. Here is his wiki for some interesting stuff plus there are many books written about him and his life as an officer during the war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_Rommel
Gavrilo Princip. Assassin of the archduke Ferdinand of Austria, this is the event that set off WW1, which allowed hitler to gain his power by promising his "revenge" for Germany, this lead to the Cold War, and eventually to conflict in the Middle East after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan... So yea this guy singlehandedly set off a chain of events to today's modern conflict.
_TURbo ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 03:34:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Apod1991 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 08:22:00 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Stanislav Petrov!
In 1983 he single-handedly prevented a full-scale nuclear war because he trusted his instinct and not a computer that took infrared light and high clouds as U.S. Missile launches. He was fired for over-riding the computer and security systems. What's even more freightening is that he wasn't originally supposed to work that night.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 08:50:15 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Kardroz ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 10:19:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tom Hanks.
He could be made sole overlord of the known universe. Would still not be enough appreciation.
bigtitch ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 10:23:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Joseph Bazalgette, who built the London sewer system. Saved thousands of lives from waterborne diseases. He built the system so well that it's still in use today.
Cospah ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 10:31:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Im just sitting here reading about People Who saved millions of lifes, thinking, the World was overpopulated enough in the first place damnit!
Any heroes out there WHO's fighting that small problem!
todayok ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 11:00:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov undoubtedly saved many thousands and basically prevented WW3.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 11:16:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
mkomaha ยท -3 points ยท Posted at 16:07:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla.
Don't get me wrong he's known and appreciated but nowhere near what he should be. Kids in school are taught about Thomas Edison who was a complete dick. Kiddos often don't hear about Tesla till high school or maybe some fantasy story.
Tesla2016
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:36:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Does it really matter if he's a dick? He invented lots of shit
mkomaha ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:01:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He claimed to have invented a lot of shit. Its heavily documented that he stole a lot of his ideas. He didn't even invent the lightbulb. He merely improved it.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 18:30:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
mkomaha ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:22:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The lightbulb existed before Thomas Edison. Edison just improved it. Hes credited with the invention of the lightbulb but we know this as false. This is noted on www.thomasedison.org in the second paragraph.
Nikola Tesla...he made renewable energy a thing back in the day but he got shut out by the government and big time oil company's so they could make more moneys
iVirusYx ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:09:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He's not underappreciated. First thing you learn about electicity in school is two names: Tesla and Edison.
There are so many references to Tesla and some things named after him. Like the Tesla Coil, or Elon Musk named his electric car company Tesla.
Took Russia from being essentially a 3rd world nation into being a stronger unified nation, bringing it back into the fold and re-balancing the power divide so that the US is not able to control the world. Took back the oil that the US were draining inside post soviet Russia (look it up).
[deleted] ยท -7 points ยท Posted at 15:42:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
Darnduf ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 16:28:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Stop! That one guy said he would scream!
tworkout ยท -3 points ยท Posted at 15:10:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Andyk123 ยท -3 points ยท Posted at 22:31:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Currently, Kanye West. People treat him like a punchline, but he has over 20 Grammy's and will eventually go down as one of the most influential musicians of his time.
vflgbo ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:33:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm so excited for swish.
Champ_Z ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:34:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Kanye - the most under appreciated person in history? Youre kidding me right? Sure, maybe he has influenced music. But did he cure aids or save BILLIONS of people by inventing vaccines, or shit, did he invent the airplane? You are an idiot if you honestly think of Kanye that much.
Andyk123 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:12:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
โWhatโthe fuck ๐ก๐ก did you just fucking say about me, you little ๐bitch๐? Iโll have you know I graduated ๐๐ top๐ of my class in the ๐ขNavy๐ข Seals, and Iโve been involved in numerous ๐ฏsecret๐ฏ raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have overโโ 300 โโ confirmed ๐ kills ๐. I am trained in gorilla ๐๐ ๐ฅwarfare ๐ฅ and Iโm the ๐top๐ sniper in the entire US ๐ซ armed ๐ซ forces ๐ฎ๐ฎ๐ฎ. You are nothing to me but just ๐ฏ another ๐ฏ target ๐ฏ. I will wipe โ you โ the โ fuck โ out with ๐ precision ๐ฏ๐ฏ the likes of which has never been ๐ seen ๐ before on this ๐Earth๐, mark ๐ก my ๐ก fucking ๐ก words ๐ก. You think you can ๐ get away ๐with saying that shit to me over the Internet ๐ป? Think again, fucker. ๐๐๐ As we speak I am contacting my ๐ secret network ๐ of spies ๐๐๐ across the USA and your IP ๐ is being traced ๐ right now ๐ง so you better prepare for the โstorm โ, maggot ๐๐๐. The storm โกโกโก that wipes out the ๐ pathetic ๐ little thing you call your life. Youโre ๐ fucking ๐๐๐ dead ๐๐๐, kid. I can be anywhere ๐๐๐, anytime ๐ง๐๐ฆ, and I can ๐ kill ๐ you๐ in over ๐ข seven ๐ข hundred ๐ข ways ๐, and thatโs just with my โโ bare handsโโ. Not only am I extensively trained in ๐unarmed ๐ combat ๐, but I have access to the entire arsenal ๐ซ๐ซ๐ซ of the United States ๐ฎ๐ฎ๐ฎ Marine Corps ๐ฎ๐ฎ๐ฎ and I will use it to its full extent to ๐ wipe ๐ your ๐ miserable ๐ ass ๐ off the face of the continent ๐๐, you little ๐ฉshit ๐ฉ. If only you could have known ๐ต๐ต what ๐unholy ๐ retribution your little โcleverโ comment ๐๐ was about to ๐bring ๐ down ๐ upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue๐ ๐ ๐ . But you couldnโt โ, you didnโtโ, and now youโre paying the price๐ฒ๐ฒ๐ฒ, you goddamn idiot. I will ๐ฉ shit ๐ฉ fury ๐ก๐ก๐ก all over you and you will ๐ฑ๐ฑ๐ฑ drown ๐ฑ๐ฑ๐ฑin it. Youโre ๐ fucking ๐ dead ๐, kiddo. ๐๐๐
Champ_Z ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:59:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's deff an appropriate response. Wanna hang out? Coffee is on me.
Malcolm X. Things didn't change for African Americans until the public had legitimate fear of a black revolution. His charisma and rhetoric instilled fear in thousands of the white supremacists that ran our country.
edcxsw1 ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 16:54:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't know if this counts because it's for all the wrong reasons you should appreciate a person, but people should at least know about him. Mao Zedong. He killed more people than Hitler, Stalin, and Bin Laden combined.
OP's mom. If it weren't for her, there would be no OP, and therefore this question wouldn't have been asked, making the unappreciated peoples of history remain unappreciated.
[deleted] ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 17:50:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
DEEZ NUTZ. Zang
Zimbah ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 18:06:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Several of my top choices have been mentioned already, but Gates might be up there with the best of them. We know that he started the company (and actually did a lot of coding himself) that would be the way billions of people know computers. For over 20 years, he has spent billions and pledged billions through his foundation to fight disease and illness all over the world, saving countless lives and also to fighting pollution and climate change.
clanlord ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 19:21:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Charlie sheen this guy showed the world whats its like to live a life of carefree person and then when he got HIV everyone got educated. His story has taught us many things.
Nikola Tesla. The guy pretty much created the technology in the 21st century and never got a single amount of credit for his incredible work. Plus the dude died alone, eating crackers, and talking to a dove that eventually flew away.
I seriously wish i could go back in time, and give the man a hug..
Thoguth ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 20:21:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jesus Christ of Nazareth. He single-handedly paid the sin debt of the entire human race through a profoundly agonizing ordeal in order to redeem us and restore our relationship with Almighty God. He could have tapped out at any time and commanded legions of Angels to stop the Passion, yet He chose not to. Even as popular as He is, I don't think mankind gives Him enough credit.
TomSG ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:40:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You know .. the whole crucifixion thing is really not that bad on the grand scale of "things to be endured".
I mean .. lots of POWs in Vietnam or in the Pacific Theatre or Eastern Front would have paid money to have only had to go through what JC of N went through. He got off pretty easy.
50-50K ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 23:58:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Elon Musk
throwupz ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 00:05:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler.
ta60223 ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 00:22:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Gavrilo Princip
He essentially single handedly kick started WWI, and if there was no WWI, there wouldn't have been a WW2 and I'd there wasn't a WW2, our whole world would be different.
Norman Borlaug. Though Hopper's a good one too. Borlaug basically saved a billion (that's right .... billion) people from starving yet virtually no one knows his name (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug).
John Garand. He developed the M1 Garand, the rifle used by the US during WWII. At the time, most foreign militaries used bolt action rifles, whereas the M1 was semi auto, giving US soldiers a great advantage in terms of rate of fire. On top of that, Garand was a genius toolmaker. Not only did he design his rifle, he designed the machines to allow the gun to be mass produced. On top of that, the gun was a damn good gun. Without Garand, WWII might have turned out very different.
Venus_69 ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 17:32:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The amount of times I see this post in a week is truly terrifying. I'll go with Nikola Tesla.
[deleted] ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 17:34:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler.
Shurvs ยท -4 points ยท Posted at 17:35:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler. The things that he did for Germany after the first war was pretty cool. He got them out of that huge debt and made them proud to be Germans again. But then he did all that bad stuff. So he still sucks.
jesse9o3 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:24:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He got them out of that huge debt
No he didn't, his shit economic policies put Germany on the edge of economic melt down. Germany's external debt grew nearly 3x as large between 1933 and 1939.
Shurvs ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:35:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I did nazi that.
Icanus ยท -3 points ยท Posted at 18:01:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Adolf Hitler
edit, some guy actually went through the effort of downvoting this reply
Hitler. Sure he did a lot of bad things, but he is portrayed as evil for many things that other countries at the time did or did worse. The US had concentration camps for the Japanese and treated their own citizens (blacks) like less than human. Hitler did wonders for the German economy. Hitler was the first to advocate animal rights. When he invaded Ukraine they loved him because of how horrible Stalin was. The Soviets were raping, killing, starving and sending to death camps many of the Ukraine citizens. Communism was and is one of the worst evils in the world and Hitler tried to stop it. I know he was an evil person, but not as evil as everyone likes to make him out. Stalin was a way way worse person, but he was an ally so let's leave him alone.
Hitler. He did nothing wrong and only helped his people. Those who think jews were innocent are ignorant as fuck and their extreme liberalism literally clouds their minds. They can't even have a simple thought process and just tend to say whatever biased history wrote.
Besides the real person who executed the order to kill jews was the leader of the SS
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 01:53:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
go back to appalachia and contemplate that in the outhouse behind the shack
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 12:22:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
'Contemplation' might be a bit much for this guy but we can always hope.
Saved comment
corran450 ยท 6168 points ยท Posted at 18:31:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
James Harrison, the man with the golden arm.
His blood contains an extremely rare *antibody that can be used to treat Rhesus disease. He has donated blood over 1000 times, and as a consequence has saved the lives of roughly 2 million newborn babies around the world.
edit: antibody, not enzyme. I r not uh sciencetist
Varlo ยท 1273 points ยท Posted at 21:48:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So the guy is 79 now. What do they do to treat this disease when he dies? Does he represent such a large share of the existing enzyme supply that fatal cases of the disease would spike in the event of his death?
corran450 ยท 1779 points ยท Posted at 22:01:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It sounds like his donations are no longer required to make the injection... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rho(D)_immune_globulin#Commercialization
They used his blood to develop it, but I think they can manufacture it now without anymore donations.
I hope that's true.
edit: fixed link
Varlo ยท 905 points ยท Posted at 22:01:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nice. For a second there I was thinking we were gonna have to open a James Harrison cloning farm.
Tainlorr ยท 69 points ยท Posted at 22:37:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Star Trek Into Darkness -> John Harrison -> Botany Bay -> Cloning Farm
whatisyournamemike ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 03:32:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
John Harrison, invented the marine chronometer, a device for solving the problem of calculating longitude while at sea. Should also be credited for saving millions of lives.
pease_pudding ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:42:02 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Benevolent humanitarian cause -> Peer-reviewed scientific studies -> Corporate seizure of IP -> Profit!
Gotta love the world we live in
[deleted] ยท 22 points ยท Posted at 00:28:49 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
RIP AFC North QBs
Acnfire ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 01:22:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This comment needs to be higher
HabseligkeitDerLiebe ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 23:26:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not necessarily a cloning farm, but should we run out of human sources (James Harrison isn't the only personhaving that globuline, he just donates like a madman) or should those source become unsustainable/uneconomical we could produce that globuline in other organisms by genetic engineering. I'm personally a fan of doing this in plants, but animals and fungi should work too. Bacteria sometimes are a little wonky when producing large proteins and folding them correctly.
WaterWaterAdult ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 01:14:49 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We still can
Ar_Ciel ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 15:05:38 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
and we thought we'd be in trouble when they didn't have enough Jan Micheal Vincents in sector six.
ihlaking ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:00:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They already did. ๐ค
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:45:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
thats what it is if you think about it.
Diablomoose ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 05:11:06 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Unfortunately, even cloning him wouldn't work. The gene arrangements for specific antibodies aren't found in the somatic cells used for cloning.
birchpitch ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:45:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What about bone marrow transplants?
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:22:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That reminds me of The House of the Scorpion.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:23:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Other guy is correct. There's a synthetic called RhoGAM
red_codec ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:48:02 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
or keep him in a stasis tank somewhere......
Riresurmort ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:15:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Don't worry, when he died he will be able to use all his blood
the_fathead44 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:26:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We can call it, "The Island"!
barscarsandguitars ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:52:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
To save money they could just clone his arm.
timmshady ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:08:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Steelers wouldn't mind doing that
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:46:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Did he at least have a few kids who might carry the gene?
slyg ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:28:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well in a way we are? We are just cloning the antibody part of him, and leaving the rest of him to rest in pease.
Jodecho ยท 377 points ยท Posted at 22:13:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes it is synthetic now. I work in transfusion services and Rhogam (product name) is given to all RH negative females if they are pregenant
PaperPlaneGang ยท 509 points ยท Posted at 22:49:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Damn they didn't even name it after him?
SuperDadMan ยท 116 points ยท Posted at 23:28:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I imagine if you're a company trying to profit off of a synthetic, you're going to want to distance yourself from the one you're replacing.
"Harrisonitide...because we won't always be able to rely on that Harrison dude."
Mundius ยท 22 points ยท Posted at 01:08:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Harritide or Harritiem would be nice.
batquux ยท 58 points ยท Posted at 03:08:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Or Rhesus Pieces.
[deleted] ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 04:23:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Bingo. That's perfect.
3trumpeteers ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 04:51:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's a bingo!
Wilreadit ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 16:54:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Benedict Cumberbatch
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:16:58 on January 18, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I wish I could gold you, that really cheered me up.
captain_video ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 02:15:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Harriscillin
fearthehippos ยท 30 points ยท Posted at 00:17:33 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Let me inject you with some James Harrisonol
magicbean99 ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 02:58:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Harrison Antibody does have a pretty nice ring to it.
[deleted] ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 00:16:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Maybe if his name wasn't James Harrison...
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:59:52 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
CBSoaps ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 02:33:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The injection is if the mom is RH negative and the dad is RH positive. (Speaking from personal experience) http://www.healthline.com/health/rh-incompatibility#Overview1
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 03:05:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
Preggo-Ragu ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 14:00:52 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Lots of docs still give it in case mom is wrong or lying about who daddy is.
Jodecho ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 05:33:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jeez no reason to make that big a deal out of it
Jodecho ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:31:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yea there are some reasons a woman wont get the shot, both parents being RH neg is one of em.
JabbaTheBlood ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 03:51:33 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jodecho is more correct than you are. Most physicians would give this form of passive immunization (not a vaccination) to an Rh negative mother because, ultimately, you never know who the baby daddy is...
roshielle ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:46:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I had to have this when I was pregnant. Didn't know the story behind it. Crazy.
Star90s ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:56:12 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He saved me and my baby then.
TheSinningRobot ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 08:19:29 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fucking Rhogam. That shit will Fuck you up
bcollins33 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 14:03:00 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Can confirm: my wife has crazy health stuff with pregnancy and this shot has been a life saver (most likely literally).
Rysona ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:10:54 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oh wow, I had that when I was pregnant. Never knew about Harrison!
Andrew_Jenkins ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 00:27:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Correct spelling is pragnent yup
drunkasaurus_rex ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 01:38:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
...pregnant?
FatherNate420 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 03:13:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My fiance and i are both rh positive, we needed two of the shots, thendoctors didnt really go in to much detal about it though
comradenu ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 03:36:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You definitely don't need the shot if you're Rh-positive... for any reason.
FatherNate420 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:07:38 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I worded that wrong, and i was mixed up. We are both rh neg, and only she got the shot.
comradenu ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 04:17:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That sounds more like it! It's standard to get one shot of Rhogam at 28 weeks and another immediately post-partum. If it's determined that there's been a fetal-maternal hemorrhage (lots of fetal blood in the maternal circulation) the mom may get extra shots of Rhogam.
Because you're both Rh-negative, you should've been given the option to out of the shot. Rh-negative parents can't have an Rh-positive child, so there's no chance of Rh-positive blood getting into the maternal circulation. That being said, if I was the doc I'd still recommend the shot, because I don't KNOW with 100% certainty that the dad is who the mom says he is.
WUN_WUN_SMASH ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:36:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That doesn't make sense. The shot is only given to the mother, and only if she's Rh negative.
"Women who are Rh positive do not have problems with the Rh factor in pregnancy.
Blood cells from an Rh positive baby can enter the Rh negative motherโs bloodstream. The motherโs body responds to these cells by making antibodies. Antibodies are made by the body to protect it from disease and other โforeignโ substances. The motherโs antibodies can attack and damage the babyโs blood cells. This can cause the baby to have anemia or jaundice (yellow color of skin). In severe cases, the antibodies may cause stillbirth." - Source
Jodecho ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:32:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Men never get the shots, neither do RH positive females. I dont know what u got but it wasnt Rhogam
pingpong_playa ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 22:43:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dude should get royalties.
damngurl ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:42:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
When the baby dies their soul adds one extra day to his life
K4ndY ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:05:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So by saving those babies, is he losing days off his life?
accountnumberseven ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 00:14:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No, because the pact only comes into effect once their blood is mixed. If he never saved them with his blood, he wouldn't gain any extra time at all.
Blood is the currency of the soul, and biomagical interest rates are pretty low. I guess he could try to milk more out of each contractor, but there's something to be said for sheer quantity, you know?
localhero ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:08:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I work in the plasma industry. We still produce this medicine through plasma donations.
The big breakthrough is the fact that you can take this antibody, inject it into a volunteer, and hope that the volunteer's body starts producing it.
Once it does, that person can donate twice a week just like the original guy. So yeah, still need the plasma donations.
JabbaTheBlood ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:50:28 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Actually, the potential donor gets Rh positive red cells, then their immune system goes to town creating antibodies against the Rh antigen. The potential donors can only be Rh negative males, for obvious reasons.
localhero ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:57:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is what I said. They get an immunization of antibody.
Women can partake, though, if they have gone through menopause or are sterile.
JabbaTheBlood ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:37:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The women who receive these injections of hyperimmune globulins do not start making the antibody upon treatment. The only anti-D antibody present is that which was delivered with the IM/IV shot. This is reflected in the fact that they get multiple doses (one at 28 weeks gestation, and another at delivery if the child turns out to be D positive).
I didn't know that you accepted post-menopausal and sterile women. Do you actively alloimmunize this population, or do they have to come to you creating the antibody naturally?
localhero ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 12:05:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We only allow our current donor base to volunteer. Periodically, 3-6 months or so, we'll order a blood sample to be drawn from just about every donor for three days.
They have to be the right blood type to be considered, but if they are, we reach out to them and they have to consent to join.
It usually takes several immunizations over several weeks or months, but once they start producing the antibody they can contribute just like James Harrison.
JabbaTheBlood ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:01:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Cool. Thanks for the information.
localhero ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 12:15:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I also just realized what you were saying in your first sentence. Yes, as treatment, women do not produce the antibody.
This is because, as opposed of getting the actual, unadulterated antibody, they receive a medicine made from the antibody.
It I understand correctly, the medicine basically binds to the pregnant woman's Rh factor to prevent it from attacking the baby.
JabbaTheBlood ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 14:57:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The prevailing theory is that the antibody binds to baby red cells that find their way into the circulatory system, and the immune system clears them (because mom doesn't have the Rh antigen, there is nothing on the maternal cells for the antibody to bind to). Interestingly, in the RED2 study, they found that the use of RhoGAM actually decreased the incidence of HLA alloimmunization (completely unrelated to the components of RhoGAM), by an as to yet unknown mechanism. I think that RhoGAM also has an IVIG effect, suppressing the immune system to form ALL new antibodies.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:19:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Must be, but it's still expensive. Here in the third world, that was the costly part of the birth of my son (I switched doctors after the first place missed the potential incompatibility...I am B- and my son turned out AB+)
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:28:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
While this may be relevant, and extremely important, I can't help but to think about the pharma company that's going to profit from it. Will anything go to James's family? If not, why. What are they charging for this 'rare' cure?
defeatedbird ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:36:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And now I bet they charge out the ass for it, but he/his estate get pennies.
JabbaTheBlood ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:29:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Unfortunately, it still requires donors. You must be an Rh negative male who makes the anti-Rh antibody (anti-D). In fact, it's one of the few blood products you can get paid to donate.
DannoHung ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:46:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't get it. What does the drug do then?
JabbaTheBlood ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:39:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The "drug" is actually antibodies that the donor made against the Rh antigen. When given to a mother that doesn't make the Rh antigen (Rh negative), the antibody is tasked with clearing any antigens that might be spilled over from the fetal circulation (babies red cells). In the sense that this is a "drug", it is very effective at clearing these antigens. If an Rh mother did not get this medication, then her own immune system would be tasked with generating an antibody against the antigen, and in her next pregnancy, her immune system could attack the fetus, potentially causing the baby to be anemic and jaundiced shortly after birth (because the antibody she makes will destroy babies red cells).
StonedWooki3 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:32:35 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Praise the good blood! It's all thanks to the Healing Church.
Bloody_stool ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:42:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Pretty sure it still requires blood plasma donations.
BP619 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:58:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
James Harrison True Blood
Isagoge ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:58:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Most likely they managed to produce the enzyme by using bacterial or fungal vectors.
You mount the gene in a plasmid and you grow the microbes in a bioreactor for large scale production.
thedankbank1021 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:23:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They've been able to synthesize a synthetic version of the enzyme. All thanks to studies done on his blood.
pudinnhead ยท 3590 points ยท Posted at 22:02:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He's saved both my babies! The man is a legend in our home.
SirGaylordSteambath ยท 239 points ยท Posted at 22:43:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's awesome
choikwa ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 01:02:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Couldn't help but notice your name.
SirGaylordSteambath ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 08:32:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thank you for noticing me senpai!
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:37:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your user name is awesome!
Rarus ยท 45 points ยท Posted at 23:13:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Lots of people like him in a sense. My mom has a rare type of O- and has donated every 3 weeks for the past 20 years. I'm not sure what it is exactly but her phone will ring like mad when bearing the 3 week point. She even got a little badge to show how many times she's donated.
Viperbunny ยท 36 points ยท Posted at 01:17:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Please thank your mom for me, and if possible, give her a big hug. I am alive today because of people like your mom who selflessly donated blood. I almost bled to death after the birth of my second daughter. I required blood and a second surgery to save my life. If I hadn't had several blood transfusions there is no way I would have made it. I even went on and had another baby (my doctors assured me it was safe and I was fine). My kids have a mother because people decided to donate blood. My husband has a wife because of them. We lost our oldest to a genetic disorder six days after birth. Losing me in the birthing process was one of his biggest fears and I worry that it would have been too much for him. We had already been through so much and this was a completely unexpected complication.
I am grateful every single day that people donate. I wish I could donate, but I have some medical conditions that make it impossible. It isn't just giving blood it's giving life. Please let her know that what she is doing means the world to so many :)
Zykium ยท 24 points ยท Posted at 02:14:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hey, I do it for the cookie and the juice.
31773 ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 02:44:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I do it so I have to spend less getting drunk
Steinrik ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 03:51:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Get drunk right before donating - share your drunkenness too!
amorphatist ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 06:10:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm not sure if it's still the case now, but when I was in college in Dublin in the late 90's, we'd occasionally head down to the big-ass (probably the national flagship) blood-bank to donate. And afterwards, in the recovery/chill-out area, you had your choice of snacks and drinks, including draught Guinness served by a young lady in a nurse's uniform. I hope that remains the situation today.
31773 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:50:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Actually when my mum was pregnant with me, her doctor 'prescribed' her Guinness for iron- this was also in Ireland in the 90s
Midgar-Zolom ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:14:25 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My mom was told to give my brother a shot or so of red wine to help him sleep at night in the rural south.
Alcohol has been phased out as being a recommendation by doctors, but it has its uses.
Zykium ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:39:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's a win-win scenario.
Viperbunny ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 03:05:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thank you anyway you selfish bastard ;)
Seriously though, thank you for donating.
ahurlly ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:23:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I do it to get out of a half hour of work.
1rdc ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 03:30:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This made me tear up :') Hope all of you are well now
Viperbunny ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 03:50:49 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We are all doing well. My daughters are amazing. They are smart and funny and the light of my life. At the moment they are visiting my mother in law. My husband and I have been fighting off a cold and are been downright exhausted so she offered to take the kids for the night. It is good to relax, but I miss them terribly at the same time. We have been through so much, but we are also so lucky to have each other. I can't imagine surviving all that has happened if I didn't have my husband. He is truly my other half. I was very lucky to meet him young. I was 16 and he was 18. It is hard to believe, but in two years I will have been with him half my life. Every last bit of heartbreak was worth all the joy I have been blessed with :)
chair_boy ยท 21 points ยท Posted at 00:23:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
it's because O negative is the universal blood type, and as such it can always be used and is always in demand. your mom is awesome for donating that many times.
[deleted] ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 02:57:52 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
O- is universal blood donor, not universal blood type. AB+ is universal blood recipient.
Mehiximos ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 06:12:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Don't you want to be o+?
ChaoticSquirrel ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:03:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
O neg is universal donor. AB pos is universal recipient.
pudinnhead ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 06:15:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My husband is O- as well! I'm B- and that's why I needed the Rhogam because our blood types weren't compatible. Yeah, the Red Cross practically stalks my husband!
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 16:38:17 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Im b- too, its also my motto
pudinnhead ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:00:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's funny. My mom is B+ and she is literally the happiest person in the world. She just found out she going deaf, has throat cancer (she's never smoked in her life), and colon cancer and all she can do is smile and help others. I'm certainly more pragmatic and would probably be wallowing in all that shit right about now...
[deleted] ยท 52 points ยท Posted at 22:14:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
StopReadingMyUser ยท 45 points ยท Posted at 22:44:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No, they just hang him to the wall instead.
[deleted] ยท 30 points ยท Posted at 23:02:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
[removed]
Asterix1806 ยท 31 points ยท Posted at 00:04:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Witness me, blood bag!
Consanguineously ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 01:45:00 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He's like the water dispenser on fridges. They just walk up to him and squeeze some blood out of him into a mug and treat their Rhesus disease.
pudinnhead ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:15:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We should. You've inspired me.
uscjimmy ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 22:22:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
what a great guy.
PM_ME_YOUR_NACHOS ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 05:05:52 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He's like the opposite of a dingo.
Viperbunny ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:09:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That is wonderful :)
bonitaappetita ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:25:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Mine too! And the shot didn't even hurt at all.
pudinnhead ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:11:35 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I know! Most people act like it's the worst thing in the world. Whatever, it's a shot in the ass, the fleshiest part of your body! A little pinch was worth my body not eating my babies.
xpowa ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 05:09:17 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That gives me the most feels I've ever had from this thread. Hope your littles are great.
pudinnhead ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 06:09:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They are...mostly.
mens_libertina ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 07:42:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Man "saved" me. My first son was Rh positive but I'm negative, so I was given treatments just in case. I thanked this man every day.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 07:47:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He saved me
Wiseguydude ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:32:18 on January 23, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Lol really?
bluecanaryflood ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:25:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dingo ate the third one, though
pudinnhead ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:12:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
People keep asking about that third one...
beachscrub ยท -10 points ยท Posted at 23:47:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He only saved one of your babies. Forming anti-D during your first pregnancy will not harm that pregnancy or child. It's the second (& 3rd, 4th, etc) time (when the antibodies come back as IgG), that would kill your baby.
jm001 ยท 15 points ยท Posted at 00:03:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ah well, you're right, what's one dead child anyway. Not even worth thanking the guy at that point, really.
meherab ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:00:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He's providing info, relax. Did he say he shouldn't thank him? Smh
BrachiumPontis ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:38:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Or her first child didn't make it and the second and third were actually saved...
beachscrub ยท -3 points ยท Posted at 00:49:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's not how it works. If her first child didn't make it, it wasn't because of anti-D, and if it was, she wouldn't need any more rhogam. Rhogam tricks your body into thinking you already made anti-D, so if you actually have it, you're not a candidate for rhogam.
BrachiumPontis ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 00:54:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm a biologist- I'm well aware of how RhoGam works. I also know that RhoGam is administered every pregnancy for Rh- women. The antibodies from RhoGam don't last forever.
beachscrub ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:35:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Right... but a true anti-D does last forever..
After the first pregnancy, she would forever have anti-D, only returing in future pregnancies as IgG, which can cross the placenta and kill the baby. And, she would not be a rhogam candidate.
So, if you don't get rhogam, and develop anti-D, the first pregnancy will be unharmed (because IgM can't cross the placenta). And if you happen to develop anti-D, then rhogam will do nothing for you, but you're a biologist so I'm sure you already know all of that. /s
Brandon2874 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:44:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Edited to add final line
No you don't..... Active anti-D = you were Rh negative and received Rh positive blood or had a fetal maternal hemorrhage(With Rh positive baby) and now your body makes anti-D. Not everyone that is Rh negative and has a Rh positive bleed will make anti D. Rhogam exists that in the event of a fetal maternal hemorrhage your body doesn't become sensitized.
Basically think of it as a flu vaccine in reverse. Vaccine exposes body to antigens so body attacks those antigens later. Rhogam hides the antigens so that your body won't make Anti-D (IGG which can cross the placenta) and kill future babies.
Passive anti-D (rhogam) coats Rh positive cells so you don't start making your own anti D.
Medical Laboratory Technician that worked in hospital blood bank
http://www.drugs.com/pro/rhogam-ultra-filtered-plus.html For administration to Rh-negative women NOT PREVIOUSLY SENSITIZED to the Rho(D) factor
pudinnhead ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:19:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I had to have the shot for both boys.
pudinnhead ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:13:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Either way, two beautiful and healthy boys instead of just one!
beachscrub ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 15:40:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes! The ability to have multiple babies is a gift!
pudinnhead ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:01:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I agree. I know so many who can't even have one. I'm overflowing with joy. I love what I call my happy handfuls.
mikealwy ยท 144 points ยท Posted at 21:35:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I was really hoping to see a steeler on this list
PedroAlvarez ยท 21 points ยท Posted at 21:55:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hines Ward does a lot of charity work
bingosherlock ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 01:48:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Charlie Batch is a legitimately good dude who does a lot for the community, too
OrangeJuliusPage ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:54:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Troy is easily the most legitimately great person, not just athlete, I've ever met.
AppleTrees4 ยท -9 points ยท Posted at 22:11:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Big Ben might consider his bathroom stunt charity work.
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 00:54:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nah he got fined instead
Bryvin ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 22:04:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If it was red you probably wouldn't recognize him.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:56:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dank.
trigunnerd ยท 18 points ยท Posted at 23:02:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
In the same realm, Henrietta Lacks. Her cancer cells were the first (and if I'm not mistaken, the only) cells to ever regenerate for endless generations outside her body. Her tumor was taken from her and her cells have been used by almost every doctoral student since. Her cells have been on the moon and used in countless studies. Her family was not informed, did not give consent, and were never compensated.
edit: spelling
corran450 ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 23:04:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I agree, and she's mentioned elsewhere in the thread.
I do think, though, that more people are being made aware of her contributions to medicine, and hopefully, her family will start to see some significant recognition, if not actual compensation.
trigunnerd ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:25:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I thought the book was fascinating. I'm glad I had to read it at university and that her story is getting popularized. We had to write three papers on it (not so glad about that) and debated her situation a lot.
brain_scientist_lady ยท 15 points ยท Posted at 22:23:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wikipedia says that he was nominated for "Australian of the Year" but didn't win! Makes me wonder about the person that won? Perhaps it was a man with two golden arms?
baldmathteacher ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 05:41:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Maybe it was someone who was born legally as another nationality but transitioned to Australian, how they had always identified, despite outward appearances.
bercl ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 09:33:51 on January 22, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ouch!
Todd_Solondz ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 07:43:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not quite.
tl;dr - He's a philanthropist of quite a few fields, poverty, homelessness, education, drug addiction, research into MS, some wildlife stuff. He appears to mostly be a chairman/director/something along those lines for those organisations. Plus he does a bunch of other stuff so he's hard to properly tl;dr.
TightAnalOrifice789 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:59:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Or a man with a golden penis.
knownerror ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 22:26:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Man, to be able to singlehandedly do that much good...
Hyndergogen1 ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 22:35:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I thought of this when I saw the name James Harrison. Was very confused and amused.
JabbaTheBlood ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 23:19:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Actually, it isn't an enzyme. It's an antibody that he (and thousands others) make that prevents women from developing hemolytic disease of the fetus and newborn. The antibody is partially purified from the blood of unique men (all over the world) who donate. The purified RhoGAM, RhoPhylac, and WinRho can only be made from these human donations.
Koozman28 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:55:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think antibodies are pretty much enzymes, they allow reactions in the immune response to proceed more quickly than normal by lowering the activation energy of the reaction, the same as an enzyme. You could use either term, imo.
JabbaTheBlood ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 06:33:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Unfortunately, the scientific community does not agree with you. Some extremely rare antibodies do act as enzymes, as you said by lowering the activation energy of a chemical reaction (the definition of an enzyme). In the immune system, antibodies act as a signal for consumption or destruction by the immune system. That has nothing to do with the activation energy of a reaction.
mbp214 ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 21:45:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That dude is a fucking saint. Crazy
uniquecannon ยท 17 points ยท Posted at 22:43:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No, he's a fucking Steeler.
tdw96 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 00:00:05 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fuck the Steelers
yeshua1986 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:16:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalt
jholds ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 21:26:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
WHOAH.
cappiebara ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:05:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I second that!
jholds ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:10:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Kind of a product of circumstance, but this guy is a hero!
JD_1994_ ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 22:40:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He's up there in age. Have they found a way to synthesize this at all for after he passes?
corran450 ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 22:41:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rho(D)_immune_globulin#Commercialization
JD_1994_ ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:42:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thank you for the answer, friendo.
unduffytable ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 02:29:38 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Similarly, Henrietta Lacks had an immortalized cell line that produced an endless supply of living cells that scientists have used around the world for decades to conduct scientific and medical research on. Her cells, known as HeLa cells, were used by Jonas Salk to create the Polio vaccine and they were also the first human cells successfully cloned.
Scientists are estimated to have grown 20 tonnes of HeLa cells.
Drudicta ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:22:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Someone should pay that man.
LordCharco_iii ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:03:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He has a powerful blood type!
He charges nothing a shot.
An awesome person, who's second-to-none,
The Man with the Golden Arm!
laustcozz ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:19:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What does the world do when he dies?
p3t3r133 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:23:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
How was this discovered?
Nightmare_Tonic ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:26:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I am so fucking glad I don't have that rare enzyme, because I faint and have seizures whenever I donate blood. It's some crazy phobia.
Cciamlazy ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:38:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Did he ever have kids? Did he pass the trait down? Or will it be gone until someone else randomly gets this?
Flopassi ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:38:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wait, are you saying its the only person in the world with blood like that? How is that possible?
IrEnToronto ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:43:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
How much blood does he have left? Serious question.
Jakku_Off ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:44:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
According to Wikipedia: "James Harrison (or simply, Khan), was the most prominent of the genetically-engineered Human Augments of the late-20th century Eugenics Wars period on Earth. Considered genocidal tyrants who conquered and killed in the name of order, Khan and his kind were frozen in cryogenic sleep."
beautyistruth14 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:45:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think I'm one of the babies he saved, as my mother needed a Rhesus injection when I was born. Awesome dude, guess I literally owe my life to him!
Tnr_rg ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:52:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"I could say it's the only record that I hope is broken, because if they do, they have donated a thousand donations."
โโJames Harrison
What a god damn legend.
NBPTS ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:55:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He saved my current pregnancy! I'm rh- and my twins were both rh+. Without the rhogam shot, I would have developed antibodies that would prevent me from carrying another baby.
557_173 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:56:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This guy lost 'Australian of the Year' in 1999 to some dude that plays cricket.
How in the fuck is playing any sport more important and noteworthy than a dude that saved millions of lives.
TPinkman ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:59:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Holy fucking shit.
arahzel ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:08:02 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't know if it's the exact same thing, but we have an online gaming buddy that regularly donates blood because he makes some sort of rare antibody. I only mention it because he's actually mentioned it be similar to this guy for comparison.
sheeeeeez ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:08:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
you would think he'd be adequately compensated for this...
tocamix90 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:17:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Had to get this shot, had no idea about this guy. Thank you.
5minutestillmidnight ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:18:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug has him beat
DiaDeLosMuertos ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:18:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
See ent tist
yeesespieces ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:25:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I guess people don't recognize his red arm...
plafman ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:42:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He also had a hell of an interception returned for a touchdown in Super Bowl XLIII. Some say it was the best play in Super Bowl history.
rolandhorn27 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:42:56 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Upon completing his record 1000th donation:
"I could say it's the only record that I hope is broken, because if they do, they have donated a thousand donations."
โโJames Harrison[1]
gunshhy ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:49:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
evolution in action, incredible
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:55:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thank you for posting this. Now I understand why a sibling born before me was stillborn, and likely why a sibling after I was born did not make it either. Somehow I got lucky, and it seems to be because my mom was in the hospital more often while she was pregnant with me (probably getting those injections mentioned in the wiki).
GroundsKeeper2 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:59:17 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I r baboon!
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:22:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Few people can wake up in the morning, decide to save a life, and then actually do it.
internet_badass_here ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:30:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think this guy saved my life, then.
misterconfuse ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:46:58 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I know "consequence" is used properly in this sentence, but for some reason it doesn't sound right to me since usually it's used to indicate a negative result.
In my mind, the word "result" would look better.
Amsterdom ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:50:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm surprised there isn't a religious following for him...
upsaesrsnwaomred ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:59:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
How was it discovered that he had this antibody?
Shamic ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:08:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So, that means that if he didn't exist. The world would have 2 million less people? Wow. Although it would probably be more as a lot of those babies would have had kids
The_Yar ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:50:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In that same vein, Henrietta Lacks. She had a unique form of cancer that created an immortal line of cells used for decades in medical and scientific research.
DankMemos ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:55:49 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
*scientician
corran450 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:12:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sciencer
Raneados ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:55:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
See, I would love to donate blood. If my blood contained some sort of crazy medicine I would flip my shit.
But I'm not allowed to donate blood because of terrible fearmongering :(
Jwagner0850 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:57:28 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
When you said golden arm, I did not click athe link. I literally thought he had a golden arm. I'm tired.
halfalit3r ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:09:52 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm glad that no one (himself, big pharma, etc.) commodified and monopolized his antibodies. just re-watched the Syfy series Helix and this kindly reminded me that philanthropy still happens
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:32:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Uhh... shouldn't we clone this guy?
bobmanfo ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:33:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jeez and I was going to say the guy who invented sweat pants
NameLastname ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:06:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He also saved his whole team in super bowl XLIII
mr_____awesomeqwerty ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:11:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Doesnt #teamisis have rhesus?
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:12:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not the James Harrison I was thinking of...
Brad1nator2211 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:42:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I feel saying "result" instead of "consequence" is better termology, consequence is most often associated with a negative outcome and this is most certaintly not a negative outcome
Micbene ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:58:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I can fill up my car TWICE with the amount of blood he has given... Wow
JerkOffTaco ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:21:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I was given the IG injection during both pregnancies and I had no idea. Awesome!
timmytooturnt232 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 13:12:06 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I am one of these babies. I had no idea it was this guy I had to thank for being alive. Mother had two miscarriages before getting the shot during her pregnancy with me.
Dark_Ham101 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 14:07:29 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I was born in Australia. There's a chance he may have saved my life! :D
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:09:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This guy is the reason my brother and I were born without any complications. My parents' generation weren't so lucky, my dad is a rhesus baby, he almost died and had to be airlifted from the country hospital to the major regional one, and was the first baby in our state to have full blood transfusions. He has cerebral palsy, intellectual disability, and is partially deaf, which is common in rhesus babies from the 50s and 60s when they started being able to save these babies lives with blood transfusions. So hey, thank you James Harrison for helping me, my brother, and so many more kids born with + blood to mums with - blood.
herpendatderp ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 08:49:15 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
James Harrison of the Pittsburgh Steelers is definitely underrated this season
lynskey123 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:12:20 on January 20, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Does he have kids?
djeye ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 10:24:43 on January 22, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
its blood plasma, not blood...
in any case, huge respect for that guy....
Dmomo85 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:39:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Don't be fooled, he is paid VERY well
But still, outstanding person
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:49:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
why doesn't he charge a fee? he would never have had to work again in his life
SS89 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:51:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As a Ravens fan, I was all prepared to tear you a new one...but this is ok. Unlucky coincidental name.
VexonCross ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 22:05:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You're saying he's partially responsible for the population problem?
MiredLurker ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 22:20:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There isn't a population problem, there is a resource management problem.
Miather ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:33:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I've always maintained there's a overpopulation problem, but this comment has blown my mind.
80sArcade ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:54:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Genuinely curious but maybe these babies shouldn't have survived? Why are we fighting natural selection?
Noodleholz ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:07:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ask him/her that:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/4131fu/who_is_the_most_underappreciated_person_in_history/cyzq1ae
trexp ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 00:10:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Consequence is not the right word. As a result
corran450 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:17:15 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Riiiighttt.....
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:31:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He was also an incredible linebacker in his day!
JackWaggin ยท -5 points ยท Posted at 22:13:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He gets appreciation, the question asked who was unappreciated.
corran450 ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 22:15:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Technically, the question asked who is underappreciated.
I think saving the lives of 2-fucking-million newborns deserves greater worldwide attention, but that's just me.
CommodoreKrusty ยท 4565 points ยท Posted at 18:56:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Grace Hopper. She invented the compiler which is the tool computer programmers use to turn their code into software. She was told computers were for doing calculations and not for running programs, so it couldn't be done. She figured it out anyway and changed the world forever. She might be the most important woman of all time. Nobody knows who she is.
Squid_Chunks ยท 1022 points ยท Posted at 23:53:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And coined the term debugging as well as bug, invented Cobol, and a bunch of other noteworthy achievements!
YossariansWingman ยท 352 points ยท Posted at 00:53:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
And it's called "debugging" because she pulled a moth out of the computer.
EDIT: Not true. She pulled the moth out, but the term has been around since at least 1878.
CrookCook ยท 118 points ยท Posted at 01:05:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I've pulled moths out of weirder places.
evanders14 ยท 137 points ยท Posted at 01:51:05 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Don't threaten me with a good time.
DUMPAH_CHUCKER_69 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 15:58:28 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Only if crazy=genius
stunt_penguin ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:32:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Agent Starling?
ps4more ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:54:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Luna?
dauntlessmath ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 04:56:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think that's apocryphal
From wiki:
YossariansWingman ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:19:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Good catch, I'll edit!
WorthGodwin ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 06:09:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The term had actually been used by engineers for some time, but her moth pun definitely popularized the term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper#Anecdotes
me_mk1 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 04:50:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And this was when computers took up entire rooms
Mollywobbles225 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 08:30:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And Who Wants to be a Millionaire saw its first winner answer this question correctly.
pink_ego_box ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 11:50:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Maybe if she had lied and said it was a grasshopper, people would remember her name.
youdontevenknow63 ยท -5 points ยท Posted at 06:02:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's an urban legend and you should know better, fuckwit
DasND ยท 37 points ยท Posted at 02:40:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Apparently she also coined the phrase: โItโs always easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission.โ (according to her german wiki). Freakin' badass.
leemur ยท 75 points ยท Posted at 01:32:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The term 'bug' predates computers. The term is short for 'bugbear' just mean 'annoying problem'.
Grace Hopper is badass though. The only mathematician to have a destroyer named after her.
Edit:
Downvoted in under 30 seconds. Take a look here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_bug#Etymology
Squid_Chunks ยท 20 points ยท Posted at 02:39:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes more correctly she popularised the term bug in regards to computing.
berlin-calling ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 03:19:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ahhh yes, Bugbears. I've slain those in many an adventure.
dauntlessmath ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:58:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's not a bugbear. This is a real bugbear:
http://www.lomion.de/cmm/img/bugbear.gif
spaghettiputs ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 11:44:22 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your bugbear is superior
dauntlessmath ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:37:28 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's from the 2nd edition Monstrous Manual. I always liked it more than the later representations because it reflects that bugbears are intelligent creatures while later versions make them look more feral and animalistic.
Matti_Matti_Matti ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 03:54:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
/r/theydidtheetymology
leemur ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:58:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
........awwwww
Matti_Matti_Matti ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:07:15 on January 18, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Now a thing at /r/theydidtheetymology!
TheyMakeMeWearPants ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 04:03:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Shame that's not a thing.
Matti_Matti_Matti ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:07:19 on January 18, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Now a thing at /r/theydidtheetymology!
1stonepwn ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:05:27 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Haha, we talked about that in one of my classes today. You're absolutely right.
0f4ovwt8ci ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 03:51:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No, she did not. She did however invent FLOW-MATIC from which COBOL was derived.
quinnhay35 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 04:52:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
How true is it that she invented Cobol? My grandpa used to work on and program UNIVACs and told me that he was invited to sit on a committee that was making major decisions about Cobol- long story short, his boss took the spot from him because it required going to somewhere cool.
spaghettiputs ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 11:47:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not very. Admiral Hopper worked on flowmatic the cobol precursor similar to C being the precursor to Java and C++
dodgysmalls ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 06:04:35 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Inventing Cobol is as much a crime as it is an achievement.
liamOSM ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 03:39:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Grace Hopper. Grasshopper. Debugging. What an ironic name.
ermal14 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:51:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not sure she coined the term bug, she just pulled one out of eniac.
Not that she isn't super awesome!
xcpain93 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:34:35 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ever heard of rubber duck debugging?
remarkable53 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:56:56 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Didn't she also coin the saying "it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission"? I thought she was credited with that?
IceFire909 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 11:44:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
SO SAY WE ALL!
http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Kobol
MadTux ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 12:40:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ahh, that nullifies all her successes. Seriously, how can someone so brilliant go and invent Cobol?
red_hare ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 13:35:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You forgot the best part. The term "bug" came because she actually found a moth stuck in a relay and taking it out fixed the problem.
Salamok ยท 599 points ยท Posted at 00:07:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also was (and may still be) the highest ranked female officer the US Military. I would guess the main reason she isn't more well known is that she was busy building stuff as opposed to out schilling books on computer science.
buckykat ยท 276 points ยท Posted at 00:38:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
She does still hold the record for oldest active servicemember. She actually retired three times, they just couldn't make it more than about a year without her the first two.
ZaberTooth ยท 64 points ยท Posted at 01:08:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
From Wikipedia: At the time of her retirement, she was the oldest active-duty commissioned officer in the United States Navy (79 years, eight months and five days), and aboard the oldest commissioned ship in the United States Navy (188 years, nine months and 23 days).[29] (Admirals William D. Leahy, Chester W. Nimitz, Hyman G. Rickover and Charles Stewart were the only other officers in the Navy's history to serve on active duty at a higher age. Leahy and Nimitz served on active duty for life due to their promotions to the rank of Fleet Admiral.)
OKImHere ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 02:27:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
To be clear, you mean active duty. She's no longer actively serving.
buckykat ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 02:33:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes. That was imperfectly clear, thank you.
imgonnacallyouretard ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 06:29:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah...she was ridiculously effective in her prime years.
dramboxf ยท 64 points ยท Posted at 01:39:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No, there are females that have been promoted above her since. She held the rank of Rear Admiral (Lower Half) which is a one-star rank, like Brigadier General in the Army, Air Force and Marine Corps.
Admiral (four-star) Michelle Howard, the current Vice Chief of Naval Operations, is the first female four-star in the Navy.
General Ann Dunwoody, US Army, was the first female four-star officer of any military branch.
robertswa ยท 29 points ยท Posted at 00:28:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Grace Hopper was only a one-star (Rear Admiral lower half). We have multiple 4-star female officers in the US military today.
TigerlillyGastro ยท 29 points ยท Posted at 00:57:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What? The lower half of a rear admiral? Isn't that just the buttocks?
The_White_Light ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 01:12:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Depending on what type of guy you are, that's the best half.
v_krishna ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 03:47:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
there's a seamen joke in here somewhere...
25564 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 13:15:00 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
She isn't anymore. Michelle J. Howard is Vice chief of Naval operations with the rank of Admiral.
hopper862 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 14:23:02 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Currently belongs to the VCNO, ADM Howard. She's the first female 4-star and the first African American female 4-star to boot.
calspach ยท 19 points ยท Posted at 01:51:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As a one time COBOL developer, I know who she is. She was an Admiral in the Navy as well. Not something just anyone, much less a woman in the 60's/70's can accomplish.
Sad part is that I've brought her up in a room full of COBOL developers and nobody knew who she was.
robobreasts ยท 33 points ยท Posted at 01:04:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Admiral Hopper was a pretty damn cool lady. Here she is on Letterman (the show) explaining what a nanosecond looks like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-vcErOPofQ
conandy ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 09:34:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Letterman: How did you know so much about computers then?
Hopper: I didn't. It was the first one.
She's fantastic.
Alx1775 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 04:00:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I actually got a nanosecond once from her. Then-Capt. Hopper gave a talk and handed them out as props.
Wish I could find it now...
which_spartacus ยท 15 points ยท Posted at 02:54:15 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm totally on board with using her as the famous American on the ten dollar bill.
And, since it would be "10", it could look like binary.
[deleted] ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 03:32:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So you want to bring back the $2 bill?
diothar ยท 49 points ยท Posted at 00:58:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
While I applaud you for calling her out, she is well known in the tech circle.
CommodoreKrusty ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 03:16:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes, amongst some circles, but not generally.
residentchubbychaser ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 04:17:52 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm an IT student and I've never heard of her before. I wouldn't call her well known.
diothar ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 04:52:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Didn't spend any time on the history in any of your classes/certifications?
residentchubbychaser ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:01:29 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Very, very little. All of my classes have focused vastly on practical, modern applications rather than the history behind it. I'm not saying that's better or worse, but that's the way we've been taught.
diothar ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 05:02:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's a bummer.
Kwinten ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 09:20:05 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You should definitely do some self study about programming history. Knowing the history is imo incredibly important to actually understand how all our modern concepts of computer programming came to be.
BGizzle7070 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:40:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If you were a Computer Science major, you'd def learn about her in your Intro to Programming Languages class
residentchubbychaser ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 10:09:05 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well for the record, I'm an IT major (specifically Information Systems Technology), not Computer Science. One of the foundation courses is an Intro to Programming course. But I'm not 100% clear on the difference between IT and compsci even after being in the program for over a year, but I know that my friend in compsci (another uni) has a lot more math/engineering shit to deal with.
BGizzle7070 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:16:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Computer Science is basically software engineering and mathematics combined. We write software, and in doing so, learn some history about the tools that we use.
[deleted] ยท -9 points ยท Posted at 01:13:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
alexiz424 ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 01:21:28 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Woah man, not everyone is in tech, I had no idea this lady existed so stop being an ass.
heyimlurking ยท 20 points ยท Posted at 00:52:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Can confirm. Never heard of her.
thejuliemeister ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 01:26:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's a navy ship named after her in Hawaii. The ship's motto is "Gracie would go." It's a play on the Eddie Aikau phrase, but still kind of neat. One of the very few navy ships actually named after a woman.
tinydoom1 ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 02:09:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's actually a conference every year for women in computer science named after her. My school pays for any women that want to attend. It's pretty cool
Passing4human ยท 22 points ยท Posted at 00:47:22 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
She's certainly well known in IT.
[deleted] ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 03:26:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
also like generally
Mcgottaa ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 02:14:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Grace Hopper is a legend in the US Navy and in any Intel or IT rate you'll see her enshrined everywhere
Thameus ยท 21 points ยท Posted at 00:14:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Techies know
RealJackAnchor ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 00:50:15 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nobody plays Techies
UrbanPizzaWizard ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 00:57:05 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
But that laugh when you get a kill
DanielMcLaury ยท 34 points ยท Posted at 00:22:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Everyone who works with computers knows who she is.
merreborn ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 01:07:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also she did a great appearance on Letterman way back when
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-vcErOPofQ
EhhWhatsUpDoc ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:35:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That was nice to watch, thanks!
DanielMcLaury ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:28:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Man, I wish late night was like that now instead of being a Millenial version of Entertainment Tonight.
ansible47 ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 03:21:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
this is blatantly false
[deleted] ยท -3 points ยท Posted at 03:44:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
ansible47 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 03:46:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah man most people remember every name referenced in one introductory class during freshman year.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:51:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
ansible47 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 03:56:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What a weird way to spend your time, I was a computer engineer and probably heard her name at some point but it was not a repeated motif.
wutz ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:54:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't
edjamesking ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 02:02:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We have a picture of her on the wall at the school that I teach at (in China). :)
Brawndotaste ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:57:35 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's a park named for her right by the Pentagon near where she lived.
Mr_BunBun ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:32:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I learned about her in high school. The Mother of Programming
Nicomachus__ ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:48:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My local Micro Center has a giant picture of her in the store, along with Gates, Jobs, and other computer greats.
neongames_kevin ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:44:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
She's known in almost every tech circle, but is less known outside of it. What she did in the Navy was later used as the foundation for client side prediction for netcode.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 05:03:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So I googled her name and one of the first images to come up was this:
http://image.slidesharecdn.com/gracehopper-120913083759-phpapp02/95/grace-hopper-3-728.jpg?cb=1347525541
I thought it was hilarious. How to summarize a woman from the 20th century's life: Year she was born, year she married, year her husband died, year she died.
ZurichianAnimations ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:21:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So I looker her up. And holy crap, she was a Rear Admiral in the United States Navy too! Wow. She definitely deserves more recognition.
sgtshootsalot ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:28:58 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Or microcenter has a banner with her on it. Pretty cool stuff
ivan0x32 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:29:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well I don't know who these idiots were who told her computers could be used for calculations only, but they sure didn't learn any history.
godhandkiller ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:31:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wow, I study software engineer and I've never heard of her. Thanks you for this information I sure will talk about this in class.
Cregaleus ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:45:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I have never met a programmer that did not know who Grace Hopper was.
_ferz ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:47:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nobody knows about Grace Hopper? Do you live under the rock?
lilzilla ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:00:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Was. She passed away in 1992. And among computer scientists at least her name is known.
CalibreneGuru ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:12:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Luckily, those in the computer field are well aware of who she is. There are even Grace Hopper Conferences that happen annually (I believe) to help women in computing.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:16:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Um seriously? Exaggeration, dude. You can make a case for someone without saying they "might be the most important...of all time".
general-Insano ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:17:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Didn't she also create the method for wireless torpedoes?(nope Hedy lamarr)
It seems a fairly sizable chunk of people were simply forgotten to everyone
mrfox007 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:19:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Holy Mowly!
pemachodron4prez ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:23:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Im so glad to see her on this list. As a female, database designer, she is my idol. She is cute as hell too https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-vcErOPofQ
brainhack3r ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:26:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also, back then the chauvinist males felt that working on hardware was the hard job and they gave the software as it was a womans job and wasn't worth a man's time.
It was common at the time to use women for jobs that weren't "worth" wasting men's time on... As a consequence women often made major contributions in areas that we now consider vital but back then were overlooked.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:28:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
One of my favorite stories about her was that she wanted to try to illustrate to non-technical people what a nanosecond was. She ordered lengths of wire cut to be about a foot. The wire represented the distance an electron would travel in a billionth of a second.
Its a great illustration of time and scale of things that are so vastly outside of human experience that they are nigh incomprehensible.
https://youtu.be/JEpsKnWZrJ8
yognautilus ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:34:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Cobol is just a frakking myth invented by the Cylons!
firefightersquirrel ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:23:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'd be down with putting her on the ten dollar bill.
DrEnter ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:49:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I met her in college when she came to give a talk. She handed out "nanoseconds": Pieces of wire about 30 centimeters long. It's the distance light travels in one nanosecond. It blew my mind at the time. I still have it in a box somewhere.
romulusnr ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:50:58 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Every computer geek worth a milliliter of Vulcan blood knows about Grace Hopper. Hell even my grandmother knows about Grace Hopper.
__RelevantUsername__ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:18:17 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't know how I found her but somehow a couple weeks ago I was talking to her to my gf having never heard of her and her wikipedia page is full of hilarious sexual innuendo if you look for it.
fearachieved ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:35:02 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Important only if you believe computers are important. I for one do not, I think they are amazing and I love them but I don't believe they are a necessity of life by any stretch.
AmazonExplorer ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:40:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Man, its too bad we don't have some sort of organization or ideology that could help promote women who actually accomplished something.
TomServoBombadil ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:40:52 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just commenting to remember to read about her tomorrow. That's amazing I feel ridiculous for never hearing of her before. Thank you!
whitedeathOMAHA ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:43:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Cool!
actualporcupine ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:48:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This the 10th top comment and the first to bring up a woman. I think women are the most underappreciated in history. Constantly forgotten and ignored.
DohRayMeme ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:14:56 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
For what its worth, I dedicated these "Grace the Ladybug" dice to her. Shes a personal hero.
http://playrollcall.myshopify.com/collections/frontpage/products/standard-player-s-kit-one
meditationswerve ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:19:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"The most dangerous phrase in the language is, 'we've always done it this way.'" -Grace Hopper
motherwarrior ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:28:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wow! You win. She wins.
mooseman3 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:15:00 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
She was also mentioned as an example of American innovation in the recent state of the union.
9823409284082309 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:15:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Uh, unless you work in computers. You can't walk through a software office leading up to October without being blasted with Grace Hopper Conference posters and so on.
She's by far the most well known person mentioned in this thread.
Frapplo ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:26:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Her name makes her sound like some kind of bug alien masquerading as a human. Like Chris Lee Bear or Brad Hardsex.
mubukugrappa ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:41:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
TIL something important. Thank you.
hi-Im-gosu ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:18:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
TIL. Thanks Grace Hopper, you're the real mvp.
Lisasrealm ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:23:01 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Retired admiral from the Navy.
__WarmPool__ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:44:46 on January 19, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
She's the woman who runs computer conferences only for women isnt she?
DukeMaximum ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:42:11 on January 19, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Uh, that's Rear Admiral Grace Hopper PhD. She was pretty much the stock they'll tap to clone a race of super-intelligent neo-sapiens.
StuffandSuch5 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:13:49 on January 21, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Anyone in computer science knows who she is.
DistractedByGirl ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:23:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
All while being a Navy Admiral
mathbaker ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:48:58 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
She was the speaker at my college graduation. As a math major, I was really excited - no sure what other students made of this.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:00:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
[deleted]
rocketman0739 ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 02:21:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You invented the compiler today?
_FreeThinker ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 00:49:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
But everybody knows Jennifer Lawrence.
Brainvillage ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:01:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jennifer Lawrence should make a movie about her.
lik-a-do-da-cha-cha ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 00:50:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Most Navy personnel have at least heard of her and all in the Intel community had better know who she is and what she did.
I love how she is the one that coined the term "bug" as it relates to computers. She was awesome.
TheManshack ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 00:52:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That woman is my fuckin' spirit animal.
aliensporebomb ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 00:53:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My friend got to meet her in high school. He's still in IT to this day and I think he still has her autograph somewhere.
YossariansWingman ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 00:54:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Amazing Grace is definitely one of the most important computer scientists, and an all around badass.
Low_discrepancy ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 00:54:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Huh? Source for that since that would make Ada Lovelace chopped liver.
TaylorS1986 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 03:07:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A lot of women in tech seem to get the shaft, it seems. :-(
Dracomarine ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 01:40:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Can someone ELI5 this? I've taken some programing course and Electrical engineerng courses but I can't fathom what happens in between.
Dickjackin ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 01:00:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
World would have been better off without her
CatsOnTheKeyboard ยท 4463 points ยท Posted at 16:07:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Patrick Vincent Coleman ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vince_Coleman_(train_dispatcher) ), a train dispatcher in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1917. On Dec. 6, 1917, two ships collided in the Halifax port. One of them was a munitions ship carrying approx 3,000 tons of explosives. Coleman stayed at his post in order to warn away trains that were approaching the port and died in the explosion. His final message:
"Hold up the train. Ammunition ship afire in harbor making for Pier 6 and will explode. Guess this will be my last message. Good-bye boys."
I'm sure there are memorials to him in Halifax but his name is worth putting out there.
EDIT: I never imagined the response I'd get to this. I figured plenty of people in Nova Scotia knew of him and mostly put it out here for Americans and others but never guessed Vince Coleman was still this well known. Thanks for the great discussion and extra information. I'll have to look up some more Heritage Minutes.
jamgingerly ยท 1651 points ยท Posted at 20:19:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Halifax explosion is just really interesting in general. IIRC, it was the largest explosion in the history of the world that was not caused by a nuke. It devastated Halifax, and most of the citizens present didn't even have the sense to run away. They had no idea what was in the ships, it was more or less only Patrick Coleman who had the knowledge and the ability to stop the trains.
Also, a ridiculous amount of babies were born after the explosion. Apparently traumatic incidents like that can induce premature labour in pregnant women, and hundreds of babies were born early that day.
greyjackal ยท 254 points ยท Posted at 21:24:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's also the reason Boston receives the Christmas tree on the Common every year. Halifax sends it as thanks for the relief efforts in the aftermath of the disaster
hippoPWNamus ยท 28 points ยท Posted at 02:00:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And a lot of people in Halifax are still fans of Boston sports for the same reason.
FairestofthemAlll ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 02:58:28 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I was actually wondering about this when watching the Boston tree lighting last Christmas...TIL.
prophetofgreed ยท -12 points ยท Posted at 21:53:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Nova Scotia government sends the tree, Halifax is the capital for Nova Scotia so it's pretty much the same.
osmlol ยท 22 points ยท Posted at 02:34:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Then why even say anything.
shawshanks ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 06:45:52 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Same same, but different.
[deleted] ยท -4 points ยท Posted at 03:24:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Because it's not actually the same
CatsOnTheKeyboard ยท 516 points ยท Posted at 20:37:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
On the contrary, a lot of people ran toward the fire to see the spectacle. The Wikipedia article mentions that there were also improvements in eye care because of the number of injuries from flying glass.
Whiskey-Tango-Hotel ยท 397 points ยท Posted at 23:01:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You know what is something that absolutely terrifies me? Glass dust. No one seems to think about it, but I swear glass dust is the single most terrifying thing since it can get everywhere, cut everything and impossible to get out.
PlasmaRoar ยท 385 points ยท Posted at 23:06:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Glass dust is simply sand upgraded.
RemoveByFriction ยท 412 points ยท Posted at 00:04:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't like sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere.
...but glass dust is probably far worse.
FlamingJesusOnaStick ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 01:07:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Imagine glass dust in the cracks you find sand in your shorts.
Ouch.
TheAntiZealot ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 01:48:17 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not like here. Here everything is soft and smooth.
seeingeyegod ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 03:17:29 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
one day I'm going to impregnate you and then later choke you with my mind
sayterdarkwynd ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:26:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That escalated at a rate that I am somewhat uncomfortable with. I may, in fact, have sharted a little.
[deleted] ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 02:55:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's both respirable and carcinogenic, so yeah.
bpj1805 ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 03:12:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I once made myself very unpopular in an amateur telescope making mailing list by doing this:
Do you have any references for that claim?
I can believe that glass dust could be carcinogenic (I'm assuming you're referring to complications of silicosis?), but all the claims I've ever seen about glass dust being harmful are really claims about silica dust. Now of course soda-lime glass and silica have a lot in common, but they're also different in biologically significant way(s): glass is a zillion times more soluble than silica, meaning there's at least some hope, to me, that your body would be able to get rid of glass dust in your lungs (but whether the half life of this dust in your lungs is 5 months or 5000 years is the real question here).
That's for chronic exposure. There's also acute exposure, where the harm comes from the glass particles mechanically cutting you up inside, but that has less to do with the fact that it's glass than with the fact that it's a zillion knives in your lungs.
PM_ME_GOOD_SHIT ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 03:40:02 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:32:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Admittedly I merely searched some things about silicosis for "glass dust" and got some hits. Additional cursory searches have been less "conclusive". I thought the two were nearly interchangeable, but apparently that is not correct. Thanks for asking.
bpj1805 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:06:12 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't think anyone sane would feel confident that snorting lines of glass dust would be harmless; I think it's very likely that it's super bad for you, just like basically any other fine dust. My thing was just that I was curious to see what directly relevant evidence there was, and for daring to express such academic curiosity people assumed that I was just trolling them. Hard evidence is indeed very hard to find for glass dust in particular (but by no means does that mean the stuff is harmless).
riznawbert ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 02:55:56 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Moon dust is even worse than glass dust. It's as fine as flour and multiple times more abravis than glass.
hexane360 ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 04:14:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So wait, Cave Johnson was right? I mean I'm sure the asbestos didn't hurt...
altiuscitiusfortius ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:29:05 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'll make sure to wear my respirator next time I'm on the moon.
riznawbert ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:34:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fuck the respirator. I thought the real concern was getting it in all the places sand gets. Better wear your moon dust proof banana hammock.
smellybuttface ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:45:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, glass dust in your urethra is the worst.
oatmealSystems ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:19:02 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I hate when I get sand under my helmet.
frothingnome ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 23:45:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I am glass dust, the sand transformed.
Rasen22 ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 00:35:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
calm down raiden
postbroadcast ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 00:59:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Lv1. Sand
Lv2. Glass Dust
Lv3. Black Oil (X-Files)
SirAlexspride ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 10:05:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Lv. 4 Scatter. Senbonzakura
Zam548 ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 01:10:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
By far da rudest of sandstorms
harbourwall ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:19:05 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Pocket glass dust!
JamesTheJerk ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:07:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Shuh-shuh-shaaaw!
BuyThisVacuum1 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:47:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't know if they grade it, but... coarse.
scaldedmuffin ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:40:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Coarse, rough, irritating, and will make you bleed in ways you never thought you could.
cakefete2 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:13:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sand Man on steroids.
quantum94 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:31:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
aaaaaand I'm scared of the beach.
ZacPensol ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:47:33 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Glass dust is basically the Scar of the sand kingdom.
Lord_Tyranus ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:11:00 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's courser, rougher and even more irritating.
ScrooLewse ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 00:21:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They used to sell the stuff to young boys under the name of "itching powder" at prank stores. You'd sprinkle it in somebody's clothes, like an unattended jacket. Or hat.
Iceman_B ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 01:03:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So like asbestos?
GammaTronix ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:51:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Exept with cutting ability
longtimegoneMTGO ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 01:03:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, you aren't wrong. Silicosis is a bitch.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:23:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Great, something else to be worried about.
MashedPotaties ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:11:22 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Cement powder is full of it, pretty much. Great on the lungs.
Tadaw ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:43:01 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yellowstone must be your biggest fear then. Glass dust is horrifying in small scale, but much worse over thousands of kilometres.
DroppinHadjisLandR ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:05:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wear ur oakleys -_-
MentalHermaphrodite ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:12:06 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I work with milled glass ("glass dust"). I am very paranoid handling it.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:23:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
ansible47 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:12:06 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Part of me thinks there's a good story here, and the other part of me thinks you're gunna be really weird and vague about "ya, I play with a lot of chemicals, lol"
osmlol ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:32:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Its not that dangerous. I'm a manager at a glass fabrication plant and we seam glass all day feeding our tempering furnace and dust gets everywhere. Doesn't cause much harm. It's not sharp like larger shards can be.
arbivark ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:03:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
the moon is covered in glass dust. let's go to mars instead.
brokendownandbusted ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:05:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
From what I have read in the past, they used to kill people with it in medieval times. It was supposedly very painful (go figure).
Thor_Odinson_ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:22:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Interned in a building with a hot glass shop. It is serious shit. Always a respirator when shoveling fresh glass chunks into the furnace. The only time you wouldn't need a respirator is if the dust is formed while wet sanding.
HowitzerIII ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:24:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Glass is dangerous because it fractures with sharp and hard edges, but as a consequence, it is very brittle. A few impacts, and the hard edges should whittle down. As someone else said, glass dust is essentially sand, without the edges rubbed down yet.
INFIDELicious45 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 01:25:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Canadian National Institute for the Blind has its roots in the treatment of all the freshly blinded onlookers at Halifax.
RelaxPrime ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 21:33:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not exactly contrary to what they said.
CatsOnTheKeyboard ยท 18 points ยท Posted at 23:08:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The phrase "on the contrary" is sometimes used to agree with and then emphasize a negative assertion someone has made. jamgengerly said "most of the citizens present didn't even have the sense to run away" and I said that 'on the contrary' (to having common sense), they actually ran toward the fire.
[deleted] ยท 17 points ยท Posted at 21:50:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I believe he meant on the contrary to them having the sense to run away
Mr_Maxwell_Smart ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:55:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I encountered the same thing when I was running away from the World Trade buildings on 9-11. People running toward them while huge pieces were falling down. It is a vivid memory for me from that day.
CatsOnTheKeyboard ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:56:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Glad you made it out safely. How are you these days?
Mr_Maxwell_Smart ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 03:10:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Good thanks!! Some but of trouble with my lungs & I rarely go to that part of the city still... But met my wife as a result so it came out good for me.
CatsOnTheKeyboard ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:45:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As silver linings go, that's a good one. :)
ChaoticSquirrel ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:08:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Aww, story time?
Mr_Maxwell_Smart ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 04:56:04 on January 18, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A friend who knew I had been there (and that I was laying on my couch all week) asked me to come to a brunch at a nearby town in NJ the Sunday after 9/11 to share my story (I lived in NYC). There was a really cute woman there (who I assumed was with someone) and I found out later that that she liked what I shared... She asked her friend to keep inviting me to things (at that time there were lots of gatherings so people could get through the tough time. Anyway, I got up some courage to ask her out and we've been together ever since (and have a 10-yr old some now) :)later that
ngmfvk ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:38:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
199 blinded that day, officially. Many others lost just one eye, likely removed without anesthetic as the hospitals quickly ran out of it.
[deleted] ยท 76 points ยท Posted at 21:10:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Largest non-nuclear, man-made explosions.
Halifax explosion: 2.9 kt (kilotons of TNT)
Texas City disaster: 2.7 - 3.2 kt (estimates vary)
Heligoland Explosion: 3.2 kt
Minor Scale: 4.2 kt
N1 rocket explosion: 7 kt
There were more large ones but they are all smaller than Halifax & Texas explosions.
TheCamelSlayer ยท 22 points ยท Posted at 21:53:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think they ment largest explosion before the invention of the nuke, at least that's what it says on the wiki.
djn808 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 22:25:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
At the time, it was the largest manmade explosion ever.
MrMetalfreak94 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:18:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
According to the German Wikipedia the Heligoland Explosion had 6.7 kt and was the largest manmade non-nuclear explosion, while the English wikipedia only lists it as 3.2 kt, so I'm not sure whom to trust
PCCP82 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:43:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
i wonder where the explosion of the HMS Hood ranks up there...
AfterThisNextOne ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:54:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thank you for posting this! I hate seeing ignorant wannabe know-it-all's spreading false information to thousands of people without performing so much as a Google search to verify. Fucking fools: seriously, deeply, strongly, pisses me off.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:40:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What about the one in China last year?
Vid-Master ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:59:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
How about that recent factory fire / explosion in China?
Noodleholz ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 23:10:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Relatively small with 21 tons of TNT equivalent.
zondwich ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 22:27:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Talk about a baby boom.
Vylan24 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:44:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Those damn Boomers
Thenandonlythen ยท 38 points ยท Posted at 20:30:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Huh. TIL, thanks. That makes me wonder if the saying "scared the b'jesus out of me" is short for "scared the baby jesus out of me" and is a reference to this incident, or an incident like this where something crazy literally scared the babies out of lots of women.
MichyMc ยท 52 points ยท Posted at 20:57:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I looked into a little bit and unfortunately that doesn't seem to be the case. Bejesus or bejeezus are alterations of the oath "by Jesus", a phrase primarily used for placing emphasis. So when someone would say "That scared the 'by Jesus' out of me" it's like saying "That scared the crap out of me" but instead of being so scared you pooped you were so scared that you invoked the oath.
physalisx ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 23:09:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"that scared the 'wtf' out of me"
Matti_Matti_Matti ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 03:49:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
/r/theydidtheetymology
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:53:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not to mention there was a huge blizzard the next day dumping 41 cms of snow on Halifax. My great grandmother survived it and I got to talk to her about it when I was 10, interesting to hear how far away from the blast it was and how bad it still was. She said her ears were bleeding, from the blast and that she lost relatives who were closer to the harbour
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:17:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My grandmother was a survivor. She and her family all lived but they were homeless for quite a while, and lost many friends. It was like the end of the world, for the people living there.
Mr_Abe_Froman ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:52:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It is still the largest accidental explosion.
Basterdsugar ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:59:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Interesting thing also, is that most of the deaths were not because of the giant explosion, but from the tidal wave that was caused by it. Lots of people were in the harbor looking at the ships.
ngmfvk ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:51:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I just finished a book about the explosion today (The Town That Died) and while the author mentions ships being hit by the wave, I think it is quite inaccurate to say that most of the deaths were caused by the wave. It sounds like the ones who weren't incinerated by the initial blast either bled to death, were crushed under homes and factories, or died in the fire that ingulfed the city that afternoon from all the scattered coal stoves. Many drowned, no doubt. Also, many died on pnemonia as tempertures plunged and could not find shelter. As a side note, looters were shot and nailed to posts.
Of the 40+men on board the Mont Blanc, only one died, and on shore. The captain and pilot were both tried for manslaughter and escaped punishment.
I recently lived close to a mass grave in the west end of Halifax were unidentified victims were buried.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:55:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Actually, the Helgoland explosion, the N1 rocket explosion, Minor Scale, and Misty Picture were larger explosions.
rjbreitenfeldt ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:54:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He didn't say that they weren't larger explosions... he just didn't list it from largest to smallest.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:07:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He claimed it was the largest non nuclear explosion. Which it was not.
rjbreitenfeldt ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:03:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ahh, my apologies. For some reason when I was reading this earlier I thought you were replying to a different comment.
JournalofFailure ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:46:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm a lawyer in Halifax. The family court is in an old school which was rebuilt after the explosion.
blubblu ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:37:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You're a lawyer in Halifax... how was Imo not held accountable?
After all was said and done even the pilot of the French ship asked for a guide and Imo was on the wrong side of the channel, going way too fast. This has actually bothered me for years that both parties were held equally accountable when it at least seems clear that the Imo was at a larger fault.
Essentially, at least the French tried.
apollo_road ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:00:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So... boomer babies?
persianjude ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:02:28 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I was actually part of a youth choir that sang a song that was about that explosion
ShakeTheDust143 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:59:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I mean the pregnant women were afraid; I think it was Hobbes who was born early because his mother heard the Spanish Armada was attacking England and she shit herself and Hobbes out.
long_term_catbus ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:04:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes. One of the ships was carrying explosives but failed to display the necessary red flags that would have let people know.
FatGreasyPackersFan ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:41:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"If I recall correctly, having just read the Wikipedia link, it was the largest explosion in the history of the world that was not caused by a nuke."
douchecanoe42069 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:00:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
that's just death balancing his books, i'm sure.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:20:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's not the largest, but it's certainly one of the largest.
WideFoot ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:17:02 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It was the largest at the time, but has since been relegated to 4th. The current largest non nuclear, man-made explosion was the destruction of the N1 rocket, which was the USSR's failed attempt to send men the moon.
Stef100111 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:46:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No, the N1 Rocket incident was the largest explosion that wasn't caused by a nuclear bomb.
mnh1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:01:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also, changes in air pressure can cause women to go into labor. It's why you aren't supposed to fly on airplanes in the third trimester and so many babies are born after storms.
Splinter_Fritz ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:22:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I like that last bit of information. In context its really awful but its pretty funny to think about 100 plus women going into labor all at the same time.
CAPSLOCKMASTER ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:52:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It actually is about the 4th largest non-nuclear explosion, the largest being the explosion of the N1 rocket, Russia's moon rocket.
WeGetItYouBlaze ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 03:26:01 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Can confirm. My Great Grandfather was born after the explosion.
future-EN949-zap ยท 896 points ยท Posted at 20:26:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
For a wee bit of context: the Halifax Explosion was the largest non-nuclear man made explosion in the history of the planet.
This explosion was the equivalent of 2.9 kilotonnes of TNT. It created an 18 meter tsunami.
The forward guns of one of the ships got hurtled 5.6 kilometers in the blast.
Thousands died and much of the surrounding communities were destroyed.
Here's a quite well done Canadian commercial spot about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5tU1CrXY-E
ZeiglerJaguar ยท 28 points ยท Posted at 21:36:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
2,000 people died and I had never heard about it until today.
I feel bad. :-/
prophetofgreed ยท 54 points ยท Posted at 21:51:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Another fun fact, because Boston helped so much with providing relief after the explosion Nova Scotia (which Halifax is the capital of) provides a large Christmas tree to Boston every year as a show of thanks.
SevanEars ยท 36 points ยท Posted at 00:30:01 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not just a Christmas tree, but THE Christmas tree. Boston uses the one from NS as the offical city Christmas Tree and put it up right in the middle of Boston Common, which is pretty much the heart of the city.
Warspite0 ยท 32 points ยท Posted at 23:04:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sadly, because of the spectacle of ships burning in the harbour many people were watching through their windows. When the explosion happened, the buildings that didn't outright collapse all had their windows blown out. There was an enormous number of people blinded by flying glass as they watched. The people that cared for all of these blinded people later were the nucleus of the Canadian National Institute for the Blind.
[deleted] ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 00:21:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
To be fair, it happened in 1917, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. As someone born in and living in Halifax, just the fact that this is second answer to me is amazing enough as it is. No need to feel bad about it.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:46:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fellow Haligonian.
Should be the top answer, absolutely.
drunk-astronaut ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:34:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You better sit down. I've got some bad new for you. Most of the people have every lived... are dead. :(
wibbitywobbitywoo ยท 82 points ยท Posted at 20:51:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So glad someone posted the Heritage Moment. Put it at the top of your post, people should see it!
[deleted] ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 22:48:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I miss these. :(
Glandrid ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 00:34:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Doctor, I smell burnt toast.
PM_ME_YOUR_SYNTHS ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:09:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I miss these too they we're great and I loved them when i was a kid. I remember back then I only watched cartoons and movies with "real persons" freaked me out, but these we're always entertaining while being informative.
Protahgonist ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 00:46:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Now... the people... will know we were here.
Lothrazar ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 07:40:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Probably seen that dozens of times, growing up in the 90s. Glad people are learning about it.
thetechgeek4 ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 23:01:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I though it was the Soviet moon rocket N-1 at 7 kilotons of TNT
the_dayking ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 03:57:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What happened with that N-1 was closer to deflagration than an explosion.
This is because the pressure wave created by the burning fuels was traveling at sub-sonic speeds, explosions (in technical terms) produce super-sonic pressure waves. That is the distinction between the terms explosion and deflagration.
To give an example, gunpowder "explosions" are considered deflagration and TNT would be considered an explosion.
485075 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:28:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It is, but as the wiki said it isn't really considered an explosion because the fuels were unmixed at the time, so while the total energy released was really high, it was released at a slower rate, making more like a really violent fire that explodes at times.
Go_Habs_Go31 ยท 38 points ยท Posted at 20:46:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I hope one day there will be a Canadian Heritage Minute commercial about Drake murdering Meek Mill's career.
The_New_Flesh ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 21:33:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jimmy from Degrassi is more relevant than drake
Peach_Senpai ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:38:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sean Cameron was the real killa though.
LeCanada ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:53:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
When those Lakehurst thugs killed JT though... We need a commercial from Concerned Children's Advertisers to highlight teen violence.
MozeeToby ยท 18 points ยท Posted at 21:00:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Largest man-made non nuclear explosion. The Tunguska event was 4 orders of magnitude larger for instance. Many volcano eruptions were similarly large.
Anosognosia ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 23:09:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Volcanos are man-made, don't let the illuminati fool you, sheeple!
Low_discrepancy ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 00:26:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_artificial_non-nuclear_explosions
Actually the N1 rocket explosion was larger. I'm confused now.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:18:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Good distinction!
jim5cents ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:28:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
2.9 kilotonnes is roughly 1/5 the yield of the hiroshima bomb
ardarvin ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:20:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
*4th largest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_artificial_non-nuclear_explosions
djn808 ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 22:29:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
largest at the time
dandaman0345 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:31:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I feel that isn't what the person he was responding to meant.
harumphfrog ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:50:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"Was" or "is"? Has something surpassed it?
A_Wizzerd ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 22:29:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It happened in 1917, 98 years in the past tense.
harumphfrog ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:54:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm not criticizing the grammar. It was a real question, though I guess I could have looked it up myself.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:18:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
chumkinson ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 00:03:01 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
According to Wikipedia the tianjin explosion was equivalent to 21 tonnes of TNT. The Halifax explosion was 2900 tonnes.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:15:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
accountnumberseven ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:26:29 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, the power and scale of nuclear and comparable non-nuclear weapons is something most human beings cannot properly comprehend. A shot of a test detonation in the desert or a CG blast does not do it justice. People would not speak so lightly of potentially nuking enemy countries if they had experienced the force of such a catastrophe themselves.
dickseverywhere444 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 01:22:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Damn, that one clip you see the shock wave blow their fence apart right in front of them just before it cuts out. Crazy.
Nihht ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:48:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Yeah, that clip is terrible. You see the fence tear apart in front of them. I believe the story is that they were recording using an app or something that streams until you let go of the screen, seems like a few of the other ones were doing something similar.
EDIT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryKyRJDGAoI second clip here is the best footage imo. Gets both explosions; I think most of the clips in the one you linked only had the first.
Twitchy_throttle ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:48:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Another one is waiting to happen in the mouth of the Thames. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Richard_Montgomery
solidsnake885 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:17:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think the Soviet moon rocket explosion was bigger.
AfterThisNextOne ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:51:01 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not even close to the largest non-nuclear explosion. The actual largest was 7 kilotons of the N1 Soviet rocket accidental explosion. You should research before spreading false information. Here's the link
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_artificial_non-nuclear_explosions#Rank_order_of_largest_conventional_explosions.2Fdetonations_by_magnitude
CommonModeReject ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:10:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
At the time it was the largest. However it's since been surpassed by a few, really big explosions. The Soviet N1 was the largest man made non nuclear explosion.
-DisobedientAvocado- ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:37:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A farmers shed was crushed by the anchor some few kilometres away.
mikehockerts1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:05:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As an American, I have no idea how big those measurements are but from context, it sounds huge.
Nothomenothappy ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:16:01 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That gave me the chills.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:24:22 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This commercial was a big part of my childhood as a Canadian kid
Mollywobbles225 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 08:34:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So, this is what Heritage Minutes are? Little commercials that re-enact Canadian history?
I've always seen the Cards Against Humanity card and wondered what the hell Heritage Minutes were. Even asked a bunch of Canadian friends I play online with regularly. None of them knew.
Chandleabra ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 08:48:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Second largest now I think. A Russian rocket exploded at Baikonur with twice the power of the Halifax explosion.
offensivegrandma ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:07:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Heritage minutes were the shit!
GotMoFans ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:34:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Those nutty Canucks, doing an educational PSA about a deadly tragedy with the light comedic tone of an SCTV sketch.
CatsOnTheKeyboard ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 14:04:12 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, the presentation was a little strange for me, too.
Quality_Bullshit ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:23:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Actually, this is not quite true. The Halifax explosion was the biggest man-made non-nuclear explosion at the time it happened. But since then, there have been 3 bigger explosions.
rokkerboyy ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:29:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I thought the N-1 rocket had it beat by a little bit.
[deleted] ยท 224 points ยท Posted at 20:22:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Spoken like a true maritimer!
animus_hacker ยท 59 points ยท Posted at 21:37:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"What're you sayin', bud? I don't mind tellin' ya, ya better lay on the brake and give 'er. Ship afire in the harbor headed for Pier 6, and boy is she ever fuckin' loaded with enough explosive to blow yer fuckin' tits off. In fairness, I guess this is my last message. Good-bye boys."
[deleted] ยท 15 points ยท Posted at 23:21:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"...b'ys." FTFY
silian ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 05:12:15 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nah that's newfies, we say the full boys.
NJ-Copes ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:25:16 on January 19, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As a Nova Scotian who has lived in Newfoundland for eight years, I don't even know what I speak any more.
FlacidRooster ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:21:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nah, we say bi
FlacidRooster ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:21:06 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Bi.
FTFY
CBlackrose ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 00:35:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Am from Halifax, this is legit.
Jon_Cake ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 00:21:58 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
But he didn't mention where they (the ships) were to
CBlackrose ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 00:35:27 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's Newfie, we know of the phrase in Nova Scotia but I've never heard anybody actually use it.
Jon_Cake ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:42:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I swear I heard a Nova Scotian use it once but I could be misremembering
CBlackrose ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:50:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There are a lot of Newfies here as well, so it's entirely possible that it slipped into somebodies parlance. One of my best friend's family is from Newfoundland, so he tends to use a lot of those terms, but yeah, usually I find that there's some sort of connection with that rock if I hear those idioms.
Maxamusicus ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:49:00 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That sounds more like a hockey player than a sailor.
blankachiever ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 06:24:49 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Maritime English is my absolute favorite dialect
Belazriel ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:33:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There are quite a few of these last word messages that show grace under fire, although I'm sure some are apocryphal. I especially like "I am just going outside and may be some time", "More weight.", and I think there were a few of soldiers calling fire down on their own position.
todayok ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 10:49:52 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"Spoken like a true maritimer" would be: Boys, I'm going to stay because I'm a week short of getting full unemployment insurance benefits.
[deleted] ยท -5 points ยท Posted at 00:13:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:21:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
CBlackrose ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 00:47:02 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I've always heard Maritimer living here in the Maritimes, so I dunno.
[deleted] ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 01:48:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's only a matter of time until Quebec reaches west and you become Onthรฉriault.
woodlandLSG23 ยท 138 points ยท Posted at 20:13:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Can confirm: been to Halifax. He's still a local hero.
chanlonxp1 ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 23:36:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
... Live in Halifax... We don't really think about him very often. But I'll dedicate this propeller ipa to him
power410 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:38:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Proper, even though I hate propeller I'll down one for him.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:48:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Born in raised in Halifax. Can't remember his name.
woodlandLSG23 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:55:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I went to lots of museums so I guess I heard lots about the event there.
FrankinComesAlive ยท 26 points ยท Posted at 20:30:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As a Haligonian I do not mean to downplay his legacy, but he's got a whole Heritage minute dedicated to him. He's at least somewhat appreciated.
CatsOnTheKeyboard ยท 26 points ยท Posted at 20:35:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, as another discussion went the other day, Reddit is pretty U.S.-centric. I figured it wouldn't hurt to make a few more people aware of that incident.
FrankinComesAlive ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 20:40:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's a fair point. Plus I can't really complain, it's important to learn about Halifax
cpcwrites ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 21:38:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thanks! I'm writing a novel set in Halifax and this information will be very helpful.
chanlonxp1 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 23:41:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I was hoping it would be the picnicface video
DaeneryAssTitsgaryen ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:55:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Halifornia up in the heezy. fist bump
SirSupernova ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 05:33:28 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In addition, every public playing of Shaggy's "Mr. Boombastic" is followed by a moment of silence.
andor_drakon ยท 25 points ยท Posted at 21:36:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Interesting fact: Boston was one of the first cities to help Halifax after the explosion so in recognition Nova Scotia gives their best Christmas tree to Boston to display downtown. It's a tradition thats still carried on 100 years after.
vancyon ยท 17 points ยท Posted at 22:26:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I was lucky enough to see the tree en route to Boston last year! I was stunned that I just happened to cross paths with it. I wish I had been able to get better pictures. http://imgur.com/a/Am8Nk
fptp01 ยท 54 points ยท Posted at 20:26:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He's a Canadian hero, anyone who grew up in Canada has heard of this guy.
zdeno721 ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 20:34:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I remember seeing him on those heritage ads they used to run on TV!
[deleted] ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 21:53:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
Autumnalgrooves ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:35:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They still air those? Holy shit
thejazz97 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:58:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Maybe Eastern Canada. I've lived in BC, AB, SK. Never heard of the guy.
fptp01 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:11:05 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I grew up in BC. Heard about him a lot.
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 00:11:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Born and raised in Canada, and still live here. This is the first time I have ever heard of this.
fptp01 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:17:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's weird
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 00:31:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not really, he's just not as famous as you thought he was. FTR I'm on the west coast of Canada, so maybe he's just an eastern Canadian hero.
fptp01 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:53:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm from Vancouver heard about him a lot growing up.
dickseverywhere444 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:24:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm from San Diego, and I've heard of him before.
silian ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 05:14:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
How old are you? There's a Canadian Heritage moment that ran on TV all the time years ago.
HumanTrafficCone ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:27:56 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm 30 and never heard of this dude. From out west though.
gmos905 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:44:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ontario checking in. Have never heard of this man before today.
RidersGuide ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 21:58:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Live in Halifax. There are a ton of memorials and alot of them are giant pieces of the ships that landed in different parts of the city. It's crazy to look at actual pieces of debris that flew thousands of metres through the air. Interesting stuff.
trua ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 20:57:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Completely coincidentally, on December 6th 1917, Finland declared independence.
bonez899 ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 21:23:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
C'mon we all know Finland isn't real.
UnJayanAndalou ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 22:06:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Damn.
CatsOnTheKeyboard ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:38:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Seriously. That grabs me by the throat every time.
solicitorpenguin ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:33:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The was a National Heritage Moment dedicated to this guy. I'd say he was appreciated
miyagidan ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 22:12:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
https://youtu.be/y5tU1CrXY-E
Come on Vince, come on!
Kyle-Cat ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:09:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I wrote a report about the Halifax explosion in 6th grade and I remember thinking that guy was like the coolest person ever
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:45:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I can imagine him smoking his last cigarette as he watches the ship heading towards him.
chanlonxp1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:43:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
... The ship didn't hit him... Two shots collided, one caught fire and they blew up. He was the telegraph dispatcher on land
High_Tower ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:45:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Here's the classic Heritage Minute that always pops to mind whenever I see Coleman brought up.
CatsOnTheKeyboard ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:59:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thanks. I hadn't seen that one but I did see a locally-made documentary about the incident many years ago.
Anth0nymm ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:24:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I grew up watching the Heritage Moments commercial of Vince Coleman. He went out a true hero.
CatsOnTheKeyboard ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:31:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's just something about his story that grabs me. His instincts had to be screaming at him to get the hell out of there but he was able to stay on the job and do what needed to be done.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:22:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I like to think that if I was in the same situation, I'd be able to do the same thing, sacrificing myself so that others could live. But I guess we never know until we're tested, judging by incidents where others didn't stick around. (Not that I am saying that they're bad people or anything - again, we do not know what we're going to do until something like that happens to us.) It's one of those questions you always wonder about and hope never to answer.
Not_A_Skeleton ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:03:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If you visit the maritime museum in Halifax there is a whole section dedicated to the explosion including an exhibit about Coleman. There is even a clock which was found in the aftermath that has it hands fused into the face from the blast and the exact time it happened. Very haunting.
Source: Lived in Halifax for years
TrickyTrivium ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:25:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And one of the faces of the clock at City Hall is always set to that time!
insanetwit ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:13:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Every Canadian should know this... it was A Part of our Heritage after all!
WhuddaWhat ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:36:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Still my favorite Vince Coleman. Though now there are two on the list of awesome folks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vince_Coleman
RedSerious ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:52:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Reminds me of Jesรบs Garcรญa, know as the Hero of Nacozari.
He saved a town from a devastating explosion after the explosives his train was carrying catched fire.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jes%C3%BAs_Garc%C3%ADa
15Tango20 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:57:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
This story is well known in Boston, it was because of his message that surrounding cities were able to send help so quickly.
There is an interesting TIL regarding the history of the Christmas tree in Boston Common, it's shipped down from Halifax every year as a gift for our help.
Edit: inserted the link
CatsOnTheKeyboard ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:03:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Strangely, I'm from Massachusetts and my grandparents came down from Nova Scotia but I don't think I ever heard this story until long after I moved to Florida.
gaudygaudygumdrop ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:59:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Great, you just made me cry in an airport.
alienwraith ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:07:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
that final message is bringing tears to my eyes.. did not expect
femalenerdish ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:10:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Maybe it's just because I've had a stressful week.... But, dang, that gave me goosebumps.
sh2003 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:19:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A heritage moment on reddit? Goddamn I wasn't expecting this today.
SimpleFNG ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:42:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Need more recognition. True hero.
Strojac ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:46:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"Good-bye boys" is a hell of a way to go
Secret_Jedi ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:11:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Learned about this in a Heritage Minute.
cirrusflight ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:20:27 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
From Halifax. You can hear the 'harbour hopper' boat/bus tour go by daily explaining him and the events
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:21:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
got chills reading this
kurtis1 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:21:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Everyone in Canada knows who he is from the heritage commercials that where always on TV! "c'mon acknowledge!.... Acknowledge!!"
garlicroastedpotato ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:39:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They made an entire commercial after him in Canada. I think he's very appreciated. I think there's even a museum featuring him in Halifax.
glassisnotglass ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:42:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's interesting in that understanding this requires realizing that this was 100 years ago, when you couldn't just send one message, "Hey everybody, the harbor is about the explode!", and leave / have it be passed on. You needed somebody physically on site to communicate to each given new incoming train that something was up.
It took me like 3 reads to even figure out what was going on.
truetea55 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:51:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
His tv heritage moment is legendary, people here in Halifax quote it all the time
SchalkeSpringer ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:04:05 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That Heritage Minute made me cry as a little kid.
...acknowledge....acknowledge....
lannyd28 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:06:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As someone born and raised in Halifax, I have fond memories of watching this video multiple times in elementary school, recognizing Vince Coleman. He was something of a hero to our little class.
Imablargmachine ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:14:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
his last message made me cry... :(
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:21:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
ahh yes the old herritage moments on cbc made me alwaya remember that man. Makes me proud to be nova scotian
Buwaro ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:36:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I am a big-time railroad history nerd and actually know the story of Patrick Vincent Coleman. My dad worked at a railroad museum when I was younger. They had a display talking about the wreck and Mr. Coleman.
visualisewhirledpeas ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:43:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My grandfather was a baby during the explosion. His mother was down the street visiting a neighbour and he was left alone in his crib. When his mom came back to the house, every window was blown out, but he was alive, albeit covered in glass.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:23:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Did he have any kids?
CatsOnTheKeyboard ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:28:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wikipedia says he had a wife but nothing about kids.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:30:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thanks. I'm wondering if that last part was addressed to them.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:04:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:20:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He had a wife. Wikipedia doesn't say if he had kids. I feel like the last part was meant for them, if they existed.
Jerlko ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:44:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A Heritage Moment.
JudiciousF ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:09:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Holy shit, I just read the transcription of what happened in the Halifax Explosion, and the guy who was piloting the Imo was a fucking cunt. I hope people in Halifax gather annually to shit on his grave.
zacketysack ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:10:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's really too bad.
dutchessofdutchovens ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:12:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
acknowledge... ACKNOWLEDGE
NSA_Chatbot ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:21:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The official story is they don't know why he went back to the telegraph station.
My guess is that he saw the crowds and realized he wasn't going anywhere but up, so he might as well make his exit a heroic one.
Suqleg ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:36:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yea he is fairly well known in Canada perhaps not by name though. Growing up the CBC would air little historical snippets at the ends of shows and his story was a common one.
explodingbarrels ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:17:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Heritage moments!!
UsernameWritersBlock ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:23:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Plural, as in spread all over the place?
Autumnalgrooves ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:33:33 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I've lived in the HRM all of my life but I can't think of a whole lot of places or events where the man's name gets so much as a whisper aside from one of those weird Canadian heritage minute shorts from the late 90s/early 00s that showed what he did. Frankly that's the only reason I ever learned he existed. Was never taught about him in school, nor what he did or how it impacted the whole event.
Kind of a shame really
needthesebasketsback ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:28:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Someone call for heritage minutes?
CherryCherry5 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:56:05 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
https://www.historicacanada.ca/content/heritage-minutes/halifax-explosion?
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:57:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He's rather popular in Canada all around. :)
bungopony ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:04:56 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Heritage Moment!
cenatutu ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:02:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So weird. I just saw the Canada history commercial about this. Such a horrible accident. I had never heard about it until tonight. Now twice.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:43:52 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
These fucking acceptance speech edits
FlacidRooster ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:19:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
From CB, never heard of him.
gkiltz ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 12:57:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Having dated a Canadian, We once compared our High School curricula.
Mine in the Virginia suburbs of DC. Hers in the area between the city and the Burbs kinda in Toronto. Both in the mid 1970s I graduated in 1977 she in 1979.
Talk about the similarities being different!
hjschrader09 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:44:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Maybe if he ducked he would've made it.
KnightOfWords ยท 1467 points ยท Posted at 14:24:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Clair Cameron Patterson. Campaigned against lead poisoning and played a leading role in getting it banned as a petrol additive. There is no safe dose for lead. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clair_Cameron_Patterson#Campaign_against_lead_poisoning
youngid ยท 105 points ยท Posted at 20:37:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He was also the first to determine the modern accepted figure of 4.55 billion years for the age of the earth.
Dafuzz ยท 140 points ยท Posted at 23:55:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Cosmos had an episode highlighting it, he basically discovered how badly we were fucking up with lead accidentally while trying to figure out how old the world is. Couldn't get accurate samples cause there was lead fucking everywhere.
One of my favorite theories is that the spike in crime starting in the 1900's and continued until the mid-80's/90's was caused by lead poisoning. It leads to some antisocial, aggressive tendencies, and we were full of the stuff for years, a heavy-metal that the body has little means to naturally remove. Of course I've also seen this decline attributed to the legalisation of abortion after Roe v Wade, probably hard to say for certain.
marsepic ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 00:13:00 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Someone linked it further down, but I think the lead is the more popular idea. Popular is not the right word, I guess, but you know what I mean.
tavtab ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 12:36:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Most countries have a similar peak in crime around twenty years after peak use of lead (generally corresponding to 70s / 90s, I think). Roe vs Wade is only a factor in one of those countries.
I think the hypothesis is quite specific to violent / impulsive crime, with little evidence that it affects other types of crime.
This article seems a reasonable summary of the idea http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline
Lyle91 ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 01:50:49 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Chances are it was a confluence of changes that led to our currently decreasing crime rates. Lead and abortion being two huge ones.
SerSkywell ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 04:48:29 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Off topic, but where did you hear the Roe v Wade theory? I've always heard policing etc. but Roe v Wade seems better.
Dafuzz ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 05:20:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalized_abortion_and_crime_effect
If you're asking where I personally heard it from the first time, I'm afraid to say I can't remember.
ManLeader ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 09:38:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Freakonomics?
whatsausername90 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 04:47:01 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Or maybe crimes started being more reported or better recorded around 1900
shieldvexor ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 06:48:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Unlikely. Murder is a hard crime to underreport. Certainly it happens, but it's uncommon
whatsausername90 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 07:39:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
But it might've been less common to keep organized records on it before 1900. Especially in less populated areas, if someone was found guilty of murder, you find them, hang them, done. No need to write it down.
borkmeister ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:33:11 on January 20, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I suspect you are giving insufficient credit to local administrative record keeping in the 19th century US. Any place with few enough people to have this level of anarchy would have too few people to affect national crime statistics.
shieldvexor ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 07:44:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fair point
time-lord ยท 356 points ยท Posted at 21:19:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Flint Mayor Dayne Walling would disagree.
i_am_the_ginger ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 14:35:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's not Dayne Walling that's to blame, Michigan has the very controversial "emergency manager" system. When it's determined that a town, city, or government department to be in an out of control bad situation (by a state review board), he/she can singlehandedly appoint an emergency manager who's power and authority trumps that of all local elected officials. Dayne Walling won his seat as Mayor on November 8, 2011. On November 14, 2011 Governor Rick Snyder accepted the review board's opinion on Flint and appointed an Emergency Manager. Dayne Walling had no actual power or control over pretty much anything that happened in Flint since his 6th day in office. When the City Council wanted to save money, they voted to switch from buying Detroit water to getting their water from a new pipeline that also pulled from Lake Huron, so also lake water that would not have required additional treatment to protect them. The emergency manager made the decision to use Flint River water as the intermediate source while they made the switch away from Detroit water and got the city hooked up to the other pipeline without treating the pipes first. It was known and told to the manager that treatment would be needed and that it was not safe to make the switch without preparations, but the manager decided to do so anyway, made the switch, and then promptly sold off the pipeline from Detroit so they didn't have the option to switch back. Then they told everyone it was safe. The people to blame for this are Rick Snyder and the two people who were emergency manager of Flint during this time period, Darnell Earley and Michael Brown, the people who made the decisions.
joeh4384 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:47:04 on February 11, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It would have been fine if they treated the flint river water for corrosion.
goonerzach12 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:07:53 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just curious... everyone is blasting Governor Snyder, without saying anything about Walling and the City government....
You sound decently knowledgeable about this... so much blame is on Snyder and how much is on the local government?
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:26:56 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
toastfacegrilla ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 04:00:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
it does not
CaptainMudwhistle ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 04:14:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Are you not campaigning against the effort to stop removing lead?
toastfacegrilla ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 04:51:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It isn't unlikely that I wouldn't be against something regardless of how many negatives I use in a sentence.
xFoundryRatx ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:30:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Don't worry, I get it.
xFoundryRatx ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:30:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Don't worry, I get it.
deceptivelyelevated ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:41:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Found Michael Moore's reddit account
Crackers1097 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 04:13:27 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I got the DFA mail from him too.
grendel-khan ยท 21 points ยท Posted at 20:46:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Especially important since lead was likely at least in part behind the crime wave of the 80s and 90s. (Have some sad stories about lead poisoning as well.)
ThrivesOnDownvotes ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:56:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thanks for linking the Washington Post article. I work in an industry that deals heavily with old lead based paint. Here's a link for those interested in learning more about lead in the home.
muddy700s ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:15:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thanks for the WP article although it does much to legitimize my violent thoughts. Or maybe I have lead poisoning.
droans ยท 15 points ยท Posted at 22:31:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
For those wondering why there is no safe dose, it is because lead bioaccumulates, which means that your body cannot get rid of it so it just builds up more and more.
DaveDegas ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 22:13:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I found out about Patterson from watching a Cosmos episode, called The Clean Room. Netflix has this series streaming.
[deleted] ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 23:17:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A weird side-note to this is that the same guy who developed lead additives to gasoline also developed CFC's. Thomas Midgley Jr
wvboltslinger40k ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:31:35 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Evil genius
John-1973 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:51:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Some poetic justice is the fact that he himself was among the many people that got their lives cut short by one of his inventions!
Whoritiquisha ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 22:02:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Unintended pun I'm lead to believe?
[deleted] ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 20:29:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
She would be ashamed by Rick Snyder poisoning kids in Flint, as we all should be.
buckeyemaniac ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 21:05:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
*he
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 21:08:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Damn male Clairs!
Lostmygooch ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 21:19:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It may just be internet folklore , but I read somewhere recently that it's thought there has been an exponential drop in violent crime and cases of serial killing over the time since lead was taken out of the fuel.
[deleted] ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 23:06:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's over such a long period where so many other things happened it's basically impossible to prove causation, though there has been a drop in violent crime and it may have been caused by that, but there are just a billion other factors that could be involved.
Addpoke ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:07:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm really wish I knew why such a reasonable comment gets downvoted.
FredrikOedling ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 01:24:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
People like simple answers. Sceptical thinking is often frowned upon for some reason.
jrm2007 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:53:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
of course, many objected to the tetra ethyl lead's introduction in the 1920s. how it went on for so long...
John-1973 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 01:06:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The decision makers in the petrochemical industry at that time knew very well that lead would cause health issues, and it was also known there was a perfectly safe alternative for improving the knock resistance by adding 30% alcohol. But that would result in having to accept revenue losses per volume sold, so they went with the lead based additive anyway.
jrm2007 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:52:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And I wonder how you determine the true cost to society of an average of 5 IQ point loss to everyone in the world?
DeleteMyOldAccount ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:35:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Isn't there a really good animated video about this?
[deleted] ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 22:57:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He's featured in animation in an episode of Cosmos with Neil Degrasse Tyson. It's on netflix for anyone who hasn't yet checked that excellent series out.
Amlethoe ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 08:31:23 on February 25, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I see what you did there.
Funocity ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:59:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
According to the state of California, there is a Safe Harbor Level for lead under the Proposition65 regulation.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:58:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So happy to see him mentioned somewhere, even if it's basically in a thread about people not mentioned enough. The guy is a true hero.
Tfsr92 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:12:33 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dude yes. The Cosmos shed light on this and brought it to my attention. I feel like everyone should have a picture of this guy hanging up in their room.
TheSliceman ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:14:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug scoffs at the insignificance of Clair Cameron Patterson.
OverlordQuasar ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:17:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He got his own episode of the newer version of Cosmos, the one hosted by Neil DeGrasse Tyson.
ryfleman1992 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:15:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wish he would have got it out of solder, probably wouldn't be so neurotic if I didn't chew solder from ages 9-12...
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:25:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It drives me insane when people say "the dose makes the poison". That's old-school toxicology and it doesn't apply anymore, like 85% of the time. Now that we have slightly more inkling of endocrinology and epigenetics it's pretty obvious that few environmental toxins have any dose that isn't poison. The saying only applies to simple venoms or nerve gasses and other shit that only adds up to a tiny corner of all "poison". If it's completely reversible and there's a dose that won't do anything at all then yeah, the does makes the poison. Otherwise, wrong.
Of course the phrase very well could have originally meant "how much you get determines just how poisoned you are", which would probably be true of every possible poison, but that's not how non-experts on the internet use the phrase today.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:34:35 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I went to high school with one of his granddaughters, which is the only reason I know who he is. Really cool stuff.
Levelis ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:40:49 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
except in airplane fuel
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:16:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Heard about him on Drunk History I think. Cool guy.
Sir_Brosephmann ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:05:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"Leading role"...Let the pun sink in.
LaddieMcBaddie ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:23:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That dude was awesome. Some textbooks still refer to him as a female.
MrGoodGlow ยท 2904 points ยท Posted at 17:37:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Larry Tesler
The guy invented cut/copy paste. How many billions of hours have been saved thanks to him?
[deleted] ยท 1769 points ยท Posted at 19:31:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Tesla of New England
pseudocinema ยท 62 points ยท Posted at 22:47:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This joke is NOT being appreciated enough.
Acemcbean ยท 21 points ยท Posted at 23:08:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A stranger's gold says otherwise ;)
[deleted] ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 00:26:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thanks to whoever that was, btw!
Oh it was him, thank you /u/pseudocinema!
FlerPlay ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 23:49:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I wish I got it
[deleted] ยท 26 points ยท Posted at 01:37:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The true Boston/New England accent actually ADDS an "ER" to a lot of words. It's not just about dropping your Rs (e.g. "hah-vahd" for "Harvard"), which is usually less pronounced than in the movies/tv anyway. So a true New England accent and not the shit Matt Damon peddles in his films would pronounce "Tesla" as "Tesler".
Larry Tesler. See ya next Tuesdee.
guethlema ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 02:51:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Maine her, can confirm. My uncle married a Donna and had a dog Donner when he met her. Holy shit was that brutal.
[deleted] ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 04:45:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Same, pizzer and soder is a good suppah, guy.
RVA_101 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 02:00:06 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yep. Just like Brender and Eddie.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:00:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My all time favorite Billy Joel song! I like you!
silverslayer33 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 04:21:02 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
From New England, have almost never heard someone adding -er to words while I heard -r becoming -ah all the time and catch myself doing it a lot. I think it's more on how we pronounce the -a as a longer -a that it kind of maybe sounds like -er but I'm not buying that people should actually be mistaking it for -er.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 04:58:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm from eastern Massachusetts born and raised, and my entire Mom's side of the family back to my great grandmother were born, raised, and mostly still live in Somerville. The -er sound is precisely how they articulate it.
I'm talking hard -er. Like saying "sod-er" instead of soda (in the rare instances where they don't call it "tonic").
silverslayer33 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:10:01 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Damn. I feel like that's something that's more confined to Boston and its suburbs along with a little bit of the surrounding area, and probably less common among younger people. I met a lot of people from all over New England as I did FIRST robotics in high school and attended a lot of district-wide competitions and while dropping the -r is very widespread, the -a to -er is something that I've never really picked up on. It might be something that's died out for a lot of younger New Englanders recently, which might explain why I've never heard it even having talked with a lot of people from throughout the New England region.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:35:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Interesting - could definitely be possible. What part of NE are you from. Just personal curiosity, always like meeting another new englander! I also spent a couple years in southern Connecticut.
silverslayer33 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:50:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
South-central NH, in a kinda-rural town. We've got a lot of families from eastern MA compared to surrounding towns, so we get the New England accent more than other rural towns do. It's nowhere near as severe as someone from Boston, but we still do a lot of -r dropping, saying Marry-Merry-Mary the same, horse-hoarse the same, cot-caught the same, and probably a few other things that I haven't really noticed (maybe saying room differently, I haven't determined if that's common for the rest of New England. My friends and I have been called out on that from people outside of New England. It's one of the parts of our accent that we didn't realize was different until we got called out on it).
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:10:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Very cool. I LOVE New Hampshire. I have lots of fond memories of driving up to Salem to drink bottomless coffee and smoke cigarettes inside as a broke-ass 18 year old. That was a Sunday night tradition for me and my friends for a while. I also had a really good friend in New Boston, NH (my grandpa also did a very short stint in Goffstown) who I loved to go visit because it was so pretty out there.
silverslayer33 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:30:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I live very close to New Boston, went there to play sports a lot when I was in elementary and middle school. It is a very beautiful place, lots of rural NH is pretty cool to see both for the nature and just to see the difference between here and the cities. Lots of neat architectural differences, even in new buildings that are built here.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 16:50:44 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Never heard a Bostonian add an "-er" to words. That's more Rhode Islanders and Mainers. People in this thread acting like Boston and New England accents are the same thing, smh
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:29:43 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, well:
I'm from eastern Massachusetts born and raised, and my entire Mom's side of the family back to my great grandmother were born, raised, and mostly still live in Somerville. The -er sound is precisely how they articulate it.
Hard -er. Like saying "sod-er" instead of soda.
[deleted] ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 23:59:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
silverslayer33 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 00:23:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's actually not it. The joke is that in parts of New England, we like to drop the -r sound and replace it with a -ah sound. So in New England, Tesler would sound similar to Tesla.
Precipiss ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:42:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No... Just no...
silverslayer33 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:57:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What do you mean, no? It's not universal to all of New England but spend enough time in MA (edit: I should say eastern MA), southeast NH, and southern Maine and you'll definitely see plenty of people who do that.
Precipiss ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:07:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes, they do. What I'm telling you, is that they do add an er where an a would be frequently. My dad still does it after 15 years below the Mason-Dixon line and the sound of it is like nails on a chalkboard.
silverslayer33 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:13:05 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your anecdotal evidence is about as good as mine. I live in NH, and I hear the -r turned into -ah far, FAR more than I hear -a turned into -er. I almost never hear the latter while I hear the former on a near daily basis and even catch myself doing it a lot. Taking a look at the New England English Wikipedia article, there's a lot of mentions of lots of New England accents being non-rhotic while there's none of -a being turned into -er.
Precipiss ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:32:15 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Rural NH probably has a different accent than uneducated Irish Boston.
silverslayer33 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:40:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
True, our accent is a bit different than being straight in the heart of Boston or even the Nashua area of NH. From where I am in NH, the biggest differences I notice are essentially in how much we exaggerate the eccentricities of the accent. A lot of the things are a lot more subtle for us. I grew up in and live in a town with a lot of people who moved here from eastern MA so for myself and people I went to school with, we have a lot more of the New England accent than other rural NH towns. I can kinda see how our -a sound could maybe be mistaken for -er but I've never heard it actually fully shift into -er, even from people from Boston. Might be something that we younger folk have decided sounds ridiculous and don't do, as I know a lot more younger people with the full Boston accent than older people with it.
Precipiss ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:52:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I feel like younger generations are slowly eliminating geographic accents. But then who will we have to make fun of....
silverslayer33 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:59:22 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't think we're fully eliminating them. Merging them a little more so the differences aren't as extreme, but we definitely all still have some semblance of the accent of the region we grew up in. I've definitely lost a little more of my New England accent by going to a big university in upstate NY with people from all across the country, but I'll be dropping my -r's, saying Marry, Merry, and Mary the same, saying caught and cot the same, and hoarse and horse the same until the day I die.
tomgabriele ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:54:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't get it
JIhad_Joseph ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 01:59:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Most dialects of english in britain and new england don't pronounce the R, so tesler would sound like tesla
KingsoftheBronze_Age ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:20:35 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Can confirm - am a New Englandah
tomgabriele ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:18:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I live in New England. Rumors of our R's have been greatly exaggerated.
[deleted] ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 23:58:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
tomgabriele ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 00:05:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Okay great. Now can you explain the New England part? And then once that's cleared up, the funny part?
nPrimo ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:13:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Same.
IHateTomatoes ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:32:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/4131fu/who_is_the_most_underappreciated_person_in_history/cyzvbnu
Matti_Matti_Matti ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:53:02 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In this thread it is being appreciated at exactly the right amount.
KingOfCarrotFlours ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:21:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
agreed
Hominid77777 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:41:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The most underappreciated person in history is /u/I_MAKE_MARIOS_AMA. :p
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 04:41:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dude, sometimes it seems that way
lawlrhus ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:56:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If Remy had to pronounce Tesla
RarestarGarden ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:07:35 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Screaming intensifies
Zolden ยท 137 points ยท Posted at 21:02:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Larry Tesler
The guy invented cut/copy paste. How many billions of hours have been saved thanks to him?
randomguy186 ยท 19 points ยท Posted at 21:58:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Larry Tesler
The guy invented cut/copy paste. How many billions of hours have been saved thanks to him?
jakeinator21 ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 22:10:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Larry Tesler
The guy invented cut/copy paste. How many billions of hours have been saved thanks to him?
pigi5 ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 22:16:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Larry Tesler has failed you
Edit: He missed the line break before editing
jakeinator21 ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 22:34:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Damn. I fixed it, but it may be too late.
pigi5 ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 22:51:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Now I look like the idiot, thanks.
jakeinator21 ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 23:16:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Here's my upvote, if it helps.
pigi5 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:36:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It does. I feel the warm fuzzies.
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 22:43:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Damn. I fixed it, but it may be too late.
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 02:58:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Larry Tesler
The guy invented cut/copy paste. How many billions of hours have been saved thanks to him?
avenlanzer ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 21:17:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I see what you did there.
taulover ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 07:14:00 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I see what you did there.
anonymous_0614 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:37:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That was a copy. I can tell, because the original is still there
_masterofdisaster ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 12:50:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I was like "Huh?" Then I was like "oh"
bullet50000 ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 20:27:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
I've seen him interviewed on so many things on the history of computers, had NO idea he invented copy and paste, but it makes sense due to him being at Xerox PARC and then at Apple
tomdarch ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:29:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Xerox PARC folks who developed a huge part of the WIMP (windows, icons, menus, pointer aka mouse) Graphical User Interface that we use constantly deserve a ton of credit.
bullet50000 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 04:48:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oh certainly. John Warnock, Adele Goldberg, Alan Kay, the aforementioned Tesler, and a ton of others did so much.
mamamurrz ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 21:57:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My aunt doesn't know how to cut and paste on her computer. She went back to college recently and had a project due so she typed up the written portions, printed them, printed the images then physically cut and pasted them into the report. She's a damn fine woman though, so her kids and I only made fun of her a little bit.
Who am I kidding we were ruthless but we're assholes, and she's a trooper.
PapaBearKing ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 01:45:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Buzzfeed loves him
randomguy186 ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 21:58:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He didn't invent it.
Copy / paste has been around for nearly as long as paper copy has been around. I remember working on a newspaper in the 80s and literally copying cutting and pasting pieces of paper with text on them.
What Larry Tesler did was be the first guy to implement a software feature that had a solid basis in physical experience. Had he not been the first, there were 1000s of others who would have been.
bureX ยท 18 points ยท Posted at 23:01:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So... He copied and pasted it?
Eheh... heh... eh... e... yup.
[deleted] ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 22:59:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
dorekk ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:35:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I put radio on the internet!
daddydunc ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:32:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Many.
N4KED_TURTLE ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:18:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The real MVP.
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 18:48:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Who invented drag-and-drop? That guy deserves a pie in the face.
MrGoodGlow ยท 15 points ยท Posted at 18:58:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jef Raskin.
You're not a fan of of drag and drop?
g0_west ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 01:18:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A massive fan of pie
[deleted] ยท -6 points ยท Posted at 19:05:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oh God no. The majority of the time, if I complete a drag/drop, it's unintentional. I find it a tad difficult to implement. I will say, I've coded some bad-ass drag-and-drop GUIs. One of them was "classic" VB scripting a bunch 9f calls into GDI32.dll. Unfortunately, the intended end user was waaaay too compuphobic to ever really leverage this thing.
BlitzHaunt ยท 22 points ยท Posted at 20:12:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
DON'T TALK SHIT ABOUT DRAGON DROP!!!!!!
margarinized_people ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:37:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I just copy/pasted his name into google without even thinking about it. Thanks, Larry!
HEYSYOUSGUYS ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:31:58 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Did you read the man file on that function?
jakeragequit ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:56:06 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
His name is Robert Paulson
BusterTheChihuahua ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:08:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ah, Larry Tesler, patron saint of plagiarists everywhere.
Nyssril ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:25:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
WarZ terms and conditions.
CyanPancake ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:24:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Depends on how many articles Buzzfeed has posted
logicrulez ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:55:28 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm all for giving credit where credit is due, but copy/paste seems inevitable.
MrGoodGlow ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:04:33 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
someone had to do though.
logicrulez ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:19:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Right, but logically then we just can't give one person all the credit of time saved.
kieran81 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:55:54 on January 20, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
How would we be able to post Navy Seals copypastas without him?
done-gone ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:28:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Larry Tesler
The guy invented cut/copy paste. How many billions of hours have been saved thanks to him?
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:08:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
Fallenexe ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 21:22:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Larry Tesler
The guy invented cut/copy paste. How many billions of hours have been saved thanks to him?
JackWaggin ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:15:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not that many. The idea is fairly obvious and someone would have figured it out.
MrGoodGlow ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:19:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Do you enjoy being crotchety, argumentative, and living in negativity?
Took a quick glance at your post history and it seems super heavily concentrated on that.
JackWaggin ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:30:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thanks for checking up. I don't live in "negativity." You will probably be shocked to find out that my activities on reddit are not my life.
rbraunz ยท 7024 points ยท Posted at 16:19:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Ignaz Semmelweis who discovered hand-washing in maternity wards decreasing mortality by nearly 90%.
edit: derp
Omakepants ยท 4528 points ยท Posted at 16:28:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
kind of blows your mind that people just didn't, you know, wash their hands.
[deleted] ยท 3446 points ยท Posted at 17:15:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
People even thought his idea was stupid and unnecessary and actively resisted it! Totally boggles my mind too because it's such a habit to wash my hands several times a day I feel dirty not doing it. Like, it's one thing to note that we didn't have such an understanding of germs and how disease is transmitted then... but you'd think that having dirt on your hands would spur the thought that touching others might get dirt on them, which isn't good even if you don't know that's how disease spreads. I'm glad his idea caught on!
Humdngr ยท 1833 points ยท Posted at 17:44:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
It must've really smelt like shit everywhere centuries ago. I don't know how anyone could stand it or get used to it.
[deleted] ยท 1966 points ยท Posted at 17:54:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
It's always something that comes up in my mind when I imagine time travelling... I'd certainly want to see a bunch of the stuff I learned about in history (specifically did 'medicine through time' which was super interesting) but my god it would reek in cities. Sewage poured into the streets, livestock just kicking around in living quarters, far too many people to a house and almost zero understanding of public health. I'm massively grateful to live in a place and time where my rubbish is collected from my door weekly and sewage is flushed down a pipe to be treated elsewhere. Also I can wash my clothes in clean water rather than downstream from sewage runoffs.
I remember a specific thing from a textbook about a noteworthy dungheap. Just a heap of shit so large it was special among the many other heaps of shit around town. I recall as well that in the days of surgery being a public spectacle (check out Robert Liston, known as the fastest surgeon in the west end, who reportedly amputated a leg in two minutes (and the poor patient's testicle in the process)) the amount of blood and dirt on their aprons was sort of considered a status symbol. Makes sense I guess, if you have no inkling that illness could be transferred through blood, but it's almost impossible to imagine that mindset now.
nolan1971 ยท 1079 points ยท Posted at 18:22:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
holy fuck
[deleted] ยท 1064 points ยท Posted at 18:25:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
For context, before anaesthesia it was important to get the surgery over with quickly because there wasn't much you could do to sedate the patient beyond getting them drunk or whacking them on the head. The screaming is very distracting and shock sets in quickly. Naturally some treated it as a race.
In fact, after anaesthesia was introduced a lot more patients died from bleeding out because without all the yelling and thrashing, things didn't seem quite so urgent.
Slawtering ยท 296 points ยท Posted at 18:32:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ah medicine through time I learnt so much shit I could win pub quizzes with, with that GCSE.
[deleted] ยท 53 points ยท Posted at 18:42:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I've answered things on QI and even University Challenge thanks to that course and it's good random knowledge to impress people with.
I liked it so much I recently spent a slightly stupid amount of money on a massive book of anatomical diagrams from the 1800s...
all_4_one_piece ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:04:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Where would one find this book?
LeagueOfLegendsAcc ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:50:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
With /u/flerps.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 12:49:15 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think you can buy it from the publisher - I passed it in the window of a charity shop and went in to reserve it right then! Probably the most I've spent on a non-academic book but so worth it, if you like looking inside bodies that is.
meeeow ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:17:06 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If you like that stuff I recomend 'The Sick Rose' beautiful book.
seventhSheep ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 12:51:37 on January 23, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Good god! The image search for 'the sick rose' is quite disturbing.
meeeow ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 14:36:45 on January 23, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It is a little but very interesting, is a book that discuss in quite a lot of detail the history of infections and diseases with these beautiful victorian style illustration. It's really fantastic!
catsocksfromprimark ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:22:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wow, I'd totally forgotten that's what the course was called! My absolute favourite subject which kick-started a real love for London's history.
Thanks Mrs Stephens!
Maediya ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 22:14:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeeeees! My favourite part of GCSE history :D I remember learning that the very first person to die under anaesthesia was Hannah Greener, who had a toenail removed.
That module spurred me to visit the Science museum in London to see the medicine gallery. Terrifying!
mikejudd90 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:33:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Loved that GCSE...
ghettomuffin ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:37:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What is that?
mikejudd90 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:54:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Medicine through time was part of a history GCSE we took. Stands for General Certificate in Secondary Education. It is basically the first "real" qualification you do in England (not sure about Wales). Next are A levels and then onto University if you want to. GCSEs are sat when you are around 16.
Joetato ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:03:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Huh. I thought GCSEs were the equivalent of final exams in America. Sounds like they're not if you don't start taking them until you're 16.
mikejudd90 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:11:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Start studying around 14 and sit exams around 16. Then it is AS levels at 17 and A2 level at 18. After that is uni.
In Scotland the GCSE equivalent are "Standard grades" and the A level equivalent are "Highers".
labrys ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:15:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What time do you do your exams in the US? I thought these were equivalent too
Joetato ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:06:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Final exams happen at the end of every school year for every course you took. It covers everything you learned that year. I'm sure England has something like that, it's just not the GCSEs.
I still don't understand exactly the point of GCSEs, though.
labrys ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 00:16:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
GCSEs are a qualification - you do 9 or 10 when you're 16*, and then you can leave school, or go on to further education. I kinda thought they were the equivalent of a high school diploma in America, because you sometime see tv characters not having high school diplomas, and you could get people without GCSEs if they failed them all.
Then, if you want to do more, you take 3 or 4 A-levels at 18 (or 6-8 AS levels, which are like half A levels, with half at 17 and half at 18), or some combination of the above to get enough points for your university course.
Then finally university for 3 years or more.
*or did when I took them, they keep changing things.
Joetato ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:55:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, no high school diploma in the US means you can't get a decent job anywhere. You may even have trouble getting a job at McDonald's without one.
I don't know what life is like with GCSEs in England. Do they have any kind of diploma equivalent, meaning they passed every year of school? Or is it just GCSEs and A levels?
But this also explains to me where OWLS and NEWTS came from in Harry Potter. I always thought those testing systems were bizarre thing that didn't exist in the real world, added in to make the wizarding world more distinct than the muggle world. No, they just seem to be the magical equivalent of GCSEs and A levels, based on how you described them.
labrys ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 11:12:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, you're right. OWLS and NEWTS are GCSEs and A Levels. We take exams every year at school, but only the GCSEs and A Levels count for anything after school. I thought the diploma was something similar, not something that was taken each year. Interesting way of doing it, instead of putting all the exam stress in one huge block at the end of secondary school and the end of college.
Not having any GCSEs would make it really difficult to get a job. I've never come across anyone without any GCSEs though - since you take 1 each for 9 or 10 subjects, it's pretty hard to fail them all.
ghettomuffin ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:06:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Gotcha, thank you!
Perky_Bellsprout ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:31:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ugh, we had to do medicine through time in our GCSE history too. What fun...
fraglrok ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:53:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Long been a popular subject for school-leavers' exams - my History O-Level back in 1982 had as a major component "History of Medicine." This exam was unusual in that it had a 30% coursework component - and that HoM was the entire coursework component. A pain in the arse for pupils like me who regularly bunked school, that was (back then no-one bothered to contact parents if you didn't show up unless it went on for over a week, say). Coursework were very rare for O-Level exams and were only introduced experimentally in a few subjects during the last years before O-Levels (GCE) were replaced by the very different GCSE.
pikachuichooseyou ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 19:27:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This makes me super happy that I'm alive now instead of then.
FigMcLargeHuge ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 22:41:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ok, you guys are right. Fuck time travel.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:07:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
But my doctor does this all the time...
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:10:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I never said they stopped doing that!
LassieBeth ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:40:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Leopold Leopoldovich would never resort to such brutish methods, he simply played a melody on his Stradivarius violin to lull his patients gently to sleep.
dude215dude ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:16:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Did we not have morphine? I mean the shit comes from a flower that grows like a weed.
CommercialPilot ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 23:19:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oh yes, of course. Nitrous oxide and ether as well. The whole "didn't have anesthesia at all" is sort of misleading. They did have it, but it wasn't as efficient by modern standards. However ether will knock a person right out when administered. Often though it wasn't available, during times of war for example.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:26:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm not sure actually. I'm guessing it's a case of it being a relative luxury for poor folk, and still a fairly new thing around those times, but I'd never really heard mention of it in that kind of quick & dirty surgery. Plus, perhaps not as effective at knocking someone out than booze or a concussion!
vehement_nihilist ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:22:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Morphine was first isolated in 1803. They had raw opium and laudanum before that but there's a difference between analgesia, sedation and anaesthesia. The latter is a very delicate balance. As any anaestesist would tell you: "Knocking them out is easy, it's waking them up that is complicated!"
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:52:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
[deleted] ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 21:36:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yep, which is why they tended to avoid doing that in later years. It would usually just be a few strong guys to hold you down and then some form of sealing. They used to use hot tar in amputations. Dunk the fresh stump in it
z500 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:24:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jesus, I didn't know about the tar.
TheUltimateSalesman ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:30:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is where I plug The Knick
phynn ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:49:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It does say something about humans that we thought it a good idea to invent surgery before anesthesia.
LacesOutRayFinkle ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:13:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wow, that never occurred to me.
nolan1971 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 18:27:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Geez, that's not a comforting reply. At all.
wow
I had an idea because I've been interested in the ACW for a long time, but... just, wow.
[deleted] ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 18:35:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
ACW?
And yeah, it's a pretty grim consequence! Thankfully this led to methods of sealing off arteries/veins to deal with the whole dying from bleeding thing.
Azusanga ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 18:43:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
American Civil War, i think.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:56:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ahh, makes sense.
If there's one thing they skip in history in the UK it's the US. America was pretty much never mentioned the entire time so I kind of forget important things like that!
nolan1971 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:26:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
To be fair, between the French, Russians, Germans, the Chinese situation, Africa, and the Middle East (among others), y'all had your own concerns to deal with. I don't blame British Imperial historians for minimizing American history between 1780 to around the 1920's.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:39:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It does make the internet a learning experience more often than not, all the things I know about American history I've learned from comments and reading up on things to understand context. Damn abundance of 'muricans on the internet, I can probably place a fair few states on a map too!
Pacelttob ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:52:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Do you have a source on this? Not trying to be a jerk, just interested.
BAXterBEDford ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:40:01 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Opium has been around for ages. You can't tell me they couldn't of had that available.
Vio_ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:47:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So a woman in the 1700s had to have a double mastectomy as she'd been diagnosed with breast cancer. All they could do for her was give her a shot of whisky, have two men hold her arms down, and cover her face with cheesecloth so she wouldn't see it (that failed, she saw the whole thing). Took some time. Got the first one done, and she panicked, started screaming. Then the second one, and still more screaming.
She said she couldn't get the screaming out of her head for months after, and definitely had some ptsd issues from it. But it was a success, and she lived a couple more decades.
Jwagner0850 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:00:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I know its just a show but "The Knick" had great visual representation of this.
[deleted] ยท 1743 points ยท Posted at 18:52:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Robert Liston is known as one of the geniuses of surgery but is also known as having the distinction of once having a surgery with a 300% mortality rate. Since anesthesia wasn't in common use, surgeries were done as quick as possible. During one of his famous quick amputations he cut through a man's leg at the hip so fast he also took off several of his assistants fingers. The assistant later developed gangrene and died. The patient didn't survive. An elderly surgeon in the crowd watching was so excited by the commotion that he had a heart attack and fell over dead, thus the only 300% mortality rate in one surgery.
"Blood and Guts - a History of Surgery" is a great read if you want to read more stories!
[deleted] ยท 571 points ยท Posted at 19:46:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Oh God!
wikipedia
Absentia ยท 811 points ยท Posted at 21:42:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A man whose surgical skills are so powerful they have an AOE.
wraith_legion ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 01:06:49 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So, basically Dr. Mundo?
[deleted] ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 00:06:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Surgical kills*
Doctor_Murderstein ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 10:22:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sometimes we all lose a patient.
ShallowBasketcase ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 01:34:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ze healing is not as revarding as ze hurting!
_XanderD ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 00:31:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
/r/outside is leaking
nsmith8379 ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 00:48:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I feel this comment is under appreciated.
Absentia ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:08:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If it is any consolation, it just became my most upvoted in 6 years. So I think it is doing alright.
DoctorWSG ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:34:12 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I wonder if Zoidberg can even come close to such a record..
skraptastic ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:03:29 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thank you for my first Friday night laugh!
MattsyKun ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 04:52:02 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Medic ain't got nothing on this guy!
FourBox ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 16:09:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thats what a max level healer can do folks, double as DPS.
AronTimes ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 02:31:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Omniknight with Battlefury is legit.
billionsofkeys ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:02:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As if we didn't have enough brownboots S&Y radiance building motherfuckers
scumbagbrianherbert ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:34:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Surgical Cleave, pvp meta back in the day.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 06:25:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Make him a MOBA character.
echosixwhiskey ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:19:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And a pretty impressive K/D
SketchBoard ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 02:07:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What an oxymoron.
X-istenz ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:22:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Quite the juxtaphysician.
wanking_to_got ยท 39 points ยท Posted at 19:56:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
But would be funny in a Benny Hill sketch.
BarelyLegalAlien ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 22:37:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fuck that, Drunk History this shit up.
FigMcLargeHuge ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:38:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Cue Yakety Sax.
Antebios ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:07:52 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
https://youtu.be/MK6TXMsvgQg
LessLikeYou ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 22:01:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Killing Spree!
thedirtyjackal ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 23:20:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Triple Kill!
Saemika ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 22:39:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What was he using to amputate with?!?!
FauxReal ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 22:57:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My guess is a sickle on a chain that he swung around from 6 feet out.
devtastic ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 02:35:01 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I have to say this also caught my eye in the wikipedia entry:
I just can't imagine it.
vehement_nihilist ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:26:28 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Holy shit :/
Baltorussian ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:00:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You think that's bad? Check out #4: Fourth most famous case Removal in 4 minutes of a 45-pound scrotal tumour, whose owner had to carry it round in a wheelbarrow.
rhymes_with_snoop ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:09:17 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I feel like removing a tumor from a scrotum should take less time than a leg amputation... I mean, I feel like if dude nicked his scrotum shaving the thing would tear it's way out like a bowling ball in a grocery bag.
ChaoticSquirrel ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:15:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not really. Tumors don't just sit there. They are attached to the tissues around them.
alienjin ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:02:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Cut one, Kill three!
Mail540 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:25:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That takes special skill
batnastard ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:40:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Liston...Listerian...Listerene?
thetates ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:41:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nah, that would be Joseph Lister. Introduced antiseptic and the concept of sterilization to hospitals.
And yeah, his ideas were heavily resisted, especially in the US (Pres. Garfield might not have died if his doctor has been following Lister's methods).
parentlessfather ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:01:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm right there with you, buddy. Sorta blew my mind when I read that.
620law ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:33:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is the most amusing thing I have read in a while
Slight0 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:29:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Was this "knife" roughly 4 and a half feet long with a double sided blade and a hilt that is reminiscent of a claymore's?
TheVenetianMask ยท 53 points ยท Posted at 20:02:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
300%!? Hahah that's impossib... holy crap.
A_Wizzerd ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:09:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
INCONCEIVABLE!
*THUD*
boxjohn ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 19:25:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
what were they using as a saw that you could accidentally cut through multiple fingers?
RyghtHandMan ยท 51 points ยท Posted at 19:46:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There are no assistants, only obstacles
[deleted] ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 20:25:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
All I can find when I look it up is a saw, an extraordinary sharp bone saw would make sense in context. Remember within minutes they would cut through flesh and bone..
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/10/time-me-gentlemen-the-fastest-surgeon-of-the-19th-century/264065/
solidspacedragon ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:13:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
One that can cut through your thigh in 2 minutes?
Broduski ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:09:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You think a skilled surgeon such as him even bothered with a saw? It sounds like he went straight for the axe.
hellopppp ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 20:27:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
oh baby a triple
Steezymann ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 20:55:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He sounds like a total fuck up lol I know he wasn't and no one back then could help it because of the technology and knowledge but holy shit. You could almost laugh at the situation if you didn't know 3 people died. Took a guys ball sack off once on accident? How does that even happen?! I have to read that book. Thanks for sharing that.
[deleted] ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 21:26:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He was legendary for his arrogance which I'm sure contributed to some of his mistakes.
[deleted] ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 20:55:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:26:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Best comment lmao
wildstarr ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:39:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alright, damn it, I have to know. Where did 5/7 come from? I guess I skipped reddit that day.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:38:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
wildstarr ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:47:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thank you. That was an entertaining read.
Antebios ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:02:45 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That was GOLD, Jerry. Gold!
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:53:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's an awesome statistic
mehmuffin- ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:36:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Robert Liston, aka Agent 47
plasticenewitch ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:02:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thank you! I just purchased the book and look forward to reading it. In turn, I recommend Puswhisperer: A Year in the Life of an Infectious Disease Specialist, by Mark Crislip.
DolphinSweater ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:53:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think that's also a show or documentary on Netflix. It's in my queue, but I haven't seen it yet.
jeeps350 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:32:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
WTF, did he just close his eyes? Testicles and Fingers, my god.
Boobr ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:33:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Probably the funniest morbid trivia i've ever heard.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:52:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Definitely read Blood and Guts. My boyfriend got me a bunch of surgery and epidemiology books for Christmas and that one is the most interesting so far!
noreasterner ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:58:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
300% mortality rate? Did everyone die three times on him? That sonovabitch!
theoreticaldickjokes ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:19:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
At first I thought you were saying that all of his surgeries had a 300% mortality rate. At that point, he becomes a serial killer.
Penguinz90 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:33:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wow! I will definitely check that book out, thanks!
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:57:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I just got past that chapter and it's pretty entertaining so far. I got two others but haven't cracked them yet:
Strange Medicine a shocking history of real medicine Genius on the Edge the bizarre double life of Dr. William Halsted
My boyfriend got me a bunch of books off my Amazon wishlist for Christmas. I might have been a mad scientist in a past life idk
Penguinz90 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:44:28 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Funny you should say that...my current job is as a Mad Scientist! Previously I worked in the medical field. I'll have to check those out, very cool!
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:22:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:34:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No, I'll check it out!
theoblivionkid ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:45:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The TV series with Michael Mosley is a really good watch as well, same name I believe
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:11:28 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's also a common TIL post.
LacesOutRayFinkle ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:11:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Holy shit, that's one hell of a story.
palmpu ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:35:49 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
300% mortality? So for each person he did surgery on 3 others died? Edit: damn...read it to the end. That guy was efficient..
asharin_bosmer ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:33:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is mentioned in M.A.S.H
Macktologist ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:49:01 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just imagine how ignorant our generations will look to future humans that don't even have rubbish.
mnh1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:04:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He was also an early adaptor of anesthesia. He really tried very hard to minimize the amount of pain he inflicted.
Doctor_Murderstein ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 10:21:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
300%? Truly, this man was an inspiration to us all.
JustBronzeThingsLoL ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 23:20:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm not convinced you have a firm grasp on how percentage works.
Mauser_X ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 21:29:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
300% mortality rate?!? He killed every single patient THREE TIMES???
winterequinox007 ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 21:44:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
10% mortality rate = 1/10 people dying
100% mortality rate = 10/100 people dying
300% mortality rate = ???
solidspacedragon ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:13:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
3/1 people dying.
edit: 100% mortality rate is 100 out of 100, 10% is 10/100
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:16:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"Removal in 4 minutes of a 45-pound scrotal tumour, whose owner had to carry it round in a wheelbarrow."
superjuan ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:35:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
At least he didn't kill two other people in the process. From his wikipedia page:
A_favorite_rug ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:54:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The guy was impressive, that's for sure.
thijser2 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:29:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He also did one of the few surgeries with a mortality rate of 300%, he was amputating a leg (this time in less then 2 1/2 minutes) when he cut one of his assistents fingers, said assistent died of the resulting infected, he then cut the coat tails of one of the spectators who promply had a heart attacking and in the end the patient died as well. Still despite quite a few of these little accidents people loved him for his speed and he was well known as a good surgeon.
heiferly ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:33:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Is he the same surgeon who performed the world's only known surgery with a single patient and three fatalities?
Edit: Nevermind, read further down and someone confirmed he is.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:57:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, why did that testicle thing happen?
wasmic ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:30:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Robert Liston also holds the record for the highest mortality rate of a single amputation: 300 %. The patient died a week later from hospital gangrene (as was common). However, he also accidentally sawed the fingers off his assistant, who also died from hospital gangrene. He also slashed through the coat of a pretty old spectator (also a surgeon), who went into cardiac arrest from the shock of thinking that he had been cut.
__LE_MERDE___ ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:49:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That quote describing the scene of one of his surgeries:
Sounds better than a night at the movies.
Snakekitty ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:54:28 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think I had him as a surgeon in /r/rimworld
lunartree ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:59:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He's a real pro in medicine. He knows sometimes you have to move fast and break things.
kurt_go_bang ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:26:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Really???
I could amputate a leg in 1 second with a big axe.....Whats so special about this guy? I bet I could even miss the testicle too.
Unobud ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:10:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think he's the same guy who managed a 300% fatality rate for a surgery irrc? He killed the patient, a nurse and a bystander.
Seraphim_kid ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:08:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
How do you accidentally amputate a testicle
alanmagid ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:55:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Lister, not Liston. Liston was a heavy-weight boxing champ.
want2playzombies ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:27:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Amputated the leg in under 21โ2 minutes (the patient died afterwards in the ward from hospital gangrene; they usually did in those pre-Listerian days). He amputated in addition the fingers of his young assistant (who died afterwards in the ward from hospital gangrene). He also slashed through the coat tails of a distinguished surgical spectator, who was so terrified that the knife had pierced his vitals he dropped dead from fright. That was the only operation in history with a 300 percent mortality.
posseslayer17 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:04:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Think of it this way. No pain killers, no anesthesia and you need to get your leg cut off. Would you want the doctor to take 20min to cut it off or 2min? I would take 2min. Plus: the quicker it is the less blood is lost and you avoid the possibility of the patient going into shock from a longer surgery.
Throwaway19761958 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:29:56 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
African militant groups can amputate limbs much faster than that, machete, tar, back to your cell!
djeye ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 10:37:32 on January 22, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Amputated the leg in under 21โ2 minutes (the patient died afterwards in the ward from hospital gangrene; they usually did in those pre-Listerian days). He amputated in addition the fingers of his young assistant (who died afterwards in the ward from hospital gangrene). He also slashed through the coat tails of a distinguished surgical spectator, who was so terrified that the knife had pierced his vitals he dropped dead from fright. That was the only operation in history with a 300 percent mortality.
[deleted] ยท 43 points ยท Posted at 18:24:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The guys behind indoor plumbing, modern sewers and toilets are goddamn heroes.
Eurynom0s ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 18:31:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Romans had plumbing bringing clean water into individual buildings and I think individual buildings also had bathrooms that had a connection into sewer systems.
[deleted] ยท 43 points ยท Posted at 18:34:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
All right... all right... but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order... what have the Romans done for us?
marineaddict ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 19:48:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Government and professional warfare.
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:10:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
But only for the rich, a water connection was expensive.
But they had public wells with clean water and some primitive public water toilets
Eurynom0s ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:18:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The fact that they had it at all shows you that they really were pretty advanced, though.
And the public facilities you're describing were still pretty ahead of their time. After Rome fell, Europe went through centuries of unreliable well water.
ImALittleCrackpot ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 22:25:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes, but they made the pipes out of lead, which was why so many wealthy Romans went a bit...peculiar...towards the end of the Empire.
Eurynom0s ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 22:26:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Their lack of realizing the problems with lead goes way beyond using lead pipes in their plumbing. For example, they used lead cookware (skillets, etc) too. Or to give my absolute favorite example, if they had a bad wine harvest they'd boil lead into the wine to sweeten it!
They thought that going crazy was just something that sometimes happened to people when they got old.
I remember something like ten years ago I saw this claimed hangover cure being advertised on TV and the guy made some claim about "the Romans used it, so you know it's legit". And my mind immediately went to them boiling lead into wine they didn't find sweet enough as the case-in-point of why that's a bullshit claim.
ImALittleCrackpot ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:59:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'd forgotten about lead sugar!
Eurynom0s ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:01:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And as I just edited in, they just thought that going crazy was something that simply happened sometimes when you got old. They had no idea it was from the lead. It probably didn't help that lead doesn't immediately make you go nuts, so the cause/effect of what was happening would have been pretty blurred.
agent0731 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:10:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Indus Valley civilization had a very good sewer system by today's standards, way ahead of the Romans. Or so I remember reading at some point...somewhere.
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 18:38:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
To those that keep my shit flowing away from me at all times: thank you, so much
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:54:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Romans? Only problem was lead pipes
nolan1971 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:13:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
2meta4me
Suuupa ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:20:56 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ah, you mean plumbers?
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:06:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thank you kind sir
TotesMessenger ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:09:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
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harbourwall ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 18:38:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You'd need to get a smallpox shot somehow, and maybe some prophylactic antibiotics. The past would kill you like a martian.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:44:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Damn, I hadn't thought of that. I have a couple of papercuts at the moment, that'd be me done in a few days.
CommercialPilot ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:21:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also malaria and perhaps yellow fever. Maybe diphtheria and cholera as well.
Azusanga ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 18:46:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also, infection ran rampant. During the Civil War, you could build a wall of limbs to keep the cold out. One of the sides (I can't remember which) had very very low infection rates (in context) because they would boil their horsehair before using it to stitch wounds shut.
22bebo ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 18:51:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm in India right now for a study abroad. It's disturbingly similar to this.
AbsoluteElsewhere ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:52:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In "The Doomsday Book" by Connie Willis, the main character travels back to Plague times. One of the first things she sees is a woman hauling away a full chamberpot; some of it sloshes on her hand and she just wipes it off with her sleeve. That scene still sticks in my mind, because I almost vomited.
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:01:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Someone else recommended it and I'm about to order it, but I'm glad you told me that so I know what to expect. I mean I should expect that anyway, but at the same time... good god
AbsoluteElsewhere ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:16:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, it's a great book. It is a downer, but then, it's about the frickin' PLAGUE, so that's not a surprise. If you want something a little lighter for after, "To Say Nothing of the Dog" is the next book set in the same universe, and is more a light sci-fi comedy.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:01:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
[deleted]
AbsoluteElsewhere ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:47:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oh god, I'd forgotten that.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:53:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What's even crazier to me is that even today in places [at least the countries with the largest populations] like India and China people still practice open defecation, drink, and wash in sewage water. For that reason India has the highest rates of bacterial infections in the World! It's also why they see such high rates of infant mortality, not because of hand washing but because they take so many anitbiotics that when babies are born they can get a antibiotic resistant super bacterial infection from their mothers on the way out and die because there are no known medicines to treat it.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:58:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Can't beat night soil for an abundant harvest!
DancingPaul ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:22:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I always have this thought about smoking. People bitch and moan about how cigarettes smell, how your clothes smell, the room, etc. But in the past people smoked EVERYWHERE. In their offices, homes, hospitals everywhere. Did cigarettes not smell back than? Or were they used to it?
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:41:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You really do get used to it, I smoke but can still get a bit overwhelmed if I'm in a room where people smoke with the windows closed all the time, but it doesn't take long to stop being bothered by it. I guess it's the same with poop.
Kraelman ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:29:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Read "Doomsday Book" by Connie Willis.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:37:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I was looking for some more fiction to read, thanks!
michael_harari ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:04:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He also once amputated the hand of his assistant (by accident), resulting in an operation with more than 100% mortality
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:08:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That man was just breaking records all over the place!
User1-1A ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:25:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Bring your own water because cholera
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:34:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not to worry, I'll just drink beer.
User1-1A ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:56:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ha-ha the safest water!
docpanama ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:36:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I've read that as well. People like Joseph Lister had a hard time convincing surgeons to wash, because clothes and hands caked with blood were a symbol of status. If you were a young surgeon with soiled clothes, you were busy, important, diligent. There were no scrubs to wear, surgeons would leave a suit of ordinary clothes at the hospital and wear them to operate in, round in, etc. Then change and go home. To wash their working clothes would be unimaginable, you would be washing away all your badges of honor. This was the mindset. These guys would deliver babies one after the other without any sort of hygiene, in filthy clothes. Then a huge number of new mothers would die of "childbed fever" shortly after delivery. It was considered an "unexplained" illness, if you can believe it.
sk8r2000 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:50:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Medicine Through Time GCSE, good times :D
Pliskin01 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:59:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I recommend checking out the Sawbones podcast. It's about the views/treatment of a disease or injury throughout history (including Robert Liston!).
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:06:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sawbones is great! I ended up listening to pretty much all of them over the summer when I didn't have much to do.
girlkamikazi ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:08:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's a documentary/show on Netflix called Filthy Cities and the host talks about what London, Paris, and Philadelphia were like before they cleaned up. A Google search tells me it's also on YouTube. I was fascinated by it.
FemtoG ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:27:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
that feel when you went back in time and you run out of hand sanitizer
mynameisalso ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:53:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If you're really curious what it'd be like to have shit, and piss everywhere. Or what it'd be like to have people bathe, and shit in the same water, just go to india.
NananaBedman ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:06:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
probably smelled like India.
LaserBison ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:08:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There is a very interesting video by CGP grey about the rammifications of european cities on the native american population. The ultimate cause they attribute the death's too is pretty fascinating. Well worth a watch if you have 15mins
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:10:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
When I see early photographs of London and New York City everyone looks so tip-top and nicely dressed. Were those people walking around with crazy body odor and bad breath? It's a weird clash of beautiful architecture, fashion and music combined with streets filled with horsey shit and piss buckets.
yougotthesilver ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:10:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I read somewhere that one could smell London in the early 1800s a hundred miles before seeing it. Don't know if that's accurate but that gives you an idea of the stench. I'm sure if you'd get used to the smell after a while. We live in a pleasantly scented laboratory compared to our ancestors.
CaptainBayouBilly ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:17:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This fucker killed three people in one surgery, the patient, the assistant, and an observer.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:22:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oh, he's not meant to be an example of a good surgeon, but I bet he was impressive.
snark_attak ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:19:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So, not in Flint, MI, huh?
ggouge ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:21:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well really just the Europeans like being dirty. In the middle east and China at least washing your self was important. Europeans even made fun of middle eastern people for bathing
yingyangyoung ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:30:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I mean, when you don't have anesthesia, speed becomes really important!
iamopenojos ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:46:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
...and people still got it on/procreated. Stinky!!
apolotary ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:50:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
No need to go that far to imagine, just ask people who lived in London in 78-79
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:57:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Reminds me Jessica Biel chopping off Leatherface's arm in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake. But she did it quicker :3
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:00:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
seems like surgeons were kind of regarded like auto mechanics today, and a pristine unblemished surgeon's frock would have been the sign of a daintyboy who didn't want to get dirty. real surgeons got elbow deep and their aprons were stiff with blood and shit.
CrrntryGrntlrmrn ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:08:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
For a realistic experience, go to India. The last bastion of "old world" "modernization"
mrgreencannabis ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:09:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I remember in a history textbook a picture of a child playing in a heap of shit in the street. He was literally climbing it like a hill.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:30:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It was the wrong leg too.
teefour ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:33:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You just have to put enough mugwort and dried flowers around to keep the bad humors away, bro. Everyone knows that.
dojakitty ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:41:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Anyone watch shows/movies set in other time periods, ex. Game of Thrones, when actors are talking close together and imagine HOW BAD people's breath smelled in those times???
EASam ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:59:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Men would walk with the women closer to the road, so chamber pots being dumped from buildings would be less likely to hit their date, companion what have you.
eph3merous ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:00:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nose blindness worked to everyone's advantage
YeahTacos ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:12:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You might actually cause quite an epidemic if you travelled into the past with a cold or the flu or something... Their bodies aren't ready for today's diseases much like your nose isn't ready for their bad breath or months of not-showering...
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:23:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No need to time travel, just go to india
dingle_hopper1981 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:27:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's a town back home in Ireland called Ballyhackamore. The orginial Gaelic translation:
'Bally' - 'place' (which is why so many town names in Ireland are 'Bally-something'
'Mรณr' - 'great' or 'giant'.
'Hack /cac' - 'Dung /Shit'
So literally, the town of Ballyhackamore is '"The place of the Giant Pile of Shit."
Semenslayer ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:27:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Don't forget syphilis so bad your skin would fall off!
ohrightthatswhy ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:28:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
GCSE medicine through time in the UK I'm presuming? I'll be honest everyone in my class hated it. Including me. But each to their own I guess :/
terminalthree ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:29:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You don't need a time machine to experience that, I'm pretty sure some places in India are almost exactly what you're describing.
Stinkybelly ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:36:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I always think about that in terms of banging. Like granted, there was probably all types of beautiful ancient chicks and dudes and you could definitely probably get laid by just showing them a magic trick but could you imagine the stench... The awful stench. I get grossed out if I even a light waft of "party pussy" (all night at a club or a bar) reaches my nostrils... A few hundred years back? Even if you could get passed the B.O. or the breath you've got that HAIRY clam to deal with. For the ladies, magnify the B.O. by about a hundred and if you could get passed that, good luck getting passed those balls.
dnick ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:41:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Imagine what they'll think is disgusting for our time period a few hundred years from now. They just shit in a room of their house? With the same air circulation and a non-sealed door to the rest of the house?! They washed their dishes in a mild detergent and then reused them? Kept raw food right in the regular fridge? Gross!!
Your-adaisy-ifyoudo ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:42:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ancient romans knew and did all this...
Polite_Werewolf ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:03:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
... Did he use a samurai sword?
Indigo_Sunset ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:05:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You don't need to time travel. There are many places still that have no functional infrastructure and continue to function in a way unadulterated by sanitary technology.
labrys ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:13:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You can experience that in India if you're keen. I lived in Hyderabad for a few years - my apartment was fantastic and modern, my neighbours were Tollywood stars (the Telugu language version of Bollywood), politicians and rich business men, it was seriously swanky. But, step out of the grounds (past the private security keeping the riff-raff away)and there were open sewers. My side balcony had a view of a slum with no toilets, and chickens and goats running around the little blue-tarp and sheet metal huts. Cows and water buffalo roaming the streets. Men pissing at the side of the road without a care in the world. People shitting in alleys, whole families living in the partially-constructed buildings they were working on with no facilities. People with all kinds of disfigurements and easily-fixed injuries we don't see in the west.
Had a friend tell me how wonderful it must be in India, all those smells of cooking spices, and incense from the temples. Yep, they were there if you were walking past a restaurant or temple, but mainly India smells of stale urine baking in the sun and sewers.
Even my apartment wasn't plumbed in to the sewers or mains water and gas supplies, since they weren't in that bit of the city yet. Instead, we got tankers of water delivered and pumped up to the roof to use for toilets and showers, bottled water delivered to drink, gas bottles for the cooker, and all the toilet waste was collected in septic tanks and driven off by tankers once a week. It absolutely stank.
I love the place, and it's modernising fast in the big cities, but it still has a lot of problems. If you've got money, daily life isn't any different to in the west, except for seeing (and smelling) the rest of the population's poverty. If you're from a poor family though, especially a poor family in a village instead of a city, life isn't far off medieval life - except now you've got a mobile phone, even if you don't have a roof over your head.
albinoblack ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:15:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It makes sense why most people lived rural lives rather than urban back then. Urban was the smelly place.
flipzmode ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:50:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Why time travel? Just go to certain parts of India.
zacketysack ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:13:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wait, so he only got one testicle? What happened to the other one?
bob_marley98 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:22:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Samurai surgeon
gooniesneversaydye ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:33:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Chicago in the 1880's evidently was a stank dungeon of death and shit smell. Definitely wouldn't want to time travel there.
Biggseb ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:58:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just think about what we'll know in a few hundred years, and what kinds of things will be common knowledge then that don't occur to us now. And future Redditors minds will be blown when they think about things we take for granted today. Hmmm..?
VolvoKoloradikal ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:15:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You don't have to time travel. You just have to visit India.
misyo ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:38:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Historian here. Whenever people ask me about my favorite time period, I always say now.
TheSlimyDog ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:41:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your nose would probably adjust to the smell pretty quickly.
bellrunner ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:42:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
How about the origin of terriers? They were bred by nobles to sleep at the ends of their beds to fend off and eat rats that tried to climb up during the night. They literally had to worry about getting nibbled on by rats while they slept. Fuck that.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:07:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I always think about how bad dentistry was in the past. Unclean and painful.
patron_vectras ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:38:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
On mobile, but the extra credits YouTube channel has a historical video about John Snow, the man who founded epidemiology. It explained how cities had low birth rates and high rates of death, they essentially only increased in size because of immigration.
crusadingAquila ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:47:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I remember Medicine Through Time. History GCSE, right?
Deus_Duodecim ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:56:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
did we do the same GCSE course
theneedfull ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:58:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No need for a time machine. If you want to experience that, just visit India. I'm there now, and livestock roam the streets along along with the people pissing and shitting everywhere will give you that smell, times 1 million in population.
CAMEL_HUMPer ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:19:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So, like India?
GunsNMuffins ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:00:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Heeeey I did Medicine through time also, probably the most enjoyable thing about my History GCSE, my History A-Level wasn't nearly as interesting.
zarthblackenstein ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:02:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It may not be coincidence, in a deterministic universe, feasibly, our universe could be less than a few hundred years old; like if you snap into existence, and the past and future butterfly out in a beautiful chain of causality.
gsfgf ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:07:49 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I wonder if someone from the past would say the same about modern air pollution? Smog has to be really thick for us to notice it, but what about someone who had never experienced it?
biglebowskidude ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:16:28 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Or you could just go to India.
Noglues ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:30:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If you haven't seen The Librarians, this is actually addressed quite hilariously in the season 2 finale, when Eve smells someone from Elizabethan England.
altiuscitiusfortius ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:34:02 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
New York in the 1800s was filled with horse drawn carriages that produced ridiculous amounts of manure. "The 15 to 30 pounds of manure daily per horse, multiplied by the 150,000+ horses, resulted in more than three million pounds of horse manure per day."
Just imagine that lining the streets of a city.
direwooolf ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:41:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
you dont have to go back in time just go to Tijuana, raw sewage smell everywhere, donkeys painted like zebras and shit and pharmacies with disco balls in them, place is fucked.
r0b0d0c ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:43:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You don't have to time travel. Regular travel will do: there are plenty of places like that today.
mrizzerdly ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:12:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I always imagine how bad sex would smell like in the middle ages after I've been camping for a few days.
animal531 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 10:24:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I already have enough difficulty peeing in public restrooms, now I have to make eye contact with the guy sitting next to me? Nope!
meeeow ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:15:27 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If you visit the Jorvik centre in York they add the smell to the experience. It reeks.
throwaway92715 ยท 236 points ยท Posted at 18:40:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ever walked into someone's room and told them it smells, only to find out they didn't even realize? Spend enough time in a stinky place and you adjust to the point where you can't smell it anymore.
For instance, I went off to college in the country for a semester. I came back to Boston and realized that the entire city smells strongly of garbage, car fumes, and cigarette smoke. I had no idea beforehand. Now that I've been here for 3 weeks, I can't smell it anymore.
[deleted] ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 21:28:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's some vaguely Latin-sounding name for it, but most people will understand if you just say "nose deaf."
[deleted] ยท 18 points ยท Posted at 21:39:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anosmia
loathenstein ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 22:37:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
But I like to call it A-SCHNOZ-MIA!
seeingeyegod ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 03:23:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
asshole a miaaaa
inDface ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 11:30:05 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
this is why you don't think your farts smell that bad but others are offended.
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 21:41:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's it, thanks.
Atario ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 14:28:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's a disability/malfunction of the body. He's talking about olfactory fatigue (though I always knew this term as "olfactory exhaustion").
Hegiman ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:54:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I've also heard it referred to as smell blind.
ActuallyYeah ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:45:49 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's right. Dewey Cox had it.
Darth-Pimpin ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 22:35:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Its only smellz
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 14:57:00 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hahaha. But yea..it is only zeee smellz.
has_a_bigger_dick ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 03:06:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What? I moved to Boston from the "country" and it doesn't smell bad in my opinion.
Much of NYC on the other hand often smells like garbage.
intensive-porpoise ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 04:38:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
San Salvador smells of burning garbage, plastics, gunpowder & night blooming flowers, It is so unique I can fly in there and immediately get my bearings as to where I am.
Ahundred ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:22:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Isn't that what a city is supposed to smell like? Then again that lovely urban aroma is noticeable here which tells me it isn't prevalent enough to get used to.
throwaway92715 ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 22:33:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I dunno what it's supposed to smell like, but I'd rather it didn't... anyway, it's a lot stronger than many people who live in the city might think since we get used to it.
giantzoo ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:33:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Another thing to note: I have a smaller city next to my hometown that has a landfill, you can actively smell trash but I've been accustomed to it so it doesn't phase me at all. I probably go there maybe a handful of times every year or so and smell it every time. In this case I'm sort of an in-between, so you don't even need to be living there to be acclimated to whatever stench there is.
throwaway92715 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:39:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Maybe your mind gets used to recognizing the scent as unimportant or a nuisance and becomes conditioned to ignore it? Just a guess, I'd love to see some actual science about this
u38cg ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:48:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes. Used to work in a wet fish intake in a salmon factory. The first day you walk in there, you nearly vomit. Some actually do.
Three months later, you only smell it when you come back from a holiday.
nightraindream ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:58:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's because of olfactory adaptation. Basically you get used to the smell as normal so any other smells stand out more prominently
mhornberger ยท 19 points ยท Posted at 19:08:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Every time I watch a period movie (Elizabethan times, whatever) and see a really hot woman I reflect that, in real life, she never would've even seen running water. She ain't so hot after that.
notthecolorblue ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:24:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And everyone looks so nice and clean! Though some of them are more accurate with the dirt.
rabdacasaurus ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 18:35:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's the funny thing about all this, is that they believed that the foul odors were making you sick rather than stuff on your hands. Granted, this was before they really knew what bacteria and viruses were. Sick people smelled bad, dead people smelled worse, the people who smelled these things (aka were around the sick people) also got sick, therefore if you don't smell the odor you won't get sick.
ughalready ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 19:05:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As someone who worked briefly on a dairy farm as a teenager, you get used to it or you go insane.
Nmaka ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:11:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Pam?
idk112345 ยท 22 points ยท Posted at 18:12:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm becoming a teacher. Walk into a classroom of kids in their puberty that had their windows shut for the lesson. It will have the foules smell imaginable yet nobody in the classroom notices. Our brain is a tricky fucker.
notthecolorblue ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:23:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Body odor?
[deleted] ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 18:47:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You do get used to it. My family is not really hygienic. At first you smell yourself, and it's gross, but you do get used to it and you get used to sitting in your own filth. I'd imagine if you lived in a very dirty world, you'd get to used to it as you were born, raised, and died of old age.
Crassusinyourasses ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 19:49:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Visit India it will give you an idea.
kasper117 ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:14:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They don't get used to it. They are born in it, molded by it..
notpetelambert ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 19:51:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Who's that?
Must be a king!
How can you tell?
'Cause he hasn't got shit all over him.
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 20:09:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
intensive-porpoise ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:40:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
or booze..
AndrewWaldron ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 21:59:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
From some reading I'm working on about the Middle Ages most people likely did not wear undergarments and you basically wiped your butt with "a torche-cul or a curved wooden gomph-stick" a practice used by the Romans which continued well into the Middle Ages. Further, in regards to cleanliness, people are thought to have still bathed more frequently in the 1200's than in the 1800's. Public baths were still found throughout the Middle Ages for the common folk while Lords and Ladies would have a room, often off the kitchen, in their manor or castle for such use. In both instances communal bathing was still common. Shaving was generally a chore that often went undone due to the weakness of available soaps and the dullness of blades, which was a simple knife that was as often used for whittling as shaving and was frequently dull.
notthecolorblue ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:29:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just imagine everyone using the same gomph stick. What a time to be alive.
AndrewWaldron ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:34:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And they would have. They weren't disposable and there wouldn't have been a thorough way to clean them. Ugh.
plazmablu ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:01:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I once went on a historical "trip through Viking Jorvik" in York. It was cool, like Disneyland but with Viking animatronics instead. They really did the whole immersion thing though - it stank!
I also saw the largest human turd ever discovered. That was cool.
sasamiy00 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:26:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I suspect perfume was developed for this reason.
bluthscottgeorge ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:50:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's like farting in your car, and your windows aren't working, you would get used to it after like 10 minutes, thinking it's gone. However if you pick up a passenger, they'll notice the smell.
SeymourZ ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:14:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
20 years ago everything smelled like tobacco.
xsibleyx08 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:31:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
To this day I love the smell of a freshly lit cigarette. Hate the smell once it's been smoked though.
oldirishpig ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:16:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Holy Grail, 'Bring Out Yer Dead' scene....
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:26:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Basically what India smells like today.
teefour ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:32:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think Monty Python said it best:
starfirex ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:35:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your nose gets used to smells and filters them out. That's why if you have bad breath or BO you generally don't smell it even though someone else will.
It probably smelled like shit, but nobody noticed.
Caneiac ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:40:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In the rich circles they had strong perfumes and perfume soaked handkerchiefs to mask the smell and poor people just got used to it.
FLIGHTxWookie ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:45:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I mean, no one wasn't used to it. It's like how you notice everyone else's house seems to have a distinctive smell to it, but yours doesn't smell like anything in particular to you. You would be used to it because there would be no alternative.
Checkers10160 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:49:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I told my mom she should watch Game of Thrones, and she said it was too dirty, she didn't want to watch it. I told get those scenes are generally beneficial to the plot, and it's not that bad.
She said no, she meant dirty as in they don't bathe, and didn't want to watch unwashed people -__-
Humdngr ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:23:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's clean dirt, makeup.
spidereater ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:52:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
especially the cities. It really shows the benefits of a city that people would choose to surround themselves by so much filth. Before sewers and toilets and cars the middle of a large city would just be a total cesspool with human and horse shit everywhere.
Humdngr ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:22:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think the most underappreciated thing would be the modern sewer system.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:54:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In france nobles and well-to-do would wear little bags of popurri and perfume around their necks in order to deal with it. It was that bad.
Eric_the_Barbarian ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:00:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Look at how your typical baby/toddler regards dirt, being sticky, or various excretia. "Gross" is a learned concept.
chookilledmyfather ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:05:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I wiped my ass the other day with my fingers. The toilet paper slipped away from my hand a little while I was reaching around.
It was disgusting.
Wookiemom ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:10:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If you were born in filth, and lived in filth, then that's the world you know best.
Colopty ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:20:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Easy. What does your nose smell like?
Rvrsurfer ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:21:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Showers were thought of as unhealthy.
sonickarma ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:22:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A man rides by.
"Who's that, then"
"I dunno. Must be a king."
"Why?"
"He hasn't got shit all over him."
HonProfDrEsqCPA ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:26:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There was another thread here about how ancient cities smelled. Someone who collected ancient cloth/paper money went into details based on how the money they had collected smelled.
Edit: shit, they smelled like shit
Taters233 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:29:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Look up the history of Brownstones in places like new york. Basically, shit would run in the streets during storms, and these were built to direct the shit downward so it didn't flood the streets as much and get into peoples homes.
Humdngr ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:20:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That sounds horrifying.
Taters233 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:29:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Good Times, those olden days.
dodgeunhappiness ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:35:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They were probably used to such smell. Can't imagine London in the Middle Ages.
King_of_the_Dot ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:49:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
How anyone ever got laid before hygiene products, I will never know... Or in the 80s.
ds580 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:49:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Relevant video on the everywhere part. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEYh5WACqEk
LiesAboutQuotes ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:11:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
you've never met hippies then
rocker5743 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:17:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well we think something smells like shit in reference to things that don't smell like shit. When everything smells like shit it's kinda hard to not get used to it.
2booshie101 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:03:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
For a large part of my life everywhere smelled of cigarettes. Everywhere, and I don't remember ever noticing it. Now I can smell it straight away and I have a lousy sense of smell. I guess when everyone smells the same you do just get used to it
Son_of_Kong ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:05:06 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
People used a lot more perfume and other kinds of fragrances around the house, like potpourri.
madmax21st ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:05:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Perfume obviously. To those who can afford it.
rubsomebacononitnow ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:54:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I bet it's like that in poor rural villages now. How different are remote African villages from 500 years ago?
Viperbunny ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:00:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I bet people were used to the smell since they never knew what it was like to be in a place that didn't smell bad. I am sure some places were better than others, but it comes down to what you are used to.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:20:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As someone who grew up on a farm, you do get used to it.
FinalMantasyX ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:52:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Go to India and ask
predalienmack ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:56:06 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It just naturally makes me think about how disgusting sex probably was in the days before consistent (at least weekly) bathing.
definitewhitegirl ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:17:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
well yes, this is a fact! Populated cities were fucking gross (IMO, still are) centuries ago... because indoor plumbing wasn't a THING. I agree it's foul that people did not wash their hands but can you imagine why they didn't? City streets were flooded with shit (and piss) and it was pretty normal shivers.. As a germophobe, I am thankful for both Ignaz and indoor plumbing.
valeyard89 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:27:58 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thats how you knew who was king. He didn't have shit all over 'im.
honda27 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:29:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Centuries ago? Visit India
The_Right_Reverend ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:30:15 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Go to India. That country is covered in shit.
falconbox ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:34:01 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Because that's all they knew. There's no "getting used to something" it that is the standard 100% of the time. It simply just is.
Jewels_Vern ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 04:40:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
http://mentalfloss.com/article/73002/fascinatingly-filthy-how-bad-science-saved-lives-victorian-london
ctindel ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 05:15:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just go to India where there are open sewers running in the streets and people bathe and drink the water from the Ganges where there are dead bodies floating right next to them.
That's what it used to smell like here.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 05:42:38 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Don't go to India then
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 06:23:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They were probably used to it. People who live in filth and have terrible hygeine are immune to the scents they create.
Questbudz ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 07:03:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As proven by Afghanistan
nevereverreddit ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 12:30:56 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There was also this
Iamhereforcats ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:53:43 on February 3, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Modernized sewage/rubbish disposal system begun in the late 18s, so any time prior to that is pretty much dump, literally.
freet0 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:31:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Actually the smell is what semmelweis was trying to remove.
thepenaltytick ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:31:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My gym teacher used to say that pigs don't think they smell like pigs. He was trying to get the point across that you should always put on deodorant after gym class because you won't always notice that you smell bad when you do. I think that's the general concept. I also think you'd just get used to all the bad smells if you grew up and spent your entire lives in them.
eNaRDe ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:03:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Beethoven was known for not showering for months. People have said you can smell him across a room.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:09:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Obviously you don't have cats.
bennihana09 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:16:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Obviously, you've never been to Asia...
malabella ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:34:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This a quote by Patrick Sรผskind in his book Perfume:
Humdngr ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:25:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That really makes you appreciate the time (and geographically) in which we are born into.
nittun ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:30:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
yeah, old london or any major european city would probably overwhelm your senses. a trip back 150 years, and shit would flow in the gutters.
yarow12 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:36:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Scent adaptation.
TheNightWind ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:50:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Centuries ago? Visit a third-world country, it's still centuries ago there.
poco ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:54:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think of this every time I watch a movie set in the past or even something like Lord of the Rings. I can't help but think everything is just gross.
speckofsacredsight ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:08:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Spend a few weeks on a livestock farm. It's pretty crazy, but people get used to smells fast. A lot of our sensory perception is less about detecting things and more about detecting unusual things or things changing. Are you on a computer? Do you hear your computer's fan going or the hard drive spinning? Is it pretty audible? Was it even remotely something you were conscious of? It's the same kind of thing.
silvapain ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:08:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's a condition called olfactory fatigue.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olfactory_fatigue
fullmetalmoo ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:13:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
smelled*
SquidBlub ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:44:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
An alternative thought there is that we're the abnormal ones. Aside from actually like being dirty enough to cause disease, the "foreign people smell bad" stereotype kind of illustrates that our perception of things like smell are different from most of the world throughout most of history.
Do foreign people have BO, or are we really strangely obsessed with keeping ourselves from smelling like human beings?
juvenescence ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:00:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Olfactory fatigue. Smell something regularly long enough, your brain naturally filters it out. The reason why some people might not know about their own BO.
Go visit India for the same reason.
kidbeer ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:23:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Some people today still do it.
Lookin at you, parts of Europe who think deodorant is optional.
TedTheGreek_Atheos ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:25:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's why perfumes were invented.
Dent18 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:05:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
DESIGNATED
EliHallows ยท 860 points ยท Posted at 18:16:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Even more mind boggling, it wasn't just that doctors weren't washing their hands in between patients. They would work with cadavers (either practicing procedures or simply examining the human body to learn more) and go straight from dead body to maternity ward without washing. This brought on the belief that some women would die due to shame if it were a male doctor that assisted with their birth instead of a female nurse or midwife (because there was such a drastic difference in death rates between when there was a male doctor or a female nurse who helped with the birth).
IIRC: The transference of germs between cadavers and living humans was found by an unfortunate doctor who recognized that he, after being cut while performing an autopsy, was having very similar symptoms as the women who were so often dying in the hospital shortly after childbirth (sidenote: it was actually safer for them to give birth at home during this time period). This doctor died shortly after but ended up saving many lives because he recognized his symptoms.
TLDR: If you are playing with dead things, be sure to wash your hands afterwards.
[deleted] ยท 480 points ยท Posted at 19:24:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
EliHallows ยท 166 points ยท Posted at 19:36:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's actually really interesting. Kudos to the Fins for recognizing this and running with it. When the whole "you should really wash your hands because of germs" thing came out, doctors became upset and often refused to comply.
ImALittleCrackpot ยท 33 points ยท Posted at 22:28:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes, They were gentlemen, and therefore it was impossible that their hands could be dirty. Semmelweiss was very nearly locked up in a loony bin for suggesting such a thing.
EliHallows ยท 25 points ยท Posted at 22:38:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He actually was locked up (eventually).
From wikipedia, "In 1865, Semmelweis was committed to an asylum, where he died at age 47 of pyaemia, after being beaten by the guards, only 14 days after he was committed."
ImALittleCrackpot ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 22:59:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thanks. I sit corrected.
Joetato ยท 20 points ยท Posted at 21:05:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Absolutely. some of them thought it was nonsense and nothing but a waste of time. People (as a whole) are always resistant to change, it seems.
KJ6BWB ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:49:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
To be fair, they didn't have good hand lotion at the time, so frequent washing with the harsh soap they had at the time could really do a number on your hands. So who's more likely correct, the looney raving about invisible monsters that somehow arise in dead bodies but aren't in any living bodies and says you need to mess up your hands with too much handwashing as a consequence, or everyone else?
[deleted] ยท -7 points ยท Posted at 21:08:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
decideonanamelater ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 05:11:49 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's purely not true, unless you define often in some incredibly abnormal way.
[deleted] ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 05:31:05 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Studies show only 40% of healthcare professional comply with the hand washing, the other 60% either don't or do it inconsistently.
60% of doctors not doing seems like it pretty often to me.
decideonanamelater ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 07:11:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just saying "studies show" doesn't mean anything. There's like 50 studies by sugar companies that "show" that sugar has no effect on obesity. Cite it if you want it to be even the slightest bit relevant.
[deleted] ยท 49 points ยท Posted at 19:56:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Native Americans put sick people in saunas too, "sweat lodges". They believed that you could break a fever with heat or sweat the toxins that made you sick out, and that's a belief that persists here in the USA among pretty much every race.
Kesht-v2 ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 21:53:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also you risk seeing the ghosts of the fiddy men you killed.
hungry4pie ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:25:00 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Back for more eh tojo?
imFreshYo ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 22:05:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I've noticed slight sickness can be shaken off with exercise. Works on hangovers too.
Notblondeblueeye ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 22:36:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Its because there's a lot of truth in it!! All the toxins in the blood, the killed and destroyed pathogens and the pathogens that can't survive in a hot temperature are flushed out through swear (yes, this happens) and the blood runs thinner when you're hot, and the increase in oxygen and ATP use when you're hot aids in how fast the pathogens are broken down and how fast white blood cells can act - so exercising and saunas do help with sickness.
kemushi_warui ยท 18 points ยท Posted at 23:30:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"MOTHERFUCKING SHIT FUCK! OH GODDAMN IT ALL TO HELL! FUCK YOU YOU MOTHERFUCKING PATHOGEN--hey, I'm healed!"
dorekk ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 00:32:27 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If this were true, I'd never, ever be sick.
PixelPantsAshli ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:29:12 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fuckin' right, me too.
_donotforget_ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:52:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Huh, I always heard Sweat lodges were diifferent from saunas. Closed in, they didn't get rid of the smoke before using (sauna fire just heated up stones for eight hours then fire is extinguished, water on sauna got rid of CO2), and were more spiritual and for men...along with being friggin dangerous because your in an enclosed, really hot space with smoke. Mess up the building, don't get enough holes in the wall, and your dead.
I don't have a sauna, really want one, but I find hot water/steam helps a ton. When I had whooping cough I could only breathe with a bathroom filled with steam from a boiling bath along with a steam maker.
NightGod ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:27:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's because the steam helped loosen the phlegm in your lungs.
Hegiman ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:56:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Because you can. Native American and eastern medicine were way ahead of the west.
whalebreath ยท -4 points ยท Posted at 22:31:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes, and its still as untrue now as it was then
sweetbacker ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 22:19:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's hardly about the smoke (though smoke saunas are rad), it's regular heating to temperatures in excess of 100C / 200F that sterilized the place. Not while having childbirth there, obviously.
Hollowplanet ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 13:10:38 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You sure about those temps? That seams deadly.
sweetbacker ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 14:47:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Positive. Just like it's not deadly for your hands to take a cake out of a hot oven, as long as you don't touch the metal or glass parts. It's all about (lack of) humidity in the air, the less there is the less heat is conducted to your body and the more effective your sweating is in cooling it down. 200F in a dry sauna is no problem at all, that's why they'd pour water on the stove rocks to generate steam and make it feel hotter.
hicadoola ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 22:18:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Still, giving birth in a sauna? Holy fuck. I get sick just sitting there for 10 mins doing nothing.
_donotforget_ ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 02:54:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The sauna isn't going when the birth is going, at least from what I can tell. It's just a sterile, sacred place.
ThundarPawnch ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 22:20:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Probably what you said. A huge reasons "tradition" comes about is because somewhere down the line we figured out it work better. We had no idea why, just that it did, until it became so ingrained in the culture no one remembered why they did it that way in the first place.
That's basically how we forgot that lemons cured scurvy. Lol
wretched_excess ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 23:26:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I wonder what simple thing we are/aren't doing in this day and age that we'll look back on in a hundred years and think, "Holy shit! I'm glad I wasn't around back then."
hungry4pie ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:26:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hipster beards and top knots probably
rm5 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:55:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Who forgot that lemons cured scurvy?
ThundarPawnch ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:02:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Humans.
Baneken ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 22:04:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also swedes thought Finns as strange for washing up as often as 3 times a week and considered such thing as "surely unhealthy".
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:18:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Cheers to smoke saunas from Estonia! And of course, saunas in general.
HipsterZucchini ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 02:42:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also I recall an anecdote from the Black Death, in which a family all survived because they had retreated to living in a corner of their furnace due to abandoning the rest of the house and not going out. The constant fire burned any present germs
I really cannot explain how their house was constructed, but it seemed like they had a large room where things were cooked and they lived huddled on the far side of the room from the entrance, and past the active furnace. But I think they left it not knowing any better and all immediately died. Read this years ago.
juvenescence ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:03:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Probably gave people the impression that saunas and hot springs helped promote healing through some sort of natural cure.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:14:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well saunas were considered holy places. You didn't just wash your body there. You also washed your sins away.
_donotforget_ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:55:02 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ya, don't Finns have sauna elves?
gymnasticRug ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:38:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No, it's just because it's finland.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 13:25:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Finland has a love of sauna.
[deleted] ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 18:28:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Man, I'd forgotten about that. I'm so glad I got to do that theme in school because I remember way more about all of this than any other history topic I ever learned about and it's absolutely nuts. Thank fuck for germ theory and the modern abundance of knowledge!
DolphinSweater ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 20:03:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also, in the Victorian times, the medical schools were so desperate for cadavers to work on that they usually acquired them through back channel "no questions asked" means. When they were especially hard up, medical students were known to rob the graves of the recently deceased. This was especially common in Asylum cemeteries, so much so that it was doubted that the asylum cemetery in Anchorage, Kentucky even had any bodies in it. Source: The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson.
[deleted] ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 18:54:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ah, the ole I don't know what it is so it must be supernatural belief.
craftychicken91 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:29:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
very popular back in the day
[deleted] ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 19:50:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Was it really that they didn't wash at all or that they finally understood you had to basically sanitize your hands?
EliHallows ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 19:57:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He proposed the practice of doctors washing their hands with chlorinated lime solutions (instead of just rinsing them in water until they looked clean).
fundudeonacracker ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 22:04:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
James A. Garfield lived for awhile after he was shot. But doctors kept shoving their fingers in his wound trying to find the bullet. He died from the infection.
MrsYoungie ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 22:51:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They didn't want to start washing hands even after it was suspected to be the problem, because if they did and their mortality rates went down, then the obvious conclusion was that they had been responsible for killing many of their patients. So instead they stayed in a state of denial about it.
BitchesMakePuppies ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 22:23:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It was also Ignaz who discovered this. His friend got poked with a scalpel that had been used on a cadaver and was dying of the same infection the cadaver died of.
EliHallows ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:34:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ahh yes, that sounds about right. I was going off of memory. This opened the door to discussions about Germ Theory and led to a better understanding about what was killing so many women shortly after giving birth.
QualityPies ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:58:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is actually home semmelweis found out the connection. The mortality was considerably higher on the days when the doctors were performing autopsies in the morning.
thermality ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:42:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I wonder what things we're doing now that we end up shaking our heads at in the future...
EliHallows ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:11:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is worrisome. As someone who has bad teeth, I can see how some of our modern dental practices will (probably) be seen as barbaric in the future.
Like, TIL that people used to drill into teeth and fill the hole with gold/porcelain/composite resin (and that's if they decided against ripping the tooth out)!
skalra63 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:21:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well some things have persisted though milenia. Tooth pulling. We still do it, we just have some anaesthetic... I believe most of the time its local so people are aware its happening. Its also a form of torture.
Effimero89 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:56:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think about that all the time... 100 years from now.. "dear god people would have to be put to sleep than cut open just to remove something, then heal for weeks and months. What monster!"
trancematik ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:18:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Reminds me of Donnie Darko talking about antiseptics
ghettomuffin ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:35:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thanks for the info! You should edit your post with the doctors name. He deserves credit
Pardonme23 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:15:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"Wet" dentistry was a thing 50 years ago. No gloves.
rackpuppy ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:41:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What does wet dentistry mean? Just no gloves, or something else?
Pardonme23 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:46:15 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just the no gloves add far as I know. They also used to have the drill sander belt over their shoulder.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:53:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Which years was this observed?
vanulovesyou ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:22:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's amazing that humans have survived as long as we have.
Highside79 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:20:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In strict term it is still safer to be at home. Being at the hospital mitigates risk because of the cluster of skilled people and equipment that they have if things get complicated, but for an uncomplicated birth, little is gained from having been in a hospital.
craftychicken91 ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 19:30:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
but being prepared for something like that can only help making hospital birth strictly safer because they can deal with complications
Highside79 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:37:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think it comes down to a very individualized risk assessment. For a certain group of people it may be that their risk of complication is "lower" than the risk of hospital born infections. For those people they may actually be safer. That kind of assessment is presently pretty subjective though.
Revvy ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:17:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's just something off with going to your local contagious and infectious diseases center to give birth.
While their ability to deal with contingency situations will improve those edge cases, the way a hospital operates can still introduce other problems.
Saint_Judas ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:41:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You are right. I forgot the infant mortality rate skyrocketed after hospital births became the norm.
Revvy ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:59:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I forgot where I said anything of the sort.
BDMayhem ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:07:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Do you have a source backing that up in strict terms?
Edit: This NY Times article cites a CDC study of 14 million births that shows home births by midwives resulting in 4 times as many deaths as hospital births by midwives.
Highside79 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:15:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sure, here is an article based on a study that discusses this at some length:
http://mana.org/blog/home-birth-safety-outcomes
Descrete ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:18:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Are there some kind of germs that come off of dead people ?
EliHallows ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 19:31:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm not sure about what specific germs may come off of a dead body but what the women were dying of became known as "puerperal fever" or childbed fever. This is defined as any bacterial infection of the female reproductive tract following childbirth or miscarriage. So the deaths could have been caused by a wide variety of bacteria.
PRMan99 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:14:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, the bacteria that are breaking them down.
tyranicalteabagger ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:37:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Probably because a dead body is being actively consumed by bacteria and maybe even Fungi; which consume human flesh if given the chance and are reproducing at a phenomenal rate. Then getting all over the doctors hands and then introduced to the infant, and a woman's nether regions; which have just been beaten up by child birth..
trancematik ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:20:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
well a decaying body is definetely on the ripe side of things
samorost1 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 00:47:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
But be aware that this and many other things is the work of the christians and similar stupid people.
onedoor ยท 70 points ยท Posted at 17:56:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We wash our hands so much partially because we can. Water is very available to us. And when I say us, I mean first worlders.
[deleted] ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 18:03:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Good point that. I waste a pretty insane amount of potable water just washing my hands because I don't want to get a cold. Damn it, now I feel bad, but I still want clean hands...
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 18:46:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:50:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also surgical masks to catch sneezes!
Nerdynard ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:13:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's actually a thing in some countries
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:15:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Some of the Chinese students here do it and I wish it would catch on. So many people sneeze in their hands :(
User1-1A ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:30:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Idk why people do that. Besides germs, you want snot on your hands? Sneeze into your armpit if you have to.
dsquared513 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 20:34:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The crux of your elbow (or anticubital fossa if you wanna get technical) seems more feasible, and slightly less gross.
PumpUpTheYams ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:19:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Every resident of Flint, Michigan reading this just sighed.
TheCapedMoosesader ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:14:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You say that, but Indians (from India) wash their hands exponentially more than any North American or European I've ever met.
Just based on personal observation, id say most North Americans are particularly shitty at washing their hands, which is unfortunate, it's a great way to stop the spread of disease.
Hegiman ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:57:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I sneeze onto my forearm.
TheCapedMoosesader ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:58:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We all sneeze on your forearm.
mcglausa ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:47:17 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I recently spent two months in India, visiting quite a few different areas of the country. Many handwash sinks did not have soap! Even the toilet sinks often didn't have soap.
I actually found this was common across SE Asia too. Considering that many cultures from that area traditionally eat without utensils, I found it surprising.
EkiAku ยท -5 points ยท Posted at 19:14:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There are absolutely no countries where plumbing isn't available and even many non-first world countries have plumbing and electricity in rural areas. It's not a sacred commodity that only the very elite have. Only the poorest of the poor do not.
dsquared513 ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 20:42:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't know what your idea of "poorest of the poor" is, but over 10% of the world's population doesn't have easy access to potable water.
EkiAku ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:14:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So, from this statistic you have given me, about 90% does. While less than 100% isn't ideal, I hate this idea that the west lives in some sort of luxury that no other country could possibly have in any other way.
Also considering that some people who don't have access to that water live in the west (Detriot and that town in Michigan whose name escapes me come to mind.)
dsquared513 ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 22:14:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Maybe I should have put it this way: over 700 million people don't have readily available drinking water. This is more than twice the population of the U.S.
And I don't think that most intelligent people (I know that's kind of a narrow qualifier) believe that the west lives in luxury that nowhere else has. The fact is that there is a significant portion of the Earth's population that exist in an abject poverty that most people who grew up in the relatively superior U.S. infrastructure can't fathom.
OobaDooba72 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:09:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You're taking the totally wrong point from this person's posts. They never said running water was an elite luxary, just that most of the first world has it, and its less common (though not totally uncommon) the poorer/rural-er you get from there.
And its Flint, btw.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:36:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The reddit circlejerk doesn't like facing reality :(
EkiAku ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:17:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
It's a whole other brand of racism that in all honesty bothers me more than straight up "Oh we hate this group of people." Oh those poor barbaric, third world countries. They'll never understand our luxuries~. Meanwhile you wouldn't be able to tell the difference from Nairobi, New York City or Dubai if you didn't recognize specific buildings, cultural differences not withstanding.
relsthrough ยท 29 points ยท Posted at 17:58:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If you didn't know that germs and bacteria existed, why would you think dirt was bad? In fact, people used to think just the opposite - that layers of dirt would protect you from ill "humours", and that taking a bath was dangerous.
inkydye ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 19:40:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We do have some instinctive and ur-cultural preference for cleanliness.
In mutation lottery, many animals stumble upon an instinctive behaviour of cleaning themselves, their food, habitat or babies. Then they out-survive and out-procreate those who don't have that instinct. The reason we don't like the smell of shit is that we're descendants of people and animals who got saved from disease by staying away from shit because they happened to dislike the smell.
In the cultural equivalent of evolution, plenty of human cultures stumbled upon superstitions or rites that motivated behaviours that resulted in effectively better hygiene ("you are tainted by death because you touched a dead body, or by spirits of rot because you handled rotting things; you must purify (=wash) yourself before you even touch other people, let alone you try to heal them or officiate the mystery of childbirth"). Then they out-survived the cultures without those memes, and begat us.
Of course, there's also the thing where rolling around in dirt sometimes rids you of parasites, or eating mud supplies a critical mineral, so there's vectors pulling in all kinds of directions.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:09:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is why I have an armchair theory that Obsessive Compulsive Disorder could have evolved. Growing up, I was an extremely picky eater, as in if the taste, texture, smell, temperature, or appearance of the food was "wrong" to me, I just wouldn't eat. I ate so little that I probably ended up several inches shorter than what I was supposed to be. I'm guessing that my ancestors grew up in filth and the OCD genes were more likely to be passed on.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:00:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, I suppose those ideas are pretty much one and the same, it's just easy for me to say 'but dirt is bad anyway because it's dirt'! Before we knew why it was bad, I guess there's absolutely no reason to worry about it.
I have been feeling a bit choleric lately. Maybe I should roll in some mud.
heiferly ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:43:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
At any rate, we're coming full circle. We're now realizing a certain level of what we previously considered "dirt" ... microbiota ... is actually essential for good health. We're curing patients with fecal transplants now, and this looks to be just the tip of the "good dirt" iceberg.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:47:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I do attribute my fairly robust immune system to eating handfuls of dirt as a child.
heiferly ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:09:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's one way to do it. I went the other route, literally, and received a fecal transplant from my husband as my first wedding anniversary gift. Truly, the gift that keeps on giving. (My farts are now eternally his "brand.")
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:12:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's... oddly beautiful. But the way you phrased it made it sound kinda like you just got one as a gift, which is hilarious.
dickseverywhere444 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:42:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alright, explain pls.
heiferly ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:15:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
http://www.openbiome.org/about-fmt/
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:14:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I just hate how grimy my hands start to feel during normal day stuff. I cant imagine working in a place where you may be covered in all kinds of fluids wouldn't make your hands feel disgusting after a while.
AugustusofAustin ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 18:30:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A great book (that I listened to in audio form) is Destiny of the Republic about James Garfield. So many additional things like Graham Bell and the things he was doing at the time. But they also covered how Americans, in particular, resisted this antisepsis theory in medicine. They literally took blood caked on to their aprons as a sign of experience! Also, that guy who shot him sounded like a Millennial you would see on a reality tv show today. Very strange.
ertebolle ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:52:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yep, and it was rather pertinent to Garfield's assassination since it seems likely that he would have lived if his doctors had used proper sanitation.
(also, Guiteau is easily the most batshit crazy of all the successful presidential assassins - shot Garfield because, after giving a rambling speech to a tiny audience in support of his candidacy, he thought he was the main reason Garfield was elected, and that Garfield should have rewarded him with an ambassadorship or something)
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:39:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sounds awesome, thanks! I know shit all about US history so it should be extra interesting.
Civ5-Venice-1v1mebro ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:30:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I mean, you totally answered your own question.
We take Germ Theory for granted today. People back then really had no idea that it was an issue. The prevailing theory was that of Miasma, so in that sense they would have had very ventilated rooms to prevent "bad smells" from getting in.
"Dirt" being a transmitter of disease wasn't even considered really, except in cases of gangrene. Even then, it's not like they would go dig a ditch and then operate [though there was a practice in some rural areas outside the US to rub dirt on the wound left behind by the umbilical cord]. Often times it was because they were doing autopsies, then would go deliver babies .
The corpses being relatively fresh, without Germ Theory, no one would have really thought twice about it.
That being said, with the advent of germ theory came the development of antiseptic technique - which we are all happy for.
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:36:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Even as I'm writing comments I'm forgetting that germs were a fucking crazy idea back then. We really came a long way in a short amount of time.
Omakepants ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:41:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
yeah, it's hard to keep that in perspective.
RehaDesign ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 18:58:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Amazing: In 1865, Semmelweis was committed to an asylum, where he died at age 47 of pyaemia, after being beaten by the guards, only 14 days after he was committed.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:01:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A very underappreciated guy.
JEveryman ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:28:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I liked Brad Pitts' explanation.
https://youtu.be/mv0ztidz_I8
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:33:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Damn, I need to watch this film.
JEveryman ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:36:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The film it was based is amazing as well. La Jetรฉe. Exact same story however La Jetรฉe is comprised almost entirely of still photographs. It is amazing because after about two minutes you are so ensconced in the story that you don't care and you find yourself investigating each photo with the voice overs bringing them to life.
La Jetรฉe was the first movie that made me appreciate films art.
rainydaywomen1235 ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 17:57:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
i love how, again and again, throughout history (and just day to day in general), people refuse to make a small change in order to have the possibility of a remarkable or the same outcome. I could see the issue if there was danger to hand washing, but in this case, the worst that could happen is your hands are clean and everything else is the same
UNWS ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 18:17:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The thing is, it detracts from routine if you have to wash your hand all the time. It is basically saying you need to get naked everytime you go on a plane to reduce bomb threats. Now if you didnt think it would help, you would just get annoyed and actively resist it.
rainydaywomen1235 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:59:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's a great way to put it, but I do think that some people are still way too stubborn
Gl33m ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:17:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It really doesn't. People in this thread aren't talking about why the other doctors refused.
The guy that discovered the thing about washing your hands? Yeah, turns out he was actually fucking crazy. There was also no real scientific backing to what he was saying outside correlative results. His entire hypothesis was that the cause of a particular disease was "uncleanliness," as well as believing "cadaverous particles" were the problem. His solution to cleaning was just whatever got rid if the dead corpse smell the best, which happened to be wet chlorine (that's what you want to wash your hands with)...
He presented this to other scientists and their response was, "Uh, none of that really makes any god damn sense. WTF are you on about." Were they wrong for generally ignoring the results? Absolutely. But Semmelweis was absolutely incorrect. They didn't refuse to adopt something because it was a small inconvenience. They refused to adopt something because none of it really held to scientific research.
However over the next couple of decades, many scientists would go on to develop the Germ Theory of disease. They did lots of cool science and shit, and had a hypothesis and results that made much more god damn sense. When presented with this data, the scientific community was like, "Hey, this shit sounds legit. This actually makes sense."
And the end of this, should the scientific community investigated the "wash your hands" idea more thoroughly even purely based on correlative data? Probably. This is about people's lives here and all that. But were they justified in ignoring Semmelweis? Generally, yeah.
rainydaywomen1235 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:33:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I see, this makes a lot more sense. I see the reason they were hesitant
thefisherman1961 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:49:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dried out skin bruh
sogard_the_viking ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:30:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
People resisting change?? No... /s
GestaltJungle ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:31:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's a couple of great books on the topic of evidence based medicine by Ben Goldacre, who has been campaigning on the topic for years. Even up to a few decades ago doctors actively fought changes in their practice, even where their way of doing things was proven to be harmful.
yodelocity ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:22:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's really a textbook example of the scientific method in action. The 2 maternity ward of a hospital had drastically different mortality rates despite being in the same building. Women would literally beg not to be placed in the "cursed" ward, some preferring to give birth on the street.
He proposed theories and ruled them out. Perhaps over crowding is causing the deaths, but the ward with more deaths was less crowded. Perhaps the priests who walk down the halls to give the last rights to the dyeing mothers would stress the other patients and cause them to die, but when the priests were removed the death rate was unchanged. He summarily reflected ideas like "one of the wards is cursed" because it was untestable.
He finally had his breakthrough when his friend died after being accidentally cut by a used autopsy scalpel, his friend showed similar symptoms to the dieing women.
He proposed that "cadaverous matter" (a functional idea that he invented) is what is causing the deaths. Ironically the doctors, in an attempt to discover what was causing all the deaths in the "cursed" ward, were performing autopsies on every woman who died in the building and then after being wrist deep in a pathogen infested cadaver would barely rinse off their hands before assisting in a child birth almost inevitably infecting the mother.
When he suggested the doctors wash their hands in a lime solution the death rate dropped to normal levels. (He discovered lime neutralised the smell of the cadaver on the hands, so he figured it would probably be good enough to destroy the supposed "cadaverous matter.")
The doctors were of course skeptical because he was unable to prove the existence of cadaverous matter. (primarily because it doesn't actually exist.) But after the death rates there was no doubt that hand sanitation was effective.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:17:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:26:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That also boggles my mind. I know you have to interrupt what you're doing for a minute or two but come on. I like not spreading avoidable illnesses.
hfsh ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:44:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I can imagine that constant washing with harsh disinfectants is not that fun on your skin.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:45:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
True, just working with food destroyed my hands if I didn't moisturise all the time from washing that much more. But, again, I do gain some slight enjoyment out of not making people ill I guess!
helpful_hank ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:34:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Semmelweis tops the list of scientists whose great breakthroughs were fiercely resisted in science -- http://amasci.com/weird/vindac.html I have a sub about this: /r/Festinger
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:47:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The remarkable thing about that list is I know nearly all of those names and why they're significant, and beyond this little niche I'm not big on history or science outside of maths.
Looks interesting btw, subbed!
helpful_hank ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:51:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nice!
harbourwall ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:36:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Even he didn't know why it worked!
desertpolarbear ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:36:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It is the same kind of people today who resist and deny change and evidence even when all scientific proof is against them.
DanielMcLaury ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:07:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What you're failing to realize is that if you wash your hands between every patient like Semmelweis recommended you'll end up rubbing all the skin off your hands and having open wounds. That's why it was "obviously" not a reasonable thing to do.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:13:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Aye, someone pointed that out and I hadn't thought about it (even though I get painfully dry hands sometimes). That's a fairly valid reason to be resistant to it if there was no demonstrable reason. It's hard to fully shake off the knowledge of how infection works because it's so widespread now here.
DanielMcLaury ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:19:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, microbiology is something most people couldn't imagine -- I mean, there are tiny animal-things that live on your hands that are too small to see but which get inside you and kill you? Really?
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:26:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well now you put it that way, it does sound kind of ridiculous...
lookmeat ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:08:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
People kept their hands clean, in the sense that many people will pick up their room but will not actually know how to clean it. The hands had no dirt or any other obvious thing.
What people didn't like was the idea of having to wash your hands with soap fully and completely every time (even if your hands appear clean). If you've ever been frustrated doing an extra step that was useless (but there for lawsuit purposes) every time, you'll understand how these doctors felt.
KingDooble ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:34:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, they didn't know about germs back then and he couldn't really prove why hand washing was reducing mortality. Germs were only discovered long after his death. The idea of washing what seemed like perfectly clean hands sounded stupid to them.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:08:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Washing hands causes autism!
fundudeonacracker ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:00:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Agreed, if I can't wash my hands I get all flerps...
Pokergaming ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:53:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You mean how people today are anti-vax? People are fucking idiots.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:57:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Quite, people are extremely stubborn as well as idiots. Not sure how much of each. Anti-vaxxers are definitely on my list of 'seriously, what the fuck?' along with Semmelweis' detractors.
dacookeymonsta ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:54:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Reminds me of how pollution is treated today.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:55:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
People resisting what's good for them? You don't say?
MrSascrotch ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:04:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's really sad that he went crazy because of people not believing him, and the way he died because of it.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:07:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Honestly after that, I don't think there's anything one can do but go completely mad. It's such a simple and effective thing, mass refusal to do it has some rather disturbing implications if you get all thinky about it. Don't people want to save lives?
TwistedRonin ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:15:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
People do this now. There's a reason that bathrooms in restaurants and eateries have signs reminding employees to wash their hands.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:20:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And now we even know why we should wash our hands, there's way less excuse. People love to be stubborn I guess.
Chewyquaker ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:19:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You were never made to wash your hands as a child?
rkicklig ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:28:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think that it's our understanding of the health risk of "dirt" that is different now and contributes to the feeling that you shouldn't be dirty.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:31:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
People never like being told something they do is bad or wrong.
Even doctors until a few years ago resisted a ban on wearing ties as studies found they were just filthy with bacteria.
The doctors came up with all kinds of excuses such as professionalism not to stop wearing them.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:42:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's been periods of time when the intellectual community said washing and bathing was the root of illness so it should be done as rarley as possible. Imaging going down on a medieval peasant of either gender.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:45:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dude, I wouldn't even go down on someone on the last day of a festival. Medieval sex was never considered!
Dr_HQ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:43:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I read that doctors resisted because they didn't want to believe they had been harming their patients so extremely and regularly. Basically logic went "If failing to wash hands between patients causes drastically higher mortality, then I have been responsible for the deaths of many of my patients. I can't accept that to be true, so I will direct hostility towards the person suggesting it is true instead of considering the possibility."
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:48:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That makes a lot of sense. I imagine some were just stubborn asses or didn't want to waste the time on it, but those are some heavy implications.
mrpopenfresh ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:46:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's proof of things like this right now. Global warming comes to mind.
droppin_NBOMEs ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:47:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You know what crazy is? Crazy is majority rules...
Prof_Acorn ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:02:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
People still do.
And if you mention washing up before cooking dinner a lot of people will talk about antibiotic resistance and "never getting sick" and so on so forth.
Leonardo_DiCapricock ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:04:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Reminds me of the scene talking about this in 12 Monkeys http://youtu.be/mv0ztidz_I8
IAmSoUncomfortable ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:05:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Makes sense as it seems like that's unfortunately the natural reaction to change.
fabulousprizes ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:15:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It was a class issue. Doctors came exclusively from the gentry, and as a gentleman your hands could not be unclean from labour. To suggest that a gentleman's hands were dirty and needed washing was an insult. Therefore, no self respecting doctor would wash their hands.
a-t-o-m ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:15:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Even though we learned that there were microscopic organisms in the mid-late 17th century, we never really figured out that such small organisms were causing such deadly problems.
We did not have the capability to "see" viruses until the early 20th century, almost 70 years after Ignaz's practices were really catching on. In a similar fashion, I am glad my barber does not twilight as an amputation specialist.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:19:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You mean your barber's not meant to put hot cups on you while you get a shave? It's great for your humours, or so he tells me.
rottenseed ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:17:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Washing one's hands was the "climate change" of the time. No matter the body of evidence, there's people that'll deny it to their death.
cruise02 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:17:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If you told me that I'd been killing people for years through my own carelessness, I'd probably actively resist that idea too. Until I saw some powerful evidence, then I'd probably spiral down into inescapable depression.
Chinoiserie91 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:19:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The reason the doctors probably resisted was because if the hand washing theory would be confirmed it would mean the doctors would have all killed many patients by accident. So you can imagine why they would be in denial about their part in their patients deaths, probably just be easier to think the deaths must be for an another reason.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:24:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Habits are learned behaviors. It's not so mind-boggling, when you consider a child playing in the mud and then going to eat something. We don't know that dirt is dirty until someone drills it into us.
EarthboundCory ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:26:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Especially when you think that they knew that dirt and such caused infection. I just watched The Revenant and then read up on the story that it was based on. This was in the 1820s, and the real Hugh Glass had laid his back on a rotted log to let the maggots eat the dead flesh on his back to prevent gangrene. If gangrene was known to be a bad disease, and they knew it was caused by infection, then why wouldn't they think that clean hands would prevent that?
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:34:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Washing hands cause autism!
Gwildsketchappeared ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:40:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just goes to show you how strong peoples resistance is to change, no matter the situation. So hard to get anything accomplished, even if it makes things better.
elondisc ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:45:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
i mean, have you heard of the antivacciners, pretty much the same thing
i_am_an_ad ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:49:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
10 Signs You May Have OCD
Joetato ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:58:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They sued to perform surgery with unwashed hands and equipment that hadn't been cleaned from the previous surgery. My understanding is they pretty much never cleaned the surgical tools.
That explains why people used to see surgery as a death sentence, I guess.
ks501 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:03:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It no longer boggles my mind that people are ignorant and vehemently resist improving that situation. Its everybody.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:06:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In the US (don't know about other countries) we now have disinfectant hand wipes at many stores. Today got to wash my hands coming in to the grocery, and again leaving the grocery. Awesome! I think they started putting them in when avian flu began - so - thanks avian flu?
bitch_im_a_lion ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:07:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You're talking in past tense, but it's still a thing for some people to actively avoid washing their hands. I once watched a guy turn the sink in the public bathroom on for a few seconds, do nothing, and then turn it off just to pretend he was washing his hands.
InVultusSolis ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:08:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's like the modern-day anti-vax movement. You can have clear, plain, objective fact right there in front of you and idiots will still deny it.
PM-ME-SECRETS-N-TITS ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:08:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They will say this about carbon emissions in the future.
phishwhistle ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:14:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not just dirt, but blood from other births and surgery. My friend started the Global Sepsis Alliance to raise awareness about sepsis and he uses this story to illustrate the trouble in trying to get new practices and procedures passed in hospitals.
biosc1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:19:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, to be fair, the idea of germs wasn't even understood at the time.
Mauser_X ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:25:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Germs? Uh-huh. In the eighteenth century, no such thing, nada, nothing. No one ever imagined such a thing. No sane person, anyway. Ah! Ah! Along comes this doctor, uh, uh, uh, Semmelweis, Semmelweis. Semmelweis comes along. He's trying to convince people, well, other doctors mainly, that's there's these teeny tiny invisible bad things called germs that get into your body and make you sick. Ah? He's trying to get doctors to wash their hands. What is this guy? Crazy? Teeny, tiny, invisible? What do you call it? Uh-uh, germs? Huh? What? Now, cut to the 20th century. Last week, as a matter of fact, before I got dragged into this hellhole. I go in to order a burger in this fast food joint, and the guy drops it on the floor. Jim, he picks it up, he wipes it off, he hands it to me like it's all OK. "What about the germs?" I say. He says, "I don't believe in germs. Germs is just a plot they made up so they can sell you disinfectants and soaps." Now he's crazy, right? See?
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:25:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
People will say this about fucking anything. We've been seeing it a lot with vaccines lately.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:26:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If you think that dirt is just dirt and is harmless (no knowledge of germs/disease/any of that) then you have no problem being dirty. That means it's no problem if you get other people dirty. It's not like they had the highest hygienic standards, so everything would be dirty anyways.
dannyc1166 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:29:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm not gross and dirty, I'm just old school cool.
kekforever ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:37:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
iirc it's because doctors took it as an affront that they were "dirty". the argument was that "a gentleman always has clean hands" or something stupid like that
SilasX ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:54:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What's worse is that the doctors had been touching dead bodies. And we already had, even back then, an age old taboo against touching dead stuff. So it's not like the idea should have been unintuitive or bizarre.
Compizfox ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:00:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well Semmelweis didn't just make the doctors wash their hands, he made them wash their hands with bleach. Doctors resisted this because washing your hands with bleach is obviously unpleasant.
Prilosac ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:02:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They also found it as a sign of disrespect which (I think) is why he's s underappreciated. They took it as an insult at their own cleanliness
webbitor ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:13:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Washing your hands reduces the population of microbes on those surfaces for a short time, which definitely helps prevent infection if done just before your hands are in contact with someone's mucosa or open wound. (like in a maternity ward, or a sexual encounter)
Outside those situations, frequent hand-washing is a waste of time, IMO. Fearing dirt is stupid. People like farmers and mechanics have dirt on their hands all the time and are fine.
ProjectManagerAMA ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:15:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Makes you think about all the things we do today that will be considered barbaric in the future.
cynoclast ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:19:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Like anti-vaxxers.
Benramin567 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:29:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, but it's the reason we got polio.
Lanko ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:32:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I heard a rumor somewhere that it was actually considered prestigious for a medical doctor to be caked in blood, shit, and placenta as a sign of how many births he had handled that day/week/whatever.
GreenFox1505 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:33:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Imagine you're a doctor and someone you're responsible for 90% of your patient's deaths. Then they tell you a simple 1 minute activity could change that. You'd first be offended at the notion that it's your fault, then laugh at the seemingly magic idea that water and soap could somehow prevent "normal" losses.
AnticitizenPrime ยท 15 points ยท Posted at 17:37:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Even raccoons know to wash their food!
Monagan ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:35:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, that doesn't always work out for them.
MAK911 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:55:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Brilliant.
[deleted] ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 19:52:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It shouldn't surprise you. We discovered the vaccine for polio and now people don't want to "expose their kids to too many vaccines". People are just stupid.
[deleted] ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 18:28:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
[deleted]
frugalNOTcheap ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:39:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Its not the laziness that gets me. It's the fact the soap dries out my hands. I still wash after I take a dump.
a300zx4pak ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:33:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Use a good lotion after? That's what I do. I use Curel.
frugalNOTcheap ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:58:15 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Do you carry it with you? Im on the go a lot for work and use public bathrooms where lotion is not available.
a300zx4pak ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:32:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes, I keep a tiny bottle at work. And if I ever travel on vacation, I take it with me. I tried a few premium lotions and found Curel is the best for me.
Nerdn1 ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 18:44:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This was well over a decade before the germ theory of disease was widely accepted and existing theories, such as the miasma theory, would not be spread through contact. So unless you were going to cleanse everyone, head-to-toe, and every room constantly, handwashing would do no good. Washing your hands between every patient was a needless inconvenience for busy doctors. Heck, by the miasma theory, washing your SHOES between patients might be more effective than your hands, to make sure that miasma-causing contamination doesn't get spread.
Doctors almost certainly washed their hands occasionally, such as after handling something with a particularly offensive odor, but they weren't going to do so between every patient.
zykezero ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 18:28:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They thought that "washing your hands alluded to you having dirty hands."
Sigh.
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 18:33:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
[removed]
PoliteIndecency ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:49:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Exactly. They would wash their hands of anything that could be SEEN as dirty but they had no concept of bacteria or other microscopic particles that can mess you right the fuck up. Clean it with the good stuff.
vagina_fang ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 18:36:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
People take a shit and don't wash their hands.
People you know.
BeardyAndGingerish ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:18:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Because a gentleman's hands are never dirty.
(fondles corpse guts to learn which humor reacts best to a good bloodletting, wanders through Victorian alleyways to a handy opium den/whorehouse, pauses to deliver twins, polishes monocle)
Omakepants ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:19:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
the good old days, eh lads!?
BeardyAndGingerish ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:31:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hear, hear!
(raises brandy snifter, scratches syphilitic rash)
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:47:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't think it was simply about hand washing as it was about effectively sanitizing your hands. You can wash your hands and still leave a fair amount of bacteria.
Omakepants ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:03:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, my 5-year-old "washes" his hands.
ShadowLiberal ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:02:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I remember reading about the first doctors during the civil war who washed their hands when tended to the wounded. They were thought of as freaks for doing such an 'unnecessary' thing.
But then their patients were found to be much less likely to develop infections around their wounds (back then infections from bullet wounds killed more then the bullets themselves).
MagicHamsta ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:26:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Doctor: "Hrrm, I just had my hands inside a dead person's rectum. I better stick my hands into this woman's vag to help deliver the baby."
Semmelweis: "Should.....shouldn't you wash your hands before you do that?"
Doctor: "Nah. What could go wrong." /sarcasm.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:36:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They still don't.
THE_ASTR0NAUT ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:55:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Agreed. I bet something like this will be said in the future but about people nowadays not getting their kids vaccinated
NAN001 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:22:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They washed their hand; with water. Now imagine how weird it would for someone having been washing his hands with water since forever to wash it with some sort of unknown mixture.
whatsdup ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:48:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
picks ass
homeschooled ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:55:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm sure people did rinse their hands so they're clear from debris, but that's different than using an antiseptic like soap (or in his case, chlorinated lime). If you didn't know about the existence of tiny microbiotic germs, you wouldn't think to do that.
MarlinMr ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:24:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Kind of like how in the past we were recommended to put babies on their bellies to sleep. Suddenly Trond Markestad says its stupid, and sudden infant death syndrome drops by 90%. At least in Norway it did.
AOEUD ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:20:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A gentleman's hands are always clean!
Mid-wives' hands weren't so they had a much lower mortality rate.
Leoxcr ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:21:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
meeeehhhhhhh ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:33:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This reminds me of an episode of Stuff You Missed in History Class where they talked about how seldom doctors and nurses actually checked the baby's vitals at the time, and the entire last part, Tracy kept saying how it was hard to think that people "didn't check the baby."
It is so strange to look back one hundred years ago and see how much childbirth has changed. I can't imagine going through pregnancy and knowing how likely it was that something would go terribly wrong.
ShitpostingFaggot ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:37:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's because washing your hands causes autism.
stevemcqueer ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:44:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I read a history of medicine once. There's a moment in the 19th century surgery section where it goes, 'then came the introduction of gloves.' You think about all the surgery you read about up to that point and go 'eewwwwwwww'.
phantuba ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:45:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I can kinda understand it. What blows my mind is that people still just don't, you know, wash their hands even today.
carelesshandwashers ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:47:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is still an issue in Irish hospitals and needs to be constantly reminded of.
goldminevelvet ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:57:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It blows my mind that people today don't wash their hands. It's sick.
Megalodang ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:03:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Kind of blows your mind that is all over the place today in India.
Sylvester_Scott ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:09:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Like Chipotle employees?
Keytrun ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:11:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dude poop hands make babies stronger. Didn't you get the memo?
CompMolNeuro ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:12:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not in the slightest. People, in general even, are so resistant to new ideas that they often respond aggressively. Sometimes they respond violently. Think on our time's discoveries and the conservative responses.
astridstarship ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:20:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Honestly I still meet people like that today. Granted they don't work in medical facilities (thank God), but some people do not wash their hands when they should sometimes
Pinyaka ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:20:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It further blows my mind that compliance with hand washing procedures by doctors and nurses in hospitals hovers around 40%. I mean, the damn doctors and nurses can't be bothered to wash their hands even knowing that the compliance is bad and that it's costing us billions per year.
drinkit_or_wearit ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:20:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What really blows my mind is how many people still do not regularly wash their hands.
dsolomo ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:25:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
People (sailors) used to think that taking baths would kill you. Also thought malaria was "bad air" venting up from earth. There are quite a few things we can look back on that seem incredibly stupid
nightlyraider ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:29:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
at some points in time, what would they have chosen to wash with however? people didn't drink water because it was so polluted in big cities, so i can't imagine them thinking to "clean up" in it.
our entire perspective is terribly skewed by our cleanliness practices and medical understanding.
thijser2 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:31:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A good doctor is a gentleman and a gentleman is always clean, as such a good doctor does not need to wash his hands and to suggest he should is to suggest a doctor is not a gentleman and therefor not a good doctor.
itsallminenow ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:40:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If you remove the knowledge of bacteria from the world, why would you bother? You know that the dirt on your hands harbors microbes and other infectants. If you didn't know that, it's just muck, blood and filth, and being clean really wasn't seen as a benefit. If anything, it's the other way round, knowing about bacteria led us to believe that being clean was being healthy.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:48:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You have to know about germs to understand why thats a good idea.
One of my favorite historical mysteries surrounds using the restroom in ancient Rome. They had toilets and at the end of the toilets there were two buckets, one filled with water and one with vinegar or brine to clean the Roman version of toilet paper, the Spongia.
So they knew enough you had to clean it, what has always been interesting is that since they didn't know anything about germs, did they all use the same one? Probably.
wanking_to_got ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:48:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
People still don't
MasterFubar ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:51:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Surgeons did wash their hands. After the surgery.
TheAmazingMothra ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:56:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
good one Morty !
ec-625 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:58:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I remember reading a quote from a woman in the 1700s whose husband installed a primitive shower in the back yard. She tried it out and wrote, "It was not as bad as I expected, having not been wet all over at once in the last 25 years."
Eab413 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:58:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I DONT HAVE THE TIME! Do you understand how long it takes to make sandwiches for an entire preschool field trip?!
kelmit ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:06:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
People still resist it. People still don't always do it when they should. Even doctors.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:09:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well to be fair.. wasn't the water back then usually filthy itself?
irish_tiger ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:11:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I know what you mean. Working in the medical field, I cringe watching Murdoch Mysteries(set in the late 1800s-early 1900s, Canada). The medical examiners just dive right on in there, no PPE(Personal Protective Equipment) of any kind to be seen. They then proceed to rinse their hands in a basin of water and shake other's hands, eat lunch, leave and touch everything in sight.
BackToSchoolMuff ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:14:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Makes you wonder what obvious thing we're all missing right now
K3R3G3 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:15:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Probably because they weren't turning pages.
pinotpie ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:18:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A lot of people still don't.
YellowB ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:18:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
kind of blows your mind that some people still don't, especially in corporate environments.
poohster33 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:19:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Rub some dirt on it,
reddittatwork ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:27:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also rinsing your mouth after a meal. Most eastern cultures its ingrained to rinse after a meal. At least here on murica, its not a big deal to not rinse your mouth after a meal.
hudamaniam ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:34:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What's worse is that people STILL don't always do it.
scaryslender18 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:37:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
didn't?
banality_of_ervil ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:38:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's been suggested that the U.S. president James Garfield didn't die from the gunshot but from all the filthy fingers digging through the wound trying to find the bullet.
dreamtraveller ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:39:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I work in a medical theatre and you'd be absolutely stunned how many of the scrub nurses and consultants I see coming from the toilets without washing their hands.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:40:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No it doesn't. People didn't know about germs back then. Does it blow your mind that we don't do anything today which we might do all the time in the future?
ExcerptMusic ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:41:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I am reminded of this every time I visit a public mens restroom.
i_am_an_ad ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:47:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
if you think about it, you know, yeah.
psych0ranger ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:58:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think 2 things perpetuated the no-hand washing.
1: didn't know wtf germs were and thought ailments were fuckin spirits n stupid shit
2: the doctors who were spreading the germs thought it was their nurses BC doctors are/were relatively infallible in the hospital hierarchy
Nisja ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:02:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
People still don't. I've noticed over my 3 years at a company that some of our company Directors march straight out of a toilet cubicle without so much as glancing at the sink.
People are grim, even the most 'polished' ones.
Fizzay ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:08:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes, but you have to remember water didn't exist back then.
wolscott ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:13:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You have to remember that this was before running water was everywhere. It's not like they just had sinks with faucets everywhere that they weren't using.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:24:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is a big reason doctors used to do home visits - your house was usually a more cleanly environment than wherever hospital existed at the time, where they would go from sick person to sick person without washing their hands.
latyper ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:29:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
To be fair, so much of the water in European cities at the time was extremely filthy. People would have rightly viewed getting wet as a great way of contracting something horrible instead of a way to get clean or avoid disease.
yungtwixbar ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:35:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
lmao I've worked some summers as a camp counselor, and we make all the kids wash their hands before meals (its a camp in the woods, v dirty and easy for stuff to spread like being sick), and to this day I still have parents that get mad at me for "making Jimmy wash his hands so much". Sometime's I'd just parrot back to them what they said and have them think about it
MormonDew ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:36:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well you know, we have anti-vaxxers today so people are still stupid and resist progress.
BurtMaclin11 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:37:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Washing your hands didn't stop the demons from making you sick back then. Prayer > hygiene.
prophetofgreed ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:39:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In those times you were considered "clean" if you put on a clean shirt.
mi_esposa_me_espia ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:43:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There were doctors back then who were outraged and offended at the thought of being asked to wash their hands. "A gentleman's hands are never dirty" they would say
3literz3 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:43:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It kind of depends on the quality of the water you're using to wash with, though.
DivineDinosaur ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:48:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I was in my college restroom, Gentleman walks in, does his deed walks out, no hands washed.
ihahp ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:54:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Did they have have indoor plumbing hand washing was discovered? It probably made the task a lot harder than it is today.
PizzaPieMamaMia ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:03:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We still have all kinds of active cultural practices today that are completely unnecessary yet facilitate the spread of disease. Namely, handshaking and kiss greetings.
bashar_speaks ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:04:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
People are still just as dumb today. 100 years from now people will be mind-blown at how people today dismissed detoxing and wholistic health practices.
biggreencat ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:08:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A doctor is a gnetleman, and a gentleman's hands are always clean.
skalra63 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:13:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It doesnt blow your mind if you remember that people didnt understand what infections were and how they were caused. I guess as long as you wiped the shit off your hands it was clean enough.
CervixAssassin ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:23:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
not too long ago people thought shitting and pissing in a river upstream from a town that was using water for food etc from the same river was perfectly ok.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:28:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
probably didn't even use the 3 seashells
MugshotMarley ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:38:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I know I have to wash my hands and the possible consequences from not washing them, yet still don't wash my hands at times.
musicmatze ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:40:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I know some people who still don't doing it... living in my dorm...
c3534l ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:44:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Doctors still don't always wash their hands like they should.
stanfan114 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:53:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
People still don't wash their hands.
grandzu ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:00:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not just people, doctors and surgeons were the biggest opponents
You_Have_Nice_Hair ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:21:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
From autopsy to maternal ward. What could go wrong?
AvailableRedditname ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:23:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well it is seen as common sense now, but common sense is defined by society and in the case of Inaz Semmelweis society just did not know about this earlier. Just like we dont know now about some simple things to do in order to improve your health, which would be seen as easy obvious in the future.
arlenroy ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:34:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I had seen a documentary on Netflix during a sleepless night about 4 years ago, I forget the show, Archeologist Autopsy? Anyway the powder monkeys meaning a prepubescent 12 year old boy who would run gun powder during fights on a sea going 1700's ship. Getting limbs blown off and having open wounds contaminated by Dr's, it was a sign of pride and experience how much blood you were coated in, dried blood killed a lot of people.
Deto ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:45:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Keep in mind, though, I don't even think we knew that bacteria existed back then.
A-wild-comment ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:00:00 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
People in India stick one finger on their left hand ,I think, up their ass's to clean up. Doesn't prevent spreading of disease to much, but cuts down on people getting hernias.
seabass2006 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:06:01 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
To be clear, it's more than just 'washing hands'. Doctor's washed with water at that time, but he introduced chlorinated products to kill bacteria.
PinkMama2015 ยท 61 points ยท Posted at 18:38:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Didn't they humiliate him to death for it? They were coming from the morgues to the labor wards and experimenting their OB practices on poor unwed mothers. Most mothers didn't want them around, they were the kiss of death.
[deleted] ยท 102 points ยท Posted at 22:22:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
[deleted]
Vladimir_Pooptin ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 23:11:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
When the next askreddit post is about people with depressingly ironic deaths, you can just link back to this thread. Poor guy.
praecordialthump ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 00:12:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Like ray-eeee-ain on your wedding day...
fayzeshyft ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 00:34:49 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
They had him committed to silence him because he was quite vocal about pushing for hand-washing. He was tricked into going to the asylum, where he was beaten to death by the guards.
warhawks ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 02:49:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You forgot how he got the infection in the first place. The wound that got infected was caused by being beaten on by the guards. I've actually used this guy in an interview question where they asked if I could shake anyones hand in history who would it be haha. Definitely could have used some recognition
vehement_nihilist ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 08:15:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Plus, you would know his hand would be clean when you shake it!
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 07:45:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Makes me wonder what doctors today are stubborn about that is killing patients.
LordPhoenixNZ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 11:35:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Read that as "Wonder why doctors today are so stubborn about killing their patients." Had to double take.
Cruiseway ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:58:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think it was syphillis
[deleted] ยท 35 points ยท Posted at 17:25:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
ExtremelyNormal ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:51:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeh you have to know about him for AQA GCSE biology
sickly_sock_puppet ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:34:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I've taught middle and high school science. The only reason he gets any recognition in my county is because I use him as an example of how scientific ideas change. The only one the county wants us to use is the model of the atom.
I mean, not only was there a 90% decrease in infant mortality, that decrease was from 1 in 3 dying. It wasn't like every 90th kid was dying or something.
It's also a great chance to think about the assumptions of today that will look ridiculous in the future. I mean, "A gentleman's hands are always clean," how many people did that kill?
RadicalDog ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:20:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The thing that's interesting about Semmelweis is he completely failed to make the idea catch on. The trial ended, the mortality rate returned to normal until the bacteria theory came about a few decades later. It's a fascinating case in the history of science.
rbraunz ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:31:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's interesting, I had actually never heard of him until reading A Man Without a Country by Vonnegut.
_thedragonscale ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:53:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm from the UK and I never heard of him..
ukrainnigga ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 18:39:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He was committed into an insane asylum and then killed there by the guards. Moral of the story- no good deed goes unpunished.
ArcherofArchet ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 18:10:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Total sadness in this topic: in Semmelweis's homeland, hospitals are reluctant to spend on hand sanitizers, because it's "expensive," leading to an increased number of staph infections in hospitals.
But they named the biggest medical university after him, so he's got that going for him, which is nice.
WikiWantsYourPics ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 18:16:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
*who
The mnemonic here is that "whom" is like "him", but "who" is like "he". So "He discovered x" becomes "Semmelweiss, who discovered x".
coredumperror ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:01:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I've always wondered if there were an easy mnemonic to remember "whom" vs. "who". So thanks for that!
charm803 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:02:22 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I have never heard of it this way, so easy to remember. Thanks!
ladnakahva ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 16:51:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
decreasing mortality?
PM_Me_Rude_Haiku ยท 34 points ยท Posted at 17:00:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Increasing immortality
EquipLordBritish ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:55:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Something about converses not necessarily being true.
D4days ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 17:05:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No they tried to wash all the baby's hands and they drowned :( it was a dark time
PleaseAnswerCMSAF ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:01:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Increased the decrease by 300%
rbraunz ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:05:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
hahah sorry, I wrote this really quickly and derped quite hard.
[deleted] ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 18:19:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
trovt ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:20:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Did you learn that from "A Man Without a Country" ?
rbraunz ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:22:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yep exactly.
trovt ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:29:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Awesome, just wondering! I finished that book a couple days ago, it was great.
Schnoofles ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:25:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Decreased by 66.66% repeating, or just "Eliminating two thirds of mortalities". Unless you're talking about something where negative values on a scale makes sense you can't decrease something by more than 100% of its value, and in those cases it is more accurate to describe it as "subtracting 300% of its value".
idontknowandidontcar ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:06:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Don't you mean "decreasing mortality [rates]"?
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:31:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I read that like 5 times before I realised you didn't type "morality". Wondered why washing hands would make everyone bad people.
silent_xfer ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:34:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's "who discovered hand washing"
You can tell because if asked as a question ("who discovered hand washing?") the answer would be "he did"
He:who::him:whom
There you go!
AwwwwYeeeee ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:38:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And he went insane after his colleagues thought he was crazy!!!!
They locked him up in a psych ward and he died shortly thereafter.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:44:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"Semmelweis was committed to an asylum, where he died at age 47 of pyaemia, after being beaten by the guards, only 14 days after he was committed."
winemaster ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:45:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And was committed to a fucking nuthouse because of it, only to be beaten to death by guards two weeks later.
fruitbat18 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:47:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is a subject learnt in GCSE Biology, so he must reasonably appreciated.
jfallon5 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:49:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Check out that dome!
oldrhymer58 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:49:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A gentleman's hands are never dirty.
Gottheit ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:50:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
I first learned about him in 12 Monkeys when Brad Pitt was ranting to Bruce Willis.
Edit: tense
A_favorite_rug ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:52:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Extra Credit has a great videos about him and the sanititation movement.
bendorbreak1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:54:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Then he was put in an asylum and beat to death. Wow.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:56:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Crazy that he ended up committed to an insane asylum at age 47, beat badly 2 weeks later and then soon died of an infection.
Nerdn1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:57:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
For those wondering, this is why doctors resisted so strongly:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contemporary_reaction_to_Ignaz_Semmelweis
Hemingway92 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:59:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The story is pretty interesting, if sad. He compared mortality in wards run by midwives and those run by physicians and surgeons who were often going from surgeries directly to a woman in labour. The difference was dramatic (midwives causing far more casualties) but when Semmelweis suggested that the doctors wash their hands, they were offended at the claim that the gentlemen's hands were unclean. IIRC, Semmelweis' suggestion wasn't actually taken until much later.
TheRealCaptainMe ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:03:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I just learned about this guy in bacteriology class yesterday. I'm in the loop for once! :D
mental_blockade ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:08:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
It was the NURSES who were telling any doctor who would listen to wash their hands but they were ignored because they were women. Then this dude copped on, and of course, got all the glorious credit. Source incoming (although it'll be hard to find, women have been kinda pushed out of history until recently.)
The same thing happened with Dr.Alice Stewart who discovered x-rays while pregnant increased the chance of childhood cancer significantly. With incredibly conclusive and solid evidence, it took her 25 years to convince the dudes they were wrong. One of the most popular Ted talks used this as an example of the benefits of pushing an argument.
Source Pt 1 :Semmelweiss thought it was a because a priest rang a bell at one point and it caused the kids to die. The actual reason was because in the midwives hospital they were washing their goddamn hands.
Fagtal1ty ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:10:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Did he ever find the 6-fingered man that killed his father?
Geishawithak ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:11:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Pretty sure I heard that he stole that idea from a nurse in his ward cuz, you know, women were too darn silly back then for good ideas of their own.
ItsNotThad ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:13:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I always found it interesting how in the Pentateuch the Hebrews were given strict "purification rituals" when dealing with the dead or diseased. Always calling for the persons to cleans themselves with water. So 3000 years before we knew about germs the ancient Israelites we using water cleansing methods because God ordered them to.
quartrine ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:16:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I believe the reasoning was that "a gentleman's hands are always clean" and so there was no need to wash them.
This was obviously before there was an understanding of bacteria and such
tigerscomeatnight ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:19:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Thought Joseph Lister was famous for this.
Edit: looked it up, Semmelweis did his study in 1847 and Lister in 1867.
seztomabel ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:26:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hijacking to say Juan Pujole Garcia, perhaps single handedly prevented the Germans from winning WW2
freet0 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:30:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I feel like he's pretty well appreciated. Him and his cadaver particles.
charmanderthegreat ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:31:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He's actually part of the GCSE Biology here in the UK, meaning most 15-16 year olds are cursing his existence
flicky1991 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:32:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
All I ever remember about Semmelweis is the time I couldn't remember his name in a history lesson and called him "Scheuenhoffer". Close enough?
NosemaCeranae ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:34:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, specifically washing your hands with phenol. Which he was actually fired for.
homeschooled ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:45:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Why does his Wikipedia just casually say:
...without explaining why he was committed? That's sad.
_prettyhatemachine_ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:46:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
solid donnie darko reference
RabidRapidRabbit ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:50:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Funfact time: His suggestions were laughed at and revoked. He even ended in a psych ward after some struggle and died to an infection he catched during an operation in said psychiatry.
Poor dude really got struck by the Tree of Irony
WiredEgo ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:50:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I blame him for the unsustainable population boom that is going to cause this world to collapse because humans suck.
yur_MUM5 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:51:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nobody really knew too much back then about bacteria but bringing in the idea of cleaning your hands before a procedure is groundbreaking. And the fact that he was killed for it because they thought he was a lunatic is ridiculous to hear but I'm glad now people understand his theory is a common practice in today's society.
deep_sea_derp ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:51:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I have ascended to the surface from depths of the sea, what say you?
DoobsMgGoobs ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:52:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Considering the projected overpopulation problem this is a subjective opinion.
guess_twat ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:53:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yea, thanks for the man made global warming....
luckyleftyo4 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:58:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Learned about him when I read the book super freakonomics.
mobpak ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:02:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
yes you are right
Cinnamen ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:04:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
When I was learning about industry age and he was mentioned in my book, I was hoping for entire chapter about the improvements in medicine. There wasn't even a full paragraph sigh
gildoth ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:11:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I thought this one was well known.
gandhi_the_warrior ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:13:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah and no one believed him and everyone called him crazy, then after he died they were like shit he's right
aaaalexandre ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:13:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I was always told it was Pasteur who found that !
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:14:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He died without his findings being accepted by the medical community. In fact he was a laughing stocking for even suggesting that doctors should wash their hands.
flipperkast ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:18:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Woah didn't know so little people knew about him. I had a question about him on my college exam yesterday. He's known because he was one of the first who combined induction and deduction. Fun fact: before discovering it was because the doctors and nurses didn't wash their hands, he thought it was because in one clinic the women always saw a priest walk by when someone died while in the other clinic (where less people died) the priest didn't have walk past the women.
rlbond86 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:19:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And all of the other doctors didn't believe him for decades.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:20:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Don't forget Joseph Lister who pioneered sterilization of instruments (and had "Listerine" named after him).
DeTrickz ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:21:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ironically enough, he died of an infection.
LobsterCowboy ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:23:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
and yet he was vilified for it
LobsterCowboy ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:23:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
and yet he was vilified for it
p1zawL ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:24:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
YES!! Haha, came here to say this
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:28:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I I am I am a Gentleman and Gentleman's hands are clean! How dare you imply that I should wash my hands like I was some common gon farmer!
mulborough ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:34:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Shit like this really should have been in the Bible
BroKing ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:36:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And now we have a population problem. Thanks Ignaz!
CloudEngineer ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:39:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Perfect example of how being right doesn't matter if you alienate people with your personality.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:40:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What did people use to wash their hands with back then? Did it actually have any antibacterial properties? I assume it must have had some if it decreased mortality by that much.
TakeovaRocko ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:41:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Heard about this on freakonomics podcast
atreestump1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:58:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I read about this.. The other doctors were supposedly so appalled by this, that they belittled him to the point where he took his own life...
Or so I've heard.
fixitvisit ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:03:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
https://youtube.com/watch?v=XQkpnPb5F1g
deadfermata ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:04:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I came to learn Semmelweis as a great hero during my Microbiology class in college.
mrinvertigo ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:15:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I read this as he was hand-washing their clothes and bedding.. >.<
eLCT ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:23:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Didn't he die from someone not washing their hands when operating on him? Not 100% sure, I'll look it up.
Edit: blood poisoning, possibly from being beaten. Sheesh
youdidntreddit ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:31:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Doctors still do a crap job of washing their hands.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:32:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Louis Pasteur made it common and backed it up, though.
Poet_of_Legends ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:39:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We all stand on the shoulders of giants, and we spit, piss, and shit on their heads the whole time...
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:39:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I just learned about this guy in microbio
tribdol ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:41:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Lol I studied his story in med school last year, the sad part is that the scientific community rejected his "discovery" because they said it was offensive for the doctors, because doctors are educated people, and by definition educated people can't be dirty, so doctors' hands cannot be dirty and not need to be washed.
Poor Semmelweis died in an asylum, I don't remember if he was convicted because he was accused of being crazy for having suggested that educated people could have dirty hands, or if because the hostility of the scientific community and the rejection of his discovery made him go crazy.
JJBang ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:43:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dr Alexander Gordon discovered the same thing the previous century, and was driven out of town, and died at a young age.
If people hadn't overlooked Alexander Gordon, then no one would have needed to know about Semmelweis. And a lot more children would have had mothers.
PedroAlvarez ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:47:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Imagine if washing your hands was called semmelweissing
jkapow ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:48:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Smug dudes kept telling him "You know what they call alternative medicine that works? Medicine." and he was like "How about you wash your fucken hands and see if fewer babies die", and they were like, "sounds pretty anecdotal, man".
sensicle ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:49:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nurse here. Thank you for mentioning this. I believe it was brought up in Superfreakonomics as well. Wash your hands, folks! Or use sanitizer which is just as effective when the hands are not visibly soiled.
McBraas ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:52:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That is so cool; my friend just told me about him a few days ago.
-eDgAR- ยท 5157 points ยท Posted at 14:23:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Maurice Hilleman
sleep_hulk_smash ยท 1607 points ยท Posted at 16:46:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Does anyone have any guesses as to why he was snubbed for the Nobel?
MaceWumpus ยท 2421 points ยท Posted at 17:26:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
They're designed to honor "research" as opposed to "applications," and developing vaccines counts as the latter.
EDIT: Historically speaking, "designed" isn't quite accurate. Nobel himself mentioned inventions in his instructions, and the first award in Medicine was related to vaccination, even if on the more theoretical side. In general, however, the awards go to "research" or "discoveries" as opposed to "applications" or "inventions," and there appears to be a least some level of intent to this by the selection committee. No vaccine developer has won since the first award; as wikipedia points out the scientists who discovered that a vaccine could be grown in monkey cells won out over Salk and the others who actually developed the polio vaccine.
ubspirit ยท 2067 points ยท Posted at 18:00:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Which is why Obama won the peace prize
LtWorf_ ยท 1418 points ยท Posted at 18:34:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He was searching for peace! He just didn't find it!
yumyumgivemesome ยท 326 points ยท Posted at 19:18:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And after a little bit of unsuccessful searching, he searched again. Hence, research.
Mr_Abe_Froman ยท 17 points ยท Posted at 22:55:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The most important part of research is reproducibility. We need lots of tests of the "Do drone strikes spread peace?" study before we can really make a conclusion.
SAE1856 ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 23:33:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
To be fair he's only really searched Hawaii. But he's searched it many, many times, so we can rest assured it's not there.
Yahweh_Akbar ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 21:38:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work. - Obama
friendofbear ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 23:02:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Considering that in all the hundreds of decisions made by Obama, there has to be a level of brilliance to be wrong on EVERY SINGLE ONE! Source: Fox News
TheRealNicCage ยท 18 points ยท Posted at 19:34:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
searching for it on the end of a drone-delivered missile!
merlinfire ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 19:29:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
the drone missiles were actually intended as digging devices. figured peace must be hiding underneath occupied structures and wedding parties
probablyhrenrai ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:41:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We haven't found it yet, but I assure you that we haven't given up on our search!
dpoon ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 20:32:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Attempted Peace? What next? A Nobel Prize in Attempted Chemistry?
CrunkaScrooge ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:00:15 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Don't worry, the drones are still out there looking.
Zifnab25 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:50:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Iran and Cuba called.
Corte-Real ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:18:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Canadian Prime Minister Lester "Mike" Pearson was awarded the prize for leading the creation of the UN Peacekeeping Corps which was first used in the 1956 Suez Crisis.
If that's not an application, I'm not sure what is.
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1957/pearson-bio.html
godless_communism ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:29:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He won the award for not being George W. Bush.
Vandelay_Latex_Sales ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:17:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He was Superman IV.
Peregrine4 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:32:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
we all want world peas, but it's always just out of reach.
yingkaixing ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:51:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What is the best way to get peas?
Peregrine4 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 20:02:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
With a knife!
jsteph67 ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:32:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Exactly! Not with the olive branch but the bayonet! Ah, Simpson, you're like the son I never had.
fendingntehmarsh ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:05:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
By minding your Qs
4floorsofwhores ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:30:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Lots of liquids.
Chilli0102 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:07:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Mashed potatoes and gravy.
MrTurtleWings ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:23:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So did Bush get the WMD Prize for the same reason?
toastfacegrilla ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 03:56:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"Si vis pacem, para bellum" or "If you want peace, prepare for war"
[deleted] ยท 714 points ยท Posted at 18:40:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think that's mostly because the peace prize is handed out by a bunch of Norwegian political rejects, while the science prizes are handed out by a bunch of Swedish professors.
[deleted] ยท 106 points ยท Posted at 21:29:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[removed]
TheBawz ยท 34 points ยท Posted at 21:51:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Life isn't fun without a little rivalry.
Stenen ยท 25 points ยท Posted at 22:20:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
fuck you sweden
Nmaka ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 00:14:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fuck you denmark
LuxoriousMoustache ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:10:17 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Damn Swedes
Nmaka ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 16:24:58 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm Canadian and THAT'S OUR ISLAND DENMARK!
LuxoriousMoustache ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:22:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Give us Vinland back and then we'll talk, Canada!
Nmaka ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:29:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Only once you give back that whiskey!
LuxoriousMoustache ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:00:05 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Never! Giving up our booze is like giving up our children!
Yilku1 ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 23:12:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Danskjรคvlar
AppleDane ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 23:54:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As a Dane, I appologise for our Norwegians.
Offensive in two ways!
joe579003 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:22:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Why can't you all just hate Finland equally.
KitsuneGaming ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 08:21:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Because they don't exist.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 10:13:00 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And how the rest of us troll them hard by saying things like "Denmark? Isn't that in Sweden?"
mrsaturdaypants ยท 29 points ยท Posted at 20:57:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Scandinavian shots fired.
[deleted] ยท 23 points ยท Posted at 21:32:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
[deleted]
[deleted] ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 22:55:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:34:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, sure. I was mostly defending Norwegians, though, since the parent comment was "Scandinavian shots fired" .
[deleted] ยท 20 points ยท Posted at 22:08:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
Theige ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:59:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not a single one?
A_favorite_rug ยท 20 points ยท Posted at 19:04:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
The Swedish know their stuff, man.
Poster8675309 ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:10:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"There"
A_favorite_rug ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 19:13:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Once
Beardy_Will ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 19:28:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
was
[deleted] ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 19:32:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
a
chronicallyfailed ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 19:33:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
man
Accountomakethisjoke ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 19:34:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
from
[deleted] ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 19:43:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
[deleted]
gliph ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:54:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
. He
sfielbug ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:58:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
reeked
hu_lee_oh ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:41:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
of
SupersuMC ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:50:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
whale
MAK911 ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 21:56:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
jizz
goblinpiledriver ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 22:03:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
buckets
AppleDane ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:56:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
One
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:23:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
SupersuMC ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:48:39 on January 20, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
he
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 22:55:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hero
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:56:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
named
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:56:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ragnar
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:56:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
the
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:56:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Red
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:56:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
who
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:56:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
came
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:56:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
riding
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:56:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
to
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:56:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Whiterun
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:56:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
from
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:56:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
old
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:56:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Rorikstead!
sfst101 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:48:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And
Cobbleking32486 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:18:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
farmer
Cobbleking32486 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:18:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
who
Cobbleking32486 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:19:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
lived
Cobbleking32486 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:19:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
on
Cobbleking32486 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:19:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
a
Cobbleking32486 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:19:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
rock
DrMaxwellSheppard ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 00:08:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Which makes the fact that the guy who nominated Obama for the award later said it was more than a bit presumptuous to have nominated him at that time and that in hind sight he didn't think he should have.
Lowbacca1977 ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 00:24:22 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's worth noting that at the time the Nobel prize was established, Norway was basically part of Sweden, so the idea was that because it would be political, it made sense to have Norway hand it out because they wouldn't need to be concerned with foreign affairs.
apefeet25 ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 19:06:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wait, how did he get that anyways?
planktonshmankton ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 19:16:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Peace Prize has often been criticised due to it being given "with the intention of encouraging future achievements" rather than due to past achievements, which seems to be the case with Obama.
Dantonn ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 19:36:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Unabated_Blade ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 19:44:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Here is the new
bossclimate, same as the oldbossclimate.Dantonn ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:46:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, things have not gone as well as hoped.
twersx ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 22:34:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ostensibly it was due to certain actions he took as Senator that promoted non-proliferation and made steps toward mending America's broken relationship with many nations in the Middle East.
If you ask most people, it's a mix of "you're not Bush," "you're the first black president, congrats" and "please don't fuck this presidency thing up"
TheLateAndTheGreat ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 19:13:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
For being black.
SmoothNicka32 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:42:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
His election marked the end of racism in America.
apefeet25 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:30:22 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I hope that's sarcasm
thisisstephen ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:25:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think the inscription on his prize says "Thanks for not being Bush! Please don't bomb more shit!"
DrMaxwellSheppard ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:52:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Then he proceeded to outdo Bush on every metric they had hoped he would curtail.
buttery_shame_cave ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 18:43:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
the peace price is kind of the odd award out in that group.
dotMJEG ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 18:55:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's strange, it's the only one really well known, but also the only one that really doesn't mean jack shitโฆ.. At least in comparison to what the other specific subject ones have been awarded for.
buttery_shame_cave ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 19:09:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
it's kind of a 'hey you did something above and beyond'
but the number of folks on the list of laureates who are there for brokering peace, that were behind the wars they stopped even HAPPENING in the first place...
yeah it's a weird award.
dotMJEG ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 19:13:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I mean, it makes sense to a certain extent and there is validity to it, but the significance of the achievements for which the other Nobel Prizes are awarded really dwarfs the majority of those won for the Peace Prize.
buttery_shame_cave ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:14:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
word.
twersx ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:33:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm aware of Kissinger, who else is a laureate who stopped the peace process?
buttery_shame_cave ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 23:15:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Kofi anan is a highly contentious figure
[deleted] ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 20:34:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What a fucking shambles that was. The man who authorized drone strikes on American citizens abroad without due process received the Nobel Peace Prize, instead of treason charges. What a time to be alive.
BraveSirRobin ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:23:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The peace prize is handed out against someone about half the time, in this case Bush.
ubspirit ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 23:05:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Despite bush having a better track record of peace to this point in his presidency.
Hindsight or something
BraveSirRobin ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:05:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
IIRC it was "HOPE" and some vague notion of "CHANGE".
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:30:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, sure he did!
rockytheboxer ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 21:01:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You know, I used to agree that that prize was a mistake, but Obama riling up the youth of America and getting them to vote for someone other than "Bomb Iran" McCain probably saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
ubspirit ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:07:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Because bombing American citizens and starting 2 new wars, arming rebels, etc. saved a ton of lives.
Sorry to break it to you, but bombs save lives in war. They make the enemy recognize the hopelessness of their situation and give up in a way that ground wars never have.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:34:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Different kind of prize.
mellowmonk ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 23:05:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
For winning the election?
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 03:19:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Can we shut up about Obama and the Peace Prize? It's not even a real Nobel Prize for fuck sake. It wasn't part of Alfred Nobel's original directions, its awarding has been an absolute farce at least once before Obama (Kissinger), and the people who select the peace prize are completely separate people in a separate city from those who select all the other prizes.
Obama and his stupid peace prize are absolutely, completely irrelevant to the whole thread. Nothing about the comment to which you responded does or possibly could explain anything about it.
ubspirit ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:15:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Someone's a bit salty eh?
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 05:33:28 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, because you tried to bring up something that had nothing to do with this conversation just to bitch about it. You can't say anything about the committee for awarding science prizes has the most infinitesimal thing to do with the behavior of the committee for awarding the peace prize.
I wouldn't bring up Larry Sun's Oracle corporation in a conversation about the ancient Greek Oracle at Delphi just because they both have the same name. They've got nothing to do with one another but a name, just like Peace and Chemistry are similar only in the name Nobel.
ubspirit ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 05:55:04 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I was making a joke, not a political statement. The fact that you assumed otherwise is exactly why you are salty
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:36:51 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, a bad and overused joke that is a political statement. Something can be both.
ubspirit ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 19:26:50 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You're just proving how salty you are by continuing to try to tell me what my intent was, when I've clearly stated it was not meant as a political statement.
MalHeartsNutmeg ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 00:53:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The peace prize is actually separate from the other prizes.
Atario ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 14:31:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Can't believe people are still butthurt about that
runetrantor ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 20:18:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The rules to get a nobel should really be updated.
I have heard a lot of bs coming from it about how only three people may win it in a team (There's barely any research team with so few people, if any, nowadays), and how nitpick-y they are about what's allowed to win.
whatthefat ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:16:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's not really so clear-cut. Several winners of the Nobel prize for physiology/medicine have been for medical applications. Hilleman's work included the research to discover and develop the vaccines, in any case.
LPP_wont_let_me_be ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:20:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Developing a vaccine isn't research? Research and applications aren't mutually exclusive. The 2014 prize in physics was awarded for developing an efficient blue light source. It wasn't even the first but rather it won the award because of how difficult the problem of practicality was and it had extensive applications.
Anosognosia ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:59:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Crafoord prize covers some of these bases in regards to astronomy and mathematics, biosciences, geosciences or polyarthritis research. (the latter probably because the founder had personal interest in polyarthritis research)
lagerbaer ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:16:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That is simply not true. Plenty of Nobel Prizes went to applications.
MaceWumpus ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:28:01 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
There are certainly some: it isn't a perfectly hard and fast rule, obviously. But look through the medicine category. The vast majority go to "discoveries," whether that is fair or not.
Of interest is that the first award was for a vaccine.
Fatesurge ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:41:35 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What, so discover vaccines in general but don't produce a useful vaccine = Nobel prize
Save a billion lives = nahhh mate
TheDongerNeedsFood ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:55:27 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think you do have a prett good point, but please check my post in this thread as well. My personal thought is that Hilleman never got the Nobel because he did almost all his research while working in the private sector (it's explained in my post). The most recent Nobel in physiology and medicine went to several people who discovered/developed cures for parasitic infections. And as far as I'm concerned, it developing cures for diseases is worthy of a Nobel, then so is developing vaccines.
Hayn0002 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 03:08:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"quotation marks"
jevedi ยท 416 points ยท Posted at 17:29:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The exact reasons are unclear, but here are some explanations:
So, why then was Hilleman bypassed by the Nobel committee? John E. Calfree, in The American, wrote: โAs the 80-plus-year-old Hilleman approached death, Offit and other academic scientists lobbied the Nobel committee to award Hilleman the Nobel Prize for Medicine, based partly on his vaccine work and partly on his contributions to the basic science of interferons. The committee made clear that it was not going to award the prize to an industry scientist.โ (4) Paul Offit, referred to here, is the co-developer of the rotavirus vaccine, Rotateq, and a biographer of Hilleman.
He never won a Nobel Prize, because those awards are designed to honor basic research, not practical applications. But Hilleman received many other awards, including the 1988 National Medal of Science, the nation's highest honor, which was presented by President Reagan.
janyk ยท 38 points ยท Posted at 19:38:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's funny, because then they awarded the Nobel prize in medicine to a professor of Traditional Chinese Medicine who didn't really do anything novel other than just survey a bunch of TCM practitioners for advice on how to treat malaria, then tested them to find which ones work and then tried to isolate why they worked.
[deleted] ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 03:13:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The result was novel. That's what's important. A "truly novel" theory is useless if it has little impact on the rest of the field. I can tell you about so many Nobel-prize winning discoveries in physics which were only barely "novel"; some of them merely added little innovations to pre-existing techniques and happened to successfully come up with a useful result. Some were even accidental - the 1996 physics prize for superfluidity in helium 3 was supposedly an almost completely unexpected discovery. That's what makes the Nobel prize unique: It's not an award for creativity, genius, aptitude, cleverness, or elegance. It's an award for success, no matter how ugly the method arrived to get there.
Has_No_Gimmick ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 19:51:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It sounds like their discoveries were novel in both theory and application. The creation of new vaccines is only novel in application.
yahoobalu ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 21:35:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
How is it novel in theory? He just copied some existing theories and tested their applications.
Matti_Matti_Matti ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:44:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's research though, not creating a practical approach.
JustAnOrdinaryBloke ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:52:17 on January 19, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not to mention the guy who developed Prefrontal Lobotomy.
lagerbaer ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 01:17:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I feel like they must have changed their criteria then over the last few years, given that some of the recent ones went to camera sensors, blue LEDs, the Pauli particle trap,
GestaltJungle ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 18:36:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So.... Basically they were elitist snobbish asspirates?
coredumperror ยท 37 points ยท Posted at 19:05:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Or maybe they were just, you know, following the rules? The Nobel prize was specifically established to award "progress through scientific discoveries in laboratories" (first paragraph). This guy didn't make scientific discoveries, he did the work of applying other people's discoveries in order to create vaccines. So the Nobel Prize in Medicine doesn't apply to his work.
Edited for clarity.
Tiafves ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 02:49:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
According to Alfred's will though "the interest on which shall be annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit to mankind" I think he'd intend for such a thing be worthy of award especially when later for chemistry he describes its selection as "one part to the person who shall have made the most important chemical discovery or improvement" The overall intent of the benefits provided to mankind being a measure and with Alfreds chemistry background it seems fair to assume he'd want it to apply to other categories if he had known improvements to existing matters were also a part of them.
BigDuse ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 19:24:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So you're saying that vaccines don't qualify as scientific discoveries?
PlayMp1 ยท 27 points ยท Posted at 19:32:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Here's the difference: if Nobel Prizes were around when vaccination was first discovered (the 18th century IIRC, the first vaccinations were for smallpox), then the person who invented vaccination would get a Nobel. The person who takes this concept and applies it to creates a bunch of vaccines is an industry application.
Think of it like this - let's say someone discovers a chemical tomorrow that makes room temperature superconductivity possible. This person would get a Nobel. The person who then goes and develops a bunch of room temperature superconductors would not get a Nobel.
BigDuse ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:23:48 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's valid, though I think the sheer volume of Hilleman's contributions to medicine would be worth a Nobel Prize. That said, there might not be any actual winners who weren't more deserving than Hilleman, so my point might be moot.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 05:10:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
An analogy: Henry Ford invented the concept of the car, but Toyota makes cars.
Toyota creates new cars all the time, but the Nobel prize is awarded to people more like Henry Ford.
shieldvexor ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 06:56:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Great analogy but you should know cars were around way before Henry Ford. He developed the assembly line and mass produced cars.
Leleek ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 19:21:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
How is discovering a vaccine not progress, science, a discovery, or done in a laboratory?
Shadowbanned24601 ยท 18 points ยท Posted at 19:26:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You don't discover a vaccine, you make a vaccine.
It's defintely progress though, although arguably not progress in knowledge of science.
To me, he deserved a Nobel Prize. But if he doesn't meet the criteria, he doesn't meet the criteria.
Prof_Acorn ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:06:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ask Alfred. It's his award.
toga-Blutarsky ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 00:52:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Because you don't discover vaccines.
Books_and_Cleverness ยท -5 points ยท Posted at 19:18:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This, to me, is fucking horse shit. Who cares if he's an industry scientist? He saved people lives using science. That's like being a superhero, but cooler because it actually matters.
Colopty ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 21:36:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The science based Nobel prizes aren't awarded for saving a lot of people, they're awarded for discovering something new. Vaccines weren't new at the time so you won't be getting a prize no matter how good you're making them unless maybe you come up with an easy way to make vaccines for anything or whatever.
Tuna_Sushi ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 18:55:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
To be fair, Offit is a piece of human excrement.
rackpuppy ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:48:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Why?
F0RGERY ยท 302 points ยท Posted at 17:03:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The nobel prize committee was anti-vaccination.
MemphisWill ยท 18 points ยท Posted at 18:37:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The first anti-vaxxers
uh_oh_hotdog ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 18:55:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Are you sure? Maybe they were just autistic.
F0RGERY ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:56:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I mean, they have to see if his vaccines work...
freshnikes ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:17:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Nobel Prize Committee gives the rest of us anti-vaxxers a bad name. At least we're sensible.
/s
thingsiloathe ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:41:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So they were all autistic? Got it.
anreac ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:21:06 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's sounds like they were anti-industry more than anything.
ZEROTHENUMBER ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 17:53:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ayyy
Undaine ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 17:55:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Big hero of mine. He went to work for big pharma because he realized the only way to get the resources to tackle these problems was to pair up with a major source of funding.
Nobel prizes aren't t awarded for perceived capitalism, and despite this not making him a particularly rich man given his achievements, his work is still shadowed by the fact he was paid for it.
Books_and_Cleverness ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:19:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What a sin, to be paid for your labor.
Undaine ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:24:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He knew the price going in. Read Vaccinated, it's a biography and a great read.
nickoly9 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 17:59:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well because of the obvious side affect to his vaccines. You can't give a Nobel prize to someone who gave a whole generation autism.
elev57 ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 17:31:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
For an actual reason, probably because the methods and techniques he used to develop those vaccines weren't novel enough to warrant a Nobel prize. Of the given rationales for awarding the Nobel Prize in Medicine (the committee gives each award a rationale like "for their development of in vitro fertilization"), none have the word "vaccine" in it. Several antibacterial discoveries have warranted Nobels (discover of Penicillin and Prontosil), as have the discoveries of how diseases are spread (like how people catch Typhus). Development of a vaccine, though, has never warranted a Nobel (not even Salk and others for the development of the Polio vaccine, which was a big deal). An HIV vaccine might warrant it in the future though.
HairlessWombat ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:28:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You have the best explanation in my opinion. I'd agree with the HIV vaccine comment because it will most likely take a break through in DNA splicing/gene therapy/gene selection to achieve it.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:21:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
For causing autism. Duh
MrPoletski ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:30:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Because his potions cause autism!
ducks ;)
Frozennoodle ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:17:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Leonardo DiCaprio's uncle.
Velocity_Rob ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:56:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Because he gave everyone autism!!!!!
ahem
mrstickball ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:58:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Because vaccines cause autism
BucketheadRules ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:04:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Mass cases of autism
Follygagger ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:42:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He was a pedder ass
blaspheminCapn ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:50:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jenny fucking McCarthy
TheDongerNeedsFood ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:51:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
This will likely never be confirmed publicly, but the general consensus as to why Hilleman never got the Nobel prize is because he did basically all of his work on vaccines while working in the biotech/pharmaceutical industry instead of an academic laboratory.
You see, the vast majority of the people on the Nobel prize selection committees are "academic scientists", that is, researchers and professors working in universities or for museums; institutions that are technically non-profit. Researchers and scientists working in academia often look down upon/have a negative view of researchers and scientists working in industry/the private sector, they view it as "selling out", and many academic researchers view biotech research as having less integrity than their own research as it is done in order to make a profit instead of being done for the sake of advancing science.
Because of this, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to win a Nobel prize for work that was done while the person was working for a private company.
For evidence, look no further than the 3 people who received the most recent Nobel for physiology and medicine. They got their prizes for discovering/developing cures for diseases caused by parasitic infections. Well, if they deserved the Nobel prize for that, then Hilleman certainly deserved the Nobel prize for his work
And to add, I have a masters degree in molecular biology, and am currently a doctoral student in stem cell biology, so this is how I know all this.
TheHaak ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:05:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He mainly developed mumps, the others he developed alongside other people and his methods were either not used or were replaced. The man was awesome, he just didn't was as ground breaking as that statement seems.
He was also a member and proponent of the one of the big things Reddit and the Noble committee hates...Big Pharma....where he is considered a god.
Source: I'm a pharmaceutical engineer at a vaccine plant: hep B, pneumo and meni are all vaccines I've worked on
DoubleDManBoobs ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 08:13:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Autism
spaghettiputs ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 12:56:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Caused autism? /s
coffeedude7 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:18:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He wasn't Obama.
dryhumpback ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 17:06:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Because of the autism, no doubt.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:57:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I assume Obama must have been up for it that year too
BrownSugarBare ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 17:24:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jenny Mccarthy?
Stockholm-Syndrom ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 18:01:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Probably because of that autism thing /s
vandelay714 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 18:54:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Because million of people are autistic because of him! /s
EKEEFE41 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:10:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
autisum
petgreg ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:18:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Because he was pro-autism obviously
xfsquirrel ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:19:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jenny McCarthy
flux123 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:48:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Because they caused autism in such huge numbers. Right?
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:03:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Because of all the autism he caused, the monster
furahmed ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:17:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They gave his prize to that Obama guy just for being black and holding some important position in his country.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:33:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Because he spread so much autism obviously!!!
h0l0n ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:34:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Anti-vaxers. /s
schwagle ยท 36 points ยท Posted at 18:14:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just think of how much autism he's caused
/s
wwoodhur ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 22:06:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I know you're joking, but honestly even if the vaccines cause autism I think I'd take that trade off
GYP-rotmg ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 18:37:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Idk, less than 1 mil?
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:24:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Goddamn it, Edgar
bigchebo ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 02:57:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So he created autism?
mutinygriz ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 03:58:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So he's the one causing all the autism!!'
romulusnr ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 04:53:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Pioneer of autism #amirite
whogivesashirtdotca ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 18:25:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Astonishing. Imagine how many lives he has saved.
IntensePancakes ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 18:51:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He didn't find a cure for affluenza tho
Sweetthrill ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:46:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Anti-Vaxxers hate him!
mbelf ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:24:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oh, I get it. He was trying raise an army of autism.
1point21 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:38:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There is a great biography on him called "Vaccinated." Would recommend
EricFackinulty ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 05:37:22 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Aka: The original author of the evil plan to give autism to everyone.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:21:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm ashamed to have never heard of him. That is one of the most impressive resumes I've ever heard.
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 17:49:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The fact that his name is not more well known really shows how backwards our priorities are.
Cciamlazy ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:34:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's sad that there are actually people fighting against something that has saved so many lives.
up48 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:27:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Aka the mastermind behind the attempt to give all our kids autism! /s
Random420eks ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:03:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So he is to blame for all of this autism? /s
NativeNotFrench ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:46:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Guess you should add inventor of Autism to the list
/s
hatessw ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:12:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Was his work even possible without Pasteur's earlier vaccines?
randomSAPguy ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:36:52 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A lot of children got cancer from the autism.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:40:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
But just think of how many cases of mental retardation he caused from his vaccines!! /s
Arg3nt ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 18:38:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, but think of how many people now have autism because of him!
/s
DeathStarJedi ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 17:50:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If they have a vaccine for chickenpox, then why they f*ck did pretty much everyone in my school get it?
TellMeWhyYouLoveMe ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:16:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Most people choose to just get chicken pox instead because they worry about getting in when they are are older (and presumably it affects you worse).
cacky_bird_legs ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:17:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It seems like he's largely responsible for our current overpopulation crisis.
xX_Justin_Xx ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:20:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes but think of all the autism he is responsible for.
UnJayanAndalou ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:47:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So, this is the man responsible for all that autism. /s
KhabaLox ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 18:46:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jesus. How much autism did this guy cause?
fixorater ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 18:32:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They ought to rename autism after him out of respect ;)
giftedwiththought ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 19:08:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
But think of all the autism he gave people
[deleted] ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 21:33:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Too bad it caused so much autism... /s
OsamaBinFuckin ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 18:28:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So he's the one responsible for the infringement of my child's rights!!!
Wolfeman0101 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 23:29:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You forgot autism. /s
batnastard ยท 4435 points ยท Posted at 16:09:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Who was the guy who was a security chief for one of the companies in the twin towers up until 9/11? He had made everyone in his company do regular evacuation drills because he anticipated such an attack, and almost everyone in his company survived. He died when he went back in for the few that didn't make it out.
[deleted] ยท 2850 points ยท Posted at 18:36:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Rick Rescorla.
Definitely one of my personal heroes.
EDIT: Watch this documentary if you have about 45 minutes sometime. It's about Rick Rescorla and focuses mainly on 9/11 but it is powerful nonetheless.
SuperMechaDan ยท 2852 points ยท Posted at 19:13:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Damn.
[deleted] ยท 985 points ยท Posted at 19:17:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
One can only hope to have the intestinal fortitude and humility to live and die like that man. Service to others first.
Zifnab25 ยท 21 points ยท Posted at 23:54:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Live like that. I'd prefer to just not be killed in the midst of a terrorist attack as a general rule. Ideally, I'd like to not be in one because they are so very, very rare.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:10:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
abdomino ยท 27 points ยท Posted at 01:35:06 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
To be fair, his wife wasn't in danger of dying. Those people were.
On top of that, it's strangers, plural. To some, two lives they don't know is still worth more than the one that they do. There are people who will choose to save the lives of ten strangers over the one person they know and love, and there are those who won't.
Last thing I want is for this to turn into an argument over who would choose to save strangers' lives over their loved ones. Until you are put in the position where you have to make a decision between staying with those you care about and saving those you don't know, you don't know what you'll do. You think you have some idea, some principle you keep close to your heart about what you think you'd do. Maybe you'll act like it's the easiest decision in the world one way or another. It's my experience that those people are the ones who disappoint and surprise themselves the most.
Mr. Rescorla chose to save the lives of thousands, most of whom he probably only had passing familiarity, at the sacrifice of never seeing his wife again. One who chose the safety of many over the comfort of some, over his own life. I strive to be like him, but I know that until I have to choose, until I am forced to make that decision, I won't know.
[deleted] ยท -18 points ยท Posted at 02:35:33 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
Nihht ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 04:12:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wait, it's sociopathic to save ten poeple's lives instead of one? Logically it's the better thing to do.
[deleted] ยท -7 points ยท Posted at 04:32:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
Nihht ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 04:35:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sure, sociopaths might be more likely to choose the ten over the one, but choosing the ten over the one doesn't necessarily indicate sociopathy, right?
[deleted] ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 04:11:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And how the fuck would you "research" that? Want to share some of these thought exercises which makes every person who values all lives not just there own on the level with Ted Bundy?
I've "gone back in" before as a volunteer fire fighter. Fuck you. It wasn't because some pop culture psychological profile as a sociopath. I genuinely thought I'd make it back out and they wouldn't without my help. The risk was worth it.
Eat shit.
[deleted] ยท -4 points ยท Posted at 04:29:29 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
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[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 04:58:01 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your fucking sources are a blog and slate?
Seriously. Eat shit.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 05:29:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 14:57:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The blog is "Based on research" with a link that goes nowhere, a study that was published inhouse, and still doesn't manage to draw the conclusions that your lazy arm chair psychology did.
Slate doesn't even really bother to mention the full title of the research they are citing. The doctors names sure sound real nice. Yet strangely they too don't draw the same conclusion you did.
In my own conclusion, you should eat shit and lay off the habit of pondering singular unvetted articles while smoking the refer late at night. It'll make people hate you less.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:59:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
philleferg ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 05:19:06 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I would love to read some of these studies. Got any links or anything that involves actual scientific studies with the results you just mentioned?
kiwirish ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:39:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And it's this type of shit that is the reason why loved ones are never allowed on the same ships in the Navy.
Because when a compartment is burning and you need to make the ship safe for everyone, you may have to resign yourself to making the decision to not save others still in the compartment.
BlissnHilltopSentry ยท 23 points ยท Posted at 01:35:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
His wife's life wasn't in danger, the people he saved were at risk of death, and they have spouses of their own.
[deleted] ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 04:05:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few"
-Spock
CERON1 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 00:00:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He shoulda just lived a hero. Oh well he's a hero
moveovernow ยท -243 points ยท Posted at 21:17:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Now give me all of your money and all of your possessions. You need to work every day for my benefit, and the benefit of everyone but yourself. After all, you come last.
Oh wait, your premise is complete bullshit and you're abusing someone else's heroics as an excuse to blather your worthless philosophy.
Edit: I like destroying obviously bogus ideas. On Reddit you always know what's going to get up or downvoted, because the users are predictable. Every one of you knows that I'm right, the parent's premise is completely retarded and non-functional, no human could ever actually obey it - it just happens to tug at your irrational heartstrings and fits on a bumper sticker.
Billy_Reuben ยท 85 points ยท Posted at 21:29:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That 48" Rod Of Insecurity is starting to slip out your ass and become noticeable again...
[deleted] ยท -36 points ยท Posted at 22:48:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
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Sikktwizted ยท 37 points ยท Posted at 23:04:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Bitterness isn't a way to live your life man.
[deleted] ยท -17 points ยท Posted at 00:01:33 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
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sadfatlonely ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 00:59:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm sorry about your father and his arm. And i'm sorry about the friends you lost. But you do seem like a troll. Just know that you deserve love, and that can't be taken from you.
If you're a troll, that's fine, what I said is true anyway, but I won't respond. Just know that someone loves you.
Viperbunny ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 01:51:02 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It is quite sad that you know so many people who lived a life of service and you would rather be bitter than help others. It isn't always about laying down your life for others. It is about helping your fellow man because we are all human and we should help one another. You have clearly suffered a lot of hurt and I am sorry for that. Don't let it make you bitter. It is a lonely way to live your life and it really takes it toll.
[deleted] ยท -24 points ยท Posted at 22:50:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
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[deleted] ยท 19 points ยท Posted at 23:18:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I couldn't help but be amused by your comment. I feel like your worldview might be too myopic for you to ever begin to grasp what I will try to describe, but here goes anyway.
When you are in that situation, where the reality that many people are about to die, it's almost surreal but you kind of lose your sense of separation, that little me/ego and become part of something much bigger. Many people have described this, and I have experienced it as well in a life or death situation. You suddenly don't care about "your" life, and it's the most euphoric surrendered feeling on earth. No drug even comes close, but I heard acid has a similar effect. I feel sorry that your life experiences have been so limited that you believe "sitting comfy at home" is anything but the most dulled down experience among those available in life.
MrSavesTheWorld ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 23:57:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You could not have described that any better. There's a tranquil feeling where you're surrendered to circumstance. I think something in your brain prepares you and doses you so that you aren't afraid. I dunno sounds weird but you pretty much summed it up perfect. I'm just glad that in my situation I acted accordingly. Afterward I felt like life tested me and I felt at ease.
sadfatlonely ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 01:00:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I understand if you don't want to share, but i'm curious about your life or death situation.
[deleted] ยท -12 points ยท Posted at 00:11:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
[deleted]
Viperbunny ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:03:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No, it really isn't. It isn't narcissistic. The op is trying to explain that things change when you realize you are in a position to help. It is about valuing others as much as you value yourself. It is an experience that is hard to describe unless you have lived it. This isn't the op trying to act superior or anything like that.
I know what it's like to struggle, to have so much taken from you that it's hard to go on. I know what it is like to wake up in physical and emotional pain every single day. I know what it is like to be dealt one blow after another to the point you feel like you can't get back up again. I have had people take advantage of me in my weakest moments because it suited their purpose. I still believe in service to others, treating people with kindness and compassion and being willing to go without in order to give to someone else. It doesn't make me any better than any other person.
Holding on to that much anger isn't healthy. If you ever need someone to talk to, I am here any time. I understand if you don't want to talk, but if you need a friend you have one.
[deleted] ยท -19 points ยท Posted at 23:29:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
--SOURCE-- ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 00:02:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Don't flatter yourself. They're not doing it for pricks like you.
They have a sense of duty and care for the greater good. There's no reason why you shouldn't respect what they do
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:10:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
--SOURCE-- ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:04:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't get your logic man, they're literally making your life better and you're too arrogant to give them their due respect?
You make it seem like you somehow take advantage of them, but in reality they do it because they choose to make a difference and have faith in their country. You don't have to agree with everything the military does, but there's seriously no reason to look down upon them.
KittyWithASnapback ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 00:14:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So somehow they're fools even though you're admitting that they make your life safer and easier?
Did you also call your parents fools for taking care of you?
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:33:35 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
KittyWithASnapback ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:18:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They definitely raised you, doubt you got here entirely on your own.
But you keep mentioning the fact that everyone has to do all the dirty work so that you don't have to. And that makes them fools, EVEN THOUGH THEYRE LITERALLY DOING THOSE THINGS SO THAT YOU DONT HAVE TO. THEYRE DOING YOU A FAVOR AND YOU SPIT IN THEIR FACE???
WHO DOES THAT?
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:41:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
KittyWithASnapback ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:47:21 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm not going to do that, because you don't need my money.
MrSavesTheWorld ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:59:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What the fuck are you talking about?
BlissnHilltopSentry ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:38:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You like to think your life is amazing, but the fact that you will never experience the true joys of life with this attitude is where those 'fools' win over you.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:11:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
BlissnHilltopSentry ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:44:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Damn dude, I hope you're a troll for your sake.
HelmutVonHelmut ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:14:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's not about you, stain, it's about the big picture.
Fortunately for mankind as a whole you'll probably live an insignificant life and die an insignificant death, having no real impact on anything aside from how clean the dishes at the local diner are.
https://qph.is.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-bc09ee7122fee7692b4fd925a2628037?convert_to_webp=true
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:26:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
HelmutVonHelmut ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:01:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nihilism is for bitches. You can define an individual by the impact they have on their fellow men and women.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:39:29 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
HelmutVonHelmut ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:57:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Never saw combat, wasn't in my job description.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:46:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
HelmutVonHelmut ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:27:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
lol
uneditablepoly ยท 113 points ยท Posted at 21:29:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Who hurt you?
[deleted] ยท 17 points ยท Posted at 01:00:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No one. Only a clueless teen whose never known the sort of feeling that would lead someone to die for someone else could say such a thing. Hold your child or your spouse once and you'll know what I mean. There comes a time when you just know somewhere inside you that if it were me or you, it'd be me.
And this guy had it for the people who entrusted their security to him. That's bravery right there. The call for an ordinary man to do the extraordinary.
Viperbunny ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 01:46:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think you have hit the nail on the head here. It isn't about always doing for others, but it is about valuing the lives of others at least as much as you value your own life. I have been in a few emergency situations. I know what it is like to be able to act and how helpless it feels when you can't help. I have been in the situation where I was the one being helped and when I have been the one doing the helping.
For example, I was on a family vacation with about 21 other relative. It was a huge family trip for us and we weren't all staying on the same floor. My sister and I were hanging out with some of our family in their hotel room when the fire alarm went off. We were all running down the stairs to get out of the building. Whatever it was that caused the alarm was taken care of and no one was hurt. While we were all running down the stairs, my dad and my uncle bolted up the stairs looking for us. They shouldn't have as we were with other adults and knew how to evacuate a building. But we were young, about 8 and 10, and the first thing that came to their heads was to get to us and make sure we were safe. At the time i was upset with them because they could have gotten hurt or killed if it had been a real emergency. Now that I have kids of my own, and know the pain of losing a child (six days after birth to a genetic disorder), I get it. I would rush into a burning building for my girls. I would be willing to lay down my life for them. It wouldn't even be a question in my mind. I would do the same for my husband.
People like first responders and those responsible for the safety of others put themselves in harm's way all the time in order to help others. They have the skills to help and so they feel called to help. I was always taught if you can help you should. It isn't always about putting yourself in danger. So many times helping someone is with something small can make a huge difference. It's sad when people don't understand that. It is demonstrates a lack of compassion. It is a sad way to go through life.
LLotZaFun ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:49:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Their parents/guardians, and now society must deal with the poor job they have done.
pagerussell ยท 19 points ยท Posted at 23:23:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Service to others is not the same thing as economic slave.
You believe yourself intelligent, and you may well be, but you are very far from wise.
TheLinuxLynx ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 23:35:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm gonna quote that
pagerussell ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:55:49 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thanks!
Which part?
TheLinuxLynx ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:33:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
probably the second part, but the first part to a guy in my class.
Aquila13 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:25:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's responses like this that make me stay on Reddit, despite everything else. Thank you.
[deleted] ยท 36 points ยท Posted at 22:39:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Careful not to cut yourself with all that edge.
NiceFella ยท 19 points ยท Posted at 23:11:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"Been a while since I jumped up someone's ass and blathered my opinion, being so fucking enlightened a philosopher."
Aatch ยท 15 points ยท Posted at 23:06:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dear god, who shit in your cornflakes this morning?
Anosognosia ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 23:03:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
How about you read "service to others" as "for the greater good of us all" instead. Maybe you won't have to be such a ButtocksChapeau
[deleted] ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 23:32:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hush little baby don't say a word
youssarian ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 00:45:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You sound like you have a stick shoved so far up your ass you can taste your own shit.
God_Damnit_Nappa ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 01:56:58 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What crawled up your ass and died?
Viperbunny ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:28:17 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There are a lot of people who put others first. No, you don't always have to put others first and you have the right to chose life in a dangerous situation. That said, there are people out there that believe in service to others first. Police officers, fire fighters, any first responder, and people like Rick Rescorla take risks because they want to help others. Rick Rescorla had the knowledge and skills to evacuate people and he went back in because he was one of the few people who could make a real difference in helping people out of the building. In fact, he had come up with security measures for such an event because he fully believed an attack like 9/11 was going to happen eventually.
This isn't to say a person shouldn't do things for his/her self. People should do things for themselves. What people are trying to say here is that in a situation where you can help you should help. You don't have to agree with it, but you don't need to get so worked up about it either. You are taking it to an extreme. I am sure the op didn't mean it quite as literal as you are taking it.
Xannin ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 09:34:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Destroying ideas is fine, but your delivery sucks.
VagueGamingReference ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:59:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
... You're pathetic dude. Just go crawl sick under your bridge.
eel_heron ยท 45 points ยท Posted at 19:20:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I was just about to post that passage. What a true hero.
[deleted] ยท 44 points ยท Posted at 20:36:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wasn't planning on crying in burger King today, but it happened.
misterpickles69 ยท 44 points ยท Posted at 20:52:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No one expects the hooker in the bathroom to say "I love you, too".
secret_aardvark ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 22:06:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I once got weepy in a Burger King bathroom
[deleted] ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 20:23:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So glad to be reminded of Rick Rescorla...
[deleted] ยท 22 points ยท Posted at 20:14:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
munchiselleh ยท 31 points ยท Posted at 21:36:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The best thing to come out of 9/11--maybe the only good thing honestly--was the exhibition of absolute human bravery and selflessness. It's truly beautiful to hear the stories of people who died with the purest intentions of saving people's lives before caring about their own.
Brings tears to my eyes every time. Let's roll.
Danyboii ยท 18 points ยท Posted at 21:53:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I like to think of it as ever force has an equal and opposite reaction. When there is great evil or terror, heroes come out of the woodwork to counter it.
southdetroit ยท 15 points ยท Posted at 00:09:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The light shineth in darkness and the darkness did not comprehend it.
alionheart ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 21:11:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I have tears and chills reading that.
psyonix ยท 26 points ยท Posted at 19:58:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What is this watery substance leaking from my eyes?
squirrelcartel ยท 97 points ยท Posted at 20:02:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jet fuel?
RandyMachoManSavage ยท 139 points ยท Posted at 20:07:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
9/11 was an inside sob
yeahmynameisbrian ยท 40 points ยท Posted at 20:34:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tears can melt the steel beams guarding my heart
Consanguineously ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:47:01 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We found Bush, boys!
Leftberg ยท -3 points ยท Posted at 20:13:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Horse semen, and it is normal.
hopefulhusband ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:39:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I didn't want to cry today but damn his quote was amazing. I'd never heard of this man before and now he is on my list of top humans in the history of everything.
itsnotajokewes ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 21:06:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If it always burns twice as bright, it only burns half as long. He sounds like a great man the world lost that day.
Out of genuine curiosity, how was he last seen heading upward when the tower began to collapse? How did the person who last saw him live to tell the tale?
space-ninja ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 21:46:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Someone was probably heading down from the 11th and saw him going the opposite way.
MC_Mooch ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:57:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The only reason the tower collapsed was under the weight of his massive testicles
Dent18 ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 20:07:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oh fuck
I...wasn't prepared for these feels
Mike___Litoris ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 20:22:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Damn.
missnewreddit ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:23:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Reading his wiki gives me the chills. What a guy...
questionablehogs ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:30:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
One of the saddest thing, I think, is how many remains weren't recovered or identified from 9/11. I mean, for most of the missing people, you know they died in the towers. But there's never that real closure and there's nothing for the families to bury.
CommanderZelph ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:46:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My office suddenly got a little dusty
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:12:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Heart breaking :( He died a hero.
SupersuMC ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:20:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Blessed. He's probably singing with one of the higher choirs of angels in heaven right now. 0:)
Darth-Pimpin ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:59:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Id like to believe he never died, and is actually living on an island somewhere with Elvis, Tupac, and Hitler.
MittenMagick ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:13:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Meme aside, I really do cry every time. Being able to say those words as the curtains of life begin to close are how I will judge my life.
Newaccountusedtolurk ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:19:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's stories like these that make me hate 911 conspiracy theorists. Instead of honouring these people you decide to spew bullshit about the government
RedSerious ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:21:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is when the coworker says:
"It could have been the adrenaline, but when I turned around to see him for the last time, I think I saw a pair of white, big wings coming outfrom his back."
;_;
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:27:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
fuck.
FableForge ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:18:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
New York values.
Meggie82461 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:33:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I work at MS, he's a god here. Every September his story circulates and I cry every time. I was in high school when it happened but they don't let you work there and not know his name
The_Fad ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:24:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oh man did anyone else's room just get really dusty?
willeatforfood8 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:40:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A non-american doing one of the most American things in the history of America.
cayoloco ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:27:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Unfortunately, if he could have seen 7 years in to the future he might have been a bigger unknown hero, if he just ran away.
(Because he saved Morgan Stanley people.)
PajamaHive ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:22:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Who's cutting onions in here?
justSFWthings ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 00:38:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The dude sacrificed himself for bankers? Ugh, insult to injury.
iampositive- ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 00:46:29 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
remember guys, he died because some selfish fucks cant have enough money for themselves
iamsmrtk ยท 1234 points ยท Posted at 19:13:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oh fuck, the feels.
bluestu ยท 137 points ยท Posted at 20:27:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Can't imagine how both terrifying and epic this would have been echoing through a concrete stairwell as you try to escape a burning tower
Cheesusaur ยท 23 points ยท Posted at 21:54:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As someone who lives in Harlech (Welsh town with 1500 occupants), it's really cool to read that reference from such a hero.
marigoldandpatchwork ยท 21 points ยท Posted at 22:56:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's the same song sung by the British soldiers in response to the Zulu chants in the film Zulu.
Really powerful final scene.
[deleted] ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 23:34:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I remember, I was reading my father's Army Officer Manuel one time and in the back they had a list of movies the Army reccomended soldiers watch, and Zulu was one of them. I remember in the book's discription of the movie, they said if you didn't feel overwhelmed by this scene, you didn't have a warrior spirit. Very powerful indeed, seeing the bravery of both the British and the Zulus, it's insane.
MJWood ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:50:29 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Classic
Danyboii ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 21:07:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wasn't that song in the movie Zulu?
faceintheblue ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 22:39:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes it was.
CornishPaddy ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 22:35:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Such a Cornwall boner right now
[deleted] ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 19:16:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah. Chokes me up anytime I read about his life.
jpop23mn ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 20:21:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DRtnWVvDX6
Damn that's a good fight song
TheWorldCrimeLeague ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 21:18:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's the song from Zulu, if anyone finds it sounding familiar.
thiscontent ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 22:10:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
that poem snippet's made all the hair on my arms and legs stand up.
probably not the takeaway from a comment about 911 heroism, but fuck:
that's fucking powerful writing right there. i'd give my left nut to write that well.
Sks44 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 00:44:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The balls on that magnificent man of Cornwall. Bold and brass.
RIP.
newimanidiot ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:27:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You made me cry. Dang it.
tatsuedoa ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:36:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He's a modern day legend. This is stuff I could imagine in game of thrones.
This dude needs a special statue, him and the others who turned from safety to help others,
actual_factual_bear ยท -3 points ยท Posted at 20:29:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Can you explain this to me? I've seen things in movies and TV shows where they sing songs like this and they never make sense to me, I never really found them that poetic or melodic and found them more annoying than anything else. I don't understand what is going on here or why this would boost morale. Is this a cultural thing where you have to be familiar with these specific songs growing up?
iamsmrtk ยท 47 points ยท Posted at 20:41:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
You've just seen a plane fly into the North Tower, heard a huge explosion, and felt your own building shake. People around you are crying and you can hear your own heart pounding in your ears as you run down the stairs for dear life. Then you see this man, who is apparently unphased by all of this mayhem, singing this song at the top of his lungs.
I have never been in that situation but I can see how that could be comforting and inspiring. I also imagined him singing this as he died, it just painted a very heroic picture in my head.
[deleted] ยท -22 points ยท Posted at 21:11:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
they probably thought he was insane lol
[deleted] ยท 22 points ยท Posted at 22:26:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I doubt it. I'm sure most of them knew exactly what he was doing.
RedSerious ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 23:27:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I personally guess that it has merely a psychological effect.
Remember, you're in shock, you don't know what's going on, what will happen nor what can you do.
Singing songs help boost morale, rithm could help to get your head back on track and regain focus on the situation and your main objective: GTFO there.
Rithm has been proven to keep you focus during a stressful time (hence why drums were used during battles).
I personally don't know this song, butif someone starts singing a very powerful song (either local,regional national or world known) you get the adrenaline going and you get motivated.
Sort of like when you listen to your favourite music.
warriorsatthedisco ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 00:13:35 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I agree with what you're saying, there's a reason armies had drummer boys or bagpipe men.
I don't want to nitpick and I'm not, but for your future uses of the word, it is spelled "rhythm" :) Yeah, it's spelled weird.
dorekk ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 01:22:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I thought drummer boys were so they could march in perfect unison.
Bagpipes, of course, sound awful; those are to make the men angry enough to fight.
warriorsatthedisco ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 02:53:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
perfect unison, battle commands(retreat/go on offense/plan B), making them battle in unison, a multitude of things. But listening to drumming is pretty motivational to me personally.
RedSerious ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 14:20:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thanks for the spell check!!
reverick ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:54:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Its pretty much like an RPG and you have a bard in your group. The bard sings in battle and boosts certain stats with certain songs. He was the real life version.
chrisv650 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:19:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah you hit the nail on the head there I think. My guess is it's to do with the comfort of home, you have to remember stuff like this stems from when there was no such thing as pre-recorded sound. The only time you'd have heard music and singing is at home when everyone got round and started singing like this so before going into a fight it would probably have helped reassure everyone to do the same.
Alternatively (and I say this as someone originally from the North of England who has gone drinking with Welsh/Irish/Scotsmen) it may ahve something to do with the fact that the celts are batshit crazy.
HabseligkeitDerLiebe ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 00:11:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm German, I grew up in Germany and I actually don't actively listen to music on my own because it doesn't do anything for me. So I'm probably one of the people who should be least affected by Welsh songs causing any kind of feeling.
But I'm also a soldier and I know what war songs do to you.
First of all it's a breathing technique. Most people become short of breath when they're panicked and then become even more panicked because they're short of breath and this becomes a spiral. Singing forces you to breath steadily.
Secondly it gives you something to do and to think about. People become panicked (and later traumatized) when they don't know what to do in an emergency situation. Singing a song gives your mind something to process and to focus on. Taking you out of the situation mentally and also makes you someone who does something instead of something that stuff happens to.
Thirdly it makes you part of a group. People like being part of a group, makes them feel safe.
Then, when you're not wildly panicked anymore you need something to do with all that adrenaline in your body. Slow steady songs can get you really pumped to actively take risks to accomplish something, be it killing people, kicking in doors or running through flames.
And the best part is that it can work with any song with that kind of beat. The marching songs that still are used by the German army are mostly about dying and not about killing people, because German soldiers don't kill people anymore (slight hyperbole, but actually pretty close to the official stance on why we abandoned many marching songs) and the effect still kicks in.
If there's good lyrics it's just the icing on the cake.
tthorwoaways ยท 23 points ยท Posted at 20:32:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
As wanky as it might be, I recommend anyone with a spare half hour read this New Yorker article, The Real Heroes are Dead, if you want to know more about this almost ridiculously-accomplished and brilliant man.
You'll learn more about his wife, and why their goodbye was so incredibly meaningful.
You'll learn more about his best friend, who was basically a real life Rambo.
You'll read about him predicting not only 9/11, but the earlier World Trade Centre bombing of the '90s, and why his warnings were ignored each time.
You'll learn about his exploits in 'Nam, and that he was part of the inspiration for the movie We Were Soldiers.
You'll cry too, because, it's beautifully written and he was such a big damn hero.
Edit: And hey, to whet your appetite, here's another quote from his wife that isn't in the wikipedia article:
CalibreneGuru ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 03:04:15 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That link was very beautiful. Thank you for sharing.
tthorwoaways ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 03:19:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No problem. I read that article nearly a decade ago, and it's stuck with me ever since. A beautiful story about an amazing life.
dmgb ยท 17 points ยท Posted at 19:16:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"Between songs, Rescorla called his wife, telling her, "Stop crying. I have to get these people out safely. If something should happen to me, I want you to know I've never been happier. You made my life." After successfully evacuating most of Morgan Stanley's 2,687 employees, he went back into the building. When one of his colleagues told him he too had to evacuate the World Trade Center, Rescorla replied, "As soon as I make sure everyone else is out". He was last seen on the 10th floor, heading upward, shortly before the South Tower collapsed at 9:59 A.M. His remains were never found. Rescorla was declared dead three weeks after the attacks."
Fuck...
[deleted] ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 19:21:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Live life. Never be afraid to say 'I love you' to anyone you care about. And never be afraid of the unknown. Always be prepared to give everything you have for others, even people you might not know. That is humanity, and he is a shining beacon of it.
Vana21 ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 19:43:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"If something should happen to me, I want you to know I've never been happier. You made my life."
His words to his wife as he was evacuating people. What a gentleman
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:45:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I cried reading those words when I read them thinking of my wife and kids. One can only hope to be able to have the opportunity to say something so wonderful to your love when it's time to go...
munchiselleh ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 21:38:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And to say it in the heat of that kind of moment shows exactly what kind of man he was. He said exactly what he needed to, a perfect goodbye to the love of his life, in a few sentences while a skyscraper was collapsing around him and hordes of people were relying on him to get to safety.
Quackimaduck1017 ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 19:17:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm blown away by all that I read in that wiki article. What an incredible man
[deleted] ยท 17 points ยท Posted at 19:19:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
When I was in Manas, Kyrgyzstan on my way into Afghanistan there was a mural painted on a wall for him. I already knew his story at that time, but it made me smile. Here's a guy who was thought of years after his demise and looked up to and painted to give others hope on their way into hell.
What a beautiful man. FTFY ;-)
Leleek ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 19:29:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Now think of all the people who are every bit as good at their jobs as he was, but will never (thankfully) have to prove their worth.
[deleted] ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 19:43:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Strangers in the crowd among us. Thank the gods for people like them who are ready to react when we might otherwise not be able to...
ZeldaSeverous ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 19:41:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I got chills reading his wiki page. What a magnificent man he was.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:43:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Agreed... :'-)
adhi- ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:28:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just read this, God damn that got to me.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:44:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
To be remembered this well, and to live a life so magnificent...
bikefan83 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:29:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What a remarkable guy, did so many other interesting things as well as his heroism in relation to 9/11
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:04:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Mine too. His exploits in Vietnam and in the British Army before that are pretty amazing as well.
kegdr ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:37:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I live close to Hayle, UK, where he was born. He's quite well known here, despite his fame coming from a tragedy thousands of miles away.
CarderSC2 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:53:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wow! The recount of his life on his wiki page is enthralling.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:54:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Isn't it though? A life lived fully, and an immortal death in service to others.
wafflefries2k14 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:57:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thanks for posting that. I had never heard of him before. What a man.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:00:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No worries. He is as I said I personal hero of mine. He deserves to be remembered. Cheers!
3jt ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:14:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Never knew about him before today. Thank you.
Meggie82461 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:35:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Another interesting thing: Port Authority told him not to evacuate. He said Fuck You and evacuated his employees. He saved so many lives that day and didn't blink while doing so. When he went back in, MS employees were safe. He was going to save strangers. There was a documentary done, "the man who predicted 9/11", because after the WTC bombings in the 90s he knew it would happen again.
Awesome article: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/02/11/the-real-heroes-are-dead
fusepark ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:58:28 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Gave me chills reading that.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:15:05 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm going to edit that comment to include the short documentary on him. It focuses mainly on 9/11 but it's powerful in its own way.
networknewjack ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:34:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fuck. Now that guy earned his "hero" status.
Danosauris ยท 513 points ยท Posted at 18:36:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I do believe he got every single person out in the end and went back for people on a different floor. Was an ex marine.
RedditRolledClimber ยท 303 points ยท Posted at 19:24:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
soldier in both the British and US armies, actually, not a Marine
berrset3 ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 22:24:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
How can he be in both armies? I thought it was extremely difficult for someone to join a foreign country's military?
RedditRolledClimber ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 06:03:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He was a Brit who served in the British army, and then came to the US and hung out until he had been here long enough to be allowed to join the US Army.
hunkmonkey ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 01:36:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Rick Rescorla was a retired U.S. Army Colonel, and was the soldier pictured on the cover of the book We Were Soldiers Once...and Young which was the basis for the Mel Gibson movie "We Were Soldiers." After the previous failed Islamic terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, he accurately forecasted that the next attack would involve flying an aircraft into the towers. He prepared the employees at Morgan Stanley, where he was the head of Security, for a quick and efficient evacuation and executed that plan when the 2001 attack occurred; I believe only three of the thousands of Morgan Stanley employees lost their lives. Col. Rescorla was one of them.
Ghosted19 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 05:00:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A Man of Honor
Kinetik42 ยท 1175 points ยท Posted at 19:47:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Former Marine. Only ex marines are those who got a dishonorable discharge. I know its semantics but they tend to find this particular point important.
thekevyboyz ยท 69 points ยท Posted at 21:05:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That is a totally legit correction. I did not know there was a difference.
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 02:45:02 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think that's also referred to as your "ex"
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:33:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I've always heard them say they're a Marine for life, with retired Marine being the preferred nomenclature.
mojave_moon ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 01:40:27 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
I have been a former Marine for the past 20 years and never understood the distinction and have never corrected people who say "ex Marine." Many civilians have corrected other people in my presence, but I never felt compelled to. The reason people always give is "Once a Marine, Always a Marine..." and this definition still doesn't fit that adequately. Both "ex" and "former" mean "not anymore." A Marine who gets dishonorably discharged was still once a Marine. And I can tell you my life was WAY different after I got out than before, so while I understand that I'm indelibly changed as a human because off the Marines, I just don't understand this distinction.
Groovyguy ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 22:09:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
I called myself an ex-marine because I no longer wanted to associate myself with them.
ILikeLeptons ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 23:34:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
there's no such thing as an ex marine, but there is such thing as a pedantic one.
BitchpuddingBLAM ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:42:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ultra Marine.
TheWorldCrimeLeague ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:20:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't get the reason for the distinction.
HaroldSax ยท 25 points ยท Posted at 21:36:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm not a Marine, but from what I can see, being a Marine is being a brother. Being a "former" Marine means you served your time, did your job, and got out. Being an "ex" Marine means you fucked up and, thus, turned your back on your brothers.
I'd rather have a Marine confirm that though, since you know, not being in the Corps and all.
[deleted] ยท 24 points ยท Posted at 21:38:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's pretty accurate. We regard it as a title that, once earned, you have for life. That is unless you do something really stupid that brings dishonor upon the Corps. The dude that killed a transgender person in Thailand last year is a perfect example of this.
TheWorldCrimeLeague ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 22:02:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Cheers, but isn't that the same mentality in the army too?
HaroldSax ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 22:04:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes and no. Army folks tend to still be warm to each other, but it's an otherworldly connection for people that were or are in the Corps.
I have had two brothers serve, one of them is like the above, the other absolutely hates what the Army did to him and tries to shun his service.
ImADouchebag ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 00:20:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
To an outsider, that is simply pedantry, and holds no meaning in any true sense.
HaroldSax ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 00:49:06 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Okay.
OrangeJuliusPage ยท -7 points ยท Posted at 03:00:17 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Perhaps it will hold some meaning when a former Marine bitch slaps the taste out of your mouth when you call him a pedantic ex-Marine?
ImADouchebag ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 14:20:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So you're saying the violent cave-mane marine stereotype is true?
greenweenie0311 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:47:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Rah
In_the_heat ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 13:16:22 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Because they're caught up on stupid words. Rescorla was regular army through and through, not a marine. He was a soldier.
TheSwellFellow ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:59:05 on January 18, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well he wasn't a former Marine either. He was in the Army, fought in the Battle of La Drang.
terminalthree ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:37:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We don't even bother with the former part. It's just once a Marine always a Marine. Then if you look like you're not currently active duty the other will ask what years and where you were stationed etc.
M_Night_Shamylan ยท -16 points ยท Posted at 20:35:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
He wasn't a Marine. If you're going to argue semantics you should at least get his branch of service right.
edit: The fuck is wrong with you retards?
[deleted] ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 20:55:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If you're going to argue semantics, you should realize that he wasn't saying the guy was a marine. He was stating that once a marine, always a marine. Unless you are dishonorably discharged.
[deleted] ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 21:39:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He didn't serve in the Marines, he served in the UK Army and US Army: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Rescorla#Military_career
M_Night_Shamylan ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:35:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wait, why did I get -20 downvotes in this exact same thread for making the exact same comment you did
[deleted] ยท -9 points ยท Posted at 21:43:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I didn't say he served in the marines.
[deleted] ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 21:47:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This whole kerfuffle started because everyone upthread is saying he was in the Marines. He wasn't. Not sure why that's difficult to figure out.
[deleted] ยท -9 points ยท Posted at 21:50:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What the hell are you trying to say? I never said he was a marine. I'm not sure why you can't see that I've never said that. Are you just not reading? Are you replying to the wrong person?
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 21:55:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Did you not read this comment above you, as well as the person replying to it, stating he was in the Marines? I mean, do you not actually know why this all started? I'm just pointing out to you and anyone else that he wasn't a former Marine or an ex-Marine. He served in the British Army and US Army. Not the Marines. Understand now?
theoreticaldickjokes ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:33:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
But the guy making the correction probably should've corrected the guy making the mistake.
M_Night_Shamylan ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 00:31:22 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Stop playing dumb ya fuckin cunt. You know exactly what's up.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 00:50:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I do, I don't understand why anyone is responding to me about him not being a marine you fuck.
M_Night_Shamylan ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:14:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Because by your own words the difference is "semantics." Is this clear enough for you now you dim-wit? Christ almighty, either you're a weasel or truly oblivious.
M_Night_Shamylan ยท -9 points ยท Posted at 20:57:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
How am I arguing semantics? It's a literal fact.
He was replying directly to a guy claiming Rick Resorla was an ex Marine, saying it's "former Marine". Seems silly to argue over a technicality when the overall premise is simply wrong.
[deleted] ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 22:04:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The fact you are downvoted for pointing out that he was in the Army and not the Marines is mind boggling. Literally what.
M_Night_Shamylan ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:22:02 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, I have no clue man, people are retarded
jnicholass ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 21:00:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It probably applies to all branches. I think the proper term to have used here is "retired-marines".
pylori ยท -19 points ยท Posted at 20:56:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Funny how seriously Americans take this, when as far as I can tell this is absolutely not a thing in the UK.
Kold_Kuts_Klan ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 21:19:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's why we kick ur ass in ww4
TeePlaysGames ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 21:35:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I have a theory about this. It has to do with the differences between the UK and the US. The UK has one of the oldest and richest histories in Europe. It's had numerous peoples, countless cultures and nations, and thousands of years of human history. When you fight for your nation in the UK, you're carrying that history with you (and yes I realize that the UK has not been united for very long, relative to the history of the isles, but still). It's a point of honor. It's a duty and a job that millions before you have taken.
In the US, we're pretty acutely aware that it was just a couple hundred years ago that we fought for independence. We're still building our history, and when you join the military here, it's not so much a point of honor as it is of pride. There's a lot more pride in being part of a relatively new history than there is continuing an old history, just like there's more honor continuing an old history than writing new history, if that makes sense.
[deleted] ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 20:19:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He was actually an army infantry officer. Not a Marine. Was also in the battle of la drang from the book and movie "we were soldiers"
M_Night_Shamylan ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:43:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He wasn't a Marine, he served in the British Army and US Army
darkchildone ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:41:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm gonna be a tiny bit of an ass and say he was a FORMER Marine. An ex Marine refers to someone who was dishonorably discharged.
Source: My dad who is a former Marine.
ArchVangarde ยท 18 points ยท Posted at 19:54:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He is neither. Never was a Marine. Was a US Army Officer, before that served in the British army in Rhodesia, and is all around one of the most badass men to wear a uniform. Hes the poster child of an Infantry Platoon leader, featured on the cover of the book "We Were Soldiers Once, and Young," which became a Mel Gibson movie.
jasmineearlgrey ยท -8 points ยท Posted at 20:17:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Same thing.
thekevyboyz ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:05:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'd like to see you argue that point to a former marine
jasmineearlgrey ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 21:24:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Why?
athennna ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:12:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Do you have a link?
RedditRolledClimber ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:25:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
here
homeschooled ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:46:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He didn't get everyone out. Several MS employees still died. But considering they were the largest tenant in the tower (20+ floors of workers) it's amazing less than 10 people died.
hogglethecoward ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:33:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Once a marine, always a marine.
family_with_benefits ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:14:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Steve Buscemi helped him too
BlutundEhre ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:19:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Semper Fi.
M_Night_Shamylan ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:36:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He wasn't a Marine.
beligerancy ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 20:10:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not to nitpick but once a marine always a marine ;)
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:14:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not to nitpick further but he was Army.
[deleted] ยท 31 points ยท Posted at 19:30:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
I_AM_TARA ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:53:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Until 9/11 jihadist type attacks weren't taken seriously at all and were dismissed as acts of mental illness or political foolishness. They were (at least by the general public) regarded as isolated unimportant events, hence the reason why they were forgotten by so many.
Also anyone born after the 1980's probably would never have even heard about the '93 bombing.
deadlast ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 20:58:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Untrue. The bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, and the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Nairobi were taken very seriously.
LadiesWhoPunch ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:27:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Is that why we now say "Never Forget"?
sidcool1234 ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 18:49:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Rick Rescorla
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Rescorla
ArchVangarde ยท 19 points ยท Posted at 19:56:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Rick Rescorla. Was a US Army Officer, before that served in the British army in Rhodesia, and is all around one of the most badass men to wear a uniform. Hes the poster child of an Infantry Platoon leader, featured on the cover of the book "We Were Soldiers Once, and Young," which became a Mel Gibson movie.
poneil ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 20:26:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Everyone here should read the New Yorker article you just linked. It's so moving.
titaniumbutter ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 19:12:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There are the tears.
mtomei3 ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 18:53:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Can't believe this is the first I've heard of him. Am now silently weeping in my cubicle at work.
Leleek ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 19:32:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"Stop crying. I have to get these people out safely. If something should happen to me, I want you to know I've never been happier. You [his wife] made my life."
mtomei3 ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 19:38:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That was the exact thing that triggered the waterworks for me.
GrumpyFalstaff ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 20:44:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yep, me too.
CurioustheCat15 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:48:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Came here to paste this as well. Made me all teary-eyed!!
cqm ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 19:23:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sometimes I think "what was he thinking!?" but then I realize that maybe it would be harder to just walk away and having to live with that.
IWillNeverRust ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 20:44:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He had bone marrow cancer, and had for several years. I think that might have made it a slightly easier decision to go back and try and save some more people.
kiwirish ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:47:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I mean dying instantly from a tower falling on you while you still had adrenaline pumping full blast through you to save people with hopes to get out alive has to be better than slowly and painfully dying from bone marrow cancer.
IWillNeverRust ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 10:40:06 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Exactly, still heroic as fuck like.
cqm ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:45:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
thanks!
I_am_Nightwing ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:10:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Rick Rescorla.
From the wiki:
"Men of Cornwall stop your dreaming,
Canโt you see their spearpoints gleaming?,
See their warriorsโ pennants streaming,
To this battlefield.
Men of Cornwall stand ye steady,
It cannot be ever said ye for the battle were not ready
Stand and never yield!"
harv4276 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:38:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
An excellent story about Rick Rescorla in The New Yorker from February 2002.
PurgeTheWorld ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:55:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I've heard of this man. But, reading that wiki article gave me chills.
That man was a hero. RIP.
FrightenedOfSpoons ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:42:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A smart and brave guy, no doubt, but it was dumb of anyone who was not doing those drills, and doubly dumb of the executives who objected to his practices. Heck, I work in a two-storey building and we do timed evacuation drills twice a year, with surprise elements like blocking a major exit to force people to think of alternate ways out. It takes hardly any time, and clearly saves lives in an emergency.
LowCharity ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 20:13:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Easier to say that now.
FrightenedOfSpoons ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:39:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I should have made it clear that this has been the case where I work since at least 1994 (the date on the associated documentation, which also requires more frequent drills in taller buildings). So it's not like the practice was unknown in 2001.
The_Bard ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:59:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's actually surprising more companies didn't do this as the WTC had been attacked by a car bomb in the 90s.
kyrgrat08 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:35:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Steve Buscemi?
Meggie82461 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:32:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
I work at MS. He's a god there .
Good article: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/02/11/the-real-heroes-are-dead
Adddicus ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:41:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Along the same vein.... there was a telephone central office in the basement of the South Tower. WHen the first plane hit, the company (Verizon) told everyone to shelter in place. The union rep (I can't give you a name) said "Fuck that, everyone out". As a result they all escaped safely.
bepseh ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:36:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
how did he "predict" 911?
A_Cylon_Raider ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 20:09:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
If I remember correctly from his biography, shortly after the 1988 Pan Am bombing he and an army buddy/counter-terrorism expert named Dan Hill got together and brainstormed how they would take down the WTC if they were terrorists. One idea was a bomb in the parking garage, another was crashing a plane into it. They tried getting more security in place for the garages since there was basically none, but no one listened to them, so in 1993 when terrorists tried to bring the WTC down with a bomb in the parking garage and failed, Rescorla figured he'd probably need to be prepared for the plane thing at some point too.
Dan Hill's a really interesting character. After the 93 bombings he (a civilian now, with no authority or mandate) went undercover in mosques he suspected of supporting the perpetrators to collect intelligence, leading directly to their arrests.
TurdFerguson812 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:10:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
IIRC, after the first attack on the WTC (the truck bomb in 1993), he predicted there would be another attack
ElCatatumbo ยท 5500 points ยท Posted at 13:43:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Stanislav Petrov ,who pretty much saved us from nuclear war in 1983.
Edit: Fixed link... I think.
TIL link
[deleted] ยท 230 points ยท Posted at 18:55:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Or Vasili Arkhipov in 1962:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Arkhipov#Involvement_in_Cuban_Missile_Crisis
wasmic ยท 31 points ยท Posted at 20:51:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, this guy. IIRC, Petrov didn't have the authority to launch (although had he reported to the Kremlin, they would surely have launched out of panic). Arkhipov did have that authority. There were two others on board that submarine who wanted to launch, but a launch had to be unanimous. In those minutes, the Doomsday Clock hit 11:59:59. Arkhipov refused.
Strawawa ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 23:42:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The book "Red November" has several chapters on Soviet officers that effectively saved the world from WW3. It really interesting and mildly terrifying.
lesperitdelescalier ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 21:21:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Came here to post this. This is just a case of one guy helping avoid a colossal mistake. Few know his name but if he made a different decision on that day we wouldn't be alive.
RutherfordBHayes ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 20:51:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Here's an equivalent American incident too
aaronr93 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 06:14:49 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So he was also involved with K-19? As in, the same one in the film K-19: The Widowmaker, starring Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson?
spaghettiputs ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 13:13:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes
cp5184 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:32:05 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Those were just nuclear torpedoes. It would have been no different if they fired regular or nuclear torpedoes.
MyPunsSuck ยท 2551 points ยท Posted at 15:18:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
One of my most upvoted posts ever is mentioning him as the hero of all non-pressers during the whole The Button thing. I'm glad to see him here
Edit: And now one of my other most upvoted posts is from mentioning The Button in the context of a hero not pressing a button. Thanks a third time, Stanislav!
bacon_catz_karma ยท 832 points ยท Posted at 16:16:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oh shit I forgot about the button! Whatever came of that?
sfzen ยท 1868 points ยท Posted at 16:19:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Exactly what everyone expected. Nothing.
Artvandelay1 ยท 825 points ยท Posted at 16:33:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So we're still not telling them what really happened?
D4days ยท 411 points ยท Posted at 16:55:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If they ever find out, God help us all...
brandon9182 ยท 337 points ยท Posted at 17:06:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Praise be to the pressiah
VonBrewskie ยท 20 points ยท Posted at 20:08:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nonpressterus be with you.
Jackpot777 ยท 22 points ยท Posted at 21:00:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thou shalt remain pure in the heart and gray in the flair. Press not any Button, for it is the incarnation of all Evil.
There is no greater sin than falsely claiming to be a Shade.
Heed not the Knights or the Red Guard, for they were false prophets and agents of the Button.
All pressers are equal in their shame. Only those few who have turned from their ways and now follow the Destructionist path may be regarded as worthy.
Spread word of the Followers, so that the evils of the button may be contained.
Holy are those who sought the arrival of the number 0 on the countdown, for they ushered to us all an end to the Age of Strife.
The weak were purged. The Shade remains.
DerGrau ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 22:15:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Long live The Shade! Long live The Shade!
TheCoolman78 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:20:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
PRAISE THE VIOLET HAND, YOU FILTHY HERETIC!
bcdm ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:00:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Bah.
I witnessed the Great Schism. The truth of the End was revealed to us then. Cassandra's betrayal showed us that there was no valor to be had by staying in the Shade. Purity was meaningless. The only meaning to be had was the meaning we created ourselves.
I joined the Hitchhikers, and I celebrate that decision to this day.
probablyhrenrai ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:40:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I stand as witness to the Ronin, who pressed as late as they could, thereby giving worth to their own existence and to the Button. Long may their honorable memory live on in their death-poems.
Kiro0613 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:17:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
But you pressed hundreds of button on your keyboard when you typed this.
Jackpot777 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:21:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
INFIDEL.
(Speech recognition is the way of The Shade.)
BURN HIM. BUT NOT USING A BARBECUE. IT MAY HAVE A BUTTON STARTER.
Kiro0613 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:23:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oh, I didn't realize you used speech recognition. I'll let you go about your nonpressing then.
Cobbleking32486 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:21:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
maybe they have a touchscreen
Allokit ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:45:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Non-presser (and proud) checking in. I resisted the urge, and was rewarded.
ThePRESSlAH ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:11:38 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You have to press to ascend.
VonBrewskie ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:19:06 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nonpressterus be with you. It is said: "yea, though the pressers claim enlightenment, they know only limitation. Though they sing songs of glory, they know only discord. In the Shade of unity, do the nonpressed dwell in bodhi."
PMMEURCOFFEEGROUNDS ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:56:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Peace be to you, fellow pressbytarian
ThePRESSlAH ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:08:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
PRAISE!!
Bobby_Hilfiger ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:00:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Gyrodawn is his prophet
[deleted] ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 17:19:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You don't want to be like the last person who told them what happened....
Alarid ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:59:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In my heart and dreams, I'm still pressing the button.
sdonaghy ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 17:15:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Only if he is red
eskimo91 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:53:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Only if he is Ronin.
Xaevier ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:50:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nothing happened, certainly no free gold that anyone who watched the button hit 0 received. Nope nothing like that, everyone can just move along
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:02:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
sheepcat87 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:10:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
das da joke
EquipLordBritish ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:58:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Don't tell them it had anything to do with the safe, people would go apeshit.
Joetato ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:11:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's too horrible to say what happened. It might unleash the same thing again if we talk about it too much, so let's all just be quiet about it.
CapitaineDuPort ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:50:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Don't do it Jack!
l_MAKE_SHIT_UP ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:10:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
But I'm still a non presser in the end.
Kiro0613 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:17:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
59ers UNITE!
BlissnHilltopSentry ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:32:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm a 60
Kiro0613 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:21:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'll accept all of my Purple brethren.
RealJackAnchor ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:55:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As weak as the other 58.
tomato_paste ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:20:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Typical reddit.
Obligatius ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:17:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Spoken with the regret of a shameful presser. You people used to disgust me.
You still do, but you used to, too.
pejmany ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:39:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You know, if we believe that the universe splits every time we deliberate a choice, the button may have been the largest singular instance of universal splitting, making it anthropomorphic
FeverishPuddle ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:58:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
i'll tell him about the button...
it reached zero and then
Chairboy ยท 1852 points ยท Posted at 16:53:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Turns out it adjusted the lethality of cancer in a group of celebrities. Took a few months to really have noticeable effects.
Eskuran ยท 712 points ยท Posted at 16:55:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We did it Reddit!
:(
Amuraxis ยท 19 points ยท Posted at 19:31:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So, we killed ziggy?.... :'(
[deleted] ยท 31 points ยท Posted at 20:40:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
-TheCabbageMerchant- ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 23:23:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hey man. Not all pressers are bad. My friend is a presser.
VioletCrow ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 02:33:01 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your friend killed Snape.
-TheCabbageMerchant- ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 02:43:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
:(
falconbox ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 03:34:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's what he gets for killing Dumbledore.
Kiro0613 ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 00:18:52 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Obviously the Button was counting down to the cancer. It's you nonpressers who killed Bowie.
TFL1991 ยท 20 points ยท Posted at 20:16:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Maybe you did.
I didn't press.
Chairboy ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:34:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sam & Al are gonna have a hell of a time getting out of their next jam, no doubt about it.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:33:35 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No, you killed Ziggy.
supercrusher9000 ยท 19 points ยท Posted at 17:43:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Too. Fucking. Soon
Chairboy ยท 22 points ยท Posted at 17:55:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Agreed, they stole those people from us far too soon.
Filthy Pressersโฆ
Fett2 ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 19:04:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It was all worth it to get a red flair. I regret nothing.
Chairboy ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 19:06:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
J'accuse!
diastereomer ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:09:28 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
But, you don't even have red flair...
englanddragons7 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:19:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The button actually prolonged the effects of the cancer. It's the non-pressers who really fucked them up.
RandizzleDee ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:36:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Id be fine with the soonness but its just a bad joke
tralfagarlaw ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 00:05:12 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Found satan
UnderwaterDialect ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:31:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Why would you give gold to this...
Chairboy ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 21:52:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Because gold conjures up a mist about a man, more destructive of all his old senses and lulling to his feelings than the fumes of charcoal.
RealJackAnchor ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:57:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Because it's dark and hilarious.
esqrepdecat ยท -4 points ยท Posted at 18:23:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
69 upvotes...
Chairboy ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 18:26:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
FUCK.
Edit: phew, made it past 69, I live agaiยซรชIโฅ{Eโeโ6-รจU
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:42:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
/r/ooer
Zizhou ยท 26 points ยท Posted at 16:20:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It ended. That's pretty much it.
Fizzyfizfiz9 ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 16:26:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It expired uneventfully.
BeerBeforeLiquor ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 21:59:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's going on my tombstone. I'm even leaving it as "It" rather than "He"
damnatio_memoriae ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 19:53:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
The community became so obsessed with pressing as close to 0:00 as possible that people created a network of bots to coordinate pressing it at the last possible moment. People actually donated their alt accounts to help keep the button alive as long as possible. This was essentially meant to be a fail safe -- if no one else pressed the button, you could count on the bots to do it at the last second to keep it alive.
And this fail safe was important because people got different colored flair depending on where the timer was when they pressed the button, so people were actively trying to press it as close to 0:00 as possible anyway to get the rarest flair color, which meant as time went on, the risk that it wouldn't get pressed increased, especially during certain times of day when people were less likely to be active in the subreddit. (Ironically it died in the middle of the afternoon US time when the most users were active.)
The key here is that only accounts created before April 1 were allowed to press the button, which meant two things:
Eventually the timer would have to end, because there was by definition a finite maximum number of times it could be pressed. (Each account could only press it once.)
Accounts donated to the "cause" had to be created before April 1 or they would be useless.
So essentially what happened was people collectively put too much trust into the fail safe, and the guy who coded it didn't put any validation in to check the account creation dates.
A bunch of people donated accounts that weren't old enough to press the button and eventually the bots failed because they tried to use those accounts to press it anyway and they couldn't.
And then nothing happened.
atsu333 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 18:25:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
/r/buttonaftermath
edit: linked the wrong one
IDontKnowHowToPM ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:34:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No "the" at the beginning. Just /r/buttonaftermath. I was in a hurry when making it and forgot to make it make sense.
Edit: Looks like that one exists too. My bad.
Shindo989 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:09:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
John Locke stopped Mr Eko from pressing it and the hatch imploded when Desmond use the failsafe
SiameseVegan ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:18:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Countdown to the ban of FPH.
TheySayImZack ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:25:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm not sure what became of the button literally, but what is terrifying is that it's reported that the Russians have an automated system in place, which continues to this day. The goal is to remove the human element, to remove the emotional component, I suspect. It's called Dead Hand or "Perimeter". What scares me is that it's a "fail deadly" system, not a "fail safe".
Link 1
Link 2
bacon_catz_karma ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 03:28:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's good to see Alex jones on Reddit.
ehkodiak ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:08:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nothing happened. Nothing at all. Forget about it
A_favorite_rug ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:06:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Everything. The chosen ones that pressed at 60 are enlightened for their devotion to affect the countdown as little as possible, yet still embraced it.
ShutTheFuckUpBryan ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:37:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What's the button? People always mention it but I don't get it
dogfacedboy420 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:51:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Every time you push it a kitten gets punched in the face.
Asterix1806 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:52:58 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
An announcement and a podcast episode. About what you would expect.
H_Donna_Gust ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:04:33 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Desmond forgot to press it
Esroh_Najort ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:35:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It got a job at Staples.
Sky_Armada ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:38:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A few days after it ended the FPH subreddit was shut down and led to that whole Ellen Pao thing.
Sean1708 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:49:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It expired like 5 times and everyone got bored.
dgran73 ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 20:51:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Proud to be a non presser, along with Petrov.
Motorsagmannen ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:21:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
he truly is the ultimate hero of not pressing a button!
an inspirational character to be held in high esteem.
Fuck_shadow_bans ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 19:45:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There was also a Russian Naval Commander (Captain?) who deliberately disobeyed a direct order to launch on the US during the Cuban Missile Crisis, because he was sure their intel was faulty. He was right, but it didn't save him from court martial and shit posts for the rest of his career.
[deleted] ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 21:54:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"Shit posts for the rest of his career". So he's a redditor now
Fuck_shadow_bans ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:01:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
ZING!
Asterix1806 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:54:35 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Worse: a moderator at /r/me_irl.
BuffaloX35 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:50:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Vasili Arkhipov
napi5 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:35:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Can I get a link to that?
Kebble ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:54:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
/r/thebutton/comments/317vi6//cpzerlt
ElPolloRacional ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:57:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Final press was a 60s. The final presser could have had any time (s)he wanted, and got 60.
10daedalus ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:48:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Minutemen unite
Kiro0613 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:21:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm a 59er, do I count?
Asterix1806 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:56:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't know. Can you check out this settlement that needs our help? Here, I'll mark it on your map.
MaxDG1013 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:28:58 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Better not need his help getting rid of ghouls. Those things are the worst.
drake02412 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:14:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Button?
Thatzionoverthere ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:04:01 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Out of the loop can someone tell me the reference?
MyPunsSuck ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:09:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It was Reddit's April Fools thing this year. Many explanations are readily available
johnny_gunn ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:51:33 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nobody gives a fuck what your most upvoted post is.
MyPunsSuck ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 08:55:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
More than two thousand people disagree. You lose; good day, sir!
The_sad_zebra ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 19:18:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
One of my greatest regrets is pushing that button.
Kiro0613 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:21:28 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fear not my Purple brother; You made it to 58s, 1 longer than I. We purples must stay together in this era of nonpressers.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 06:00:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I bet you gave a lame ass acceptance speech then too
DrHarby ยท 332 points ยท Posted at 16:07:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
he's like the reverse of the wing commander in Dr.Strangelove. Rather than going crazy in a sea of sane bureaucrats, he was sane in a sea of...well, bureaucrats.
PseudoArab ยท 41 points ยท Posted at 18:40:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He probably did a good job of maintaining his precious bodily fluids.
The740 ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 19:17:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Obviously he never drank a glass of water
joshmanzors ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:24:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Purity of Essence... Peace on Earth...
scaldedmuffin ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 16:30:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Love it
Yemeth261 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:06:05 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
General Ripper and his precious bodily fluids.
[deleted] ยท 19 points ยท Posted at 19:13:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, that was the good ol' USSR for ya
And then
irishiwasaleprechaun ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 17:40:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
US had a similar situation I read about in Robert Gates' memoirs, crazy how many times we came so close to nuclear war
da1hobo ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 21:06:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And kind of makes me feel good to know that every single time we've come within a panicked button press of the biggest global disaster in human history compassion and reason won out.
LepetitJeremy ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 21:22:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Or time travelers
ElCatatumbo ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:52:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Got a link? I'm very interested
irishiwasaleprechaun ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:48:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I can't find a link, but the account can be found on pages 114-115 of his book 'From the Shadows' very interesting stuff
xxkoloblicinxx ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 18:54:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Or like the prime minister of Russia (might have been Gorbachev?) Who when a satellite was being launched over Norway had his entire cabinet screaming that he must return fire! As they believed the satellite was an ICBM. As he was going to push the button he said "there must be some mistake." And refused to launch the counter attack. With seconds to decide. He said "it must be a mistake." And didn't start a nuclear war.
That's a fucking leader.
arbuthnot-lane ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 20:48:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You're a bit of. I've seen no mention of Yeltsin (one of the most volatile leaders in Europe the last few decades) personally being the voice of reason. They simply waited it out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_rocket_incident#Response
xxkoloblicinxx ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:05:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, "waiting it out" when you have been told its a nuclear missile with your name on it. Is a pretty big wait.
aDAMNPATRIOT ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:06:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Why would anyone launch a 1 missile first strike anyway
xxkoloblicinxx ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:14:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Because one missile can break up into several small nuclear bombs and wipe a city off a map. (Moscow.) With the head of the snake gone theoretically the rest will die. So to the leader of the u.s.s.r. a missile headed for his house could just be the first volley to see how the Soviets react. If they have any countermeasures. Then if a strike is successful, then the rest would launch. Without any counter attack because the Soviet hierarchy would be in shambles.
aDAMNPATRIOT ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:51:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It'd be a very flawed first strike
xxkoloblicinxx ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:23:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And that's exactly why it could work. They have no idea what the u.s. could be planning.
Now, they made the right call. But it could have easily been a very wrong one.
SmokeyUnicycle ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:24:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No but it wouldn't work as a first strike.... there's no way that could eliminate the nuclear triad.
xxkoloblicinxx ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:33:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Eh, it was a crazy time in history.
It's also worth noting that if all evidence points towards a strike like that(a bad one) then what information are you missing? Are there MORE attacks you don't know about? Has your nuclear arsenal been compromised?
Even if it would be a terrible choice on the u.s. in a matter of life and death that drastic it can easily cause all kinds of paranoia and panic. It's a credit that they remained calm and assumed correctly that the u.s. wasnt attacking and there must be some other explanation.
arbuthnot-lane ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:37:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
1995 was a "crazy time in history"?
xxkoloblicinxx ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:40:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Then I think I may have bastardized two historical events. It was not the Norwegian satellite event. It was one during the cold war. If I'm recalling Correctly it was the event which resulted in the direct line between the white house and the Kremlin.
Edit: fuck it. American history about the cold war is fucked... I'm out!
arbuthnot-lane ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:50:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Moscow-Washington Hotline was a consequence of the Cuba crisis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow%E2%80%93Washington_hotline
I think you are conflating issues again. You might actually be thinking about the 1983 events, though no president was personally involved.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alarm_incident
runetrantor ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:16:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, I recall reading a Cracked article of the times we were THIS close to nuclear doom, and how Russia, several times, managed to stay calm and not do something everyone could regret until there was seriously no time left. (Some even theorize that Gorbachev, or whoever was the PM you mention, was actually even considering to not even retaliate, as their nation was already dead, was it really a good idea to bring everyone else down just because?)
It really is incredible, specially since a lot of media depicts the USSR as some nutjobs that were just waiting for USA to sneeze to have an excuse to start armageddon.
wasmic ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:54:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, that's crazy. There's a reason that it's called the MAD Doctrine. Nobody would want a nuclear war for any reason at all.
gosling11 ยท 38 points ยท Posted at 16:21:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Are you intentionally making us suffer with that mobile link? OP pls
Pitticus ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 17:18:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
All he needs to do is delete 2 characters, to save us all from suffering, and to no longer have a place in hell
alignedletters ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 19:04:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Stanislav!
Baby don't hurt me
don't hurt me
no more
iwashighmakingthis ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 17:58:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
in an alternate universe, soviets fired missiles to retaliate the supposed incoming US attack and we'd be collecting bottle caps
Nezell ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 18:28:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So not the Aston Villa midfielder??
_dive_ ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:23:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Did anyone ever think of doing a writing prompt where, in an alternate universe, he actually pressed the button?
question_sunshine ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:23:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
While they're both based on totally different nuclear events, I submit to you:
The Fallout video game series.
The Silo Series - available through kindle.
_dive_ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:39:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I appreciate the recommendation!
The angle I was going for was if this specific event, in 1983, had happened differently - not just nuclear fallout in general. My reasoning for this event is morbid curiosity. When I think about typical events depicting nuclear fallout occurring, I don't imagine it in a time I was alive (e.g. Cuban missile crisis). I was alive in 1983, which is why this is piquing my interest.
Copper_Tango ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:33:45 on February 10, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Greetings from the future. Check out 1983: Doomsday, it's an online alternate history project exploring this scenario.
theultimateone ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:43:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This guy is actually mentioned in MGSV during one of the dialogues between Soviet soldiers. One praises him for stopping nuclear war and the other condemns him for not following orders.
SpehlingAirer ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 13:52:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is what I came to mention. Anytime I mention that dude nobody knows who the hell I'm talking about or that the event even happened, but if it wasn't for him it really is very possible there could have been a nuclear war.
Matt2142 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:01:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Semi-Related XKCD, Petrov is the Bayesian.
username_lookup_fail ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:14:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Help us celebrate Stanislav Petrov day. A very under-appreciated and unrecognized holiday. September 26. There are at least three of us now.
PuyallupCoug ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 16:08:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Came here to write this. Nice work.
EWSTW ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:33:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I came here to mention this guy. Thanks for saving me the time of writing it up.
doMinationp ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:26:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The only winning move is not to play
Hans_Delbruk ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:08:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Stunning
SquirrelODeath ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:03:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is the man that immediately sprang to mind upon reading the thread. He single handedly saved much of the world from a much bleaker existence and probably saved hundreds of thousands of lives. To top it all off he was punished for this, the world owes this man a deep debt of gratitude.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:11:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He got 1,000 dollars for saving the world -_-
ronindavid ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:16:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And there's a movie about him. It's not as good as it should be, but it's better than nothing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0p9XLOpLroM
Treskal ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:24:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, I think I agree.
LAgirl3 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:26:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is the exact day I was born..month, day and year. Thanks for giving me a chance at life, Mr. Petrov.
rocketbunny77 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:35:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Stanislav the Manislav
kmsilent ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:36:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wow, based on the wikipedia article this guy was awarded the princely sum of $33,000 for his action.
I hope the article is wrong. The guy at least deserves to win the powerball.
Edit: Looks like this was or is his residence.
potato0 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:37:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Came to see if someone had posted this. I think this this is arguably the most correct answer to this question.
Ogroat ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:04:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I was thinking about him the other day, just out of the blue. It's likely that I would have never been born had he done his job. That billions of people would have perished while just going about their daily lives, unaware that a false alarm had set off a chain of events that would lead to the end of humanity. It's intensely frightening and awe-inspiring all at the same time.
0x8086 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:05:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Honorable mention goes to Valeri Bezpalov, Alexie Ananenko, and Boris Baranov. These men dived into radioactive water in order to open flood gates that would enable the water to drain and prevent the reactor at Chernobyl from exploding.
BrydenH ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:42:28 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ctrl + F "Nuclear"
Yep... Never fails in these threads
djslim21 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:14:29 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They actually mention this in Metal Gear Solid 5.
danwroy ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:49:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Don't forget about Lieutenant Commander Denzel Washington
Nihilistic-Fishstick ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:52:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's a 2014 part doc/part reenactment about this called the man who saved the world for anyone interested. Kevin Costner Matt Damon, and a few other well known actors are cast.
RockLeePower ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:55:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"In a later interview, Petrov stated that the famous red button has never worked, as military psychologists did not want to put the decision about a war into the hands of one single person."
Rogan29 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:56:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
From this thread, I have realized there are a bunch of Heros of the Soviet Union (or should be heros) that I know nothing about.
Wraith_GraveSpell ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:48:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fucking chump change.
TheZombieMolester ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:58:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He must of died in Watchmen
YaBoiiChaos ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:17:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I read that as "Stiliyan Petrov".
pragmaticbastard ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:38:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There was a similar case in the US, systems showed Soviet missiles incoming, commander requested they check again, same conclusion, commander requested a third check, false alarm.
There was also a time one of our bombers had an engine issue and crashed close to one of our own forward radar stations in Greenland or something. Later was found that the bomb on board had a safety defect that could have caused it to go off in a crash. Mainland was never told of the engine problem. All we would have seen was one of our forward radar stations go down and an explosion.
CylentShadow ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:43:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I guess I'm gonna be the bad guy here but he was just doing his job and saw the evidence of an equipment malfunction. He's probably the least heroic out of all the people here.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:47:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Doubtful. Petrov didn't have the authority to launch any nukes. If he had reported the warning, there was probably a long list of precautions they would take before a retaliation. The worst he might have done was cause an increased alert for a few hours while other stations could confirm if there were any missiles or bomber activity.
MrsSporkBender ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:08:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Theeeere you are Jay.
drake02412 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:14:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
And nobody remembers The Boss. Even as an AI she saved the world from nuclear war. And she's still remembered as a war criminal.
frosty147 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:39:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And this guy as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Arkhipov
Anosognosia ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:53:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wtf, guy is slacking of at work and you think he is a god damn hero?. /s
RedSerious ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:58:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I may not remember his name,but I do remember him as The man who saved the world. Big hero!
GoblinGrills ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:15:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Stanislav the Manislav.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:16:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also the esteemed James Blunt: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/news/how-james-blunt-saved-us-from-world-war-3-2134203.html
bob_marley98 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:26:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He did not press the Easy button...
Kalashnikov124 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:53:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Stanislav the manislav!
predalien33 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:31:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is awesome. Reading his wiki is pretty fascinating. Is there any documentary on him or the false start incident?
unusually_specific ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:40:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"it was a gut feeling"
Holy fuck. We were that close.
OmarBessa ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:47:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oh shit, didn't see this was already posted.
Atbt1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:14:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That could've been the biggest TIFU
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:54:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
SheepGoesBaaaa ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 13:02:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Doesn't he play for Aston Villa?
jheat008 ยท 2035 points ยท Posted at 14:37:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Harvey Hubbell, the inventor of the electric socket. We all use this invention every single day, it is such a critical part of all of our lives, yet I never knew who this man was until I googled him just now.
mishki1 ยท 904 points ยท Posted at 17:02:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
But who came up with the stupid idea that they should be different in different countries?
[deleted] ยท 812 points ยท Posted at 17:55:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
At a time where few electric devices were rarely portable, and international travel was made by boat, I don't think universal standards were seen as a priority.
mishki1 ยท 78 points ยท Posted at 18:30:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That seems like a reasonable explanation - I was thinking it was a plot by the international plug adapter mafia. Those things cost like 2 dollars to make and sell for 25 in airports.
PlazaOne ยท 53 points ยท Posted at 18:46:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And part of the reason they've stayed different is because of countries still having various mainstream electricity supplies. Here in the UK we've got three-phase alternating current 240v @ 50Hz, which could fry certain devices intended for a different supply. Likewise, if I take my stuff abroad, not being able to plug straight in might even save my life.
ConcernedInScythe ยท 23 points ยท Posted at 19:15:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not in our domestic plugs, they're two-phase with a mandatory ground pin.
grendel-khan ยท 18 points ยท Posted at 20:38:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The 50Hz/60Hz, 120V/240V thing is much worse than the differently-shaped-plugs thing. I've actually fried a PSU plugging in a desktop in another country. (Luckily, the rest of the machine was fine, but it did let out an orange flash, a loud pop and a puff of blue smoke. It was quite dramatic.)
Ailure ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:25:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's getting extremly common to have universal adapters that can take anything nowadays though, mostly cause it's cheaper to produce them that way for the whole world.
Which is why you occasionally see pictures of people doing ugly hacks with their electrical socket to fit in the "wrong" plug as it does work with a such adapter if you don't have the right plug by hooking it up with loose wires or anything metallic (but is also a very nice fire hazard so please don't actually do it).
drunk98 ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 19:25:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Lol, I'd be shocked if they cost more than 25c.
mishki1 ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 19:36:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
At the highest estimate, the adapter, transport, packaging etc. would not be more than a buck or two, possibly much less as you say. And yet they sell for 10 or 15 minimum, often much more, because there are no other options. It is weird how semi-arbitrary decisions about plug formats over time have created this economic niche. Like if there was an international treaty to standardize plugs, these guys would lobby against it saying that this would put whole towns of people out of work somewhere when the adapter factories close.
dunaja ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:57:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's no way they cost 2 dollars to make.
gimjun ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 19:57:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
voltage standards aside, i think USB is showing promise as a universal plug standard. nowadays most hotels and planes have charging ports for small devices. maybe in future it could grow output to power larger devices?
chem_dog ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:37:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Man I could never trust a public USB port. And I'm not even that paranoid, no tinfoil hat but I do keep a sticky note over my laptop webcam.
mathematical ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 22:09:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You could always just one of the data cables. Basic USB is Power+- and data +-. You could make a power-only usb and you'd never have to worry about someone stealing data via the cable.
gimjun ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:48:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
haha, i never thought about it! holy shit, you've made me paranoid now :/ where's that damn tinfoil
dickseverywhere444 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:33:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Shit even my vape uses the same USB charger as my phone.
grendel-khan ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:43:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
You do know that all of your USB plugs and devices are now obsolete, right?
(Still, I like the idea of wall outlets supplying DC power via USB, so most devices no longer need wall warts. You can do this now if you want, though it seems to just be the older USB Type A standard.)
cnnrduncan ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 21:31:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Eh, none of my devices have grown a new Type C port recently, so I guess I'll keep using micro and mini for another couple of years!
grendel-khan ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:48:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm mostly kidding--I'm just a tad bitter because I have one of those fancy new phones and my wall chargers, laptop chargers, and spare battery are all suddenly much less useful, plus the replacement cables are way more expensive.
ds580 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 22:03:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
These systems were also developed independently (mostly) and it makes sense to have different plugs for 110 vs 220v. And while we're on standardizing things, it isn't easy to do (see USA and metric). https://xkcd.com/927/
LobbyDizzle ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:27:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Agreed. Look at other technologies that came after that, such as telephone, video, and internet line endings/sockets.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:05:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, same issue happens in development all the time. We don't need standards, nobody but us will ever use this
gapyearwellspent ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:40:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
what about being able to export?
TheUnfabulousKilljoy ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:05:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You'd think that everyone would use the most efficient design.
DiabloConQueso ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 20:19:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That would imply that people all agree on the definition of "efficient."
_I_Have_Opinions_ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:18:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Like that is a question, schuko masterrace
B3owulf101 ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:32:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Relevant: Standards
Megabobster ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 21:52:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Depends on your definition. UK plug is great because of how safe it is, and the power efficiency of 240V (I think that's how it works), and 50Hz is more Metric friendly. However, the plug is massive, which means it's not space efficient compared to, say, the US plug, which has significantly less safeties built in to it.
spaghettiputs ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 14:02:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Higher voltage less wasted current, so yes it's slightly more efficient, the 50hz isn't for metric friendliness, inductive reactance is proportional to frequency, by reducing the number of poles and thus efficiency of a generator/motor you reduce the line losses, the UK went for a unified grid sooner than the US hence the adoption of 50Hz, the US was not a unified grid at inception but 60Hz won the frequency war because of better motor winding performance and smaller long lines at the time of inception. Frequency regulation is also easier at 50Hz, metric had nothing to do with the decision to adopt 50/60Hz same as it didn't affect the decision to use 400Hz in maritime/aerospace
Megabobster ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:29:26 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ah, thanks for the response :D
spaghettiputs ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:04:32 on January 18, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Glad you read it.
MJWood ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:54:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And you can't just yank the cable to pull the plug out of the wall.
anormalgeek ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:44:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't buy that. We already knew the pain of poor standardization amongst countries due to rail gauge issues. It should have been very obvious that more standardized sockets would be good.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:05:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Likewise, there are different power standards/frequencies/voltages worldwide. With the same connector you are very likely to encounter issues by plugging an american device into a european socket. The need for a different socket/transformer block prevents people from destroying their electronics while travelling abroad.
CranialFlatulence ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:26:01 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This sounds more fun. We should write a movie.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:48:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A movie about the establishment of universal industrial standards?
Sexy.
Secret_Jedi ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:18:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well they clearly weren't thinking ahead!
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:00:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In a redundant time of redundancies
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:19:56 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Where's the redundancy?
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:35:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You only need few or rarely
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:40:29 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not when a British company is worried about getting their product into homes across the UK, and don't want to bother with working with a company in the US.
As a British company, what incentive do I have to do that? Is the comfort of American toursists my primary concern?
sandrocket ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:26:29 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So what about the lightbulb and it's socket?
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:04:06 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There is a multiplicity of standards for lightbulbs. Go buy a lamp from Ikea and experience the frustration of replacing the bulb.
sandrocket ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:56:56 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The standard edison standard socket e27 is being used worldwide for a whole century, that's what I meant. I know there are other sockets as well, but they are meant for a different technologies, e.g. low-voltage-Halogen, for smaller lights e14, or special uses. The "e" (edison) + number is the system of the worldwide standard.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:38:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And to this day, the bayonet fitting is still the most common in the UK.
And E27 is the most common in Europe, while E26 is most common in North America.
sandrocket ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:51:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You are trying to portray it as more complicated then it is. We were talking about norms. Buying lightbulbs at Ikea nor are there many different standards like with the electrical sockets. The e27 is used in: The following countries use E27 bulbs:
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:35:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
But they're not exclusively used. And they're not even the majority of lightbulbs used in all of those countries.
Apple's thunderbolt is probably used in all of those countries too. That doesn't make it a universal standard.
sandrocket ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:03:09 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I know what you mean but the comparison doesn't really work. Besides the british commonwealth, most of the world uses the edison standard, it's not like that with electrical sockets. And even in the commonwealth it will gain ground with major companies like Ikea which mainly offer edison type bulbs..
evilcheerio ยท 17 points ยท Posted at 18:16:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It stemmed from the stupid idea to use different voltages and frequencies in different countries. Different plug shapes prevents people from plugging in things that aren't rated for the frequencies and voltages.
[deleted] ยท 18 points ยท Posted at 18:51:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It wasn't a stupid idea. Electrical grids were developed concurrently, there were no standards at the time.
tomdarch ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:33:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, but we've been f-ing around with this stuff for decades. It would have been ideal to establish a global standard in the early 20th century, and it sucks that "the west" didn't standardize voltage/frequency/plugs after WWII. Shit, Japan even has part of the country running at 50hz and part at 60hz.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:49:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The United States is standardized now, but the war between AC and DC persisted quite awhile. It's just too expensive to standardize anything since probably the '30s.
BraveSirRobin ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:25:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They weren't even the same within countries for the first few iterations, many different designs were in use. Some countries switched at some point and had multiple systems in official use for long periods.
3jt ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:30:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Electrical engineer here! It wouldn't be all that hard to standardize everywhere in the world to two kinds of socket, one for 220VAC/50Hz and one for 110VAC/60Hz. Better yet, we could skip that and switch straight to DC since it's more efficient, and now we can do things with power electronics we could never do before. Will it ever happen? Not in your lifetime!
tomdarch ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 04:36:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As an architect and electronics buff, I'd love to see homes equipped with one big (hopefully more efficient) AC to DC converter, and then run low voltage DC (3v, 5v, 9v, 12v x 2 for available 24v) wiring and special sockets throughout buildings. Imagine if we could get rid of all those phone charger transformers, wall warts, and even the power supply in your computer whirring away and just pull that power from the wall... sigh...
3jt ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:44:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Getting rid of wall warts would be awesome, but low voltage wiring through your house isn't likely to ever happen for reasons of voltage drop... you're far better off having a converter in each outlet. Outlets with USB built in are increasingly popular. USB-C provides quite a lot of power and you don't have to flip it over three times. Anything more than that ought to be in a socket.
2A_is_the_best_A ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:23:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's actually a good thing in some cases. The sockets are different to indicate that the electricity is different, and plugging in your US device into EU electricity could fry it.
Billy_Sastard ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 12:10:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's the same with other plug in devices, it's ridiculous how many different mini USB's there is, and SD cards, why can't these companies just get together and create universal devices, because monies. :(
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:10:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"What's that? They're using vertical slots?..... let's make them diagonal."
raytaylor ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:15:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There are benefits to diagonal - they stay plugged in to the wall better. Which is a safety benefit before insulated pins came about in the 90's
Max_Trollbot_ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:29:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
His name was Larry Jackass.
ds580 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:00:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
https://xkcd.com/927/
DrthundercockDO ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:33:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Electrician here:
Let me fill you in.
Back when Edison was putzing around fucking over tesla, electricity was generated in all kinds of voltages. DC current was generated anywhere between 75 and 200 volts. Tesla invented AC electricity and because of the nature of AC current you can generate it, step it down, step it up or otherwise transform it.
Westinghouse and tesla decided that general purpose power should be 208/120vac. 120volts could very easily handle All the needs of residential buildings as well as most commercial applications.
So while Westinghouse was busy creating the infrastructure in America, the powers that be in Europe decided that 208 should be the standard for general purpose outlets. Now I don't know exactly who so this is a slightly incomplete answer however, Europe has a history of doing things their own way. America invents the auto industry with the driver on the left, they put the driver on the right. We drive on the right hand side, they drive on the left. We use 1 phase of a 2 phase system at 120, they use 2 phases @ 208. Years
edit
Ok so some research tells that in Germany, the BEW company found it could save money by switching to a 220v system for generation and replacing all of its customers lamps with newer metal fillMent bulbs. So that's why the European 220v 50hz is standard.
raytaylor ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:19:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Various other benefits to 220v
- Wires can be thinner when carrying the same number of watts
- Less energy lost in transportation between generation and load
- An expensive roadside transformer can serve more houses due to the increased reach
DrthundercockDO ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 10:42:52 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
See here's the problem though,
Lower voltage is generally safer to work on as well as be used. It's true that amperage is what kills but because we generate electricity at 50-60hz, and because the heart operates in that range; 220v is much more dangerous than 120 in terms of electrical shock. Since voltage is electromotive force, a 220v shock delivers more amperage, while a 120v shock will deliver less amps in a shock because of the natural resistance of human skin.
120 is also less likely to "grab you" in the event that you do get a shock.
raytaylor ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 11:13:01 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oh yes of course I accept the safety difference. You are right there. I still prefer the 240v system we have in NZ. There are a number of reasons why...
1) If you count the annual number of 240v electric shock events causing injury or fatality, and repeat those same events in a 110v environment, the reduction of events causing injury or fatality would not be enough to outweigh the number of life-days lost due to extra pollution created by the reduction in transport efficiency.
2) Most events causing injury or death involve higher voltage lines such as those carried on powerpoles or transformer equipment. These involve things like car crashes, drunks on train tracks or vandalism. Not general household events.
3) Every new house or electrical installation has an RCD - even on indoor wiring. This reduces the chance of an event involving 240v or 110v causing injury or a fatality. As more and more premesis are rewired, the proliferation of RCDs reduces this risk further.
So although 110v is clearly safer than 240v, there are now ways to offset the risk and damage, which brings us back to the matter of economics. RCDs remove most of the risk created by the increase in voltage to 240v from 110v and 240v is more efficient.
DrthundercockDO ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:56:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Interesting.
u38cg ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:55:06 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They were originally different depending on which company supplied you.
creamersrealm ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:30:27 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The real stupid idea here is 220/50HZ vs 220/60HZ vs 120/50HZ vs 120/60HZ (US).
The sockets themselves isn't the problem but the backend infrastructure as that is what the country was built on.
LtWorf_ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:36:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It bothers me that in Italy many products (especially computers) are sold with german plugs, and then we need to go and buy lots of adapters.
LogPad ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:29:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Where are you located and where are you buying your computers from....?
LtWorf_ ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:39:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Italy (I said that before) and I get my computers from Italy. I most certainly don't drive 2000km to Germany to buy one.
cqm ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:21:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
good thing everything I need charges with USB now, non-issue.
and chicks just need their hard dryer
[deleted] ยท 20 points ยท Posted at 20:27:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
EverythingIsByDesign ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 22:21:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Especially since the UK socket is far superior.
FredWestLife ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 23:02:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
And here is why it's superior: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEfP1OKKz_Q
Wiring a plug is simple: bLue to the Left, bRown to the Right.
EverythingIsByDesign ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 08:20:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think the fact that it's no longer part of our Education system should a national outrage.
jangxx ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:21:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Okay, the plugs are cool, but not having a central fusebox seems pretty dangerous to me, especially in a bathroom or a kitchen or something.
FredWestLife ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:40:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's why each plug has a fuse. Instead of relying on the whole circuit, you rely on the local loop between the appliance and the plug. It's only recently that it's enforced that there are RCBs on the entire circuit. Also it's illegal in the UK (against code) to have sockets in the bathroom at all. And those same BSI standards also do say you have to have a seperate circuit for high current kitchen appliances.
jangxx ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:45:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No plugs in the bathroom? Where do you charge your razor/electric toothbrush or connect your hairdryer? So instead of being dangerous it's wildly inconvenient. That still makes it a bad system in my book.
FredWestLife ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:49:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's why we're all so hairy.
rotherss ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:09:17 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We have special sockets just for razors etc. which are lower voltage.
First-Of-His-Name ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:30:58 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Low-voltage specialist sockets
gsfgf ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:23:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's my understanding that because all the plugs have fuses, they're all as safe as a GFCI plug in the US.
bbqroast ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:38:06 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm pretty sure all modern houses do.
Meanwhile elsewhere ungrounded sockets (and even fake ground sockets) are considered ok somehow.
bbqroast ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:38:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm pretty sure all modern houses do.
Meanwhile elsewhere ungrounded sockets (and even fake ground sockets) are considered ok somehow.
gsfgf ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:18:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Until you step on one
Man-Among-Gods ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 18:54:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
People in the past used lightbulb sockets to get electricity. IIRC.
rotherss ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:48:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In the film 'Get Carter' (1971 version) you see Carter do this, at the time it was probably showing how shitty the house he was staying in was, but now it just looks bizarre.
Lele_ ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:44:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes, every device had a thingy that was screwed into a lightbulb socket. They sold adapters to plug multiple appliances into the same socket in rickety, dangerous trees hanging from the ceiling. Electric cable was uninsulated. It was a fucking deathtrap. Look for Hidden Killers of the Victorian Home on Youtube, you'll be terrified at how cavalier they were with electricity back then.
Sqwirl ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:11:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I was thinking along the same lines, but about another device we use every day (and don't even think about how many devices we use which contain them).
Peter L. Jensen invented the world's first speaker.
RemoteViewing ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 10:20:00 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thanks harvey! Reading this on my phone on the charger.
Smitty_666 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:09:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I work for a contractor and anytime we go to Home Depot to buy electrical outlets/covers, the brand is Hubbell. Didn't know if you knew this but thought it might be cool to know.
No_Zuul_Only_Teejay ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:37:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Was it his idea to place them in such an awkward position? Why must we bend over to plug things in? And why do we have to hide them? What are they genitals?!
Sirromnad ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:57:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You wouldn't happen to know if he has anything to do with the company Hubbell? I work in an electrical supply house and we have a ton of Hubbell devices. Or perhaps they just took his name.
jheat008 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 13:14:28 on January 18, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I learned from other commenters that, yes, they derive their name from him. I would have never known if not for that.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:30:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Among those who provision such products. His name is almost generic.
Hubbell Inc
dangerouspangolin ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:53:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Come on, if he hadn't done it somebody else would soon. This is like some Apple level of "invention" like slide to open...I bet you like Steve Jobs...:)
Swing_Wildly ยท 1876 points ยท Posted at 15:08:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Whoever the FUCK invented the modern toilet. When ever time travel hypothetical come up I am always like, "Sure, can I bring a toilet?"
PromoPimp ยท 935 points ยท Posted at 16:42:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Underrated answer since most people believe Thomas Crapper invented the flush toilet when, in reality, it was invented 250 years before he was born by John Harington. So even people who THINK they know typically do not.
heidevolk ยท 1194 points ยท Posted at 18:02:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Except we all sit on it backwards. That shelf allows a place to set your chocolate milk and play with your toys.
TheOneTrueGod69 ยท 499 points ยท Posted at 19:55:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
TIL you're supposed to sit reverse cowgirl style when you take a steaming harrington.
GoTaW ยท 32 points ยท Posted at 00:30:15 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wouldn't that be regular cowgirl? I mean, you'd be sitting in the toilet's lap, facing toward it.
Reverse cowgirl is how most of us do it now.
TheOneTrueGod69 ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 00:49:17 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
that's cowgirl, face to face is reverse, have you ever seen someone ride a horse face to face? or 2 horses fuck face to face?
edit: I didn't do research, you guys are probably right about what is actually cowgirl or reverse cowgirl.
GoTaW ยท 19 points ยท Posted at 00:51:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Your logic is sound, but some quick Googling (and Wikipedia) suggests that regular cowgirl is the face-to-face one. Seems that you're right and the rest of the world is wrong.
TheOneTrueGod69 ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 02:08:33 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's been known to happen before.
ggerf ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 23:44:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I've heard its known as a Fonzy
TheOneTrueGod69 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:47:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
ayyyyyyyyy!
dude0416 ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 22:21:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
R/nocontext
TheOneTrueGod69 ยท 23 points ยท Posted at 22:25:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
south park, season 16 episode 1
Acemcbean ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 23:07:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If you are not going to get a reference at least have the common courtesy to properly link to a subreddit
Nothing_Doing ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 00:03:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
/r/NoContext
Acemcbean ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:07:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I prefer lowercase, but that works too
HeronSun ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:30:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I would upvote you but you're sitting at an appropriate 69 points.
edrudathec ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:06:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You can do it now.
bacloldrum ยท 44 points ยท Posted at 19:17:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
To set your comic book!* EDIT: Apparently some people are confused about this or think I'm being overly specific in saying comic book. For the confused
thiscontent ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 22:13:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
one reads a book, comic or otherwise.
Davis660 ยท 15 points ยท Posted at 19:46:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
But that would mean you'd have to take your pants all the way off to sit on the toilet...
sgs500 ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 21:26:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's what the laundry hole is for.
Jaywebbs90 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:33:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oh... that's what that's for...
pm_meg_pupper ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:10:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Or just, yknow, do a lot of yoga.
18aidanme ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 20:12:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fucking pleb, it's for comic books.
DiscordsTerror ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 20:20:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I prefer to have cereal, I've always wanted to enjoy a bowl of puffins with whole milk.
tallNDawkward ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:48:17 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
it's more of an almond milk cereal but live your dream
Painting_Agency ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:14:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ah, the Slater Dump.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Slater+Dump
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:19:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
its where you place your book when youre taking a sir harrington
Casswigirl11 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:05:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Everyone on Reddit must be constipated or something. Do you really all spend enough time on the toilet to do these sort of things?
astroskag ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 21:08:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They intentionally spend that much time on the toilet in order to do these sort of things.
I don't really get it, either, other than maybe if you grew up with a lot of siblings or something, locking yourself in the bathroom was the only way to get some peace. But I was an only child.
da1hobo ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 21:25:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If you have a job that you hate or work with people you will hate you will understand the peace of the long bathroom break.
JesusChristSuperFart ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:37:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I do it and I'm married with one kid. Alone time is important
Caelinus ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 21:43:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
South Park.
MeatAndBourbon ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:12:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Office job, are two 45 minute bathroom breaks a day too much to ask for?
Funkajunk ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:37:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just tell them you have colon cancer
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:51:12 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You obviously don't get the reference
mi_esposa_me_espia ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:03:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Seriously. It's all formal business for me in there, it even has a name.
"Hi there Gus. Just popping in for a little deposit, be in and out in 2 minutes, see you around"
gonesnake ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:58:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There was a wonderful film about this
Palindromer101 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:28:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just got the quick mental image of a grown man playing with toys sitting backwards on a toilet while taking a shit. It was hilarious.
prozacgod ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:45:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hah, only all those plebs who haven't discovered the best place to take a nap at work...
muristheword ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:50:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
'tis the creator of the reverse kanga
IrrelevantLeprechaun ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:51:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Isn't this a Butters quote?
heidevolk ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 00:12:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Finally, someone gets it.
SpezwubsSpunk ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:49:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
damn it Butters
MrMountainFace ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:53:42 on January 20, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your comic book too
Dedod_2 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:35:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your comment made me start wheezing in study hall. Here take an up vote!
BubbaFunk ยท 157 points ยท Posted at 17:37:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Crapper put the "ess" bend in the pipes though right? Thats the reason why your toilet doesn't (usually) smell like shit all the time.
_pH_ ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 20:42:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's just an 'S' bend because it's shaped like an 'S'
BubbaFunk ยท 15 points ยท Posted at 20:57:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Been doing a lot of crossword puzzles lately.
VorpalMonkey ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 21:37:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's worse than that, the fumes from the sewers could kill people, so that S-bend was pretty damn important. While he may not have invented the flushable toilet he was instrumental in getting them into as many places as they are today.
macaronisalad ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 21:55:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
TIL toilets double as safety bongs
Ctharo ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 02:12:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wait. So in the movie "The Kingsman" or whatever it is called, in that scene where they could have put a tube in the toilet to keep breathing when the room filled with water, that wouldn't have worked??
prickity ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 02:51:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It would've, forgot how to embed but google image searching s-bend toilet diagram gives this useful example: https://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.ultimate-handyman.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/toilet-cut-out-diagram.jpg&imgrefurl=http://terrylove.com/forums/index.php?threads/toilet-wont-stay-unclogged.62601/&h=656&w=600&tbnid=pe_h-DTPeeoIMM:&docid=1LCE8ArjLnl12M&hl=en-gb&ei=Rq-ZVujsFoPSU5XMh6gH&tbm=isch&client=safari&ved=0ahUKEwjop-7VqK3KAhUD6RQKHRXmAXUQMwgcKAAwAA
Ctharo ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 14:14:29 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yea, but what about the fumes mentioned in the comment I commented on?
prickity ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:35:37 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah that'd kill you slowly, it's just the smell of shit and is unhygienic to breathe, but it wouldn't kill you instantly.
echo_birch ยท 20 points ยท Posted at 20:33:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
His name was Crapper??
AbigailLilac ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 20:48:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
That's how we got the word "crap".
Edit: I'm probably wrong, listen to the guy who replied.
VorpalMonkey ยท 29 points ยท Posted at 21:38:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Actually that's a common miscomprehension. The word crap likely comes from the french crappe meaning waste or chaffe. It's first recorded use to refer to bodily waste was in 1846 when Crapper was only 10 years old: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/crap
gsfgf ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:17:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So now the question is it a coincidence, or did Crapper become familiar with the term and then be inspired to go into toilet innovation?
YagamiLawliet ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:15:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Or he was bullied because of his last name.
rocketbunny77 ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 21:37:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No fucking way.
Ramza_Claus ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:00:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It seems like you're alarmed about this.
anormalgeek ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:45:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yep.
vizzmay ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 08:07:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm sure a time-traveler convinced his ancestors to take on that name.
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 03:18:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm surprised no plumbers have responding to this. I am not a plumber, but I've done some DIY drain work. That S curve in the toiled is a modified "P Trap", which apparently WAS invented by crapper. Every drain in your house has one: sinks showers and bathtubs included. A P Trap simply holds a little bit of water to keep sewer gas from coming all the way up the pipe and into your home. It also catches the occasional wedding ring.
The water in the trap can evaporate if you don't use the sink/shower/etc often, so if you start to smell poo-gas just pour a little water down the drain.
ADSRelease ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 21:34:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Isn't it the "S-bend" because it bends like an S?
chetlin ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:29:00 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ess is just the spelled-out name of S. It's kind of weird but all the letters have "official" spelled-out names.
ADSRelease ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:48:01 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
oh i see. interesting
miss_dit ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:50:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
there's also a wye connection, it's two pipes coming into one and shaped like a 'y'. plumbers are literal.
Drudicta ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:31:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Are my pipes broken? Mine ALWAYS smells like shit.
Ninonskio ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 23:46:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You gotta flush the toilet first bro.
RettyD4 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:33:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I believe a queen requested a better smelling toilet and he came with this result. I think of it more as a 'U', though.
Pyro_Simran ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:30:38 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's called a water trap and all pipes leading to waste water / sewage mains have them to prevent odour.
InfanticideAquifer ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 10:41:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
TIL that the reason for the bend is not to stop snakes from crawling up from the sewer like my parents told me twenty some odd years ago.
TARDIS_RAVEMASTER ยท 30 points ยท Posted at 18:04:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He's Kit Harington(of Game of Thrones fame)'s ancestor too!
Vandilbg ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 21:25:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Kit's my cousin like 23 times removed. His (Sir John's) father John Harington MP of Kelston was Henry's privy lord and supposedly married one of Henry VIII's bastard daughters.
Tortillaish ยท 20 points ยท Posted at 18:15:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thomas Crapper... really?
PromoPimp ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 19:03:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Really.
Morphitrix ยท 15 points ยท Posted at 19:35:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
TIL Thomas Crapper invented the Ballcock.
...giggle
Tortillaish ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:19:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wow... didn't invent the flush toilet, but he did invent the ballcock...
vanceco ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 20:13:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Why do you think it's called a crapper?
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:10:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Really.
anonymous_0614 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:55:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Where do you think we get the term "crapper" for toilet?
[deleted] ยท 26 points ยท Posted at 17:06:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Learned all about John Harrington on South Park. He should also be credited for the "laundry hole" we misuse.
onedoor ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 18:08:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
ITT: Poop chute and laundry chute.
determinedforce ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:49:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Laundry hole aka glory hole. Where things go to get washed.
wildtaco ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:04:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The flat surface for your ink and quill really was a stroke of genius.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:07:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Started bringing comic books and chocolate milk to the bathroom with me on a regular basis.
jayesanctus ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 17:23:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ancient Minoans had flush toilets.
AOEUD ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:25:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As did some ancient south Asian civilization or another.
ost99 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:24:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Around 3500 years ago...
fuggahmo_mofuhgga ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 19:05:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I had no idea Thomas Crapper was a real person until I googled him. That's gotta be a kind of bittersweet legacy being that your last name becomes a synonym for "shit".
PikaSamus ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:40:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
is this why people call it "the john"?
sukikano ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:15:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Kit Harrington is actually related to John Harrington!
CatanOverlord ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:28:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You've just described all of reddit
Swing_Wildly ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:59:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A hero to modern man.
xxkoloblicinxx ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:01:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I know this because of southpark...
Thorolf_Kveldulfsson ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:09:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So we should be saying "haring" instead of "crap"? Like, "You did a harring job there" or "This place smells like haring"?
F_urOpinion ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:25:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I literally spit out of laughter right now, I am fucking dying. No way a dude named Thomas Crapper had an important role in anything to do with toilets, there's no way!
vanceco ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:15:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's WHY it's called a crapper.
Sitodaboss ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:35:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
For when you need to take a Sir Harington
Sexymcsexalot ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:36:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Agreed, although Crapper popularized it and invented the ballcock valve which is an essential mechanism in the way toilets operate today.
Source: did some research after sitting on an original Crapper toilet.
omahaspeedster ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:57:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Harington's business partner was a gentleman by the name of Hugh Upperdecker. He insisted the flush toilet be named after himself and the company failed miserably, later the old drawing were found by Mr Crapper who re-launched the flush toilet with a new name and .....profit.
Spork_Warrior ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:11:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So you're saying they don't know crap?
PRMan99 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:25:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And yet nobody used it for 250 years. So apparently his model wasn't that great.
Thomas Crapper's model took over the world in short time.
aloz_831 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:01:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Kit Harrington (Jon Snow) his descendant
avenlanzer ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:23:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yet the method for water staying in the bowl and draining out completely once it reached a certain level was Pothagyrus. He used it at parties to control gluttons of wine. Those that overfilled their specially made wine glass would get drenched in it.
Max_Trollbot_ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:32:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Crapper is credited with inventing the ballcock, if I recall correctly.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:39:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Kit Harrington (Jon Snow from game of thrones) is a direct descendant of John Harrington.
ecltnhny2000 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:54:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Isnt that kit harringtons great great grandpa or something?
Rab_Legend ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:20:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Flush toilet was technically invented by the Romans
Darth-Pimpin ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:01:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
OOOOHHHHHHHHH THATS WHY A TOILET IS CALLED A JOHN GOTCHA BITCH.
Tacomeat10 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:18:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They don't know shit
TheImminentFate ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:09:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And yes, Jon Snow is one of his descendants
pm_me_yur_pantiez ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:59:02 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What's funny is I thought the name was John Crapper
SDF05 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:29:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also Kit Harington, the beloved Jon Snow in Game of Thrones series, is actually a descendent of John Harington. TIL
howsmyform ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:55:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Kit Harrington told me that one!
stannisdamannis ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:10:17 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fun fact: Kit Harrington, the actor who plays Jon Snow in Game of Thrones, is one of his descendants.
rose788 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:14:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Who is an ancestor of Kit Harrington aka Jon Snow
jongargia ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:37:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Especially since Crapper's contribution is even more fun to talk about. He invented the ballcock. Gotta love Crapper's ballcock.
TheMadTemplar ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:30:05 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Except the first flushing toilet was invented in Crete sometime around 2000 BCE if I remember correctly, according to murals and archeological evidence discovered in ruins there. They also had working plumbing, sewage and water disposal.
danmilligan ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:28:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And something like it invented in ancient times by a civilization in India
BrotherM ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 08:15:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
South Park taught us all this.
Killa-Byte ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 08:48:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
LOL his name is crapper!
CookedPorkchop90 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:44:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
To be fair, Thomas Crapper did invent a valve which made the toilets not spontaneously explode, so his contributions were not completely trivial.
Walksonthree ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:45:46 on January 25, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
John Harington is Kit Harington (Jon Snow's) ancestor!
Amlethoe ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 08:39:45 on February 25, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I refuse to believe that the toilet wasn't invented by a chap called Crapper.
jm51 ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 17:22:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not the inventor but the guy who made the modern toilet popular is Thomas Crapper.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Crapper
RoboNinjaPirate ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 17:56:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'd hate to go into the future, I don't even know how to use the 3 shells.
Swing_Wildly ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:12:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
and why did i google three shells?
RoboNinjaPirate ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 18:17:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Congratulations, you are one of the lucky 10,000!
Arcane-Legion ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:05:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You do know the modern toilet puts you in an unnatural pooping position? It's not the best thing invented
Swing_Wildly ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:08:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes sir. I'm well aware of the natural colon straightening squat method, however being a westerner makes me feel at home sitting on the John.
1Argenteus ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:15:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You think that's good? Try an Australian toilet.
Ninj4s ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:54:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Reporting back from my america-adventures, it seems it hasn't come there yet. Germany too. I'll bring a proper one my next trip to either destination.
popozuda247 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:33:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Whatever. Have you ever tried to clean around all those fucking contours? Surely there's a way to streamline the back/bottom of a fucking toilet.
Casswigirl11 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:03:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I could time travel relatively comfortably if I could bring my whole bathroom. The top of my list would be clean running water, toothbrush and paste, then toilet, then shower, soap, and shampoo.
RajuTM ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:40:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Unpopular reply: Modern toilets are actually a burden to our anus and it causes lots of problem. The healthiest way of taking a dump is by squatting.
tesstickles2206 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 12:17:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Plus using a toilet is essentially just shitting in our most precious resource...
We should all be using composting toilets
cC2Panda ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:23:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I've been in countries where squatting is the norm. I'll take my western toilets and miniscule chance of health issues over other options,
RajuTM ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 11:58:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
miniscule :D
mironmouse ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:32:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Are you Karl Pilkington?
Swing_Wildly ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:38:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No, but thank you for that wondrous compliment.
buckerooni ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:02:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Really, the toilet design is outdated. We need a new one. japan super-toilets
ForsakenForSale ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:56:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Honestly, I'd take unlimited supply of modern day toilet paper over an actual toilet any day.
Swing_Wildly ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:57:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
YOU sir/ms, are correct.
nemtudokegynevetsem ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:01:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Modern toilets are actally awful for your health. You should be shitting in a squat position, that's why colon cancer is alomst nonexistent in third world cuntries.
NinjaDude5186 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:23:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well there were forms of toilets dating back to Rome, maybe later.
Tigress74 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:28:05 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Bring the toilet AND toilet paper.
HonorableJudgeIto ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:32:02 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There is a fascinating toilet museum outside New Delhi that I highly recommend slant one who visits India to check out.
bebipbop ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:34:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I like this answer! Plumbing lead to the success of a lot of countries since they no longer had to deal with their own feces, thus avoiding things like disease.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:34:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Disagree. Bidet is where it's at. Clean your butthole with a spritz of fresh water, no need to generate massive pressure in the S bend with gallons of water to suck wads of TP down the drain.
StrongerThanAnAnt ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:32:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The modern toilet isn't underappreciated.
BusterTheChihuahua ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:14:06 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The amount of water the modern toilet uses is insane though. Composting toilets (which look like regular toilets, but don't use water) are the way to go at this point.
Primo_uomo ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:32:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It was invented by John Harington, ancestor of Kit Harington (Jon Snow, GoT). Looks like somebody in that family knew something, after all.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:59:22 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
and a close second: the person who invented toilet paper.
dogbert730 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:02:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You mean overrated? The toilet is terrible for human waste disposal. The more we research pooping, the more we realize how bad the modern toilet is to do it on (position wise). Now plumbing though...that's underrated.
benscookie ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:24:22 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jon Snow AKA Kit Harington's great great (not sure how many great) grandfather invented it.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:29:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fuck whoever invented the modern toilet. They're directly responsible for nearly all hemorrhoids and colon cancers.
We are not built for pooping while sitting. We're built for pooping while squatting. The Asians have it right. They also have a significantly lower presence of hemorrhoids and rectal cancers.
NeverBenCurious ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:54:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The design is fucked. It's not anatomically correct to shit from a chair
callmegecko ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:08:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You will be sued, spirit!
5171 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 14:34:56 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What about if you went to the future and saw even COOLER toilets???
Swing_Wildly ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:33:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Finally, someone on my wavelength.
Jticospwye54 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:43:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Japanese toilets are better
determinedforce ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:38:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Speaking of that, I need to leave a shit. Thanks.
JoSeSc ยท 6522 points ยท Posted at 13:27:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
The 3 guys i learned about in this reddit thread On May 6, 1986, ten days after Chernobyl, there was a risk of an even greater explosion that would spread radiation across half of Europe and kill millions. Three men volunteered to dive into what they knew were lethally radioactive waters to open a release valve to prevent this from happening.
[1]edit
my first reddit gold, thank you!
also fixed a typo
[1]
On May 6, 1986, ten days after Chernobyl, there was a risk of an even greater explosion that would spread radiation across half of Europe and kill millions. Three men volunteered to dive into what they knew were lethally radioactive waters to open a release valve to prevent this from happening.
SolemnPhate ยท 5052 points ยท Posted at 14:15:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also, their lights went out only a few minutes into their dive and they had to feel their way to the valve. Fucking terrifying.
[deleted] ยท 4479 points ยท Posted at 16:11:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Man, that's like movie heroism. It reminds me of that black scientist guy in the movie "The Core" where he sacrifices his life in the super-heated chamber to hit some switch. Dude was literally burning to death and pulled it off.
Except this is even more badass because it's real life and they were doing it blind.
strangetails33 ยท 2323 points ยท Posted at 16:47:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They need to make a movie of this holy shit.
ThomFoolery_ ยท 3022 points ยท Posted at 17:00:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That would make a pretty difficult to watch movie
CalmerWithKarma ยท 2018 points ยท Posted at 17:13:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah they'd need at least one light on, right?
thedaveness ยท 1600 points ยท Posted at 17:33:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
naw, ambient light glow from super nuke water = everything gets a faint
greenblue tone.computeraddict ยท 1017 points ยท Posted at 17:54:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Blue, actually.
this__fuckin__guy ยท 608 points ยท Posted at 17:59:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Great now I want a radiation powered night-light thanks.
Exist50 ยท 178 points ยท Posted at 18:49:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Radium used to be used for a surprising amount of things.
surfnaked ยท 24 points ยท Posted at 19:48:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Watch faces. Clock faces. Pretty much anything you wanted to glow in the dark. Including kids toys. Then the cancers started showing up. That was the end of that.
cocaine_face ยท 18 points ยท Posted at 19:50:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Didn't it used to be applied directly to teeth for super shiny teeth?
surfnaked ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 19:59:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think so. It was considered to be absolutely safe. They hadn't figured out yet what killed Marie Curie was low level exposure. Then people started getting skin cancer under their wristwatches
STOP-SHITPOSTING ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 20:49:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't know about that but I remember Fiesta Ware! Glow in the dark dinnerware for the whole family.
ZombieHoratioAlger ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:45:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My parents have a full set! The orange ones in particular are painted with uranium.
Edit: It isn't very strong or dangerous, but it definitely freaks people out.
rocketbunny77 ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 21:34:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah. Read up about the Radium girls. Factory workers that painted clocks with radium.
Spoiler alert: lots of cancer.
slowest_hour ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 22:05:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Didn't the factories lie to their workers about the safety of radium after they knew it was dangerous?
Agent_Pinkerton ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 22:20:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It wasn't just the radium they lied about. They launched smear campaigns against the victims, claiming that they had STDs and stuff.
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 00:36:27 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yep, pretty standard protocol whenever a company does some dodgy shit.
Asterix1806 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:01:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nothing better than to combat dodgy shit with even more dodgy shit.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 01:55:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"Quick, think of something, the lying didn't work!" "What about...more lying?"
MS6Emew ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 23:02:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Panerai, which was used strictly by the Royal Italian Navy; issued watches for divers using radium in their "Radiomir" watches with a zinc sulfide mixed in to make the watch face glow so it was legible underwater. Though he didn't know it had radiation properties and the watches to this day are still unsafe to wear! :) I finally contributed a fact on Reddit cause I'm obsessed with Panerai watches.
surfnaked ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:59:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Do you have pictures up on imgur?
MS6Emew ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:06:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ooooooof?
surfnaked ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:09:17 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The ones you're talking about with the radium faces.
MS6Emew ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 00:19:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
http://rolexblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/part-3-complete-history-of-rolex.html
surfnaked ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:07:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well there you go. Thanks
NameMyExDoesntKnow ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 05:51:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Crap... I have an antique glowing clock by my bed. It has been there for about 6 years.
Am I going to die?
surfnaked ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:59:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fuck if I know, but you're not dead yet. . .are you?
NameMyExDoesntKnow ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 06:02:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I have no idea....
surfnaked ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:08:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I know the feeling.
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 22:25:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
*number. If you can count the things, say "number"; if you can't, say "amount".
Exist50 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:51:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well number is a bit ambiguous in this context. Amount captures the volume better.
[deleted] ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 23:23:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I understand your logic, but from a grammar perspective, it's still not correct, because of the word you used: "things" are countable.
Contrast the word "sand". "Sand" is called a mass noun, which has no singular form; it always refers to a group of things. "Sand" refers to something that can't be counted.
You can talk about an amount of sand...
...but number of sand doesn't make sense in English.
You can talk about sands, which are countable, but this word implies you can distinguish one "sand" from another, as in different types of sand. For example, you can say, "The geology department has samples of many sands." You can have a number of sands but not "an amount of sands".
You can also talk about grains of sand, since "grains" are countable (in theory, if not in practice); in this case the word "sand" only describes the type of grains being discussed. When discussing a pile of grains of sand, you'd say a number of grains of sand, not "an amount of grains of sand".
Things are countable, so we talk about a number of things rather than "an amount of things". It doesn't matter what "things" is referring to, since the word (not its meaning) decides how it should be used in a sentence.
Hopefully this is helpful. Here's some more info if you like.
dickseverywhere444 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:14:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I never knew this. I mean reading it the wrong way does sound weird, but I guess I never really knew why.
Exist50 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:55:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This situation isn't quite as clear cut, however, because I'm not only talking about the number of items it was in, but also the amount of it used, as in volume of products shipped.
I completely understand what you're saying, and agree for the most part, but I don't believe this situation is quite as well defined.
this__fuckin__guy ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:50:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Is that what was in those green plates n shit?
is_anyone_in_my_head ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 19:49:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's tritium, it's still used for some watches and emergency exit plates
Exist50 ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 18:52:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Green plates? Probably uranium glass, but that doesn't glow without UV light.
solidspacedragon ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:17:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Or, as the other guy said, tritium and some phosphates. Depends on the time period.
Cobbleking32486 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:25:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
like radithor!
lostinsurburbia ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:47:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Didn't they use it in tooth paste to make the teeth glow?
[deleted] ยท 37 points ยท Posted at 18:29:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's surprisingly safe as long as you keep it under all that water. And it stops glowing if you take it out, so that's not really optional anyway.
koleye ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 18:32:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So all I need to do is flood my apartment before I put uranium in my trashcan, got it.
crimson117 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:33:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/
"What if I took a swim in a typical spent nuclear fuel pool? Would I need to dive to actually experience a fatal amount of radiation? How long could I stay safely at the surface?"
Jack92 ยท 33 points ยท Posted at 18:53:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Radiation is how all night lights work.
this__fuckin__guy ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:54:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Looks like my life goal has been achieved, thanks Jack.
Forgototherpassword ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:36:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I am Jack's dull wit...
drakoman ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:19:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ugh go home, dad.
PheonixManrod ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:37:52 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
All light, technically. Just not all radiation is ionizing.
A_favorite_rug ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 18:59:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In that case. The Fallout games and/or 50s Radium products is your friend!
Or you know. Be boring and use energy from a real life nuclear reactor.
mechwarrior719 ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 19:43:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Check out tritium illumination it's a glow stick that won't dim for some 6 years.
jrmunro11 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 15:37:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It uses tritium? That's interesting..
baltakatei ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:46:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Products containing self-luminous paint were available in the early 20th century. Unfortunately, to save costs, the radium paint was hand-applied by ladies using paintbrushes. This resulted in the ladies having bits of themselves rot and fall off.
So, radiation-powered night-lights are hard to comeby, now-a-days.
NightGod ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:34:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The city I lived in until a few months ago had one of the main plants where those girls worked. They eventually tore it down and packed off the top 18 inches or so of dirt and have since erected a lovely bronze statue dedicated to the "radium girls".
Fun fact: there used to be places in the city where snow didn't stick in the winter, including the football practice field of my high school. The EPA has since cleaned most of those up.
Mike762 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:39:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Search eBay for tritium vials or tritium keychains.
lambdaknight ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:42:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Technically, all night-lights are radiation powered. If radiation wasn't involved, there would be no light!
brianundies ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:06:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Military grade compasses use radioactive materiel that slightly glow in the dark.
SpiralDimentia ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:51:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
http://www.thisiswhyimbroke.com/drippy-faucet-night-light
this__fuckin__guy ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:54:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
47 dollars fuck that. How will I afford the black jack and hookers.
SpiralDimentia ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:56:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
By winning at Blackjack. Then you buy the light and hookers.
this__fuckin__guy ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 18:57:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I can see you've never played blackjack before. You don't actually win when gambling that's why the Indians are doing so well.
nonny39 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:54:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
http://www.mixglo.com/
EastPhilly ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:56:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You could make one out of tritium
alficles ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:30:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think they call that the moon.
hackurb ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:34:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What you dont want to wake up ever again ?
darkautumnhour ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:13:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You do know all visible light is radiation?
Cuyler1377 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:30:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, also light outside of the visible spectrum...
darkautumnhour ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 08:21:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes but how can you radiate invisible light if our eyes aren't real?
Cuyler1377 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 14:34:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You forgot to capitalize every word for some reason.
PacoTaco321 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:40:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me too thanks
anti_worker ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:30:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tritium might do the trick.
NebulaNinja ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:35:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
like this?
Destiiel ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:31:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Those were a thing IIRC.
howerrd ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:55:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I mean, isn't all light radiation?
SushiAndWoW ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:19:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Technically, all of our energy sources are radiation powered. (... if we go back far enough.)
Sacar25 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:39:05 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This fucking guy.
lumens ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:27:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yea, you go kick start that asap.
bs1110101 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:27:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Better idea: Underwater scale model reactor core full of blue LEDs, which can also act as a fish tank.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:16:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Why don't you just buy a blue light?
this__fuckin__guy ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:23:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oh right it's just that easy huh why don't we buy homeless people houses while we're at it.
almuric ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:19:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Cue all the people who post about their radioactive plates and saucers. That's a thing. Was big on reddit a few months ago.
NeroDidNothingWrong ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 18:51:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's a really pleasant colour, it's so calm and cool
AthleticsSharts ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:44:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I dunno, those pics kinda creeped me out. There's something unsettling about it.
oleg_guru ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 05:57:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's definetely "shhh, only sleep now" vibe to it. Still looks soothing
StrangeMeetsEvil ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 18:19:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
man, can you imagine seeing that with your own eyes, knowing you were going to be one of the only people in human history to witness that sight in person. knowing they were going to die because of it, and knowing that it had to be done...
Zhoom45 ยท 17 points ยท Posted at 18:40:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Because water is such a great radiation shield, Cherenkov radiation is actually quite safe to observe, assuming there's a few meters of water between you and the radiation source. In most radiation pools, you experience less radiation a foot underwater than you do standing outside the pool, since the water blocks ambient radiation from the atmosphere. Of course, if you get close to the radiation source underwater, you're in trouble.
BilboSwagginz ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:20:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And there's an xkcd (what if?) for that!
Zhoom45 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:05:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Exactly where I got that fact from!
StrangeMeetsEvil ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:44:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
what killed the divers then? now i'm confused.
Zhoom45 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:29:56 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Even underwater, if you're within a few feet of those spent fuel rods, you'll recieve a lethal dose within minutes. My point was that Cherenkov radiation happens under safe conditions lots of times, so those divers weren't the only people in human history to see it.
DropletFox ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 18:46:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
NUKA COLA QUANTUM!
Erob90 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 20:03:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Right. If I learned anything from movies, everything is either blue or orange.
Wraith_GraveSpell ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:38:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's crazy to think that this light is created by having particles technically travelling faster than the speed of light (in a specific medium).
idunfukwichu ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:06:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The pictures look like they're straight out of a scifi movie holy shitttt
I_Bin_Painting ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:37:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Perfect, movie nights are always brightly lit with blue light already anyway.
frachris87 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:16:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
VIDEO
It's beautiful, yet scary at the same time.
Seliniae2 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:05:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Phazon...?
atomicllama1 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:34:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Now I have to change the color on my pip boy for fallout.
smokeyythabear ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:23:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Reminds me of a certain Doctor...
MC_Mooch ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:54:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fuck that must be terrifying
Box_of_Glocks ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:32:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Have you never seen a bottle of Nuka Cola Quantum?!
Psevilla11b ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:15:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I would've thought green.
JooJoona ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:48:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We need a scientist to confirm this!
Did said water in Chernobyl have Cherenkov radiation, adn how much?
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:04:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thats why nuka quantum is blue!
Super-Tramp ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 17:38:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's one dark joke..
Aliquis95 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:52:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Here we go, diving into another pun thread.
fuggahmo_mofuhgga ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:57:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tread lightly...
fistkick18 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:22:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You will know endless suffering!
Wait, fuck.
The_curtain_feather ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 18:12:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
this guy
kryonik ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 18:28:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I say do the end of the movie with no lights, just sounds. You see them descending then all of a sudden, their lights start flickering then go out. Next you just hear ambient water noise, breathing and them frantically trying to fix the lights. Then you hear them resign to doing the rest of the dive in the dark. You hear them scrambling, grabbing onto things, heartbeats rising, getting more and more frustrated over comms. Then, "I think I've found it!" kssssshhhhhhh The end.
Stay_Curious85 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:07:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Idk. I think itd be pretty sweet if they left it black. Add to the claustrophobia.
Edit; obviously not the whole movie. But a few minute portion of it.
turtles_like_I ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:52:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No everyone knows they'd start glowing as soon as they enter the water
ArtorTheAwesome ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:20:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Perhaps make the movie a series of flash backs before the Cherynobl incident, up to their dive. Intersperse scenes of pitch black terror with an underwater muted silence and dialogue to create an eerie tension throughout.
TR_Ollington ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:58:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The name of the movie should fuckjng BE "One Light"!
probablyhrenrai ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:36:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You might be able to do it with thermal imaging, but I'm less than confident; I think water is opaque to infrared.
Would night-vision goggles work?
MojarraMuncher ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:17:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Unless the movie had Feel Around
cyril0 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:53:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"There are four lights!"
ReasonablyBadass ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 18:40:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't know. Sitting in the theatre, in pitch blackness, hearing their laboured breathing and increasingly desperate voices over the perfect sound system...
Flight714 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 17:15:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, obviously they'd use creative license with the studio lighting.
Mutjny ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 21:56:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A movie where you can't see shit? Call JJ Abrams.
MyDickIsMeh ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:53:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It would also be really entertaining. Totally dark movie theater, just the ambient noises and dialog to guide you through the story.
Think about that level of sensory deprivation.
cartak ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:36:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Theres a submarine movie with some similar stuff. Nuclear sub, shit goes down, dudes have to fix it. It's pretty decent
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-19:_The_Widowmaker
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:28:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It could be like United 93 where it all builds toward the central action at the end.
mrmtmassey ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:21:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The same was said about the end of zero dark thirty.
bubblescivic ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:35:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Unless the radiation gave them super powers!
AssumeTheFetal ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:58:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not for a few minutes at least
AzorAhaiIsJonSnow ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:18:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I just watched pacific rim last night, so they could do what those guys did. Have one person say "It's pitch black down here." And the continue to light it so we can all see perfectly fine.
SaucyPlatypus ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:33:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'd envision it similar to Gravity
Traherne ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:19:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Naw. Just cast Vin Diesel.
laughterwithans ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:56:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Int. Nuclear Reactor - Night
Alexie, Boris, and Valeri slowly squeeze into their diving suits. They are quiet and somber, their eyes seldom leaving the ground and never meeting one another, until Alexie looks up - his eyes steely.
You donโt have to do this Boris, we can find our own way. Besides, what happened here is hardly your fault
Of course, but how could I sit by and let two engineers get all the credit for saving my country?
For a moment the tension is eased by the small chuckles of the three men. After a moment they pull on their helmets and make their way to the door.
We will only have a few minutes until the radiation sickness makes it too hard to keep swimming.
Perhaps now is not the time for such reminders.
Alexie begins to turn the wheel on the steel door to the reactor. When it finally creaks open, the three divers are greeted with an unnatural blue light which glints off the deathly still surface of the inky black water.
Boris turns on his spotlight and the three men slip beneath the surface. Illuminated only by the spotlight in Boris' hands, they begin their descent towards the massive glowing reactor. Boris light goes out and they are plunged into darkness.
Alone and blinded in the dark water, they each hear nothing but their own breathing which grows heavier and heavier with each second they spend in the poisoned depths.
EXPLODING INTO THEATRES 2020
ะฏeactiv
ZerexTheCool ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 17:15:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I see what you did there =D
sbroll ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:19:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That hasnt stopped them in the past.
Human Centipede is a thing.
hungry4pie ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:27:49 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It'd be even more difficult to make -- the radiation fucks camera and other electronics equipment.
guildedlotus ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 01:54:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I feel like they should make a movie just honor them and make sure everyone knows who they are. Saving millions of lives and half of europe would influence more people than we can imagine.
[deleted] ยท 44 points ยท Posted at 17:30:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You may enjoy the movie K-19 The Widowmaker where a very similar situation occurs on board a Russian nuclear submarine.
One of the extremely few Hollywood movies where Russians are shown in a mostly positive light. From the director of The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark 30.
EucalyptusHelve ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 20:12:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Movie is really really good. Also very sad/dark.
giantbfg ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 20:18:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well yeah movies with Russian protagonists or movies that focus on Russians made in America/the west usually aren't typically pleasant.
ScurvyTurtle ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:18:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Good music too by Klaus Badelt (guy that did original Pirates of the Caribbean and understudy to Hans Zimmer)
HypotheticalCow ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:16:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And the original Point Break.
detectivemonk ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:46:17 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The only Point Break anyone should acknowledge.
Get me two, Utah.
GrinningManiac ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 18:30:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The BBC did
Here's the scene in question
It's called Surviving Disaster: Chernobyl
It's hauntingly intense. The main character's actor is a noted comedian in Britain, so it's very impressive that he pulls this off.
Sly_Wood ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 17:55:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They did in a similar situation. K-19 The Widowmaker.
Same premises but on a nuclear submarine during the Cold War. True story and the men sent in were given chemical suits and told they would help, but they likely knew it wouldn't. Even if the first guys knew, the guys who were up next saw the first team suffering as they left.
samuel33334 ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 17:36:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't think I'd watch a movie of 3 people wading through pitch black water
[deleted] ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 18:14:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
[deleted]
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:31:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Do yourself a favor and don't.
FLAPPY_BEEF_QUEEF ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 18:29:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
K-9 the Widowmaker has some of this stuff in it.
[deleted] ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 17:12:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I appreciate these men and their sacrifice but I would not watch that movie.
smaug88 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:24:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There is a movie about the disaster, but I don't think it include our 3 heroes.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1555084/
Tim_Burton ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:48:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It should be directed in a similar fashion to Apollo 13. I would totally watch that.
Blindobb ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:52:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There is some nuclear sub movie with the same idea. A few dudes had to go into the reactor to cool it with water or something. Died days later. Another true story, and more Russians. Man, maybe they should stop messing with nuclear material...
jjones5199 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:57:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Movie opens to media coverage of the Chernobyl disaster and after opening credits, the scene is the discussion on what to do. The movie goes on with evacuation and the actual disaster. When finally our scene comes, there is arguing about what to do about the valve. The three men volunteer and finally dive in. I think it would be cool to see the scene in real time and first person from who would be the main character. When the lights go out, you see it how they did. Flickering in front of your eyes and then black. Then after the panic, they finally find it and the scene goes to the rest of the group taking notice that the three men succeeded.
wytchthewarrior ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:34:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So, we already have the soundtrack and the artwork for this...
(An extraordinary band called We Lost the Sea released a record last year, inspired by - and dedicated to - those who sacrificed themselves for the greater good. It's a must-listen).
KhabaLox ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:44:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's a pretty important comma you are missing.
djlewt ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 18:02:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think they did, they called it Star Trek 2.
ptwonline ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:31:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If they were American it would likely be a movie already.
Tabnam ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:20:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A light hearted comedy, definitely
limbodog ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:16:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Or at the very least, a "Drunk History" episode.
ericofduart ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:18:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If McCarthyism didn't exist, you'd have that movie. And we'd live in a whole different world.
itstimmehc ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:22:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Reminds me of The Iron Giant, at the end of the movie.
cacky_bird_legs ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:46:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Here you go (part of a made-for-TV movie): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wa3k-USAVdY
KDallas_Multipass ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:46:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You can watch an over 11 part series on this epic disaster and the epic failures of disaster mitigation that followed. Its filled with stories like this.
EldarianValor ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:06:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That kinda happens near the end of MGS4
ep1939 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:24:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A good feeling about it might be the second part of k19 with Harrison Ford.
It's about a soviet nuclear submarine whose reactor cooling breaks.
Great underappreciated movie.
thebachmann ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:34:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Chris Evans' character had to swim through liquid nitrogen to fix an switchboard in sunshine, close enough I guess.
mustard_mustache ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:55:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Have you ever seen K-19 The Widow Maker?
It's about a Russian submarine that suffered reactor core failure near the US east coast. The men took turns to go into try and fix the reactor with limited PPE.
nosniboD ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:07:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Bbc made a tv movie of the whole thing, including this scene. Can't remember the name of it but last I looked it was on YouTube
Edit: found it https://youtube.com/watch?v=njTQaUCk4KY
333444422 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:59:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Don't give Michael Bay ideas.
mellowmonk ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:04:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well it won't be Hollywood that makes that movie because Russians apparently can never be the good guys.
Robinisthemother ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:45:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's called Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
akm-scout ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:10:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
there is a movie of similar events called K-19: The Widow Maker,
It is about a russian sub that had gone unstable, and if it were to explode it would destroy a U.S. destroyer, almost guaranteeing nuclear retaliation from U.S.
IAmTheToastGod ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:38:01 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
West wing did it
Virtual-Aidz ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 11:44:53 on January 19, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Metal Gear solid 4 ending.
EmpororPenguin ยท 30 points ยท Posted at 17:49:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's this weird movie called Sunshine where astronauts are in a spaceship, and for some reason the cores powering the ship are going critical and they need to be submerged in coolant or else the space ship will fail. One of the characters has to dive in this huge pool of freezing coolant not once but three separate times and you can see how he gets slower and slower since he's freezing to death. Not as intense as being burned to death but pretty badass.
The_Gecko ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:12:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Actually I think it's the supercomputer that runs the ship that is always submerged in coolant, and is removed, causing it to go critical.
Apples-and-chips ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 02:28:28 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sunshine is an exceptional movie.
axlespelledwrong ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 17:44:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Or in Sunshine, when Handsome McHandsomeface dives into the super coolant to save the ship. If any of you haven't seen Sunshine, get on it.
The_Gecko ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:12:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's Chris Evans....
axlespelledwrong ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:26:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I know. If you haven't noticed, the dude is really handsome.
dizzykitty ยท 90 points ยท Posted at 16:54:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Didn't that exact same thing happen in battle star galactica to the engineer admiral?
rspeed ยท 104 points ยท Posted at 17:43:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think you're thinking of Spock in the Wrath of Khan.
billwoo ยท 59 points ยท Posted at 18:38:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He is correct, the chief engineer who became admiral of the Pegasus saved the ship by entering the radioactive engine bay to do something or other and died.
Terrachova ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 19:00:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wasn't it that the Engine bay where the controls were had been breached and was venting air? He went in there and had the door sealed behind him, and suffocated?
rspeed ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 19:05:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Oooooh right. John Heard's character. Forgot about him.
Though IIRC the comparison is inaccurate, since room he sealed himself inside was venting into space, not flooded with radiation.
Edit: Also, I'm pretty sure after Cain died, Adama became the senior officer of the fleet and therefore became the defacto Admiral. Pegasus' former engineer would have only been the ship's captain.
RyanRagido ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:24:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also in Stargate SG-1. Daniel Jackson sacrifices himself to stop a nuclear disaster in one episode.
kurokame ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:38:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Today we honor the memory of our Chief Engineer who died doing something or other. May he rest in peace.
bongozap ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:38:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I thought it was venting oxygen and he suffocated.
this_is_not_the_cia ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:13:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It wasn't radioactive. He suffocated.
dizzykitty ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 17:45:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Never saw it.
robodrew ยท 29 points ยท Posted at 18:07:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
WHAT THE FUCK DUDE
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 18:45:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I picture you saying it like this dude.
African_Lorelord ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:24:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fightin' words.
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 18:44:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Better get on that.
ElVichoPerro ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:42:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
ANIMAL!
rspeed ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:14:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You've made some poor choices.
A_favorite_rug ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:01:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Them fightin' words!
SamWalt ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:33:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hell of a thing when Spock died...
rspeed ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:35:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Why do people always throw Seinfeld quotes at me?
This death takes place in the shadow of new life, the sunrise of a new world; a world that our beloved comrade gave his life to protect and nourish, and he will be rewarded with a convenient excuse to bring him back in the next movie.
ninj4geek ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:42:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
or Kirk in the reboots
rspeed ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:36:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No. Nobody was thinking of that.
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 17:39:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, I believe it was radiation...or lack of oxygen?
[deleted] ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 18:08:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He died from lack of oxygen.
TrukThunders ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 18:44:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He was the commander of the Pegasus. After the death of Admiral Cain, President Roslin promoted Adama to admiral.
PubliusPontifex ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:02:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Captain, and he ran out of air.
RadiantSun ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:13:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No it happened in Battlestar Pegasus
qwertymodo ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:47:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In that case it was a hull beach not a reactor. But similar, yes.
CrayolaBrown ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:56:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And the last Star Trek movie?
DaGreatPenguini ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:39:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It happened to Spock, too.
Bajeezus ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:54:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also, Metal Gear
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:00:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also in Star Trek,
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:45:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There an even more similar scene in... U-571 maybe? I forget, but the guy in charge has to order one of the men to swim underwater to close a valve or something, and everyone knows it's a one-way trip.
CaptainChewbacca ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:52:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He had to patch a hull breach.
b4b ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:50:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ah yes, internet where some guy writes about real people who saved thousands if not millions and then comes out the guy who wants to talk about Babylon5 or other crap.
dizzykitty ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:16:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Its chill bro
ztsmart ยท 42 points ยท Posted at 18:16:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Neil DeGrasse Tyson was in The Core?
[deleted] ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 19:59:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's more than one
raptor102888 ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 20:56:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, there was more than one.
orbjuice ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:28:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's a joke somewhere in here about not being caught dead in The Core.
Diarrhea_Van_Frank ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:48:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's about as scientific as NDT is. I wouldn't be surprised.
[deleted] ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 18:32:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I loved that movie. The plot was silly. and a lot of people apparently hate it but I thought it was fantastic.
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 17:59:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
GoogleFloobs ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:20:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's haappppeenniiinnnnggg!
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 17:57:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Reminds me of Metal Gear Solid 4, except, you know, nanomachines.
kagedtiger ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:02:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Why couldn't the little robot go through on its own?
rythmicbread ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:57:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fallout 3?
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:44:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ukrainians. Tough buggers.
Drak_is_Right ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:57:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The nuclear reactor chambers are HOT to work in, even when idled for maintenance. When my sister had to go in to the pressure vessel during maintenance outages (reactor is basically idled, but still produces some heat) they had to wear special cooling/radiation suits that still only allowed them like 30 minutes (I think its ~135 degrees with 100% humidity), a lot hotter then that when the reactor is running.
(note i could have some of the terminology wrong, but I do know with the reactor idled it was in the range of 135 degrees with 100% humidity and the stuff they were working on was to prevent hydrogen gas buildup)
JupiterSaturnMars ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:22:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's like when Spock did the same thing in Star Trek.
braindeathdomination ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:50:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That was by far the most memorable scene in that retarded movie
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:24:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:27:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The character was literally burning to death. The actor may have been fine, but the "black scientist guy" was in fact in mortal peril.
jckrn ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:42:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
aghhh i remember that. much cringe.
d1770 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:43:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They died 2 weeks later due to radioactive poisoning.
xenophon57 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:48:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
and the scientist died a much worse death than the guy in the movie.
weezermc78 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:58:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That movie was laughably bad
Theres_A_FAP_4_That ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:10:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wait, the Core isn't a documentary?
tboneplayer ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:18:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dammit, why did you tell us this? Yes the movie has been out for some time, but now I feel much less motivated to watch it.
kwh ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:18:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Black scientist guy, we will never forget your sacrifice
actual_factual_bear ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:20:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Or the movie about the Volcano on L.A. where the train conductor or somebody rescues a passenger by catching them and throwing them to safety while he is ankle deep in lava.
TheJackFroster ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:22:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Similar to that scene in Doctor Who where he steps into a box full of radiation to press a button.
C413B7 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:23:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's also the guy from the Jurassic Park: The Lost World, who was trying to pull the trailer back on the cliff while getting eaten by t-rexs. That always struck me as heroic.
myblindy ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:38:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It had to be him. Someone else would have gotten it wrong.
ImJustThane ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:39:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I agree that dude did sacrifice himself, but by way of drawing straws if you remember.
VordakKallager ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:42:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also reminds me of Chris Evans' character in Sunshine (2007) where he is trying to fix the flight computer and has to dive into the super-cold coolant to manually fix it.
Overrwatcher ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:43:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
To be fair, he actually would have survived if he was able to make his way back up the ladder. But the heat and semi-molten floor was so exhausting that he just gave in and told the others to open the airlock.
HunterTC ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:44:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The scene on the Widowmaker was pretty rough
STOP-SHITPOSTING ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:46:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not to discount their heroic deeds, but it's not like the water was actively melting them or something. You can't sense radiation. It was 'just' a little dive that you knew would be your last.
RSRussia ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:51:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As a geologist I am unsure whether to laugh or to cry when anybody mentions the core :|
savvyxxl ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:02:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What about the grandma in dantes peak? The acidic water is melting the boat and she jumps out into the water and pushes them and it's burns the shit out of her
Fred_Evil ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:07:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The needs of the many.
Outweigh the needs of the few?
(nodding) Or the one.
doomshrooms ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:46:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
had to be me.... someone else mightve gotten it wrong
capernoited ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:47:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Look into the movie K-19 with Harrison Ford. It's about the submarine K-19 which was a soviet built nuclear sub. The reactor begins to leak and due to shortage of supplies, the sub was not equipped with suits that offered any protection from radiation. So the men went in wearing plain hazmat suits in increments of 10 or 15 minutes to perform repairs on the leaking reactor. That is signing your own death warrant if I ever heard.
Chicken-n-Waffles ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:16:12 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I believe The Core is based on true events.
I want to that is.
Mad_Hatter_Bot ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 07:28:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Definitely a lot easier to see when you're a torch
IblewupTARIS ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:29:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That movie stands out in my mind as having terrible science. For instance, the "unobtainium" could handle incredibly high temperatures and was effectively indestructible, but at some points it gets melted and a guy dies from a rock hitting his helmet and puncturing it.
Sir_Thaddeus ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:07:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So Fallout 3's ending?
Aleczarnder ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 17:14:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah but in the middle of the mantle instead of the middle of Washington. And without a big super mutant to do it for you.
statist_steve ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:22:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nah man, actors are the real heroes.
Parade_Precipitation ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:38:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
or what russians call "tuesday"
thumperdumper ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:43:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
reminds me of k19 the widowmaker
literally_tho_tbh ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:45:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
literally tho
Mr_Biscuits_532 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:57:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That is like my favourite movie ever
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:59:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And their deaths were much more horrifying
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:16:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Is that the "Sci-Fi channel" esque film where a group of people dig into the Earth's core to detonate nuclear explosions and save the world?
That was an awesome movie
A_ARon_M ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:26:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I still think about that scene over a decade later. Too bad it was a terrible movie, and I loved every minute of it.
YeahTacos ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:14:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
or Chris Evans' character in Sunshine - choosing death by superfreezing to save the mission (and the solar system)
ragn4rok234 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:59:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That was Spock in star-trek: the wrath of khan. Which lead to "the search for Spock"
bazir03 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:16:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Neil DeGrasse Tyson?
TheUltimateSalesman ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:37:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
K19 Widowmaker
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:46:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You should read the story of HMCS Kootenay. They had a gear box explosion while doing a full power trial after a refit. A full power trial is basically just making the ship go as fast as the guys can without going past any safety parameters. While they're doing that they're also watching everything very carefully and logging every gauge in the plant. This is done to make sure there's no problems that might arise during battle.
Well something did go wrong, very wrong. A bearing was installed backwards, it overheated and the gearbox exploded. What likely isn't published, but I have learned from people that were onboard and helped put out the fire is fucking terrifying. They had aluminum ladders and deck plates in the engine room were the gear box was. They found hand prints in the ladder were guys tried to escape the fire but the ladder melted away as they tried to grab it. But that's not even the worse part.
The guys in the boiler room knew something went wrong, but didn't know what. They're job was to maintain steam pressure at all costs until told otherwise. Without knowing what went wrong they don't know if command may need that steam to get the ship to safety. Well, the Chief engineer was yelling orders from the engine room to the boiler room until the deck he was on melted and he and his chair fell through into the inferno.
If he hadn't done that the others onboard wouldn't have been able to enter the engine room to put out the fire. This would have been because the space was filling with steam at about 550 degs F from the steam pipes that ruptured in the explosion.
im_not_afraid ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:25:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Did the directors and producers huddle in a group and decide, "Let's burn the black token!"?
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:50:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They make fun of that in the South Park episode that parodies the movie. The one where Cartman has to drill through all the hippies to stop the music festival.
Retireegeorge ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:00:15 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
http://youtu.be/0x05PrIasjk
VolvoKoloradikal ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:18:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ahh...Dr. Zimsky.
I make fun of my geophysicist friend by calling him that.
galadedeus ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:36:35 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
was the use.of.the word "black" necessary at all?
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:39:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There were several scientists on that ship. The black scientist is the one who died.
galadedeus ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:45:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So, not needed, got it.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:13:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Huh. I actually don't even know why I automatically decided to qualify it with race. It was just what popped into my head to identify the character. I feel kinda bad now.
Vio_ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:49:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's beyond movie heroism. that's a "put a bullet in my brain, because my skin is going to start sloughing off in days."
KptKrondog ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:19:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
this clip from U-571 is what it reminded me of. That dude has to swim down some flooded shaft to close off a valve or something and his oxygen line ends up being too short and he drowns after reaching the valve and fixing it.
Also reminded me how cheesy that movie was.
WhatIsThisNewDevilry ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:46:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
RemindMe! Watch "The Core" movie
raystone ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:11:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Or like the grandma that jumped off the rowboat into superheated volcano water to save her grandchildren in Dante's Peak.
PinkFloydPanzer ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:25:27 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0x05PrIasjk
The scene he is talking about
animeniak ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:46:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Reminds me of a comic (Saga), where this alien lady decides to release a valve or something to extinguish a fire on this space ship, and she dies in the process.
She ended her life in the same way she lived it... http://stoopitstuff.tumblr.com/image/118971641391
csl512 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:21:01 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
jrmunro11 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:34:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
U-571 when the young guy dies opening a valve
Batby ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:53:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Its been awhile since i watched it but i think he was ment to escape but his wrench melted so he pulled the valve thing.
ToneThugsNHarmony ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:14:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Said black guy is Samuel L. Jackson. Shit was heroic
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:17:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I am like 90% certain that it was not Samuel L. Jackson. He looked like a professor or something, not a badass.
MadlifeIsGod ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:59:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Delroy Lindo, not Samuel L. Jackson.
ToneThugsNHarmony ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:00:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Eh, I was close.
ToneThugsNHarmony ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:00:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Haha I just realized I was thinking of Sam Jackson in Deep Blue Sea.
MadlifeIsGod ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:01:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A lot less brave sacrifice in Deep Blue Sea, a lot more hilarious to watch though.
AProfessionalDoctor ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:33:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dat Bruce Willie in Armageddon tho!
suicidebylifestyle ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 18:50:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Granted knowing you're going to die of radiation poisoning the prospect of drowning becomes kind of welcoming
dexikiix ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 18:59:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I thought you were using lights went out as a metaphor haha. I was like "damn they didn't make it past the dive itself???"
NutmegTadpole ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 19:53:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I know this is going to sound stupid so I apologize in advance, but would these divers feel any immediate sort of pain/sensation due to the highly radioactive water while they are swimming in it?
Or would they just know that they would be fucked in the long term?
SolemnPhate ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 20:45:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
No. Radiation itself does not cause pain. The effects of radiation causes the pain. ARS (Acute radition sickness/sydrome) occurs very shortly after being exposed to large amounts of radiation. Symptoms being nausea, vomiting, fatigue, radiation burns, hair loss, gastrointestinal issues, neural issues. Just to name a few.
Edit: Yes, definitely fucked in the long term.
Source: I'm a Radiologic Technologist
NutmegTadpole ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:32:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thank you for the explanation. That takes some serious balls for those divers knowing that they are essentially sacrificing themselves for the greater good.
SolemnPhate ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:54:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
How bout it. Literally the ultimate sacrifice.
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:50:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Silly question did the light run out of battery or was it because of the radiation
SolemnPhate ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:47:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not 100% sure. Articles I have read and documentaries I have seen never explained a cause for the malfunction.
KallistiEngel ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:46:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Radiation can interfere with electronics. It was a problem during parts of the cleanup where they were trying to use robots to clean things up. The electronics just stopped working due to the extremely high radiation. They had to use "bio-robots" instead, humans working in the high radiation areas for brief periods, then retreating to lower radiation areas.
eaglessoar ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:13:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
God damnit that is terrifying, I recently took the first class in a scuba certification and when we had to go a minute without our masks it was the longest most stressful minute of my life
aaary444 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:03:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Someone, make a fucking movie out of this.
gid0ze ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 19:01:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They did, it's called the Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn. Admittedly, it did get some details wrong.
homeschooled ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:43:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This would make an excellent film.
stiKyNoAt ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:10:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
From what i remember, only one of them wasn't a diver, so the lights going out would really only be terrifying to the one inexperienced engineer. However, all three knew that braving those waters would be lethal, so there's that...
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:27:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
they knew they were going to die. only thing keeping them going must have been the thought of failure.
serisho ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:45:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
divers are trained for this. firemen do the exact same thing when they cant see from the smoke or flames. going in dark isn't much worse. just kinda sucks.
lennybird ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:52:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Reminds me of a scene in U-571.
epsilonbob ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:59:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I can see the connection (flooded room -> find the valve) but it reminds me more of K-19 where they had to wade through torso deep radioactive water to try and weld pipes to restore cooling and prevent a meltdown. The guys who went in that room got fucked up by the raditation
lennybird ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:12:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah that was horrendous to watch...
-Replicated ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:58:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So they came out of the water and survived for a while? how did they find out the lights went out.
SolemnPhate ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:02:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
According to Wikipedia only one engineer took some sort of lamp light and it just stopped working.
Edit: Died in 2 weeks.
Cygnus94 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:28:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Those men knew they were going to die, I think at that point you no longer fear a thing.
Ienrak ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:39:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
How do they know if they died?
SolemnPhate ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:40:52 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
?
LimpPlacenta ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:06:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
How do you not plan for that?
tevert ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:18:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If I'm going to die, why not with my closed, fumbling around in the dark? Same way I came into this world....
NICKisICE ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:54:17 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not to mention that dying of radiation poisoning is about as miserable of a way to go as one could think. Imagine the worst flu you've ever had that causes your skin to fall off and your cells to literally start falling apart.
ghost_mv ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:25:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
KNEW WS ONEWY TRIP BT KNEW I HAD TO COME
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:31:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
At that point, they're already dead men swimming. Giving up because you have no light would be a waste of their life and they knew it.
SFXBTPD ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:09:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This needs to be a movie
ktappe ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 18:42:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Since they were on a suicide mission, would it be? What's to be scared of if you're already dead?
lordcirth ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 18:49:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You'd probably be pretty scared that you wouldn't be able to get to the valve in time, or collapse first, thus dying for nothing. Plus just because there's no reason to be scared, doesn't mean you won't be.
SolemnPhate ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:12:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Diving into an unfamiliar area looking for a valve along a pipe with no light on a known suicide mission and not making it means hundreds of thousands more will die. That's pretty fucking terrifying.
Andromeda321 ยท 1884 points ยท Posted at 16:22:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We should also spend a moment to remember the "bio-robots" of Chernobyl, who were young army reservists. Basically at the time it was realized that real robots were not up for the task of cleaning out the debris from the roof because the radiation was destroying their components. The solution taken was to then take these young army guys and slap thin lead sheets on them, and then promised if they went to work on the roof for 3 minutes they could retire from the army. The calculations at the time from radioactivity though was after 45 seconds you would exceed limits, and many people went up there several times.
Here is a little documentary about the biorobots for anyone curious.
No one's ever done a study btw on the long-term health effects of the bio-robots.
rarely-sarcastic ยท 303 points ยท Posted at 18:28:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There were a lot of older men who volunteered for that job saying that the radiation won't affect them for years and they'll likely be dead by the time it would. They didn't want young men to risk their lives like that.
[deleted] ยท 373 points ยท Posted at 19:02:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
[deleted] ยท 143 points ยท Posted at 00:58:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
romulus4444 ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 07:03:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
For some reason this reminds me of Uncle Iroh.
InfanticideAquifer ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 10:32:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Probably because it's wise, about old guys, and everyone remembers the scene by the tree and the saying is also about trees?
BlackPrinceof_love ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 00:56:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
But Fukushmia no one was exposed to lethal radiation and no case has been recorded of anyone getting sick.
[deleted] ยท 34 points ยท Posted at 01:00:29 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
BlackPrinceof_love ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 01:02:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just saying its quite safe now, there are even people living in Chernobyl now and the other 2 reactors there were running until the late 90;s.
[deleted] ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 01:13:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
some areas are safER. SOME.
BlackPrinceof_love ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 01:20:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just saying its not a wasteland like the media says. In fact most of the building were looted to shit in the early 2000's so most of the stuff inside the buildings are all gone.
[deleted] ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 01:29:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
i still wouldn't go frolicking around without a geiger counter and a trained guide lol. i have heard some animals are thriving without humans there. but still
BlackPrinceof_love ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:40:22 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
yeah if you stay for long periods you def would have a way higher chance of health problems.
administratosphere ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:44:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I can only hope that by the time I reach an advanced age that I am able bodied enough to be ready to be called on for such a task.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:41:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Do you have a source for that? I'd expect the radiation from this would affect them mere days after exposure.
macfergusson ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:56:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't know about that specific incident, however in general terms radiation exposure takes many forms. Alpha, beta, or gamma ray radiation all have different effects depending on level of exposure, and those effects are more or less likely to have long term effects vs. Immediate based on the type of radiation. It's really quite interesting if you want something to read about.
UnknownQTY ยท 1262 points ยท Posted at 17:44:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's hard to do long term studies when all your subjects are dead.
armrha ยท 83 points ยท Posted at 19:22:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They aren't all dead though. Watch the documentary. Very few of them died outright right after exposure, most just seemed to suffer terrible effects for most of their lives...
StoneyLepi ยท 19 points ยท Posted at 23:04:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ahh, yes. A much better alternative.
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 01:34:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, it meant people doing surveys had a lot more work to do.
thantheman ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:27:58 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A happy ending for everyone involved.
NoItNone ยท -4 points ยท Posted at 05:49:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That wasn't the argument, but thanks being a tard
StoneyLepi ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:13:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
I didnt know there was an argument.
Edit: An letter. Apparently some people are offended with my speeling.
NoItNone ยท -3 points ยท Posted at 07:18:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Huh? Learn to type, moron.
StoneyLepi ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:49:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah sorry i missed a letter. Thanks for helping.
NoItNone ยท -4 points ยท Posted at 08:29:02 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
EDIT PLZ NO DIWNVOTES AM SMART I SWEAR
StoneyLepi ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:36:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
SICK SPELLING YOU BRAIN-DEAD SPASTIC! XDDDDD SO EDGY AMIRIGHT? DOWNVOTES TO THE LEFT PLEASE.
Dude, I can do it too.
NoItNone ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 10:18:56 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Don't worry, bro. I'm sure you'll get your upvotes. Cash them in for Bernie votes.
StoneyLepi ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 10:35:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You're a bit on the slow side if you think I'm after upvotes. You started this argument with no reason other than to fish for downvotes, or you are too dense to not understand the words you are spouting.
NoItNone ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:36:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Looking at your comments confirms you are a circle jerking karma whore. Eat a dick. Get a life. Fake internet point won't bring you real happiness.
GavinZac ยท 474 points ยท Posted at 18:13:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Um, that seems really, really easy actually. Like, if you're going to survey hair length, you'll be thankful for every baldy the that passes by.
cpt_pancreas ยท 784 points ยท Posted at 18:22:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Journal entry 5053: They're still dead.
desertpolarbear ยท 89 points ยท Posted at 18:45:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
if zombie movies have taught me anything, it is that this is a fairly important thing to check regularly when dealing with radiation!
InverurieJones ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:26:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That is exactly why we need regular updates. Radioactive mutant undead are not to be taken lightly.
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 22:05:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Smoothskin
physalisx ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:36:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You're confusing zombies with mutants.
Seanobi777 ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:22:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Journal entry 5054: What am I doing with my life?
cpt_pancreas ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 19:48:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Journal entry 5055: Margaret says I'm losing my mind. She's just jealous that those radioactive corpses talk to me and not her. Maybe I am insane....no its her, shes the one thats wrong.
Seanobi777 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 20:54:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Journal entry 5056: Billy came in and woke me up today. He said it wasn't right to sleep in the same room as them overnight. That fat oaf. I'm watching him closely, and that ugly Margaret too. Those corpses warned me about them. I'm going to lock the door before I go back to sleep tonight with them. This itchy arm is getting to me too.
cpt_pancreas ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:10:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Journal entry 5057: That prick Billy said I should go to medical about my arm. What does he know? He doesn't dare take the risks for science that I do. There's nothing to be afraid of among these corpses. He must of been listening to Margaret's crap again about how in the morning they're on different tables to the ones she left them on. That clumsy bitch is probably just mixing up her notes, they aren't that stupid.
Seanobi777 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:37:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Journal entry 5058: It's hurting to write. My arm is starting to look like the corpses. They told me I should take care of Billy. He sure is fat and plump looking, just looks so juicy. I woke up today once again, spending the night here with the corpses. They're not here anymore. Where did they go? Am I going crazy? Am I hallucinating? Maybe Margaret and Billy is messing with me. But how? The door is locked and the corpses are gone! No, Margaret and Billy won't take me. They will stop! I'll show them!
cpt_pancreas ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:42:33 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Journal entry 5059: It's been 5 days since Billy and Margaret locked me in here. I would be starving if they hadn't sent that lab assistant in....the corpses still haven't returned. There was a lot of noise a few days ago like people were fighting, this joke has gone on too long now. That rash on my arm keeps spreading, its nearly at my legs now.
Ixidane ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:59:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Journal entry 5060: I heard a researcher who tried to escape from this mansion was shot last night. My entire body feels burning and itchy at night. When I was scratching the swelling on my arms, a lump of rotten flesh dropped off. What the hell is happening to me?
Seanobi777 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:00:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Bloody scrap of paper
Journal entry 5060: The screaming in the hallways have stopped. I am running out of meat here. I need more. What have I done? I need help! No. I need more meat. More.
cpt_pancreas ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:07:02 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Journal entry 5061: I can smell them, they'r coming. paper below smeared in blood
Seanobi777 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 06:25:58 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Mangled piece of blood soaked paper
Journal entry 5062: Blood mm gud fewd, itchy tasty kill kil
Paladir ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 13:57:02 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This whole thing reads like an SCP
Esscocia ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:49:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Lmao
downeysoft ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:46:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Journal entry 5054: Wait a minute, somethings not right with subject 67
In_the_heat ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:17:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Lived until 2003? That's not terrible.
nPrimo ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 00:08:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
GavinZac ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:44:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
2.43 am, coincidentally also the number of glasses of rum I'd had. I do hope I didn't spoil your evening.
nPrimo ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:09:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Lol, dude I was just joking. :p
Banzai51 ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 18:39:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's a result.
Pretagonist ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 19:09:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Naw that's easy.
thijser2 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:34:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If you can prove any chance then there is bound to be a nobel price for medicine and maybe peace in there.
thatbossguy ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:41:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's more the the whole accent was being covered up by the government.
Cobbleking32486 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:28:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
yes they made them put on new accents.
RenderedKnave ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:31:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well why don't you ask Aperture then.
eadochas ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:08:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Died from what? Old age?
ninja_stalker ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:07:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Considering the amount of radioactivity exposure, probably cancer. If they were lucky. Could be radiation poisoning.
eadochas ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:50:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The massively conservative death rate estimate by the WHO (as in, very pessimistic, extremely unlikely to be this high) is 4000 for the entire cohort (of about 600,000 liquidators). This represents a lifetime death rate of 0.67% due to activities at Chernobyl. This is a statistical study and not based on any medical date.
Two separate studies conducted by doctors in Ukraine and Russia conclude that from cohorts of 66,000 and 10,000 liquidators, there was zero evidence for increased rate of cancer mortality as a result of exposure. There was a statistically significant increase in the number of cancers, but not the mortality rate (ie nobody extra died).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquidator_(Chernobyl)#Exposures_and_health_effects_experienced_by_liquidators
For reference the total number of ARS deaths was 64, out of 600,000.
No-Known-Alias ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:08:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The study would examine their post-exposure timelines for that very purpose, to see how long each survived and what circumstances might have prolonged or shortened their lives.
ladydeedee ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:52:56 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There are suvivors and they try to lobby and protest but hey, it's still Russia.
Check out the book Voices from Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich. It's all recent stories from survivors. Powerful dark stuff that gives real insight to the days weeks and months after the disaster.
aqf ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:47:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's the thing though, they may not have died or even experienced adverse effects. Radiation has different effects on different people, and some people have received many times a lethal dose and survived. It's discussed at length in the book Atomic Accidents by James Mahaffey.
stanhhh ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 18:56:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You had a joke there. And you fucked it up.
2059FF ยท 22 points ยท Posted at 20:12:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
How many times do you need to retire from the army?
Polskyciewicz ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 22:41:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Maybe they had a deal where if you worked an extra three minutes, you could get your buddies out of the army without them being exposed to the radiation.
If you figure you're fucked, might as well work for an hour and have your 19 closest friends be able to go home relatively safely.
Andromeda321 ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 23:17:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think it's a case of "we need to do this job or more people will die so I'll volunteer again so someone else doesn't have to" by that point.
wasniahC ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 23:25:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I mean, you don't really feel the effects of it short term, do you? I don't really know, so if someone knows differently please correct me, but I would have thought you wouldn't really notice it short-term.
So you've been up there 3 minutes.. and you know another 3 minutes would help a lot. Another 3 minutes won't hurt, right?
RGBrazberry ยท 18 points ยท Posted at 20:25:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
One thing to make it sound even crazier wasn't that the robots couldn't do the jobs, it's that the radiation was so high it caused them to break down. Think about that, radiation so potent it broke down a machine, and they sent people in.
[deleted] ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 22:32:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The radiation was simply ionizing. Meaning it messes with the chargers of the semi conductors, when you take away their polarity or change it with a few hits of ionizing radiation it disrupts things. Hence why you need to shield from it and have purpose build components which is expensive.
In humans it does the same crap just to the DNA, can make it dimer or knock out sections by changing charge. Its the bodies repair system that inst perfect and can only do so much.
RGBrazberry ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:16:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I knew this, but was pointing out that it wasn't that the robots were incapable in the first place, it's that they malfunctioned because of the radiation.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 14:59:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If radiation is on a scale of 0-100. And a chip fails at 10 on the scale, and safe might be 100 and we send a robot in and it fails, what we could guess is at minimum the radiation would be min 10 and maximum 100. So using a computer chips failure to gauge strength is not a great measure.
TBBT-Joel ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 19:13:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The thing is it's very simple either you die from acute exposure. Or get cancer at an increased rate.... or nothing ever happens and your fine. There's no mystery and if you didn't get cancer then well you're fine.
just_disturbed ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 22:14:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My dad was actually in the red army in '86. He told me that at one point it was in question wether or not his unit would have been send there for exactly that task. He said they all were extremely happy, when the officers told them that they were able to talk high command into letting them remain at their current position in Kazakhstan. I probably would not be alive today otherwise.
Blewedup ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 20:36:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
great footage of them wearing improvised lead suits is out there somewhere...
here's a photo
iwumbo2 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 23:23:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That looks so thin. I feel like they could have given them thicker lead shielding and not have had it impair their movement.
bongozap ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 21:45:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Here's the Wikipedia article on them with a lot more detail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquidator_%28Chernobyl%29
eaglessoar ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:14:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So they all died?
Dervendel ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:00:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Why did they have to clear the debris off chernobyl anyhow?
Andromeda321 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:22:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Because it was on fire. And you don't want to leave highly radioactive stuff exposed so it can seep into the environment for years.
Vio_ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:53:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
THis podcast: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06bp2vm interviews some of the people who were there.
One guy said they had pretty solid protection (or so they'd been told). He pulled off his gloves, and they were bright red. Couldn't even put them in the sun. Went to the doctor immediately.
"Did you wear protective gloves?"
"Yes."
"Yeah, your hands are chafing from the gloves."
I guess since he's still alive and didn't mention that they'd melted off, that it was the gloves and not the radioactive material.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:40:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's surprising how few deaths Chernobyl caused though, really. People tend to mis-remember it as a human catastrophe when really almost all impact was environmental. The most brutally cynical interpretations of Chernobyl, the ones so far out there virtually no scientist agrees with them, still say that all direct and indirect deaths from Chernobyl weren't even 100,000 people. That's a holy shit number, but hardly as if someone nuked a city or something - and again the number is a huge exaggeration.
Most reputable estimates say just 3,000 - 15,000 people ultimately died from Chernobyl, some decades later. The UN figures maybe 4,000.
Really...Chernobyl was sort of a small deal when you think about it. Hear me out. A terrible reactor design running a very risky experiment that then blew up so hard it launched a two million pound chunk of concrete across the complex, and all we lost was like 4,000 people and 1,000 square miles? Don't we lose that much from coal like every month?
Chernobyl was a bad design that got fucked up unfathomably bad, and yet the results weren't even 1/100,000th as bad as what fossil fuels did to us in the 20th century nor were the results anywhere near as bad as people feared a full-blown meltdown of a shitty reactor might cause.
Really, really sucks that like four nuclear disasters, only two of which even did major damage, completely turned the world against the safest power source mankind has ever seen - by a factor of thousands.
hellli ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:46:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In the first days after the explosion they basically came at night to young soldiers' homes to "take them away". Very few knew about where they were going or what was expected of them. In the Soviet union, you couldn't really ask questions.
[deleted] ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 20:04:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Last time this stuff was discussed on Reddit, there was a comment from a man who lived in Russia at the time and was a young teen. He said his village was rounded up and forced to clean up aftermath on pain of being shot. Most of them died, he survived and eventually moved to the US.
Andromeda321 ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 20:08:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I frankly doubt that Internet story is true. We would have heard about it by now.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:12:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I would believe it. I know a few families who lived in the USSR around the same time and their stories are horrible, and completely unable to be proven because of coverup and the general state of the USSR record keeping at the time.
DrDragun ยท 1413 points ยท Posted at 16:11:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's a little unclear exactly who were the 3 mentioned, but the names of the people involved with this overall effort were:
Aleksandr Akimov
Vladimir Babychev
Aleksandr Nekhaev
Ivan Orlov
Gennadievich Uskov
Leonid Toptunov
PXSHRVN6ER ยท 1464 points ยท Posted at 17:44:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Im naming my son Babychev
Edit:how is this my most upvoted comment? Reddit is weird
PM_ME_YOUR_WOLOLO ยท 1705 points ยท Posted at 19:10:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
shhh bbychev is ok
skankboy ยท 164 points ยท Posted at 20:03:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
how is bbychev formed?
[deleted] ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 20:04:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
soRi fOR yor Lotts!!1
Minor_Tom ยท 18 points ยท Posted at 21:57:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
When a mummy chev and a daddy chev love each other very much...
whalebreath ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:36:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Vey instain
Glandrid ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 01:13:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
do away with them
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:30:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
radiation exposure
FluidMechanics77 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:08:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
bby making
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:14:33 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
by bbymama and bbyddy going boom-boom
JimiofEden ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:37:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
u alway bab bbychev
bluebeau7 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:30:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Babychev forever unclean!!!
DabuSurvivor ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:16:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not after the radioactive water he isn't.
cccviper653 ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 18:53:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
When he's able to comprehend that he has a horrid name, just tell him to cry some more and make him half a sandwich since you know he's fucked when he gets to school.
JNS_KIP ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 19:18:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
life ain't easy for a boy named babychev
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:05:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I've been doing nothing but teleporting sandwiches this whole time!
PXSHRVN6ER ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:45:15 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As long as its a BLT
retnemmoc ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:04:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just name him Chev. He will be Babychev for the first few years anyway. He will probably want to go by chev when he signs the legal emancipation documents in his teens.
PXSHRVN6ER ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:44:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is brilliant. When that day comes he will be known as Manchev
emilvikstrom ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:02:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sounds like a mafia boss.
PXSHRVN6ER ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:45:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Don Babychev
M0T0RB04T ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 04:15:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
FUCK YOU AND YOUR FUCKING EDIT! JUST LEAVE IT BE, IT WAS FINE!!
PXSHRVN6ER ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:12:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yikes. You right though.
Badoit1778 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:59:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Go ahead for the Babychev as the middle name. When I hear baby names from people I know I think another boring stereotypical french name, or oh that's so quirky just like so many other English babies in the last 5 years.
But Babychev. That's something, plus he was in the water at Chernobyl so there's a good enough reason behind it too.
Nasty-Ass-Nate ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:06:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
baechev
punsohard ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:15:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
eyy babchev you wan some tuck?
PXSHRVN6ER ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:42:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If that tuck isnt chub, I'm not interested.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:11:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's a last name that's like naming someone turner smith or Simpson clarckson
PXSHRVN6ER ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:52:22 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I know a guy named Karl Nicholas and he turned out fine. I mean he set his house on fire in middle school but still.
notthecolorblue ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:49:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Its mostly because your comment is close to the top level and this is a huge subreddit.
PXSHRVN6ER ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:14:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
True. Reddit is still wierd.
bungopony ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:01:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
baechev
DivideEtImpera8 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:08:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Except it's a surname and it's pronounced with the accent on the "y" not the "a" like in baby.
PXSHRVN6ER ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:48:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Even better. All the honeys finna be all over him.
GrizzBear97 ยท 655 points ยท Posted at 17:50:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
TIL all russian last names end with -vowel-v
Roland0180 ยท 901 points ยท Posted at 18:10:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Vladimir Putinov.
Kesht-v2 ยท 2849 points ยท Posted at 18:31:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Funny, he never struck me as the procrastinating type...
EDIT: Thanks for the gold, stranger!
CheeseFantastico ยท 96 points ยท Posted at 18:45:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You might say he was Stalin for time.
JtheE ยท 51 points ยท Posted at 19:03:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He ain't Russian, that's for sure.
planet808 ยท 20 points ยท Posted at 19:53:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He isn't gonna Chekhov "be punctual" from his to-do list anytime soon.
SadGhoster87 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:13:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He gets borsched easily.
DiggerW ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:06:44 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
God l, the double meaning here is too beautiful.
I_Am_Jacks_Scrotum ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 19:58:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Let's see how many more of these we can Trotsky out.
spacenb ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:50:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tolstoรฏ and Dostoyevsky would disagree.
odguy34 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:33:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
He has plenty of time though, the guy's practically rol-Lenin it
Edit: Spelling. I guess I didn't get top Marx
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:06:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
rol-Lenin it*
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:09:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ok, you get high Marx for that one
Herbacio ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:33:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Lenin, Stalin, Putin. Something-in.
Wraith_GraveSpell ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:40:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just add some Razz to that and you got Rasputin!
Roland0180 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:08:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Boris Yeltsin!
DrTelus ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:16:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yagoda be able to come up with something better than that.
...That Russian history MA finally proves useful.
[deleted] ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 18:44:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oh you!
jamiryo ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 19:09:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I was having a fucking horrible evening, thanks for making me chuckle
Kesht-v2 ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 19:11:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Glad I could "help."
I've had a shit week myself. Here's hoping it's up from here for the both of us.
ConflictingDuality ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 18:43:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Goddammit
zdawg5465 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:43:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Groan
porcelain_pounder ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:08:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fuck it, you made me giggle. Have an upvote.
traconi ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:47:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Daaaaaaaaaaaaad stop!
dunaan ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:59:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I dunno, he still hasn't gotten around to that whole global domination thing yet
Marzman315 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:22:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Goddammit....
RyanRagido ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:26:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Judging by all the overly manly pictures of him, I'd say he is
puts sunglasses on
Putinout.
Silent_Cutlery ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:40:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That was an outrageous pun
The_Cantabrigian ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:50:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
ZING!
as_a_fake ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:28:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, I've got a new joke now. +1
Kesht-v2 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:43:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'll add that +1 to my Marx.
TheUltimateSalesman ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:41:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Gold is irradiated so mother russia can track and kill you for funnzy joke you make.
Kesht-v2 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:09:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'll be sure to give Vladimir Komarov their regards when I die. I'm sure he'd appreciate my pathetic little joke over the one they gave him.
TheUltimateSalesman ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:49:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In mother russia, parachootskies are optional.
Richisnormal ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:28:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Do you hear words in your head when you read? I just kind of see them.
Kesht-v2 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:32:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It depends. I do tend to sub-vocalize more when I'm trying to make sure I understand something 100%, especially if it's confusing or badly written. But for the majority of my reading I skim and process visually.
In this case though I saw the pun in scanning and just went for it.
RdMrcr ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:38:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't get it... can someone explain?
ThatFag ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:05:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Bahahaha! Fucking brilliant, mate. Just bloody brilliant. Great job!
31773 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:08:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fucking beautiful
SadGhoster87 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:13:58 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is the best joke ever.
WritingPromptPenman ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:13:55 on January 20, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Go.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:00:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This was great. Just in case no one else sees it I want you to know
ARealSlimBrady ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:12:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't know about history, but you're the most under appreciated person of this thread
Public_Fire_Hazard ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:35:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That would be Stalin.
Decantus ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:04:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just well done sir.
ElGringoPicante77 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:11:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
LOLOLOLOLOLO
Kesht-v2 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:13:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
FTFY.
Just because we're Russian around with all these jokes doesn't mean we forget the great Eduard Khil
christocarlin ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:31:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oh for fucks sake. This is serious. Not punny
danielleiellle ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:54:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You joke, but genealogists have a hard time tracing the roots of his name. It's not common and there's little public knowledge about his lineage.
The-SpaceGuy ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:54:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
what a way to prove him right.
clownsLjokersR ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:51:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
rasPutin
Adddicus ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:43:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Josef Stalinov.
EnderWyatt ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:01:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ivan Pickupanddropov
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 18:36:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
thetonyhightower ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:03:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Stalin's last name at birth was Djugashvili, which might still prove the point.
mk09 ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 20:02:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He was also Georgian, not Russian.
thetonyhightower ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:25:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fair point.
SweetNeo85 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:06:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Peter Alexeyevichov
pavelbure ยท 960 points ยท Posted at 18:47:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Russian taxi driver. Pikup Andropov
[deleted] ยท 49 points ยท Posted at 20:00:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Someone watches Car Talk
experts_never_lie ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 23:09:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I've always found Car Talk rather boring to watch. It's much better to listen to it.
pavelbure ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:15:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Never heard of it. It was a joke an old hockey coach used to tell when the Red Wings had all the Russians. Larionov, Federov, Konstintinov, etc
TheFuckNameYouWant ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:52:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I like it even more now. Thank, Mr. Bure.
DatSnuffleupagus ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:50:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Paging /u/FedorovNotFederov
pavelbure ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:32:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No I meant this guy http://chuck-nbc.wikia.com/wiki/Victor_Federov I swear
Is_A_Velociraptor ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:33:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
M'comrade
tips Fedorov
FedorovNotFederov ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 04:40:39 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
echo_birch ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:21:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
CAR TALK
pavelbure ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 20:23:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Car drive, people talk
GENITAL_MUTILATOR ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 21:26:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I too enjoy car talk
rordan ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:50:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
lmao
shotgun_smoke ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:29:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is soo funny.
woopsifarted ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 10:34:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Doctor that performs circumcisions.. Peter Chopalottacokov
PhlogistonParadise ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:43:19 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's the name of a Russian imperial stout made by Hale's brewery.
Lothar_Ecklord ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:17:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I thought it was Andropmiyov?
Klukitsi ยท 126 points ยท Posted at 18:15:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
For females, they end in a. For example, these people's wives would be Akimova, Babycheva, Nekhaeva etc
MountainDewAndSmokes ยท 138 points ยท Posted at 19:21:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Russian last names are adjectives and act like normal adjectives, taking gender, number, and case.
Another familiar example is Anna Karenina and her husband, Alexei Karenin.
Not to be confused with patronyms, which are not family surnames, they name the person's father.
For example, Anna Arkadyevna Karenina shares a patronym with her brother, Stepan Arkadyevich Oblonsky. They are, respectively, the daughter and son of Arkady.
Oblonsky's female children will be known as [whatever] Stepanevna Oblanskaya
invalid_dictorian ยท 18 points ยท Posted at 19:30:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's like a puzzle!
X (N-1)ev[na|ich] (N)[a]
ImnotBoboramI ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:57:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That is also why there are so many ovich and ovna names in the US. When they would come from Russia and other culturally relevant areas to the US there was quite a bit of name confusion. When asked their name they would give the First and Patronym thinking that's what was asked. So Boris Borisovich, or Robert son of Robert. That would become their American Name. The surname was a family name, in small Russian communities it wasn't a necessity to utilize the surname/family name as often. If you were Robert son of Robert they knew who you were. My great grandfather fled to the US not long after the Bolshevik Revolution through "Poland" and my grandfather was born here and was the last to be named in this way. But his was Americanized in that he just took his fathers first name as his middle name. Our surname luckily stayed with him and sounds more Italian than Russian. My grandfather had explained this all to me some years ago.
wraith_legion ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 02:07:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Why is "Poland" in quotes? Was it under somebody else's rule then?
ImnotBoboramI ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:53:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
During the time of the Bolshevik Revolution, apparently many of those who fled came through Poland. My great-grandfather was amongst a large surge fleeing at the time who claimed to be Polish, when they got to the US, and fled through Warsaw. Some feared those in support of the revolt would murder those who were in support of the Czar and others feared to have a stigma to being attached to a country in turmoil.
Not sure how many actually did this over time. But being "Polish" was apparently better than Russian or even Ukrainian at the time. I know they came through Ellis Island back in the day but I don't remember the exact year. I know it was between the Revolution and WWII. Most of this came from stories handed down by my grandfather from his father. I'm hoping to return to Ellis Island some day and find the paperwork. Apparently if you know enough you can search for your ancestors records.
juliokirk ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 03:31:33 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I've always taken issue with people not understanding this when making characters for books, movies, comics, etc. The Black Widow for example, from the Avengers, is called Natasha Romanov, which is wrong.
butyourenice ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:59:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wait I thought Russian last names were indeed patronyms? Are they not?
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:10:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Russian names are, iirc, [given name] [patronym] [surname]. For example, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.
giantbfg ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 20:22:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yep, but between men and women the patronym and last name will change. If Putin had a sister her name might be something like Irina Vladimirovna Putina
spacenb ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:53:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's fascinating and makes me want to take Russian courses for my mandatory language courses even more.
Domskhel ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 00:13:28 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Would recommend, it's a beautiful language and rich culture.
lawlrhus ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:45:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If that doesn't work out take Russian Lit. You'll learn about the naming structures in that course too.
spacenb ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:37:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ah, I wish the universal literature courses at my university gave Russian lit classes. Unfortunately all the classes are pretty much focused on francophone literature (as I'm in Quebec, Canada), which I know because my major is literature haha. I don't think I'll have any trouble getting Russian classes though since there are two teachers in the language department for it.
InfanticideAquifer ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 10:34:27 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dooo iiiit.
Taking Russian was super fun.
CyberByte ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:23:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Why do the brother and sister not also have the same surname?
jflb96 ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:40:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The patronym is different because one is Arkady's daughter and the other is Arkady's son.
The surname is different because Anna got married.
Deyffan ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:41:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Anna Karenina took surname of her husband.
abetheschizoid ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 04:00:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It annoys me when ignorant authors get it wrong in their books. Makes me wonder what else they didn't research.
Cuyler1377 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:40:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Said this above, but after you did, but before I saw your comment... Sorry.
LordoftheSynth ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:43:58 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So, Vladimir Putinova.
(oh god, is that polonium being added to my coffee?)
mikehockerts1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:26:02 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Akimova, Putina Madika, Mayca Ucumma. All good Russian women's names.
GrinningManiac ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 18:33:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's a genitive construction. It means "of", usually as in "of the clan X" or "of the line of X" or "of the town of X"
So it's a bit like "-son"
[deleted] ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 18:09:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Vladimir Putin disagrees, gently ofcourse.
MrTittyFingers ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 18:27:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Evgeni Malkin
Alex Ovetchkin
Artemi Panarin
Vladimir Putin
Stalin
Lenin
So basically they all end in V or N
silverfox762 ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 18:45:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Stalin and Lenin are both pseudonyms. Stalin's real name is Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili. Lenin's real name is Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov.
PlayMp1 ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 19:04:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also note that Stalin wasn't Russian, he was Georgian, so his name is gonna be basically completely different.
silverfox762 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:04:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, if certain people had their way, Georgia would be part of Greater Russia.
ThereIsBearCum ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:48:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sergei Ignashevich
Artyom Dzyuba
Aleksei Berezutski
Valen_the_Dovahkiin ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:10:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They can also end in either -ski or -sky like Alexander Nevsky although they are much less common. Ukrainians and those of Ukrainian descent will also oftentimes have names that end in o like Alexander Dovzhenko.
dawajtie_pogoworim ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 18:53:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's similar "-son" in English names. However "-ov" (and similarly "-ova," for females) denotes possession (specifically, it's the genitive case), so it was also used to russify foreign names as well as denote nicknames and affiliations.
So the last name "Ivanov" means that somewhere down the line, someone in that family was an Ivan. That can cause confusion, because Russians also have a patronymic name (a middle name derived from the father's name). So the name Ivan Ivonovich Ivanov would be "Ivan, the son of Ivan, of Ivan's family".
Bonus: the other popular Russian surname suffix is "-sky" (as in Dostoevsky), which denotes either an association to a place or that the person's ancestor was a serf (more or less a Russian slave). I was told that Dostoevsky is derived from a place called Dostoevo (so, "Fyodor Dostoevsky" becomes "Fyodor of Dostoevo"). However, the name Ivanovsky would almost certainly denote that an ancestor was the slave of a man named Ivan.
Double bonus: Other users are discussing Putin. I couldn't find a serious discussion of the etymology of his surname, but it's most likely derived from the Russian word "put'" meaning "way" or "road."
Kralte ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 18:36:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
-ov just means son/descendant of, kind of like -son in Scandinavian names.
You could take all all those names and slap on -ov to get family names, Aleksandrov, Vladimirov, Ivanov, Leonidov, Gennadievich is strange because it is also a family name, a double in fact.
Gennady is the base name, some descendant could be Gennadyev which is just another variant of -ov, but then there is the third level, Gennadievich, -ich signifies 'little' or 'junior', basically just means descendant of like -ov -ev. So he would be MacGennadyson in some imaginary land.
DJSkrillex ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 18:16:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Bulgarian names end with "ov", too.
Example: Berbatov, Dimitrov
Female: Berbatova, Dimitrova
WearTheFourFeathers ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:42:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm...a little horrified by this mental image. She's casually smoking a cigarette with dead eyes, wearing knee-high black boots and flicking rabonas into the net from 20 yards out. Like a tired-looking Malotov Cocktease from Venture Bros. with silky-smooth first touch.
goldpeaktea314 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:12:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Vladimir Putin would like to have a word with you
buttery_shame_cave ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:31:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
the endings deal with parental lineage - i think it's a holdover from back when names in russia/slavic countries were patrinomic(based on who your father was) or descriptive of your job(smith, stabler, shitraker, etc)
hjschrader09 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:41:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They all end with a valve
TheoMasters ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:29:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ukrainian ;)
Banzai51 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:40:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Before it was settled on The Russian Five, we always joked that Red Wings line was the "-ov line."
danwroy ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:42:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Except for Babychew
jeffhext ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:43:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"Pat, I'd like to buy a vowel!"
"Go ahead."
"V!!"
"Sorry. Dan, your spin."
enfermerista ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:53:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If we're talking about a male. Most surnames get an "-a" stuck on the end for a woman.
Dano_The_Bastard ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:34:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Like - Olga Korbut and Nellie Kim? ...It's Christian names that get the 'a'. ValentinA...SvetlanA...LudmilA...etc.
Just saying.
GotMoFans ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:10:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Weren't they from Ukraine?
TBBT-Joel ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:14:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is Ukraine. It means son-of IIRC?
ProjectFrostbite ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:37:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's their patronymic name. It seems traditional in England (from what I can tell, I live there) to have your middle name be somebody you're related to. My middle name is my father's name. In Russia, it's a big tradition. -ev and -ov are just the two endings, and mean "son of". (I'm happy to be corrected on this, but I believe it's how it works)
For example, Vladimir Putin's full name is Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. Vladimir, son of Vladimir Putin.
freeworldslave ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:38:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My Russian born last name was Klitchkovin
JonnyBox ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:45:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Many, but not all. There is also the 'in' ending, and the 'ko' ending, and Baltic 'as' and 'is' endings that have found their way in.
hwarming ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:58:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
For women they add an a to the end. So aleksandr's wife or daughter would have the last name Akimova
wtsd ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:06:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Most of them do. In most cases it is -v [m] or -va [f] or -n [m] or -na [f]. 1: Mr Ivanov and Mrs Ivanova. Mr Leonov and Mrs Leonova. Mr Nikolaev and Mrs Nikolaeva. 2: Mr Nikitin and Mrs Nikitina. Mr Nikulin and Mrs Nikulina.
As far as I know, most Ukrainian last names and with -ko: Savchenko, Vasilchenko, Nikitenko.
HunterGames ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:07:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Russian last names are actually different for male and female, even in the same family. For example the ending -ov is for male, and the equivalent would be -ova for the female.
PRMan99 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:17:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If you are male. If you are female, it's -ำva.
bikefan83 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:19:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not quite, e.g. Putin, Pushkin. To be fair, I have no idea if there's other endings than 'v' and 'n', except that all women's surnames end in -vowel-va, e.g. uskova, orlova, putina, etc.
Cuyler1377 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:39:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
For men, yes... For women, append an -a to it. Like Novikov/Novikova.
thedrew ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:45:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
-ov/-off means "son of" in many Slavic languages. It's just like -s/-son in English.
lambdaknight ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:48:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not all, but many and only if they're male. Female last often end names end in -vowel-va. It's kind of the equivalent of "O'" in Irish surnames: "of" something.
TheFuckNameYouWant ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:51:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alex Oveckinov
Sentazar ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:58:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"Of"
or Varoujavich would be like of Varouj also. I donno, not russian but similar culture our last names end in IAN which is like belonging to that group.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:13:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ukrainian...
Shaban_srb ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:24:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm not completely sure, but I think it indicates "possession". Ie., Leonid Toptunov's ancestor was probably called Toptun or such, and it would literally be Leonid Toptun's.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:27:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
ev, ov, and in are the most common ones, though others have appeared through immigration, deliberate changes (for example, some wanted to hide Jewish ancestry, especially in the first half of the 20th century, and the adopted names persist), errors and other factors.
crawlerz2468 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:53:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Cheat sheet: last names, like all Russian nouns have genders. Therefore male last names will end in consonant, but female last names (even though it's the same last name let's say) will end in a vowel.
Example. My granfather's last name is Strizhevskiy. My grandmother's - Strizhevskaya.
bluecanaryflood ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:20:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Russian surnames have a couple of common endings: -ov/ova, -in/ina, -oi/aia, -ii/aia, but these are not all of them. Also, Russian names typically include a patronym, which ends in -ovich/ovna or -evich/evna. It's a pretty complicated system.
http://lisahayden.com/lch/Russian%20Names.pdf
CptnAlex ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:58:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Only male Russian last names would end that way. Female names would end with "va".
I.e. Akimova, Babycheva, etc
Edit: not all Russian names actually end in "v" by the way
vicereversa ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 18:45:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Those are middle names. All men take their fathers name + ov or ev. Women take their fathers name + ovna.
CanuckPanda ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:22:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Too lazy to check, but -ov/-ev is basically the Russian suffix for males, ie. "Ivan's son" is Ivanev/Ivanov, and "Aleksandr's son" is Aleksandrov (In the case of the Russian suffix -ovich/-evich, you could roughly translate it as Of the Sons. In the case of Rurikovich, the rough translation would be Of the Sons of Rurik; the dynasty of the sons of Rurik")
In the same, the female suffix is "ova" or "ovna", as in "Ivan's daughter" becoming "Ivanova" or "Aleksandr's daughter" becoming "Aleksandrovna".
A more wellknown comparison would be the use of "-(s)son" in Scandinavian last names. Ivan's Son in the Scandinavian convention would be Ivan(s)son (the second 's' being dependent on which Scandinavian language we're discussing).
cheese007 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:33:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
For the record, the divers were:
Valeri Bezpalov
Alexie Ananenko
Boris Baranov
Every time I see this posted I try to memorize their names. These guys deserve to be remembered.
Load04 ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 18:25:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not that I'm picking on you or anything but Gennadievich is... well, something like a "third" name. You see some slavic names have the third part in them. It's basically like #NAME# #SURNAME# #MODIFIED DAD's NAME#. What I'm trying to say that Gennadievich is those #DAD's NAME# part, it was either Gennadiy or #NAME# Gennadievich. I know it's overcomplicated and I probably look like a douche pointing that out but I have to say this. Still it's really nice that you found the expanded list of the names, just a little mistake doesn't reduce it's weight. Cheers :)
JNS_KIP ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:18:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
fuckin douche
xv323 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:59:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Aleksandr Akimov and Leonid Toptunov were not anything to do with the diving. They were technicians who were on the console in the power plant the night the explosion occurred. The official report laid the blame pretty squarely on them and on a man called Anatoly Dyatlov, who was their direct superior, for failure to follow safety protocols that led to the explosion. It's now known that report didn't properly apportion blame to faults in the design of the reactors but even so, the conduct of the people who were in control of the reactor at the time of the accident was far from exemplary. Toptunov and Akimov did put in great effort immediately following the explosion to get water into the reactor to cool it down - not having realised at the time that the reactor basically wasn't there any more - and they died a few weeks after the explosion. Dyatlov died, I believe, sometime in the 1990s.
throwawaygoodvibes ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 17:20:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Their names should be on top.
quyla ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:07:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
TIL I share a first name with a Russian hero.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:42:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's a lot of 'ov's
Prince2w ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:11:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thank you for putting the names on these heroes
plincer ยท 1680 points ยท Posted at 14:32:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That is the way die. Sacrificing yourself to save millions from what would have been widespread gruesome deaths.
[deleted] ยท 2970 points ยท Posted at 16:25:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
imhereforanonymity ยท 2598 points ยท Posted at 16:34:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not screaming in terror like the rest of the people in the car.
Stopikingonme ยท 969 points ยท Posted at 16:42:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Shut up dad.
Phildudeski ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 18:34:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah dad. Go back to sleep
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 17:17:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ok, but you'll have to tell me where Dad is first.
Coolsam2000 ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 18:48:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He went out to get a pack of smokes 3 years ago. He'll be home soon.
RealBuoy ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 17:26:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
With his gay boyfriend, of course...
tarsn ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:01:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
he's beating OP with jumper cables
dunaan ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:52:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jack Handey, actually
cinepro ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:22:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Shut up Jack Handey
SexualPie ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:45:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
thats not even a dad joke tho
Stopikingonme ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 19:49:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You must not have a dad. I'm sorry.
sfielbug ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:45:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's racist!
grapearls ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 19:58:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You woke me up!
pinotpie ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:17:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
*plane
tigerspace ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:38:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And not while having his balls tickled.
SweetNeo85 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:03:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
tboneplayer ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:31:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
FTFY
krabbby ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 18:25:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm thinking blimping accident. And not the kind where I'm in a blimp that's crashing, I'm picturing me standing on a hilltop and I get hit by the blimp.
I want my descendants to have a great story to tell.
Justafatguy481 ยท 15 points ยท Posted at 16:38:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I am sure they would have also.
The_curtain_feather ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:14:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The good thing about death is it's only tough the first time..
DaneMac ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:28:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'll be honest. That's not how death works.
DavidG993 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:15:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Like everyone else? Jesus, that's grim.
SgtSlaughterEX ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 17:27:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'd rather die In my own bed, at the age of 80, with a belly full of wine and a girl's mouth around my cock.
xXSJADOo ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 18:34:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You really think at age 80 you'll still have the values of a 13 year old?
Appetite4destruction ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:54:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
God willing, yeah.
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 18:56:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
You look at for a map
DialMMM ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 20:40:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me too, your wife gives great head.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:09:58 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
She learned it from watching your mom work on me, so...
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:12:01 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fucking rekt
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:54:28 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You see that ol' boy ain't got nothing after that.
GavinTheAlmighty ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:12:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't think that's how your granddaughter will want to remember you.
alpacapunched ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 17:50:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ain't never gonna happen man
Pester_Stone ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:26:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Coward.
Ethical_Existential ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:29:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Shoot... That was my next guess after "going out in a hail of bullets and a blaze of glory"
Butt_Stuff_Pirate ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:46:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I want to die with a breast in my mouth and a mouth around my cock
eroticdiscourse ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:48:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That sounds all great but you could dream something terrible is happening
MannCoEmployee ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:14:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah. I wonder if people who die heroically think they're very heroic when they're dying.
Brotaoski ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:50:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In your own bed. At the ripe old age of 80 A belly full of wine. And a whores mouth around your...
hundycougar ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:05:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Why tiptoe through life to arrive safely at death?
Crackers1097 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:17:17 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'd like to die doing something high octane and fun, like skydiving
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:17:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'd rather die in battle, with a sword in my hand
altiuscitiusfortius ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:36:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
How would I like to die?
In my own bed, with a belly full of wine and a maiden's mouth around my cock, at the age of eighty.
kiddo51 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:52:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm confused. You wouldn't rather die doing something badass to save countless lives?
crantastic ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:25:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If you don't believe in an afterlife, what's the difference? Dead is dead.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:55:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
[deleted]
PredictsYourDeath ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 18:34:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Boy do I have some bad news for you... The flames will wake you up long before death
sigma932 ยท 481 points ยท Posted at 16:17:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And yet somehow history has mostly forgotten these brave people, it honestly upsets me.
flipmangoflip ยท 404 points ยท Posted at 16:37:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We can choose not to forget them.
Grey-fox-13 ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 17:43:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Choose not to forget whom?
arsenale ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 18:38:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"His name is Robert Paulson-ov. His name is Robert Paulson-ov."
sigma932 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 16:47:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We certainly can, I just wish that these kind of sacrifices were more well known. Nothing restores my faith in humanity quite like real examples of absolute selflessness.
rarely-sarcastic ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:30:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There are things we can do. Perhaps if they have any family left we could at least write to them or collect money for some sort of tribute to these men.
Blewedup ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:31:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
i have chosen that.
i will always remember these three dudes.
2a0c40 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:49:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Forget who?
charlie_snuggletits ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:24:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Who?
Deaths_head ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:40:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nah
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:45:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
But we won't, see you guys next time this thread is reposted
abutthole ยท 154 points ยท Posted at 16:48:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
History didn't forget them. You can't forget someone you never knew.
abusementpark ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:48:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The nature of history forgetting something is that people in the future never learn about it.
KeatingOrRoark ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:08:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
But they're clearly not forgotten.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:15:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Everyone gets forgotten eventually. Great heroes and villains alike.
polyinky ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:14:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, we're here talking about them.. so.. there's that.
JManRomania ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:30:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Like hell it has. I don't go a day without thinking about how these guys ran to their deaths, like how when I was a little kid, firefighters, paramedics, and cops ran up the North Tower stairs, even after the South Tower fell.
Too many people have used their bodies as tools, so that others may live, for me to forget it.
Especially after being raised to very strongly internalize the concept that a body is sacred, holy, almost, and that you shouldn't be careless with it.
vale93kotor ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:16:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is the worst part about it all.
himself_v ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:48:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
History has forgotten more bravery than we could ever imagine.
NumberNull ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:00:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hey, it's not like they had a big ass and a sex tape or anything.
Whiskey-Tango-Hotel ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:11:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ever since I saw a til of them a year ago or so I think of them occasionally. They shall not be forgotten.
AvailableRedditname ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:27:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
For them it doesnt matter. All that matters for them is what they did when they were alive.
SrpskaZemlja ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:58:28 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If they were from the other side of the iron curtain, we'd all have their names drilled into our heads every year at school. It's really a shame how much of a role political ideology plays in our education.
AdmiralTiberius ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:43:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
History forgets everyone eventually, you cease to exist but time marches on. 200 years after your death, no record of anything you ever did will be remembered.
Eltotsira ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 16:56:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wow, Deja vu for this comment
xxkoloblicinxx ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 18:47:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Except they didn't die pleasant or particularly fast deaths...
They died a slow horrible death due to radiation poisoning which basically caused their flesh to melt off slowly over a couple days...
Very strictly NOT how I want to die.
throwaway92715 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:42:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's how you get a seat next to Thor in Valhalla :P
TheWatersOfMars ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 16:13:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, if I had to go, that's totally the way die.
Frostivus ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:22:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The worst part is you've never heard of these people. The heroes that get ingrained into our minds are the ones that resonate with society's current trends and cultural movements. Not to undervalue the contributions they've done, from transgender activists and woman suffragists to the 4-year old kid who dialled 911 for her mother who fainted, to the brave cops facing danger daily and enduring the police hate fro the public, but in these days the term 'hero' is a loose label that can be used for virtually anything.
These guys are barely even acknowledged out here beyond a wikipedia page and a well-read redditor who decided to spread the word.
mulduvar2 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:44:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nah bro, they would just all turn into ghouls.
ayryyn ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:11:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few...
eleven21 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:29:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
RIP Russell Case
vVvMaze ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:49:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And most people have no idea who they were.
Nelson1107 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:02:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It doesnt actually say they die. I would assume they did though
drfetusphd ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:29:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This reminded me of that one scene in the movie, Sunshine.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:43:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It would have been a great harm to the NATO countries if they key this blow up, right? I mean, Warsaw Pact countries too, but NATO countries will get hit with radiation?
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:07:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If you're ever faced with this, be sure to make it real casual. Take your wallet, phone, all that stuff out.
"Hand me the water breathing thing"
Call at least one dude a pussy and dive in.
cacky_bird_legs ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:13:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I get what you're saying but I'd die pretty much any other way besides radiation poisoning. If I had to have done what they did I would request a gun to shoot myself immediately afterwards.
fireysaje ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:25:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Radiation poisoning is arguably the worst possible way to die
newsjunkee ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:38:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That started a religion once
rum_ham_jabroni ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:49:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A glorious death is all one can strive for.
PM_ME_MESSY_BUNS ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:01:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'd rather do it when I'm very old though
AvailableRedditname ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:28:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Why is this the way to die?
F0sh ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:16:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Of all the ways to die, radiation poisoning is one of the last ones to choose. It's horrible, slow, painful and inevitable. One by one, your bodily functions fail. Assuming I somehow got the opportunity to be a hero in this way I'd probably chicken out but I would certainly never do it unless I was assured I would be killed painlessly after it was determined I had incurable radiation sickness.
hail_termite_queen ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:02:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And then end up in some reddit thread years later...
snackies ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:47:15 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not that they weren't brave but they would have also died in the blast. It's not like they had a choice, they're dead either way.
[deleted] ยท -4 points ยท Posted at 16:05:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
StonedAthlete69 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:17:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's human nature to aspire to martyrdom. Everyone wants to be remembered after their gone, and martyrdom is the easiest way to achieve that.
Kohvwezd ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:18:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That isn't martyrdom though.
kingjoedirt ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 16:26:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I suppose you could argue they died because of their belief that millions of lives are worth more than their own and in that way became martyrs. That seems like a stretch though.
Kohvwezd ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:20:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think that you are a martyr if you are a victim of persecution due to your beliefs, which still wouldn't apply. Whatever, it's not that important.
FizzleShake ยท 1443 points ยท Posted at 15:25:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Why didn't they just use a big stick
GodIsntASurgeon ยท 2636 points ยท Posted at 16:02:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
well why didn't you say anything
green715 ยท 1186 points ยท Posted at 16:09:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Those lives are on u/FizzleShake's hands
radpandaparty ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 18:30:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The wrong kid died.
magnumstg16 ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:27:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Let's play with these machetes. It'll be fun!
Mitch_Mitcherson ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 18:50:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Their username is what took this comment from just blowing air out of my nose, to giggling quietly to myself at my desk.
185139 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:19:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You fucking monster...
Sardoodledum ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 17:35:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He spoke too softly.
weepy_boy_santos ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 18:41:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He did he was just speaking softly
TheGenocides ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:54:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
YOU LET THEM DIE, /u/FizzleShake!
Im_thatguy ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:29:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
somewhat relevant
UsuallyQuiteQuiet ยท 450 points ยท Posted at 15:36:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
... Fuck.
thatwasnotkawaii ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 16:25:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me
imnotyourcousin ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 16:27:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
;D
ocelot-senpai ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 17:59:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, considering you're not my cousin...
OrientalOtter ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:46:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Username checks out?
rspeed ยท 23 points ยท Posted at 17:46:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
'Cause, you knowโฆ corners.
Though they did later use robots (derived from the USSR's badass Lunokhod lunar rovers) to take readings in parts of the reactor building that were too dangerous for humans to enter.
FizzleShake ยท 57 points ยท Posted at 18:16:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If they can make a nuclear reactor I bet they can make a stick that turns corners
Posthume ยท 46 points ยท Posted at 18:32:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The stick industry was left in a sorry state by years of communism.
rspeed ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 18:55:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In a short timeframe?
VolvoKoloradikal ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:21:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's amaZing. (No idea why my spell check does that with the 'z', looks really gay.)
I didn't know RC/robotics technology had gone so far in the 80's.
rspeed ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:48:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
80s? They were driving one of them on the Moon less than a year after Apollo 11.
[deleted] ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 20:19:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sticks weren't invented until 1992
PubliusPontifex ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:03:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You mean a thinglonger? Good news!
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 21:16:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
like this?
BLASPHEMOUS_ERECTION ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:41:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Slow down there. They didn't have time for some complex engineering contraption.
THE_CHOPPA ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:24:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Time .
FizzleShake ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:15:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well they had 10 days after the accident to come to the conclusion of putting 3 guys in
THE_CHOPPA ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 18:30:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Are you suggesting that the scientist working at chernobyl never thought of the idea, hey lets use a stick to release the valve?That 10 days was more than enough time to solve ALL the problems associated with an unexpected nuclear meltdown? That perhaps they didn't try every possibility before 3 men sacrificed their lives to save everyone.I think they deserve more respect than , " why didn't the use a stick lol"
TheoMasters ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:27:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We are crafting some sort of poking device.
OniTan ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:44:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I assume you would have to twist a valve.
Year3030 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:50:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's Russia dude
cacky_bird_legs ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:15:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The citizens of the Soviet Union: extremely brave but unbelievably incompetent.
platysaur ยท 309 points ยท Posted at 15:34:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If there isn't a movie about them, they should be. The whole meltdown happens and culminates to the ultimate sacrifice.
[deleted] ยท 134 points ยท Posted at 16:19:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
[removed]
Tchocky ยท 258 points ยท Posted at 16:26:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That was the K-19. Soviet missile boat that had a severe coolant leak.
The repair crew only had chemical protective suits instead of radiation suits.
May as well have gone in naked.
PromptCritical725 ยท 1630 points ยท Posted at 18:48:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
"Radiation suits" (something that will protect you from high levels of radiation) do not exist. Never have.
The first thing to understand is the difference between radiation and contamination. Basically contamination is the shit and radiation is the stink.
What are commonly referred to as "radiation suits" are anti-contamination clothing. They're nothing special. Just a cloth or plastic suit designed to prevent radioactive materials in dust or water from getting on your skin. Basically the same as a chemical suit. It keeps the shit off your skin, but can't do anything about the stink.
In other words, if you in the presence of an unshielded high radiation source for too long, you're fucked no matter what you wear.
The only way to reduce radiation exposure is Time (Less time smelling shit), Distance (Stay away from the shit), and Shielding (Put something between you and the shit).
"OK, smarty pants, why not build the shielding into the suit?" Glad you asked. Radiation harms you because it causes interactions with the atoms in the living tissue of your body. If the DNA gets screwed up enough, you get cancer. If the dose is really high, the cells get killed. The only way to shield against radiation is to use a material that has a better chance of having the radiation interact with it as it passes through it before it gets to you. If a particular radioactive subatomic particle passes through you, it does precisely nothing to you, but why take the risk? Here's where it gets sticky.
In addition to the strength of the radiation, you need to take into account the type. There are four:
The paradox here is that the more reactive types penetrate less, but do the most damage if they get to living cells.
Sometimes this is explained with the Cookie problem: You have four cookies made out of shit. Alpha, beta, gamma and neutron. You have four exclusive choices: Hold it in your hand, put it in your pocket, eat it, or throw it away.
Solution: Hold the alpha cookie in your hand. The outermost layer of your skin is dead and will react with the alphas, blocking them from getting further into you. The skin cells shed as they do naturally. For god sakes don't eat it because the tissue inside you is still living.
Put the beta cookie in your pocket. Although it's more reactive than the alpha, it will still be stopped by a shield as thin as a piece of paper. Fabric is enough.
The neutron cookie? Throw that bitch away. Now. Nothing you can wear will stop neutrons and they will fuck you up.
Eat the gamma cookie. Nothing you wear can shield you, but gammas stand as much of a chance of passing through you doing nothing as they do in reacting. Way less risky than that neutron fucker.
So the anticontamination suits are fine to prevent you from getting beta shit on your skin and possibly ingesting alpha shit. What about neutrons and gammas? These need relatively massive substances to stop. Water and plastic actually do a pretty good job of stopping neutrons because they contain lots of hydrogen atoms to interact with. This is also why they fuck you up so bad. Better the plastic than you. Problem is, you need a pretty substantial thickness and a suit that would protect you would be too heavy to move around in. Luckily, the vast majority of neutrons are produced in nuclear reactors and bombs. Neutron shielding a reactor is easy (put it in a big water tank) and luckily nobody with half a lick of sense is testing nukes. For gammas, becaus ethey are high energy photons and not actual particles, you need something thick and dense. Lead works well, but it's density makes it extremely heavy. You know that apron your wear when getting an X-Ray? You might be able to wear that around for a bit, but it's only covering the front and Gammas are hundreds of times more powerful than X-Rays. So wearing something that can block gammas is out of the question. Interestingly, I've seen gamma sources used for
X-rayingRadiographing steel that were shielded with depleted uranium. Yep, using a very dense radioactive material to shield a much more powerful radioactive material.Source: Trained in nuclear power by the US Navy. Hence the profane and memorable examples.
TL;DR: Radiation suits cannot exist. Stay away from shit cookies.
emilvikstrom ยท 104 points ยท Posted at 19:04:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
But what do austronauts wear to protect them from space radiation then?
SPOOFE ยท 152 points ยท Posted at 19:41:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Space suits are probably more concerned about thermal radiation (and maintaining pressure, of course).
SgtSmackdaddy ยท 111 points ยท Posted at 23:48:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Actually in space, cooling is more of a problem than staying warm. Vacuum is an incredible insulator so the astronaut's body heat and heat from the heat from the photons of the sun are really hard to get rid of. Hence they have complex cooling systems built into the suit.
rudolfs001 ยท 20 points ยท Posted at 01:43:33 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Could you describe some of the cooling systems?
00yoshi ยท 18 points ยท Posted at 02:02:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Spaceships have radiators to radiate the heat away and astronauts might have a pressurized fluid cooling system (think of liquid nitrogen)
butter14 ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 05:27:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
How can you radiate the heat away in a vacuum?
Shadowex3 ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 05:55:02 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
direct radiation is still possible, just far less efficient than terrestrial cooling solutions.
Kenny__Loggins ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 06:11:38 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Actual radiation travels best in a vacuum. I'm not sure what he means by radiator though.
Edit: yes, that's exactly what he's talking about
Look here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacecraft_thermal_control
Under the "Thermal Control Systems" tab and "Radiator" heading.
Spaceships use different types of devices that emit infrared radiation. Radiation is the only mode of heat transfer that requires no medium, so it's a good use for this application.
Logan_Chicago ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 06:13:06 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Use a suit that circulates a coolant (water), remove heat with a heat exchanger cooled by ice, let ice sublimate into space. Source
00yoshi ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 10:40:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I wonder why they don't use liquid nitrogen or such, it vaporizes and thus takes more energy than letting ice melt.
Vaughn ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 13:31:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The heat of vaporization of nitrogen is 5.56 kJ/mol. That's as compared to water, where the heat of fusion (i.e. melting) is 6.02 kJ/mol.
Granted, N2 has a molecular weight of 14, compared to water's 18. So nitrogen wins...?
But water also has a very high heat capacity in the liquid range, which means you can push a lot of heat into it without increasing the temperature too much. Water is also a lot easier to make dense.
TLDR: It's complicated.
00yoshi ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:10:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Damn... But it is 77 degrees hot and you can heat it up to 310 degrees, or is the ice also very cold?
What_Is_X ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 07:57:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Radiation is the only type of heat transfer that doesn't require a medium to transfer to. For example, the sun radiates quite a bit of energy to the earth :)
Woodsie13 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:56:38 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Objects will radiate heat away as light, even in a vacuum. This is how infra-red cameras work, and why things start to visibly glow when they get hot enough.
Galevav ยท 26 points ยท Posted at 05:14:12 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Here's a site with a lot of detail for you! LOTS of details, about possible spaceships. The whole site is a good resource for sci-fi authors who want to get scientific details right. The site's author admits that if you don't break any of the rules of physics, it can end up being a boring story: no FTL, fighters don't make any sense, stealth is impossible. You want to break as few rules as possible, and as small rules as possible, or there can be unintended consequences. If you're good, you can make those consequences work for you.
Just-my-2c ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 13:56:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
nice read! thanks :)
datenwolf ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 11:35:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's a beautiful documentary series about the Apollo program and one episode is entirely dedicated to the space suits. They go into the thermal management in depth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJbztthNrVQ
malevshh ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 01:59:49 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If I - drunk as I am - had to design one now, I'd use pipes filled with water under the needed pressure on the inner layer. The energy from outside makes the water evaporate, which causes a huge thermal loss. Then lead those steam pipes outside of the suit where the water condenses, then bring it back into the system. No idea if this is what they do,but it could work.
bunabhucan ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 02:58:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The apollo missions used space suits that did roughly this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_Cooling_and_Ventilation_Garment#Space_applications
The cooling is supplied by ice sublimating to water vapor in the vacuum of space.
rudolfs001 ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 02:06:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The point of the parent post is that a vacuum is a great insulator (meaning very little conduction/convection).
What would cause the water to condense? The steam would hardly be at enough temperature to be able to radiate away that much heat.
r1243 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 13:06:27 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
no conduction/convection in a vacuum, there is nothing to conduct or convect to. only radiation goes through a vacuum.
meinkraft ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 02:10:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't think this would work very well, as the water won't easily condense again without something else to transfer its heat to. This kind of system would work well in air, but I'd think not so much in a vacuum.
If you just vent the water vapour out and accept losing it though, that part works.
malevshh ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:17:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A vent to lower the pressure could work, indeed. You could also use the enthalpy to heat the suit for the astronaut.
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 03:32:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Actual space suits use radiators.
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 03:32:56 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Actual space suits use radiators.
Kenny__Loggins ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:10:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
To lower the pressure for what exactly? That won't help it condense.
xeyve ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:12:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Outside of the suite is vacuum. One of the best thermal insulator. The water in the pipe would stay hot.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:33:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You're not going to get steam in a space suit. They do use liquid cooling though, but have a radiator to radiate the heat into space.
AnarcoDude ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 00:29:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also they're relatively safe inside earth magnetoshpere, also their suits are made to work in low G, which helps because they are massive slightly flexible suits of armour.
FoxtrotZero ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 06:56:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The majority of the thickness of a space suit is actually ballistic protection against micrometeorites.
most_low ยท 53 points ยท Posted at 21:32:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Cosmic radiation is one of the biggest hurdles for a manned mission to mars. Several years of radiation exposure is going to give them cancer.
jswhitten ยท 56 points ยท Posted at 23:35:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
4 to 7% increase in fatal cancer risk for a 900 day Mars mission (see page 11). That's the additional risk above the 16% (for men) and 12% (for women) of dying of cancer if they stay on Earth.
It's not insignificant, but it's a lot safer than, say, smoking.
funnysad ยท 65 points ยท Posted at 23:56:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
so if i smoke I can say i'm braver than an astronaut, got it
[deleted] ยท 39 points ยท Posted at 00:25:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You're a goddamn hero.
DrMax4 ยท 33 points ยท Posted at 00:28:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thank you for your service
HappyHapless ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 03:49:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Give this man a medal.
Augustus_Trollus_III ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:42:45 on February 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If you want to travel to mars, I have some green stuff you can smoke.
funnysad ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:14:30 on February 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That was a month old comment. what are you doing with your life?
Augustus_Trollus_III ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:10:28 on February 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
getting high?
TheLastEngineer ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 00:45:52 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What I got from this is that we're not going to be allowed to smoke on mars.
cthulhushrugged ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 09:44:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You'll be allowed, but you'll be politely asked to step outside the habitation bubble first.
batquux ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 04:34:29 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You won't be able to smoke on Mars.
Augustus_Trollus_III ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:43:49 on February 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If it's any consolation you'll still be able to grow potatoes from your own shit though.
Stribog ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 00:08:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I was reading a while back about a using a thin wire mesh to create a magnetic field around the ship and the astronauts. That seemed like an interesting way to solve that problem. I would think that could also work on the ground.
Synaps4 ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 04:13:52 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Unless you power that electromagnet with something insane, its not going to be strong enough over the short distances involved to change the path of a fast moving high energy particle, imo.
chibstelford ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 06:43:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I believe what hes talking about is more of a Faraday's cage, and would be used to block electromagnetic radiation from stars, not particle radiation.
emilvikstrom ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 12:36:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Maybe if the electromagnet is built by some kind of superconductive material?
Debellatio ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 13:59:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
why the +30% delta in fatal cancer rates between men and women? this seems like the difference is potentially even more pronounced if the significant difference in gender lifespans isn't mostly due to cancer.
is most of that due to prostate / male-only cancer, compared to female-only cancer and the difference in early detection rates and treatment options?
*I understand males can also get breast cancer.
jswhitten ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:06:12 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
From what I've read it's a combination of male-only cancers, lifestyle differences (smoking, drinking, diet, weight), and that men are less likely to visit their doctor and report symptoms early enough.
Psyladine ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:12:42 on January 21, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
With men its your ass & balls, who wants to handle that shit, women are far more likely to handle their boobies enough to detect early cancerousness.
[deleted] ยท -24 points ยท Posted at 23:57:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Why the higher risk for men? Also kind of sucks since males are better suited to be astronauts (more physical power per kg of bodyweight, more mentally/emotionally stable, etc.)
bistromat ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 00:34:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not to shit in your Cheerios, but women are actually better suited for many, if not most aspects of spaceflight -- they're more likely to get along for long periods of time, better at forming/maintaining community, smaller (and so consume fewer resources). This is all backed up by NASA research.
spaghettiputs ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 01:47:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Would you mind sharing what studies you're basing your conclusion on?
bluedrygrass ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 13:57:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's questionable XD
And for the size part, there are men of all sizes and shapes
Rathadin ยท -10 points ยท Posted at 04:56:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not to shit in your Cheerios, but Season 1 of Bear Grylls The Island shot that to fucking shit and back. The women didn't even have fucking raised beds until the last week on the fucking island. On top of that, they sucked shit at working together.
And what happened on Scandinavian Island Survivor, or whatever the fuck it was called, where the men had a functioning community and the women were about to fucking starve to death because they couldn't stop bickering and didn't want to work?
I call bullshit on your NASA research.
The_Doculope ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 05:07:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
People NASA considers fit to be astronauts tend to be a very different type of person to those that TV networks want on their reality shows.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 06:57:29 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wait, no. Are you sure?
Shit. There goes my dreams of a Kardashians In Space television series.
Rathadin ยท -9 points ยท Posted at 05:16:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I will 100% give you that. I still call bullshit.
I would love to see the first Mars mission with a much prettier female astronaut and like... 2-3 just dogs... I mean really gnarly looking lady astronauts. That fucking ship will be set to self-destruct in less than 6 months.
bistromat ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:15:04 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I feel sorry for you and hope you learn to move past your fears.
Rathadin ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:21:10 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Don't feel sorry for me. I have a job I love, people I love, and a city I enjoy living in. Also, its not a fear. Its just people being people.
[deleted] ยท -5 points ยท Posted at 00:56:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I just now read that paper, woman actually have more cons compared to men? Talk about digging your own grave, argument-wise. Lol.
spaghettiputs ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 01:47:29 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Can you please link the paper
[deleted] ยท -13 points ยท Posted at 00:38:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What I'm saying is actually backed up by NASA and ESA research. Besides, I don't even need to tout research: who more often have drama, and if there's drama, who resolve it quickly: a group of dudes or a group of girls? Exactly.
[deleted] ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 00:57:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Never thought I'd be wishing for a biased Corinthian.
bistromat ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 00:41:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm kind of sad because I thought you were being serious, but you're trolling.
https://www.nasa.gov/content/men-women-spaceflight-adaptation/
no_face ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 01:18:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
TLDR from that link:
Worse in women:
Worse in men:
[deleted] ยท -6 points ยท Posted at 00:52:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Can't find the paper right now but it basically said that when you send people there, you want them to be ultimately self-sufficient, and that costs should be a secondary thing. Yes its more expensive to launch male astronauts, but when heavy stuff needs to be forced open or whatever, that 5'4" woman ain't going to be able to do shit.
lomelyo ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 01:17:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So they need a man like you to open tight jars for them and women shouldn't go there because there would be so much drama?
Jesus Christ dude it's a mission to Mars. Whoever goes there is going to be have a fucking amazing curriculum and your concerns are not the concerns of anyone who isn't a moron.
epicsheephair ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 00:15:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Zbt_R_d_V4
GeckoDeLimon ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 23:12:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not to mention that Mars has shit for a magnetic field. No Van Allen belt. We'd have to become nocturnal.
[deleted] ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 01:53:38 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
[deleted]
wraith_legion ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 02:15:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I remember seeing a research paper done recently that said there may be kilometer-wide caverns under the surface on Mars. Due to what we know about the soil composition, old magma tubes and chambers could get much larger than they are on Earth (at least, I think that was the reasoning).
[deleted] ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 02:36:49 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
[deleted]
shieldvexor ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 06:36:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Safer from magma and whatnot, but they could still collapse
stormbuilder ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:16:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Except for the alien cavern monsters of course
wraith_legion ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:17:16 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The big trouble is using earthmoving (marsmoving?) equipment on Mars. We are now pretty proficient at picking up single rocks and analyzing them, but nobody has tried to build a Mars- or Moon-ready bulldozer yet. Even if there's a kilometer-diameter magma dome perfectly formed, we'd still have to tunnel down to it and build an entrance. That's going to be the tough part. Although, 20 tons of heavy equipment is just as heavy as 20 tons of radiation shielding.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:21:22 on January 19, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think the idea would be to send the mother of all 3d printers, eventually.
wraith_legion ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:26:22 on January 21, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Right, yeah. But the only good printing material is an iron oxide-laden soil and some water. On Earth, we have the luxury of using very controllably pure materials for construction of heavy duty equipment.
For example, the principles of the diesel engine have been known since the 19th century. One of the reasons we can operate them at much higher pressures now is the slow advance of materials science.
Turning Martian soil into usable metals and alloys would take a network of processing plants, foundries, and forge shops.
We would have to send a 3D printer that can bootstrap itself from mudbrick construction to nodular cast iron drop forging, by building basic foundries and mills and working its way up the ladder of materials. The only 3D printer that has done so thus far is humanity, and we had coal in an environment where coal is fuel.
Imagine doing the last 150 years in an environment where the only fuel is solar cells dropped from space.
Granted, we know what our end goal is, so it'll only take half the energy, but we still need to smelt out steel and form ceramics to make crucibles, and use the resulting materials to make better steel and crucibles, and so on.
Your "Mother of all 3D Printers" would be a tremendous leap forward, much greater than anything imaginable now.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:48:50 on January 21, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, but conceptually, there's nothing that says it can't be done. Our understanding of robotics is such that, while it would be tedious and expensive to do so, every step COULD be automated and passed off to another automated system. The only part that's unimaginable is the cost.
To quote Heinlein
โAnything which is physically possible can always be made financially possible; money is a bugaboo of small minds."
wraith_legion ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:29:07 on January 21, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Right. I'll agree with you straight away and say that there is no obstacle but money for this entire enterprise.
However, there's a lot we don't know. We're not sure which metals can be found on Mars, and if they're in similar minerals as on Earth. We're literally only scratching the surface. As in, we are picking up rocks we see on the surface, scanning them, and making guesses.
Could there be appropriate precursors to form recognizable metal alloys and other materials? Yeah, of course. Could we be entirely lost? Yeah, of course. Can we find our way if we throw enough resources at it?
Yes, emphatically. I hope we do so within my lifetime.
TheMadmanAndre ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 08:06:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My experience in Space Engineers says that hiding underground in a meteor shower is a bad idea: the meteors come from underground at night...
3jt ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 00:22:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Bullshit. Several years of exposure to radiation on the journey to Mars is likely to increase their LIFETIME risk of getting cancer by a few percent, depending on the mission parameters, the spacecraft's design, solar activity, etc.
It's far more complex than cancer or not cancer. The way the body responds to radiation at low levels for long periods of time is not well understood. Even if an astronaut gets cancer during the mission, there are hundreds of types of cancer, many of which won't kill you for years.
Also, we're all eventually going to die. I would take a one way trip to Mars in a heartbeat. So would any astronaut.
x3iv130f ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:39:20 on January 18, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Mars and Earth are at their closest every 26 months. That means any Mars trip would be only about 2 years in length.
There are dozens of men and women who've spent 1-2+ years in space. source. Radiation is a hurdle, yes, but one we already subject our astronauts to regularly.
I recommend this lecture by NASA scientist Dr. Robert Zubrin. Mars travel is very feasible with current technology, there is just no will to go.
redwin ยท 26 points ยท Posted at 22:01:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In low earth orbit (the only place in space humans have gone since Apollo) astronauts are largely protected by earth's magnetic field the same as you are on the ground (the field is really big and extends far beyond the earth).
For multi-month voyages to other planets (Mars being the obvious one) radiation is a large problem that is still not entirely solved, but which will need to be before we can really send humans out there.
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 23:13:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
clearly we need lead-armored exo-suits...
Gigniotron ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 00:18:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Or an exo suit that creates its own magnetic field...
00yoshi ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:09:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What is all that about magnetic fields? OP said that your dead skin cells already protect you from alpha and your suit from beta radiation, a magnetic field won't protect you from neutron and gamma radiation either.
boydorn ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 03:21:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The earth's magnetic field deflects charged particles from solar winds, the majority of which is electrons, protons and alpha particles. It's fair to say that in low earth orbit, a LOT less particle radiation (the most damaging kind) will reach you than if you were in interplanetary space. Gamma radiation isn't a major problem in space. Gamma is produced at the core of stars where fusion is taking place, so most of it is absorbed before escaping the star (there's a loooooot of mass it has to pass through!).
In space the most problematic type of radiation is one we don't deal with on earth because of the magnetic field and the atmosphere protecting us. Closer to the surface of a star particle radiation gets thrown out into space, and some of it is really heavy (like Fe +26 ) and moving at close to the speed of light. These heavy, energetic ions are called HZE ions, and they are the cannonballs of radiation. The walls of spaceships cannot stop them, and they are hugely more damaging than the kinds of radiation we tend to encounter on earth.
To give an idea of how damaging they are, we're used to the idea that a radioactive particle or a gamma ray causes damage by barrelling into something important in the cell and imparting a crapload of energy to whatever it hits; this tends to mess up things like DNA. HZE ions have been shown to cause damage in cells they don't even touch, just by passing by them. These mofos have a serious amount of energy.
How are we supposed to avoid something we can't block? Maybe we could deflect them with magnetic fields, but considering the energies of HZE ions they'd have to be very strong. OR maybe we could line the walls of spaceships with aquaria, and let our ornamental fish absorb most of the radiation for us? JK the water would probably help...
VikingFjorden ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 05:33:28 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Indeed, but hypothetically a minor one.
troubleondemand ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 04:15:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Would it be possible to use the Earth to block the radiation?
Meaning, we launch our ship at a specific time in Mars & Earth's orbits so that the Earth is always between the ship and the Sun.
Or does radiation curve/bend around the earth because of it's gravity or magnetic field?
chazysciota ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 05:56:12 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
The earth is not large enough to eclipse the sun from a Martian perspective. Not even close, remember the solar transit of Venus a few years ago? But even if it were...
I think this would require a delta v greater than current technology can provide, and greater than our tender meat bodies can survive. Due to the nature of Earth's and Mars' orbits, such a trip would have to happen either waaaay to fast, or way to slowly. And then, once you got to Mars, you'd have to stay on the dark side forever, since Mars has no magnetosphere. Plus if you ever wanted to return, the entire trip back would be in clear sun anyway.
00yoshi ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 10:45:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
But aren't spaceships made out of metal? Why doesn't the metal block out all the radiation? Compared to polymers, it has no holes where ions (especially heavier ones like Fe+26) could pass through. And do stars which produce heavier materials also radiate them away? Then we would have uranium radiation which is radioactive by itself... Haha.
boydorn ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 15:43:38 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
OK I think I overstated the penetrative abilities of HZE ions. Your point about dense materials blocking them is true, and even spacesuits and clothing will collide with them and halt then in their path.
The problem is that a single one of these ions getting through shielding causes a lot of damage. If one hits your clothes or skin, the incredible energy it carries will be converted into secondary radiation, causing damage to tissue around and behind the point of impact. I don't know the specifics of what secondary radiation can be produced in what circumstances, but I would imagine that these things hitting the hull of your spaceship would also produce x rays and gamma rays that then happily continue onwards and through you.
Edit: as to whether stars are able to radiate heavy ions, iron is the heaviest element I know of that is regularly found in cosmic radiation.
Edit2: So, stars don't really radiate heavy ions (except rarely in CME or solar flares), they mostly get thrown out by events like supernovae or by neutron stars. Things like galaxies colliding might be responsible for the highest energy forms of cosmic radiation!
00yoshi ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:47:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, we could collect them with a magnetic field and use them to fabricate new spaceship parts, but I think that there aren't that much Fe ions floating around there to make that a feasible resource farming option. How much energy (joules or ev) does a Fe+26 ion from our sun have? Do they also come in less ionized forms?
boydorn ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:49:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah I reckon iron ions are pretty rare, the vast majority of cosmic radiation is beta and alpha particles (98%), followed by free electrons (1%) and then heavier ions as well as some antiparticles (the remainder, combined). I don't think you'd even be able to collect a gram of iron in the time it took you to fly to mars (source: vaguely educated guess).
HZE (high [H] atomic number [Z] and energy [E]) ions are naked nuclei with a charge greater than +2; so basically anything larger than an alpha particle. As to whether you can get less ionised forms: matter inside a star is really really hot, so it goes beyond gaseous into plasma. Plasma is achieved when temperatures are so high that electrons escape their orbit around a nucleus, so anything ejected from a star isn't initially going to be a complete atom, it will be a naked nucleus or an electron.
There are a load of types of Cosmic Rays (not really rays, mostly particles). Our sun mostly produces some of the weakest forms: protons, x-rays, ultraviolet and down. I say mostly because sometimes other stuff will get thrown out by solar flares/CME. Next come galactic cosmic rays which are thought to originate from supernovae, black holes, other massively energetic phenomena in our galaxy: this includes HZE of common elements (up to iron basically) and can be MUCH more energetic. There are extragalactic rays that are even more energetic and come from outside our galaxy, we don't really know where from...
So basically, our sun doesn't throw out iron, that will only happen if it goes supernova! As to the amount of energy I couldn't find anything specific, but wikipedia says that the energy of cosmic Fe+26 is in the order of MeV compared to solar radiation being in the order of 100s of eV.
Here, have a webpage.
00yoshi ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:00:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And would heavy rays (like Fe) cause visible holes in your body or on not so stable materials?
AOEUD ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:05:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Cosmic rays are charged and highly energetic but are normally turned away by the Earth's magnetic field. They kick the shit out of anything OP mentioned.
NoahFect ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:21:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They'll use their water tanks as shielding on a Mars mission, most likely.
Sluisifer ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 23:36:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The space station is still protected by Earth's magnetic field.
The Apollo astronauts just took the radiation hit.
A Mars mission would likely be designed to keep as much mass as possible between the crew quarters and the sun. You can also take a less efficient, but faster, transfer orbit. Straight shielding is highly impractical because mass is so difficult to deal with.
Radiation really argues for a large craft to go to mars, perhaps a Mars Cycler or just a big mission. The more fuel, water, and supplies you take, the more you can shield.
Cheeseblanket ยท 26 points ยท Posted at 19:21:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Space suits
Jessica_T ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 19:37:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And water tanks inside a spacecraft.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:52:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Lets go Spacecoach!
PromptCritical725 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:14:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not reall familiar, but from what I gather the suits offer pretty decent protection from cosmic rays, but Astronauts (and pilots and flight attendants) get way more radiation exposure than nuclear power operators.
UScossie ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 21:59:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Most of our astronauts are spending their time in relatively low orbits (ie around the ISS) which keeps them within the magnetosphere and thus shielded from most stellar radiation.
theSharkness ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:14:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We're protected from 'space radiation' by the Earth's magnetic fields, for the most part. Most of the radiation is trapped in the Van Allen belts.
Emphasis on most. Astronauts routinely report flashes of light in their vision, which I recall reading as radiation (not sure which kind) reacting with their retina/nerves/eyeballs in just the right way.
As for the Apollo missions, I believe we were extremely lucky/prepared in that all the missions fell in a period of low solar activity.
spaghettiputs ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 01:56:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The flashes are called phosphenes but they're caused by cosmic rays.
chazysciota ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 06:00:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jesus. That's some serious mental preservation right there.
OverlordQuasar ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 00:15:22 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Time. The suits protect them from ultraviolet and infrared (heat), limiting the time spent outside the capsule protects them from x-ray and some gamma, and the fact that the sun doesn't usually produce all that much gamma, outside of solar storms, keeps them relatively safe from that. Nevertheless, one of the big concerns with going to Mars is the fact that there is still enough gamma rays in space to fuck you up given a few years, and, outside the Earth's magnetosphere, there is a ton of other crap the sun shoots out that will also fuck you up.
Bartweiss ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 00:57:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They wear a space ship, mostly, but that's really not good enough.
The big metal+ceramic ship around them certainly cuts down on radiation, and even a space suit will block alpha and beta radiation, but nothing is stopping interstellar gamma. There just isn't enough for fast or guaranteed health problems.
Sending people to Mars carries a meaningful but not horrifying increase in cancer risk (single digit percentage points). It's nasty, but probably acceptable if people sign waivers.
Sending people to Pluto, or putting them in cryo sleep to go to Proxima Centauri, though? It's a death sentence by cancer unless we solve either shielding or radiation sickness treatments.
chaosmosis ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 06:16:38 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We could also try to get better cures for cancer. While there isn't any possibility of one single cure, a lot of treatments work on a large percentage of subtypes, so getting the risk down far enough might be manageable. At least, as manageable as the other potential solutions are.
Bartweiss ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:24:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In addition to more effective cures, I think we would need cleaner and less invasive cures.
Some of the most reliable cancer cures consist of early detection + organ removal (for instance, the near-perfect cure rates for Stage 1 testicular cancer). Others, like leukemia, involve dangerous operations and difficult donor matching.
If we're accepting cancer as the price for long-term space travel, we're accepting cancer as a part of life for astronauts. A lot of our existing treatments view cancer as a radical, one-off event - we can't go pulling a dozen affected organs out of the same person.
That said, some of the more flexible (unproven) approaches to cancer could work wonders. In particular, the attempts to run treatments through the bloodstream could deal with widespread cancers all at once.
Compizfox ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 22:11:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nothing. It's just a risk they take.
The cosmic radiation in the ISS is comparable to that on a intercontinental flight though.
The majority of the radiation coming from the sun is still deflected by Earth's huge magnetic field, so the only difference between sea level and LEO is the lack of a atmosphere that protects you from radiation.
MRadar ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:27:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No, it is not. Don't write off the shielding by the atmosphere. Even in the higher-altitude supersonic flight you are going to get higher radiation intensity, but probably lower dose because of the shorter exposure.
Compizfox ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 12:45:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's pretty much what I meant.
Astronauts in LEO are still well within Earth's magnetic field (which protects them from the bulk of the cosmic radiation), but they lack the shielding provided by the atmosphere.
rlbond86 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:58:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Actually, one of the ideas for trips to mars is to have a water tank with a hollow center to shield from radiation.
User1-1A ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:55:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
http://srag.jsc.nasa.gov/spaceradiation/how/how.cfm
second_to_fun ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:40:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The van allen belt
pATREUS ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:16:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In low orbit you are still protected by the Earth's magnetic field.
AnAppleSnail ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 14:09:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Space suits have minimal protection. Near Earth, the magnetic fields protect you somewhat. Farther away, you hurry to reduce exposure.
tmpick ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 20:37:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A space suit made out of kangaroos?
reatter ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 22:49:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is the first time that I realize it is easier to memorize these three things in German, they are called the 3 As.
Abstand - distance
Aufenthaltsdauer - time of exposure
Abschirmung - shielding
LongStories_net ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 23:03:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's not too bad in English either. We learned that the best protection from radiation are STDs.
padfootmeister ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 23:32:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'd say that easier than AAA because the different letters are easier to identify with a unique word.
Polish_Potato ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 19:39:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So Fallout's power armor will never be a reality...
msd011 ยท 39 points ยท Posted at 20:21:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If I'm reading /u/PromptCritical725 correctly, a suit of power armor might be the only style of anti-radiation armor that could be feasible. The problem as I understand it is that you can't put enough shielding onto a human being to protect them from radiation and still expect them to be able to move. If you put a human into a powered exo skeleton that massively increases their carrying capacity, maybe that changes. Whether it would be practical or not is another issue.
PromptCritical725 ยท 25 points ยท Posted at 20:46:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Robots to do anything requiring a radiation suit will probably happen before the suits.
[deleted] ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 20:55:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 21:22:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah but the suits in Fallout do fuck all to protect you from radiation.
msd011 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:13:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Are you talking about fallout 4? Because the only thing with equal rad resistance is a hazmat suit. If you put the lead lined mod onto the power armor it provides more rad resistance than anything else in the game if I remember correctly.
darksounds ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:34:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's what Radaway is for!
Karzoth ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:26:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They're massive metal tank like suits. The metal could be Lead, lead is good at stopping most radiation.
arkanys ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:00:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You can wear a radiation suit underneath
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 12:28:06 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What about their positronic brains, though?
Wolfbeckett ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 22:01:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It might be feasible, the real reason Fallout style power armor will never be a reality is because it's a lot easier to build something with the same functionality that you control remotely. Power armor is a cool idea for making video games fun but there a lot more efficient/less risky ways to do that kind of thing in real life.
Swissgiant ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:59:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Don't they already have powered exoskeletons? If I remember correctly the only hurdle is short battery life.
KimonoThief ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:37:12 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Exoskeletons are already a reality. They're useful in providing mobility to disabled people, and are more easily controllable than a remote-controlled robot.
Wolfbeckett ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 09:12:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes, for that kind of thing they might be useful. I was talking about military applications specifically. Building a military grade exosuit a la Fallout power armor would be a lot more expensive and risky to deploy, it's a lot easier to just use it as a drone and not have to worry about the all of the extra expense and problems that come from designing it to be useful for a human. Obviously the same is not true of helping disabled people since by definition they have to be able to wear it if it's going to help them get around, it would be useless to them if they couldn't wear it. That's not true for a military suit, which can be just as useful (or even more so since you don't have to take the soldier's safety into account) without having a body physically attached to it.
tahuti ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:45:50 on January 20, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
http://www.oceanworks.com/our-business/services/ads-services/
diving hard suits would also fit in this category (not sure how much shielding would they be able to carry)
kateykmck ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 21:03:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This was a fascinating read. Thank you for the information!
veloxiry ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 21:12:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Made it about 5 sentences in before I knew you were a nuke. I hate that I know this
el_burracho ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 23:16:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Water blocks neutrons...a single piece of paper stops alphas, a piece of lead blocks betas and gammas. Work with radiation every day.
Edit: spelling
crackanape ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:50:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It must be quite rare not to have at least a sheet of paper worth of matter between a person and a significant source of alpha radiation, right? I mean, unless it gets stuck under your fingernail or something.
PubliusPontifex ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 11:53:12 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just don't eat it, your stomach and intestinal lining would be that sheet of paper, but they're alive and will quickly become cancer.
tmpick ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 20:34:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Instructions unclear, shitting in my radiation suit while eating cookies.
Newaccountusedtolurk ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:15:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
DONT EAT THE NEUTRON COOKIES
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 21:04:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thanks for teaching me stuff today. :)
bigtcm ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 00:05:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's an interesting detail with beta radiation (I know because I work with beta emitters in my lab!).
Before I worked in this lab, I had no idea why you wouldn't just use lead to block everything. It's so dense! It blocks everything as long as it's not so heavy that you can't pick it up right?
Some beta emitters are super high energy and generate something called bremsstrahlung radiation when they encounter something dense. When a high energy beta particle runs close by a heavy nucleus (and this occurs more frequently in a dense material like lead), it slows down and emits an electromagnetic wave. In the case of high energy betas, that means it shoots out an X ray.
So using lead to block a high energy beta will successfully block the beta particles, but then you'll also be successfully showered with X rays. Which is why we're supposed to use plastic to shield ourselves from beta emitters.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 06:47:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So what if we shield the lead... With plastic
Mexkimo ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:37:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I enjoyed the lesson! Thanks!
Mintaka7 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:02:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So... what exactly does a neutron do to you if it hits your hand? Would you feel anything?
hashasinsss ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 21:26:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The neutron caught by DNA molecules can cause any atom to become 'weak', thus changing its reactivity-bone formation.
This can cause a crack in the DNA link which will be recognized by DNA repair mechanisms and if the shit is fucked up beyond any recognition (FUBAR), the cells will call quit and undergo apoptosis (programmed cell death).
This mechanism I've told above, if the mutation is not recognized and it is in any important part of DNA string (we call these oncogenes) you may get cancer.
Imagine this times billions of neutrons, and you are dead within hours.
Source: Senior Molecular Biology & Genetics student.
Mintaka7 ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 21:29:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So you're saying neutrons can cause cells to kill themselves? Oh boy... and thanks for answering :)
Serei ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 21:43:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Cells killing themselves is usually fine. They do it all the time (at roughly the same rate you get new cells), and doing it slightly faster isn't big a problem.
The problem is when neutrons cause cells to forget how to kill themselves. That's how you get cancer.
gallifreyan_pleb ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 10:23:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's a thing that I've always found funny, how cells are programmed to kill themselves as a default, and need to be constantly told not to. Suicidal tendencies.
AHucs ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 21:20:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
My understanding is that they decay, and when they do they release ionizing radiation in the form of a beta particle (free electron), and occasionally gamma rays. So it's kind of like a grenade. The neutron itself isn't ionizing, but it can release some nasty stuff. Because it doesn't interact electromagnetically it is very difficult to shield against.
Edit: my post is wrong. See explanation from doymand below.
doymand ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 00:21:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is wrong.
Neutron decay has almost nothing to do with it. The half-life of a free neutron is around 10 minutes, which is so much longer compared to it's travel time (even a thermal neutron is traveling at around 2.2 km/s) from emission to absorption that it can be neglected.
Neutrons will slow down in your body through scattering, mostly off of hydrogen nuclei (the same reason water is used as a moderator in reactors), and these hydrogen nuclei will gain a large amount of energy. And although neutron radiation isn't directly ionizing, the fast moving hydrogen atoms that the neutrons gave its energy to are and will tear chemical bonds in your body.
Neutrons can also create secondary radiation once when they are absorbed by nuclei that become excited and then release other forms of ionizing radiation. However, this effect is secondary and smaller than the neutrons simply bouncing off hydrogen in your body.
AHucs ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:29:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thanks for explanation. I did some reading after my post and I believe you are correct.
Mintaka7 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:30:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thank you.
Compizfox ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:13:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Neutron radiation can actually irradiate other atoms, making them radioactive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_activation
BadGutz-i-got ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:08:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Going into the navy nuke pipeline February 29th. Any tips?
PromptCritical725 ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 22:32:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Get ready to study your ass off. Nuke school is nothing but 40 hours a week of math, physics, chemistry, and reactor principles. A few hours of homework every night. You'll hear stories about insane attrition rates. In reality, probably 80% make it through. Nuke school is fucking expensive to run so the Navy doesn't want anyone to fail out. If you're having trouble, get help from someone in your class who's doing better. It will help both of you. All homework is done in the building since it's classified. This saved my ass because I have a real problem motivating myself to do homework at home. Grades and class standing are posted and kept up to date. If you're competitive in nature, you will want to get in a high ranking. I felt kinda sorry for the anchor-men at the bottom. Logged study hours are also posted so there's informal grade to hours ratio competitions. Basically who's smartest pissing contests.
It's been 16 years since I was there so I probably don't have any clue about any details. Many things may have changed.
BadGutz-i-got ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:52:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thanks for that. You cleared up some stuff especially the fail out rates. I'm super fucking pumped to get through it because I know it'll set me up for life. Any info on the life after nuke school?
PromptCritical725 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:50:20 on January 19, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Depends. After Power School, they send you to prototype, either in Ballston Spa, NY, or stay in Charleston, SC. You will get to request where you want to go, but no guarantees. In NY they have actual "prototype" plants of several designs build on land. In SC (where I went), they have a couple old decommed subs converted for training. Everything is real and operating, but power limits are reduced. Here you will qualify as an operator and get to split some atoms.
The first few weeks will be spend in the classroom getting acquainted with the specific plant you'll be assigned to, then it becomes a self-directed qualification training. Study up on a system or procedure, then find an instructor to demonstrate to, get your check-off signed. There will be training watches too. You stand watch with a qualified instructor. You do everything, they just make sure you don't break anything or violate procedure. This is an excellent time to get some check-outs since you have an instructor's undivided attention. It's all done in shift work, 12 hours a day, 7 days straight. Then you get a couple days off before rotating to a different shift. If you don't like that, then say ahead of the curve. There really is a curve. It's basically a progress line trend. If you're getting stuff done fast enough, you aren't required to do the extra 4 hours. If you qualify early, the rest of the time there is more relaxed classroom time until you're sent to the fleet.
Ahh, the fleet. Here, again, you have some choice in the matter. You fill out what we affectionately call a "dream sheet". Basically a platform (CVN, SSN, SSGN, SSBN) and home port. Then you find out a few weeks later that you asked for a SSBN out of Kings bay and got a carrier out of Yokusuka. Seriously though, I asked for a SSN out of San Diego and got just that, so dreams can come true.
After I got out, I went back home, used my GI Bill for school. Got my EE degree and had littlel trouble landing a decent job. Now I work in consulting and should be clearing six figures in a few years. You may not end up working in engineering or nuclear power, but having the word "nuclear" on your resume is an attention grabber.
Hope this helps.
Rathadin ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 04:51:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I fuckin' knew it... I started out in the Navy on the USS Honolulu, as soon as you got to the "cookies made of shit" example, I thought to myself, "This guy was a nuke..."
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:15:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
TIL Jim Lahey is a scientist. The shit apple doesnt fall far from the shit tree.
mjklin ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:55:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nice shit analogy, Rick
EsotericAlphanumeric ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:22:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
So which one is it, then? If memory serves me correct, the first statement about the cookies is absolutely correct (Alpha slow, very reactive, Beta faster, less reactive), but the second statement throws me off.
IIRC, Beta particles penetrate deeper, ionise slightly less, but are still very, very dangerous.
Your post is throwing me off because the way the bulletpoints are worded clashes with the way the solution is worded. =/
PromptCritical725 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:55:15 on January 19, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Crap. Yeah. Betas are less reactive due to having half the absolute charge, but higher energy because they're lighter and go faster.
golleniel ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:33:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As I was sitting here reading this, I couldn't help but realize that this was the exact same wording and analogies used by a lot of the instructors currently teaching in NPS.
Scrolled down to the bottom and sure enough, Navy Nuke.
PromptCritical725 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:53:21 on January 19, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The curriculum hasn't changed much in the last 15 years then.
ladydeedee ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:56:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You wanna know something super tragic about Chernobyl? The first bio-robots to go up on the roof spent the night before sowing pockets to fit lead sheets in their clothes to try to block the radiation. But they wore nothing on their feet, and the radiation was coming from below...
mattchenzo ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 08:45:06 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I have a random question, and you might have an idea of an answer:
I know everyone who possibly could set off a fuckton of nukes back in the day, and we now have treaties and stuff to ensure we don't fuck up the environment or each other any more through nuclear testing. However, it makes me a little sad that the best cameras that existed at the time all this was happening kind of sucked. What kind of damage would it really do if the UN decided, for science, to set off one more Tsar Bombs so we could see it in fucking high speed 4k HD? I mean, would one more do a significant amount of damage, like each test was really so terrible, or was it the sheer numbers of tests that made things so bad?
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:18:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
From what I remember tbe tsar bomba, if detonated at it s full potential (100 megatons), would have prpducex 25% of the radioactive polution up until then.
mattchenzo ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:23:05 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Holy fuck....
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:28:24 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Good thing they halved it to about 50 megatons. To be fair, it's a complete waste of resources. There's no sitiation where a lighter nuke wouldn't do the job even better. The Russians were just showing off.
Tchocky ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:16:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well shit, TIL. Thanks!
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:52:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
How dare you make me learn, and on the internet no less!
nezamestnany ยท -4 points ยท Posted at 21:33:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Don't worry mate, enough of it's wrong that it doesn't count
1BigUniverse ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:04:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Something about this had loch ness monster written all over it. Glad to see there was no Loch ness monster here.
chookilledmyfather ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:04:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fuck yeah, that description got me pumped to learn more. First time I've really wanted to get more sciency. Where were you when I was at college?
Bravo!
as_a_fake ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:33:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That is an awesome explanation. Thank you.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:35:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You are basically saying they can exist, they would just be really heavy. It would be more of a vehicle then a suit then I guess. But basically you need shielding and you could definitely build shielding....?
PromptCritical725 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:18:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A tank lined with lead would probably do pretty well, but it wouldn't be very practical or useful.
spaghettiputs ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 11:37:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/4131fu/who_is_the_most_underappreciated_person_in_history/cyzup9k] ([not exactly])
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:54:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Would a lead fiber suit and an accompanying exo-skeleton work? Effectively I am asking if power armor a la Fallout would have any impact in the real world.
PromptCritical725 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:22:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The more material the particle has to go through, the better. The denser the better. So it would be still goddamn heavy. and big. The heavier the shielding, the more internal structure you'd need to support it and the more powerful and bigger the power systems to move would have to be. It all really depends on how much exposure you're expecting or trying to protect from.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:53:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fair enough. Thanks for the response.
ilikeeatingbrains ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 13:07:49 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What about graphene layering?
webbitor ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:00:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I believe I have also heard or read that one particle can strike a shield material and cause multiple lower-energy-but-still-harmful particles to be ejected from the other side. So in some circumstances, shielding can make things worse. I could be mistaken on this though.
ogld ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:20:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This should genuinely be on r/bestof. Fantastic read with some great analogies.
solidspacedragon ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:21:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wouldn't that be gamma-raying the uranium/steel combo? One does not simply x-ray with gamma rays.
PromptCritical725 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:36:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Took me a second. Yah. Radiography. The steel is just steel. The source was shielded with DU so it wouldn't kill us.
solidspacedragon ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:58:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Aaah. How thick was it? Even DU needs a few inches for many gamma sources.
Edit: also, you need cadmium plating for neutrons. They just really dislike most materials.
PromptCritical725 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:06:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The box I saw was about the size of a lunchbox and weighed probably 50 pounds. DU is friggin heavy. I'd guess it was 2-3" thick.
solidspacedragon ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:16:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sounds about right.
Next time, try making the box out of osmium. That stuff makes uranium look like lead.
InfanticideAquifer ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 10:59:22 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It also reacts with oxygen... which poses its own difficulties.
solidspacedragon ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:19:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's not my fault a box that large mad of osmium tetroxide would be able to kill a billion people or so.
jeffh4 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:41:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Great analogy/explanation.
Throwing away my cookies now....
theoreticaldickjokes ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:42:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That was enjoyable and informative. Thank you.
RedSerious ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:17:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Goddamn, that was a good read.
Thanks for sharing!
curryone ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:51:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well there you go
HorchDriver ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:11:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I recognize this lesson, did you teach at NNPTC?
PromptCritical725 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:56:29 on January 19, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nope. Just remember living the nightmare for 6 months.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:41:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
you just boiled down months of training into one cookie related metaphor. You're a freakin hero
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:49:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A couple of extras: Gammas and X-rays are functionally no different. Gamma rays are emitted from the nucleus, x-rays from other processes like bremsstrahlung. Speaking of which, lead blocks gammas, but electrons traveling through have a high chance of producing xrays. Neutrons also just go right through lead.
Basically shielding is hard.
tentativetheory ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:59:49 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thanks Dr. Lahey!
Formshifter ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:26:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
im working at the largest nuclear power facility in the world. i just wanted to add that wearing the tyvek and plastic suits is not fun. you sweat your fucking balls off wearing them for an hour, much less on a long jump in the vault like 6-8 hours.
the really wierd part is they scare you so much in training that you cant believe the tyvek hood you wear isnt really attached to the suit, but because you stay plugged into a airline positive pressure keeps tritium vapour out of the suit.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:30:15 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Upvote for shit cookies.
Happypants2014 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:10:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think I just fell in love with you.
Xcodist ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:13:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Or just lead the suit... duh!
_head_ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:47:58 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
How thick to block the neutron radiation? I seem to remember it's something like 10" of lead or 10' of concrete.
Edit: I think I meant to say gamma. Whatevs.
TreemanDyson ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:46:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In 'the Martian', Mark Whatney dug up an RTG to use as a heat source half a meter from his body. The neutron flux from this should have killed him.
เฒ _เฒ
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:55:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is one of the best explanations of the different types of radiation I have ever read, and the most lucid. Fantastic job.
TightAnalOrifice789 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:06:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What an appalling punctuation error, silly sir!
NiceGuyJoe ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:15:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Because of the typo this sounds like Tracy Morgan.
eaterofdog ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:58:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
First comment I ever saved on reddit. Outstanding
BeltOfWristWatches ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 10:04:15 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thank you! I've finally learned something interesting today
artboiz ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 13:51:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Could we hypothetically build an Anti-Radiation-Mech?
Like we build a 10 Ton Machine, which actually has thick enough material between the pilot and the source?
CptAJ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:43:10 on January 18, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ditch the shielding and make it a drone. Way easier at that point.
strallus ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 14:56:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Making a wearable faraday cage would prevent exposure to gamma radiation.
second_to_fun ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:39:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
prompt critical, you spent a lot of time typing that! I guess that was more delayed critical
PromptCritical725 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:44:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Delayed critical is a thing too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prompt_criticality
second_to_fun ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 21:12:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
That's the joke. nuclear stuff is kind of my thing
EDIT: Also this
Auctoritate ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:24:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What about a faraday cage?
PromptCritical725 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:26:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Doesn't block shit but radio waves.
0x7270-3001 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:42:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
At what point does an EM wave become impossible to stop via Faraday cage? Is it a limitation on how small of a mesh can be manufactured? (this is based on my intuition that the frequency that can be stopped is related to the hole size which may be wrong)
InfanticideAquifer ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 11:03:29 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, it's related to the mesh size. You can, of course, get the mesh size down to zero by just using solid metal though.
Once the radiation exceeds the "plasma frequency" of your metal it will start to noticeably penetrate it. X-rays pretty much slide right through Faraday cages and you have to start relying on thickness of shielding the same way you would if you were trying to block a radio wave with an insulator.
onedoor ยท 19 points ยท Posted at 17:34:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Nobody wants to see Vladimir's ass crack, especially not if it's going to be the last thing you see.
EDIT: So I said "Vladimir" as a slightly less stereotypical Russian name, over Boris. lol Turns out a Boris was involved.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/4131fu/who_is_the_most_underappreciated_person_in_history/cyz9jou
Dont____Panic ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 18:47:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Radiation suits only prevent you from inhaling and directly touching radioactive gasses. Chemical suits would do the same.
In fact, when you look up "radiation suit" online, you get a bunch of generic hazmat suits as a result.
Is there such a thing as a "radiation suit"?
Idrkc ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 18:50:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
chemical suit with a lead lining?
chowderbags ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:23:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not going to do jack in a fission reactor. Any kind of CBRN suit is just there to keep out alpha and beta emitting radioactive dust and such that'll really only cause problems if it gets inside you and stays in there. For anything else you're dealing with, you're screwed either way.
stankbucket ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 18:56:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My radiation suit is my birthday suit. I just make sure I'm at least a few hundred miles away from the radiation.
cccviper653 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:07:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Suit you say? I love a man in uniform.
hockeyscott ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:04:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They didn't have radiation suits because there really isn't such a thing. The three keys to minimizing how much radiation dose a person gets are time, distance, and shielding.
Time: spend as little time in an area of radiation as possible.
Distance: stay as far away from a source of radiation as possible. Radiation follows the same inverse square law that light does, so even a little change of distance can make a big difference.
Shielding: put material between the radiation source and you. Different materials have different shielding properties. Also, some materials are better shielding for one type of radiation over another. Lead is a great shield against gamma radiation. It's a decent shield against neutron radiation, but water is better.
So back to the so called radiation suit. To make a decent suit that was at all effective, it would use so much lead to the point where it would be too heavy to wear or move around in.
rtx447 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:17:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
good movie
TzunSu ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:47:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What's a missile boat?
Tchocky ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:51:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A submarine that carries intermediate or intercontinental range ballistic missiles.
Wiki
TzunSu ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:53:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, but thats's a ballistic submarine, not a "missile boat" :P
This is a missile boat:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_boat
Tchocky ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:00:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Submarines are called "boats" generally, also the previous comment to mine specified a sub.
TzunSu ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:02:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Everything that floats on the ocean or moves under it is called boats by people who don't know better. It's still not a missile boat, which is a specific class of warship.
Tchocky ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:08:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Some people call watercraft ships but that almost never is used to describe a submarine. Again, previous comment kept this sub-related.
TzunSu ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:14:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's not relevant if someone can figure out what you mean. I didn't, i saw "missile boat" and assumed you meant an actual missile boat.
This is like you calling a bolt action rifle an assault rifle in a thread about hunting and then saying that the discussion was about hunting so they should be able to figure it out. Missile boat is just plain not the right word, because missile boat already means something else and is an established word with a specific usage.
Most subs nowadays carry cruise missiles, btw, so by your defintion you can call any sub a missile boat.
Tchocky ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:44:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fair point, although I don't think that's how it comes across to the average reader. Think we've covered both angles here
They would have to be ballistic missiles to fit in with my definition. I specified IR or ICBM, which doesn't cover the kind of cruise missiles carried by SSK/SSN/SSGN subs.
Mithster18 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 17:35:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
K-19 the widowmaker?
buttery_shame_cave ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:32:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
'hiroshima' was her(his? the russians refer to their ships as 'he', i think?) unofficial nickname.
'widowmaker' was, i think, to spice up the movie title. still a pretty solid flick.
hugesteamingpile ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:25:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Remember the name of that movie by any chance?
Quizzelbuck ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:26:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
K19 was the movie.
Mazza1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:52:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sounds like das-boot. German film and one the greatest.
THE_CHOPPA ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:26:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Spolier?
joshyrA ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:37:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There is a very good documentary by the BBC about them.
NipplesOnToast ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:53:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I remember watching that in physics class but can't for the life of me recall the name of it.
joshyrA ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 10:30:44 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think it was called Chernobyl: surviving disaster
letsgetrandy ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:56:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Um... Star Trek 2.
Sairothon ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:08:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Absolutely, I can already envision the scene of 3 men swimming under murky water with emotional music desperately trying to turn the valve before they themselves die of radiation poisoning.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:17:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There is. Here's a clip.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:31:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There was a Z Nation episode like that. A reactor is going critical so an old nuclear scientist sacrifices himself to shut it down.
cacky_bird_legs ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:15:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Here's a relevant part from a made-for-TV movie, at least. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wa3k-USAVdY
mmkay812 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:05:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You would need a hell of a screen writer to make a feature film about that and not bore people to death.
FoxyGrampa ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:48:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
There is a movie, it's called; "K-19: The Widowmaker"
It's a dope ass movie with Liam Neeson and ya boy Harrison Ford
ADSRelease ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:27:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I feel it doesn't say good things about our culture if the way to be immortalized is to have an overdramatized, oversimplified Hollywood movie be made of you
jaybustah ยท 485 points ยท Posted at 14:40:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This comment painted Fallout 3 imagery in my mind with that Geiger counter going crazy.
beforethewind ยท 466 points ยท Posted at 14:52:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Even when it's like +1 RAD it's still so paranoia inducing.
[deleted] ยท 669 points ยท Posted at 16:50:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
+8,770 RAD
"Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. FUCK."
Doctah_Whoopass ยท 585 points ยท Posted at 17:20:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Quit licking uranium fuel rods, dumbass.
[deleted] ยท 330 points ยท Posted at 18:02:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
i do what i want
[deleted] ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 18:39:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
rip
cccviper653 ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 18:58:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not rip, now he's a ghoul.
A_favorite_rug ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 19:02:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Too much radiation. Now he's gone feral.
cccviper653 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:29:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ah, might as well rip then.
A_favorite_rug ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:12:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's why you got to use the "old reliable brain in a jar" option.
Dank_Skeletons ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:59:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
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A_favorite_rug ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:10:17 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
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Dank_Skeletons ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:15:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
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A_favorite_rug ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:20:12 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
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Dank_Skeletons ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:21:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
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A_favorite_rug ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:22:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
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Dank_Skeletons ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:22:52 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
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A_favorite_rug ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:25:12 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
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Dank_Skeletons ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:25:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
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A_favorite_rug ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:26:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
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Dank_Skeletons ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:27:06 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
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A_favorite_rug ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:34:05 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
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Dank_Skeletons ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:34:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
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A_favorite_rug ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:41:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
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Dank_Skeletons ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:42:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
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A_favorite_rug ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:54:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
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Dank_Skeletons ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:54:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
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A_favorite_rug ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:55:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
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Dank_Skeletons ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:59:06 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
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A_favorite_rug ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:20:12 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
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klatnyelox ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:26:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Or rip them.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:12:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm homer simp- RIP Frank Grimes, formally Grimey
tatersdabomb ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 18:54:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Uranium Fevvvveeeerrrr
pope_fundy ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:43:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This reads like a Space Quest death screen.
masterzombehhh ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:16:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You're not my real mom
1fastman1 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:22:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
But i wanna become a hulk
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:09:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
BUT THEY TASTE LIKE WATERMELON
jflb96 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:41:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Whose anium fuel rods am I meant to lick, then?
Doctah_Whoopass ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:44:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Mine, of course.
jflb96 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:36:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So I should lick uranium, just not myanium?
Rorschach_And_Prozac ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:54:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The new ones would be perfectly safe to lick. I just helped put some into storage at work yesterday. Stood one foot away and guided it down by hand (cotton gloves) as the crane lowered it.
The used ones though... Yeah they would kill you quick.
Doctah_Whoopass ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:54:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's quite a bit different that licking them.
Rorschach_And_Prozac ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:21:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not really. There's a little bit of extra radiation coming from them, but it's nowhere near dangerous levels. They swipe all over them to make sure there is no contamination before going into the storage tubes. If you know the difference between contamination and radiation, then you realize that if there's no contamination, there's really no danger in licking them. My highest dose rate with my chest one foot from the fuel assembly was 1.5 mrem, which is very close to nothing, and may have just been from being around the spent fuel pool.
Doctah_Whoopass ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:26:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's interesting, so it only becomes an issue with the spent fuel rods? I suppose this is due to all the new isotopes of elements created during the reaction, but you'd think that the new rods would be spilling over with radiation from the U-235.
Rorschach_And_Prozac ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:40:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Someone with an engineering background would be able to tell you more, but yeah that's correct. My background is just in operations. Additionally, the commercial reactors have a much lower enrichment than Navy reactors, so Navy reactors don't need new fuel for decades, while commercial reactors shut down every 18 months to replace a third of their fuel. Commercial fuel can't be made into weapons without much more refinement, while Navy fuel is already highly enriched weapons grade uranium. So new Navy fuel may have higher on contact radiation, but I would be willing to bet it still is "safe" to lick, in that there's no initial contamination before the fuel is used.
But yeah, just pulling a spent fuel assembly out of the water for a second would kill you if you are anywhere in the area.
The U-235 isn't what is causing most of the radiation even after its used. That is coming from the decay of fission products that are left over after the fission of the uranium. Without bombardment by thermal neutrons, the uranium itself is just the same as it was before it was used.
Doctah_Whoopass ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:02:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I see, thanks for all the insight! I always love learning about nuclear reactors and related fields.
OrbitalToast ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:17:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Uraaaaanium feeever...
Protodevilin ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 18:53:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
First time I went to Boston Common. See a little sign by a pond that says simply, "Swan." Huh. Check it out. This gigantic motherfucker comes rampaging out of the goddamn water. Holy shit, uh, run? Oh, here's a shack, I can get some cover from his OH MY GOD THE RADS WHY IS THIS IN HERE AM I PLAYING DARK SOULS RIGHT NOW!?
Yorpel_Chinderbapple ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:12:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I didn't know swans could get that big :/
Aisha11 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:37:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm playing through it on Survival atm. Came across that dude the other day. Funnily, I caught him on VATs before he aggro'd. Even saw the skull next to his name, but thought "fuck, how deadly could it be?".
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:02:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oh hey you found that shack too?
Non-Plot essential Spoilers ahead Step outside and look in the fenced in area, there's a barrel of radioactive waste just chilling there with a skeleton strapped to it.
sp4ce ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 17:28:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Is there anywhere with that much rads? No spoileze pls.
edit: I hate edits.
[deleted] ยท 18 points ยท Posted at 17:32:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The elephant's foot at Chernobyl put out that much, I'm not sure anywhere in fallout does though
Deathrayd ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 17:49:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
theres a vault that had a direct nuke hit on it with about that much rads.
brilliantjoe ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 18:13:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The entrance to Vault 87 is ~3500 rads/sec, and I believe that's the highest in FO3.
Nihilistic-Fishstick ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 18:48:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Vault 87 has a crazy amount like 3000 and something. It takes about a second to die and you have to hotkey and button mash through rad away to even have a chance.
746865626c617a ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:52:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
tgm
buttery_shame_cave ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 18:28:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
there's a spot in fallout 3 that clocks in at about half that(ish) and you'll die within a minute even wearing all the protective gear you can.
Stanley232323 ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 18:33:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In Fallout 4 fast traveling to a certain secondary location spawns you directly on radioactive barrels. My character had no rad resistance perks and was taking close to 700 rads a second for the brief moment I was there
timewarp ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:31:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's one quest that involves entering the core of a nuclear reactor in order to get a macguffin. The radiation killed me in something like 20 seconds.
frachris87 ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 23:24:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"Oh, look! The Vault door!"
+8,770 RADS
"FUUUUUU--"
death music
whiteguycash ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:05:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Let the men, women and children of the earth to come forth to gather and behold the power of atom.
Let those who dwelled here in this favoured land, attend now to the word to the profit of atom.
Come forth and Drink the waters of the glow.
For this Ancient weapon of war, is our salvation, it is the very symbol of Atom's glory.
cant_be_pun_seen ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:15:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
could really use some mysterious serum right now
UltimateShingo ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:08:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Did you try to open Vault 87's front door or what?
verbing_the_nown ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:05:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My luck is 1 so radiation storms happen all the time. At first I had no idea why I was getting random irradiation so often and it freaked me out.
ThunderousLeaf ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:01:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Im literally in a nuclear power plant right now. You get over it.
Dascandy ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:24:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Actually, 5.5 rad per second. Please note that 500 rads over 5 hours is lethal.
Minn-ee-sottaa ยท 239 points ยท Posted at 16:25:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They should've just sent their radiation resistant green skinned companion in to do it for them.
TuriGuiliano ยท 238 points ยท Posted at 17:14:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I literally just finished this game 3 days ago. At the end 3Dog says "A true hero stepped up and made the sacrifice for the greater good" as the camera pinned in on Fawkes and I'm like "Wait, he's perfectly fine"
Load04 ยท 55 points ยท Posted at 18:15:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Got perfectly the same ending slide. It's rather strange when you think about it since IIRC every companion available in the game is rad resistant (SMutant; Robot; Ghoul). Having this as possible option and not having proper slide/voicing for it is somewhat anticlimactic. Can't say much about how ending looked like before DLC though, as it was "closed" before "Broken Steel" AFAIK.
Adamulos ยท 89 points ยท Posted at 18:20:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Before broken steel you had to go in or send Lyons. If you had a ghoul, robot or Fawkes they woukd say sonething like "I am not programmed", "this is not my contract" or "this is not my destiny"
aceofhertz ยท 109 points ยท Posted at 18:29:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah! Fuck Fawkes! "It's not my destiny..."
"Fawkes... seriously... FUCK DESTINY! That shit in there is lethal to me!"
If it hadn't been for Broken Steel, that would have ruined Fallout 3 for me.
shrubs311 ยท 21 points ยท Posted at 19:01:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I didn't have broken steel. It wasn't ruined for me, but it sure did piss me off.
morrighanz ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:59:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's been a while since I finished the game, so I may be forgetful on some parts. I also first played without Broken Steel. I kind of saw the option of asking your companions simply a Bethesda RPG allowing you to take your own pace when it comes to story, and that's why it feels so off - because pacing is extremely important for the moment. Being able to pussyfoot around makes the moment much less heroic than it should have been.
I prefer to think of it like - the Vault Dweller simply rushes in and gets the job done, while the companions watches in a stunned awe at what's happening, Lyons yelling at the Vault Dweller to not do this, and s/he just seals themself in. It was kind of a movie moment in my head, where it would parallel the Dwellers parents' sacrifice.
Since Oblivion also had these "great stories told badly" moments, I naturally started reimagining the ending this way, and I thought it would've been better if they had forced your movement.
BuddaMuta ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 23:07:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
All they really had to do was make it so over the course of the final mission your companions couldn't make it to the end with you.
Maybe have Fawkes captured while storming the Jefferson Memorial, or maybe even play up the dramatic irony and have Fawkes sacrifice himself so you can get to the Memorial. Fawkes not realizing that his sacrifice, while letting you save the world, will force you to have to make a sacrifice of your own.
Instead they forgot he was their entirely and had to add the "destiny" dialogue in last minute.
the_number_2 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:23:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It was a cheap cop-out to end the game after that mission instead of continuing.
morrighanz ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:58:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, it was sort of a band-aid solution. They had a great material there, too bad.
IAMA_otter ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:19:27 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm really confused whenever people talk about this part of the game. When I played it, I chose to sacrifice myself, saw the cut scene, and thought the game was over, but then woke up in a bed in the brotherhood of steel base, with Lyons in another passed out. I didn't actually die and the game didn't end. Am I missing something, does having the DLC make it so that the game doesn't end there?
Thatzionoverthere ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:15:12 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes.
IAMA_otter ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:10:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ah, good to know. I only ever had the GOTY edition.
the_number_2 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 23:21:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, right? Umm, Fawkes? You literally did EXACTLY THIS TYPE OF THING a few days ago in Vault 87, running through dangerous radiation because I would die and you wouldn't, to help ME with a task, you fuck.
aceofhertz ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 23:33:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, I like to believe that they couldn't think of a better explanation when they got to the end as to why Fawkes wouldn't just go in himself and punked out with the "Destiny" card.
Sythine ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:40:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fawkes believed in destiny, it's like asking someone to go against their principles/religion.
aceofhertz ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:20:33 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Meh, you'd think there was a strong (no pun intended) enough bond that he wouldn't want to see you die.
Sythine ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:51:53 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, Charon on the other hand is bound to you by contract so he should've done it regardless.
A_favorite_rug ยท -8 points ยท Posted at 19:03:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hey hey hey. Don't be dragging /r/Destinythegame into this.
TuriGuiliano ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 18:55:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's a few that aren't Rad resistant. Jericho and Star Paladin Cross should be affected by it. Dog meat might also just run into it for shits and giggles despite the 10 mines I have set up for deathclaws to run through
Highside79 ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:24:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Before broken steel your only available option (even if Fawkes is standing right there next to you) if yourself or Lyons.
Chewyquaker ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:14:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A TRUE HERO
LuciferianAntichrist ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:37:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dude, spoilers
TenderAchingAsshole ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 19:27:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah because the first ending was fine and everyone like always bitched and moaned. It's like they care nothing for the story arc as long as their super powered human can keep chugging along
TuriGuiliano ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 19:45:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I ain't afraid of no deathclaws! (As long as I have my Gatling Laser wielding super mutant friend to do most of the damage and my dog who's too short to get hit to aggro all of their attacks)
dontfearme22 ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 16:47:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Or popped some rad-x like a real wastelander you peevish molerat.
Minn-ee-sottaa ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 16:48:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Or just wear a hazmat suit, unlike the wasteland peasants.
dontfearme22 ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 16:49:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oh lookie here some fancy Institute guy; too busy boning robots to get his hands dirty.
Minn-ee-sottaa ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 16:51:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's the Railroad, they're busy liberating vending machines
dontfearme22 ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 16:52:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And you are busy doing what exactly...? I mean, outside of squirting 3 gallons of hand sanitizer everytime you touch one of the people you kidnap.
Fuck_shadow_bans ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:43:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It also brings to mind what a complete self-absorbed fuck stick Fawkes is. He is literally immune to radiation. Why the fuck didn't HE go into the chamber to flip the switch? WTF, man. You are an asshole.
McZerky ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:51:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Trying to discover vault 87...
atomater ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:54:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nah, reminds me much more of Metro 2033.
DropletFox ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:47:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nuke cola quantum?
lennybird ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:55:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Aw man, does nobody else think back to the HEV suit Geiger counter in Half-Life?
Rutgerman95 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:49:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Glow. Not even once.
darthmase ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:36:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
All theese kids talkin' about Fallout around here and I'm just lying here, slowly dying in the depths of Yantar...
Whiskey-Tango-Hotel ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:14:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I was thinking closer to STALKER
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 18:07:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
Golden-Sun ยท 45 points ยท Posted at 15:13:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's a video in Youtube that I looked up to explain Chernobyl. It mentions the people who had to dive down, its pretty moving https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfKm0XXfiis
daemon7 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:15:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
it mentioned only two divers
Golden-Sun ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:57:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah I noticed that too, guess it was a mistake from the person who made it.
factsprovider ยท 57 points ยท Posted at 13:52:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I read somewhere that the radiator spreading thing was bullshit... Wonder if someone can clear it up
ShotsGotFired ยท 244 points ยท Posted at 13:56:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Its true.
Source: I was there
I am writing this with my 7th hand
GenesisAD ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 14:19:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Can confirm.
Source: i was there
I am reading this with my 3rd eye
Yoda___ ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:16:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My third eye is blind :(
whohw ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 15:46:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I thought that you couldn't see out of it.
multiplesifl ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 16:15:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You can if you take enough mushrooms.
sun_worth ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:00:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You can if you quit wearing pants.
GenesisAD ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 15:49:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I can't see your point, care to explain?
seemedlikeagoodplan ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 16:21:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm assuming it's a Third Eye Blind joke? Not sure though.
whohw ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 16:33:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yep! Sure 'nuff.
claucsb ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 16:34:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
are you retarded?
pathological_liar__ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:12:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's his brown eye
TheSeaIsRadioactive ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 16:46:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Can also confirm
Source: was also there.
Writing with my 9 toes (I also have 3 balls)
Lion_Among_Cedars ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:02:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I might believe a first- or second-hand account, but not a seventh-...
ShotsGotFired ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:15:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This was a very clever repsonse.
Luposetscientia ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:04:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Shots fired
Cobra121 ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 16:08:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It is true, if that was not drained the molten metal from the reactor above would of reached it and caused a second steam explosion blasting radioactive isotopes all across Europe.
roneman815 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 16:58:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ya, everytime I read about this "they saved millions of lives" thing, I google it, and the only thing that comes up typically are reddit posts. They might have saved lives in the area, but saying they basically saved Europe is probably exaggeration.
giggleworm ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:00:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, radiation was already spreading across Europe. I can't say how much worse it could have been, but it's not like it's out of the realm of possibility. Fallout of radioactive cesium and iodine is nothing to fuck with.
armrha ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:24:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Many hundreds of thousands of people could have had more health problems than they already did. I mean, there is still a legacy of poisoning with equipment salvaged from the region being sold in Belarus and being used in food production...
boywithtwoarms ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:49:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I can confirm no radiator spread that day.
CrossedQuills ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 11:03:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I've heard it from a guide when I was at Chernobyl, but at the same time I've spoken with a doctor in nuclear physics here in Sweden who claimed it's just hyperbole and essentially impossible to have happened. Still, a heroic feat by the men involved.
planktonshmankton ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:12:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Saying that there would be a giant explosion causing millions of deaths might be an exaggeration, but there was a definite danger of massive amounts of radiation spreading accross Europe. Similar to a so-called "Dirty Bomb", a build up of pressure from the cooling water pools under the reactor could cause an explosion. The explosion would not have caused much damage in itself, but the radioactive material flung up from the explosion would have caused huge crop failure in Europe, and also dangerous and irradiated foods of all kind. The effects of the radiation were already apparent in Sweden, where they first noticed signs of the Chernobyl disaster. This was due to nuclear power plant workers having higher amounts of radiation going into the power plant than going out. Even without that explosion the radiation already spread a huge distance.
There was a definite danger. Corium lava was already melting through the reactor floor into the water, and the radiation had caused the water to turn into hydrogen peroxide with extremely low pH. The divers were essentially swimming in radioactive acid.
WassDogg304 ยท -5 points ยท Posted at 17:13:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
r/conspiratard
EpicPixelboy ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 18:31:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's nothing wrong with being a bit skeptical about stuff you read on Reddit.
Scudstock ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:46:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Uh, these guys need a statue dedicated to them. A big one.
People outside of that area need to hear about this amazing sacrifice.
ilovetpb ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 04:19:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There should be statues and memorials to the three around Europe for what they selflessly gave their lives to prevent widespread death and poisoning of the ground in the neighboring countries.
[deleted] ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 15:10:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wouldnt that explosiot wipe out half of europe?
JoSeSc ยท 206 points ยท Posted at 15:35:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
u/moeburn who submitted the original thread i learned about those 3 wrote there
I honestly still don't understand how there aren't schools and streets and everything named after those 3 men all over europe
Raincoats_George ยท 86 points ยท Posted at 16:09:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Because the Soviet Union was looking to cover up everything about the incident. We didn't find out about most of this until much later. Yes though I think they should now be honored, having been so removed from the event it's hard to get people to see their sacrifice personally.
[deleted] ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 17:08:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I remember reading that Pripyat was even evacuated much later than it should've been and bystanders watched the fantastic lightshow of burning radioactive material wafting into the air from a bridge, unaware and not informed that it was dangerous and incredibly urgent they get away. Same for the firefighters and so on, not informed of the gravity of what had happened because they didn't want to fess up to a nuclear incident.
Anterai ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:36:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I struggle to believe that.
Pripyat was a house of young nuclear physicists. Out of all people - they would've known what was happening.
Sure, some support staff might not, but the majority of the people living there had someone in the family who damn right knew what happened in the reactor exploded
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:45:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, I don't know how true it is. But I'm certainly willing to believe that for those who weren't in the know about how damaging radiation is they wouldn't have been told about it so as to not spread word of the monumental fuckup that had occurred.
And it's not that the firefighters could have done more than say "we're not going near that shit, no way" with a disaster on that scale I suppose!
Senojpd ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:53:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It is a city and it is true.
hwillis ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:30:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/worldnews/5043362/A-tour-of-Chernobyl-and-Pripyat.html?image=9
The population of Pripyat was 50k at the time of the evacuation. Very few people knew what was going on even at the reactor; the entire thing was a result of massive mismanagement. They knew very little about what to do
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:36:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm really hoping they at least gave these guys the Order of Lenin medal or whatever the Russian version of a Victoria Cross or Congressional Medal of Honor would be at that time.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:04:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
Raincoats_George ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:21:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Interesting. I'd need context though. Was this article covered at all? What else was being covered at the time?
[deleted] ยท 25 points ยท Posted at 16:00:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Can you imagine the conversation they had between themselves and their families? Damn.
Kohvwezd ยท 21 points ยท Posted at 16:21:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There might not have been a conversation. The people in the Cherbobyl area were strictly military and liquidator personnel.
TwiZtah ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 16:36:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Because the USSR couldn't do anything wrong and building a nuclear reactor with tooth picks and papier-mache is a great idea.
[deleted] ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 17:54:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The reactor was actually a pretty run-of-the-mill design for the day. Perhaps it's greatest flaw contributing to this disaster was its positive void coefficient. This means that as the reactor increased in temp, steam began to form in the coolant. Steam isn't as efficient at absorbing neutrons that carry on the nuclear reaction, so there would be more free neutrons increasing the nuclear reaction, thus increasing heat further, thus increasing reaction further.. It could become a runaway train.
Modern reactors haves negative void coefficient, where the design causes increased absorbtion of neutrons as the core gets hotter, leading to a decrease in reaction. It's a basic safety design in any modern reactor.
In addition to this design flaw, the operators were purposely overriding safety features to put the reactor into a dangerous state in order to test an emergency cooling feature. On top of this, a change of worker shifts occurred and the incoming shift wasn't properly communicated the plan.
The design of the reactor was bad, but this was mainly a human error disaster.
jflb96 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:50:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I heard that the immediate reaction of the reactor to the insertion of control rods was a brief spike in activity which would normally be fine as it would jump from 'safe' to 'slightly less safe' before dropping as expected, but in this case there was no margin for it to spike into.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:04:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
I believe what happened is that they had diesel powered generators to power the cooling pumps in the event of a loss of power. These diesel generators took something like 12 minutes to come online.
They had a plan to use residual power in the plant's steam turbine to power the cooling system for that 12 minutes to cover until the diesel generators kicked in.
Something got fudged in the plan, and the core temp shot up more quickly than expected. Because of the positive void coefficient, steam formed in the cooling pipes and the nuclear reaction began to run away on them, getting to dangerous levels of heat and power.
The operators panicked and hit the emergency stop to jam the control rods in.. which, in a normal reactor that would have put the brakes on immediately, however, another flaw in this reactor design was that the graphite tips (the first little bit on each rod) on the control rods actually increased reactivity. (which is exactly what you said) So upon inserting the control rods, they were already beyond "dangerous", and then spiked the power even further for a few seconds.
Then one or a few of the control rods got stuck, because they were withdrawn farther than they were supposed to be (one of the safety measures the crew had to override was that the control rods shouldnt have been allowed to be removed as far as they were), and with the already run-away reaction, everything got so hot that the rods expanded slightly and no longer fit properly in their channels... so they got stuck and couldnt be lowered further, which meant that the reactor was truly out of control.
That's when the boom came.
jflb96 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:35:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What.... But.... Whyyy....
It's like when you read that the watertight compartments on the Titanic didn't have watertight ceilings, except in this case the ceilings were watertight until the captain ordered that holes be drilled in them 'to see what happened' and then drove straight at an iceberg.
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 17:39:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The engineering wasn't the problem, it was human error. One of the operators was running an experiment and was too arrogant to abort it in time.
Vince1820 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:21:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Did you watch seinfeld last night also?
chinamanbilly ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:35:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"Hey, mom? I'm going to volunteer on a suicide mission. I love you."
"Don't go. Let someone else do it."
"Mom, either me and these two guys die or everyone dies."
Starfire013 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:53:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not one of those three men even have a wikipedia entry. That's so sad. We must not forget what they did.
Banzai51 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:54:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Because the Soviet government at the time classified all the info and we didn't know about it until some time later. After the Soviet Union collapsed, Russia went through lots of docs and declassified them.
rblong2us ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:25:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is just plain false, made up to sell the post. The steam explosion wouldn't have been nearly as bad as the original reactor explosion.
Dynamaxion ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 16:11:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Because the fact that the Russians were stupid enough to design a reactor that could kill millions of people and destroy half of Europe is a taboo subject.
Da_Banhammer ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 16:31:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well the reactor was DESIGNED to have three complete and independent failsafe systems, any of which would have prevented the disaster. But the Russian government was putting tons of pressure on all their existing reactors to increase output so all three safety mechanisms were turned off. The chief engineer's daughter, her dad designed much of the reactor, was interviewed and she said her dad always cursing the government for the people it killed in its stupidity.
Dynamaxion ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 16:35:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ah, well in that case it's even more of a taboo.
greyetch ยท 24 points ยท Posted at 15:32:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nope. IIRC, the explosion wouldn't be that big of a deal. The fallout and ash that would travel across the world would be the issue.
[deleted] ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 16:08:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Weird im pretty sure they mentioned in a documentary that the explosion itself would have been huge.
Kohvwezd ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 16:22:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oh it would have been huge, just not that huge.
greyetch ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:00:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah it would be huge. Just not deadly to Europe in any immediate way. It would basically nuke lots of ukraine.
lenaro ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:50:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It spreads fast and far. For example, the first the West knew that shit was going down at Chernobyl was from radioactivity detection in Sweden!
source
BLASPHEMOUS_ERECTION ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 17:42:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The explosion itself wouldn't be super significant. The damage of nuclear weapons is hardly just their destructive power. Even the biggest nuke ever made couldn't completely erase the smallest state in the US.
It's the radioactive fallout that makes them so nightmarish. It blights hundreds of miles for thousands of years.
rblong2us ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:27:12 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Completely backwards. The explosion is by far the most lethal part of a bomb, the fallout is pretty minimal and insignificant. Look at hiroshima and nagasaki, or any country's testing grounds, as proof.
surendipitus ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:23:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Reminds me of Captain America in Sunshine
Bobosmite ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:38:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thanks! I'm obsessed with Chernobyl and never saw this before.
jammerjoint ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:30:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's a fantastic West Wing episode which I think may be a tribute to this.
loki-things ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:45:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If you get the chance to read how and why the reactor melted down with all the safety measures in place it was very interesting. Basically they were trying an experiment to help make the reactor more safe during power loss situations and a series of events lead to shit hitting a fan and breakneck speed. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster]
RaptorF22 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:54:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This reminds me of Star Trek: Into Darkness. KHHHAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNNNNN
BarclaydeTolli ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:57:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oh, it gets worse. It probably wasn't water. The intensity of the radiation had probably turned it into hydrogen peroxide.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:02:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Every time I read this I tear up. They had to be buried in lead-lined coffins :(
koy5 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:47:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That is a problem you would see on and episode of Star Trek.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:59:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So that would be a origin to a super heroes comic book where they all get powers from the radiation and one of them ends up evil and the other two have to fight him.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:06:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The 3 guys i learned about in this reddit threat On May 6, 1986, ten days after Chernobyl, there was a risk of an even greater explosion that would spread radiation across half of Europe and kill millions. Three men volunteered to dive into what they knew were lethally radioactive waters to open a release valve to prevent this from happening.
Its friday night, who else is gonna dedicate a round to these three guys?
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:47:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Like Spock.
SilverProductions ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:52:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There needs to be a movie about these guys!
Mardred ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:44:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I want a movie about this .
cutebearbaby ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:52:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wow, if not for those guys I wouldn't be here to read this awesome subreddit
Whiskey-Tango-Hotel ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:09:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's one of those moments I'd like to see tuned into a movie. Not a blockbuster, a simple production with a filter and realistic take on situation akin to blue valentine.
BikerJedi ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:36:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I was living in West Germany when Chernobyl hit the fan. (Dad was in the US Army) They were saying on the news not to let your kids play in the dirt outside in areas, and did an overlay on the map. Of course, we were there, and my mom freaked, because my sister was outside doing just that.
We often wonder if my little brother died from Leukemia caused by Chernobyl. It was a freaky time to live there, probably more surreal than when Libya bombed the disco in Berlin and we had soldiers in full battle rattle with M-16's on the school buses and checking our dependent ID cards as we entered school each day. That lasted for several weeks and was weird.
Jed_Moseby ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:47:56 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The liquidators (guys wearing brown or black lead smocks with small masks and goggles) are absolutely harrowing. THEY KNEW THEY WOULD DIE. Yet they still did it. Selfless sacrifice. Heroes! And they were promised 3 days holiday and a Pepsi!
all i wanted was a Pepsi.
ladydeedee ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:51:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Everything about Chernobyl is harrowing. They had to use humans to push radioactive lead shells off of the roof because the robots they brought in would lose control under that amount of radiation (two just ran off the roof, a couple flipped out) but humans would keep going. They were only supposed to stay up there for 40 seconds at a time and the night before they went to the roof they sowed their own lead lined suits. They weren't just fighting for Russia, they were saving the world. Now that hot spot is still going strong, and the expense of maintaining it safely lays basically on defunct countries with piss power cash, it's just another disaster waiting to happen.
If you are interested in Chernobyl there is a great new book our called Voices from Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich. It's really fantastic.
jaqenhg4r ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 13:56:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You're the real MVP
[deleted] ยท 35 points ยท Posted at 14:32:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Those 3 guys are the real MVPs.
DrHarby ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 16:04:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
MVP is the real MVP
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:58:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I heard about this a long time ago and wonder why it took three guys to do this. The ultimate sacrifice.
MissMamanda ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:12:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There are a few documentaries on Youtube about Chernobyl and I think all of the men who were tasked in cleaning it up the best that they could are heroes. I can't even imagine what they've had to deal with health wise since.
punchdrink ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:20:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is a great documentary of the incident. Highly recommend for anyone to get a grasp of the effects of radioactivity.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dS3WvKKSpKI
Vestigen ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:30:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Three Jesus'
bangorthebarbarian ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:35:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
what were their names?
JoSeSc ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:29:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alexie Ananenko, Valeri Bezpalov, and Boris Baranov
Felkenary ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:38:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They aren't underappriciated because these guys easily were on the frontpage for a hundred times
JoSeSc ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:34:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Think they deserve a little more appreciation than making the frontpage of reddit.
I am 30 years old (so I was 1 when Chernobyl happened), I live in Europe, they most likely saved my life or at least saved my life from behing a whole lot shittier and I hadn't heard about them until 2 weeks ago, I don't think i am particular ignorant so for me that makes them underappreciated.
Felkenary ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:34:12 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fair point
TaurineLine719 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:57:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Good job them
Son_Of_A_Pun ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:01:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's amazing. Also, exactly 13 years before I was born! ๐
fuggahmo_mofuhgga ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:01:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Have you ever seen the show The Last 24 Hours or something like that that describes what happened right before the explosion at Chernobyl? IIRC, there was a young engineer who realized something bad was going to happen, but was overruled by a stubborn senior engineer. Crazy shit, but it seems like that happens all the time.
starmoishe ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:04:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
All the while knowing that whether successful or not they would spend the next week or two dying in a hospital.
Shoryuhadoken ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:11:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What makes it less heroic however, is that those men thought they would be safe. The readings on their device was showing max radioactivity (but according to it, it was still not deadly) Turned out, the actual radio activity was hundreds of times more and definitely deadly.
So as brave as these men were, it wasn't a suicide mission to them. Unlike the japanese suicide bombers for example. Not going to say that they were hero's, but giving up your life for your country is pretty brave.
fauxscot ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:12:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Russians, man. That is a country just full of tough motherfkrs.
Something about the national character there.
J_Cant_Box ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:17:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
First thing that went through my head when I saw this post. Thanks for posting. These guys were fucking heroes of the highest order!
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:18:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This could make a fucking great movie.
fvdcsxaz ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:23:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Australian Post-rock/metal band We Lost The Sea recently released an album entitled "Departure Songs", which was "inspired by failed, yet epic and honourable journeys or events throughout history where people have done extraordinary things for the greater good of those around them, and the progress of the human race itself." The second track on that album, Bogatyri, is dedicated to those three men.
OsamaBinFuckin ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:25:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
if you read about them already then they are no longer the most under appreciated.
JerkFairy ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:37:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's some Spock shit right there.
Urkchaloi ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:56:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Heroes. Straight up fucking heroes.
Middleman79 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:04:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There should be a public holiday worldwide for these guys as opposed to the crap we all celebrate now
IAmRareBatman ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:20:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I watched Godzilla yesterday.
Serious question: There was no radioactive suits that they could have worn?
armrha ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:26:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They do have monuments for the liquidators and stuff, and their names are widespread in the literature...
I mean, they are perhaps under appreciated (they saved many thousands of people from having to suffer from the effects of radioactive contamination, though already the damage was done for thousands to this day), but the MOST UNDERAPPRECIATED IN HISTORY? I don't think the most under appreciated person in history is going to have a monument built about him.
Shadowclaimer ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:27:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This led me to reading about Chernobylite, I can't believe in all of my reading for the Chernobyl disaster I hadn't once run into the pictures/information about that mineral.
It would almost make a prompt for a great RTS. Like a cross between Command & Conquer and STALKER.
InbredScorpion ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:52:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
IIRC, at that point it wasn't water. The water had been oxidised from the alpha radiation making vats of hydrogen peroxide.
McCFred ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:55:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not the first time the Soviets saved Europe.
goofball_jones ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:04:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also, the helicopter pilot that volunteered to fly over the exposed reactor and dump wet concrete on top of it.
GDMFusername ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:17:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There are many heroes from the Cold War era who will never be as famous as they should, due to the secrecy of the Soviet Union.
iworkforanasshole ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:29:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
I'm not sure if anyone mentioned but I'm pretty sure that they wouldn't let them die either as they wanted to see the effects of extreme radiation, so they had them kept alive as there skin literally fell off there bodies.
cacky_bird_legs ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:45:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
One of these three guys' job was to hold a flashlight, and the flashlight broke before they found the valve.
clownsLjokersR ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:48:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wasn't there a Russian sailor who gave his life in a doomed submarine equipped with nuclear warheads? I'll have to read about that again
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:49:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Man, the Slavic people understand sacrifice and stone-cold courage.
cant_be_pun_seen ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:14:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This happened in Fukushima as well.
DickButtBot ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:32:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We hear about this stuff 3 times a week
I think OP is talking about more obscure persons that made LARGE contributions to society. Like the guy that invented toiletpaper.
-rabid- ยท 4569 points ยท Posted at 13:59:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Chiune Sugihara.
Everyone's heard of Oskar Schindler, but no one's heard of this man, despite him saving almost 6 times as many people.
vadkert ยท 1767 points ยท Posted at 16:07:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also, Raoul Wallenberg a Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews by having them declared Swedish subjects. He also had several buildings in Budapest designated as extraterritorial properties of Sweden. He had signs such as 'Swedish Library' and 'Swedish Institute' outside, and housed Jews inside.
There was a particular incident where Wallenberg intercepted a train bound for Auschwitz at the station. He began handing hastily issued Swedish passports to people in the cars, reaching through slats and openings. He was ordered to stop by Arrow Cross Party men. (A Hungarian nationalist party that ruled Hungary for a brief time in WWII; several thousand citizens were exterminated during their time in power. They had some ideological similarities to the Nazi Party, but were not, in name, Nazis themselves, and were under direct Nazi influence.)
Wallenberg did not stop, and at one point climbed on top of the train and began reaching down through openings on the roofs of the train cars to hand out his passports. The Arrow Cross men began to shoot at him, firing several shots over his head. But he didn't stop until all of the papers he had were handed out. He hopped down and ordered anyone in possession of a Swedish passport off the train. They were ushered into a cavalcade of waiting cars, decked out in Swedish flags, and driven away.
All told, Wallenberg and his program (which at its height consisted of 350 people) are credited with savings 'tens of thousands' of Jews, though it's hard to put a real, concrete number on it. For his trouble, Wallenberg was apprehended during the Soviet siege of Budapest and disappeared in the Soviet prison system, probably dying sometime between his capture in 1945 and 1947.
scaldedmuffin ยท 531 points ยท Posted at 16:35:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Holy shit, that's a brave man. But imagine being on the car and not being handed one, then seeing everyone who was walking off the car.
vadkert ยท 74 points ยท Posted at 16:47:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
For sure, but when you're on a train to Auschwitz, I don't know if you have the capacity to think of anything else as 'bad news.'
Meglomaniac ยท 79 points ยท Posted at 17:42:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I would likely be happy that people made it out alive.
And god awful that I wasnt one of them.
OK_Soda ยท 39 points ยท Posted at 19:51:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sometimes if I see a particularly large bill on the ground, like a $10 or a $20, I think, "No way man, someone might've needed that and they'll come back for it. Let it lie." I once found a $100 bill on the ground and just stared at it for like five minutes before forcing myself to walk away.
Imagine if one of those passports fell through a slat right in front of you and you saw someone who didn't have one and you had to face the moral quandary of whether to take it and leave (finders keepers, after all) or let someone else have it and survive instead. You could sacrifice your life for someone purely by doing nothing.
[deleted] ยท 22 points ยท Posted at 21:32:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
[deleted]
rhymes_with_snoop ยท 28 points ยท Posted at 00:30:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's funny, I felt your response was reasonable and appreciated your candor... until I got to "Sorry not sorry," which strangely made me feel completely different. It's amazing what a phrase will do to change the perceived intentions of the person writing it.
[deleted] ยท 18 points ยท Posted at 03:49:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
[deleted]
Hispanicatthedisco26 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 10:06:27 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I love peaceful interactions like this on Reddit
LordPhoenixNZ ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 12:07:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
FUCK YOU BITCH.
Hispanicatthedisco26 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:36:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
EAT A DICK
LordPhoenixNZ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:11:21 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
NO LETS BE FRIENDS and be peaceful. Forgive me for my outburst brother.
Funkajunk ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 22:30:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's just self preservation, completely normal
TisteSimeon ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 23:38:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And hopefully, none of us on here will ever have to face such a situation. We can be thankful for the brave ones who did while we hypothesise. :-)
MoonChild02 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:54:02 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dude, were you walking in Bill Gates' path? He reportedly only carries hundreds, and, if he drops one, he says that his time is so valuable that it's not worth the time it takes to pick it up. At least, that's what he once told my cousin who saw him drop $100.
OK_Soda ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:07:15 on January 19, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It was in an envelope labeled "Beer Money" so I assume someone dropped it on the way to a party or something. The label made me more tempted to take it, because it's not like it was labeled "Grandma's Medicine Money" or something, but I decided maybe it was, in fact, Grandma's medicine money and whoever dropped it had just been trying to be humorous in a sad situation.
ThunderousLeaf ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 01:15:35 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The people on the train to aushwitz thought they were being resettled which is why they all had packed suitcases with things they needed and all their valuables. They brought pots and pans for their new lives in their new homes. Aushwitz is nestled into the polish forests, nobody knew what was happening there.
Thatzionoverthere ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:21:52 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Depends, the lies about work camps only lasted until you had people noticing nobody got letters from their family.
lifelongfreshman ยท 19 points ยท Posted at 16:51:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Imagine being the person who gets one, who sees someone standing next to you who's either old and infirm, or too young. Or the mother who gets one who has to deal with the fact that her child didn't.
sharshenka ยท 23 points ยท Posted at 19:26:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They couldn't have had names on them if they were being passed out like that, right? I have a hard time imagining a mother not just handing hers to her child. (Or even if they had names on them, how are they going to prove she didn't name her son "Sarah"?)
[deleted] ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 01:26:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Passport is not necessarily a requirement for a baby with his parents. Rule were a lot more lax in the past.
typically_wrong ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 18:36:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's exactly what I was thinking.
I'd have gotten one, and been elated. Then the mother next to me would get one, but not her son.
At least I'd know I did the right thing.
arkhamzz ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:17:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wow. That's nice and all, hell that's fucking admirable. But do you not value your life?
typically_wrong ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 00:26:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I do, but you have to ask yourself what you or your children would think of your decision later, and what you could live with.
Were I a 20 something with no kids, I couldn't in good conscience take a mother from a child (because let's face it, we know mom wouldn't take it in that scenario).
Lowbacca1977 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:27:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Or if the mother had two kids, and could only take one, and would have to make some sort of choice
Mr_Inconsiderate ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:31:43 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
She wouldn't pick, she'd give one to each child :(
leemon3321 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 02:34:35 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I would think the mothers name is Sophie
theluckkyg ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 00:52:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Couldn't you just mix with the crowd that has passports and leave the train as well? He doesn't sound like the kind of guy that'd take you back once he found out, and once you were in one of the cars there would be no reason to.
deceptivelyelevated ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:58:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I would imagine at that point on ones existence see I g anyone be freed was majestic and beyond expectations
Ghosted19 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:57:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Imagine you are on a train bound for death. You are prepared. You have sat with your maker and shook his cousins hand. Death has agreed to take you. The deal is struck. It will be a terrible road but you know death is your solace.....then a man runs in handing out papers to save those around you. You might or might not receive them, however now you have changed. You no longer accept death as your deal, rather you live with hope. You think each day of struggle may lead to your freedom and you continue. Day after day until you collapse. You are taken to a line, in that line your hope and faith persevere. As you are marched into a small room with shower heads you still think you will be saved....until they drop the crystals in the room. Your last gasp is for freedom, not of pity or sorrow. There was never a soul on those trains thinking, "I didn't get a paper, I'm doomed." They only thought "There is hope." There were no false pretenses, the Jewish populace understood what was happening.
Dragon_yum ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 18:52:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He is actually quite well known in Israel, there is a street named after him (I in fact live in one). There is also a statue of him in Ranat Hahayal in Tel-Aviv.
http://imgur.com/E0nDuUs
bsand2053 ยท 20 points ยท Posted at 16:37:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's incredible. He is a Michigan alum and I used to see a plaque for him in one of the buildings, but I didn't know the extent of his heroism.
vadkert ยท 48 points ยท Posted at 16:57:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's just the short summary of it, too. One of my favorite other anecdotes is that there was a fascist intention to literally blow up the Jewish ghetto in Budapest, on the eve of the Soviet invasion. (An attempt at 'liquidation' before the Soviets arrived.) Wallenberg got word of the plot and bribed a party member to deliver a note to Gerhard Schmidthuber (a major-general in the German army) and Adolf Eichmann (who was actively hunting Wallenberg at the time.) In the note, he threatened to have both Eichmann and Schmidthuber brought to trial for war crimes should the plot go through, either directly on indirectly (through a 'death march' which was also discussed) to liquidate the remaining Budapest Jews.
The gall it takes to be an unofficially wanted man (Wallenberg was, legally speaking, mostly above board and should have enjoyed diplomatic protection, but he personally was wanted dead by the Arrow Cross and Eichmann himself. He had to resort to sleeping in different houses every night to evade them.) and then to bribe one of your enemies to deliver a threatening letter to guys that want you dead, saying, in essence 'I will see you hanged if you go through with this plan.' And then to have them listen, is insane.
Eurynom0s ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 18:45:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think it seems contextually appropriate to call that letter he sent an act of supreme chutzpah.
vadkert ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 19:31:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
For sure. In both senses.
In modern use, 'chutzpah' is roughly akin to 'balls.' While in traditional context, it carries a connotation of audacity. Like, it's not just brave, it's not just confident, it's borderline arrogant. And it absolutely was.
Eurynom0s ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 20:30:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I can't speak to how the American populace at large would use chutzpah since I'm Jewish and from NY/NJ, but at least for me, I've always understood chutzpah as being stronger a statement than just saying they have balls. Maybe not quite to the full extent audacious/arrogant that you're describing, but I would definitely use it as a stronger statement of something more to the effect of "you have to be a little bit nuts to try to get away with that" and not just as a statement of "that was a ballsy move".
[deleted] ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 20:54:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
Eurynom0s ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:00:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, I think for both of us, being from an area where there's actually Jews around who know how to use the word (and in my case, from my grandparents and parents who grew up speaking Yiddish) is obviously going to affect the way we take it.
I know for me, saying that something took chutzpah can be meant in a relatively admiring about the person who did it, but it can also be a bit derogatory. It heavily depends on the context of the individual you're talking about.
SCHROEDINGERS_UTERUS ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 18:41:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Didn't do either of them much good to listen, though -- Schmidthuber was killed in action in Budapest, and Eichmann got himself hanged anyway.
vadkert ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 18:44:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Very true. It's not like Eichmann needed any help getting brought up on war crimes.
bsand2053 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 17:14:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's wild. Is there a biography about him that you can recommend?
SoonToBeEngineer ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 18:25:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wait, the Soviets captured and imprisoned a Swedish diplomat?!? What the actual fuck!
vadkert ยท 24 points ยท Posted at 18:43:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's a lot of uncertainty about what happened to Wallenberg after his apprehension, but the short of it is:
Wallenberg was summoned by Marshall Rodion Malinovsky, a Soviet officer, to respond to allegations that he was involved in espionage. He said as he was leaving 'I'm going to see Malinovsky. I'm not sure if I am a guest or a prisoner.' (Paraphrasing.) In the early 00's, it came out that Vilmos Bohm, another Swedish diplomat and Soviet informant, had given the Soviets Wallenberg's name as someone possibly involved in espionage. For what it's worth, Wallenberg was eventually outed as someone connected to American intelligence during his time in Budapest. But I'm not clear on if it had anything to do with the Soviets.
Everything after his arrest is mostly speculation. Some sources say he was shot not long after, others say he died of a heart attack while in prison in 1947, others acknowledge the validity of the heart attack timeline, but contend that he was poisoned or by other means assassinated and the heart attack is just the cover up. (Like, 'Oh, the prisoner was found dead in his cell. Judging by the intense, violent bludgeoning, I conclude, heart attack.' That kind of thing.) Still others say he was alive up until the 80's and died of old age.
There's not really a happy scenario to imagine-- 40 years in a Soviet prison, on charges of being a spy, couldn't have been all that preferable to death.
nothing_clever ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 19:33:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is amazing. Why aren't stories/movies about people who actually fought the Nazis more popular? We have eg Indiana Jones and inglourious basterds, but this man's story seems so much more remarkable.
hurfery ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:22:00 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I recommend the movie Sophie Scholl - Die Letzten Tage.
reticulated_python ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:39:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We have a park named after him in my city. I never knew he did all that though! What a great man.
AchtungKarate ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:08:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, but Wallenberg is very celebrated, though.
vadkert ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 19:38:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Both Wallenberg and Sugihara have received honors, but I don't know if they're well known to people outside of the context of the Holocaust. I'm speaking from a US perspective, of course, but they're not very well represented here.
Anyway, I would say my motivation for including Wallenberg is in my interpretation of 'under-appreciated' (in the thread title.) He didn't even leave Budapest-- he was summoned and arrested by the Soviets (ostensibly the 'good' guys from his perspective in the Siege of Budapest) and died in their custody. Wallenberg was not around to see any of this celebration of his outright heroism, he died under-appreciated.
Just my take on it.
AchtungKarate ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:14:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And a very good take it is.
I guess I'm a bit biased, being from Sweden.
dodgerh8ter ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:44:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also Fridtjof Nansen
Saved millions of ethnic Ukrainians, Georgians and Armenians from starvation. Helped resettle millions more. He also crossed Greenland on skis, got to within a few miles of the North Pole by getting his boat intentionally stuck in sea ice and is a certifiable BADASS!
ChamplooFool ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:20:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
yea right
Salt-Pile ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:26:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I always tear up when I read about Wallenberg.
PMmeabouturday ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:08:58 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My high school is named after him
bungopony ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:03:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Before Schindler's List, I only knew of Wallenberg. Too bad no one knows what happened to him.
Atheist_Simon_Haddad ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:18:01 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
cavalcade for horses, motorcade for cars
LordDVanity ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:03:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also! The brother of uh..fuck. He was the brother of a high ranking nazi and was even jailed twice. Once by the Americans and then by Czech.
vrgr23 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 13:29:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In Israel he's not underrated at all, there are streets named after him in several cities. He used to live in Israel (then Palestine), and there's a plack commemorating that on the building.
_peanut_juice_ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:19:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Where the hell did all these Jews come from? Thousnads here millions there. Who knew there were so many Jews?
vadkert ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 17:27:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I mean, there are ~14 million worldwide right now. Roughly the same number as pre-Holocaust. There were 9.5 million Jews in Europe in 1933-- 2/3s of whom were killed.
PlayMp1 ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 19:18:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, a shitload of the world's Jews went to Israel using the law of return following World War II. I imagine much of Europe's Jewry in particular fled to Israel, knowing that things like the Holocaust can happen again. The US has the largest population of Jews outside Israel, and actually competes with Israel for having the largest population of Jews period. It helps that in the modern day, for the most part, the US is pretty tolerant of Jews. Shit, we got one running for President right now (Bernie Sanders) and no one has come after him for being Jewish.
pylori ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:54:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oh I'm sure they have, maybe not the same group as Obama being 'Muslim', but there are plenty of "JIDF conspiracy" retards prepared to spew racist hatred towards anyone or anything Jewish. The whole Gaza war in 2014 has also brought out a lot of anti-Israel/anti-semitism in college campuses as well, sadly.
PlayMp1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:07:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Definitely, yeah, but no one in the mainstream has questioned Sanders for "Jewishness." Even Trump, racist fuck that he is (or at least pretending to be), hasn't made a peep about that.
Stockholm-Syndrom ยท 2875 points ยท Posted at 14:51:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Funny, on the other side, you have John Rabe, a member of the Nazi party who saved many chinese from Japanese war crimes.
Catsdontpaytaxes ยท 951 points ยท Posted at 15:00:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
I don't think he was committed to nazi ideology though. From what I've read party membership was necessary for his position. Great man mind, shame he died in poverty.
Edit: I wasn't shitting on op btw, just wanted to add to it. I believe there was a collection from a Nanjing survivors group who paid for his funeral and possibly a memorial.
Edit2: it should also be noted that the events in Nanjing took place in 1937, many years before the final solution was put into effect.
One__upper__ ยท 369 points ยท Posted at 16:26:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Most positions in business and government and military in Germany at the time required Nazi party membership.
Eurynom0s ยท 15 points ยท Posted at 18:40:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In a similar fashion some people don't seem to get the difference between Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS. The latter was used in military battles but the Wehrmacht consisted of a lot of people who viewed themselves as just fighting for their country; a lot of the generals had served in the imperial army in WWI.
To name just a couple of examples, Dietrich von Choltitz is the general who disobeyed Hitler's orders to level Paris (amongst other reasons because he recognized that Hitler had gone completely nuts), and Erwin Rommel just ignored orders about things like killing captured Jewish soldiers. People also tried to rope Rommel into a plot to assassinate Hitler and he was pretty adamant that, no, we should arrest Hitler and try him for his crimes.
XavierMendel ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 19:40:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Erwin Rommel is the only Nazi to have a museum in Germany. He's respected near universally, even now and knowing his affiliation and allegiance.
BurntHotdogVendor ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 05:48:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A few major things going for his legacy: His treatment of allied PoW's, his sheer brilliance and skill, and ultimately his death(Essentially forced suicide for having knowledge of a plot to kill Hitler and not trying to stop it if not outright condoning it.) It's easier to respect and separate him from other German figures of the period.
PlayMp1 ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 19:11:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
/r/shitwehraboossay
The Wehrmacht was anything but "just a lot of people who viewed themselves as fighting for their country."
Eurynom0s ยท 15 points ยท Posted at 19:16:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Obviously there would have been Nazi true believers in the Wehrmact as well, but you can't categorically label them all as Nazis the way you can with the Waffen-SS.
PlayMp1 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:36:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No, but your post reeks of the Clean Wehrmacht myth.
costryme ยท 15 points ยท Posted at 20:02:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It didn't to me.
The point he was making was that the Wehrmacht was the military, same as the French Armรฉe de Terre, or the US Navy. So yes, there were Nazis in the Wehrmacht, but most of them were just soldiers.
PlayMp1 ยท -4 points ยท Posted at 20:16:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Soldiers who helped commit war crimes.
DeadKateAlley ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 21:01:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah that's called being a soldier.
costryme ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 22:27:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Right, then you should hold Japanese soldiers to the same standard, as well as the American soldiers, and any WW2 country's army really. They all did war crimes at some point during WW2.
Edit : Also, war crimes weren't a thing until after WW2.
Kiwi_Force ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:02:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Except war crimes comited by the Imperial Japanese Army and the wehrmacht (yes them specifically) vastly outnumber the war crimes comited by the Western Allies.
costryme ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:05:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't disagree with that !
Kiwi_Force ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 23:08:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Phew, sorry your comment made it sound like the wehrmacht were on equal footing with the Western Allies. In reality they comited an obscene amount of war crimes. While yes many did sign up to "fight and protect their country" that country was still Nazi Germany. They all knew this when they signed up and they all knew what that meant. I'm not saying 100% of them liked it but they all knew who and what they were protecting.
varroth ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 06:52:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No they didn't, the average person in Germany knew no more about the dealings of what was going on inside the military (including the Jewish genocide) than your average american at the time.. Most people only learned of the fact after the war. the country ''Nazi Germany'' didn't mean shit. It was just the name of any country, such as Sweden. It's only after the war that all the horribleness has gotten out.
Kiwi_Force ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 07:16:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is just pure bullshit.
You're telling me the "average" person knew nothing about the fact that their government rose to power on a platform of anti antisemitism and violence. This average person apparently knew nothing about their government that made no attempt to hide their eugenics policies, their anti Jewish; economic, denial of citizenship, and imprisonment policies, their doctrine and belief that the Aryan race was superior in every way to their Polish neighbors. The list goes on and on.
I am 100% not saying that all of the common German soldiers were Nazis. That is far from the truth and I disagree just as much with that as I do with anyone who says things along the lines of "the vast majority of the Wehrmacht were just fighting for their country and/ or forced to fight."
This "clean Wehrmacht" myth floats around Reddit so much it's so damn annoying.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/feb/17/johnezard
I'd also say check out the book "Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust" goes into quite a bit of the "collective guilt" side of things.
For info on what the term "clean Wehrmacht" means: http://harvardpress.typepad.com/hup_publicity/2006/07/the_wehrmacht_a.html
The book discussed in above article helps a lot as well: http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674025776
I can provide more sources if anyone requests them. I also like the book "Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland". Talks about ordinary German men in rear echelon police units and their roles/ knowledge of the horrors.
varroth ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 07:31:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No that's not what I meant. It was well known that the Jews were hated by their regime, but the German people needed a scapegoat at the time so that was the Jews so the people also believed in it. But when it comes to the actual GENOCIDE it wasn't very well known about except for the military and other ''higher up people''. I'll be honest I've heard differently from different books and different sites on the internet the only reason I'm standing by this one is because It's the one I've heard the most about.
Kiwi_Force ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 07:57:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I would say believe the vast majority of study on this issue over the Reddit consensus/ the side which you have "heard the most about". There is no way the largest attempted genocide in history was only known of by the military and "higher up people". Think of the manpower required to run just a single one of these camps. All it would take is one cousin of a friend of a guy who knows the cook for an officer who is in charge of supplies for the guards at a checkpoint leading to a camp to spread rumors for example. Once again, I am sure the vast majority didn't know the massive extent but there is no way in hell they didn't realize or at least extremely heavily suspect what was going on when all of the Jews, Communists, Social Democrats, homosexuals, asocials etc in their neighborhood one day just vanished.
varroth ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 08:07:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, that's true. The stuff I read said that people believed that they had all been imprisoned / deported but didn't suspect actual genocide. But like you said, with all the people in all the different camps and possibly a wife of a higher up official talking about it with their girlfriends it seems kind of unlikely the knowledge of it wouldn't spread.
Anouther ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:24:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Okay, so if America, say, invades the rest of the globe, idk, setting up coupes and assassinating democratically elected leaders and starting wars, over maybe several decades...
All under false pretenses...
Then can we hold American soldiers and law enforcement to the same standard?
Edit: and for the record.... they were living in poverty, dealing with a worse great depression than America. They grow up and join their military to defend themselves and regain sovereignty.
Not that I disagree.
varroth ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 06:32:52 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Are you serious? soldiers from all countries commited war crimes numbnuts. You don't think allied soldiers went around raping women and killing civilians?
PlayMp1 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 06:39:56 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Wehrmacht committed more - ethnic cleansing on a massive scale. There was nothing in WW2 perpetrated by the Allies that could compare to the numerous atrocities committed by the Wehrmacht. The only people that come close are the Japanese actions in China.
varroth ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 06:44:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Japanese were way worse IMO. And the point isn't what they did but that they thought they were doing the right thing. Fighting for their country and future generations etc. That's what OPs point was.
PlayMp1 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 06:50:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
OP's is still defending perpetrators of genocide. There's a reason this thread ended up on /r/shitwehraboossay just like I pointed out.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 02:25:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You can accept the fact that even the most honorable, squeeky clean wehrmacht person who died, died either (pre 1943) to conquer germany's neighbors and bring them under the brutal, insane fascist regime or (post 1943) to delay the end of fascism.
so basically, i'm saying fuck you
gymnasticRug ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 03:46:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I had to read that twice to understand the shit you just spewed from your keyboard.
[deleted] ยท -4 points ยท Posted at 04:02:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
i'm sorry you're a mentally-handicapped iron cross fondler.
gymnasticRug ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:04:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We're all sorry for you too.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 04:11:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
they were just defending their country!
from the consequences of the optional war of aggression launched by their genocidal regime!
gymnasticRug ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 04:16:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't know if you've realized this, but I'm not the original guy, cunt, so if you want, you can accuse him of being a Nazi to make yourself feel better. Do you jack off to this?
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:22:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
sorry, i was just following orders! which absolves me of any responsibility for my actions!
gymnasticRug ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 04:34:38 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Do you think I disagree with you? I just think you're a fucking cunt who can't provide any actual argument without resorting to insults.
[deleted] ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 05:10:00 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
you're right, i should have gotten into a more serious and reasonable discussion with the guy trying to generate sympathy for nazis
gymnasticRug ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 05:16:38 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, maybe you should have, seeing as reasonable discussion is more useful than "you're wrong because you are."
[deleted] ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 05:22:38 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You're making a few faulty assumptions here. 1.Nobody gets to the point of "poor misunderstood clean wehrmacht" by accident and 2. Logic won't fix what logic didn't create. I just wanted him to know he sucked.
Eurynom0s ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:30:15 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thank you for adding a useful, insightful comment to the conversation. A++ comment would read again.
[deleted] ยท -6 points ยท Posted at 02:33:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
ok, all those brave honorable germans who died. what was the effect of their struggle, again?
One__upper__ ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:20:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes, you are correct. There were many on the wehrmacht who were not nazis and were not war criminals. Many were fighting for their country or were simply drafted. I believe all waffen ss were volunteers and had to be members of the Nazi party. I'm sure not all of them were murderous scum, but a lot of them were and they had a pretty bad track record for committing atrocities.
You listed some of the well known and honorable German army leaders, but there were quite a lot of them. I read an excellent book by one, who was Hans von Luck. He was a panzer commander and quite a good one. It's a shame that the Nazis did such awful things and literally ruined a country and entire generations of people.
Eurynom0s ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:25:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, I knew I was just rattling off a couple of the very well-known ones. But without intending to say that none of the rank-and-file weren't also just fighting for their country, Rommel is a very clear-cut example of that. The guy was in a position to ignore Hitler and he did, which shows you how sincere it was on his part. He's pretty universally recognized as having been completely unhappy with what was happening to Germany, and knowing that Hitler was insane, but feeling like he had to go along with it for the sake of his country.
One__upper__ ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:16:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's too bad that more people didn't actually act out. There were some strong leaders that I think could have overthrown Hitler and gathered a big enough following to be successful.
Eurynom0s ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:32:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I can understand why though, with the general air of paranoia about getting rounded up as a political prisoner (remember, the concentration camps had a badge for political prisoners) and stuff like never being quite sure who was really an informant for the Gestapo, you were taking a really big risk that the person you wanted to conspire with was actually someone you should be trusting. The difficulty of getting a resistance movement off the ground in that kind of totalitarian environment is precisely why governments create that kind of environment in the first place.
DavidlikesPeace ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:26:01 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
When? When did Rommel ever say to his confidantes that he hated the Nazis or detested the dogma of aggressive war? This is the general who rose from the ranks after sniping Italians in WWI. He served as one of Hitler's bodyguards, took full advantage of his physical proximity with the Fuhrer to gain military command and a chance to smash apart the French and British. He also fully understood the consequences of the Holocaust in occupied regions and personally berated his subordinates for 'being too kind to the infantry'. Rommel was a product of his era, but that was an era where generals were routinely applauded for using men as cannon fodder. If he wasn't a Nazi, he was still a morally bankrupt man.
The_Cantabrigian ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:25:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
same thing happened with Wernher Von Braun. He is the father of the US's space program, but he had to be a member of the SS while he was in Germany
One__upper__ ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 23:20:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's up for debate. It's been said that he was actually a fairly ardent Nazi and member of the ss. He certainly led to the deaths of thousands of prisoner slaves and was responsible for building ling range weapons that specifically targeted civilians. He didn't have to be a member of the ss. That is very different from being a member of the Nazi party. I wouldn't be surprised if he was basically forced to be a Nazi party member but he would not have been forced to join the ss. He most likely joined to gain some benefit of command in the organization. Or he was an actual supporter of them and that's why he joined. Most of the other scientists he worked with were not in the ss.
tkingsbu ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:30:28 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Absolutely true.. My Opa was a nazi.... But only because he was an officer in the army ( anti aircraft battalion)
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:40:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In war both sides are usually filled with both good and bad people..
One__upper__ ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 04:03:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oh I do agree. However, the Nazis were full of very capable and strong leaders who were extremely opposed to Hitler and his leadership. I think more so than other totalitarian regimes in history. Between rommel, doenitz, and canaris, among others, they certainly could have staged a successful coup. It's just a shame they didn't manage to do it.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:17:27 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
yes, I too like grilled cheese.
One__upper__ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:43:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What?
von_Hytecket ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 19:13:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
*all
One__upper__ ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:15:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No. That is incorrect. All were encouraged, but not all were required. That's a big difference. There were plenty that held out and managed to keep their jobs.
von_Hytecket ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 14:17:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
My friend, maybe the 0.1% of decision makers in Nazi Germany were not in the party, and maybe 1% of the governmental employees were not. But let's assume that a staggering 10% of the people were not in the party, you call 90% "most" and not "almost all" !? And the 10% "plenty" !?
And c'mon, if the Nazis "strongly suggest" but "do not require", it's laughable to think it was a choice. Are you familiar with how the SA strongly suggested members of the Reichstag to vote in a certain way?
Now, to be fair, a great grandfather of mine was an important Prussian professor (one of the strongest supporters of Esperanto btw) and he kept his job despite being a terrible pain in the ass to the Nazi Party. So, some big names were not fired by the Nazi Party. But to call that "plenty" is preposterous.
One__upper__ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:31:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In leadership it was rare to not be a member, but in general business, it certainly wasn't everyone or nearly everyone. That is what I was first responding to. I also disagree with the 1% figure for government employees. It was probably closer to about 10%, give or take depending on the job or field. There were plenty of non party members all over the country and in all sorts of jobs and positions.
von_Hytecket ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:36:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's interesting, if you have a Source I'll be glad to learn something new.
However, how was life for non party members? Because in the DDR it was awful if you were not in the party... And I don't think that regarding this particular it was soo different then under the Nazis.
One__upper__ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:29:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Let me dig into my pre war Germany books and I'll let you know where I read it.
Life was fine for non party members. There were too many for it to be some sort of bad thing to not be a member. Really people only became members to either further their career or because they agreed with the party politics.
von_Hytecket ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:18:31 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I really, really can't wrap my head around the SA and Gestapo leaving alone non Party members.
One__upper__ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:41:35 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's not much to wrap your head around. It's not like they went around harassing German citizens who weren't party members. I'd be willing to bet that the majority of people in Germany were not party members. Again, people really only became members if they wanted to advance their careers or if they were ardent supporters of the party and regime. As long as you weren't speaking out against the party you were completely fine.
Tastemysoupplz ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 20:23:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No he was committed. He thought Hitler was a great guy. But a lot of this happened before the bulk of WW2 and before the Nazis showed their true colors. Rabe actually went back to Germany to tell Hitler what happened in China believing he would stand up to the Japanese and call them out on everything. Hitler basically told him to never speak of it again and took everything from him, shattering his illusions about the Nazi party and thrusting him into poverty.
He was a great man, just misguided by the Nazi party like so many others.
There's a book called the Rape of Nanking that I highly recommend reading. It pulls from Rabe's (and other internationals in Nanking) diary to help tell the story of what happened. It's terrifying.
XavierVE ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:27:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's a very good book, but his diaries have been published and they're a much better and heart-wrenching read. I wish there was a way to force everyone to read his diaries just so people would learn what a proper application of the word "Hero" looks like.
baudelairean ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:56:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Schlinder died in poverty IIRC.
Janus96Approx ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:55:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Plus, he didn't know what Nazism was really like. He was literally on the other side of the world, all information that reached him was propaganda.
Catsdontpaytaxes ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:34:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Additionally the events in Nanjing took place in December 1937, years before the final solution was put into effect.
hopefulbagon ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 16:29:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Which is why he said member of the Nazi party
nsto ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:09:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes, but obviously, explaining that he wasn't committed to the ideology is important information to add.
hopefulbagon ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:47:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's kind of already obvious when he was saving the Chinese lives and openly against the Japanese military, an axis ally, from committing the atrocities in nanking
i_am_the_ginger ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 14:51:56 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Being in the Nazi Party technically is no different from being in the Republican Party or Democratic Party. "Nazi" is a shortening of the full name of the party, Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, which translates to National Socialist German Workers' Party. It was the blue collar labor party in post-WWI Germany which was financially crippled and in the midst of a crashed economy, and the Nazi Party members tended to be the low income poor who were suffering the most from the sanctions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. Hitler, seeing an opportunity in the discontent of the party members, exploited the anger and resentment by turning it towards non-German peoples (such as other countries and Jews) and used that to build support for himself and ultimately seize power by perpetuating the anger and fear at these foreigners. If this sounds like what Trump is doing with Muslims, it's pretty much the same tactic. By the time Hitler was in power fully, everyone in the country was "in the Nazi Party" because everyone who wasn't was starting to disappear or turn up dead. But anyway, in those days saying someone was "a Nazi" isn't specific to "they were a Jew-hating holocaust worker," it just means they were German during World War II. I don't know if you recall, but there was some hubbub after the previous Pope Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict) was elected because he was in the Hitler Youth as a child, but EVERY boy was in the Hitler Youth during that time; it was compulsory. He would not have had the ability to not join. It was the members of the Reich and Hitler's close confidants that were doing pretty much all of the bad. There's a theory usually colloquially called "The Pure Wehrmacht" that's very important in Germany. The Wehrmacht was the regular army, so just filled with the general population of Germans, not Hitler and Co, and the "Pure Wehrmacht" theory states that the Wehrmacht soldiers were just regular Germans who were fighting for their country; they didn't know about the camps, they weren't supporting the Jewish and non-German exterminations, they were just fighting for Germany and thus the entire population was not evil.
So Tl;DR I guess, being a "Nazi Party member" in WWII Germany doesn't mean "Hitler's Pal," it just means the person was German in WWII and was in the army. You'd have to look into that person's background more to determine whether or not they were cool with Reich ideology.
Catsdontpaytaxes ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 14:57:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I would agree with this
x314159265359x ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:21:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There is a great Film of him: John Rabe (2009) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1124377/
A7X4REVer ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:59:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Not nearly as many people saved, but there was a Luftwaffe pilot in WWII that went against orders and helped escort damaged American bombers and fighter pilots out of the combat zone. I just love the thought of a guy who has so much respect for his fellow man, that he risked the repercussions and possibly treason to save a couple enemy airmen.
Can't remember his name at the moment. Sabaton wrote a song about him.
gildoth ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:16:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
OP's I thought was well known, this guy though was truly new to me, thank you for reminding us of his heroics.
CapitanPeluche ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:53:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thank you for this.
jazzyJasChen ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:26:53 on January 27, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
John Rabe is a true hero, during the Rape of Nanking, he and some other expats showed us the greatest shining moments of humanbeings.
heirloomlooms ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 00:01:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You know a situation is completely fucked up when a Nazi is the hero. The Rape of Nanking was that degree of fucked up.
Bigleux ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:58:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I read about him thanks to your post and I actually teared up a bit. Thanks for sharing.
rpimentel13 ยท 424 points ยท Posted at 15:28:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Aristides de Sousa Mendes, "the portuguese Schindler", did the same saving dozens of thousands of refugees. He was a consul in France during the Nazi invasion.
pteridoid ยท 17 points ยท Posted at 16:42:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"dozens of thousands" sounds weird.
ColePT ยท 41 points ยท Posted at 17:05:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Because it's a literal translation from Portuguese.
But it's true, the man saved about 30 000 jewish refugees against the orders of Portugal's fascist government. He died in poverty less than 10 year after this.
this_account_is_mine ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 18:02:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
tuga caralho!
Australopiteco ยท 22 points ยท Posted at 19:01:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
/r/PORTUGALCARALHO
Trick2Gesus ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 18:33:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Em todos os fรณruns, threads, boards, o que for, se houverem portugueses hรก sempre alguรฉm que tem de o exclamar, haha
sekva ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 23:24:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Brasileiros tambรฉm :P
guto8797 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 00:34:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
HERรTICO O IMPรRIO RENASCERร
Frenchfencer ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 12:00:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Funny how you don't have to speak portugese to understand this one, haha.
sekva ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 13:40:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
HUEHUE BR
this_account_is_mine ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 18:40:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ah pois :D
thedrew ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:04:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
When one saves a life, they save a world. So it's silly to argue who was the greatest savior in WWII.
Raoul Wallenberg is my candidate though. Hard to top 100,000 Jews.
Ichiroga ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 08:41:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Try a maraschino cherry!
mousicle ยท 86 points ยท Posted at 14:08:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Do what's right because it's right, and leave it alone.
TheVegetaMonologues ยท 31 points ยท Posted at 17:28:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fiat justitiae, ruat caelum
Do justice, and let the skies fall
overkill ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 22:16:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Holy shit this is great. Must convince wife that I can get a tattoo.
ShakingSquirrels ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 02:50:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just do it
[deleted] ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 17:07:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
jesse9o3 ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 17:59:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And if you're in the mood for a good cry, here he is meeting some of the people he saved
oodluvr ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 02:37:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Is there an AMA of one of these children or a family member of the saved children? That would be interesting to read! Thanks for the video. What a cool moment for him.
banality_of_ervil ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 21:06:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's also Ernst Morch, a Danish anesthesiologist, who used cocaine mixed with dried rabbit's blood to confuse German search dogs trying to sniff out Jews that where being smuggled out inside of fishing boats. He came to my high school to talk to us about his time in the Danish Resistance, which was successful in saving a large percentage of Denmark's Jewish population at the time. He also told us (maybe a little too gleefully) about killing Nazi soldiers too. Plus, he dismissed all the questions about Oskar Schindler (since the movie had recently come out at the time) by saying that he was a "fucking Nazi." Interesting class period.
I_ThinkYouAreGreat ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 17:04:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
While his train was leaving he was throwing signed passes out the window
TrekMek ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:43:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This guy probably means "there isn't a movie about them so nobody knows who they are."
BlackLedN ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:35:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also, Angel Sanz Briz: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%81ngel_Sanz_Briz He saved 5,000 jews by giving them fake Spanish papers.
vodka_titties ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:39:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
also, Jose Castellanos was the "Salvadorean Schindler".
He and a Romanian-Jewish colleague he also provided papers for, convinced officials that there was a sizable group of Salvadoreans living in that part of Europe.
He saved an estimated 25,000 lives.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:30:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What does that have to do with money? Where does $25,000 come into it?
vodka_titties ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:17:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Opps! Sorry meant 25,000 lives
Trobee ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 17:25:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also Nicholas Winton who helped get Jewish Children from Prague to the UK.
Check the end of this youtube video where the BBC tracked down some of the children he saved to surprise him https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIiBTP0spEA
pics-or-didnt-happen ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 16:53:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I wouldn't consider either of them "the most underappreciated person in history" though.
UnknownQTY ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 17:46:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
His name is easier to pronounce.
Dogpool ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 19:45:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And there was a movie.
Atario ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 14:36:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also, he would have been in a lot deeper shit if found out.
lionalhutz ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 17:27:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
On the same vein Albert Goring who was the brother of Hermann
grapearls ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:11:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
On a similar note Tzar Boris III of Bulgaria, in spite of being allied with the Axis, simply refused to hand any jews to Hitler, at least not from the current Bulgarian territory. He did have to let go of 11 000 jews from territories Bulgaria annexed during the war, but saved the lives of 48 000. This is widely considered as the reason he was poisoned, although it's not official.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 06:41:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'd like to see a sitcom of the grandchildren of these Jews living in Japan who were inexplicably raised as stereotypical New York Jews
OwlsOnnaShip ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:25:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
For the last few days I've been trying to remember this person, thank you for reminding me. Particularly I was looking for the code he taught: 1. Do not be a burden to others
Take care of others
Do not expect rewards for your goodness
There are a lot of decent documentaries involving Sugihara up on youtube too if anyone wants to check him out.
ever_onward ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:45:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
To that note, the person who Schindler employed to manage his business is the one who brought a change in Schindler's attitudes and is of equal credit.
n3xas ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:15:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Holy shit! We have a street named after him here in Lithuania, it's right next to where I live and I never knew who he was!
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:19:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
n3xas ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 11:54:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's also Sugiharos street in Vilnius
overkill ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:15:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
When he was honoured with a grove in Israel they initially were going to make it a grove of cherry trees. At the last minute they made it a grove of cedars. The Japanese arrived and said how fitting it was.
His name means Grove of Cedars.
None of his neighbours knew anything about what he did and wondered why all these Jewish people arrived to honour him when he died. He was just their quiet neighbour. His story always makes me emotional.
cprenaissanceman ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 06:09:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I was very glad to see this here, so thank you for posting this.
I would add to the summary that it seems very likely that he lost his job because of his actions and that he never thought what he did was anything special. He saw people in need and helped them. Consider that he wrote visas against the authority of his government, in a society where you did not disobey authority. What did was really quite brave. Finally, following his dismissal, he lived the rest of his life in poverty and was only recognized by Yad Vashem a year before he passed away.
I remember going to the United States Holocaust memorial museum and not seeing his name among their display of righteous people (names of people who saved Jewish people's, etc.) When I asked why they said that they covered the "western experience" (granted I was talking to some of the dossins and not the curator.) I really hope that since i was there last (maybe 8 years ago) they have changed this. He was a great man and I hope we can all be inspired to stand up to such a situation with the same conviction and courage as Mr. Sugihara.
Eagle_Warrior ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:51:04 on January 18, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Gilberto Bosques Saldรญvar helped too. A mexican consular he helped tens of thousands of jews.
That landed him, his family and 40 person staff detained by the gestapo.
ChickenFriedRake ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:15:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
I remember reading about this guy in middle school.. I think it was some historical fiction military journal series I used to read.
AnticitizenPrime ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:27:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Where they were promptly bombed?
Chie_Satonaka ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:18:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Most went to Manchukuo or Japanese Shanghai where they stayed until the Japanese surrender in 1945. Then most went on to British Palestine/Israel.
luminosity_ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:38:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I see his memorial garden everyday on my way to work! I took a course on the holocaust and not once did I hear his name.
For those of you interested: http://www.templeemeth.org/AboutUs/SugiharaMemorial/tabid/169/Default.aspx
Adamulos ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:22:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm fairly sure there is a Japanese-produced move being filmed about that.
Sideroller ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:31:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I remember learning about this guy in Middle School funnily enough.
MelGibsonIsKingAlpha ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:32:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dang, that kind of flys in the face of everything reddit has tought me about Japan during WW2. Was there a reason helping them escape. It just seems kind of silly since they slaughtered like ten million Chinese.
UnholyPrepuce ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:39:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is incredible. It's sad I never heard of this guy.
Mangusu ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:44:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wait so theres some Jews in Japan? Did they relocate afterwards or did they stay?
DrAlabamaJones ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:44:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sounds like an Oscar winning movie if somehow it was developed.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:05:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Probably because he's not some white dude who got a movie made about him.
Saint-Peer ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:12:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Righteous Among Nations names people from nearly all over the world who played a part in rescuing the Jewish refugees.
Chambergarlic ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:31:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Aristides de Sousa Mendes - The portuguese version.
DankKiller_Pat ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:34:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
I had to do a report on the movie Schindler's List and I think it got so much more attention was because the Gestpo arrested him, he was a Nazi and he basically saved them inside of Nazi territory.
badexplanations ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:35:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It is just too bad they settled them in Nagasaki...
mkfbcofzd ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:53:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If I remember correctly his hands were fucked from blisters writing all the documents and continued writing these documents on the train home so he can hand them out to at least one more Jew out the window.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:59:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
came here for this guy
Th3Greyhound ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:07:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I feel like I read a short story about him a few years ago, if it's the same dude he and his family were later sent back to Berlin and imprisoned I believe.
lifeasitwas ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:36:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also Gilberto Bosques, the Mexican Schindler.. also a diplomat who helped everyone he could.
duckvimes_ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:38:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Knew I recognized that name
uterus_probz ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:52:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Snap Judgement has a great episode featuring this story. If you haven't heard it I highly recommend it. What an incredible man.
Link: http://snapjudgment.org/shamed-man
Steezymann ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:59:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Honestly I think it is because he is Japanese. It would be hard to sell that right after the war no matter how amazing his accomplishments
throwaway08151994 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:21:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Related
CheatedOnOnce ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:37:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, it's not a competition - people deserve their recognition for sure, and they'll get it.
cappiebara ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:04:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They should make a movie!
KalAl ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:24:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Would anyone know the name Oskar Schindler if not for Steven Spielberg?
usernamenottakenwooh ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:35:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He shares a birthday with soooo many online profiles.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:37:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'd also like to point out the thousands of people, in Europe and North Africa and parts of the Middle East, who sheltered their Jewish friends and neighbours and saved their lives. Maybe they only rescued one person, or one family, or only looked after them for a little while, or just helped pass them on to the next safe location, but they chose to resist tremendous pressure and risk their lives in order to help others survive. We have seen acts of tremendous heroism and kindness throughout times of disaster or conflict, actually. And most of those names are forgotten - I imagine most stories will never be told.
If anyone is ever in Jerusalem, I would highly recommend going to Yad Vashem (the Holocaust museum). One area is the Avenue of the Righteous, which has trees and/or plaques to honour the people who saved lives. The number is truly staggering, and of course it's nowhere near all of them. But in terms of the general population, I think fewer people are capable of that than we realize. It's something that should be given the highest honours.
yarow12 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:42:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We need a movie.
Super_C_Complex ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:50:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I wonder if any of those refugees were caught in any bombing by the US
mrmtmassey ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:23:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I actually learned about this guy and wrote an essay about him in 6th grade. Small world
HeronSun ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:28:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think the reason why is because Schindler was a Nazi. Schindler was literally right next door to people who would kill him had they known his true intentions, and was friends with several of them. Don't forget that Schindler also allegedly intentionally manufactured faulty munitions that had a very low success rate, saving who knows how many other enemy soldier's lives.
b4b ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:54:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Noone heard that Schindler's brother became a communist butcher and worked for the Russian oppressors killing innocent Poles.
TheTrueNobody ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:01:00 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Albert Gรถring was the brother of Herman Gรถring. He was actively opposed to the Nazi and worked to protect dissidents and jews.
He was such a good guy that:
thedudedylan ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:10:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah but admittedly it wouldn't make much sense for liam neeson to play a Japanese guy.
PortAndChocolate ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:21:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
I can't remember his name, but there was a member of the German military who prevented the S.S. from capturing the Jewish people in a town, on the basis that they were German citizens, and it was his job to defend them. I forget how it ended, but I'd imagine not well.
Edit: I was a bit off on the details. He defended a Jewish ghetto in Poland, and managed to evacuate some of the people, after having his men defend the area from the S.S.
He had been repeatedly reprimanded for essentially not being horrible to Jewish people.
His name was Albert Battel
ChaIroOtoko ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:58:22 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Interestingly many European Jews made it to Japan and they gradually got assimilated.
spcdbrdmx ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:55:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This man saved my grandfather
-rabid- ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:14:15 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's awesome!
rain_and_hurricane ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:59:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And also Chinese Schindler
arbivark ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:57:00 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
actually i saw a nice black and white movie about him at the heartland film festival one year.
i once met my ex's grandmother in a little village in france. during the war she chased a group of nazis out of her kitchen, armed only with a broom. her husband and others in his resistance cell were hiding in the basement below.
fishyfishyfishyfish ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:16:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I knew his grandson who went to college in the US. What was funny is he would go into WalMart with a camera and take pictures of 'American toys', then post them on the yahoo version of ebay in Japan. He would sell a simple $10 toy for $100, just because there were all these rich Japanese that collected American toys (mostly made in China) as a hobby. Not sure where he is now.
Ninjaisawesome ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 12:22:22 on January 21, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I went to the Schindler factory in Poland. There is one small room dedicated to his life before/after the War. Dude was bit of a dick. unhanded deals to benefit himself constantly and then fucking over his wife at the first chance to become rich after he left Poland when the Russians came in.
ocelot-senpai ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 18:09:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Imagine being a poor Jew in Europe, being granted a transit visa to Japan, thinking you're in the clear only to move to fucking Hiroshima.
mr_triple_double ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:38:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He is very well known and remembered in Lithuania. There is a Chiune Sugihara sakura garden in Vilnius, as well as streets named after him in Vilnius and Kaunas. Also, there was an interesting stroke of coincidence that when the Israeli government found out about his bravery they decided to honour him with a grove of trees planted in his honour. They were initially going to plant cherry trees, because Japan is famous for it's cherry trees and their blossoms, but then they suddenly decided to go for Cedar trees instead because of the religious symbolism in Judaism. After they had planted the trees the government learned that "Sugihara" literally means a grove of Cedar trees. (last bit is reposted from /u/Somobro's comment)
alexistheman ยท 443 points ยท Posted at 19:15:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is going to get so buried, but I hope it gets upvotes. This has actually been a pet project of mine for years. Please read this.
Fรฉlix รbouรฉ is by far the most underappreciated person in modern history.
If you aren't French, you probably haven't heard of Felix รbouรฉ. There is no authoritative biography of the man written in English. He is, however, one of the few dozen modern burials in the French Panthรฉon, the resting place of the approximately 100 greatest French luminaries of all time such as Voltaire, Pierre and Marie Curie, Louis Braille, Alexandre Dumas and Victor Hugo. So why, might you ask, haven't you heard of รbouรฉ?
After the Battle of France in 1940, the French Republic was in a state of utter chaos. Charles de Gaulle was forced to flee to London where he was regarded by many of his own countrymen as a traitor, the French High Seas Fleet was sunk by the Royal Navy in its harbor in Algeria and Hitler had installed Philippe Pรฉtain as a collaborationist head of government. At the time, รbouรฉ was the Governor-General of Chad and the first black senior government official in French history. Instead of accepting the capitulation, รbouรฉ immediately sprang into action and rallied all of French Equatorial Africa to the Free French cause thereby preventing a strategic Axis victory over North Africa. Before any inch of metropolitan France was liberated, the only "free" territory in all of France was that of รbouรฉ, who preceded to not only harass the Italians but send much-needed raw materials and supplies to the Allied cause.
รbouรฉ's actions also ushered in a dramatic change in domestic colonial policy. The grandson of slaves, รbouรฉ promoted hundreds of talented local Africans to senior government positions, arrested pro-collaborationist officials and instituted policies that recognized local traditions and talents. It could be said, arguably, that รbouรฉ's quick thinking and effective administration prevented the complete collapse of Europe both at home and overseas.
We often fail to think of the many Africans and Asians who died in the cause of liberty against fascism, but Felix รbouรฉ is undoubtedly one of the greatest statesmen of the period. He ultimately died of a heart attack due to overwork in Cairo in 1944. He was interned in the Pantheon immediately following the war.
RudeDingo ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 00:30:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The only Eboue I know is from Ivory Coast. And he's a football fucking legend.
stalbielke ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 03:21:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Phrasing...
tinoasprilla ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:55:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Emmanuel Eboue from Galatasaray right?
RudeDingo ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:16:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes
croufa ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 03:10:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thank you for that. I've never heard of him, nor had I ever really though about (nor been taught about) African involvement in WW2 until now.
mikehockerts1 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 03:45:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I love WW2 stuff and had never heard anything about this before, thanks for sharing. I gave as many upvotestudents as I could.
turtlesteele ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:23:58 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thank you for sharing that.
The_Alaskan ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:32:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thank you for sharing this. I did not know of him beforehand.
pejmany ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:49:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I recall being told of a french movie about the african involvement in wwii called the tribals or something, I really want to find it again.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 10:54:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
[deleted]
pejmany ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 08:48:19 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Vous รชtes genial! Merci!
alexistheman ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:47:26 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's called Indigรจnes.
TheAeroplaneFlies ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:52:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
*Well, his name is interesting enough, let's read this...
Lola_got_a_Lazerface ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:36:52 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Holy shit -- thanks a lot for this one. Wildly underappreciated.
waraw ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:02:33 on January 22, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thank you, never knew this!
Justin429 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:14:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
tl;dr
Low_discrepancy ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 00:57:12 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Highly arguable. WW2 was won at Stalingrad. Mitterrand for example knew it
I_miss_Chris_Hughton ยท 19 points ยท Posted at 03:33:17 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
WW2 was won all over the place. For example, if the UK makes peace with Germany after losing the battle of Britain/the atlantic in 1940/41? the Germans would have likely been able to beat the Soviets due to a lack of lend-lease travelling from/through the UK. Likewise, the arguably most important Soviet operation during the war was actually operation Bagration which gutted the entire German army in Belarus, and kicked the door in all the way to the Vistula, but that relied on victories in places like Stalingrad.
TL;DR: The war wasn't 'won' in a battle, every act in the war led to the allied victory, including from the actions of people like Eboue
Low_discrepancy ยท -7 points ยท Posted at 03:43:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We are adding more buts and ifs. We can simply compare the amount of resources that went into the Eastern front, the Western and the African and you'll realise Africa wasn't essential.
Saying he was essential to preventing the collapse of Europe (WE minus UK did collapse) is a huge exaggeration.
I_miss_Chris_Hughton ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 03:54:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Its not so much the outright, 'solid' benefits of central africa as much as it is the effect it had on moral. It kept France in the war, and gave them some land to which they could call their own, and it gave the free french more legitimacy (which had its benefits, considering that battles that could have been massacres, like in Paris, where essentially won by the resistance as the Allies arrived on the outskirts.
Also, Africa probably was essential. If the Afrika Korps had broken through to the Suez, Britain connection with its Eastern Empire would be totally severed, and the Germans/Italians would be in a position to sweep up Palestine and Iraq into Persia (thus cutting off a key supply route to the Soviets, and threatening the southern border of the USSR itself)
Low_discrepancy ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 04:03:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
France (and I speak as a Frenchman) was out of the war. The Resistance mouvement is simply something we have to say hey we weren't that bad, the real French fought hard.
Why would the battle for Paris be a massacre? And either way the war was lost by Germany at that point.
Well the key supply routes were the Artic route. That was the main route that supplied the USSR with the trucks and equipment it needed to win that war.
thehonestyfish ยท 1249 points ยท Posted at 13:53:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Claude Shannon.
Do you use any devices that communicate digitally with another device? Thank Claude.
[deleted] ยท 429 points ยท Posted at 16:13:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
thehonestyfish ยท 509 points ยท Posted at 16:20:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Turing gets a movie, Shannon gets a conference room.
thiscorpsofbrothers ยท 18 points ยท Posted at 19:52:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
To be fair, Turing went through a lot of bullshit, died, and THEN got a movie.
TightAnalOrifice789 ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 07:10:12 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, being a homosexual, you might say his penis went through a lot of human shit, when he was busy performing anal sex with other men.
famouspeople0 ยท 18 points ยท Posted at 17:50:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I mean The Imitation Game was a good movie.
Faryshta ยท 21 points ยท Posted at 18:53:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
and the conference room has a tv screen. your move turing
Awestruck3 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:49:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm sure there was at least one screen in the movie.
WhatVengeanceMeans ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 19:46:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It was a fine piece of entertainment, but it had about as much to do with Turing as Game of Thrones does with European history.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:33:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Turing was forced to undergo chemical castration, then killed himself. He also did work at a place called Bletchley park during the war. I would say that the film was more accurate than ASOIAF is to medieval europe.
WhatVengeanceMeans ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 23:42:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Almost no detail of the investigation and trial that led to Turing's plea bargain was portrayed in the film as it occurred in real life, right down to the screenwriter admitting in interviews that he named the cop after an old roommate.
Was the place called Bletchley Park? Sure. That's just about the only detail the film gets right. In real life, Alastair Denniston had himself been a codebreaker during WWI and fought to keep cryptography a priority between the wars. The film attaches a ridiculous caricature of out-of-touch military leadership to that name so audiences have someone to root against.
Also if the Soviet spy John Cairncross ever met Turing in real life, even in passing, no evidence has turned up of the event. They certainly weren't direct co-workers, and the whole notion that Turing broke off his engagement to Joan Clarke because he didn't want her to be implicated in some threatened false spying accusation was invented by the filmmakers.
Even on the subject of whether Turing's suicide was intentional, there is room for reasonable people to disagree. Room which the film does not leave, apparently in pursuit of a clean "martyr" narrative. Given Turing's use of cyanide in experiments in his home laboratory, it is entirely possible that his death was a tragic accident. His mother remained certain of it until the 70's. Plenty of those who knew him have their doubts.
Yet the film, after raking the British justice system over the coals for the entire last act, ends by uncritically accepting the official conclusion that he'd intentionally killed himself. They never even tested the apple for cyanide.
Ugh.
marsupial20 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:55:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I want to kiss you on the mouth. The movie did absolutely nothing to highlight how bad ass Turing and his achievements were during WWII. I felt similarly about The Theory of Everything and Hawking.
thehonestyfish ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:31:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, but Isabella I did give birth to dragons, and Jutland was overrun by White Walkers, so I say it's a wash.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:35:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A big wall to keep out the uncultured Scots is just too far, GRRM should've kept it slightly realistic. /s
Beep_Boop_IAmaRobot ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:34:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Was it? I thought the writing was pretty terrible and the plot devices wooden
CyberByte ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:47:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Usually these comparisons go something like "[Insignificant jackass] gets a movie, Shannon gets a conference room". I like Shannon and regularly use information theory and I agree that he's perhaps underrated (although not among scientists), but Turing is a fucking hero too.
And to be fair, Turing didn't get his movie based on his groundbreaking research alone, but also because there was some, ehm, "interesting drama" in his life. I know Shannon also worked on cryptography in WW2 (and he even met Turing and may have collaborated a bit), but I don't think his achievements were as concrete and easily explainable as breaking the Enigma code. I'd watch a movie about Shannon though.
Yuktobania ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:06:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
But is the conference room Turing complete?
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:22:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Turing got a blatant piece of Oscar bait that deliberately glossed over the darkest parts of his life. I think Shannon wouldn't mind a conference room after that sacrilege.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 04:07:28 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sexism is real eh?
thehonestyfish ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:16:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
But Shannon is... a... guy?
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 04:34:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
YOU CAN'T TELL HER WHAT GENDER SHE IDENTIFIES WITH!
DonJulioTO ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:59:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We have a Turing conference room at my workplace.
SquirrelicideScience ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:13:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Baby steps.
bluecanaryflood ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:34:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
To my knowledge, Shannon wasn't chemically castrated, so I'd say it's fair enough.
cavemanben ยท -4 points ยท Posted at 19:46:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
But Turing was gay and people didn't like gay back then so it's edgy.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:34:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It was a bit more than 'didn't like' them.
cavemanben ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 22:50:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Think so?
Jackhe96 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:21:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
UCLA?
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:22:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No, it's a Swedish university.
Ojos_Claros ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:47:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Never heard of him...
Ughda ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:40:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Mine too. Also every conference room is named after a great scientist/engieneer
LabKitty ยท 54 points ยท Posted at 15:19:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also: Edwin Jaynes, who extended Shannon's information theory as the maximum entropy principle.
alek9 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:23:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Bayesians unite!
LabKitty ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:58:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Witness the Gaussian emerge like a greasy calf wriggling free of its mother's birth canal!
NiceVu ยท 117 points ยท Posted at 17:01:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Shanon, Dijkstra and Turing(not now because of the movie) are people that get no recognition outside of the CompSci circles.
UncleMeat ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 17:48:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I mean, what cs academics have gotten recognition outside of the field? If you go up to people on the street with a list of Turing Award winners and ask them who they recognize, I bet the majority of people recognize zero names.
UNWS ยท 15 points ยท Posted at 18:13:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think, the same thing would apply to noble prize winners, except those who are already famous otherwise. Science is not a popularity contest.
UncleMeat ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 18:27:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Exactly. That's why I thought it was a little weird to call out those three people, Dijkstra in particular. He was a smart guy and came up with some pretty important stuff, but not really any more important than hundreds of other cs academics. He also wrote that fucking paper that everybody loves to use as a template for their paper title. I'll never forgive him for that.
TheLifelessOne ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:42:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Which paper?
mostermand ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 20:35:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Considered_harmful
wieschie ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:07:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Now there was a columnist who was bored at work..
notadoctor123 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 05:17:52 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He was busy learning recursion.
notadoctor123 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:16:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Niklas Wirth was actually responsible for that paper title. He was the editor of whatever publication venue Dijkstra submitted that paper to, and changed the title from what Dijkstra had originally intended.
UncleMeat ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:05:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's true but if Dijkstra hadn't written that paper then I wouldn't have to review a bunch of papers every year that think they are clever for aping the phrase. "X Considered Harmful" and "Why Johnny Can't X" are extremely vague titles that don't really tell you what the paper is about yet it seems like 10% of papers insist on using those titles.
Just a pet peeve of mine.
BloodWolfCruz ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 21:10:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dijkstra shouldn't be recognized. The man wanted Temeria for himself, no matter the cost.
Echelon64 ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 17:32:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I would throw in Dennis Ritchie as well.
[deleted] ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 19:07:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
Low_discrepancy ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:45:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Im happy this didnt start a debate between theorists and applied people.
SoldierHawk ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:20:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That asshole has such a good gwent deck. Haven't beaten him yet.
Salamok ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:03:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Don't forget Grace Hopper.
yordles_win ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:55:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In turing's case, history circles as well.
mithoron ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:18:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The first email account I got was (at)Dijkstra.almostfullyspelledoutuniversityname.edu. It was fun learning to spell it.
Dano_The_Bastard ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:54:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Turing has a main road named after him in his home city of Manchester. 'Alan Turing Way'. Most of us had no fucking clue who he was though before the movies about Bletchley Park or his own arrived!
ADSRelease ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:36:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As if anything in CS beyond Jobs and Gates gets recognition for things.
Another interesting tid bit, I went to school with the grandchild of the inventor of encryption.
NiceVu ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:41:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not to disrespect Gates and Jobs, but to me it seems like the whole era of modern computers was building up by many genius people and those two just came and cashed in on it.
Low_discrepancy ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:48:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Then you probably dont know Turing's contribution to PDE theory.
desmonduz ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:16:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
how about John von Neumann?
rua160113 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:58:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Shannon gets some recognition among phoneticians
YCobb ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 08:13:00 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Turing has always gotten a good reputation for the Enigma Machine, to be fair. He deserved more, but that's not too bad.
Mur0 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 12:00:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Shannon showed up a lot in my Communications studies, and I still go back to some of his work when I'm working on topics involving distribution (Information Theory) and privacy (Cryptography).
I found a lot of his work pretty compelling, and I don't think he's at all unknown outside of CompSci circles. People in my field are having to contend with a lot of computer tech overlap, and it's in their best interest to read up on the foundations of our communications systems - even if they have little or no interest in computer science as a discipline.
poeir ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:32:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alonzo Church also goes unacknowledged.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:24:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
[deleted]
noggin-scratcher ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:09:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Among many other things in the rest of his career. The one particular algorithm carrying his name which he's now famous for was practically written on the back of a napkin one afternoon, because it didn't take any longer than that to figure out. In his own words to some interviewer...
He also coined the phrase "structured programming", thereby promoting the concept of "Maybe programming would be easier if we wrote it in organised blocks and loops and subroutines rather than a big old mess of spaghetti-code. Which is another one of those good ideas that seems so very obvious after the fact.
Polish_Potato ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:54:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I have no idea who any of them are, other than Dijkstra is from The Witcher, lol.
NiceVu ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:01:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You're kinda undermining Dijkstra and Turing there, check them out. Dijkstra made big contributions to Operating Systems and modern CPUs appart from his algorithms.
Turing formalised for the concepts of algorithm and computing. Turing machine is considered origin of computers, and I'm putting it short here, you should really read something more about them.
JuggleGod ยท 17 points ยท Posted at 18:14:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Random aside, he's also quite famous in the juggling community. There's a lot of very fascinating math (including a branch of group theory) within juggling, and he's recognized for creating some of the first juggling machines and "Shannon's Theorem" which describes the relationship between the position of the objects juggled and the action of the hands.
(F+D)H=(V+D)N
F is the time an object spends in the air (Flight)
D is the time an object spends in a hand (Dwell), or equivalently, the time a hand spends with an object in it
V is the time a hand spends empty (Vacant)
N is the number of objects
H is the number of hands
Adam-In-The-Oculus ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 18:19:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
He would also take his wife to Vegas and count cards playing blackjack using the High-Low method (which he co-created). This is where Bringing Down the House and 21 got their idea. Wikipedia says they made a fortune.
CuntJuggler ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 17:20:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Shannon
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:03:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nobody even knows who slepian is!!
Brixton6 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:48:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I grew up in the same town he did. It made me a little sad that I hadn't ever heard of him until I was a senior in high school. You would think there would be some kind of dedication to him somewhere, but there isn't.
the_chewtoy ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:49:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thank Claude, it works!
danwroy ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:53:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Put an asterisk next to his name, that's all the praise he needs
mcmcn ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:53:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He wrote the most important master thesis of all time
OldPolishProverb ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:30:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I thought the actress Hedy Lamarr was credited with inventing digital communication. She created spread spectrum technology, the basis of cell phone communication, back in 1941 in order to secure and encrypted communication.
fnybny ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:08:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He is famous
Bassflute ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:17:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Too true! Only learned about his work (and a ton of other interesting stuff) by reading that fantastic book, The Information by James Gleick.
zdelarosa00 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:52:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
EE student, never heard of him till now
badge ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:27:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Claude Shannon.
The most depressing thing is that it all started with his Masters thesis.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:42:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What's the equivalent of installing adobe flasher player back then? Would be good to get some ancient it memes
l_2_the_n ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:45:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm a Computer Science major, and I've learned about a lot of mathematicians and computer scientists from Gauss to Knuth. But I've never heard of Claude Shannon. Underappreciated indeed
Drafo7 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:56:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Isn't that the same guy who calculated the hypothetically possible number of different chess games?
InformationTheory ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:16:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Where would I be without him?
thiscontent ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:17:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
ftfy
ThiefofNobility ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:28:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Kevin Flynn had the idea first, he just got stuck on the Grid.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:34:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In 1795, Dr. Salva presented at the Academy of Natural Sciences and Arts of Barcelona his first report devoted to "The Electricity applied to telegraphy."
Shannon was way late to the game
ILikeLeptons ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:42:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
shannon and edward o thorpe collaborated on an early wearable computer that they used to predict roulette wheel spins.
Sharrac ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:36:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just had my Theory of Communication exam today. Give me a break, mate.
HamburgerDude ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:40:53 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
His work feels decades and decades ahead. An absolute genius.
Moidah ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:53:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nah, I just use my phone, I don't hook it up to my computer or nuthin.
Rumback ยท 803 points ยท Posted at 13:45:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Zinaida Vissarionouna Ermolieva. She was a great scientist, saved a great amount of people and didn't get a wiki page in english.
https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/antibiotics1968/28/5/28_5_399/_pdf
fearlessandinventive ยท 585 points ยท Posted at 15:33:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So write one! That's the beauty of Wikipedia.
TheKrs1 ยท 634 points ยท Posted at 19:18:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It took a while, so I made a first effort. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Zinaida_Vissarionouna_Ermolieva
grendel-khan ยท 95 points ยท Posted at 21:22:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I tidied it a little. Since I don't know much about the subject, could you add something outlining why she was important, or what she did that she should be famous for?
TheKrs1 ยท 42 points ยท Posted at 21:32:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thanks! I don't know as much as what OP would. I did recently find this page which includes sources for the following facts:
diuvic ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:12:02 on January 22, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think she swallowed an EVE Hypo
Psychonian ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 00:44:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's kind of the point of making a Wikipedia page, don't you think?
JnnyRuthless ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 22:18:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
6 hour turnaround is pretty good, I'm looking forward to reading this.
TheKrs1 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:26:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No, I meant that OP didn't reply to /u/fearlessandinventive in over 3 hours. So I took the liberty to start the beginnings of an article.
JnnyRuthless ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:29:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well look at me not reading usernames. Good on ya my friend, I'm giving you the credit now and look forward to reading your work.
Towerss ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 00:18:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Someone took it down for stupid reasons
TheKrs1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:05:01 on January 18, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Someone put it back up for better reasons!
CVMackin ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 22:16:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is why I think Reddit is cool. Good job!
Daviditamon ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:58:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's already down :(
Mr_Bumper ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:40:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah that happened quite fast.. A shame really..
TheKrs1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:05:18 on January 18, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's already back up!
ChaIroOtoko ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 01:05:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I am gonna help with the page when I reach home.
TheKrs1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:04:41 on January 18, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thanks for your efforts.
soulteepee ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 19:37:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
'...USSR Academy of Sciences as the head of the head the Department of Microbial Biochemistry ...'
Too many heads. But a great start!
TheKrs1 ยท 20 points ยท Posted at 19:38:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If you go back to my original post I never said anything about doing a good job or that I wouldn't be rushed.
...
Thanks.
Edit: Although most people wouldn't complain about a little extra head - I removed it from her page.
Extramrdo ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:05:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
/r/shestillsucking
soulteepee ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:14:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oh I was only trying to help! I'm sorry if I sounded snarky. I really didn't meant to. I was so pleased you wrote the entry for her. You are to be commended!
TheKrs1 ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 20:47:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No snarkiness perceived. All good chief. I appreciate the heads up.
afrodcyack ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 01:14:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ha. I see what you did there
Hoser117 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:37:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Now she's not under-appreciated anymore! What an asshole you are buddy!
TheKrs1 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:41:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Eh, Hoser... Sorry about that, eh! Make it up to ya with a beer?
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:43:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
can't believe it was declined. sometimes wiki editors feel like such sticklers.
TheKrs1 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 15:03:59 on January 18, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Seems like it was since accepted. :-) (Someone else came in and did lots of work. Very much appreciate all that).
Missingplanes ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:00:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Apparently making a new Wikipedia entry is a lot like writing a master's thesis. Good luck.
romulusnr ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:57:17 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I remember when you could just write a Wikipedia page and not have to go through a bunch of pedantic bullshit. After all, cutting arbitrary elitism out of encyclopedias was the whole fucking point.
PS Jason Scott, you were right. Happy?
fearlessandinventive ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 00:02:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You, sir, are a national treasure.
TheKrs1 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 15:05:38 on January 18, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
... Maybe in the USSR? No wait, that's her.. not me. :-)
Zeitgeistalt ยท 366 points ยท Posted at 17:35:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Man, if only there was a way for the common man to add a wiki page. Oh well, maybe one day
Stalking_Goat ยท 21 points ยท Posted at 19:51:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You have to be willing to deal with the toxic community though, so mostly the common man has given up. Not worth fighting the admins. https://theconversation.com/wikipedia-at-15-in-decline-but-condition-isnt-terminal-so-what-may-the-future-hold-53185
Jak_Atackka ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 22:09:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well yeah, if you think about it it's not surprising that the number of editors has declined. Look at the quality of the existing articles. There are a lot that can be improved, especially those requiring special knowledge (science, medicine, etc), but there are many articles that are basically as complete as they'll ever be.
I've worked on a wiki and have seen the same thing happen. You run out of new stuff to write, and all that's left requires more knowledge than you have, so you leave. It's not because the project is dying, far from it. It's because the project is nearly complete.
komali_2 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:42:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't disagree with what your saying but that article was drawing far gone conclusions for the data it was putting forward.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:03:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
How do I fax Wikipedia a letter demanding this change?
Adddicus ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:55:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's just crazy talk!
ZMush ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 04:13:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Pretty sure anyone can create one..just needs to be approved.
throwawaygoodvibes ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 17:30:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Second this. She deserves this. You can read Russian presumably. You knew about her.
CAPITALLETTERMAN ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:56:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A quick Google search shows here that someone translated (not just machine translated) the Russian Wikipedia of this woman.
Anyone interested in paraphrasing it into English?
TheKrs1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:07:13 on January 18, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
FYI - If you missed the rest of the conversation.. She does have one now thanks to you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinaida_Vissarionovna_Ermol%27eva
MoronLessOff ยท 1702 points ยท Posted at 14:36:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Benedict Arnold was so under appreciated that he turned traitor.
alphagammabeta1548 ยท 1343 points ยท Posted at 15:44:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
This is one of those facts that more people should know. Arnold was a hero of the early revolution, but he was repeatedly ignored, sidelined and passed over so he said "fuck it, I'll
fight forsupport the British"MJWood ยท 750 points ยท Posted at 17:21:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As a Brit, I'm not sure whether I'm supposed to consider him a traitor to his country or a redeemed rebel.
Legate_Rick ยท 543 points ยท Posted at 18:22:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
His reasons were entirely selfish. Rather than he thought what he was doing was wrong. So I would consider him a cunt.
sgs500 ยท 33 points ยท Posted at 21:29:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What would you have him do instead? Quit the army? Well he tried that...twice. Washington refused him both times.
RogueRaven17 ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 07:43:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"No, Ben, you can't quit the army because I gave a medal to someone else. Stop being such a pussy and get back out there."
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:55:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wasn't he in love with an English woman?
MJWood ยท 30 points ยท Posted at 18:27:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think this is the right answer.
lord_mayor_of_reddit ยท 149 points ยท Posted at 19:58:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Actually, it's kind of not. Yes, he did switch for largely selfish reasons but that's not the whole story.
He was a loyal American military leader up until 1778. But by that year, the British had captured both Philadelphia and New York City and Washington's Continental Army was not in a very good position to win the war.
In an effort to end hostilities, the British offered self-rule to the colonies. They'd still be British subjects, but it would basically give the Americans most of the things they'd had grievances over prior to the start of the war.
The Congress argued over the British proposal and ultimately rejected it. Given the unfavorable position the Continental Army was in, Arnold thought the Congress had thus doomed the country. In fact, this wasn't a singular opinion. Back in 1775-76, there was a document called the Articles of Association that was distributed throughout the country, and there were many local signings of the document, in a show of support for the Congress. But by 1778, surviving records show that a very large percentage of the signers gave up on the American cause because they thought the Congress was fucking over the country. These former Patriots quit the American militias or even took up arms on the side of the Loyalists.
This was the climate during which Arnold switched sides. He wasn't alone in predicting disaster. And in a way, he was kind of fucked no matter what he did.
If the British won (and it looked like they were going to), he was probably going to be hanged by the Brits for treason, and his family would face financial ruin, if not worse, once the war was over.
But because of the zealousness of the Patriots (who were a minority, albeit a vocal one, in the colonies), if he simply resigned from the Army because he no longer believed in the cause, he may have been hanged anyway, and almost certainly would have had everything he and his family owned taken from them. (Congress had no money and used confiscated lands as payment to Continental soldiers during and after the war). Either way, he was facing financial ruin and possibly death.
Switching sides for payment, he saw, was the best option. He saw it as a way to save his own skin, and save the economic livelihood of his family. And it would have worked, too, if the British had won, as the majority of Americans at that time predicted. The rest is history.
A cunt? As a military leader, sure, especially given the fact that he was passing on information about the Continental Army to the British Army.
But as a citizen trying to save his life and the livelihood of his family? What he did was totally reasonable.
Yuktobania ยท 78 points ยท Posted at 21:05:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Congress: Fucking shit up since the birth of America!
Matti_Matti_Matti ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 03:58:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
FTFY
itchytweed ยท 23 points ยท Posted at 21:46:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just think, we were so close to being similar to Canadians.
lord_mayor_of_reddit ยท 49 points ยท Posted at 22:51:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In fact, it essentially is the story of the beginning of Canada.
All those small time Americans who sided with the British, or switched sides from fighting for America to fighting for Britain, formed a big chunk of what is now Canada. (See: United Empire Loyalists.) John Adams wrote that about a third of all Americans at the time of the Revolution were sympathetic to the British cause.
Many of these Americans had all their land and property conficscated by the new American government at the end of the war, and it was given to Patriot soldiers because the government had no money to pay them for their services rendered.
So those Loyalists, with nothing left, were offered free land by the British government in what became Canada. This is largely how the province of Ontario was started. Before the 1780s, there were next to zero white people living there.
Since the land they were given was mostly in unsettled areas, they had to start from scratch, building homes and mills and churches and taverns, in a place where the weather was less conducive to good farming. Lots of people nearly starved to death. Some did.
Life was hard enough that many of these people ended up coming back to the States after a few years, relying on handouts from family and sympathetic friends to get themselves back on their feet, though the more rabid Loyalists were not welcome, even many years later.
The ones who stayed largely shaped the culture of English-speaking Canada.
kjhwkejhkhdsfkjhsdkf ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 00:28:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's a good point, because in hindsight we proudly look at Valley Forge, et al, but in reality if we were around in 1776 we wouldn't exactly be so assured of eventual victory. For a while it really looked like the whole thing may fail, and when treason is rewarded with death for the traitor and ill fortune for his family, a lot of people would second guess their choices.
MJWood ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 20:45:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Saving your own skin justifies treason?
I wonder if Arnold himself would have argued that.
Mo0man ยท 30 points ยท Posted at 21:48:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Saying it's treason when it's a revolution is a bit hypocritical.
lord_mayor_of_reddit ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 21:59:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I didn't say it was justified. Just that it was reasonable. Certainly, his sharing of Continental Army information with the enemy was unjustified and put soldiers' lives in danger. And if you sign up for one side of a war, you ought to see it through.
But Arnold wasn't some evil plotter whose purpose at the outset of the war was to undermine the American cause. Nor was he solely a greedy asshole who switched sides to get rich, as is often portrayed. He genuinely did have concern that his life may be in danger if he stuck with Washington's Army, given the way the war was going.
Now, if the war had played out the way he and many other Americans expected it to, Arnold would be remembered much differently. It would be Washington and others who'd be called the traitors, much as the Confederacy is seen in (much of) America today. In that scenario, Washington and similar "traitors" would probably have suffered the same fate as earlier anti-royal rebel Jacob Leisler. A fate that Benedict Arnold was trying to avoid.
As the saying goes, history is written by the winners.
dorekk ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 01:41:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Er...weren't all Americans committing treason already?
MJWood ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 05:41:58 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If they had lost, they would have gone down in history as 'rebels'. But Benedict Arnold, if remembered at all, would still have been seen as a turncoat, an opportunist, a man of no principle, a traitor doubly so in that neither flag meant anything to him.
greedcrow ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 10:00:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That is completly wrong. If Britain had won he would have been remembered as a hero. A great spy who risked his life.
MJWood ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 10:15:33 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No because he wasn't on our side from the beginning.
The British accepted his help but didn't have to like it. Turncoats have been held in such disdain you are ideally supposed to reject their offer and send them home like the Faliscan schoolteacher by Camillus.
greedcrow ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 10:37:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I disagree yet again. Look at world war 2 and how many spies there were. They are all seen as heroes.
Maybe he might not have been able to continue his military career since some people would not trust him but overall he would have done just fine.
In fact the dude managed to keep his head and let his family have a good life which was what he wanted.
1fastman1 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:31:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Shit man, never knew that.
On a unrelated note, i feellike this could be a plot in steven universe
cmckone ยท -6 points ยท Posted at 20:18:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
load more comments and HOLY SHIT WALL OF TEXT
Luyten-726-8 ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 20:38:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Good wall of text though.
scattyboy ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 23:43:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah but part of his plan was to have George Washington captured by the British during an inspection of West Point. He forged the inventory there and drained the supplies secretly thereby weakening the fort. He was a dick.
Titanosaurus ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 03:15:28 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah but he was selling out West Point. Just because I'm not gonna start giving Russia state secrets just because Congress is being stupid. Also he was in the high echelon of the military. He wasn't washington, and Gates was getting more credit, but his soldiers looked to him for leadership and guidance. When you're in the military, you don't have the luxury of believing or not believing the cause.
I disagree sir, benedict Arnold is a traitor.
RogueRaven17 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:43:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A little crybaby traitor bitch cunt.
nycstocks ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 00:18:12 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He's a blood relative of mine. Take that back! Haha
Timothy_Claypole ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 20:30:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As a Brit I have to say I would like to view our colonial past as a part of history and not something worth having an emotional reaction over.
MJWood ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:35:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Keep Calm and Carry On
Timothy_Claypole ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:43:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As luck would have it I had two cups of nice Earl Grey today.
sheilzy ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 03:24:35 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't know what your schooling wanted you to think about him, but the British commanders didn't like him either. Arnold expected them to embrace him, "Oh, the damn Yankee doodle smartened up!" But they didn't trust him. They thought him to be wishy-washy and not committed to anyone's cause and might have had ulterior motives to get inside info to the Colonists. He didn't switch sides because he believed in any of George III's policies, he switched sides because he was being a showoff and wanted to get the Colonists' attention and piss Commander Washington off.
MJWood ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:30:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We didn't get taught about him at all.
I'm not surprised the British officers didn't trust him. Nobody likes a turncoat. And it's not as if he did it out of conviction.
Thovy ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 19:09:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As a Canadian I'd say he was awesome. He supported a pathway of secession that would have cost fewer lives. It was also a similar approach the colonies that formed Canada would take (and clearly superior :P). In the context of the time and place (not knowing the future of the independent colonies) it might have seemed the prudent thing to do. Especially since it would have made him rich. Also most of the growth and stability of early Canada can be attributed to the British-Empire-Loyalists and their decendants who set up shop up north after the war so points to him. There weren't many people around back then on account of it being cold as balls all the time.
If the Carlisle Peace Commission got traction I wonder what would have happened. Would there have been a United North America? Would Lady Liberty instead be Lady Loyalty? Would the rebellion in the American Civil War have been crushed? With 3 regions (Quebec, New Brunswick, Louisiana) would French be an official language? Would over 300 million people know how to spell the word "colour" properly?
MJWood ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 20:31:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Would Americans say 'Eh'?
Lord_Iggy ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 01:12:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In all seriousness, likely not. American dialects had been developing for a long time, they wouldn't have picked up the Scottish influenced accents of English Canada just because their timeline of independence was delayed.
ZeroReiMaru ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:14:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Of course we know how to spell it properly. It's Color.
silverfox762 ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 19:06:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As a citizen of the Rebel Colonies, I'm not sure whether I'm supposed to consider him a fair-weather rebel or a British Patriot. :)
Quirkafleeg ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 00:00:56 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As a Brit - I will point out that he switched sides when the Americans allied themselves with the French.
MJWood ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 05:33:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Now there's a reason I can get behind!
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:43:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You got rid of a bunch of maniacs.
"And with that, we banished the lemon tree forever, because it was haunted!"
I_be_who_I_be ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:36:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just don't think about it.
ChamferedWobble ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:02:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A traitor squared.
RogueRaven17 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:42:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He defied the crown.
Drawn, quartered, and hanged
intensely_human ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 08:06:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If it weren't for us you'd be eating your ice cream out of paper cups.
TheAeroplaneFlies ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:50:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
King George was a motherfucker
MJWood ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:24:38 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Am I supposed to be offended or something?
TheAeroplaneFlies ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:52:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
are you angry?
MJWood ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:25:01 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Grumpy old man. Not attached to King George though.
TheAeroplaneFlies ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:21:20 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
it is my goal to be like you
MJWood ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 08:57:01 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Get off my lawn, grasshopper.
craigtheman ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 00:53:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You lost ssoooo traitor .
With love from across the pond,
Murica
Fluffy87 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:58:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Didn't care enough to make a fuss over it*
It's a small footnote in British history.
Qikdraw ยท -42 points ยท Posted at 17:48:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
How are the Colonial rebels any different than ISIS?
MJWood ยท 27 points ยท Posted at 17:49:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Really? You really want me to answer that?
TheSovietGoose ยท 23 points ยท Posted at 17:57:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The flags are different. Duh.
Qikdraw ยท -14 points ยท Posted at 18:05:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If you want to, I'm just messing with Americans on reddit really. I lived in California for 10 years, and my wife is American. For all the shit (good natured) I got for being Canadian while I was down there I figure I can poke back.
The American Revolution is one point I like to bug her about. Such as the Boston "Massacre" was anything but, yet that was the lie printed and spread to the other colonies that did not want to separate. So a lie to start a war. Old white dudes who said 'all men are created equal', but owned slaves. It was also a war because the rich didn't want to pay taxes and got the poor to fight for them. America, not much has changed.
jemmyleggs ยท 18 points ยท Posted at 18:27:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Name a country where the rich fight the battles
PlayMp1 ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 19:46:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Israel, since they have conscription and there's bound to be some rich kids in their military. No one's that's wealthy of their own doing obviously, but still.
alphagammabeta1548 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:10:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's so cute that you think wealthy Israelis don't find ways to get their kids exempted from conscription
PlayMp1 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:16:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm willing to bet that not every child of wealthy Israelis is exempted.
alphagammabeta1548 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:16:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No but I can certainly guarantee that a lot of them have "medical" exemptions or something like that
joshman5000 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:51:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They have the option to either serve with the military or go to farm in kibbutz
plainwrap ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 19:20:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Revolution was fought for a lot of reasons. Here's a list of them.
(Note: "He" in all cases is referring to George III, King of Great Britain)
"He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us: For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States: For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world: For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent..."
See how long it takes for them to get to taxes? We didn't revolt because we hated taxes, we revolted because to get anything done in our country we had to send a ship across the Atlantic, and after months of waiting the answer was usually, "No."
Qikdraw ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 20:13:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That was a lot of effort, and honestly thank you for writing it out. It is interesting in a historical sense, which I do love to read about.
My post was not meant to be factual, but elements of truth to poke a bit of fun at Americans. This always gets my wife riled up and we have a fun little debate with lots of laughing. What I wrote, please don't take it to mean I hate Americans or anything, Americans are my cousins and I love poking fun at them and being poked back. I've seen a hell of a lot of Canadian jokes on Reddit, and I never take them serious.
But again, thank you for all that you wrote out. Some of that I had not known about. So now I am more learned. Have yourself a great weekend!
plainwrap ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:36:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If you want some actual history check out 'An Answer to the Declaration of the American Congress' by John Lind to read Great Britain's side of the argument, written in 1776. Some good points, some reactionary nonsense and funny insults about Canada too. It's on Google.
The opening sentence is some classic unintentional villainy, "Ill would it become the dignity of an insulted Sovereign to descend to altercation with revolting subjects."
Qikdraw ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:15:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thank you! I shall take a look at that. I've downloaded it already.
For anyone interested you can find different formats here: https://archive.org/details/cihm_20519
I quoted that to my wife, who looked at me weirdly. I told her what it referenced and her reply was, "Well we all know how that turned out don't we?". lol
Seriously, thank you for more information. While I am not a history major, I do like to read bits and pieces in areas I may have an interest in at that particular time. Learning from someone who knows more than I do is always a pleasure. Thank you.
aeyamar ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 19:01:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
I'm not really convinced that the lie of the Boston Massacre started the war. While it didn't help the Crown's PR, things were sliding toward rebellion without it. The taxes, the quartering act, economic exploitation, the undermining of colonial governments, and eventually the heavy handed response to colonial insubordination kept driving the colonies further away. These things didn't only effect the rich, but also hurt the livelihoods of the average city dweller, or farmer. It also didn't help that many of the colonies were full of people who were never exactly loyal English subjects to begin with (Scots-Irish, Presbyterians, Quakers, Catholics, Congregationalists, Baptists, etc).
I agree with you on the hypocrisy of preaching inalienable rights for all, while owning slaves though. At least to their credit most at the time recognized the hypocrisy, and some even worked to see that slavery would end. But in the aggregate, they chose to ignore it in order to keep the colonies together, effectively kicking the can down the road.
Qikdraw ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:32:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well you're right of course, but not all colonies wanted to leave Britain, and this was used as a PR stunt to help sway people. I equate it with the Gulf of Tonkin lie to go into Vietnam or the lies used to invade Iraq. Lying to the public to change their opinion to start a war. Was that the only thing that started the rebellion? No, but I do think it played a large part in changing minds. The sad thing is my wife remembers being taught the false history of the Boston Massacre in school. It wasn't until university that she found out the truth.
Thank you for your reply as well. While my initial bit was more for humour than anything else, I am learning a few new things and am enjoying the discussion.
silverfox762 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:08:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Flawless logic- how is this different from making black jokes because I have a black friend? I thought Canadians prided themselves on critical thinking. Or was that hockey?
Either way, I can make Canadian jokes because I have a Canadian friend.
Qikdraw ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:09:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Really? Not the same thing. Plus Americans and Canadians are like cousins who mostly get along and like to bug each other. My ten years in California sure had many people, strangers, neighbours, co-workers and managers I interviewed for a job with make fun of me for being Canadian. I take it as funny because it is, I gave back as good as I got and it was all in good fun. My post was not meant to be entirely factual, but just as a jab at Americans meant in good fun.
It seems many Americans don't understand humour. I'm just siting here laughing.
But yes. Its always hockey. lol
Werewolf251 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:23:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We have kept a nationalistic spirit where as a lot of other countries have abandoned that thinking (whether this is a good or bad thing I don't really care to get into), so we get pretty defensive about our Revolution. Plus I mean, you could've compared the rebels to anyone else and we probably wouldn't have cared, but ISIS? C'mon man that's just fucked up.
Qikdraw ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:41:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My wife & I have serious conversations about this. And you can find instances of it being good and bad. But that is another whole ball of wax that its best left alone. lol
Yeah, sorry about that. lol It was on the extreme end, but its the first thing that came to mind and I had to get back to work before I could figure out something less extreme, but have people know who I was talking about. I could have said IRA, but who remembers them these days? The PLO? Same thing. Having said that, history is ripe with examples of freedom fighters vs terrorists. It boils down to who won the war and who is writing the history. Some people we called "freedom fighters" (the Taliban and Osama bin Laden), we have now called terrorists because instead of fighting for us they are fighting against us. So could the revolutionists have been called terrorists? It depends on your point of view really.
Werewolf251 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 15:12:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Very true, as much as I hate to admit it I'm sure there were plenty of instances of terrorist like activities commuted by the rebels, then again there probably were some by the Brits/Loyalist side too. War always carries with it atrocities since it seems to bring out both the best and worst in men.
Qikdraw ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:39:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yup. Very much agree with you on this. My gramps, he was in WWII in the Cdn army. He went into the Netherlands (I think) and met a young boy there, gave him chocolate, the normal stuff a soldier would do for a young child. But they kept in touch all these years. They met again twice over the years since the war. Christmas cards went back and forth every year. Last year my gramps died and because of the way my gramma is I don't think she passed that information on to him and I have no information to send him a letter saying how much that contact over the years meant a lot to him. He talked about it every time we saw each other (we lived in different provinces). There are probably a million other stories like that, laying quietly in the background of something horrible like war.
dorekk ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:45:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Uh...I think everyone remembers the IRA.
silverfox762 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:25:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Meaning Americans DO understand humor. Some Canadians, on the other hand, don't get DRY humor. :)
Dano_The_Bastard ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:06:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jesus mate! You're brave! Lol. (you know they can't take that kind of "messing"...RIGHT?)
Qikdraw ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:43:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sure they can. I don't care about the downvotes at all, yay random internet points. Wee. lol But I have had some very nice points made to me and I have learned some stuff, and now have a reading assignment too. I consider that a win for learning new stuff.
dorekk ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:42:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You don't seem like a Canadian to me. Canadians are usually intelligent and polite, in my experience.
Qikdraw ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 01:50:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well I did spend 10 years in the US, and married an American, so....
In case you missed it, that's a joke. Just to be on the safe side I figured I would explain it to you.
Dusk_Walker ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:52:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Lol
No.
[deleted] ยท 22 points ยท Posted at 17:57:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He was also stealing money and supplies, which is why Washington never trusted him
hopefulbagon ยท 97 points ยท Posted at 16:34:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So he became bitch made,
alphagammabeta1548 ยท -5 points ยท Posted at 16:41:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Can you into grammar?
hopefulbagon ยท 24 points ยท Posted at 16:42:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I can into and outta whatever I want
fetishsycophant ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 19:28:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He became bitch made and switched sides like a fuckboy whats difficult to understand?
Yankz ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 16:46:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ninja*
[deleted] ยท 25 points ยท Posted at 17:14:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He fraudulently overstated his expenses so he could get reimbursed by and bootstrapped nation. Read a few biographies and the guy was an egomaniacal ass. Fuck um.
k-wagon ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:33:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
WasteHisTime1779
cablesupport ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 17:40:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He got gravely injured and that's a large part of why he didn't advance in rank for awhile. The dude deserves the notoriety though. Giving up on a cause and supporting the other side because no-one appreciates you is pretty selfish and shows your strength of character, or lack thereof.
alphagammabeta1548 ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 17:43:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I definitely agree, just saying everyone knows him as the greatest traitor in American history, not as the brilliant commander who essentially saved the early stages of the Revolution.
AgoraiosBum ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:36:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He said "but what about meeeeee!!" Hey, maybe the revolution wasn't just about him. Zero sympathy.
Taaargus ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:00:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Uh, don't know why you removed fight. Benedict Arnold led British armies against American cities (see the burning of New London).
alphagammabeta1548 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:07:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Someone else gave me grief for it, said he wasn't really fighting fighting for the british. Idk. Fucking reddit, I'm never right
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:14:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That doesn't really make his traitoring any more justified.
Sly_Wood ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:09:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yea but he started doing bad shit, in what was it Philly? He was basically stealing money but no one outright charged him. Instead he lost respect for it and his position. This was all happened while getting passed over like people have mentioned, but the guy was kind of a sketchy character to begin with. So he was snubbed a bunch of times and of course his sketchiness made it okay for him to turn traitor. It wasn't like he was created a traitor, those elements were already there.
alphagammabeta1548 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:21:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You're totally right, but if it weren't for him the Revolution might have been lost in its early stages
DitkasMoustache ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:04:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He ultimately was charged with a list of things, but only one stuck. The resultant debt was possibly what finally drove him to outright treason. In fact, indemnification against that debt was part of his list of demands when he was negotiating with the British (much to their amusement).
hatillathenun ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:44:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"Pass information for money for the british"- rather differant than fighting for them
karrachr000 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:34:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
After he started supporting the British, he regretted his decision...
Andrroid ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:31:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The AMC show Turn does a great job of depicting this.
jdallen1222 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:53:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He's featured in the 2nd season of Turn: Washington's Spies on AMC.
spudenfinkle ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:01:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So the Revolutionary equivalent of Milton from Office Space. It all makes sense now!
barden1069 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:58:28 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The novel Arundel by Kenneth Roberts really gives the character depth and complexity that most historical tellings of him fail to deliver. I'd recommend it to anyone interested in a good read.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:03:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Who gives a fuck? He's still a traitor. I'm not religious but imagine the story of Gob where he says fuck it I'm supporting satan. Fuck Arnold that traitor. I bet you think theon greyjoy was just misunderstood too
Dano_The_Bastard ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:59:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He should have taken a leaf out of Washington's book. He was so pissed off the British wouldn't make him an officer he went to the rebels....and the rest is History!
Edit: In fact, he probably did just that but the opposite way around....didn't work out well for him either lol!
mashington14 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:59:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No, he was a selfish bitch who tried to halt a revolution because he was jealous of George Washington and didn't get enough glory.
[deleted] ยท 19 points ยท Posted at 17:44:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He was viewed with suspicion in great part due his expense claims.
jesse9o3 ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 18:06:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's just British tradition to lie about your expenses, it's not that bad
Griffolion ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 18:42:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Context for the clueless: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_parliamentary_expenses_scandal
Zakrah ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:01:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Anyway, you gotta keep your moat clean or the water will be all stagnant and gross.
newtonnes ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 18:00:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Did he do sick spins too?
GunRaptor ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 17:33:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If ever I were to name a traitor for a book, their name would be something like "Brutus Koga Arnold."
Brutus for Julius Caesar's bff.
Koga for the clan than sold out their Iga brothers to Nobunaga.
And Arnold for the dude who bailed on the Patriots just before they went Super Saiyan.
Delts28 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:15:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Campbell should be in there as well for betraying their hosts hospitality in Glencoe.
IgnoreAntsOfficial ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 17:03:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Turn: Washington's Spies is a
greatpretty well done series surrounding Benedict Arnold's story on AMC.SantaCheese ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 16:24:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
TR-8R!
mycannonsing ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:24:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We named a brunch meal after him, duh!
Marius322 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:56:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Benedict Arnold's contemporary James Wilkinson was much worse, but got away with it all.
Drink-my-koolaid ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:12:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Like Buddy, aka "Syndrome" in The Incredibles.
richb83 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:10:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I had to go this low before recognizing a name
jgjelaj ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:17:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I truly do wonder if there is anyone out there with the name Benedict Arnold on their birth certificate
PoopAndSunshine ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:58:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Don't hate the traitor....
PhazePyre ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:12:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Personally I love his eggs. Get it every time I'm at a restaurant.
LordRycho ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:42:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Atleast he has eggs named after him :)
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:21:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He was the Finn of the American Revolution if you want a modern day analogy
random314 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:36:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Big fan of the eggs.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:20:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I came to look for this specific reply.
Njdevils11 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:38:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I spread this around as much as possible. My family thinks my wife and I are ridiculous because we say he's one of the heroes of the Revolution, until he turned traitor that is....
_masterofdisaster ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 12:54:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nah, he was really just sent over to the British to spy but some shit went down and in order to save the US his disciple had to infiltrate behind enemy lines and kill him.
[deleted] ยท -3 points ยท Posted at 19:15:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
TRAITOR
magenta_bandit ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:33:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yo, fuck him
Danyboii ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:57:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
How isn't he a traitor? He was planning of surrendering at the first sign of the British and when he was discovered he switched sides?
tomato_paste ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 23:21:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Finn.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 23:52:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nah, he's a cunt.
hablomuchoingles ยท 164 points ยท Posted at 16:08:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ziryab the slave
Joseph Warren
GunRaptor ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 18:15:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I had never heard of Ziryab...thanks!
[deleted] ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 02:13:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I was raised in Iran and have heard of him. He was more than likely african and/or arab though. Due to long established cultural customs, it is highley unlikely that a Persian/Iranian would be a slave, especially during that era of history.
Mohamedawad ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 08:34:38 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Most educated Arabs know a great deal about Ziryab, almost exclusively for his contributions to music. He was said to make people cry and then make them laugh in the same setting by playing music. Among Arab musicians and those interested in music and its history he is quite the legend, in fact, one of the largest arabic music internet forums is named after him.
penguinpwrdbox ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:34:05 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This thread needs more posts like this one.
TightAnalOrifice789 ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 07:02:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This wasn't exactly a novelty.
hablomuchoingles ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 07:03:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It was then
TightAnalOrifice789 ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 07:31:00 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No it wasn't, silly sir.
TightAnalOrifice789 ยท -3 points ยท Posted at 07:33:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No it wasn't, silly sir.
WVVWWWVVVVVWVWWV ยท 2274 points ยท Posted at 13:49:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The person who made perforated toilet paper. Thank you to whoever it was.
[deleted] ยท 907 points ยท Posted at 17:18:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
WVVWWWVVVVVWVWWV ยท 615 points ยท Posted at 17:33:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
At long last, it's you. How have you been?
gnarfel ยท 91 points ยท Posted at 19:50:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
https://xkcd.com/1105/
[deleted] ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 23:38:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
One of my favourite comics.
JuanElMinero ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 03:52:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Brothers getting reunited through toilet paper.
These are marvelous times we're living in.
LL_Drool_J ยท -49 points ยท Posted at 18:56:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Good man, how about you?
[deleted] ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 02:34:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Shut down
Sheqaq ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:19:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Whoa
Derinda ยท 1398 points ยท Posted at 14:00:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
How the fuck do you remember your username?
ihasaKAROT ยท 3609 points ยท Posted at 15:57:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Its not that hard at all. You simply start with W and after that it's just VVWWWVVVVVWVWWV
OutrageousIdeas ยท 654 points ยท Posted at 17:32:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Can I see a Fourier transform of his username ?
Jacques_R_Estard ยท 561 points ยท Posted at 19:19:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
edit: I tried...
If you shift it so its average is 0, you should even get rid of the peak in the center.
kyred ยท 41 points ยท Posted at 19:49:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wow. That's actually kind of accurate. There's only 2 frequencies at work in WVVWWWVVVVVWVWWV. So the Fourier transform would only have 2 humps.
Jacques_R_Estard ยท 62 points ยท Posted at 20:10:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I know.
hero2bash ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 20:56:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I agree. But you could also but it's ok it's actually not bad, it's good.
Jacques_R_Estard ยท 50 points ยท Posted at 20:57:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Those are definitely words.
CaptainDefect ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 10:09:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
what did i just read
Jacques_R_Estard ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 11:05:22 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My guess? Words.
kyred ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:52:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I know.
hurdur1 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:00:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I love you.
RedSerious ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:37:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Pray I don't alter the thread any further.
ForcaBarca1899 ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 20:23:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Found the nerds..
EE checking in :)
ratbastid ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 21:45:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"Can I see a Fourier transform..." is blatant nerdbait.
asleepatthewhee1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:22:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sure, sure, but how many lovely lady lumps?
Yuktobania ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 21:03:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
FTFY
EquipLordBritish ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:11:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If we're just looking at peaks, it's possible it could correlate to a UV/Vis spectra of something. (the density on the right could be something like an OH group) The density function in R isn't much help, though.
FolkSong ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 21:01:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Where did the numbers come from (0,4,7,10,etc)? And what are w and v in the expression? And why is the time-domain plot's initial value 17 (at t=0)?
Jacques_R_Estard ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 21:07:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
The values are the offset on the x-axis of the letters. The w and v are defined like this:
Here, f is just a function that draws a piecewise "V", at some offset with a parameter to control how steep it is.
The "time domain" is just the dual domain of whatever the domain was I defined the letters in, it's not explicitly time. It's 17 at the start because of the normalization of the Fourier transform in Mathematica, which I'm both too lazy and too much of a physicist for to bother looking up and correcting for.
edit: oh the 17 was in the original domain... It's just because of the way w and v are defined, you get a bunch of offsets of 1. My Mathematica skills are mostly about being close enough.
edit 2: Here's f, for completeness' sake:
FolkSong ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 21:19:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
OHHH ok, I didn't get that you were visually drawing the letters with your plot. I was thinking you would plot the ASCII values or something.
I'm an electrical engineer so all Fourier transforms are time and frequency to me!
uprightbaseball ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 01:50:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Can you explain this in laymans terms
Jacques_R_Estard ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 08:48:49 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A Fourier transform takes a function (electrical signal, sound wave, picture etc.) and splits it up in waves with single frequencies. It's like those lights on a stereo equalizer, those bars that go up if there's a beat or whatever.
It's incredibly useful in all sorts of circumstances, from audio filtering at home to analyzing complex systems in particle physics.
DeePro1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:14:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I have no idea what the fuck that is... But it's fucking wicked
Sartalon ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:34:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You're my mutherfuckin hero. God I'm a nerd for loving this.
cheunste ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 19:20:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
sure...
[deleted] ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 18:28:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
HebrewHamm3r ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:06:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The fastest in the west? The FFTW?
jonny_weird_teeth ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:27:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Can I get a print-out of Oyster smiling?
nerdcomplex42 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:17:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Here you go. I didn't bother prettying it up or labeling it or anything like that, but if you'd like I can explain the conventions that I used for plotting the username.
OutrageousIdeas ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:19:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Well done, I kind of expected this.
On second thought, it doesn't look right. You used W as 1 unit, and V as 1 unit, but what about spaces between them ?
nerdcomplex42 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:39:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hm, good point, I hadn't thought of that. Here's what happens when you put a .2 space between letters.
ReasonablyBadass ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:43:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
V and W
karmaniak ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:03:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's an outrageous idea
detroitdoesntsuckbad ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:21:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The first time I actually used a Fourier transform at my job was terrifying. It was 10 yrs after uni so I had to google how to do it.
Nardo318 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:44:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah but s domain is where the cool kids hang out
Jacques_R_Estard ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:28:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's a Latime and a Laplace for everything. This is apparently the ideal time for forced puns.
nPrimo ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:15:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What's Fourier?
Jacques_R_Estard ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:41:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The man who discovered a nifty trick that is the mathematical basis for solving pretty much all of physics.
nPrimo ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:33:29 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And bookmarked. Well, TIL! Thanks.
WrennAmethyst ยท 111 points ยท Posted at 18:27:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Draw the rest of the fucking owl.
shibbyllama ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:58:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well that's easy to remember...0118 999 881 99 9119 725...3
PaPoolee ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 21:42:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wow im browsing reddit in bed on my phone and randomly come across your username! Did you used to play sc2 and often browse teamliquid? I think i remember you used to like making maps n stuff =p
ihasaKAROT ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:30:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You were my maptestbitch :) yeah its me man, pm me!
Meshiest ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 03:22:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
now kiss
yumyumgivemesome ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:23:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, but how do you remember to start with the W?
eyedharma ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:06:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's pronounced exactly like it sounds
Bergie31 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:12:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
W12351121. Start with W, one of those. Then 2 Vs. Done.
Jacques_R_Estard ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 20:34:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So 1 W, 2 Vs and then 351,121 Ws. Got it.
BackToSchoolMuff ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:19:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
drummer?
xRhavagex ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:22:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your carets are upside down.
videomaker16 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:32:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is relevant:
https://youtu.be/q9cGudkrAGs?t=2m56s
Tko38 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:44:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
First I draw this face
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/wmqsk1vZSKw/hqdefault.jpg
erase some details and viola
WVVWWWVVVVVWVWWV
real_fuzzy_bums ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:52:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
When I look at the name, i hear a long kazoo sound
mastigia ยท 301 points ยท Posted at 14:14:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Auto fill is the hero here I bet.
WVVWWWVVVVVWVWWV ยท 493 points ยท Posted at 14:19:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I have it written in the notes section of my phone, but I haven't needed to use it yet because auto-fill.
lllllllillllllllllll ยท 112 points ยท Posted at 18:57:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
if you lose it, just draw some stalactites
komali_2 ยท 20 points ยท Posted at 19:57:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
ManLeader ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 09:57:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It goes 1 2 3 5 1 1 2 1
So it's the 2nd through 5th fibonaccis, then the first 3, then the first again
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:44:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It would be easy to make it an alternating series based on a number you already know like a phone number.
plokijuh1229 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:43:12 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
First thought that occured to me was phone number. It matches the right digit count if you include the country code but I doubt all the numbers are below 6.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:24:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
But... why not just choose a name that's easy to remember and not have to do any of that?
DeMagnet76 ยท 411 points ยท Posted at 16:28:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just view it as a number. 12351121 where each digit represents the number of v's and w's in alternating order.
AcceptDefaults ยท 88 points ยท Posted at 17:17:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Run length encoding.
ofsinope ยท 33 points ยท Posted at 17:55:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Found the comp-sci student.
DeMagnet76 ยท 35 points ยท Posted at 17:57:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Definitely not. I majored in psychology in the 90's
neren ยท 17 points ยท Posted at 18:24:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Chunking!
SmacSBU ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 18:29:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Mnemonic devices are the best
DeMagnet76 ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 18:32:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Exactly.
ofsinope ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 18:31:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I guess if you were a comp sci student you'd have expressed it as 21 * 32 * 53 * 75 * 111...
uppity_chucklehead ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:20:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, I still wouldn't be able to remember that many numbers.
DeMagnet76 ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 18:27:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sure you can. Create blocks of smaller numbers. 12, 35, 11, 21. Or 123, 5, 121, 1. Or say Jan 23, '51 I turned 121.
bstix ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:45:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
123-511-21 is easier IMO. It's only 3 numbers.
ccai ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:53:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And 12,351,121 is only 1 number, so that must be much easier than 3 numbers.
Now we're back at were we first started...
DeMagnet76 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:51:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Anything that works for you.
FAT_BALD_GUY ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 18:48:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Interestingly, this is how file compression works.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:26:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Why do I feel like you write code for a living
DeMagnet76 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:41:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't. Sorry.
ARealSlimBrady ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:10:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nifty plan
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:13:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You're clever
NotThatEasily ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:16:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I feel like you're only complicating matters.
Karge ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:15:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's much easier.
SPVCEGXXN ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:33:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sorcery
ext23 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:07:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
this is even more confusing to me.
mastigia ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 16:41:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I bet you are fun at parties haha
DeMagnet76 ยท 15 points ยท Posted at 17:08:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Of course I am.
Timett_son_of_Timett ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 17:32:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Shut up baby, I know it.
heyboddiker ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:01:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is the solution I thought of also. Wanted to check the comments before I posted it though
[deleted] ยท 19 points ยท Posted at 14:17:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Autofill, you da real MVP
fearlessandinventive ยท 38 points ยท Posted at 15:34:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So...your vote for this thread is "the guy who thought up autofill?"
ArtSchnurple ยท 80 points ยท Posted at 16:43:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
His name was Otto Phil
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 17:44:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
sweet jesus
Aborawatabinov ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:42:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Was it worth it?
Was the pun worth it?
GDMFS0B ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:51:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
His name...was Otto Phil.
flipmangoflip ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:44:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He's the true hero.
yumyumgivemesome ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:24:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It deserves its own submission in this askreddit thread.
[deleted] ยท 65 points ยท Posted at 16:00:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
12351121
TCV2 ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:33:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just remember that sequence with associating it with an important even that happened on December 35th, 1121.
Derinda ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:39:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Before /u/DeMagnet76 pointed out what's up with those numbers I could not understand what you said. Makes total sense though.
That's kind of a dyslexic fibonacci row.
TwiZtah ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 16:38:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Why the fuck do you log out?
stupernan1 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 20:29:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
porn alt
one is subbed to everything my head brain is interested in.
the other is subbed to everything my penis brain is interested in.
Derinda ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:43:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, although I'm almost in a matrix-esque way plugged into reddit, I do use it sometimes on computers where I'd never save my password / username.
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 17:17:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
zdelarosa00 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:50:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This.
GrannnySmith ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:28:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thats 7 Ws!
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:35:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't know about him, but I almost exclusively use reddit is fun on my phone. I can just say login to this account and it logs in. Useful for when you have more than one account you use because you can just tap on the one you want.
IGiveGreatHeadphones ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:43:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It has 16 characters so I imagine it's binary or some other structured form that usually uses some other characters
Looks like gibberish to us but makes total sense to him/her
onedoor ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:02:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
4 v
1 v
2 w
3 v
and so on until the character cap.
EDIT: Ah DeMagnet76 already got it.
EDIT: Actually, I didn't catch the w after the 4 Vs. So maybe after the first stage it's
and so on
corran450 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:16:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Here's a guy asking the real questions...
Tis_be_thine_upvote ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:27:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They are his initials
MakonaOrigin ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:42:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
it's 1 w, then 2 v's, then 3 w's then four v's then vwvwwv
jrtx5799 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:47:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I noticed it starts as a Fibonacci sequence alternating Ws and Vs, but then it goes off the rails
mattbridel ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:13:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A friend's email in high school was pneumonoultramicroscopicsilivolcanoconiosis67 or something.
So annoying trying to email him.
50Thousanddeep ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:18:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Why would you need to remember it?
TaedW ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:21:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's spelled the way it sounds.
Tarandon ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:24:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
12351121
swictch w and v for each number
w vv www vvvvv w v ww v
1 2 3 5 1 1 2 1
gfh8437rejg ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:42:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
huh?
zdelarosa00 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:51:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Asking the important questions.
fournameslater ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:01:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I made a sentence to help remember the anagram: Will verify vans with white wide vinyl vents varnished very vividly when vanquished with warm vaginas.
Derinda ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:41:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You had me at vagina (โแโ)
PostPostModernism ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:11:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just use a mnemonic device!
MKorostoff ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:16:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Why do people always ask this about weird usernames? It's saved in his browser.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:24:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Why would someone need to remember their username?
RaoulDuke209 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:45:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I dont think I have had to re-enter my handle more than twice in the 2+ years ive been here.
mi_esposa_me_espia ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:57:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I figured it's some form of throat singing sheet music. He knows how to decipher it.
ForgetfulDoryFish ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:27:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Password manager like Lastpass
thor420h ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:10:06 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's the relevant questions in Reddit that keep this site alive...
tommytwochains ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:15:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
1-2-3-5-1-1-2-1. Some semblance of a pattern there.
Edit: ohh geeze it's 5 V's in the middle.. Yeah f that guy!!
Prince-of-Ravens ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:32:12 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Why would you need to remember it?
I mean, seriously, have you EVER typed in your reddit username? I click once "remember me" whenever I make a new account and thats it.
Hshjakotqcabzniywtec ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:50:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
His song that difficult to remember some of us have it alittle harder
KingoPants ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:14:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
12351121 is the pattern with alternating Ws and Vs starting with W. Some things you can use to make jt easier is that it has 8 numbers and adds up to 16 in case you forget one of the numbers. Or just remember 1-5 without 4 and then 1-1-2-1
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:22:33 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think it's an Eastern European surname.
robyank88 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:34:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
i am in tears right now because of how funny i find this
mightymouse513 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:45:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's a pattern 1 w 2 v 3 w 4 v then it starts to repeat and then hit max limit of characters
lllllllillllllllllll ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 18:56:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
same way I remember mine
oijalksdfdlkjvzxc ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:01:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not that hard.
Catsdontpaytaxes ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 15:00:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Bidet manufacturers hate him!
Terminal_Lance ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 15:39:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I would gladly exchange my toilet paper for a bidet and only use paper towels to dry myself off.
EhrgeizIX ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:38:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Man you want both toilet paper and a bidet, the bidet ain't gonna powerjet remove fecal matter from your tender self
sun_worth ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:03:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I see what you did there.
EVA_01 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:20:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wipes :D
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:35:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I used to have a gamertag that was : "MWMWMMWWWMWMMWWM"
lurking_misanthrope ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:01:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Shit tickets.
PublicAccount1234 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:08:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Real men of genius.... Mr. Perforated Toilet Paper maker...
John_Bot ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:13:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'll one up this.
The person who invented toilet paper that could be labeled as "splinter-free"
Thank you. My hero
Oedipus_rekts ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:10:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Or took the splinters out. Seriously, "splinter free" was a selling point back in the day.
Rev_Jim_lgnatowski ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:30:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We really should have replaced the sliced bread expression with "it's the best thing since toilet paper."
Fahsan3KBattery ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:37:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Seth Wheeler
natlight ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:24:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Apparently you have never used a bidet. Trust me, it's glorious.
Jon_Cake ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:23:49 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Even though toilet paper is terrible and is holding back a huge chunk of the world from using bidets?
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:06:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Okay I know this is random, but one of my professors was the grandson of the guy who designed the machine that perforates toilet paper.
I have no source. Can't prove it. But that's what he told me.
FamousStudios ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:42:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your name looks like the perforation itself.
FeatherKiddo ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:35:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My university must hate this guy, because we only have single-ply with no perforation. Wipe too hard and you'll be fingering your poopy asshole.
AnchovieProton ยท 2879 points ยท Posted at 14:00:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That wheel guy. Probably didn't make any money off the invention and nobody even knows his name.
fishpond15 ยท 2187 points ยท Posted at 15:06:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Maybe his name was Wheel, so we really are honoring him.
adrianmakedonski ยท 757 points ยท Posted at 15:30:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'd need to look it up again but the proto-Indo-European word for "wheel" is something like "kwol" so you may not be wrong.
RandomAnnan ยท 1327 points ยท Posted at 16:50:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What you don't know is the word kwol is derived from "cool" which itself derives from lol
[deleted] ยท 1244 points ยท Posted at 17:06:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
ancient memes
Notorious4CHAN ยท 1697 points ยท Posted at 17:34:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
From the dank ages.
Stax493 ยท 223 points ยท Posted at 18:17:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
2000-2200
The dank ages.
instinctblues ยท 30 points ยท Posted at 20:29:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I will probably complain to my grandkids how much danker our memes were.
pejmany ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 09:46:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Meme dankness reached saturation in late 2006. It seems to be or have reached saturation once the past few months.
Some however, argue that that around august 2011 was optimal dank to consumption ratio.
aaaaaaaandy ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 02:42:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"Hello my dear
dae le wrong generation?
FeelsBadMan"
instinctblues ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 04:00:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Listen you children, back in my day we didn't have these shit memes you share on your holo-pad, we had Sad Frog and we were happy.
baconaro ยท 26 points ยท Posted at 19:01:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
420 BC Kappa
singularity_13 ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 21:22:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That would be 0 AD(After Dank)
screen317 ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 20:24:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Born too early to explore the world...
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 21:26:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
...born to late to explore the Earth...
RedSerious ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 23:29:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Born just in time for the dankness.
turkeyfox ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:37:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
FailFish
REDDITATO_ ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:24:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Too early to explore the world, but too late to explore the Earth? Something's not right here...
tacoguy56 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:35:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
2000-20XX
TyCooper8 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:26:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What happens in 2201?
Stax493 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:14:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The great memegration
LuxoriousMoustache ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 03:19:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You mean the pepocalypse.
eggre ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 18:22:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Take your fucking upvote.
Viscous_Crescendo ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 18:18:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
hehehehehe
dreadington ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:19:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So when we're eating fish, we're eating God's memes?
Andoverian ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:03:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Goddammit, I usually hate stuff like this, but this was really pretty clever.
Capitanelli311 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:55:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's... an old meme?
isoundstrange ยท 353 points ยท Posted at 18:00:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
can't melt stone beams
manamachine ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:32:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Can't melt wheel beams
rtx447 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:20:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Can't melt when the power of fire had not yet been harnessed.
makerofshoes ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:23:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Doric columns?
retiringtoast8 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:29:27 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
can't melt stone memes
Spork_Warrior ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:30:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Shut up and take my upvote.
xx78900 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:20:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Meta
DAREALANUS ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 00:35:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Pls
zulu-bunsen ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:51:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dankcient memes
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:59:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dank fossils
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:19:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Praise Helix?
Joetato ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:39:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Back then, you might be eaten by a philosophical raptor.
Lilpu55yberekt ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:04:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Which derives from dota.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:36:22 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Which derives from Warcraft 3, the first invention made by humans
sp4ce ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:09:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
sweet
deathpulse42 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:49:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
a corruption of lol
4floorsofwhores ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:34:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
cool has two wheels in it
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:46:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
/r/shittyetymology
made-u-look ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:53:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
hit the kwol?
wren24 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:16:05 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In my head it sounds like Rick Grimes saying "CORAL"
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:21:06 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'll never look at the bridge over the River Kwol the same!
minipet ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 10:34:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's wheely kwol.
_never_knows_best ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:59:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The etymology is better understood these days. It's now believed that kwol descended from rofl, reflecting the first descriptions of the wheel as "rolling as though convulsed with laughter." Kwol would later mutate into both lol, almost inaudible snorting resembling the low rumble of a rolling wheel, and cool, the attitude of an individual who is "seen rollin" and whose behaviors and mannerisms require others to "deal with it."
ofsinope ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 17:54:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The wheel is named after its inventor, the famous Proto-Indo-European engineer Phineas J. Kสทel (5212-5273 B.C.).
El_Predsjednik ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 21:02:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He was also the inventor of time travel.
ofsinope ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:49:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes, of course. Or as the Proto-Indo-Europeans called it, tสทym tสท?vel (say it "twime tWHUUUH?-vul")
adrianmakedonski ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:30:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ah, yes, of course.
hsnk42 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:30:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
I know a couple of Indian languages and can confirm the native word doesn't sound close to wheel. Maybe some other branch can confirm.
El_Predsjednik ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 21:06:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Believe it or not, the Hindi word cakra and wheel are actually cognates:
Hindi cakra: From Sanskrit เคเคเฅเคฐ โ(ฤakrรก), from Proto-Indo-Iranian, from Proto-Indo-European *kสทรฉkสทlos โ(โcircle, wheelโ).
English wheel: From Middle English whele, from Old English hwฤoฤกol, hwฤol, from Proto-Germanic *hwehwla, from Proto-Indo-European *kสทekสทlรณm, *kสทรฉkสทlos
gsfgf ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:27:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I've heard that linguists use the word wheel as a benchmark for linguistic spread since words started spreading way faster after its invention and were therefore more similar across longer ranges. Same reason that new words (usually brand names) these days can be global.
adrianmakedonski ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:34:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think it's interesting that in two languages that I know, English and Macedonian (leaps and bounds of difference between the two, one being Germanic and the other Slavic) that the words for wheel are "wheel" and "kolce." They're fairly similar, I think, especially given that the "-ce" on the end just gives the connotation of a single item and therefore being almost wholly unnecessary.
dexmonic ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 14:49:58 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
How do you pronounce kolce?
adrianmakedonski ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:08:38 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Like "coal-tseh" but don't voice the H.
by_whom ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 06:02:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fun facts, you can directly trace wheel, a germanic word, to kwol, the original indo European word. First kwol became hwol. Then the h sound was dropped completely, but it was represented in writing by switching the h and w, leading to whol. Add in a Great Vowel shift and you have wheel.
Similarly, kwod became hwod (k->h) which became whod (h dropped, pronounced wod). Go through the Vowel shift and whod changes to what. So kwod -> what. In romance languages, the original k sound of kwod wasn't dropped but the w was. So you end up with things like que in Spanish (kwod -> kod - > qod -> que).
So what and que are cognate from the same original Indo-European word, kwod. Similar to how kwol ended up ad wheel.
PacoTaco321 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:00:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hwe-el
yumyumgivemesome ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:21:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He was notorious for stealing Edmund von Circle's ideas.
Cymry_Cymraeg ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 16:26:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I wheely hope so!
GetOffMyBus ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:00:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm tired of these jokes
probablyhrenrai ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:44:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Indeed. They just seem to go around in circles.
dryhumpback ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:05:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Shut up, Dad. You are so embarrassing.
righteous_sword ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:30:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
His name was Will.
wickerman316 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:34:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
According to The Tick, it was a woman, and her name was Wheel.
BrockRockswell ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:48:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This would make a decent SNL skit. Cave man named wheel trying to explain that the wheel is named after him, and no one believes him.
Timothy_Claypole ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:28:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
THat would be wheely weird.
jordan1166 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:48:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
maybe it's a gril
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:57:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oh wheely?
wetchup ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:58:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We wheely are honouring him
BlueKnight8907 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:41:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah! Yeah I think his name was Gary Wheel right? That guy was a hoot at our caves first Christmas party, he ended up getting the secretary pregnant that night! What a joker he was, that Gary Wheel!
PM_ME_UR_SRIRACHA ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:25:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
sup wheels
Shitmusiclistener ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:41:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He was Wheel.i.am
Foxfire2 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:12:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I read they as "honoring rim", ha.
THR33ZAZ3S ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:27:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wheel all be honoring him until the thread tires of it
SbenjiB ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:47:15 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Maybe his name was Wheel, so we wheely are honoring him.
FTFY
websnarf ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:29:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
More likely: ะบะพะปะตัะพ
HgFrLr ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:47:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That would be wheely funny
UkrainianDragon ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:34:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We wheely are
skullturf ยท 631 points ยท Posted at 15:44:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
For a brief moment I thought you meant Pat Sajak
AnchovieProton ยท 266 points ยท Posted at 15:45:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Perhaps a direct descendant.
TheseIronBones ยท 348 points ยท Posted at 16:34:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Grug Sajak, inventor of the wheel, purchaser of vowels.
sjhock ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 18:40:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Before that he was just Grg.
Drink-my-koolaid ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 17:14:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hello? Is it Grug you're looking for
Cause Grug wonders where you are
And Grug wonders what you do
sirtjapkes ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:26:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Grugs Sharona
Joetato ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:42:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hello? Yes, this is Grug.
nejadisholy ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:54:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alas, his pride was too great and he eventually went bankrupt..
HurricaneSandyHook ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:40:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Grug to this day still drags that White pussy into work.
MissionFever ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:50:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Sajaks don't purchase vowels, they SELL them... because Grug invented them and the family keeps insisting the copyright is still valid. Compared to them the "Happy Birthday" people are pikers.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 07:20:17 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wasn't he related to Uuuhg Sajak, purchaser of bowels?
99639 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:43:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's likely that they're related. Humans are much closer related than most people realize.
Clutch220 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 16:57:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Frederick Von Wheel I believe.
seemooreth ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:58:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
And I thought he meant Stephen Hawking.
senthiljams ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 10:36:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I actually thought he meant Charles Goodyear
xX_Justin_Xx ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:21:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He really is inderappreciated though. Putting up with Vannahs shit for all these years.
sfitzer ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:39:35 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I was thinking the Baby Wheel guy from that fishing video.
GunNNife ยท 317 points ยท Posted at 14:48:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He might have been appreciated in his own time. "Grog, you rock! My work is so much easier with this spinmotron! "
Load04 ยท 409 points ยท Posted at 15:50:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Heh, prehistoric jokes.
Nutcrackaa ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 16:37:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I feel like this would have been an insult back then.
DoofusMagnus ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 19:04:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You're basically calling them a tool, right?
jaggoffsmirnoff ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:49:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yep
soylentcoleslaw ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 01:10:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"Me not rock, me Grog." - The first Dad Joke
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:35:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Rock 'n Roll was a big hit with the ladies.
TheFreshOne ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:09:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
roflrocks
GetOffMyBus ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 16:59:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
FTFY
BradC ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:31:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Such an old joke.
PlayMp1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:39:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Old school.
LupusLycas ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 17:19:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The wheel was not invented by cavemen. It was invented at nearly the same time as writing, most likely in Mesopotamia.
GunNNife ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 17:26:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
TIL
"Thanks for the spinmotron, Gilgamesh! It makes my work much easier!"
ubspirit ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:01:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Somehow I don't think they called wheels "spinmotrons" before there were motors.
GunNNife ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 03:09:49 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
To be fair, this would have been millennia before present day English existed, so not one word in that sentence would have been present.
notpetelambert ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:55:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Grog Wheel is his full name
[deleted] ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 17:02:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The wheel's nothing. Everybody knows round things roll. The Axle is the impressive bit.
Slamwow ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:11:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The axle's nothing. Everybody knows a round thing attached to round things rolls. The Cart is the impressive bit.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:32:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The cart's nothing. Everybody knows a box attached to a round thing attached to round things rolls. The Ass is the impressive bit.
tomdarch ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:22:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Axels are shit - frictiony and wear out quickly - until you add a bearing. But do you hear much about their inventor, Hans Bearing? Nope. Lost to history.
fifty_five ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 17:14:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Mesoamericans built civilizations without the wheel so I think the inclined plane guy is probably a bit more under appreciated.
flossdaily ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:32:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"Inclined Plane Guy" would be an interesting nickname for stunt pilot, and a terrifying nickname for a commercial pilot.
Fuck_shadow_bans ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:10:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The wheel is a pretty fundamental idea. It was probably "co-discovered" several hundred times.
tangowhiskey33 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:36:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Same with the guy that discovered fire
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:36:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Probably the first human, speaking in the genetic sense, discovered fire. Now, how much of a dude does the dude have to be? Can we count Cro-Mags as dudes? If so, well then, THOSE dudes probably discovered fire before us dudes. And what about that astro-la-pithiwhatever dude? Is he a dude? If so, also before us and also, probably the first one discovered fire. I doubt we would want to go as far as monkeys/gorillas/whatever but we probably could!
kingjoedirt ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 16:29:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I have a feeling he made it just before he was killed and had it stolen.
Earl-0f-Lemongrab ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:22:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
-Sid Caesar
usernamenottakenwooh ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:43:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And if we had the current patent system back then we have right now, we would still live in caves.
tomdarch ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:21:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The only airplane you'd be able to buy would be from Wright Aviation... that would have been wonderful for the development and implementation of aviation world wide... /s
chrisonabike22 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:56:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's wheely good
schrodingrscat ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:22:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Plot twist: What if 'he' was a 'she'?
Gark32 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:34:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
according to The Tick, her name was "WHEEL."
Antrikshy ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:42:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Was the wheel really invented in one place before spreading elsewhere?
xj20 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:38:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I bet he got around, though!
danglesauce19 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:38:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Pete fucking Wheeler
bungopony ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 04:07:35 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ahh, I heard he was a big axel.
roadwarri0r ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:06:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Maybe it was a wheel woman...
Diabetesh ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:30:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
His name was ug.
Ramza_Claus ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:59:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He was wheely cool.
CameronMcCasland ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:51:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
rodney d. young?
aazav ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:52:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fuck that. I want the guy who invented the axle.
A wheel is useless without the axle.
GoddessoftheUniverse ยท 470 points ยท Posted at 13:53:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Willis Carrier, inventor of air conditioning. FOr 9 months of the year, I give him praise~
elyisgreat ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 19:01:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You must live in a hot climate. I can only appreciate him 3 months of the year :(
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 03:16:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As a Canadian, whoever invented the heater is the only one worthy of my appreciation.
GoddessoftheUniverse ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:02:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Too hot and too humid many days.
crooks4hire ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:47:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Try Louisiana. Pretty much use an A/C at some point every day of the year...
taterhotdish ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:34:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's that way in Minnesota. 3 hot months.
Edit: I just noticed you are in Ely. I didn't know you got 3 hot months that far north. Interesting!
elyisgreat ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:52:58 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No, I'm not in Ely. I didn't even know that was a place... TIL
taterhotdish ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 06:16:00 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Lol
It's pronounced "Eelee."
Just in case you didn't know.
I don't know why.
lolgreen ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 19:20:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Texas?
GoddessoftheUniverse ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 19:22:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Florida
lolgreen ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 19:54:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So 9 months of summer, 3 months of hurricanes
GoddessoftheUniverse ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 12:15:15 on January 19, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yup. we're livin' the life~
[deleted] ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 18:56:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Where do you live that you need AC during 9 months of a year?
Zyphyro ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 20:23:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The majority of Arizona :/
nucklehead8 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:28:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Can confirm, live in Phoenix
Zyphyro ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:31:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Phoenix native, but now living on the East Coast. Did you know Winter can last well into March???
ForsakenForSale ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:05:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's BBQ weather by then.
Phoenix... 'But its a dry heat'. Shuddup.
caesar15 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:39:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dry heat it is way better than humid heat though.
ForsakenForSale ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:42:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I went to Florida for a conference one year and OMG, it was the worst. Though when Phoenix gets those 115 degree days, I don't know which one is worse. I feel my eyeballs getting a sunburn in those days.
caesar15 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:08:17 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well when it gets that hard then it being dry isn't much better.
thantheman ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:44:28 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, dry vs humid heat is definitely a thing.
However, extreme heat is very uncomfortable regardless. Just because the air is dry, if it is over 105 you are going to be very uncomfortable and sweating.
Humid heat can be extremely uncomfortable even in the mid 80s, whereas "dry heat" doesn't seem to be nearly as uncomfortable at similar temps.
ForsakenForSale ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 15:11:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Very true
nucklehead8 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:59:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The only problem is that summer lasts until December
Zyphyro ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:21:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just in years like this year
sheepboy32785 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:18:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Only March? Enjoy your short winters. In Montana, it can go into May.
Milys ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:50:56 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
March is an early end to winter where I come from.
GoddessoftheUniverse ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 19:00:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Florida. Only this year it is looking closer to 10 months.
NoButthole ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 19:27:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
11.75 months.
AndHerNameIsSony ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:56:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As an AZ native, thank you Willis Carrier, for I would not be alive today if not for you.
TheKrs1 ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 19:23:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I give him praise for 14 non-consecutive days of the year.
Chefjones ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:13:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Canada?
TheKrs1 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:14:08 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Eh!
Pride_of_CT ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:12:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He's got the Carrier Dome named after him in Syracuse! College basketball fans will remember him.
smb275 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:41:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's more than just the Dome named after him, in Syracuse. A few roads, landmarks, and neighborhoods all share his name.
GaySkull ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 16:48:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Came here to post this. Carrier's work has probably saved thousands of lives from heat stroke, but no one knows his name.
KSW1 ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 18:35:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You kidding? Carrier is a massive company now. Maybe people don't realize it's founded by the guy that invented AC, but they are definitely aware of the name.
GaySkull ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 18:50:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I dunno, how many AC companies can you name? Do many people really know the name of their AC manufacturer?
daytonatrbo ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 19:53:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Can't stop a Trane
Carrier
Goodman
InvidiousSquid ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:27:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
First time I'm even hearing of the name. If you dropped 'Carrier' into conversation, I'd be picturing a device that enables near-instant global application of Freedom(tm).
justyourbarber ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 18:56:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He also made Florida habitable.
NoButthole ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 19:27:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As a Floridian... No he didn't.
justyourbarber ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:38:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nevermind he's right.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:01:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
NoButthole ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:16:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Agreed. We're a curmudgeonly bunch.
SemiFormalJesus ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:59:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Where I'm from it is the opposite, heater 9 months a year.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:53:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Unless you live in Georgia then it's 6 months ... err 5 mo ... err 3 m ... err 7 months ... err ...4
(Note: I've seen snow storms in April and it was 83 on this past Christmas day . Our weather is ACTUALLY retarded)
Janitarium ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:09:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Own a Carrier Infinity furnace/AC system, can confirm he's a hell of a guy.
SuperSulf ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:26:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You mean 12 months of the year
Source: I live in Florida
GoddessoftheUniverse ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 12:14:14 on January 19, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I try to suffer without it a few months to lower my electric bill. Fortunately this past week has been lovely!
Passing4human ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:51:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Praise? In Texas we sacrifice goats to him.
_bobsacamano ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:08:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The best part is that he invented air conditioning to allow comic books to printed in the summer in Brooklyn. The building is still there and I genuflect every time I walk by.
MisterBadIdea2 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 09:10:12 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Time Magazine named him one of the 100 most important people of the 20th Century. His article began:
"How'd you like to write about Willis Carrier?"
"Who the hell's that?"
"Invented air conditioning."
"HE IS A LIFELONG HERO OF MINE."
seeingeyegod ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:38:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A lot of people invented/developed AC simultaneously but he came up with the best most practical version yet, IIRC
pejmany ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:54:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As a canadian, for 3 months of the year I thank him
[deleted] ยท 462 points ยท Posted at 14:20:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
[deleted]
TheCheeseCutter ยท 145 points ยท Posted at 19:52:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Zolden ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 21:04:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
wow, sounds like he saved the Earth
TurdFerguson812 ยท 21 points ยท Posted at 21:36:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thought I'd add this interesting factoid...since this thread has two people who helped to avert World War 3, we can add James Blunt, the musician.
I am not suggesting Blunt deserves as much credit as the others here, but it's interesting how many times WW3 has been averted.
Milleuros ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 23:08:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We can be glad that some soldiers are able to not follow the orders.
seeingeyegod ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 03:40:02 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
thank the future for all the time travelers.
pejmany ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:53:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sure time travel would be fun, but this shit is what I point to when people say humans will destroy themselves during war. As long as humans are the button pressers, global genocide is near impossible.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:30:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You do realise that 2/3 people actually wanted to press the button right
Anosognosia ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 23:24:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Factoid is not the same as an interesting fact. A factoid is something that's wrong but is often presented as fact.
Like "Mozart was poor when he died and had to be buried in a massgrave". That's incorrect or misleading. That's a factoid.
TWRABL ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 02:16:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Anosognosia ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 10:01:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I would argue that while Webster might include the "small fact" part, that usage is detrimental to understanding and should eb avoided if one aims for clarity. Considering that there are much more use for the "factoid" as "pop culture missunderstanding" since there isn't another word for that. While "factoid" as "interesting fact" is redundant, there are many ways to present true facts, such as "interesting fact" "trivia" etc.
[deleted] ยท -12 points ยท Posted at 23:06:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
topCyder ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 01:25:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The reason it required the agreement was so that if it was obviously wrong, it could be overruled. He decided to spare the world from nuclear holocaust
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:22:00 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
topCyder ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:49:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sure he was a traitor. I would prefer that there be traitors if it means that there is a possibility that we are spared a nuclear holocaust. Think of it this way - if one nuke is launched, the world ends. If that is a correct order, than you have about 25โ of the launch sites would likely fire. That's is more than enough.
Traitor he may be, but I think he did the right thing. Nukes are stupid in that they should never be used, period. If one government nukes us, the other ones will retaliate. Same with the other way around.
CalibreneGuru ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 03:17:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'd like to share this with you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Kohlberg's_stages_of_moral_development
And this quote: "Most active members of society remain at stage four, where morality is still predominantly dictated by an outside force."
Have fun, pal.
malabella ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 20:44:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is my vote. You never hear his name, but by his own decision, he prevented WW III from happening.
firestorm734 ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 23:15:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not just his own decision, he was going against orders.
TheGeckoGeek ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 23:26:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I entered this thread to say this. Vasili was arguably responsible for the continued survival of the human race.
Come_To_r_Polandball ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 02:18:01 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This.
Stopikingonme ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 17:02:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
I expected this to be higher. With no up-votes I suppose he really is the most under appreciated person in history.
Edit: Originally no up-votes two hours after post
JasonChernow ยท 22 points ยท Posted at 19:40:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Its probably cause no one wants to read through his whole wiki page to find out whats interesting about him. Op should have quoted or linked to the part of the page thats interesting then let people decide if they want to read the whole wiki.
DanceWithTheDevil_ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:12:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oops sorry, I was on mobile at the time as I was at school and didn't really want to try quoting on my phone. Just added text.
GunRaptor ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:59:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As much praise as this dude usually gets, I'm shocked he's not up towards the top...
0ttr ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:02:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Stanislav Petrov falls in this category as well.
Ako17 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:05:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I ctrl+f'd to find this. It's WAY too low.
This man is an absolute hero to humanity, and nearly unknown.
DeuceBuggalo ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:00:02 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My band wrote a song about him! Guy literally prevented World War III
hexane360 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:35:17 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I just watched 13 days, and they didn't mention this at all. Sure JFK made some good decisions under hard pressure, but it all would've ended real fast if not for this guy.
Star_Wreck ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 02:24:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't mean to diminish his contribution, but had he agreed to fire a nuclear torpedo on the US Fleet they faced, the immediate retaliation is on the Flotilla, not on the country itself. A skirmish like that would still take a huge amount of consideration whether to escalate into armed conflict, and subsequently, war.
Mai_FireNation ยท 51 points ยท Posted at 20:00:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Claudette Colvin
Did what Rosa Parks did first, but didn't get credit because she was single and pregnant.
SNCommand ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:03:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
#me irl
kaptant ยท 1045 points ยท Posted at 16:15:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Henrietta Lacks. No one knows who she is but her cells are still being used in labs all over to this day. All without her consent or knowledge.
Azusanga ยท 83 points ยท Posted at 19:09:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What happened? What's her story? Why her cells?
Romalar1 ยท 221 points ยท Posted at 19:32:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks
She died of cancer in 1951 and researchers took samples from her tumors. They found that they could make the tumor cells "immortal" in the sense that they could continue to reproduce in the lab indefinitely. Ever since, immortal cell lines have been a critical part of biomedical research. Cells from her specific lineage are used by labs all over the world today.
Azusanga ยท 24 points ยท Posted at 19:45:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oh that's so interesting! Thank you
MossyMadchen ยท 28 points ยท Posted at 23:54:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Recently the book about her recommended in this thread caused a stir in a US school where it was required reading, because the cancer was cervical. The book described her finding the tumor(s) (she was touching herself) and discussion of her husband cheating on her, and some parent caused a big stir saying it was inappropriate for high schoolers and pornographic.
Sad that she made such a big and publicized effort to get the book banned, but in the end it brought a lot of attention to Lacks's story :)
ext23 ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 07:09:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
i think i speak for all of us when i say...
'ffs.'
IAmTheToastGod ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 09:47:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Read about her in anatomy and physiology
MossyMadchen ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 14:23:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's awesome! No mention of her in my anatomy class :(
IAmTheToastGod ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:43:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My teacher liked to take a few minutes at the beginning of each class to give us a little unknown biology history, current biology events, or relevant far side comic to get us in the mood for science.
MossyMadchen ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:09:02 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's beyond cool! I'm so jealous :)
IAmTheToastGod ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 04:19:46 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My favorite teacher
davvii ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:18:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So, essentially, she is the first immortal?
2midgetsinaduster ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 02:59:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Basically her blood cells are unique, as far as anyone knows, in that they continue to live and divide (whereas blood cells usually die after a few divisions). This made research on disease possible, where in the past much of a researcher's time and energy was spent trying to keep the cells alive.
From Wikipedia:
sictransitgloriia ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:12:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Like the commenter above said, you should read "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot, it talks all about her, the advancements that could be made with the HeLa cells, and all the ethical problems the world of medicine has
sodangfancyfree ยท 244 points ยท Posted at 17:11:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
died in a segregated hospital room.
Quackimaduck1017 ยท 311 points ยท Posted at 19:20:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I urge everyone to read "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot
Huge advancements in science were made thanks to Henrietta's cells, including Jonas Salk being able to create the polio vaccine due to being able to use her cells
OverlordQuasar ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 00:27:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My 9th grade biology teacher actually had that as something we were assigned to read for homework.
Captain_Klutch ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:17:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My 9th bio teacher assigns us to read that book and fill out questions for it too. Interesting book if you ask me.
penea2 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:09:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Had to read it for school! should be a required read for everyone in High school imo
Imperfectyourenot ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:21:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The audio book is fabulous as well
buustamon ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 08:49:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
IIRC there is also an episode of Radiolab about her story for those who might be interested
da9ve ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 12:17:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Really excellent book - I read it a couple months ago, and several friends ended up hearing quite a bit about it.
coconut_ismytruelove ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 05:30:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Amazing book, thank you for reminding me what a great read that is. Mrs. Lacks most definitely influenced and progressed medicine in a huge way but had no idea of her contribution, nor does the average present-day individual.
[deleted] ยท -19 points ยท Posted at 22:22:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
[deleted]
NixNoxKnight ยท 24 points ยท Posted at 01:30:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
But what's more inherently yours than your own body? You should have a right to decide to do what to do with it after you pass, same as you are allowed to pass on money and other things. Those will hold no value to you, but will to your relatives.There is a reason a situation like HeLa would never a pass an ethics board today.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:45:46 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
She signed the release.
newswilson ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 03:07:28 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also don't forget that many people and companies have profited from the production of samples and products based on her DNA.
samorost1 ยท -21 points ยท Posted at 01:08:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I totally agree. But of course the inherent dumbness of the reddit users forces them to downvote.
[deleted] ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 04:11:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You and the other person got down voted for not understanding the simple concept of bodily autonomy. That's why we can't take organs from dead people without their permission.
samorost1 ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 10:41:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah I know, you fear that your evil soul is harmed. Stfu asshole.
Sodiepawp ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 21:28:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Has nothing to do with the soul, it's about physical parts of what is physically yours.
To go full hyperbole here, if corporations had free dibs to your body post mortem, and you contained something they needed, how long do you think you would still be breathing?
It's hella more complicated than your dumbass is making it out to be, and even if it's purely philosophical in your mind, you're an idiot for not understanding that your body is yours and yours alone to make decisions with.
But go ahead and call someone an asshole for being tactful with you, while tossing around strawmen. Idiot.
samorost1 ยท -4 points ยท Posted at 23:20:22 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Stfu asshole. The illuminati will hunt you for your organs.
Sodiepawp ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:09:53 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
wot
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:38:19 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Bodily autonomy does not necessarily have anything to do with religion. I think you missed the point
itsnotmyfault ยท 89 points ยท Posted at 18:53:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
>Perpetually replicating human cells.
That's HeLa cool.
ZaydSophos ยท 15 points ยท Posted at 20:10:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think most people in medical professions would know about her, but still very underappreciated.
FUCKING_HATE_REDDIT ยท 38 points ยท Posted at 19:48:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In a sense, she is more alive than any other long dead humans.
aaronwanders ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 22:58:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What about newly dead humans?
Coolstorylucas ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 23:26:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Less alive but still very much alive.
FUCKING_HATE_REDDIT ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:09:05 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
cell-wise, pretty alive, especially if you count gut-flora.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:43:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In what sense? The cell is not the person. There is no essence to a cell. In fact the HeLa cells have been clones so many times that they drift structurally and behaviorally from the original lineage.
Sure most of the patterns are the same - but its not her any more than the cells I just lost when I showered are me.
FUCKING_HATE_REDDIT ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:09:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes, but the cell you lose showering will or have already died. Hers are very much alive, just like a brain-dead body in a hospital.
merlinfire ยท 55 points ยท Posted at 20:18:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And her kids got jack shit from it, and still live in poverty
They didn't even know about what had happened for years. Then someone called them and tried to explain, and did so quite poorly: her grandchildren left the conversation believing that somehow they had their grandmother alive in a lab somewhere. A shitstorm ensued.
[deleted] ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 03:40:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
To be fair - they got nothing from how scientists used their mother's cells - many billions of which turned on their mother and killed her. It would be nice for pharmaceutical companies to care more about people but try to justify a payout in millions to third party associates of a deceased test subject for products you developed based on cells willingly provided by the deceased.
[deleted] ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 19:24:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I just got the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, a girlfriend of mine harassed me to buy it. It's next on my to-read list.
PrepareInboxFor ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 20:27:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I just read the book about her life and her cell lines. Amazing book! Many science advances were made due to her unknowingly harvested cervical tumor cells. This should be so much farther up than 9/10ths of the other submissions
[deleted] ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 19:18:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Most people who work with HeLa cells know who she was
halfbakedcupcake ยท 22 points ยท Posted at 20:37:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Literally. We would not have mass produced vaccines without this woman. Her cells were stolen from her, without her knowledge and are profited from to this day. Much of her family still lives in poverty.
Tiny_Rat ยท 24 points ยท Posted at 22:32:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"Stolen" is a bit strong. The law back then allowed the gathering of biological samples from patients without consent, so nothing illegal was done, and there was never any intent to cause harm on the scientists' part. However, much profit has been made off these cells, and it is unfair that her family has seen little to no benefit from it.
[deleted] ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 03:47:56 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Her family did not contribute to the effort or sacrifice the scientists made to productize and clone those cells. I don't see the lottery ticket these people seem to think they have just because some biopsies of their mom's cancer were used as research tools.
If you want to credit anything - the cosmic ray that flipped the right base pair to cause cellular immortality is the thing that started all this.
If it was not her it would have been someone else's cells too. She was just used as a founder stock since that was what they had when they developed the technique.
throwthefuckaway7 ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 05:02:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
rolling my eyes all the way back on "sacrifice". These scientists were generally wealthy, privileged white men with social status who gained at least as much in ego stroking and straight up money to even out any kind of contribution to society.
Besides the immutable fact that you should get to decide what happens to your body (even if it's "I won't provide you healthcare unless you agree that I can use your body byproducts for whatever" you should have a choice), straight up, if you're going to have a system where you have to pay many dollars for healthcare the institution shouldn't be able to steal your cells without compensating you. If it's your duty to contribute to society to deserve healthcare, it's a capitalistic commodity, so you should be paid if an industry wants to use something of yours to make a profit alongside the benefits of their "discovery" that is only fully available to those with insurance.
Man America is weird.
At the very least her cells contributed enough to society her family's goddamn heart surgery should be paid for.
halfbakedcupcake ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 05:14:00 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, I think they have every right to feel a bit taken advantage of...
[deleted] ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 06:55:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Do you think those jerky science guys all rich and white - heaven forbid - maybe even JEWISH - just got their sciencing jobs at the rich guy hangout?
Or do you think they worked their asses off paying for school with side jobs - then busted their ass in school to get their doctorate - which is no easy feat --- then landed a cushy nearly minimum wage job as a lab assistance where they see their work get used and credited to the principal investigator in their lab? That guy worked for 40 years in labs and teaching to finally become a PI after years of training and long nights.
Those people that allow children with Leukemia to survive - don't make sacrifices of their time and energy to make the products that keep you alive?
You lose something like 500 million cells every day. They are literally all over your furniture and house and everywhere.
Do you own DUST - because that is what you are saying.
This is not a foot. Its invisible. It is one of a hundred billion just in your foot. You don't own it any more than you own your shit. Do you hold onto your shit - it contains your intellectual property.
I think healthcare should be a shared public expense. I think the public /private partnerships that gave us things like the human genome project are capable of being applied to many of the big problems - like curing cancers. I think we should have a public healthcare system. I would gladly pay for a well run public system through higher taxes if I did not have to pay insurance out the rear.
But realistically - this government sucks so badly at most things - I have my doubts that it could effectively expand medicare to include everybody.
I think her family's heart surgery should not be paid for by the family if they do not have the means. And its regretful that this system is not able to help people that are not paying into it.
But the people that productized the HeLa cells did not cause this problem with society and they should not be demonized in this situation.
throwthefuckaway7 ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 15:46:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
man, I'm not trying to play oppression olympics, but as a full certified jew intellectual over here, however hard they did or did not work does not erase the fact that should Henrietta Lacks had the nature to be one of them she definitely would not have had the nurture part of the equation to get there. They didn't ask consent back then because they generally took from people who were disadvantaged and no one gave a fuck about. re: sacrifice. Nah, it wasn't a sacrifice. definition: "the act of giving up something that you want to keep especially in order to get or do something else or to help someone." Their "time and effort" would only be sacrifices if they were doing it for free and without credit. They deliberately pursued this time and effort, and were the privileged few in society that got the access to do so. Whatever minimal sacrifices they made in their lives were more than made up for by the incredible luck and honour they had to get the education, compensation and space to be scientists at all. Yes, luck. Not everything you get in life is because of your own hard work.
Look, I'm in a profession people regularly like to heroize and while I understand the good intentions none of my colleagues would be doing what we do if we didn't get paid. That shit ain't heroic
Yeah, fallen off dust or hair is noooot the same thing as samples from an invasive biopsy. Just like you need consent to do such a procedure in the first place, you need consent to use any extracted products during cause they ain't yours. If they're taking a blood sample from you to run tests on, they can't just decide "heeey, might as well run this a bit longer and collect some blood for the blood bank." without your explicit permission to do so.
there are people whose entire degrees (you know, the kind of educated people you seem to like) are about figuring out what's right and wrong in these scenarios -- bioethicists. Their views are pretty nuanced, and maybe you should look into why consent has developed as an unshakeable standard in the last while, and why it's important. (Hint: It was developed as a professional standard post-Nazis)
And look, HeLa cells are used everywhere, including by pharmaceutical companies who have a long and storied history about being about money first before "helping people", even if they do incidentally do some research and development to get there first. If that's the kind of society we live in, people should be compensated for what they have to give, just like these scientist get compensated for what they do. It's unfair and classist to put them on a pedestal and say they should be expected from the market forces of their capitalist society and the people who they exploited and violated (and hey, medicine has a looong history of doing just that especially to black people: tuskagee experiments!) are just as worthy of you know, basic rights of autonomy.
halfbakedcupcake ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 05:09:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also, it wasn't much effort to clone them. They were Immortal so they continuously replicated anyways....
[deleted] ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 06:42:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well turning them into a product line eventually did actually take some work. Sure culturing cells is not an exotic exercise - but the value they had was not just in the fact that they were easy to replicate. The science built off of the ideas derived from study of the cells was the source of the financial gain. Its what drove a market to spread the HeLa line everywhere.
Does that mean her family was injured in any way? Does that mean her intellectual property was compromised?
You don't own carbon and nitrogen. You don't own cytoplasm. Your trillion copies of your recipe are all over your house and everything you touch - but can you capitalize on them?
Actual science is not like it is portrayed in cartoons. Its business as much as scientific endeavor.
zakkwaldo ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 20:53:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
got forced to read about her story my senior year of highschool. back then i was so unappreciative and thought it was stupid. but now looking back on it, its so amazing and fascinating. that whole course was about questioning everything we were taught. was awesome as fuck.
RichardRogers ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 18:54:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
She was a HeLava woman.
UberMcwinsauce ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:46:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I learned about her in high school. I think most people in the medical field know who she is.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:53:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
She literally saved millions of lives. Imagine what cancer treatments would be like today if there hadn't ever been an abundant source of cancer cells to test on...
paradizingmania ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:43:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
More info?
andrabesque ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:48:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a thought provoking read for sure.
Dioxitanium ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:58:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The book about her was required reading for a class of mine. So many of my friends disliked it, but I read it all in less than a day. My mom had to take it from me so I'd actually interact with people.
mr_garcizzle ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:10:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
HeLa underappreciated
bigredgiant ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:01:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't know if I'd call her a hero, she herself didn't really do anything to save lives. She may be a savior of sorts because she happened to have magic blood
IAmACheekyChild ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:20:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I learned about her in my biology class.
Daimondz ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:37:22 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
IIRC she was dead before they started using her cells. They never told the family, they found out from some stranger who remembered their last name...
Source: sophomore chemistry class
Educated_Spam ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:59:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I read a book about her just this year. Can't say I enjoyed it a crazy amount, but I did learn plenty and do recommend the book. Henrietta Lacks isn't the only cell donor anymore, but I believe she was the first, and those cells made soooo many things in science and medical-related fields develop much faster.
xPlasma ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:15:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
She did nothing but get cancer and die. She didn't know her cells were being used and when they eventually told her family they didn't know cells were a thing. They thought they were keeping her in jail. She's not the hero of that story.
nashvortex ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:41:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Oh there is a book about her. Frankly, I don't think she deserves much credit because she did not willingly participate nor understood what the scientists were trying to do. Heck, she didn't even care. Her only 'contribution' was to simply be have the misfortune of having aggressive cervical cancer.
The entire credit goes to the scientists who recognized what they could try to do with these cells that would benefit humanity even though they could not save Henrietta Lacks.
Also, the entire ,'without her consent' is a very very gray area. At the time, no laws existed that required consent to use biopsies tissue for other purposes. Remember this is a time when it is barely becoming clear that DNA has something to do with heredity. It was not understood how close to your identity your DNA and cells are...they didn't even know what DNA looked like or how it functioned.
And further more, even by today's standards 'informed consent', not just consent is what the law wants. It is highly doubtful that Mrs. Lacks had the education and expertise to understand what was then cutting edge tissue engineering even if the doctors had asked her.
The entire brouhaha about how Mrs. Lacks was wronged is just anachronistic misguided activism. Her descendents are even more annoying given that they have even less to do with the whole story but think they are entitled to some kind of sympathy and compensation.
Finally, she has received what recognition is appropriate. The cell line is called 'HeLa' after her name.
Sorry to be that guy.
Needs_Improvement ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:12:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
'The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks' was the freshmen assigned reading at my college. She's also one of the few people I knew of before this thread.
Raezak_Am ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:13:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Minus the whole like best selling book about it?
schnichaels ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:39:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Huh... HeLa. Never really thought about it before.
craftymom1o19 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:44:27 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I remember hearing about her descendants legal fight a few years again, and just looked ago to see if there was an update Probably not the happiest of endings, but:
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:45:27 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I heard an NPR programme on her!
subtledeception ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:41:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I would argue that the book about her was rather insanely popular, and quite a few people know about her now.
tinykarebear ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:07:56 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a fascinating book if you want more backstory!
torrasque666 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:26:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oddly enough I know about her because of Prototype 2.
VCUBNFO ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:34:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My freshman year summer reading assignment was about her.
thekream ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 11:10:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think I've heard of her! Was she the woman whose cells were used to advance some parts of the medical field? I remember listening to a podcast of a woman whose cells are still being cloned, so technically part of her still lives
CatlikeQuickness ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 19:17:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'd say whoever developed the procedure to make use of her cells deserves more credit.
Sameri278 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:32:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
To be fair, she did sign a consent waiver for them to take a sample of her tumor IIRC.
[deleted] ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 19:14:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
boobiesiheart ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 20:34:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"everyone"?
Printerswitharms ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:00:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Looks like people are lacking knowledge on her.
I'm so sorry.
ElagabalusRex ยท -5 points ยท Posted at 19:12:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I feel like there's nothing about Lacks to appreciate. There are many poor black women who died of cancer. We know her name purely by what other people did after she died.
athennna ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:14:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I learned about her in school. Isn't there an episode of TAL about her too?
Squoghunter1492 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:35:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dude, so many people know who she is. There was a book written about a few years back that got wildly popular (I think because of Oprah?). Anyone with more than a cursory knowledge of medical testing and microbiology knows of her cells. Her case is one of the most contentious ethical dilemmas in modern medical science. She's hardly underappreciated, for someone who really did quite little.
kittens_4_breakfast ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:41:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ok she was definitely unappreciated during her life, but she's really famous now...
ZMush ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 04:10:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
HeLa cells aren't too unknown, are they?
fatn00b ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 22:02:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't mean to be dissing Henrietta, but if not for her cells, they would have gotten someone else's immortal cancer cells. The same discoveries would've been made, just a bit later.
honeypuppy ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:19:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Arguably, this is the case for a great many discoveries.
captainmagictrousers ยท 1729 points ยท Posted at 14:00:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug
scaldedmuffin ยท 904 points ยท Posted at 16:42:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
C477um04 ยท 64 points ยท Posted at 19:05:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thanks, another example for me to use when people say they are against GM foods.
frausting ยท 17 points ยท Posted at 20:04:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm 100% pro-GM foods, but at least according to that short paragraph, he very well could have developed those novel wheat varieties through 'traditional' non-GM techniques like cross-breeding as opposed to selective genetic manipulation.
C477um04 ยท 20 points ยท Posted at 20:09:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Artificial selection is a massive part of GM. Most of it in fact, and I think that's what a lot of people don't realise.
frausting ยท 20 points ยท Posted at 20:22:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Everything we eat is GM in that regard. Brussel spouts, cabbage, broccoli, and a lot of other vegetables are actually originally from the same plant, and are still the same species.
I'm with you, though. GMO is the future, but you have to be aware that while the distinction is somewhat arbitrary, you have to use the terms as they are if you want to engage in anti-GMO folk. Simply saying "All food is GMO" is true but you have to realize their stance and work from it, not outright deny it.
C477um04 ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 20:40:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Most people wouldn't consider the fact that all of those foods are already GM. They are so used to them that they are just normal and anything with more modification is not. Most people don't even fully consider the artificial breeding that has went into our dogs today (although that's actually a better example of GM doing harm rather than good).
ChE_ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:49:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Our breeding of dogs did nothing to how nutritious they are. We just made it so dogs don't live as long. Most crops we have are so royally fucked that they would stand no chance without cultivation. Many plants we eat can no longer replant themselves. Even when they can a lot of them spend so much energy making the part that we eat that they can't compete with wild vegetation.
liontamarin ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 13:24:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Are you sure dogs aren't more nutritious now than 1000 years ago?
thantheman ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:40:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I agree with your comparison of dogs to GM foods, but I don't know if its a better example of a "GM doing harm rather than good."
You could definitely argue that certain dog breeds suffer serious health risks due to artificial breeding and it shortens their lifespan.
However, in regards to humans, dogs were bred for very specific jobs. The majority of dogs before the 20th century weren't bred simply as "pet" breeds. Some definitely were, but even that is a "job" function of the dog that serves humans.
The artificial selection of dogs, in the overwhelming majority of cases throughout human-dog history, have been to the direct benefit of humans and have not been harmful to humans.
C477um04 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 11:23:22 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fair point, the dog argument is a lot more complex than I put it and in history dog breeds were very useful but the newer breeds especially are largely just genetic fuck ups designed to either look nice or just for the sake of seeing what they could do. (think victorian era eugenics). But you are correct that we have bred a lot of useful dogs, whether for hunting, herding sheep or killing rats.
tastycat ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:06:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Good God, bananas.
BigDamnHead ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 21:04:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Selectively breeding foods doesn't make them GM. GM foods are made through genetic engineering. People aren't against selective breeding.
JesusChristSuperFart ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:48:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Same thing though, right? Modifications happen and they are either caused by sun spots or deliberate adjustment, or perhaps other causes.
BigDamnHead ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:56:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No, it isn't the same thing. Random mutations are inherently not engineered.
Gark32 ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 23:23:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
so random is better?
JesusChristSuperFart ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:06:52 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
According to Mr. bigHead random is better than intelligently selected; and natural selection is superior to human selection
BigDamnHead ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:25:38 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That is an outright lie. I never said anything of the sort.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:35:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
[deleted]
JesusChristSuperFart ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:16:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Scientist Kirk Cameron covers this topic quite well in his "Converting the Gullible" videos
StalksYouEverywhere ยท 15 points ยท Posted at 20:17:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm for GM foods, i'm against expensive private-owned patents held by huge corporations driven by nothing other than profit for their shareholders
GlyphGryph ยท 18 points ยท Posted at 20:19:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I really wish there was an anti-patent movement instead of an anti-GMO movement, since the anti-GMO movement keeps burning down experimental patent-free research crops and preventing patent-free crops from being planted, while doing quite a bit to help the profits of abusive and soulless corporations.
StalksYouEverywhere ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:34:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
in my humble personal opinion, all GMO patents without exception, and only state/country owned companies would be allowed to plant GMO seeds - or have a special institution that gives rights to plant GMO's to specific farmers.
But all the profits from the crops owned by the state should go into the public/state budget.
This is how you would at least limit lobbying a small ammount, but even what i'm suggesting is full of loop-holes that can be abused.
Its really a clusterfuck of a system to implement, where the desire for greed by individuals/companies would have no effect on such a system, so I would say by the virtue of human nature, such a system would be impossible to implement and keep it "fair" for companies, small farmers, state companies.
Because as soon as you for example limit the right to grow GMO crops to only state companies, you're basically pushing every company/farmer growing non-gmo crops into less and less competitivness and they would have a hard time competing with your prices, leading to their bankrupcy.
The only way this would be solved is if we would transition all agriculture to state-owned, but now we're talking communism/socialism in regards to agriculture which nobody would accept.
Of course you could remedy this problem with high-wages for private farms working under state owned agricultural companies, but that would recieve back-last from other people, as those farmers would have almost 100% job security and nice wages, to prevent dissatisfaction of such a state-owned agricultural sector.
In reality the problem is so complex, that without adjusting the very basics of the system we're living in, things like adequately legislating things regarding GMO's is virtually impossible.
oceanjunkie ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 21:46:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Why should there be an anti-patent movement? Plants could be patented since 1930 and growers were given exclusive rights to their patented hybrid varieties since 1970, before GMOs existed. Whatever imaginary cases of patent abuse you believe happened, why wouldn't you just address those imaginary cases rather than completely ban all patents of plants?
Why should inventors of completely new non-naturally occuring plant varieties not be able to protect their inventions?
oceanjunkie ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 21:39:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No shit they're driven by profit. That's what every corporation does. Do you want them to be a charity or something?
StalksYouEverywhere ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:59:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No. But you have to ask yourself if profit is the only drive behind a business entity that that entity will do everything in its power to achieve that profit.
thats why you have regulations to limit what is legal/not legal for the sake of profit.
And that is why most regulation today isnt regulation at all.
oceanjunkie ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:05:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What does this mean?
StalksYouEverywhere ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:10:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
while its a pretty hyperbole statement, as a lot of regulation is very useful today, there are still areas that are detrimental to the very human survival, for example climate change, which isnt a part of regulation nearly enough.
oceanjunkie ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:12:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Got it, that makes more sense.
StalksYouEverywhere ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:17:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I mean the problem, is and thats why i almost never reply to topics, is that when you discuss a topic like this in detail, you need hours and days to debate it fully and to reach effective conclusions.
so hyperbole statements, and generalizations are go-to in pretty much every argument or stance you take here.
and sooner or later you end up in political science or philosophy which warants another few hours of debate, which most people including myself dont even have the energy to write and most redit users not the energy or wish to read so its slightly meaningless to explore all the nuances of a certain stance, because it serves no usefull purpoace in the given circumstances of a discussion.
but i like in depth-talks so if you ever would like to hear a more in-detail explanation we can talk over skype, or something.
oceanjunkie ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:36:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I've had conversations like that on this topic before. When it's around plant patents or the like, the difference in opinion goes down to just fundamentals and at that point, there is no convincing, you just disagree on a fundamental part of society.
That is unless their opinion is based on incorrect facts.
Metal_Mike ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:21:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
What he probably means is that some cases regulation creates a barrier to entry where it is expensive to adhere to, that makes it hard if not impossible for newer/poorer companies to enter the market. GMO manufacturers actually lobby for very strict regulations that require extensive testing before a new GMO product can be sold. They have the time and money to do this testing, but smaller firms do not, which keeps competitors out of the market.
oceanjunkie ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:22:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Do you have a source? I'm sure the other end of the spectrum - the organic lobbies - also do this.
ds580 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:11:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My problem is that gmo labeling doesn't mean anything. I don't really like chemical pesticides and would prefer to not consume food produced with them, but gmo labeling doesn't tell me that.
Nougat ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:06:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There are no foods that are not genetically modified, if you count selective breeding. Even if you don't, almost everything in the grocery store is straight up laboratory GM, it's just that the techniques have recently gotten more efficient.
PacSan300 ยท 23 points ยท Posted at 18:32:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
One person saving perhaps 1/7 of the world population is incredible by any measure.
I wonder if some his varieties are being used in Africa. They could really help there.
SeeYou_Cowboy ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 21:23:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That statistic was dropped in 1970. The man lived to be 94 years old.
He's saved 1/7th of the world multiple times over.
eponinethenerdier ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 22:42:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
They definitely did try to use his varieties in Africa, but the types of hybrids he developed were far more suited to the climates of Asia and Latin America (especially Asia). Africa's climate is very varied, and its soil degraded. It also lacked infrastructure that would allow farmers to access markets (market access is hugely important), and didn't have the widespread government support that existed in many Asian and Latin American countries. In addition, the crop in question - wheat - is not the main staple in Africa. Rather, a "green revolution" -type innovation for maize could definitely have a similar effect, because maize is the most common crop in Africa.
CIMMYT, the center that Borlaug worked at, developed a drought-resistant maize variety that's being used by 3 million farmers in 13 African countries. Currently these varieties are being spread by the Drought Tolerant Maize for Africa Initiative, and 140 varieties have been released so far!! Hopefully, this will help increase food security in Africa and beyond.
Right now, a massive part of the food-security community is focused on expanding the Green Revolution to Africa. In fact, AGRA (Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa) is focusing on supporting smallholder farmers, especially females - who are often ignored in projects like this, despite being the backbone of rural agriculture - to improve crop yields and usher in a new Green Revolution. Importantly, people in the community are committed to improving on the Green Revolution of the '60s and '70s, and not repeating the mistakes that were made (which, despite its massive success, definitely existed). So there's definitely hope for African agriculture! It's massively promising, and if you want any more information on the world of food security, or agriculture, or anything please ask I like talking about it way too much!!
Also one last thing, this report on Agriculture in Africa by NEPAD and published by the UN is a super informative and interesting read!
krye ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 19:35:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Huh, so that's why a somewhat famous street on my hometown is named after him, even though it's a little farming town in northwestern Mexico.
Thoguth ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:19:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So he's the villain who gave us all these carbs and gluten!
Orc_ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:21:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Actually he IS a villain who gave us climate change, if the population had stayed in 1 billion we wouldn't even think climate change as an issue.
Perdendosi ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 19:05:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
[sarcasm]
NO GMO!
[/sarcasm]
EDIT:I understand that his work wasn't the same as switching on or off genes in plants, or splicing in a gene from another plant to get beneficial results, but his crossbreeding and hybridization were designed to affect the genes in the plants to make them thrive in harsh conditions or against certain plant killers.
He also supported GMO crops.
And here's a critique piece in the Guardian, calling him the "biggest killer of all to have got the peace prize".
Wista ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 20:20:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Maybe it's just the hangover and im missing the point... but is the author of that second article arguing that Norman Borlaug is a massive killer because his wheat required more fertilizer / water and it didn't eradicate poverty?
Because if so, that's fucking stupid.
Captain_Wozzeck ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:53:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's fairly deplorable. Also the guardian author quotes his obituarist completely out of context to make it look like the obituarist agrees with him.
Anyone who says "The jury is still out" on Norman Borlaug has no idea how agriculture works and the situation it was in before his endeavours
Seizure_Salad_ ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:55:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I got to meet him back in 2008 at the world food prize. He was the nicest most humble people I have ever met.
scaldedmuffin ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:37:27 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This guy. I want to be like him so much. Groundbreaking research in his field, and apparently nice?!
CalypteK ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:46:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I learned about this by watching The West Wing.
Thanks, Netflix.
plazmablu ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:07:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Holy shit. What a hero!
Omegatron ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:57:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So you're telling me that is essentially the FATHER of GMOs? DOWN WITH NORMAN! (/s)
Timothy_Claypole ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:09:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Awarded Nobel Peace Prize....so not at all underappreciated!
JesusChristSuperFart ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:45:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I thought they didn't give the Nobel for application?
Decantus ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:29:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Monsanto Lawyers are prepping their lawsuit against you for revealing trade secrets.
Orc_ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:20:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Do you really save people from starvation simply by adding more? I mean there were like 1 billion people before all of this, now there's 7, like, how can that be "saving" people from starvation? I think it's bullcrap, made up, yes what he did is great and all but the "saving" part is UNFOUNDED.
scaldedmuffin ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:38:05 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He didn't add more, he fed more.
Orc_ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:39:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah it was an accident that the Green Revolution skyrocketed the world's population from 1 or so billion to 7+ billion, yeah, totally not related.
AGAIN, there is not a SINGLE shred of evidence he "saved" anybody, it's a myth constantly repeated.
DancesWithPugs ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:58:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nah, all GMOs are poison. /s
Cato94 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 10:58:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
His statue is in Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol building. He's one of only 3 people (if I recall correctly) to win the Congressional Gold Medal (civilian equivalent to the Medal of Honor), the Nobel Peace Prize, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The bottom of his statue says "The Man Who Saved a Billion Lives."
TheoHooke ยท 353 points ยท Posted at 16:45:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
In a somewhat similar vein, Fritz Haber invented a process for producing massive amounts of ammonia economically which is used to produce fertilisers. On the other hand, he also weaponised Chlorine Gas and invented Zyklon A.
leviathing ยท 235 points ยท Posted at 17:17:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That process is called the Haber process. I mean maybe its just because Im a chemist, but I think hes a pretty famous dude.
umbertounity82 ยท 19 points ยท Posted at 17:51:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes I think it has to do with your chemistry background. I also studied chemistry and I feel he is well-known in the field but not so much in the general public. Also, the public at large doesn't really grasp how vital the production of ammonia is for the modern world.
[deleted] ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 22:42:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Haber process is on the GCSE syllabus (mandatory subject) in the UK. Anyone who paid attention at school between the ages of 14 and 16 should know of him / his process.
umbertounity82 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:49:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't think we covered the topic in high school chemistry here in the US. Although it's been a while since I graduated.
[deleted] ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 18:49:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
All chemists know about him. It's one of the most famous chemical processes ever. Maybe not too many other people, though.
ChE_ ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:51:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He was one of the worlds first chemical engineers. He didn't invent a lot of chemicals, he just created a lot of processes that allowed for large scale production of them.
umdiddly ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 19:10:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Haber-Bosch. Why no props for Carl Bosch? He seemed pretty cool too.
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 20:43:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Bosch's grave is just up the hill from my house. He's pretty famous where I live, but I suppose not so much to non-Germans.
Shit, I confused my Boschs. It's Carl's uncle Robert that founded the company, and is buried up the hill.
RYKAhowRAD ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:43:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Currently getting my PhD in chemistry. Some how Born, Haber, and Bosch come up in every single class I took. Even done with classes it seems like there is a monthly conversation about why the Bosch-Haber process is the most important invention of the 20th century.
TheoHooke ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:02:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm an (aspiring) chemist too. While he's undoubtedly well-credited in the industry, the man who facilitated this could probably never get the recognition he might be due.
ScenesfromaCat ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:43:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The part that blows my mind is that, at least this is what I was taught in Chem 1 in college, is that the Haber process is the only way to make nitrogen reactive so you can use it because N2 gas is super stable and nonreactive, and it's super inefficient. I feel like the dude that invents a better way to make reactive nitrogen would be a trillionaire.
umbertounity82 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:25:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You're right, it's a hugely important reaction. A lot of catalysis research is directed towards improving the efficiency. Even incremental gains will have a large impact. I've heard this reaction alone consumes ~5% of the world's annual energy consumption.
ScenesfromaCat ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:39:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Legumes and some bacteria can convert N2 to ammonium, NH4+. I know we use bacteria to produce commercial insulin. I don't understand why we can't do the same thing for the nitrogen problem. I mean obviously there's a reason it doesn't work or else people would be doing it, but I can't see why it would be worse than the Haber process.
umbertounity82 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:53:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My guess is it has to do with the shear scale of industrial ammonia production. Any alternative has to be massively scaled up.
ScenesfromaCat ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:05:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think it's doable. I mean just the fact that it doesn't have to take place at like 20000 Pascals and 500 C should mean it's more efficient. Just a big old fermentation tank if it would work the same way as insulin-producing yeast. Most of the yeasts I'm aware of function best around like 90-110 F and atmospheric pressure. Takes a lot less energy to heat a fermentation tank to 100 F than to raise temp to 500C and pressure to 15-25 MPa.
Bobshayd ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:31:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm not a chemist and I know about the Haber process.
CapWasRight ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:35:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm not a chemist, but I sure as hell know Haber's name (for this reason).
guinness_blaine ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:09:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Some knowledge is largely field-dependent. I didn't know about Haber, but in physics/math/engineering Gauss and Euler have their names on like a thousand things each and I'd bet most regular people don't really know how important they were.
drugsinmybody ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:08:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In my chem class it is referred to as the Haber-Bosch process, do you know who Bosch is?
NotoriusNC ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:18:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I did a speech on him once in college, so to answer you no he was not famous because no one knew he was.
ShakeTheDust143 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:53:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He's pretty famous among chemists for the Haber process, no doubt.
tikhead ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:08:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I only know about him because of radiolab. He not only developed fertilizer but the use of the same technology to develop explosives. He also proposed the use of and then used chlorine gas in trench warfare during WWI. He also created zyklon A, which had an odor (like the gas you use to cook does nowadays to be easily identifiable when you're in the presence of it); the odor was removed to make zyklon B, which was used to exterminate many during WWII. Ironically he was Jewish. Also he's known as the "father of chemical warfare."
link
Groovah ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 17:27:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What about Zyklon B?
LordzOfChaos ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 17:42:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He invented Zyklon A, the Nazis kicked him out because he was a Jew and altered his weapon to become Zyklon B.
PlayMp1 ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:41:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Zyklon A wasn't a weapon though, it was just a pesticide. That's probably all Haber intended it to be. A similar product was used by Imperial Germany in WW1, then banned after WW1. Zyklon B came later.
FarkCookies ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:25:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Haber was determined to weaponize gas. He even traveled to battlefront to see the usage. His activities drove his wife to suicide. Source.
PlayMp1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:30:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oh. :(
Rednaz1 ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 17:53:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
radiolab shoutout
Mefanol ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:50:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Approximately 2% of global energy consumption is dedicated to this chemical reaction...that's crazy to think about.
Also Bosch deserves a bit of credit too.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:01:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
TheoHooke ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:05:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oh I don't doubt. I just figured since the top level comment was about an agricultural scientist I might as well mention the guy behind modern fertiliser.
polyethylene_oxide ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:45:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Pretty sure his wife also committed suicide over his weaponization of Chlorine.
Anal_Vengeance ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:04:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In the Garden of Beasts facts!
sixth_snes ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:16:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Something like half the nitrogen in your body is there because you ate food grown using synthetically produced fertilizer that this guy invented. That's a big deal.
Doomur17 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:08:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Have you listened to the Radiolab podcast about him?
TheoHooke ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:13:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nope, just chemistry lectures.
Canadian_Infidel ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:14:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, the process was developed to increase bomb production. The fertilizer thing was a side effect, that if it didn't exist, wouldn't have slowed the development in the slightest.
Hularuns ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:28:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Haber is up there with the famous chemists. Definitely not an unsung hero
JoshStevenMiller ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:13:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
For a great book about Haber-Bosch, try "Alchemy of Air." it's fantastic.
Fragarach-Q ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:01:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They did a video on him for The Great War channel.
https://youtu.be/ztzKHU2oaF8
oOPonyOo ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:11:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I heard on Radiolab that possibly half of all the N in your body is from the Haber process.
Hoof_Hearted12 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:27:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Plus he rocked some crazy looking specs.
dogbert730 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:00:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Why is your e all fucked? I mean I know technically why, but why?
TheoHooke ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:02:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I spelt it "vain" initially, but someone pointed out that it ought to be "vein".
galactapotamus ยท 184 points ยท Posted at 14:02:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's kind of nuts how despite the fact that he has been given a ton of official recognition, you never hear about him otherwise. I didn't know about this guy until like a year or two ago.
Chupacabra_Sandwich ยท 108 points ยท Posted at 15:13:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I learned about him from the West Wing.
Libertyreign ยท 77 points ยท Posted at 17:50:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I learned about him from Penn and Tellers Bullshit.
A_favorite_rug ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:12:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Good show. I just wish there was less naked people, but pretty informative. Totally recommend seeing it.
VAGINA_BLOODFART ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 20:27:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Maddox did a petty good job showing how they liked to take their guests statements completely out of context to fit their narrative. He was interviewed for a few hours about old people and they took one sentence (old people smell bad) without any of the context of why he said that, and shat on him for ten minutes using bullshit pseudoscientific "experiments". I liked the show and agreed with the majority of their points but they definitely liked to distort things to fit their narrative and that retroactively left me with a pretty bad taste.
A_favorite_rug ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:49:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
There are episodes like that, I'll agree.
I seriously can get over the naked people thing. I watched it uncensored. So I got a face full of man/woman bush action when I least expected it.
VAGINA_BLOODFART ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:20:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, they really did love their nudity. I understood the swearing, as they explained in the first episode it was to avoid lawsuits (it's okay to call someone a motherfucker but not to call them a pyramid scheme runner) but the nudity usually just felt out of place and there for the sake of nudity and took away from the message.
That said, I always appreciated the boobies.
walkingcarpet23 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:50:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I learned about him from this thread o_o
Shiroi_Kage ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:38:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In my home department at the university there's a photo of him. No idea who took it and no idea who's in it, and I don't think anyone knows, apart from him.
ferlessleedr ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:29:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's weird (in a good way) how educational that show was.
seemedlikeagoodplan ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 16:26:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Same here. Bartlet was just full of random interesting facts like that.
RCIfan ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:20:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Same.
pdmcmahon ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:49:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Same here. I immediately recognized his name.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 17:40:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Because GMO crops are evil /s
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:59:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
He even won a Nobel Peace Prize, credited with saving over 1 Billion lives.
Eric_the_Barbarian ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:52:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Even if you're conservative with how much credit you give him for the increased output of modern farming, easily at least a tenth of the worlds population owes him their lives. It's probably closer to a sixth or a quarter.
Minn-ee-sottaa ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:29:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He was pretty big in my Human Geography class during the agriculture and population units.
Dynamaxion ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:49:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
But I thought GMOs were evil.
itshowyousaidit ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:22:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Did you hear him referenced on The West Wing? That's the only reason I knew who he was.
ChaplnGrillSgt ยท 21 points ยท Posted at 17:48:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Learned about this guy from Penn and Teller's Bullshit! This guy is a god damn hero and know one even knows who he is!
[deleted] ยท 20 points ยท Posted at 18:27:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm from Des Moines, Iowa, and we have a building 'monument' to him, the World Food Prize Hall of Laureates. The World Food Prize is something of a Nobel prize for agriculture.
captainmagictrousers ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:28:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oh, that's neat!
MeteorKing ยท 81 points ยท Posted at 15:55:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This needs to be higher up, Mr. Borlaug is estimated to have saved over a BILLION lives. He is a great man.
BBlasdel ยท 30 points ยท Posted at 19:33:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Fuck even that, he is the greatest man to have ever lived, and it wouldn't be hard to argue that he may be the greatest man to ever live.
He didn't just save a billion lives from starvation. Those billion lives, as well as the desperation they and their loved ones didn't feel, have put humanity on a track towards a kind of hope and justice that would not have been remotely possible had he not given up a sweet industry job near his wife and kids to live his adult life alone in the poorest region of 1960s Mexico. His work didn't just save an order of magnitude more lives than were lost to all the dictators and wars of the 20th century combined, it made life on Earth so much more worth saving, allowing us to be greater, kinder, and less callous than we were before. The great famines that he averted would have done damage to so much more than just an abstract total number of people on Earth, but to our sense of self as whole aspects of our global culture died, to our societies in wars that wouldn't have ended, and to our souls when the West eventually decided what the limit on food aid would be.
He slayed one of the horsemen of the apocalypse by living a life of sacrifice and respect for the humanity of his neighbor, greatest man.
EDIT: Please don't downvote /u/hillbilly_trash, what he is saying is horrifying but its what a lot of people feel. Its worth hearing and responding to.
Hominid77777 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:50:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's a grain of truth to what /u/hillbilly_trash is saying. Borlaug was amazing, and what he did was great and necessary at the time, but there were a lot of negative side effects to his work. "The environment" isn't just an abstract concept that only rich white liberals care about; it's an actual thing that people depend on. There must be a balance.
BBlasdel ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:19:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The environment is a thing that only people with full bellies care about, and there is no balance to be had between it and the genocide we're abstractly talking around. Besides, what Borlaug did made protecting the environment a political problem, carbon and sulfur are emitted, virgin lands are repurposed, and animals are driven to extinction now only because we allow it to happen. It is no longer a question of survival, at least on a global level, but a question of will.
Hominid77777 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:51:12 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What if people depend on the environment for food? Sure, hungry people in Indonesia might not care what happens to the giant panda or trees in Massachusetts, but they definitely care about whether there are enough fish in the ocean, or whether rising sea levels will devastate their area.
I'm not trying to criticize Borlaug here, but I'm trying to bring a little more nuance into this discussion. Whenever he comes up on Reddit people try to use him to personally attack environmentalists, but the reality is a lot more complicated.
[deleted] ยท -5 points ยท Posted at 19:49:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
[deleted]
BBlasdel ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 20:17:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm not sure I can think of any clearer more eloquent definition of evil than this sentence and fragment typed from affluence into a computer.
What you are implicitly suggesting as an alternative, this willingness to barter the lives of billions, is unspeakable. Trading human lives for ecological wealth, even if the logistics of that made any fucking sense - and they don't, is an intention so utterly horrific I have no idea of any of us could meaningfully respond. I mean we could certainly talk about how reducing hunger lifts up societies, empowers women, reduces family size, and in the end reduces ecological impacts - but that would seem to justify the murder by the billions through willful inaction as simply impractical rather than what it really is, or at least leave it unacknowledged. Fuck that, fuck that so hard. The Earth's population is currently projected to level off at 12 billion and stay at least roughly stable there for at least a while, but even if it weren't, famine is certainly not the answer.
Borlaug didn't just save lives, he saved us from needing to take you seriously. We are better than that now, we can be better than that now, because of him. I hope the rest of your day finds more compassion in it.
[deleted] ยท -3 points ยท Posted at 20:44:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
[deleted]
BBlasdel ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 21:27:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Fuck that, humanity is beautiful in all of its flaws, you are beautiful, even your love for the environment as misplaced as it might be is beautiful. Bioengineering, medicine, Toyotas, fucking, and all sorts of other things that make your life right now on reddit possible are beautiful. Even just you, one person with all your cynicism and callousness, are infinitely worthy of the Earth and its riches. Even just you alone are a way for the universe to know itself, to love and be loved, to understand and be understood.
If we could only learn to love ourselves and each other, in a way that Norman fucking Borlaug both modeled and made logistically feasible, this cats not just getting out of the bag - its going to the stars.
I don't believe you, I don't think it would even take much digging to find compassion in you, but for what its worth /u/hillbilly_trash, I care about you and I believe in your ability to do great things in whatever it is thats important to you.
Orc_ ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 00:24:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You are crazy, the world's population staying at 1 billion was just fine, we didn't need 6 more billion people.
We didn't need climate change and countless starving is worth it compared to the utter destruction of an entire planet's faune via relentless warming.
BBlasdel ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 01:00:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
...Do we have a volunteer?
Climate change is not at all an inevitable result of a larger population, and if anything a smaller more desperate population in greater poverty would be much worse - heating homes with unreplenished wood instead of more efficient means, burning virgin land for subsistence agriculture, and waging the kind of total war we haven't seen in 70 years. But like with /u/hillbilly_trash's response, it would be wrong to dignify your comment with just an argument over the practicality of killing more people than have died in all of the wars in recorded human history, in a slaughter of apparently willful neglect that would enshrine a permanent global underclass, an agricultural gradient of human value.
It is a monstrous, unspeakable, and yet horrifyingly human response to even the perception of scarcity. If there were a button that you could push to murder six billion people, would you really push it? What if you had to push it six billion times, could you do it then? What if it was a knife you had to push into the sides of six billion skulls? Try to imagine what you are really arguing for, an act of mass murder more than a thousand times greater than the holocaust.
What Borlaug gave us was not just the manpower to fix this planet and bend it towards climate stability, but at least a shot at the economic justice, agency in the developing world, and peace that we'll need.
Orc_ ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:17:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hah! less "more desperate" people, would according to you, contribute more, seriously can't even argue against such nonsense, if that were to be true carbon emissions before would be larger, people from the industrial revolution would have large carbon footprints than today, but now, the opposite is true, population IS tied to carbon emissions in every single country, not sure where you even got the idea that that might be wrong.
Poor people use more public transportation, travel less, spend less and eat less, in every single factor they will have a lower carbon footprint, period.
Without flinching! Even if it included myself, 6 billion dying>7 billion dying (extinction or near extinction from climate devastation)
He was a climate "skeptic" (whatever that bullshit means) because he new 100% that his work was devastating long-term. Whatever objectives he thought could be achieved by feeding people oil are all irrelevant when they're inherently unsustainble.
BioSemantics ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:40:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just so you know, most of the articles that scare you in regard to population problems actually are usually centered on specific places, rather than the world itself. The world has a huge potential population limit, and most of the world is practically uninhabited. Our problem is that the population isn't very spread out and that certain inequalities prevent everyone from getting the food/shelter/etc they need to live well. We produce more than enough food every year to feed everyone, and we could easily house everyone in the world. We don't due to inefficiencies and politics. Basically, certain places have population problems, the world does not.
Most the fear you have about population comes from a series of articles published when some scientists were afraid that, on the course they charted, we would simply exponentially grow faster than our means to support people. As it turned out a lot of countries, when they hit a certain point in their progress towards industrialization, have ever shrinking populations and reproduction rates. Japan, some of Europe (which is why they are pro-immigration) are shrinking when you look at natives. The US is looking good in that regard as we had quite a lot of immigration up until the recession.
Orc_ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:26:15 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You realize most sciencists who work on the climate, including myself, are absolutely helpless about climate change? There is no soft solution now, just so you know, the only "solutions" that exist today that can potentially work are all technological concepts. In other words, techno-fantasies.
BioSemantics ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:11:02 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Climate change is a connected, but different problem than just pure population load. It is also something we can't really do a lot about because, as you said, there is no soft solution, and decreasing population at this point, magically, won't solve the problem out-right, just slow it down. Its happening regardless. We are going to lose Islands and coastal lands regardless.
ARealSlimBrady ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:08:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You should read a book called Hungry World, by Nick Cullather. It's a bunch of little interconnected chapters about the setting, events, and consequences of the Green Revolution.
It's not entirely as black and white as people think, one way or the other.
Orc_ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:30:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The story of the Green Revolution ends with a 6c+ warmer world with 99% of vertebrae species wiped out, oceans acidified with 99% of fish gone, super-droughts bringing in famine and wet-bulb temperatures making entire placed of the earth inhabitable to humans.
Thanks Borlaug! Enjoy your time in hell tho.
WhatIDon_tKnow ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:25:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
that is what i was thinking learned this from penn & teller. thanks BS.
Edgefactor ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:58:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And yet in my environmental history class our liberal-ass professor had the nerve to question the tradeoff between saving a billion lives and industrializing agriculture.
A ton of people on Reddit do their best not to see the reality of agricultural industrialization too
twersx ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:04:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The horror.
An academic.
Questioning conventional wisdom.
I can't imagine a worse person than a professor at a university having the goddamn nerve to question a historical event.
Orc_ ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 00:27:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
1.- There is no evidence he saved anybody besides some wikipedia mention.
2.- Adding 6 billion more people to the planet isn't saving people, there's probably MORE people starving now than when the population was just 1 billion.
3.- The industrialization of agriculture alone is one of the primary motors of climate change, in fact, the creation of animal feed accounts for like 20% of all emissions.
Fuck Borlaug.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:58:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
it's probably closer to 3 billion by now
[deleted] ยท -4 points ยท Posted at 16:52:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
Schnoofles ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 17:33:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If we can improve on the current situation with wealth inequality enough there will be no population crisis. The world can sustain much more people than are currently alive, but it's a matter of resource allocation, distribution, utilization etc.
Population growth stabilizes once economical situations improve. Wealthy, stable nations have a drastically slowed, completely stopped or even negative population growth.
More access to food, resource wealth, and energy will all massively help all corners of the world.
See: A talk by the wonderful Hans Rosling
necrow ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:28:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, great points. To argue with the original poster, don't know that I would necessarily say that the world has a population control crisis as much as I would say there is a humanitarian crisis in some developing countries. Like you said: the world can support a much larger population, we just need to improve the situations in developing countries. Everyone has this weird idea that the population all over the world is exponentially and unsustainably growing, when its not in most all developed nations.
MeteorKing ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 17:07:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Probably, but his ideas could also be used in order to sustain the eventual 12.someodd billion people that the world is projected to cap at.
Orc_ ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 00:32:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah with mega-droughts, climate change, acidified oceans, entire areas of the world nearly unhabitable and everything else currently projected to happen by scientists because of climate change.
Well, at least it will be just, if so many humans are so ready to celebrate irresponsible pieces of crap like Normal Borlaug then we do deserve climate change, I mean, since you all celebrate the primary climate changers of history.
UNWS ยท -6 points ยท Posted at 18:10:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You realise the only way to cap population is for people to die as fast as they are born. Now think about the reproductive rate of 12 billion people per year. Thats is how many people die per year in that world. In other words, it wont be fun living then.
necrow ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 18:34:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sorry man, but you're way off base there. You do know that most developed countries are at or below the replacement rate already, right? On top of that, it's very, very difficult to get back above the replacement rate once you dip below. 11-12 billion people, like the person you're replying to said, is the general consensus. Once countries develop, their birth fertility rates drop dramatically. It's not that people are dying frequently, it's that fertility rates drop significantly. It'll be better living then than it will be living now.
UNWS ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:24:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
hmm, you are right, I was thinking of the sigmoid curve of how animal populations develop. It makes more sense that people start using more birth control.
necrow ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 18:26:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What world population control crisis? Developed countries are almost all at or below the replacement rate, and developing countries always get closer to the replacement rate when they develop more. There's not really a population control crisis at all; I don't know why people (especially on Reddit) think that.
2rio2 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:56:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's a misconception going around since the 80's/90's. Growth rate has been slowing forever (especially in developed world) but the reason the overall world population has continued to grow is people are living longer. That means we'll likely hit a cap by mid to end of this century as even the devloping nations with really high birth rates start to taper off.
gloomyzombi ยท -3 points ยท Posted at 19:15:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He was actually a real piece of shit.
MeteorKing ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:38:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Any info on this? Genuinely curious.
gloomyzombi ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:11:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Look into what happened when he returned from deploying the first gas attack in ww1 and before he left for the second time. I'm at a car dealership otherwise I would give you some links, but he really was a very bad person.
BBlasdel ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:27:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Maybe you're thinking of Fritz Haber? Borlaug was only just born four months before the start of WWI, and spent his career in the poorest areas of Mexico breeding dwarf strains of cereal crops to feed the world. Haber though was a callous deuchebag.
Orc_ ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 00:33:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Need links of this, I hate Norman Borlaug and need any info on him, for me his is worst that the worst terrorist.
Thimble ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 18:32:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I was gonna post a reply to OP "Yeah, that guy last century who saved hundreds of millions by improving agriculture ..." His name just doesn't stick in my head.
roflsd ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 18:56:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
TLDR; He GMO'd gluten. If he put that all into a vaccine he'd be crossfit soccer mom's Hitler.
[deleted] ยท 19 points ยท Posted at 16:56:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
.
silverfox762 ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 19:02:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So, considering that billion people have bred and their offspring have bred, we might actually say he was single-handedly responsible for making world overpopulation possible.
adeels53 ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 20:31:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yea why did he have to go and save a billion brown people. It was so much better before when they could barely survive and had to spend their entire lives just scraping by.
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:11:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
.
silverfox762 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:04:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yup. What a dick.
Orc_ ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 00:35:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And people here are downvoting me for saying he is trash, HE IS. Without a doubt, the single biggest contributor to global warming in fucking history.
If there's a hell, there's a special place for Norman Borlaug.
Orc_ ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 00:34:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There is NO EVIDENCE of SUCH THING, but YOU STILL PARROT IT. AMAZING!
scaldedmuffin ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 00:43:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Who hurt you
Orc_ ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 00:45:35 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Climate destroyer and at the end of his disgusting vile life, climate skeptic, Normal Borlaug.
ownage99988 ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 18:42:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The best part is that 'green' people love Borlaug, but they hate Monsanto for doing the exact same thing he did with wheat to soybeans.
allwordsaremadeup ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 19:08:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
this. This is Monsanto's business! Using technology to increase yields and feed people. They just use the technologically superior version of his technology, genetical engineering. Organic farming, heirloom seeds, small scale farming etc, those are the exact concepts Borlaug was fighting.
oceanjunkie ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:53:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm not an anti-corporate tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiratard, but could we not pretend that they did it out of the goodness of their hearts? They did it to earn a profit. That's it. Anything else is secondary.
allwordsaremadeup ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:27:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Scientists usually work for the love of science I believe, even if they're employed by corporations.. I mean it pays their rent, but it takes a lot of time and effort to get good at that stuff, just money isn't gonna cut it as a motivator.
oceanjunkie ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:34:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's not about the scientists. It's about who employs the scientists and who decides where the money goes to fund which project. And what the people who own the money in the first place want.
lass_blaster ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 13:33:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well sure, but as it turns out you can make a lot of money by increasing crop yields and feeding people. So the two kinda go hand in hand.
ownage99988 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:26:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Right. Essentially Monsanto has monetized Borlaugs model, which I see no problem in. This is America, capitalism is a thing.
Orc_ ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 00:38:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Being a leader in climate change is also a thing!
Orc_ ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 00:37:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He was an absolute idiot just like all of you, dedicating his life to oil-based agriculture, what a freaking moron, yeah, let's feed oil to people, we got plenty of that anyway! Oh and don't mind those pesky climate change evangelizers! They want famine! As opposed to climate change famines! But anyway...
Fuck you all morons.
oceanjunkie ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:51:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No they didn't. Borlaug did not use genetic engineering. If it is the glyphosate resistant soybeans you are referring to, Monsanto used a gene gun to insert those genes, it wasn't developed through traditional hybridization.
ownage99988 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:55:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ok, so they used a different process to get the same result. Does it matter? No.
oceanjunkie ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:59:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not really, but then I don't see the point of a comparison. The only similarity is that they both created new varieties of crops.
pepemon ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 16:59:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I literally read about this guy todayโฆ seriously though he has like most lives saved doesn't he?
captainmagictrousers ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 17:12:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes, next to that time traveler who killed Cyborg Hitler.
binarto ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 18:17:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Penn and Teller's take on it.
AnticitizenPrime ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 17:40:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He's not that unappreciated. Still, he should probably be a household name.
captainmagictrousers ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 17:53:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Unappreciated by the general populace. Saving a billion lives should make you at least as famous as Erik Estrada.
Samopal_Vzor58 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 18:33:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug has been my hero for many years. If I was asked for a list of the greatest people ever, I would have named him first. I was literally regularly making people aware of him. Then I was diagnosed with celiac.
I still think he was fantastic and amazing, and I know there is no rational reason for my thoughts and feeling on him to change. But it's a little harder for me to get too excited anymore.
Barabbas- ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:55:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Didn't he die at the hands of Gandalf the Grey within the mines of Moria?
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:57:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He saved over a billion lives, probably closer to 3 billion by now
SeeYou_Cowboy ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 15:58:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Greatest human to ever walk the earth as far as I'm concerned. No individual has even approached the number of lives this man saved.
karmanimation ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 16:26:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Maybe some scientists who invented some vaccines.
jesse9o3 ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 18:04:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You'd be interested in Edward Jenner then.
The guy pioneered the smallpox vaccine and effectively started the entire field of immunology
karmanimation ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:16:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, that might have been who I was thinking off but I couldn't remember the name.
NinjaCorgi ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:04:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
TIL Norman Borlaug facilitated the overpopulation of the planet Earth by creating an abundant reliable food source. The vast numbers of humans created required additional energy sources which, in turn, accelerated global climate change endangering the lives of all inhabitants.
Orc_ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:38:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Basically, he should have never existed.
NinjaCorgi ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:14:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Creating methods that allow hundreds of millions of more people to exist ain't responsible.
The Earth's carrying capacity shouldn't be maxed out just because we can.
four_d_tesseract ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:09:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Currently reading this from Borlaug Hall on my university campus, with a bronze bust of Borlaug in the foyer. He's awesome.
BlackBloke ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:43:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is the answer I was looking for
Balzac_Onyerchin ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:15:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I am glad I didnโt have to scroll the whole thread to find him. Especially now that it's so hip be anti-GMO. Especially some privileged people shopping at Whole Paycheck.
I do realize any knowledge can be perverted and abused, but this man has saved countless lives.
The_Great_Kal ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:44:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I saw a bumper sticker today with his name on it. First thing that came to mind.
AwMyGawsh ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 04:09:29 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A good friend of mine's grandfather was the Norman Borlaug of Brazil. IIRC, Brazil is nutrition independent in large part because of his work there. Last name was Murdock. The agricultural revolution, man. Killed no one, saved billions.
Ill_Tumblr_4_Ya ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 05:13:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thank you, Penn and Teller, for teaching me about Norman Borlaug a few years back.
IanUndervvood ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 07:16:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This deserves to be at the top of this thread. He's saved more lives than anyone in history and I bet the majority of people have no idea who he is.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:53:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
While he did save a lot of people, it's actually led to quite a few problems. Lack of biodiversity, food that isn't as nutritious as it once, and we've met the threshold for food production, as of right now. Scary thought.
allwordsaremadeup ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:10:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
How have we met the threshold of food production? New varieties with higher yields are entering the market every year.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:14:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Sorry, kinda lost what I meant there. We can't keep up with the growth of population.
allwordsaremadeup ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:18:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
population growth will hit it's ceiling soon. should top off at ..10 billion I think? population isn't the problem, it's just that billions are escaping poverty and are eating more meat.
A_favorite_rug ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:10:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The man that saved a billion lives and even more potential billions.
You can't really top that.
ElagabalusRex ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:18:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's a shaky one. Producing more food does not improve quality of life in the long run. I used to think that giving food to the developing world was righteous, but then I read Daniel Quinn, and started noticing the failures of industrialization.
jroddie4 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:26:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
wasn't that the guy knighted by the queen, and he had a ridiculous title like "savior of all humanity" or something?
cayneloop ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:27:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
/thread
i`m still ashamed i can't spell his name right
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:59:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Came here for him. I'm glad to see that there actually are a good number of people who know about him.
arcosapphire ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:59:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He is, really, highly appreciated.
But his achievement is so great that it's still less than he deserves.
Casswigirl11 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:00:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Except he won a Nobel Peace Prize, so he was hardly underappreciated. I guess not many people know his name though.
PublicAccount1234 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:10:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You took mine. Have an upboat.
OleRawhide ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:10:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My father recently retired as the Director of the Borlaug Institute. Proud son :)
eaglessoar ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:18:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This was going to be my answer, I knew I'd see it if I scrolled far enough. They say he's saved a billion lives or something bonkers like that.
giantdumpprospector ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:34:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
TL;DR: Saved over a billion lives. Developed important GMO crops; prevented starvation.
kidbeer ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:41:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And the hero's tool? GMO's.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:58:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Came here to say this.
mcrbids ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:02:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This. Guy. At least a billion people owe their existence to this guy.
A. Billion. F--- Superman!
ARealSlimBrady ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:09:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I said this below too, but..
You should read a book called Hungry World, by Nick Cullather. It's a bunch of little interconnected chapters about the setting, events, and consequences of the Green Revolution.
It's not entirely as black and white as people think, one way or the other.
jongaynor ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:08:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"Norman is the greatest human being, and you've probably never heard of him."
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:23:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Don't let any of the nature freaks know - but he is also a strong supporter of GMO agriculture.
thewitchofagnesi ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:37:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I remember reading about him in biology class.
Scrotinger ยท 1442 points ยท Posted at 14:26:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alexander Hamilton. Did so much to build America, and it mostly just remembered for dying in a duel.
[deleted] ยท 550 points ยท Posted at 17:15:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
And one of the most successful broadway musicals of all time.
rugger88 ยท 50 points ยท Posted at 19:30:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I was skeptical when I first heard about this play, but after seeing the piece on 60 Minutes, I tend to the think the director, Miranda is a genius. Such a compelling and imaginative way to get people to get people interested in history that would otherwise be forgotten. Wish I could take my history students to see it.
LadyPancake ยท 23 points ยท Posted at 21:34:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The musical's soundtrack is on Spotify. It's, of course, not the same as watching it, but you can still get the gist. The first song on the soundtrack is pretty much just a synopsis of his life.
There is some hope, I think, since I remember hearing something about like a Broadway-Netflix type thing.
But there is no reason that it won't go on tour, I like to think. It's super successful and I know I'd love to see it if it came to my neck of the woods.
RampanToast ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 23:54:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It is going on tour (of sorts)! They're running a couple of months in Chicago, and I believe they have plans for SF and LA runs after that.
pejmany ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 09:56:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Toronto? He asked hopefully, laughing at his foolishness before the last syllable left his mouth.
mastelsa ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 22:23:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
It's absolutely worth listening to on Spotify, and I'd recommend going on Genius to follow along with the lyrics, too. It makes the plot a lot easier to follow and Genius has lyric/song annotations that show just how much of a lyrical genius Miranda is. He's actually been on Genius to annotate his own lyrics, and a bunch of history buffs have also gone through and cross referenced all the historical facts with Hamilton's letters too.
jakielim ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 02:22:06 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just so you know Miranda is the composer/writer/main star. Thomas Kail directed the show.
[deleted] ยท 90 points ยท Posted at 19:08:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I saw it last week and haven't stopped singing songs from it since. Lin-Manuel Miranda is a genius.
Zehrok ยท 22 points ยท Posted at 21:10:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He's an incredible guy, too.
Source: He started talking to me and my friend after my friend was the lead in a school play. (I went to the same school he did)
rlbond86 ยท 29 points ยท Posted at 20:30:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You got tickets?!?!?!??
[deleted] ยท 18 points ยท Posted at 20:44:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My girlfriend's parents did, I just tagged along. I want to see it again but there is no way in hell I'd drop the kind of cash needed.
Ombudsman_of_Funk ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 03:58:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You'll be back, soon you'll see
You'll remember you belong to me
You'll be back, time will tell
You'll remember that I served you well
[deleted] ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 20:57:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I bought tickets for August. Time to get patient!
graytotoro ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:41:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wait for it!
nutmegtell ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 22:48:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
r/hamiltonmusical
Marsandtherealgirl ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 02:31:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hamilton is my religion and Lin-Manuel is my Jesus.
PM_ME_2DISAGREEWITHU ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 06:26:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Joetato ยท -4 points ยท Posted at 23:08:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I swear, I'm the only person who doesn't like it. I never saw it, but a friend forced me to listen to the soundtrack album and I couldn't take it. I had to stop after the second or third song.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:35:00 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
To be fair, we listened to the album later that weekend and it wasn't the same.
But the show is unreal all together.
thedog951 ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 19:23:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just heard 60 minutes did a peice on this play and I really want to see it now
mastelsa ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:25:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's absolutely worth listening to on Spotify, and I'd highly recommend going on Genius to follow along with the lyrics. It makes the plot a lot easier to follow and Genius has lyric/song annotations that show just how lyrically and musically genius the show is. Miranda has been on to annotate them, and a bunch of history buffs have also gone through and cross referenced all the historical facts with Hamilton's letters too.
BrockRockswell ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 19:49:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, apparently he was really into hip hop.
vorschact ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 21:28:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
IT'S A GODDAMN MUSICAL YOU PEASANT!
hn3ir ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:58:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I wanna see it so bad!
RyanLJ14 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:30:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I knew I'd find Hamilton lovers here!
mrwelchman ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 01:01:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
it's so good, though.
catnik ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 21:46:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dude, I love Hamilton... but it is realllyyyy early to be going "one of the most successful of all time." (And success != quality, either. Cats had nearly 7500 performances on Broadway. Mama Mia grossed $624,391,693.)
[deleted] ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 22:16:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's near universally praised for being high quality, so that's not really an issue.
Is it any different than judging the success of a movie based on opening weekend? Hamilton's musical score debuted on Billboard at number 12. The last musical that beat that was Camelot in 1961. It's sold out through July. I'd say that's as good an indicator as any.
saditerranean ยท 377 points ยท Posted at 16:06:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You have no control who lives, who dies, who tells your story.
CrackaJakes ยท 156 points ยท Posted at 17:53:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The $10 founding father without a father
saditerranean ยท 104 points ยท Posted at 17:58:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
got a lot farther by working a lot harder
icantchooseausername ยท 81 points ยท Posted at 18:20:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
By being a lot smarter
Helz2000 ยท 84 points ยท Posted at 18:30:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
By being a self-starter
Scrotinger ยท 76 points ยท Posted at 18:43:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
By 14, they placed him in charge of a trading charter
PM_ME_YOUR_LIT ยท 36 points ยท Posted at 19:01:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And every day while slaves were being slaughtered and carted away
BookWormBeccy ยท 32 points ยท Posted at 19:44:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Across the waves, he struggled and kept his guard up.
Scrotinger ยท 39 points ยท Posted at 19:58:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Inside he was longing for something to be a part of
icantchooseausername ยท 21 points ยท Posted at 20:11:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The brother was ready to beg, steal, borrow, or barter
bkhtx82 ยท 18 points ยท Posted at 20:37:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Then a hurricane came and devastation rained
Yawehg ยท 18 points ยท Posted at 20:50:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And our man saw his future drip dripping down the drain
Simpsolover ยท 17 points ยท Posted at 20:57:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Put a pencil to his temple, connected it to his brain.
hellhoundgarm ยท 18 points ยท Posted at 21:05:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And he wrote his first refrain, a testament to his pain.
cameronbates1 ยท 17 points ยท Posted at 21:06:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well the word got around sayin'
"This kid is insane man!"
icantchooseausername ยท 15 points ยท Posted at 21:11:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Took up a collection just to send him to the mainland
Crossfiyah ยท 15 points ยท Posted at 22:00:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Getcha education, don't forget from whence you came
Scoundroul ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 22:08:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And the world is gonna know your name.
Snicker56 ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 23:14:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What's ya name man?
Professor__L ยท 15 points ยท Posted at 23:51:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alexander Hamilton!
catsandbutter ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 03:02:27 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My name is Alexander Hamilton And there's a million things I haven't done But just you wait, just you wait
KyrieEleison_88 ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 03:21:15 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
When he was ten his father split, full of it, debt-ridden
32brownies ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 03:49:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Two years later see Alex and his mother bed-ridden
Hominid77777 ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 03:57:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Half-dead sittin' in their own sick, the scent thick
adg1034 ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 05:37:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alex got better but his motherwentquick
elitepigwrangler ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 05:47:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Moved in with a cousin, the cousin committed suicide
saditerranean ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 06:27:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Left him with nothin' but ruined pride, somethin' new inside
hellhoundgarm ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 07:29:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A voice saying "Alex you gotta fend for yourself"
Oy_Gestalt ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 08:20:33 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He started retreatin' and reading every treatise on the shelf
KitsuneGaming ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 08:49:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There woulda been nothin left to do for someone less astute
Professor__L ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 13:39:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He woulda been dead or destitute without a cent of restitution
PM_ME_YOUR_LIT ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 16:51:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Started workin', clerkin' for his late mother's landlord
Professor__L ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 19:20:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tradin' sugar cane and rum and all the things he can't afford
KyrieEleison_88 ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 19:30:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Scannin' for every book he can get his hands on
Professor__L ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 19:48:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Plannin' for the future see him now as he stands on
(btw its scammin' not scannin')
Hominid77777 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 05:13:26 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
the bow of a ship headed for a new land
Professor__L ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 15:05:57 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In New York, you can be a new man
graytotoro ยท 23 points ยท Posted at 18:50:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Came for Hamilton references, was not disappointed. I guess you can say I'm satisfied.
saditerranean ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 18:57:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's not a question of if, /u/graytotoro but which one
graytotoro ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 19:29:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
BUT THERE'S SO MANY OF THEM.
bkhtx82 ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:38:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm sorry, is this not your speed?
julinay ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:19:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm a General, wheeeee!
[deleted] ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 22:25:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You shot him in the side! Yes, he yields!
Scrotinger ยท 40 points ยท Posted at 17:39:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Love the musical as well. I'm amazed at how huge it's become and how many people get references to it, considering it's still a very young show
saditerranean ยท 42 points ยท Posted at 17:46:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's incredibly addictive! I listened to it basically non-stop (sorry) for the last two months of 2015. It was my walking music, my drawing music, my gym music. I was the weirdo running and weeping on the treadmill when Eliza tells Ham her proudest achievement was opening the first private orphanage in New York City.
Scrotinger ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 17:50:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Pretty much my life too. Have you been able to get to the theater and see it?
saditerranean ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 17:54:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
no, I live in Europe :( How about you?
Scrotinger ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 18:23:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I have. A few weeks ago I went and stood on line for tickets. I had incredibly high expectations that were met and surpassed.
saditerranean ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 18:28:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm furiously jealous but very happy for you :)
Helz2000 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 18:30:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I went with my family and we all loved it (I was badgering everyone to go and we got the tickets before the prices went too huge). It was amazing.
adultaraisin ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:53:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Are tickets still available at the box office? I thought they were all sold out...
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:13:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sold out for a few years. Only secondary market tickets are available which you will be dropping crazy cash to get.
I went to a Saturday matinee last week and I think the very front of the people that stood in line for the no-calls got tickets. But they were likely there three hours before the doors opened.
Scrotinger ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:57:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They are, however you can buy resale tickets (basically legal scalping. Horribly overpriced, but ticketmaster handles it so it's at least secure) or go to the box office and buy tickets that other people cancel
waxenpi ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 18:45:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Eliza!!!!
saditerranean ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 18:48:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I put myself back in the narrative!!!
waxenpi ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:04:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Bitch built an orphanage!
jlobster ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 02:18:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
(and Peggy)
prudieb ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:41:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just you wait.
Pixelyus ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:00:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I should've know the world was wide enough
pungeonmaster ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:33:22 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oh don't mind me I'm just quietly sobbing in a corner
Caelinus ยท 234 points ยท Posted at 16:42:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I have always thought of Hamilton as the true father of America. We usually ignore him because he was all about finance and was never president, but he was a genius who laid the groundwork for what America became.
knowledgemule ยท 72 points ยท Posted at 17:51:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me too. Jefferson is beloved, but he envisioned the republic as an agrarian society.... Huge Hamiltonian here and I think he is my favorite founding father hands down.
From the life as an orphan on the streets of st. Croix, to rising up in the revolutionary army, to being in the cabinet and engineering the bones of the federal government. Hamilton is a personal hero and is so underrated.
ncolaros ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 22:47:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not only that. Him and Jefferson effectively became the first constitutional lawyers when they would debate the government's role for Washington. Reportedly, Washington tended to side with Hamilton. Maybe I'm a damned, dirty Federalist, but I think he saved our country from being unorganized and backward-thinking. Jefferson was, I believe, a genius, but he wasn't enterprising like Hamilton.
At the end of the day, it was their debates that helped shape the United States.
knowledgemule ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 23:14:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I agree. Washington was unabashed supporter of Hamilton, and they pretty much ran the government together during his presidency.
I don't think being a federalist or not has anything to do with it, it's pretty clear that Jeffersons vision is no where close to the actual outcome, and I don't think that was because of Hamilton. We ended up becoming more organized and more urban, as has almost all societies have over time. Jefferson was pretty smart, but not the biggest fan personally. Intelligence does not mean competence :P
Additionally their debates was some of the most brutal. Some people thought the newspaper fights would break up the union long haha. Now look where we are today.
purplelady14 ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 22:03:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Plus he was anti-slavery and that gives him a big plus ahead of Jefferson in my book.
FPSreznov ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:29:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I read that he "was born into an influential family" and those connections obviously helped him then rise to the top. Is that not true?
julinay ยท 21 points ยท Posted at 20:48:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Pretty much as far from true as possible! Guy's (alleged) dad was a deadbeat, his mother died from sickness (and was regarded as a prostitute), then he stayed with a mentally ill cousin who committed suicide. His rise upwards was entirely due to older, influential men realizing that the guy was a genius and funding his education, more or less. More than one contemporary said that the reason Hamilton irritated a lot of people was because he failed to understand that he was thinking so far beyond everyone else, and leaving all of them in the dust, and then coming off as disbelieving about it.
He did marry into a well-regarded family by marrying his wife, although his father-in-law wasn't a lot of help later on because, like Hamilton, he also ended up in a sea of financial debt.
FPSreznov ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 22:17:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oh wow. TIL. I knew the guy was awesome but didnt know he was a total freaking badass.
And right, I must have confused "married into an influential family" into "born into an influential family."
ReinQZ ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 20:40:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
His life story told in rap: https://youtu.be/WNFf7nMIGnE
Howland_Reed ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 18:36:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dude was in his early twenties when the revolution started too. Only like 34 as secretary.
julinay ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 20:52:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hamilton pretty much studied economics while fighting the Revolution. He was incredible, imho!
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 23:59:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Every other founding fathers story gets told.
Every other founding father gets to grow old.
-tydides ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:19:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Can't forget about Madison either, who drafted most of the Constitution. I feel like sometimes the founders, like Jefferson, Adams, and Washington are remembered over Framers like Hamilton and Madison even if the Framers were probably more important to the United States we see today.
soapy_goatherd ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 04:38:56 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He never gets enough credit for the credit he gave us.
DuplexFields ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 00:02:27 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What if, 150 years from now, the youth on 2166's version of Reddit are learning something similar about why Trump is on the hundred dollar bill?
Caelinus ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 01:05:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Only if future America is a land founded on fear and reactionary racism.
LloydVanFunken ยท 25 points ยท Posted at 19:59:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Someone should write a Broadway musical about him with a hip-hop soundtrack. Call it something like Secretary of the Treasury!
Scrotinger ยท 20 points ยท Posted at 20:00:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I imagine that image is totally ridiculous to someone who hasn't heard of the musical
LloydVanFunken ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:44:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hamilton for the initiated.
Chupacabra_Sandwich ยท 724 points ยท Posted at 15:14:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And now we're replacing him on the money while still keeping that genocidal fuck Andrew Jackson. Fucked up.
facetiousrunner ยท 481 points ยท Posted at 16:43:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He hated paper currency, it's ironic
Rethious ยท 434 points ยท Posted at 17:27:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's a pretty big fuck you. I like to think it was done solely to create a perpetual motion machine. Jackson spinning in his grave is probably powering a significant portion of the country.
Helz2000 ยท 31 points ยท Posted at 18:27:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
relevant SMBC
GreenMonster81 ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 19:32:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Here's my inner turmoil. I despise what Jackson did to the Cherokee of the Carolina regions for gold. BUT if those Cherokee hadn't been forced to move I probably wouldn't have been born. My mother's side are decendants from that Cherokee line. I have a tribal membership. My family is a side product of greed.
Golden-Fox ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 20:39:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
If Jackson hadn't moved the Cherokee they all would have been killed by white people. That's what happened to a lot of Northern tribes.
dorekk ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:51:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Damn, that's...talk about damned if you do, damned if you don't...
bionic80 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:43:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
yup, wife is stockbridge-munsee Long Island/New York area - no culture left at all.. they try to keep things alive, but most of it just got decimated.
GreenMonster81 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:04:27 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They were killed because of the gold found in the Carolinas. The Cherokee legally owned the land according to the federal government at the time. A few dozen Cherokee sold the land to Jackson right under the rest of the tribes nose. So they left to Oklahoma with pockets full of cash. The remaining group of Cherokee were forced off under threat of death. Thus became the Trail of Tears.
Golden-Fox ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:27:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The really unfortunate part about the relocation is that most people that volunteered to escort the Indians west were the same people that wanted to kill them in the east in the first place. Racists, and often combatants in frontier wars.
TechnoEquinox ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 02:44:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is why, as a Native, I always make sure to spend my twenties on stupid shit to make him feel even worse. Like buying gallons of lube at a time, or rubber ducks.
ccai ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:57:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What's wrong with the buttered toast strapped to a cat's back perpetual motion generator? Even though they don't generate as much per unit, we have an over abundance of cats and buttered toast.
Rethious ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:01:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jackson was invented before toast was you see. They had not yet invented sliced bread.
CliCheGuevara69 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:15:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So fucking hilarious
iceman0486 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:45:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I always have to think that Russia's largest mall being within 100 meters of Lenin's Tomb would do more to create a perpetual motion machine.
Rethious ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:57:12 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There go the Russians, copying the Americans again.
[deleted] ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 18:30:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He also hated the national bank and made it his mission to destroy it, that was the precursor for the federal reserve.
superdago ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 18:57:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, I get that... but so? Being on money is a place of honor, and is explicitly a statement that the person is to be revered. You can't say "Washington, Lincoln, Grant, Jefferson, Franklin, all some of the nation's most revered leaders, important figures, and role models for civic duty... Jackson? Oh, he's there for the lulz."
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:47:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He hated paper currency, but could not save himself from being placed on a bill. - Chancellor Palpatine
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:50:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's beyond ironic, it's fucking stupid
knowledgemule ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:48:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think that he might have different opinions today haha. But he was the best
rlbond86 ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:32:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Andrew Jackson was the best? He killed a shitload of Native Americans
knowledgemule ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:14:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Crap I didn't realize the chain I responded to. It was in reference to Hamilton not Jackson. Jackson is a populist idiot my bad
Tsquare43 ยท 15 points ยท Posted at 18:23:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
the $10 came up for redesign first... I wouldn't be surprised when they redo the $20, that they put Hamilton on it.
Chupacabra_Sandwich ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:26:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well they said they're keeping Hamilton "somewhere" on the 10 so I doubt it. I bet when the 20 comes up we have a massive fight as the GOP tries to put St. Reagan on it.
Tsquare43 ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 18:54:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It will be a woman, likely Eleanor Roosevelt.
mightymouse513 ยท 40 points ยท Posted at 17:01:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He's only the first secretary of treasury and is the gather of the federal national bank, but nah we don't need to represent him on currency.
Jackson vehemently opposes and eventually dismantles the second national bank, but hey the dude was awesome in the war of 1812 so we'll keep him on the twenty.
Wtf.
[deleted] ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 21:53:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That isnt what he is most famous for tho. Him and Madison both constructed the constitution and got it passed through the Federalist Papers. Hamilton is 10x more deserving than Franklin even if you disregard Hamilton's work as Treasurer.
mightymouse513 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:33:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I was going for the irony lol
Sean951 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:56:29 on January 25, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hamilton was also known as a Little Napoleon and there was real fear he was going to try and seize power.
Mal_Adjusted ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 19:19:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What irritates me is that we're replacing him solely for the sake of having a woman on a currency. Not because we have someone particular in mind that we feel the need to honor by putting them on a currency or anything, but just so we're more pc.
jakielim ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 02:24:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The redesign mainly due to high amount of counterfeit bills. The originally campaign for woman in the bill sought to replace Andrew Jackson on $20.
BubbaFunk ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 17:41:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Keeping Jackson on money is kind of a big fuck you to Jackson since he did everything in his power to dismantle the US treasury.
Scrotinger ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:38:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Are they actually replacing him?
Chupacabra_Sandwich ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 17:42:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yep. With an as-of-yet unnamed woman in 2020. Maybe Margaret Thatcher if Jeb Bush is elected president.
Scrotinger ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 17:46:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's some bullsit
Chupacabra_Sandwich ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 17:49:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Treasury has said that Hamilton will still be somewhere on the bill. Idk if he's going to be hiding or what. But the portrait will be a woman. Not Thatcher, but Jeb Bush did honestly suggest putting a BRITISH LEADER on US money.
Chief_Admiral ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 18:30:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They should do the Queen just to see the collective uproar
The_Petunia ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:29:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They currently plan to keep him in the design and are still figuring out exactly how. See number 4 on this page
czulu ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:56:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Seriously the thing I hate about this.
Alright yeah it would be a good idea to put women on money. 1: Why Tubman (the current front runner)? I realize she's a black woman but that's really just blatant pandering. Susan B Anthony or Jane Addams is a much better choice. It's true she saved over 300 more slaves than I have but in the course of US history, she didn't have a huge impact. Lincoln saved all the slaves.
2: Alexander Hamilton literally designed our financial system. He died for his beliefs. He's the embodiment of the American rags-to-riches dream. If anyone should be on money, he should.
Lets look at the other candidates. George Washington is on two kinds of money, so it Abraham Lincoln (although the penny may be on it's way out). The $2 just has a picture of congress on it. Andrew Jackson tried to eliminate the possibility of a central bank and the Seminole and Choctaw Indians. He's near the bottom of list of presidents. So is Grant on the $50, who's frequently regarded as the most corrupt administration in US history.
Sooooo many other people deserve to be on money less.
Chupacabra_Sandwich ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 22:47:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think Tubman is a perfect choice. Represents the best of America. Not hardly pandering.
czulu ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:21:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What's the best of America?
silvermember ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 16:32:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
To be fair Federal Reserve is stupid. WE honor a mass murderer while punishing the one guy that gave a fuck about banks.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 16:56:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And Jackson didn't even like paper money.
ownage99988 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:45:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't mind keeping Jackson, but getting rid of Hamilton is the real atrocity.
downvotemeplss ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:48:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Can you explain please?
jigokusabre ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 17:39:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The genocide thing? Probably a reference to the Indian Removal Act.
Chupacabra_Sandwich ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 16:50:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Explain what?
The_Petunia ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:27:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They're keeping him on it but they arent sure how. See number 4 on this page
ByTheHammerOfThor ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:58:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's actually the biggest fuck you we could give him. If we forgot him, his dickishness would recede into history. This way, we get to keep remembering him as an asshole and laugh about how much he hated paper currency.
FannyBabbs ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:52:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Really? Fuck, maybe Broadway can save us.
explainittomeplease ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:21:27 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Andrew jackson, while in a duel, took the shot, got up, and shot the other guy dead, and lived with the bullet in his chest till he died.
I bought his biography after seeing the author on the daily show. That guy had so much passion for jackson, he made me get jazzed too.
Turns out he really was kind of a dick. Stole his wife from another man kind of dick. But it was a great book. That I never finished.
Chupacabra_Sandwich ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:24:12 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
understatement of the century
explainittomeplease ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:27:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I need to find that book and really delve into the dickish depths of him. I'm so excited.
Chupacabra_Sandwich ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:31:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Supreme court makes a ruling? Well, I control the Army so how the fuck are they going to enforce that ruling. I'll just do what I want anyway, fuck the court.
Indians? Fuck the indians. Send them to Oklahoma. Who cares how many thousands die.
Creek Indians have a peace treaty with the US? Lol who gives a fuck slaughter them.
Pinkiepie1170 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:39:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Did I miss something? Who's one the ten now?
Googlefu edit: Harriet Tubman? That seems an odd choice.
Sir_Thaddeus ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 17:48:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I really hate how history glorifies Jackson. He fucked up our economy, BADLY.
xV1RALx ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 19:18:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
I completely agree with everything you have said about Jackson being genocidal and hating banks and he should be removed over Hamilton, but one of Reddit's biggest issues is that Redditor's have a tendency to look at history and the people involved and compare them to today's social standards.
I completely agree that Jackson was not a very good president (although he was kind of frat bro throwing an open house rager in the White House after becoming President, which I think is hysterical and kind of awesome), and he absolutely committed genocide on the Native American's, but by the standards of the early 1800s he was not doing anything wrong. American's did not like the Natives and generally did not get along with them, along with this America at the time was growing and needed room to expand, so by forcing them west he did open the door for American expansion which WAS a good thing at the time.
It is absolutely important to learn about how awful the Trail of Tears was, and to learn from these tragedies so they are not repeated, but Reddit tends to immediately blackball some historically significant people for the things they did, when by the standards they lived they were not doing "insane, oppressive, genocidal, etc." things. It's always important to look at everything from the standpoint of the time period as well. Back then even though Jackson was conservative, compared to the leaders of other nations he was extremely liberal. Along with this he did do some awful economic things for the US, but he also had a lot of good policies, such as the aforementioned expanding of America west.
TL;DR Jackson certainly wasn't an awesome president at all, but he did do a lot of good things for the TIME PERIOD which is important when looking at things historically, so one or two things that by today's standards are fucked up shouldn't blackball him.
Lunar_Lord ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:23:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Reddit's also obsessed with absurd Great Man History. Jackson doesn't force the Cherokee west? Someone else does it instead; the national will is still there. Everyone who supported -or hell, failed to resist- Jacksonian Western Expansion is part of the process that led to it. Jackson didn't just decide to and then do it. His action was a product of wider factors, as is all history.
xV1RALx ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:17:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Exactly. It was going to happen one way or the other. For all we know had Hamilton been elected he may have done it. Who knows? He did what the American people wanted, he was a good president for the people in many ways, even if his economics hurt the people.
Sir_Thaddeus ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:07:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The damage to the financial system is what makes me angry. I do agree that his treatment of Native Americans was the standard view at the time. His devastating financial policy was not.
PlayMp1 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:51:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Chupacabra_Sandwich ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 17:50:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
But he stuck it to the libs. That's all anyone cares about.
Apex_Predator_ ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:41:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm learning about Jackson and the country's history right now in high school. He was painted as a stubborn person who did as much good as bad.
thatJainaGirl ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 17:13:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jackson hated federal banks and paper money. He was a fuckwad. Putting him on federal paper money is a great way to say fuck you.
superdago ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:02:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You know what's an even better way to say fuck you? Let him suffer the same fate as James Polk or Benjamin Harrison. Just another footnote or trivia question answer when discussing US Presidents.
MisdemeanorOutlaw ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:29:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
These are the guys that put shit like the upcoming election into perspective for me. All of the passion, emotion, love, hate and vitriol that goes into presidential election campaigns might result in a president that someone 100 years from now will have to look up on Wikipedia because they were so inconsequential that nobody remembers who they are.
Although, picture on the $20 or not, Jackson is too important to fade into obscurity.
i_bet_youre_fat ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:15:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Indians were basically at war with America, and living within/near American borders. What would you have done? Peace wasn't an option.
Also, even though Jackson was a "genocidal fuck", he still had a heart. For example, he found an orphaned indian baby after a battle, and he and his wife raised the kid as their own until he died of tuberculosis when he was 18.
Chupacabra_Sandwich ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:28:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is ridiculous revisionist history. The IRA was passed to give southern plantation owners access to more land. That's it.
i_bet_youre_fat ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:04:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
How is it revisionist history? The Seminoles were launching raids backed by the British from British Florida into Georgia during the revolutionary war. The Seminoles, and other tribes were considered to be at war with the USA.
Chupacabra_Sandwich ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:34:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Revolution ended 40 years before the Indian removal act.
i_bet_youre_fat ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:48:35 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes...and the seminole wars were off and on from the late 1700s until the mid 1800s.
PRMan99 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:30:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Andrew Jackson was a really amazing dude too, as far as winning the Battle of New Orleans against the general that beat Napolean by partnering with slaves, Indians and pirates.
He also survived two duels, winning both, including one where he let the opponent shoot him in the chest first so he could have a better return shot.
Yeah, the trail of tears was bad, but that was the common sentiment in America back then. It's hard to fault someone for sharing a then-common belief. Most people, because of social Darwinism, believed them to be sub-human.
And if you like Alexander Hamilton, realize that he STARTED the central banks which plague the world to this day. At least Andrew Jackson bankrupted them during his time, giving a short window of reprieve.
Chupacabra_Sandwich ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:44:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The War of 1812. We go our ass kicked up and down the continent. The British burned our capital. Jackson one won battle and we act like he's the greatest.
Who cares.
Bullshit. Who cares if it was a common belief. It was a common belief that Indians were savages and we should totally fuck them over and kill thousands and thousands? And it was not just the Trail of Tears. Jackson annihlated the entirety of what was left of the Five Civilized tribes. And that's just as president. When he was a general he slaughtered Creek and Seminole wholesale. There was never a treaty with Natives that Andrew Jackson didn't see fit to break in the name of murdering Indians. Leaders are judged by history to a higher standard. Not to mention that Jackson DEFIED the Supreme Court and did as he pleased anyway, brutally stealing everything with the Indian Removal Act.
Andrew Jackson was a clown who knew nothing about banking. It's why he's so loved by today's conservatives.
godcomesfirst ยท -4 points ยท Posted at 18:02:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Except Jackson wasn't genocidal...
Howland_Reed ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 18:31:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well there was the whole trail of tears thing.
jrtx5799 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:52:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What history class did you take in high school?
tne2008 ยท 21 points ยท Posted at 18:45:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Up until recent years, maybe. The musical is definitely helping his cause, though.
The_AtomBomb ยท 71 points ยท Posted at 18:13:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He was just like his country; young, scrappy, and hungry.
LochFarquar ยท 17 points ยท Posted at 19:51:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No longer, thanks to Lin Manuel Miranda.
nhnolan ยท 15 points ยท Posted at 17:04:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think now that the amazing album is out, more people appreciate him.
[deleted] ยท 27 points ยท Posted at 18:31:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
Marsandtherealgirl ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 02:33:56 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just reading that makes me teary eyed. Ugh. My heart.
LlamaJack ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 17:01:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A bit of insight.
sooperkool ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 18:56:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just had a piece on 60 minutes about someone bringing more awareness to him, plus you could go see the play: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Hamilton_(musical)
[deleted] ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 20:11:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I would say that a lot of people don't fully grasp exactly how important George Washington was. He didn't seek further power after his presidency. Democracy wasn't a big thing back then and it wouldn't have been inconceivable for him to become king of America.
We realize today how important the first transition of power is when we observe other, newer democracies. The early transitions of power tend to be one of the most common pitfalls for democracies.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:48:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
I think that's overrated to a certain extent. I agree that Washington's choice to retire from public life was important, but it's not like the British Empire was unfamiliar with the concept of changing governments. The House of Commons had been an elected body for hundreds of years by the time of the American Revolution, and in the half-century or so leading up to the Revolution the office of Prime Minister had started to develop, so having a head of government distinct from the head of state wasn't a foreign concept, either.
It's not like the early USA was a model of democracy as we understand it today, yet, either. In most places, only free adult men who owned property could vote. Hell, in Washington's first election to office, five of the states didn't vote at all for President; their state legislatures appointed electors to the electoral college. Senators were appointed by state legislatures up until 1913.
You only have to look at Napoleon to understand what Washington could have done, or tried to do, so I'm not diminishing the importance of his decision not to run a third time - just trying to add some nuance.
Plus, I think there's a difference between "new democracies" in the sense of the Frankenstein governments getting set up after the West tears down the previous regime through war, and other historical examples of new countries setting up democratic constitutions.
AfterAttack ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 18:16:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You sound like my history teacher. He loves Hamilton so much, you'd assume he has posters of him back at home like a pop singer
Scrotinger ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 18:21:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think that's a really common thing for history teachers. Mine was like that too.
ArcherofArchet ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 18:17:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And then he gets put on the $10 bill, which is one of the least circulated bills (just above the $2 and the $50 denominations).
dorekk ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:53:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Huh, if it's so uncommonly circulated, why do we have it?
I love two-dollar bills. Especially using them at stores and all the teenage cashiers have to call their managers over to see if they're real. I wish they'd put Jefferson on the $20, though.
ArcherofArchet ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:10:49 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I love the $2's, too! I wish Hamilton would get a better bill... Although honestly, I'd put him on the $100 instead of Franklin; move Franklin to the $20, and get rid of Jackson as-is.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:23:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
After going through this part of the thread I had no idea how much people care about appearances.
The_Fluffy_Walrus ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:13:33 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And they wanna remove him from the $10 bill, I don't know why this pisses me off so much, it's just he worked so hard and they wanna replace him to put a woman on it. Why don't they remove Andrew Jackson?
ArcherofArchet ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:31:36 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Let's just move Hamilton to the $20, and scrap Jackson.
The_Fluffy_Walrus ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:35:32 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Exactly.
ProfessorMcGonagall ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 16:32:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thank you, my ap us history teacher would be proud. I'm in total agreement, I'd also probably add Henry clay.
pinkkittenfur ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 16:56:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And the 'Got Milk?' ad.
Rodrigo_Loco ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 17:25:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
deleted
pinkkittenfur ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:12:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
pans around the office
The gun. The bullet. A painting of the duel.
iliketuurtles ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:07:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Aaron Burr, that son of a bitch.
massmanx ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:32:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
*Aaron Burr, Sir
iliketuurtles ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:38:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Huh?
massmanx ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:37:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
(was referencing the musical )
The_ThirdFang ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:09:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In our cowardice and our shame we will try to destroy his name
21stCenturyGentleman ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:39:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Now he's the center of the number one broadway musical that's receiving hype across the world.
Yawehg ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:50:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just you wait, just you wait
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:58:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In every US history class I've ever taken (4) Hamilton is mentioned many times and in only one was his death brought up.
Scrotinger ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:05:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Are you talking about college courses? If not you had a really great high school. I never had to take history courses in college (CompSci guy), and in high school we only ever talked about Hamilton in one year. And I think many people only experience US history classes in high school.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:09:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
One in MS, two in HS, one in college (here history is a graduation req regardless of major)
Hamilton is such an important part of early American politics I don't see how/why he could be left out
Scrotinger ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:12:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sadly, it happens. American schools can be shitty a lot of the time.
ScribbleMeNot ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:35:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I took American History in college and boy did it open my eyes on things. He is without a doubt in my mind the most underrated man in american history. Did a lot of shit for this country and most people dont even know who the hell he is.
dorekk ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:54:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
All I really know about him is he was against the Louisiana Purchase, which was one of the most important things America did in its infancy. Doesn't really reflect well on his legacy!
SexyKaiser ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:16:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This needs to be higher up!
Also, for those unaware, the Broadway musical based on his life, Hamilton, is truly a masterpiece. I highly recommend listening to the soundtrack. There are feels to be had.
"There's a million things I haven't done. Just you wait. Just you wait."
jabata ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:23:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hamilton was certainly a brilliant man, but he's no saint. His bond repayment plan essentially made millions for his wealthy speculator friends in the northeast, taking advantage of many of the nations poor, specifically veterans of the Revolution. He was an elitist, who never hid the fact that he thought the wealthy should have a greater say in the affairs of the government. "All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are rich and well born; the other, the mass of the people. The voice of the people has been said to be the voice of God; and however generally this maxim has been quoted and believed, it is not true in fact. The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in the government. They will check the unsteadiness of the second; and as they cannot receive any advantage by change, they will therefore maintain good government."
Scrotinger ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:39:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I always say, he may not have nececarily been a good guy, but he was a great man.
jabata ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:56:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Good point, I can't deny that he has quite the list of accomplishments to his name.
Keilz ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:00:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Came here to say this after listening to the entire Hamilton soundtrack
MonkeyScales ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 07:43:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's a great book based on the story of how Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr defended a man charged with murder in old New York. It's based on a true story and it's called The Manhattan Well by Stanley Cloud.
The well still stands too. You can still visit it in the basement of a shop in Soho, which is neat! If you're a Hamilton fan I highly recommend this book. It made him come alive for me
charliethestalker ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:10:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's a musical on his life, I doubt that's underappreciated
waxenpi ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 18:46:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Ironically the musical is about how he is under appreciated...
edit: not sure if this is actually ironic, given how confusing that word has become
FappyJacky ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:22:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Aaron Burr is an asshole.
Scrotinger ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 18:27:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Kind of, but I think he's an unappreciated person too. All he's remembered for is his beef with Hamilton but I don't think he was all bad
FappyJacky ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:01:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He tried to get the rich of the northern states to secede from the nation, although it horribly failed, and due to it, one of the biggest political parties of the time, I believe it was the federalists, fell due to the conspiracy of Burrs actions.
julinay ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:00:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't know about unappreciated, but as far as admirable qualities go, Burr seemed to be a very proficient lawyer and politician and was appreciative of women's rights at a time when very few people were.
At the same time, it seems like he was a good lawyer and politician precisely because he never put his own opinion or motivation into things and played into what people wanted to see, so it's kind of up in the air.
He also went kind of crazy and tried to conquer Mexico.
Aerialfish ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:50:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No, he was a douche bag. Read about The Manhattan Company. His company won a bid to provide clean water to New Yorkers but Burr's real intention in getting the winning water bid was to use a loophole to open up a bank in NY (only other bank was Bank of NY). He barely put any money towards the water project and he was blamed for a yellow fever outbreak that summer.
nonamee9455 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:10:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hey I think I'm related to that guy, did he live on the niagra peninsula?
ripleyclone8 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:28:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My city has a big statue of him sporting an American flag cape. We appreciate him, damn it!
ph_wolverine ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:32:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
the sad thing is that most people wouldn't agree before someone made a musical about his life.
julinay ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:57:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not quite true... a lot of recent scholarship, even before the musical, had started exploring both Hamilton and Jefferson more in-depth, and finding Jefferson wanting.
Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote the musical based on Ron Chernow's Hamilton biography, which I guess is seen as almost the definitive source about Hamilton's life now. So the academic waves were already a'churning.
smokeymcblunt2121 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:15:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I agree with you but the dude also gave the British our flag codes right before the war of 1812 which at that time was pretty much treason. Flag codes = all our encryption keys for our communication. Only reason it didn't become a huge deal was because he died right after. Awesome dude and founding father but he loved the British ever so slightly too much
Scrotinger ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:49:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'd be interested in reading up on that. Could you provide a source? I Googled "Hamilton flag codes 1812" but didn't find much. No time for a more extensive search at the moment
ShadowLiberal ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:17:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
People remember him a lot in history class as the guy who founded a lot of successful programs from his time as secretary of the treasury under President George Washington.
He's also remembered as the leader of the Federalist party, and one of the more important founding fathers.
usedthrone ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:31:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Came here to post this, but I might be a bit biased as I own a book signed by Alexander.
Scrotinger ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:32:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's pretty awesome. How did you come to have that and what is the book?
ChurroSalesman ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:54:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'd say he's well appreciated. The idea of a central bank is usually credited to him.
RocksOffStones ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:27:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Agreed. I wonder where we would be with out him
nutmegtell ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:49:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He was a mixed race immigrant who was Washington's right hand man, the only founding father to fight in the Revolution.
this_is_poorly_done ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:32:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's what pissed me off about the treasury announcing that they are replacing hamilton on the $10 bill. The dude worked so hard to get the usa it's first National bank, advocated industrialising the nation over Jeffersons bullshitery, he campaigned hard for a stronger central govt, contributed to the federalist papers, was at Washington's side during the war, was the first secretary of the treasury, and did all that while starting off as a dirt poor orphan who wasn't even born on the continent.
robotfoodab ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:09:22 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Eh, I would say he was prevented from doing too much damage too early on. But that's just like...my opinion, man.
bthebard ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:36:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You are the worst, Burr.
FannyBabbs ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:52:15 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In middle school we did reports on which founding fathers were most influential to America, in our opinion. Me and every other jackoff in the class did Jefferson or Franklin, and I remember being bored as fuck.
Fast forward to AP US History, and we have a similar assignment; Convince the teacher that your revolutionary of choice was the most important. That class was fucking amazing, lot more diversity in choices. Dude presented about General Washington from the point of view of a soldier he commanded, great shit. Good mixture. Teacher was a notoriously strict, but fair, grader... most people got Bs or low As.
My buddy and I both picked Hamilton and presented together... me extolling the virtues of Hamilton's contributions and him complaining about the impact his financial system has had upon American culture... sort of a point and counterpoint. Teacher gave us an A+, and told us it was because we'd changed his mind on the subject.
One of the best teachers I've ever had.
metaphoricalgoldstar ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:19:38 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
How did a bastard, orphan, son of a whore...
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:20:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Killed by one of Bill Burr's ancestors. Oh Jeezus.
T-HO-THA-MALE-HOOKER ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:00:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My APUSH teacher is deeply obsessed with Hamilton and for the month we talked about the pre, during and post revolutionary times he brought him up and told us interesting stories every chance he could. He would shoe horn him into nearly every discussion and try as best he could to demonstrate to us that he is infinitely more important than most of the politicians we idolize today. He also detested Big Man historians, so to tear down and shatter our preconceived notions about these 'great men' were his favorite things to do in class.
TroutTroutBass ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:14:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is probably changing that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zp9HUc9HraQ&list=PLUSRfoOcUe4avCXPg6tPgdZzu--hBXUYx
big_nkrumah ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:17:05 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Every other founding father's story gets told. Every other founding father got to grow old.
broadsheetvstabloid ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:47:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That dude was fucking cunt and Aaron Burr is the real under appreciated person. Thanks Alexander Hamiliton for ruining America, we should have listened to Jefferson instead of Hamilton.
kronos669 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:27:33 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes, I too have listened to the musical
SwellSeason ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:39:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He's got a dope ass musical now, though.
romulusnr ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:01:35 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, that and the whole being on the front of the ten dollar bill thing.
If you want a forgotten Founding Father, look up James Otis.
jelvinjs7 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:05:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The guy is essentially the epitome of the American dream. He started in a terrible life situation, but through hard work and dedication, he was able to successfully pursue his dreams, and became the person he wanted to be. And in the process, he helped create a country where anyone else can do the same thing.
ivquatch ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:47:01 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
He was a quasi monarchist. Literally to blame for the Whiskey Rebellion, Undelcared war with France, and the Alien & Sedition acts. If not for Jefferson, the country would've imploded. Hamilton had it coming.
The_Popes_Hat ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:50:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Did a really long ass report on the Federalist party in the US. Might as well have been a documentary on Hamilton. Dude is by far the raddest of founding fathers
PaleFury ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:01:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
By Aaron Burr! I dont know anything about him, but I do know that he shot Hamilton. Booyah.
intensely_human ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 08:07:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Was that the guy who got killed by aaan buuu?
zelisca ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:17:37 on January 18, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fuck Hamilton . He was an elitist prick
Britt121 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:46:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Damn, I really dislike Alexander Hamilton and the federalists. I'm a much bigger fan of Jefferson and the anti-federalists. Central banking is an awful scam destroying society I don't have much respect for those in history or modern times who support them.
"And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.." -TJ
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:19:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Can you really call it a scam if it has been working for the past 200+ years with unmatched success?
There really hasn't been a system to match up to it in modern history. Much of our prosperity as a country is due to Hamilton's centralized banking system.
Britt121 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:52:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Federal Reserve was created in 1913 to protect the dollar. Since then, the dollar has lost 96% of its purchasing power and the size and scope of the state has grown tremendously. Massive war spending since 1913 would only be possible with the ability to print money the way they can. I highly recommend reading "The Creature from Jekyll Island" if you are interested in learning more about our Federal Reserve- it's fascinating and shocking.
I am a government/econ/US history teacher and it has become apparent to me over the years that all wars are fought for the banks.
http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/allwarsarebankerswars.pdf
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:33:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I bet he's rolling in his grave seeing the way America is getting destroyed.
TheRealNicCage ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:38:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
fuck that Federalist scum.
julinay ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:49:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Woah there, Tommy Jefferson.
TheRealNicCage ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:02:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
(I actually do think TJ was our nations best president)
julinay ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:06:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's fine! Personally, I can't stand with the dude, but opinions can differ.
TheRealNicCage ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:12:28 on January 20, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
cheers to rationality and nuance
bball975 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:07:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The guy was kind of a jackass.
Pr0glodyte ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 00:04:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hamilton was a giant ass hat.
samorost1 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:06:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fuck America
Darnduf ยท 953 points ยท Posted at 16:29:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The non-IT guy who knows how the printer works in the office.
Hell, all IT people too.
FunkyFireStarter ยท 94 points ยท Posted at 18:57:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
IT Guy here - you're going to need to submit your comment via a ticket through official support channels before I can respond. Thank you for your understanding.
tehlemmings ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 20:25:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And then they respond by email telling you the issue hasn't been resolved re-opening the closed incident...
Ramv36 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:09:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Remedy saves the day again...
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:24:06 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Too late. I already did my own work-around.
ADAMKOVICSLOVECHILD ยท 58 points ยท Posted at 18:31:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thanks! Feels good to be appreciated, usually we're just just treated like shit.
tonyd1989 ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 20:22:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I love the IT guys. I can fix and get most problems resolved on my own being a computer literate individual, but when I need help I make sure to thank them immensely!
determinedforce ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 18:58:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
I never understand IT people who say this. Maybe it has something to do with that person's, who happened to be in IT, social skills. I have been in IT for 20 some years (mostly help desk/direct end user interaction), in a vast variety of places, and NEVER have I been treated like shit. Except by bosses/supervisors/managers. The worst thing I can think of, is the guy who POLITELY busted me balls on a regular basis cuz I SUPPOSEDLY didn't get all the PERSONAL photos off his old laptop. Of course later, much later, after my MANAGER intervened and treated me like shit, did he realize that I did, in fact, get all his photos.
Addendum: I've only done support for EMPLOYEES of the companies. Not end users such as Comcast customers, for example.
[deleted] ยท 18 points ยท Posted at 19:08:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
[deleted]
determinedforce ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:39:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You got me there. You worked for Comcast so that explains a lot.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:07:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
[deleted]
determinedforce ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:16:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I have been fortunate in working at places with good people and dating A LOT of nymphos, yet I am broke. It's a trade off.
Segfault-er ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:33:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I work public facing tier 1 tech support. I get yelled at and generally treated like shit every day. I hate my job
Gl0riousGr0uch ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 20:16:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Try level 2 support. Just because (most of the time) level 1 is only following the scripts and is generally outsource to 3rd world countries (Philippines, India, Costa Rica) and take 3 hours to come up with shit they get transferred to us in level 2. Then we get shitty irritable users who complain that IT doesnt know shit, and we haven't even gotten a proper description of the issue because the 3rd world helplessdesk employee doesn't know a lick of English or how the grammar is.
end rant
TwoPeopleOneAccount ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:38:33 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well at least we, the users, aren't the only ones who despise those guys. Is there a way to get them to skip their script and send you to level 2 immediately? I always start off by saying what I've already done to try and fix the problem and yet they force you to go through their stupid troubleshooting script anyway which includes all the same shit I've already tried. I always tell them just to give me someone else right away but they will never comply.
Also, sorry that you have to deal with irate people. The few times I've ever needed any sort of tech support I always get pissed at the level 1 guys but the level 2 guys I get after them are always a welcomed relief and I'm always sure to be courteous toward them.
Gl0riousGr0uch ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:57:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Most of the time it depends on the company you work for. Sometimes you have to tell them that IT has been made aware (make sure you are in good terms with them, make sure they arent busy) and that you would like it assigned to that tech. Otherwise tell them that you are not currently available to troubleshoot and you would like level 2 to contact you in an hour. If they insist on calling you back, tell them you would liek to speak with a supervisor, or transferred to level 2 support. Most of the time they wil INSIST on troubleshooting and there is nothing you can do.
Segfault-er ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:27:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm the main help desk at a University. Our job is more to act as a barrier and filter out the shit for people who are paid a lot more than us. We're not scripted and 9/10 times they're simple problems that we can deal with, or we identify what's wrong/if there's an actual issue. We also tell users what's out of scope. And weed out the idiots like the caller that I had yesterday who wanted to open an outlook datafile with word.
Gl0riousGr0uch ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:41:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You're one of the good ones. My helpdesk would have tried to to just that for the user and then take an extra hour talking in between them and the managers. Then we get them fix their issues then they complain about our helplessdesk. Sorry you get such a bad rap because of other idiots, that's just the way the cookie crumbles.
tehlemmings ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:22:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Even in corporate IT I'm amazed you haven't seen more shit.
Two years ago I had employee who went so far as to lie to the police about me to try and get me fired because I wouldn't install games on her computer.
Dozens of times I've had people try and lay the blame on me for every kind of situation. Employee fucks up, blame the helpdesk because they clearly did something to your computer and deleted all your files.
I've had two employees try and get me fired because I got a pedophile fired for looking at child porn on his company laptop...
People fucking suck. There's a reason why it's standard practice to record all interactions with customers. The ability to call people on their shit is core to IT support
determinedforce ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:29:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Damn. I guess you got all the shit that I did NOT get. Maintaining balance in the universe? (shrug)
tehlemmings ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:43:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Honestly, I think it's all down to numbers. The smaller the group you support, the better that group is. Likewise, the smaller the support group, the better people treat the group. People are better to each other when they're failure with each other.
I'm working for a managed service company that supports just under 200,000 users. There's no connection between me and most of the people I support, so people let their emotions get the better of them. It's a lot easier to take out your frustration on the faceless IT employee you'll never meet than the one you'll see in the break room.
On the upside, we're working on using this to our advantage. Clever phone routing to build those relationships up a little bit to help make everything more bearable for everyone. Hasn't been long enough to know if it's working yet, but it's interesting to watch none the less.
Isord ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:58:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's true. I work help desk for a 120 person company. Everyone knows my name and pretty much everyone in the company gets along. I don't think I could ever work for a huge company.
determinedforce ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 20:52:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I agree, but like I said, I've worked in various industries as well as number of users although never as much as 200,000. Maybe 20,000 if that. Nonetheless, I'm lucky in sex and nice end users, unlucky in bank account size. LOL
McDogerts ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:21:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The shitty people tend to stick out more than those who appreciate what IT staff do. I've had more than a couple rude people. But I've also had plenty of people who were endlessly thankful for fixing a small issue. I guess it's just easier to remember the bad over the good.
determinedforce ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:27:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's kinda what I was saying. I can only recall ONE that stuck out as being "bad". So there were thousands of others that were "normal" or "good".
dorekk ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:58:15 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes. Oh man. I've primarily supported only employees of other companies, but I've had a couple general public clients, and, well...it's not nice.
l0c0d0g ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:33:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
To be honest, we are shit.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:09:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I learned long ago to always treat IT people well. They fix problems I can't fix myself sometimes, unlike other problems related to humans being annoying and/or wrong.
mrkhiggz ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:52:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My experience so far has been either, "Why doesn't this work. Do you even know what you're doing?" Or "You guys never do anything, why do we even have you?" We are also never thanked by management and overlooked by everyone, unless they need advice about what computer or phone to get their kids. The show IT Crowd is sadly not that exaggerated.
the_doughboy ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 19:58:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I had this argument for people asking me how to do things with the printer: Ask the IT guy who prints once a year, or the Admin Assistance you prints out 90 pages a day and sits right around the corner from the printer.
Isord ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:01:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As IT I aggree. Same with asking for help with specialized programs. I can help you get photoshop or your accounting software involved, but I've never used either past that. Better to ask other users that have the same software.
For printers I think every IT person ever would rather they just go away at this point.
lethaltyrant ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 18:45:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If everything is going right we tend to not get noticed. The minute something stops all hell breaks loose on our phones and ticketing systems.
tehlemmings ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 20:15:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You know, this makes me want to post something.
I work in IT dealing with a lot of hospitals and medical groups. I want to thank the god damn nurses. They're very appreciated for what everyone knows they're doing, but if you had any idea how much more they do to keep shit running people would be amazed.
The number of times I've asked a doctor to find me a nurse who knows what facebook is... fucking best people in the world. They're smart and willing to put up with so much shit and I fucking love working with them.
The docs tend to be assholes though...
Jracx ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:35:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Had to call hospital IT last night. Such a chill conversation once the dude found out I was a nurse and had actually done all the little Bullshit troubleshooting stuff before calling him.
xj4me ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:37:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ill second this! I worked for a few small offices and clinics. The nurses were always helpful and knew exactly how to describe the issue and even take screenshots. The doctors were okay attitude wise but their computer skills were terrible.
bigbossman90 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 20:32:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm the non-IT guy who always fixes the printer, it's good to be appreciated.
Lemthur_Drye ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:33:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We need more of these people, that would make so many people so much more calm. Printers, if you're listening, GO AWAY! NOBODY LIKES YOU!
TheSovietGoose ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:04:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
M'toner
mccoyster ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:44:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
bows
NoButthole ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:25:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thanks!
Neilas ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:02:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As an IT person, I do battle with printers on a daily basis.
avenlanzer ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:28:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You're welcome
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:37:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thanks dear
Decantus ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:38:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Read the first line, was like "..."
Read the second like was like: 8|
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:17:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm a guy working in IT and we often ask the HR girls foe help. The irony is strong
originalfedan ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:43:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not an IT, but I theoretically know how it works
msunderoos ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:57:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I showed the IT person in my office how to unjam the printer today. I am that person.
DuplexFields ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:04:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Office power-user here. Thanks!
Cuda14 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:13:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thx bro. I appreciate you.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:03:02 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Do people seriously not know how to Google "How to use so-in-so printer"? I google how to fix or do something unusual on my computer all the time.
Nougat ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:07:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
YOU'RE WELCOME
_paag ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 11:29:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I guess all these upvotes came from IT. :)
We do appreciate you remembering us! Come to r/talesfromtechsupport and laugh/cringe with us.
amaluna ยท 2065 points ยท Posted at 15:25:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Mark Yeaton.
He was the guy that used to throw WWE superstar Stone Cold Steve Austin his beers and had amazing accuracy.
http://giphy.com/gifs/beer-steve-stone-77JEJN2gWFvWw
EmperorCorbyn ยท 861 points ยท Posted at 18:34:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So many kids grow up nowadays never hearing of Mark Yeaton. Makes me sick.
Every time I throw a beer at a kid and he starts to bleed I just shake my head and think about the past.
VincentVega92 ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 21:41:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I know I'm white trash but this is an under rated comment.
hurdur1 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:01:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not your fault. You seem to be accurate enough. Guess it's too much to expect kids to be as good as Stone Cold Steve Austin at catching beers.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:22:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I miss the days when drinking beer before and during professional athletic competition wasn't just for the fans, but the athletes too.
wolsel ยท -3 points ยท Posted at 19:22:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Is that a misdemeanor for assault or a felony for distribution to minors?
LE4d ยท 22 points ยท Posted at 19:26:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well if they couldn't damn well catch it...
[deleted] ยท -7 points ยท Posted at 19:45:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Underage drinking without a permit is definitely illegal.
Theoneofcool ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 19:59:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
How can they drink it if they can't catch it?
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:00:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't know. Internet?
Theoneofcool ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:02:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Kids and their internets these days...
dynamojoe ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:25:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
without a permit is an interesting clause.
"Hello, Mr./Ms. Gov't official, I'd like to apply for an underage drinking permit, please."
Beidah ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:02:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Depends on the state, but there's usually a qualifier or two (usually being home and/or with a legal guardian).
thebornotaku ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:39:59 on January 21, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not 100% true oddly enough. From 18-21 you are allowed to brew and drink your own beer in your own home.
Aeleas ยท 545 points ยท Posted at 16:17:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Damn. Dude's got a hell of an arm.
[deleted] ยท 520 points ยท Posted at 17:20:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
FamilyGuyGuy7 ยท 153 points ยท Posted at 18:45:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Plus catching it from across the ring without losing it in the lights? If those two went to the MLB they could field all nine defense positions
SketchBoard ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:31:27 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
catch is, they must throw beer cans and not baseballs.
GeeWarthog ยท 116 points ยท Posted at 19:36:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Texans have specially evolved hands customized for catching and holding beers.
BlueKnight8907 ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 22:46:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is true. I tried catching a Pepsi one time and it didn't work, caught a Bud while holding a baby on the same arm though.
jrd5497 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:56:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yep
Yep
Yep
Mhm
Nmaka ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 00:31:05 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
how ironic
Tocoapuffs ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 18:34:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
With one hand.
Damn impressive team.
wh1036 ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 19:23:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Can confirm. Once had a friend throw me a beer across the room at a party. My first beer can black eye.
goldentenor ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:33:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What was your second? Third? How many beer can black eyes have you received?
wh1036 ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 19:34:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's a story for another time...
mysticsavage ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:46:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He's blind now, and probably has CTE from all those beer cans hitting him in the head.
TheDugEFresh ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 18:27:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Practice practice practice.
Ghostronic ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:22:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's a video floating around of him missing a catch and the can hitting him right in the face.
The funniest time I think was when he was trying to throw one to Jericho and it slipped. https://youtu.be/SZdMi2_-MRI?t=30
RehaDesign ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:35:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
How did Austin not get a shower of beer when he opened a can?
SolidStart ยท 30 points ยท Posted at 19:54:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He did.... that was generally part of the point.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:36:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Actually you would be surprised. Beers are easier to catch than a football. Source: Got drunk w. a lot of rednecks and beers were launched. Advice: Catch with an open hand and let the beer hitting the hand cause it to close or you are gonna get some broken fingers... oh and keep your thumb out of the way. Just focus on having it hit your palm. Also abort if the dumbass threw it straight for your face.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:04:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Looks like a former center fielder
thfc11189 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:50:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I've seen him miss once. FUCKING ONCE. that's a sick ratio because that's 25 years of tossed beers
HongManChoi ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:57:17 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's like Tom Brady throwing to Odell Beckham.
keenynman343 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:50:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm sure because of his athletic physique he has massive hands. That always accounts to catching awkward shit easier.
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:58:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
His accuracy is more impressive. It's not exactly hard to throw a can of beer 50 feet.
Charmanderp7 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:13:28 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Maybe it was Yoenis Cespedes and hes not signing in the MLB!
Petrol_in_my_eyes ยท 90 points ยท Posted at 18:07:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
and then he got fired for no fucking reason.
Dammit, Vince.
hjschrader09 ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:50:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Are you a McMahon or a McWoman?
mario2isamariogame ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:22:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What?
chocoboat ยท 20 points ยท Posted at 19:26:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He worked there from 1984 to 2014, was a model employee, and they fired him for no apparent reason.
kaztrator ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 20:11:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Computers had usurped his timekeeping duties in early 2000. He was basically out there to ring the bell. They could get any poor schmuck to do that.
tears_of_a_Shark ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:54:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That sounds like hard times...
mario2isamariogame ยท -5 points ยท Posted at 20:15:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What?
chocoboat ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:15:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Why don't you say "what" if you like to sleep with your own sister.
Ghostronic ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:25:05 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's a reason he was called the American Badass!
mario2isamariogame ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:47:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wha... boooo!
rod333 ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 21:51:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Say 'what' again. Say 'what' again, I dare you, I double dare you motherfucker, say what one more Goddamn time!
LexaBinsr ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 21:53:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Pineapples.
[deleted] ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 23:06:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Smarks always think they know everything.
There probably were a good reason he was fired
ferlessleedr ยท 66 points ยท Posted at 18:28:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That link goes to a weird error page for me. This one works though
jacobetes ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:33:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's impressive as fuck.
[deleted] ยท 41 points ยท Posted at 18:46:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
reads other answers
I mean its not that a guy throwing beers is not important...
The_Iron_Bison ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:15:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, I'm guessing people appreciate Norman a bit more than the beer guy. So he's not wrong really?
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:46:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Touchรฉ
ToneThugsNHarmony ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 18:16:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wow, a true unheard of hero. Good find.
Ghostronic ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:26:27 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just seems like /r/SquaredCircle is leaking again to me
PleaseShutUpAndDance ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 19:36:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This guy must be related.
JakBKwiq ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:40:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Relevant
Howland_Reed ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:30:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And here I am unable to throw a wad of paper in a trash can 90% of the time.
[deleted] ยท 40 points ยท Posted at 18:41:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This fucking thread...
We've got scientists, doctors developing lifesaving medicines, heroes sacrificing their lives to save thousands....
And that dude that throws a wrestler a beer.
'MERICA
cero2k ยท 99 points ยท Posted at 19:02:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
even in this topic, you're under appreciating him
Wesc0bar ยท 31 points ยท Posted at 19:12:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Having fun on the Internet?! Some people got a lot of nerve, huh?
OP should have used the serious tag.
confused-koala ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 19:34:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dude. 2 beers.
Cheeseblanket ยท 21 points ยท Posted at 19:27:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not just a wrestler, motherfucking Stone Cold Steve Austin
YoungWhiteGinger ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:18:38 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ya but did you see that toss? Dudes unreal.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:03:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Don't take life so seriously, sweetie.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:56:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'd like to add the real Double J, Jim Johnston to this list.
GDMFS0B ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:53:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That'd be a pretty fucking cool job.
curryisforGs ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:18:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wasn't actually his job, he did it on the side. He was bell ringer iirc
Ghostronic ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:27:22 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Timekeeper IIRC
awesomeificationist ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:29:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm using that gif
AllEyeWantsPie ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:59:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think I can do that. Hold my beer.
Myrandall ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:04:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
404 for me :(
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:59:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I watched wrestling when he was Stunning Steve Austin. Years later when my nephew started watching wrestling on Stone Cold came on with his badass persona all I could think of was him as stunning Steve.
Joetato ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:06:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I feel like I remember seeing Stone Cold chuck a beer from the top of the ramp all the way to the ring and the Undertaker caught it once as well. Unless I imagined that (and I may have), Stone Cold apparently has an arm on him as well.
fridchikn24 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:15:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
People like him and Jim Johnston are people who should be receivning Warrior Awards as it was what he(ultimate warrior) intended to have in his hof speech. Now the award is just a publicity stunt for WWE
outsidepr ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:30:15 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hey, I'm the reigning Belvidere Park egg-toss champion, that guy has nothing on me.
miss_j_bean ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:09:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I didn't know it was the same guy, I thought it was a random fan in every city.
inselfwetrust ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:09:22 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Stone cold Steve Austin had some soft hands. That man could have been a first baseman in a past life
Nocommenthistorylol ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:26:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
๐ถreal men of geniusss๐ถ
[deleted] ยท 309 points ยท Posted at 16:27:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
Please_Reply ยท 40 points ยท Posted at 20:58:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
IIRC he died in the same week as Steve Jobs and got hardly any recognition.
Come_To_r_Polandball ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 02:22:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
At least he didn't die of AIDS like Steve Jobs.
seeingeyegod ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:43:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
oh is that a conspiracy theory?
TightAnalOrifice789 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:15:35 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Only if you're one of the few who don't know he was secretly a homosexual.
LilyKnightMcClellan ยท 28 points ยท Posted at 17:59:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If he hadn't done it though, would someone else have developed something similar? I feel like technology was heading in that direction and there were a lot of people working on the same sorts of things and Ritchie's was the first one that worked best and so that's what we use now, but really someone would have come up with something eventually? Maybe I'm wrong. Not saying he's not important, just maybe not underappreciated?
steiner_math ยท 18 points ยท Posted at 18:50:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Probably, but C is so perfect. It's low enough level where it's efficient, but high enough where it's easy to use. It's used in pretty much every operating system in existence and computers would be way different without it.
guy_from_canada ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 19:24:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Which is why it's a great candidate for your first programming language to learn. Lots of students learn Java first and I feel like you'd kind of just take things like garbage collection, memory allocation, etc for granted.
[deleted] ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 19:45:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And driving students should have to first operate a house and buggy.
DiabloConQueso ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 20:25:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I can't even find my house's steering wheel. :(
Low_discrepancy ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:59:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Did you shove your hand down the toilet. Thats where it usually is'
ex_nihilo ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 20:28:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No, but they should definitely learn how to drive a car with a manual transmission, which is a much more apt analogy.
C is still a very powerful and versatile language in which many things are still written. You get much more educationally out of learning C than learning Java.
[deleted] ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 20:33:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not if you never use C.
I mean, you may as well say you should start with assembly. Nothing will teach you more about how computers really work than assembly, even C abstracts a lot of that from you. Then you can learn about how a compiler works. Then, years in to your training, maybe you can write something actually useful right?
C is useful, but there is more than enough space in the programming world for people to specialize and not have to know everything.
ex_nihilo ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 20:48:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Actually you have described a complete computer science education almost exactly! Java can of course be part of it. I am not saying you should know everything about how a computer works before you are allowed to write anything useful or novel, but in the course of a computer science education you most certainly should learn everything about how a computer works.
And even if you never use C, you'll go much further in your career if you understand it. Years ago I discovered a buffer overflow exploit in Apache because proper precautions weren't being taken with the client's IP address. I never would have understood what was going on beneath the application (PHP) code if I hadn't understood the whole stack, including the language in which my webserver is written.
So sure, don't learn C. Don't learn anything you don't absolutely have to. Be a mediocre software engineer. Why not?
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:07:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Because there are a lot more programming jobs out there than just the ones that require that kind of in-depth knowledge?
You said C was a good candidate for a first language, If C was a lot of people's first introduction to programming they might do something else instead because C is needlessly complicated for most tasks in the modern world.
Hell, even game developers need not know a lick of C these days.
Not everyone who is going to program needs to be a computer science major, is what I'm saying.
ZaberTooth ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 01:40:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
First, this is completely false. I'm a professional C developer working on enterprise applications. If it was really that complicated we'd have switched to a different language.
Second, suppose that what you said is true-- suppose C actually is too complicated for most tasks. That doesn't mean it's a bad learning tool. Most students aren't writing programs that are tens of thousands of lines long, or that need to run flawlessly on Windows, Mac, and every flavor of Linux, or that need to do complicated processing for a hundred years, uninterrupted, without crashing or leaking memory. Most students are trying to figure out what a for loop does or how to write a hangman game on the console. C is great for that.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 07:07:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
C is more verbose and quirky for that simple stuff than, say, python, or any form of basic.
As far as the professional world, I'm not arguing that C doesn't have its place, but there's a reason .Net and Java are so popular, they make it quicker, easier, and safer to write code that actually does stuff. If you don't care about performance and aren't writing something low level, then C is probably not the best choice.
EphemeralSun ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:00:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Take a good look at any Java or C++ handbook/textbook and compare it to Brian Kernighan's C book. Compare the size.
I won't say that makes C a much easier language to learn, but it is a whole lot quicker to digest.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:59:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Seriously. K&R is a barebones walk through the machine simplified down to the point where you could visualize memory for what is is - a long assed chain of slots with addresses at each slot. It really helps to understand not only memory management - but file reading, optimization, serialization strategies, types and sizes.
It is required reading, IMHO.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:55:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I started with Java and Actionscript (sorry) - and though it is nice to have things like memory management and references handled for you - if you don't at least understand SOME C the virtual machine on which you Java app is running would be like a black box. I think it is totally necessary to understand what a pointer is and what memory really is.
Of course it is not required to make a web app - but its is helpful to understand how these things work from the bit level up.
I think C is something every programmer should be able to read and understand. Maybe not write or write well - but it should not look like black magic.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:09:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I disagree. We have evolved beyond the need for every programmer to have to understand those things. Will it make them better programmers? Probably, but they don't really need it.
perl_Help ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 12:22:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Think you're missing the point here
PRMan99 ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:40:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not in America. The chances of having to drive a manual car are virtually nil.
I finally had to move my Dad's Mustang last week when he broke his foot. First manual car I have driven in 25 years.
dorekk ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 02:00:29 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm an American in my early 30s and I know how to drive a stick. When I hear shit like this I feel like a unicorn.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:05:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
BOOM BITCH!
0x8086 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:24:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's a poor analogy. A lot of companies still use outdated computer technology because the expense to replace their systems would greatly exceed maintenance costs. Just because you might have an up to date computer, doesn't mean everyone does. Eventually, most computer programmers are going to come across a job that requires them to modify, fix, or create a program on an outdated platform that may require strict memory management. Understanding a language like C or even Assembly is important to not only understanding more modern languages and computer science as a whole, but also important to many jobs and problems a software engineer may encounter.
dorekk ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:01:29 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hell, I believe my company still has one or two COBOL programmers.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:15:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So you know COBOL right? And assembly? Fortran? Ada? RPG? And you think it is reasonable to expect every programmer to understand the ins and outs of those languages?
No one calls the Java business application developer when their AS400 has a problem. Just like I wouldn't call an electrician for a plumbing problem.
Is it helpful to know these things? Yes. Is it necessary to do the job properly? No.
EphemeralSun ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:56:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tell that the CS subreddit. I suggested it as a first language, and it got downvoted to kingdom come.
"Too difficult" they said.
"Java...." they said.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:04:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
hahaha I love this. Interfaces for interfaces for interfaces for generics for templates --- gah!!! I remember when Java was a sweet girl with automatic memory management. You take her on a date and you don't have to write headers - or worry about malloc anything. It was so sweet.
Then she turned into a ball busting bitch that gained 300 pounds and started wearing 50 different outfits and styles for every mood -- all while growing cancerously in complexity and general shittiness.
I still love JAVA - but complexity it almost its key feature now.
synept ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 22:22:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, except for that whole NULL pointer and NULL-terminated string stuff, which has resulted in immeasurable stability and security problems in computing.
steiner_math ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:43:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If you have half-decent programmers that do bounds checks, that won't happen
Low_discrepancy ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 01:00:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I love C++ (okay its not C but still) but even I admit, if you blame a fault on the user, you're not a good engineer.
Use C where it's good, use c++ where it's good so on and so forth.
For example multi threading is painful in c++ before 11
EphemeralSun ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:02:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, cars are pretty well built these days, but people still crash 'em. Who's to blame? The car manufacturer?
Low_discrepancy ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:09:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
C is a sports car. Made to go fast and to be driven by people who know what they're doing. If you give it to a novice and they crash is or to truck driver and doesnt find it useful for his job, it wont be their fault.
Select the car most suited for your need because different needs require different cars and no one language has been invented that can suit all needs.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:07:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I wouldn't even say its a sports car. Its a V12 attached to a set of wheels. No seat. No windshield. None of that weak crap for bitches that need to be coddled.
synept ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:25:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The entire world's experience with software engineering would beg to differ.
steiner_math ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 02:32:00 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's why I said decent ;)
The way to handle those is to have an integer as a parameter in the function call to store the size of it.
synept ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 02:33:33 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sure, but that's not a language feature. It's a technique you have to be knowledgeable enough to use.
TightAnalOrifice789 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 07:22:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If you're too dumb to use that "technique", then by all means, stick with Java.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:05:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Only when implemented incorrectly. The machine always does exactly what it is told.
synept ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:02:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That argument has nothing to do with the qualities of a programming language, which was the discussion here. Sure, assembly is great too, I guess.
josefx ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:43:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Excluding Linux the most commonly used OS kernels use a subset of C++, even most compiler writers have abandoned pure C. The way C forces programmers to handle "efficiency" has given birth to decades of buffer overflow based code injection attacks. Almost every standard C operation on memory and text will fuck you over unless you manually triple check your input at any step and even better doing so for text is a slow O(n) operation that might cause a segfault ( oh we forgot to terminate that string somewhere) instead of a quick O(1) operation.
C is only perfect if you are a black hat looking for an easy target.
sixfourch ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 01:27:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What? No. This is not and will never be the case.
josefx ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 12:59:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So you claim the NT and XNU kernels used on all current Microsoft and Apple devices are C?
sixfourch ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:37:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You mean Windows and OSX devices. And the core of NT is still C, as is the Mach microkernel Darwin is based on. iOS, Windows Phone, all other mobile devices, ChromeOS devices, and of course, the wide array of embedded devices like routers, TVs, etc., all use C. vtable indirection is too expensive for a large array of systems programming use cases, and one of the main reasons Microsoft has been able to use C++ where it can is because it invests heavily in language infrastructure. But that doesn't change the fact there's a massive amount of C in every operating system.
josefx ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:12:52 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The NT kernel uses C++ the XNU (a fork from Mach 3) kernel uses C++ that is documented and they are the kernels used in any current Microsoft or Apple product. Chrome OS itself is another Linux incarnation. No need to list these products as if there was a difference to what I stated.
First vtable indirection is fully optional in c++. Even most of the c++ standard library relies on template based code reuse and avoids run-time overhead of virtual methods when possible.
Second if you really prefer function pointers to implement inheritance then you are free to use them. They still work in C++ when needed. C++ is almost a valid super set of C so in case you need to write ugly, buggy, buffer overflow inducing code to get out the last bit of performance you can and nothing will stop you from doing so.
There is a large amount of C in GCC, that does not change the fact that pure C is not considered good enough by people responsible for the mentioned projects and the C used is restricted to the subset valid in C++.
adrianmonk ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 06:49:28 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes. There were other languages with comparable features even before C was invented. Pascal, for example.
For a while, Pascal fairly widely used for systems programming, the same niche as C. For example, on the original Macintosh, there was a mixture of MC68000 assembly and Pascal. The Mac only switched over to C later as it became more popular.
Also, both C and Pascal are generally referred to as members of the ALGOL family of programming languages. They both have their own improvements on ALGOL and their own different ways of doing things, but they are both fundamentally doing the same thing in the same way.
C eventually won out because it had some practical advantages over other languages. One of those was that the official version of Pascal was limited in a few ways (since it was originally meant as a teaching language), so while there were lots of extended Pascal dialects sporting the missing features, nobody did it the same way so you had a bunch of versions of Pascal that were all incompatible. C didn't suffer from that because the base version had enough to make people happy.
LilyKnightMcClellan ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:59:06 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thanks, this was really interesting and informative.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:49:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That can literally be said for anything
LilyKnightMcClellan ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:00:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah basically I was saying I didn't think he qualified for most unappreciated person in history, but I can see how that could be overlooked when there's an opportunity to say something faux insightful.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:13:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I agree, but it's not like development is impossible without higher order languages than assembly....it's just a pain in the ass
[deleted] ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 22:47:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
prozacgod ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:57:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You'd be surprised what some people are willing to do. I made a fully dynamic sprite engine ('infinite' sprites), with complex features/particle emitters/physics all developed to work on mode 13h - x86 asm + 32bit extensions in about 2 weeks worth of work. Never made a game for it though.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:16:17 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, that's silly. Any performance improvement you get is outweighed x100 from uusing mode 13.
I think there are opengl wrappers for masm32, though. I know for a fact there are masm32 gdi wrappers.
prozacgod ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 07:12:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes, but I did this in 1998. on a 386sx
randarrow ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:48:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So, if C goes doubly, it's C++?
JustAHippy ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:52:06 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If it weren't for the microprocessor and assembly, C would not have been created.
bigderivative ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:13:28 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Idk man, anyone who has ever learned C had read his textbook...
YCobb ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 08:22:33 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I love what he's done, but as a C programmer... you've got to hate him a little bit.
Shields42 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 13:25:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
C is also the language that most high-level languages are based on. C++, Java, C#, and Objective-C are all very widely used languages that wouldn't exist without C!
kstonge11 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:40:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Meh...
-sent from my iPhone-
shashankgaur ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 18:10:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Came here to say that! Thanks
[deleted] ยท 175 points ยท Posted at 18:49:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
I'm a bad storyteller, and I must admit I can't exactly describe how historically important it is. I would love for a historian to fill in the details. Generally, in Belgium, two or three men are credited for almost singlehandedly stopping the German invasion in World War I. Karel Cogge, Hendrik Geeraert and Prudent Nuyten came up with the idea to strategically open (water) locks to inundate large parts of the countryside to stop the Germans. Nuyten was the general who came up with the idea. Cogge was responsible for the locks and upon hearing from the plan immediately set out with his bike to plan it out in a way that wouldn't also inundate the parts where Belgian soldiers were -- some makeshift dams had to be created. He knew the locks inside out. Geeraert then set out to actually execute the plan. The inundated area was 8km wide and effectively stopped the Germans in their tracks. In winter, the Belgian army had to shoot the ice, so the Germans couldn't cross it. From that day onwards, the war became one of trench warfare. Geeraert made it the to the Belgian bank note of 1000 Frank. Then king Albert I told Cogge "he did more for his fatherland than a whole regiment." Fun fact: Cogge and Geeraert never met.
pic
Ojos_Claros ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 21:51:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
IIRC this is something the Dutch did against the Spanish in the middle ages
GustavGustavson ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 21:43:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Its pretty neat but not exactly an original thought. De Hollandse Waterlinie had at this stage existed for well over a century, while strategic flooding was a common practice in wars in the low countries from at least as early as the 16th century. Still good of them to remember though.
[deleted] ยท 20 points ยท Posted at 20:03:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
AnIntoxicatedRodent ยท 28 points ยท Posted at 21:12:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
BELGIUM! HE SAID IT LIKE 5 TIMES.
Ari_Reddit ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:38:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Same thing. Just like Luxembourg.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:34:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My great-great-grandmother was a Belgian spy.
Shotornot ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:28:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I once heard different versions of the story circulated in differant local villages. Some claim Cogge was a hero, some say he was a useless drunk...
P.s.: where did that football player come from? karel geeraert? ;-)
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:14:38 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Haha nice spot. Fixed
n23_ ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:24:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
But wasn't like 99% of belgium captured by the germans? Seems that way on those maps of the WW1 frontline.
Anyway, the Dutch planned to do the same in WW2 with the hollandse waterlinie or dutch waterline, but the german advance was a bit too fast. Also, they used paratroopers which can easily be dropped behind such a defense and the bombed Rotterdam to shit.
Scagnettio ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:21:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The paratroopers failed initially but the waterlinie didn't hold much and because of the German air superiority the Netherlands was a done deal. Did give the Germans the great idea to flood big parts of the Netherlands as a fuck you after their defeat though.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:33:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yup, it's the 1% that held them off! And that's the area where I come from. Coincidence? I think not.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:42:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wait, if they never met, who are the guys in this photo? Are they just some random officers?
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:17:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yup some random shmucks, here's where I got the full story from, there are some nice pictures as well.
croufa ยท 68 points ยท Posted at 19:15:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Lise Meitner
She was the discoverer of nuclear fission.
She was ethnically Jewish (and a woman working in a traditionally man's job), so had to flee Germany prior to WW2, and her colleague, chemist Otto Hahn, got all of the credit. He actually won the Nobel Prize for it and denied that Meitner had anything to do with the discovery.
Only decades later did the paper trail of letters between them, confirm that she provided the theory behind the discovery. She was finally honored with the Fermi Prize in old age, but is still not well known among scientists and the general public.
utkrowaway ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 23:17:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nuclear engineer here, we appreciate her!
mr_garcizzle ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 23:20:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
She has an element named for her. That's like, pretty high up on the appreciation scale for a scientist.
croufa ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 02:57:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well certainly. But she's not very well known outside of nuclear engineers and some chemists. Lots of people don't know the names and people behind all of the elements. Mt is pretty short lived too... not an everyday element... only lasts a little over 7 seconds.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:55:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Scientists may not know her first name, but anybody who has taken chemistry recently has noticed the symbol Mt, for Meitnerium.
supe3rnova ยท 1666 points ยท Posted at 15:18:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Maybe not the most but she still is to me. My grandmother, say what you will but she could have changed the course of the war. Not my much at first but butterfly affect would do the rest.
She was captured by the nazis while giving out propaganda fliers. Stupid of her to do so after Mass can't argue that and she got caught. She was
torchedtortured for three days but she did not give out any intel. End up in concentration camp in Austria where she almost gave up on life. But the need to help others kept her going. She stole small portions of food, crumbs of bread, peace of apple and such and she rarely ate it her self, always gave to others.Few years ago there was a documentary about this camp and one woman mention one ''crazy'' inmate was stealing food for others from her hometown. My mom broke in to tears as she knew who she meant.
So to me, my grand mother is the most under appreciated person in history.
OsamaBinFuckin ยท 36 points ยท Posted at 18:30:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You live your life and make her proud!
seewolfmdk ยท 332 points ยท Posted at 16:10:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
*tortured.
"torched" has a whole different meaning.
Your grandmother was an amazing person.
supe3rnova ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 16:28:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Edited it. Thanks for correcting.
seewolfmdk ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 16:38:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Kein Problem.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:27:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Same as peace of apple.
bbbdddeee ยท -8 points ยท Posted at 21:29:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If any of that is true.
Indecisive_Bastard ยท -33 points ยท Posted at 18:22:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, she WAS a Jew in a concentration camp..
supe3rnova ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:40:38 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not a jew. Was a Christian but lost fate in god there
HighHopes_ForHumans ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 19:23:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Was she German? My German great-grandma had a similar story that ended up with her in a concentration camp. Her street was passing out anti-Nazi propaganda.
supe3rnova ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 20:15:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No, she was from slovenia. Her whole family is too
HighHopes_ForHumans ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 20:52:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ahh ok. Well she sounds like an incredible women. I'm sure your proud.
iliketuurtles ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 19:02:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your grandmother was a really great person. Thanks for telling her story.
Thewonderingent1065 ยท 28 points ยท Posted at 18:46:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Make that woman a wiki page! Then people will know her.
Deesing82 ยท 37 points ยท Posted at 20:58:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
pretty sure wikipedia isn't the place to tell unsourced stories about your grandma
gaslacktus ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 00:25:00 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He can link to this thread.
Nihht ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 05:27:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And edit his post to cite Wikipedia. Perfect.
singul4r1ty ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 09:26:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Citogenesis
meathomewithmygarage ยท -5 points ยท Posted at 21:28:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
B-but my grandma changed WWII for the greater good!!
Cerulean_Shades ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:55:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This story brought tears to my eyes.
Flight714 ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 17:21:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think you mean butterfly effect: At any rate, the term butterfly affect would refer to a person taking on the behaviour of a butterfly.
hopefulbagon ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 16:31:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What kind of Intel did she have?
Uhu_ThatsMyShit ยท 23 points ยท Posted at 16:48:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
at least the basic 'who made these flyers' I'd guess
supe3rnova ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 17:10:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Mostly that and where the local resistant is based. Like I said small at first but could be bigger later on
Fastriedis ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 20:48:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
quad core i7. Way ahead of its time.
hopefulbagon ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:51:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ah I see, good thing she didn't give up that kind of technology to the nazis
citrus_mystic ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:22:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Do you happen to know which documentary or camp?
supe3rnova ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:35:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sadly no. It was slovenian documentary and can't remeber the name. Could be something lie ''Slovenians during world war 2''
heyanuntakenusername ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:28:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your grandma's a badass
epraider ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:09:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The most extreme circumstances are when you truly see the kind of person someone is, and your grandmother was truly a selfless and caring person. That's incredible.
Viperbunny ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:33:17 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It sounds like she absolutely made a difference.
DUMPAH_CHUCKER_69 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:08:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I wish I could have the peace of Apple.
Lola_got_a_Lazerface ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:43:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
effect
momomotorboat ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:26:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Take my upvote while I put away these chopped onions.
otakugrey ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:05:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your grandmother is amazing.
CollegeStudent2014 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:22:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Piece* of apple
kamlnskl ยท 43 points ยท Posted at 17:46:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Stanislav Petrov: His job was to report missile launches from the United States. Well one day in 1983, he got reports of launches from the United States. He decided not to report the launches because he thought they were a false alarm. Well, he was right. If he reported the launch to his superiors, Armageddon would have gone down that day. Tldr: Russian guy didn't report a false alarm, saving the world
Lankshire ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 23:13:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Whats scary about this is how many times this has probably happened in history. Some earth-shattering thing is always about to happen and some poor, underpaid son-of-a-bitch steps in and saves the world.
ForsakenForSale ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 23:27:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The fact that we haven't exterminated ourselves by now does make me think of divine intervention when we need it the most. Though I'm pretty sure He's getting tired of our shit.
61185 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 17:56:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Same thing as Vasili Arkaphov.
therealocshoes ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:08:00 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That was the guy in the sub, right?
61185 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 12:04:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yep the one who refused to give his key to launch the nuclear missiles.
therealocshoes ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:40:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Crazy how many times global nuclear war has potentially been averted.
Yuli-Ban ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:21:24 on February 1, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's almost like we're not supposed to die or something...
lowertechnology ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 06:32:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Feels like half this thread is Russians almost kiling everyone.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:06:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sounds like a stressful job! I'm glad he didn't lose his cool. I probably would have lost mine if I were him :O
edwardshinyskin ยท 421 points ยท Posted at 13:51:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
ฮคhe unknown fellow who left a gate unำocked in Constantinople in 1453. Talk ะฐbout altering history. That was the truะต end of the roman empire after ะฐll.
Uhu_ThatsMyShit ยท 49 points ยท Posted at 16:52:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
care to elaborate?
SoGodDangTired ยท 88 points ยท Posted at 17:21:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't remember the full story, but iirc the Turks are trying to overtake Constantinople but couldn't siege the walls. Then someone left a gate unlocked, giving then entrance to invade the city with the city unaware.
Google it, it's pretty interesting.
MetagamingAtLast ยท 118 points ยท Posted at 17:33:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The sacking of Rome in 410 by the Visigoths had a traitor open a gate for the invaders, not the siege of Constantinople in 1453 bythe Ottomans.
xeothought ยท 81 points ยท Posted at 19:18:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, the Ottomans brought giant cannons and pummeled the walls of Constantinople for weeks with their giant Dardanelles Guns - aka Great Turkish Bombards. But it was so slow in loading, that the Byzantines could repair the walls... until the Ottomans concentrated on one part of the wall and unleashed utter hell.
These walls Aka the Theodosian Walls were some of the strongest fortifications in the world. But even they slowly were reduced to rubble.
The Byzantine Emperor at the time Constantine XI Palaiologos had his last words recorded as
"The city is fallen and I am still alive."
subsequently, he took off his royal clothing and joined his soldiers in their last stand. Apparently his body was not officially found.
Dan Carlin, in his Hardcore History podcast, mentioned that one story of his death had Constantine fighting until the very moment the Ottoman army breached the walls... And then as they began marching between the walls, Constantine was said to have jumped from the height of the remaining wall into the midst of the invading forces with his sword unsheathed, and died.
This is of course not a definite story... but man, it is just about as epic as it's possible to get.
cocaine_face ยท 51 points ยท Posted at 20:25:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
I've always wanted them to make a movie about the siege of Constantinople.
Such a cool setup - you've got:
Mehmet II, who was a firecracker himself (declared himself the Roman Emperor, had plans to invade Italy and take Rome itself to demonstrate that claim later on in life)
Constantine XI, who was dutiful and tried to do whatever the hell he could do to save the last remaining bastion of the Roman Empire, the last emperor of a 2000 year old empire who says badass last words and goes into a suicidal assault when his empire falls. If I remember correctly he also gave a badass speech about how they were defending the last place the Roman Empire still stood on Earth, as well as all of Christianity (it was thought that if Constantinople fell, so would the rest of Europe - and honestly, a good chunk of it DID fall. The Turks got to Vienna by 1689, about 240 years after this all happens).
A bunch of Venetians and other western Christians that decided to stay to protect an oriental version of their religion (technically the Romans had switched to a version of Catholicism, in desperation about a decade before, but nobody really believed in it on either side)
The biggest cannon on earth at the time - initially offered to the Romans, but they couldn't afford it, so it went to the Sultan.
And gigantic city walls around the formerly largest and richest city on Earth, which had never been breached since they were built 1,000 years beforehand. The Turks rallied against them for weeks, and nearly gave up, but decided to make a final push, which was ultimately successful.
Not to mention a bunch of family drama (Mehmet wanted Constantine to retire and rule some lands in southern Greece, peacefully, and he had a brother down there who had to deal with a bunch of drama), and the fact that they're all related (but have a different religion and speak a different language) because Byzantine princesses had been marrying Sultans for centuries.
And then the last recorded heir of the family ended up as a bodyguard for the Pope.
It's basically a fantasy story, but it happened in real life.
LavaSlime301 ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 22:36:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It should be noted that the siege of Vienna failed.
(Thanks to mostly my country. National Pride intensifies)
cocaine_face ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 22:42:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I thought that was clear from the lack of Turkish that we are speaking.
LavaSlime301 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 06:48:27 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm just saying because /u/cocaine_face made it sound like they did
irishking44 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:51:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
On a similar note, a book like The Religion or Ironfire which are both fictionalized accounts of the siege of Malta, a similar siege would be excellent to see adapted
JQuilty ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:34:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't know why you'd call Greek Orthodoxy an oriental version of Christianity. Christianity started in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Mehmet also didn't need to take Rome to make a claim on being Roman Emperor -- Constantinople had been the capital for nearly 1000 years at that point. To this day, the Patriarch of Constantinople is styled as "of Constantinople, the New Rome".
cocaine_face ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 21:25:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
I was simplifying a little bit because most people don't know the whole history of the Roman/Eastern Roman Empire. I'll clarify.
Agreed, but to the Latins at the time, and honestly I'd say most of Reddit's audience (which I assume is based primarily in western Europe or lands colonized by western Europeans - essentially the Latins of the modern day - hell, look at the alphabet we're using), Eastern Orthodoxy has different rules, structures and appearances than western Christianity (Catholicism and Protestantism) do. Granted, some of the non-mainline Protestant versions of Christianity got pretty crazy too, but that didn't even start to happen until about 70 years after this event.
No, not at all. In fact he made the claim that he was Roman Emperor immediately upon taking Constantinople, IIRC, and I THINK (not 100% sure of this), the title was kept by his heirs until the 1920s, when the Ottoman Empire was disbanded. However Mehmet, and several others throughout history (I'm looking at you, Justinian) have felt that styling yourself with the title Roman Emperor is best paired with holding both old Rome and New Rome (Constantinople). New Rome is absolutely the capital and all that's required. But old Rome is where the shindig started. It's a huge prestige thing.
And in a world where people felt that God literally determined the events of their lives, it's a clear indication to the rest of the world that you are the rightful Roman Emperor. And Mehmet took the principle of Translatiio Imperii (I might be butchering this) seriously. Look at how he dealt with appointing the Patriarch. He took that shit seriously as one of his job duties - even though he was a Muslim.
xeothought ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:44:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I couldn't agree with you more.
I'm picturing Russell Crowe as Constantine .... It's definitely because of Gladiator, but damn man. I would love a well made epic of this story.
It might even be one of those stories where they have to dial it down because people won't believe things. If you had to, you could even do a Wim Wenders esque thing with having angels watching the fall of Rome if you really need to add things to it. But you don't need it... This story is just made for a grand movie.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:55:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
actually Constantinopole was sacked a couple of times by "crusaders"
cocaine_face ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:00:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Once, in 1204, but that was more of a coup, not a military conquest.
PubliusPontifex ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:00:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
When I think of the siege of Constantinople, I just picture Gondor in Return of the King... but with a sadder ending :(
FlyingDutchDude ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 08:07:35 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Theres a movie about that. Its called Fetih 1453
cocaine_face ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 08:48:12 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Thank you! I'll check it out.
EDIT: It appears a little pro-Turkish, but I'm guessing just about any film that came out about the topic would either be pro-Greek or pro-Turk.
[deleted] ยท 28 points ยท Posted at 19:39:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I mean, maybe because it didn't have a head?
solepsis ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:42:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Goosebumps every time
irishking44 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:47:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Which hardcore history episode was that?
xeothought ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:01:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's a very good question. It could have been Thor's Angels ... BUT as you see right now his website is completely down.
...a few days ago he posted on Twitter that the site was having problems, so I can only assume it was taken down to fix them faster.
I couldn't find a concise list of his episodes anywhere else ... so that's my current guess... but I really don't know and can't currently find out.
Joetato ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:40:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I've read that Constantine XI actually hung himself rather than be captured, but I don't know if it's true.
SoGodDangTired ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 17:37:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I didn't mean open by a traitor, I believe It was an accident. But I'm also probably misremembering, thanks for the info.
shongage ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 19:41:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Could have been a time traveler.
supersheep8 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:32:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
iirc the 1453 siege was decided by ottoman cannons and navies.
drfeelokay ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:16:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think the Crusader sack of Constantinople involved some kind of treachery like that.
As far as unlocked gates fucking someone's whole shit up, I'd go with the Khitans unlocking a section of the Great Wall and letting Ghengis Khan into Northern China.
JQuilty ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:30:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They used a cannon to knock down the Theodosian walls that were falling apart. Even if this person had done that, the Romans had already lost.
parav0x ยท 31 points ยท Posted at 17:33:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
When the Ottomans besieged the Byzantine (
WesternEastern Roman) Empire's capital of Constantinople, the Ottoman army managed to breach the city walls via a gate that had been accidentally left open. Now, this city's defenses were legendary - it had withstood decade upon decade of sieges from nearly every marauding army that Eurasia had to offer.But this time was different. Because of someone's careless actions, yet another long, drawn-out siege was interrupted by an incursion of Ottoman troops who basically walked right in. The panic of seeing this breach caused the city's defenses to rout and the city quickly fell.
This was basically the final, unexpected fall of the Roman Empire, an empire that had lasted for 1,500 years. It dealt a terrible blow for Christianity and heralded the rise of Islam in the region, and arguably thrust the world from the Middle Ages into the modern age.
Edit: Can't read a compass.
GavinZac ยท 17 points ยท Posted at 19:01:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
One history of it I've read says that the Roman Emperor, Constantine XI, was attending the first and last recombined Catholic/Orthodox mass in the Hagia Sofia, the impending doom having mended the schism briefly. He believed the city must not fall to Muslims, or all of Europe would. He hated his situation, he hated the idea of being the last name on a long list when none of it was really his fault.
The Turks offered him a small kingdom outside the city if he would surrender; he refused, saying he had no authority to not be the emperor. He swore he would die before the city surrendered to them. His decision to make amends with Catholicism may have created traitors inside the walls; some said they'd rather be ruled by turbans than mitres; the Latins had of course sacked the city themselves. Related or not, before the mass was finished, the Turks got in.
He cried, "the city has fallen, yet I live!", stripped himself of his emperor's garb and donned common armour and a helmet. Joining his soldiers as an ordinary man, a body no different from those piled up, no-one actually saw him die; the Turks had to dress up a decapitated body to parade it as a trophy. A little mythology arose that he was rescued from the battle by an angel and turned to marble, buried beneath the gate, and will rise again to take the city back for the Greeks.
We can't exactly call a guy who is remembered by Greek nationalists to this day as completely underappreciated, but I think given how romanticised and familiar the Roman Empire's history is, that more people don't know of Constantine XI is kind of odd.
Another man whose contribution to world history is underappreciated, on the opposite side of the battle, was a Hungarian engineer named Orban who built, for the Turks, canons of enormous size. With these they tore through the previously impenetrable stone walls, a symbol of medieval life wiped away in a revolution so dramatic that the machines he built mark a dividing line through European and near-Eastern history.
Das_Boot1 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:48:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'd be careful about inflating one small occurrence to the level of a world-altering event. It's a common trap that people fall into when studying history
Joetato ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:51:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I wouldn't call it unexpected. The night before Constantinople fell, people supposedly saw mysterious lights around the Hagia Sophia. They took this as a spirit leaving and thought God had withdrawn his favor because the city was about to fall.
Then again, that story could have been made up post-sacking and nothing like that ever happened.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 17:50:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Could you explain that theory?
i_karamazov ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 19:10:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The above statement about Columbus and the new world is absolutely true and a big reason why the fall of Constantinople is seen as a turning point. Also, many scholars from the city fled and ended up in Italy, hastening the Renaissance.
dzm2458 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:25:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
i'd say the moops getting driven out of the iberian peninsula was larger in the context of columbus, this is where the funds for his expedition were derived from
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:55:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
-14k- ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:21:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
woops!
labalag ยท 23 points ยท Posted at 17:57:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Constantinople was a big hub in the East-West trade. The Ottomans started levying more and more tolls so the Portuguese went around Africa to find India and to bypass the Ottomans. Then one Columbus had the bright idea to sail west. The rest is as we call it history.
crop028 ยท -4 points ยท Posted at 19:25:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So this gate being left open led to the slave trade and racial genocide? Great....
cocaine_face ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 20:46:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Growing pains are hard. The world was not a better place before Columbus, and then he strolled around and suddenly magically made it worse.
Slavery (or similar economic bondage - serfdom, indentured servitude) and genocide have been the rule, rather than the exception through most of history.
Every race, every creed, every city, and every nation.
I'm not going to say bad things didn't happen - they absolutely did. But the economy that flourished with the ocean-going ships of the 15th and 16th centuries led to a growing capitalist economy, an educated class, higher math, and the steam engine.
The steam engine being the ancestor to most of the creature comforts we have today (including ample food), and productivity not being directly tied to how many men you can force to do something at a given time.
Considering we went from starvation and early death basically being a way of life (for 200,000, or 3.9 billion years, depending on how you want to calculate it) to ample food for most people within 300-400 years after this event, yeah, it was a pretty big deal.
LexaBinsr ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:13:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Why does the west LOVE to put an emphasis on Columbus when all he did was to find a piece of land that wasn't even what he thought (India)? He wasn't a genius like Tesla or Einstein or the fucking Newton; he just sailed in a boat until the boat stopped sailing.
He did absolutely nothing special and whatever he did anyone else could've done it with no skill involved.
Wolfbeckett ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 22:26:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Why do people put such an emphasis on Grog's stupid spear invention? All he did was put a sharp piece of rock on the end of a stick, that's not that special, anyone else could've done it with no skill involved.
Yeah, anyone else with a boat could have done it. But nobody else did.
Columbus is overrated in the sense that he's usually the first and sometimes only naval explorer to enter the conversation but the larger movement that he was a part of where European nations struck out across the oceans to find new lands and new routes to old lands completely changed the world in so many obvious ways I can't believe I even have to type this.
PlayMp1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:27:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Regardless of whether he was skilled or special, he was the one to do it.
cocaine_face ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:43:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well he was kindof a shitty person, but no, he really didn't do anything particularly revolutionary except be wrong in a very major way.
Yanto5 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:04:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
nah, that was already happening. you just read a story about a city being slaughtered, and likely enslaved. this city was the last of an empire that had spent the last couple of millennium enslaving large groups of people.
crop028 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:22:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't think the Romans were great people. I just don't think a near dead empire would do much harm, and massacring Native Americans is bad.
therealocshoes ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:14:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
...and untold advancements in science and industry which have done far more to enhance humanity than anything before it. I'm not going to pretend that slaves and racial destruction are a good thing, because they're not, and I also think your entire premise is utterly ridiculous (no, I don't think unlocking one gate is entirely responsible for the state of everything that followed it and the world today) but if you're going to attribute all the evil to it you have to attribute the good as well.
labalag ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:45:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not really. The Portuguese we're already trying since the late 14th century and had discovered south-Africa in 1488-ish. The slave trade and racial genocide would've happened irregardless.
crop028 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:01:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The slave trade wouldn't have been nearly as powerful without the new world plantations.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:33:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'd say that the discovery of a few new continents made it worthwhile. The inhabitants lost their land through right of conquest, so there's no sense in spilling tears over them.
crop028 ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 20:43:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So what happens in conquests is people have to submit to their new rulers. What happened in these conquests is everyone was massacred, or died of horrible disease. These aren't normal conquests, maybe if the natives were treated in a somewhat civil way I'd be fine with the discovery.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:19:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
but that's inaccurate. as a conqueror comes in, there is absolutely nothing that said they had to treat people humanely. that's quite literally what conquering a people is - the conqueror decides what to do with their new subjects. Wars are not something that is new, i'm sorry that you've got such a naive worldview as to believe that the Geneva convention existed prior to the 1800s, or that you think that the victors & conquerors would, for one moment, be concerned about people they viewed as beneath them.
at any rate, you're mostly just pissed at disease, which would have happened anyway.
crop028 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:22:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Do you have to be an asshole and call me naive? I know conquerors can do whatever the fuck they want, but they were generally kinder than the conquerors of the new world.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:29:35 on January 18, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I apologize for calling you naive, it was rude.
The conquerors of the new world did it exactly the same way that the conquerors of any other place did. The native americans largely died out due to disease, and a few centuries after the fact, we had some mass genocides such as the trail of tears.
Things like this largely happened because the people of the time did not view them as fully human, it's a very dangerous situation to use modern morality to judge the people of the past. There were a lot of things that were & are different, and that should be taken into consideration.
crop028 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:34:08 on January 18, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, I understand that the discovery of the new world was inevitable, I just wish that Europeans had a bit more time to become get some morals before it was discovered. The late 18th century would be ideal, as enough people would probably be non-racist to avoid any genocide, but just any time at least century later would be good.
dorekk ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:14:46 on January 19, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As droppingknowledge2 said, about 90% of the population of Native (North) Americans were killed accidentally, due to disease. Even if Europeans had discovered the Americas 300 years later (which is incredibly unlikely), that still would have happened.
crop028 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:15:57 on January 19, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
By then they may have been able to cure diseases more effectively. The Chinese were already leaning how to build immunity to smallpox, without the new world the West would have paid more attention to China.
crop028 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:16:08 on January 19, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
By then they may have been able to cure diseases more effectively. The Chinese were already leaning how to build immunity to smallpox, without the new world the West would have paid more attention to China.
jseego ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:47:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Don't you mean Eastern Roman?
parav0x ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:49:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Whoops, yeah I messed up. Good save!
[deleted] ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 17:49:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Are you a Turk? Then it's none of your business.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 18:46:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nooobody's business but the Tuuurks!
fuggahmo_mofuhgga ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:11:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
link
fuggahmo_mofuhgga ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:12:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
link
Call_erv_duty ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 18:16:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There was a small gate that was unlocked that the Ottoman took over. Upon seeing the Turkish flags the defenders freaked out, driving the final nail in the coffin of the city's defense.
But several other events led to the city being conquered, not just one unlocked gate.
SinibusUSG ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:31:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Eh, by that point, Constantinople was basically a political backwater. The Byzantine Empire didn't have much to show for itself after Isaac Angelos fucked everything up.
Joetato ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:55:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
By 1453, the Byzantine "Empire" consisted of Contantinople itself and a few miles outside the city. There wasn't much left of it at all.
Pacblu202 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:00:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What did that do?
Yanto5 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:05:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
oh you know, just the fall of a 1500 year old empire, the loss of a holy see and the loss of a major trade route for much of Europe. nothing major.
Pacblu202 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:56:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You don't have to be an ass about it. I didn't know how leaving a gate open resulted in the fall and I wanted to know more.
Yanto5 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:12:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
sorry.
The gate was left open, allowing a group of ottomans into the city. they flew their flags from the gatehouse, the happened just after the general of a large section of the Roman troops had been wounded and had retreated from the walls. The caused panic among the Roman, Genoese and Venetian defenders, who began to scatter, the Romans running for the city, the Venetians for their ships and the Genoese had nowhere to run, many of them committed suicide by jumping from the walls.
Then the Romans made a last stand, with the emperor apparently joining them dressed as a common soldier. he was probably killed, although reports vary.
at the end of this all, this meant that the Bosporus straights between the Mediterranean and the black sea, as well as most of the Mediterranean now belonged to the Islamic ottomans, making trade difficult for the Christian European nations, forcing them to sail round Africa for their trade routes. Constantinople/Byzantium was the site of a holy see for eastern orthodoxy, and the only remaining holy see outside of Vatican.
again sorry for being rude.
Pacblu202 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:19:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
All good. Thanks for the info though!
LexaBinsr ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:02:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah this guy was REALLY underappreciated.
We really need to build a monument to him for all the rapes and murders he caused.
SolidThoriumPyroshar ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:38:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They were already on their way out at that point, he didn't really change much
formgry ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:06:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You shouldnt pretend it wouldnt have fallen otherwise.
PRMan99 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:38:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also. David's troops seized Jerusalem by climbing up through the caves that provided spring water to the palace. They literally started their siege by killing the current king FIRST.
LexaBinsr ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:59:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"Underappreciated".. fuck off. Ottoman's were the bigger evil.
How was leaving a gate open and leading to a massacre of an empire an "underappreciated" thing?
LavaSlime301 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:32:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm not sure if this should be appreciated.
Medium_Well_Soyuz_1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:33:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I mean, sure that one event led to the city's quick fall, but the Byzantines were outmatched by that point anyway. It was only a matter of time
azlef900 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:50:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ottoman cannons can't melt Byzantine walls. 1493 was an inside job.
twersx ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:21:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Even if a gate was left unlocked/opened it wouldn't have made a huge difference. The Roman Empire was fucked at that point, they weren't going to get any help from the rest of the Christian nations on account of the spanking they all got 9 years prior.
Auctoritate ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:29:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think his name was Roggvir.
NinjaDude5186 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:25:58 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's not like it would have lasted much beyond that anyway. They had such a small amount of land left and nobody intended to send aid.
dbsndust ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:57:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
More like that dumbass Crusader who decided he wanted to sack Constantinople thus leading to the decline and eventual downfall of the Byzantine empire
-eDgAR- ยท 2958 points ยท Posted at 14:03:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
On July 19, 1969, John Fairfax became the first person to row solo across an ocean. His fame was short-lived, though, as the very next day humans landed on the Moon for the first time.
Saw this on /r/HeresAFunFact a couple of months ago and it's stuck with me.
[deleted] ยท 1657 points ยท Posted at 15:24:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Is it really under appreciated if nobody would have cared either way?
Uhu_ThatsMyShit ยท 142 points ยท Posted at 16:44:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
yeah, I feel like we care just the right amount about this
cakeisgreat ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:15:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What, not at all? It's an amazing feat. Way more impressive than the first transatlantic flight but people know and care about that.
Uhu_ThatsMyShit ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 22:40:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
For me, the difference is what the act represents. One is physical endurance, the other the pinnacle of human ingenuity and engineering at that time.
-eDgAR- ยท 607 points ยท Posted at 15:36:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think people would've cared then, that's a pretty fucking amazing feat. I probably couldn't row across a river, let alone an entire ocean.
Ferniff ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 19:44:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sure it's an amazing feat, but what did we as people benefit from that? He discovered that it was tough, wet and something people probably shouldn't do. The other guys left the planet and set foot on a fucking moon.
dorekk ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 02:04:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As others have mentioned in this thread, people who have achieved other somewhat meaningless things are still remembered, like the first person to make a trans-Atlantic flight.
Ferniff ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:37:38 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's an amazing thing to do, but I wouldn't say that makes him "the most under apprreciated person in history"
yaffle53 ยท 292 points ยท Posted at 15:50:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
It's an amazing feat but not one that has changed the world for the better in any way.
Edit: All those people saying "yes, but how did landing on the moon change the world for better?" I never said it did.
-eDgAR- ยท 333 points ยท Posted at 15:54:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The thread isn't asking specifically for people that changed the world for the better, just people that are underappreciated.
yaffle53 ยท 147 points ยท Posted at 16:08:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes, but when we're talking about those people who are the most underappreciated in history someone who was good at rowing would probably come pretty far down the list.
GrollTheLicker ยท 20 points ยท Posted at 17:41:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
REALLY REALLY good at rowiing.
[deleted] ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 18:10:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
really, really, ridiculously good at rowing
GrollTheLicker ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 18:19:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Row Row Row your boat is about that guy
drafterman ยท 19 points ยท Posted at 17:20:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So... you're saying he's on the list, then...
mc_kitfox ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:29:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You are TECHNICALLY correct.
The best kind of correct.
riko58 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 20:39:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Do...do you know how big an ocean is?
Koan_Industries ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:24:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't think you understand the gravitas of rowing across an entire ocean. It isn't even just the act of travelling over an incredibly large distance, but oceans are known to swallow entire ships - rowing across 20 foot waves for thousands of miles with very little in the way of direction is a pretty amazing feat.
nsto ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:11:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I understand it. That still doesn't make him the most under appreciated person in history.
Koan_Industries ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:20:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah I understand that, but I believe that the comment made it seem like his accomplishment was not impressive.
SulliverVittles ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:19:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As opposed to the people who invented vaccines or stuff, whom we are very appreciative of.
Acidwits ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:42:29 on January 18, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
John Fairfax wishes to tell you to shove it.
GrinningManiac ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 18:36:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You sound like you'd be fun to hang out with.
Beardy_Will ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:30:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
But don't you agree with him?
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 18:42:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah but it's not like we're making some super formal list. And "under appreciated" is somewhat vague - people could've appreciated his feat more than they did, so he's underappreciated. Doesn't necessarily have to change the world.
mrt90 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:01:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well using "recognize the full worth of" as a definition... I'd say the "worth" in his feat is close to nil? I guess it helped him stay in shape? Maybe gave some journalists some article content?
Hardly see how it's under-appreciated considering people are talking about it on the internet 50+ years later.
bandalooper ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 18:31:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes...clearly no one at all cares about people who are athletes, actors, musicians or just attractive people.
kingofvodka ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:08:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yet noone here is saying their hot neighbour who can play the flute super well is underappreciated.
bandalooper ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:30:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Who's noone?
kingofvodka ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:05:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You know you have no argument when you start focusing on spelling errors.
bandalooper ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:06:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You ought to know you're a little full of yourself when you make a comment like that and think it's some grand argument.
kingofvodka ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:07:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Said the poop face
bassinastor ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 20:02:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
But what about rowing across the ocean deserves appreciation? I feel like I appreciate this guy the perfect amount. Now that guy who created 8 of the main 14 vaccinations is most definitely under appreciated. Imagine all the lives he's saved and yet has almost no recognition
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:35:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well I don't appreciate and don't think he deserves much appreciation for that feat. Congratulations, of course. If he had done something that changed the world for the better I would appreciate that.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:39:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
Parade_Precipitation ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:52:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
stop slurping that hate-r-ade.
seeing a fellow human push himself to crazy limits is worthy of respect.
the sistine chapel mural aint made existence any easier but its still a wonder of human work
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:06:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
Parade_Precipitation ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:28:33 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
oh yay...semantics...
Palafacemaim ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 16:07:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I Think he is appreciated plenty
pics-or-didnt-happen ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:54:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No, the MOST underappreciated person in HISTORY.
You picked a dude who set a rowing record.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:12:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He holds the historical record for the largerst amout of underappreciated rowing in history EDIT: ever!
nsto ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:14:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No, it's asking for the MOST appreciated person in HISTORY.
A guy who rowed across the ocean obviously doesn't deserve that title over someone who saved countless lives
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:36:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm not sure why so many of you are treating this like it's a competition.
nsto ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:38:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nobody is treating it like a competition, they're calling out stupid answers to a specific question.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:46:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I liked the rowing answer. Certainly someone I've never heard of, which is my whole reason for clicking on the thread.
nsto ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:50:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm glad you learned something, you are an idiot if you think a rower is the most unappreciated person in history though.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:53:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I never said he was. Christ, there you go turning it into a competition again. I just think it's a neat fact. Same as the guy who invented all those vaccines. I'm just here to kill time and be entertained. I mean, are you really going to go to bed tonight and say a little prayer for Maurice Hilleman to be more appreciated in the future? Of course not. There's only one idiot here.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:00:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You look like a tremendous retard right now. It's time to give it a rest
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:09:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
How am I a retard? I'm not the one coming in here and insulting people. Christ, this is why I avoid default subs. It's filled with 12 year olds trying to be edgy while sitting behind a keyboard. I like reading all the answers to the original question. I mean, aren't we here to learn about people we probably didn't previously know of?
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:55:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[removed]
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:58:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[removed]
LNMagic ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 21:28:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Landing on the moon changed the world for the better, yes - Unequivocally and indirectly so. Think of all the technologies developed in order to make that happen.
Think about food storage, for example. Yes, canning had existed for centuries, but it wasn't very lightweight. Every pound mattered, so they would have had to spend thousands of dollars just to develop the technology to send enough food to space for the astronauts to survive.
[deleted] ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 22:33:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
velcro. duh.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:58:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
yaffle53 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:07:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I also never said it didn't. I never mentioned anything about the moon landings, I was talking about rowing across the ocean.
MarlinMr ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:15:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Exactly. Here in Norway we have some famous eksploreres that everyone knows. Amundsen, Nansen and Heyerdahl. They are not really famous because of the expeditions they did, but rather because they fronted Norway as a nation to the rest of the world. Back then we were a poor fishing and farming nation, one of the poorest in Europe, so it was a big deal. Fairfax would not really show the world anything about the British Empire, the world already knew of it.
DCJ3 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:33:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The 'moon shot' drove science, engineering, and technology in an absolutely enormous way. It was (and still is) an inspiration for everyone. It changed everything. Of course the moon landing made things better on Earth!
Dynamaxion ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:45:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Have the Moon landings? Genuine question.
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 18:15:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I believe it had some implications on the cultural tone of the Cold War, which I'm not versed enough to elaborate on. See: Space Race
Oneharryson ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:53:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The technology developed in the pursuit of a manned moon mission gave rise to so many advances. Cant quote anything of the top of my head but its amazing the things we use everyday that NASA developed during the space race. Not to mention the generation of scientist that the moon missions inspired.
The_Dr_B0B ยท -3 points ยท Posted at 17:39:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Going to the moon didn't do much either. Much if not all of what the astronauts can do can be done through robots and rovers. Sending humans is much more expensive and ineffective.
But it's not about how it progresses the world. It's about the feat, the inspiration, the achievement of going beyond our limits. Yes, going to the moon dwarves crossing an ocean solo. But this is one man we are talking about, not a team of thousands of people. I think it is quite impressive and inspiring, and not something to dismiss.
hokie_high ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:40:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Apples and oranges. I can say with confidence exactly zero of the people involved with the moon landing could row across an ocean. They have nothing to do with each other and it's pointless to compare them.
The_Dr_B0B ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:54:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Maybe that's why I didn't compare them.
the13bangbang ยท -3 points ยท Posted at 18:03:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
To be fair, when we first landed on the moon, it didn't change the world either. So we beat the Soviets to the moon, big deal. There is no practical use for it. It's only to say we did it. The ocean rowing guy did it just to say he did it. The only difference is that landing on the moon is a lot cooler and was a way more intricate process.
AuNanoMan ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:14:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We solved a lot of new problems and developed a lot of new technology just to get the astronauts to the moon. Landing on the moon may not have changed much, but getting them there certainly did.
the13bangbang ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 23:36:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We solved the problems of getting them to the moon. None of this changed the world. Now we only conduct low orbit missions practically i.e. ISS science expirements, satellites, etc. This would have been done with or without going to the moon. It is definitely an amazing feat and especially at the time, but it was only a publicity stunt. I guess it did help test the range for long range communications and video feed.
AuNanoMan ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:58:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We probably would have solved the same problems later on but that doesn't chase the fact that with the shirt timeline, they made discoveries much earlier. To think that sending people in what amounts to a tinfoil cannon to the moon as nothing more than a publicity stunt is insulting to those men and the people that worked their ass off to get them there.
the13bangbang ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 04:19:28 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Did I not say that an amazing feat? I definitely did, but it was absolutely a publicity stunt. We just wanted to go to the moon before the Soviets. That's it. They didn't shorten things either. They were already working on advancing our satellites. They were already working on low orbit missions. These have provided actual practical use. The Apollo program's mission and equipment was made to do nothing more than get people to the moon. I still thinks it's awesome that we said we are going to the moon and we are gonna do it before 1970. That is some serious American might and ingenuity.
AnEpiphanyTooLate ยท -3 points ยท Posted at 19:00:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
To be fair, you could argue the same for the moon landing.
cavilier210 ยท -3 points ยท Posted at 19:34:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What was changed for the better from landing on the moon? It was basically and epeen contest between the US and Russia.
Parade_Precipitation ยท -3 points ยท Posted at 19:47:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
so how has the moon landing made your life better?
yaffle53 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:52:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't think it has. But then I never said it had.
Throwawayfabric247 ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 15:56:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I kayak a lot and when I get a mile or 2 from shore I always question myself because of wind and currents. An ocean.. damn
Dubanx ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:28:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
To be fair, when people set these types of records they generally have supporting ships with them in case something does happen.
AssumeTheFetal ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:00:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Are there any creek sized oceans?
fuggahmo_mofuhgga ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:08:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My thoughts exactly. There's people who get stranded in the middle of the ocean for months and sometimes over a year just drifting along until they hit a rock. This guy is proactive.
PacoTaco321 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:51:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You could probably row across a river if you stopped printing karma.
MartMillz ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:09:29 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's a fucking death wish. The ocean scares the fuck out of me on a cruise liner, alone on a rowboat I would literally die of anxiety. The ocean is just so endless when you're on it and so dark at night.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:49:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It is amazing. So is someone cycling cross country. I don't care though.
bonjeebe ยท 24 points ยท Posted at 15:48:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You're an idiot, who wouldn't care about a guy rowing across an ocean? That shit's crazy
[deleted] ยท 29 points ยท Posted at 16:06:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't care. I guess it's a great personal achievement for himself, but totally inconsequential beyond that.
ASK_IF_IM_PENGUIN ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 18:48:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not really. Its pushing human boundaries, a bit like travelling to space. He was the first person to do it - that's really fucking cool.
Consanguineously ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:40:01 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You mean just like the moon landing was inconsequential and a personal feat?
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:06:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
Boro84 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 17:14:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
u/bonjeebe what are you related to the rowing guy? not one of these people has said they think they can do it, or that it isn't impressive, it is however, COMPLETELY INCONSEQUENTIAL. How can you even argue otherwise?
bonjeebe ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:28:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Lol no relation. It's simply an easy thing to appreciate. You all sound like a gaggle of hens, trying to argue the opposite. If you can't appreciate that somebody rowed across the ocean, you're lying
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 17:15:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Does it though? I don't have to be accomplished at all to not give a fuck about how someone else chooses to spend their time.
shatkarma ยท 52 points ยท Posted at 16:10:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I wouldn't. It's a pretty pointless feat, and to imply he's even somewhat close to being the most under appreciated person in history is ridiculous.
[deleted] ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 18:35:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
By that logic any feat of athleticism, no matter how amazing is pointless. Sports don't have any meaning or "point" really but they gain meaning in the billions of people who love and engage in them every day. I'm not saying this man is the most under appreciated person in history but he still completed an incredible feat of endeavour and deserves recognition and admiration for it. Don't be so miserly
tall_comet ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:00:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Pretty much sums it up for me.
wwoodhur ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:10:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well that's generally what people who aren't into sports think. It's not particularly original or edgy.
[deleted] ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 12:24:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jesus, I can smell your neckbeard through the fucking screen.
riko58 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:39:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Definitely not the MOST underappreciated, but I'd say he is underappreciated, as rowing across an ocean is harder than beingan astronaut, IMO, and look at the fame they get.
TheoHooke ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:47:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dude, do you know how hard it is to row? That thing looked like it weighs a lot. It probably would have been faster and easier to walk the same distance, as well as producing a significantly lesser risk of drowning on the way there.
shatkarma ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 16:56:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I know how hard it is, I just don't care more than a two second thought of "that's pretty cool". His act was nothing more than a personal achievement.
bonjeebe ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 17:01:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Maybe one day, if you try your hardest, you can achieve something too. It still won't be as cool as rowing a boat across a fucking ocean though
shatkarma ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 17:03:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If I help an old woman across the street, I've already helped more people than rowing a boat across an ocean ever will.
bonjeebe ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 17:10:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Did you read the question? It's not about a person doing the most good. Plus, everyone has helped a woman cross the street. Most people haven't, and couldn't, row across the ocean. It's an easy thing to appreciate
Boro84 ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 17:13:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
its a fine thing to appreciate, its not something to mention in the same day even as talking about people like the guy who saved 6000 jews or the guy who created 7 vaccines
bonjeebe ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:27:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Agreed
Boro84 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 17:12:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He's not arguing the coolness factor or how hard it is or how impressive it is, he's simply saying its NOWHERE near even the middle of the list for people who are the MOST underappreciated in HISTORY
Indecisive_Bastard ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:16:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You're getting real hostile over them realizing that his feat isn't something that makes him "most under appreciated person in history". Do you even realize what you're trying to defend? Also someone's personal achievement isn't something you appreciate. You recognize it and respect it. I respect Usain Bolts crazy fast runnig feats. Do I appreciate them? No because they don't do anything for me or the world. I respect them.
Indecisive_Bastard ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 20:30:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You're real butthurt about this huh?
bonjeebe ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 20:55:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Lol "butthurt." The last resort of someone who's out of ideas. I ain't even mad bruh
The_Dr_B0B ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 17:42:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Going to the moon didn't do much either. Much if not all of what the astronauts can do can be done through robots and rovers. Sending humans is much more expensive and ineffective.
But it's not about how it progresses the world. It's about the feat, the inspiration, the achievement of going beyond our limits. Yes, going to the moon dwarves crossing an ocean solo. But this is one man we are talking about, not a team of thousands of people. I think it is quite impressive and inspiring, and not something to dismiss.
matterhorn1 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:46:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They were the first people to land on another object outside of the earth. He didn't discover anything since we've been traveling the ocean for hundreds of years in other ways, he just did something in a much more difficult way. It's like someone being the first to slither on their belly across the USA. Sure it would be a first, and it was difficult, but what was the purpose and what good did that do?
The_Dr_B0B ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 19:26:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm going to ask you. What good did it make to have humans on the moon at all? What did they do that couldn't have been done by rovers for a lot less money?
And I'll answer your question.
The purpose was to inspire thousands of people by demonstrating that a human has the ability to cross an ocean single handedly. Think about it this way, what is the purpose of the Mr. Olympia contest, Red Bull events, Olympics, FIFA, etc? How about inspiring countless people who are constantly both amazed and entertained by it, leaded to have goals in life. Or spreading values such as determination and encouraging hard work and training?
Just because you're narrow-minded and can't see the good or purpose in something it doesn't mean it's not there.
wwoodhur ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:13:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And so you honestly think this guy who rowed across an ocean could be the most underappreciated person in history? Or are you just arguing for the sake of it?
The_Dr_B0B ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:39:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm arguing against the comment I replied to:
Which I disagree with, I don't think its a pointless feat, and yea, it was a pretty under appreciated achievement.
Indecisive_Bastard ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 18:13:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We ain't fuckin talking about "dismissing" it or any of that shit. Jesus you guys are going off topic. The thread is about under APPRECIATED people. Yes it's cool that he rowed across the ocean, but why would I appreciate it? Why would he be appreciated? You recognize his feat and respect it, not really appreciate it.
The_Dr_B0B ยท -3 points ยท Posted at 19:12:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your definition of appreciating is pretty idiotic. Who do you appreciate? Your mother for giving you birth? Yes, that's a good example. That role figure that inspired you all your life? Yea, you probably appreciate them as well.
How about the guy who would inspire thousands of people by rowing a damn boat across a fucking ocean who didn't even get a single headline because of another event? Yeah, thats pretty appreciable too. So why don't you stick your half-witted opinions somewhere where they don't bother us. Thanks.
NeverBeenStung ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 15:56:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Okay, but calling him the most under-appreciated person ever is a bit much.
VincentHart ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 16:47:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
These people below me don't really have a concept of how big the world is. One day they'll get out of the house and realize what rowing across the ocean means.
matterhorn1 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:39:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, its an amazing personal feat but what good does that do for anyone else? His accomplishment is also completely pointless since we can already travel faster by sails, motors, etc... it's not like he discovered a new continent while rowing.
VincentHart ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:17:58 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I hope one day you find your limits and don't stop there just because someone else already did it better.
Chahar100 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 17:35:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
How the fuck does rowing across the ocean make him one of the most "under appreciated people in history" shut the fuck up with your dumbass self calling other people idiots for no reason.
bonjeebe ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 19:14:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Did I hurt your feelings by casually throwing around the word "idiot" when my comment was clearly in jest? Would you like a tampon or a maxipad? I never said it made him one of the most under-appreciate people ever. I said rowing across an ocean is an easy thing to appreciate, and it is. Quit crying and beef up your reading comprehension skills you fucking baby
beethibodeaux ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:13:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thank you for using the word "you're" correcty
Indecisive_Bastard ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 18:10:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Cool, but should appreciate him? Did he do any good for anyone by rowing that should be APPRECIATED? Cause that's the topic of the thread. Not "who did cool shit that people don't recognize enough?".
Edit: Also you're an idiot.
bonjeebe ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:01:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
ITT: people who can't read good
All I said was that it's crazy someone rowed across an ocean. I never said it made him one of the most under-appreciated people of all time. My professional opinion is that you should buy a book and practice reading comprehension.
Edit: You're fucking stupid. Try harder.
Keetlady ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:38:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I agree. Not like he did something to help mankind. "Hey, John, I just want you to know how appreciative I am that you rowed across the ocean! I don't know what life would be like for me if you hadn't!"
mellowmonk ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:53:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Agreed. Whether Fairfax rowed across some ocean a year earlier or later, it was all about the space race in those days.
dorekk ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:03:12 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's an astounding achievement. If it hadn't been immediately followed by the single biggest thing humanity has ever done, he'd probably be remembered by more.
hokie_high ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 21:46:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wow there's a lot of shitty comments under yours, lots of really smart sciencers here talking about how little that mattered compared to landing on the moon.
The man rowed a boat across the fucking Atlantic Ocean by himself.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:26:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He should have rowed the Sea of Tranquility.
cole199910 ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 17:16:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Rowed? Holy shit that sounds terrifying!!!
TheBrickster ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:09:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
When he finished rowing did he come back to claim the iron throne?
clownsLjokersR ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:01:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's one small step for a man...
MechanicalTurkish ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:22:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
At least he got back in time to see the moon landing.
dog_in_the_vent ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:32:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I feel like for somebody to be "under appreciated" they have to have done something that the rest of the world would have appreciated.
Not that soloing across an ocean isn't a big deal, but it doesn't help humanity or serve a purpose.
klassobanieras ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:30:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Now I'm wondering what counts as 'across' in this context... I mean, you can row 20 meters between two rocks that technically have some Pacific ocean between them. And you can progressively move your start and end points apart until you're rowing from Brazil to Russia. When does it become a crossing? Are you allowed to just row along the coastline or must your path bisect the ocean's area by some fraction?
Anosognosia ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:07:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Canary Isles to Florida was his feat. Is that enough ocean for your taste to put it more into the category of "across an ocean"?
klassobanieras ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:12:35 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yep! But I was wondering what defines ocean crossings in general, rather than questioning this one in particular.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 17:29:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
lmao i thought it was gona be His fame was short-lived, he drowned
The_Only_1 ยท 2751 points ยท Posted at 14:09:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My ex-girlfriend: Source- My ex-girfriend
Reddit-Loves-Me ยท 511 points ยท Posted at 15:05:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Reliable source. You should appreciate that she left you.
DoctorPuddingPop ยท 23 points ยท Posted at 16:05:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I appreciate it too, since now I'm underappreciating her ( อกยฐ อส อกยฐ)
D4days ยท 23 points ยท Posted at 16:58:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm appreciating under her
WhatsThatNoize ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 17:23:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Solid return on your investment, eh?
4floorsofwhores ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:33:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
no
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 22:04:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hahaha. This is REDDIT ppl. A wonderful place where we can always assume that the ex left op, and not the other way around.
Wonka_Vision ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:43:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I LEFT HER, DAMMIT!!
Cascore ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:59:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't think he can appreciate that fact enough.
kuekuatsu77 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:28:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I've seen your name around askreddit alot recently. Just wanted to let you know I love you
HolmatKingOfStorms ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:53:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Probably because he thought she was half-gir.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:29:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'll add my ex-wife onto this please.
She actually posted an article (from some other girl who felt under appreciated and made it an open letter) to her Facebook page
Kendo16 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:22:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Them bitches get checked like they all correct.
But they be wrong that's why they're called your ex.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:02:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
Hank_Gribble ยท 801 points ยท Posted at 14:07:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
R2-D2 pretty much saves everyone's asses some way in episodes 1-6.
Catsdontpaytaxes ยท 370 points ยท Posted at 15:01:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Kinda odd how large and cumbersome their robots are...almost like they were designed with internal human capacity in mind
BringTheNewAge ยท 110 points ยท Posted at 16:55:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Are you suggesting that robots in the star wars universe consume entire humans!
Catsdontpaytaxes ยท 28 points ยท Posted at 17:21:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm speculating that perhaps these "droids" run off people!
dan_144 ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 20:29:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Calm down Chris Evans.
ReasonablyBadass ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 18:46:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
HK-47 would approve.
zipzapman ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:50:18 on January 22, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sarcastic Response: "Of course I would"
edsobo ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:30:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
How else are they supposed to refuel?
nvolker ยท 64 points ยท Posted at 17:28:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
you ever see R2 plug into something to charge?
that guy's pretty much a big ol' battery on wheels.
peejster21 ยท 33 points ยท Posted at 18:41:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Only seen it once, in Empire Strikes Back, when Luke plugs him in once they set up camp on Dagobah.
bantha121 ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 20:09:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He managed to go for over an entire movie without charging.
opm881 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:44:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Doesn't he also plug in on the queens ship in Ep 1?
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:35:29 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah - I figured he was using R2 to power his stuff - I thought R2 had a nuclear reactor or something.
Spexes ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:28:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yep. In empire strikes back, Luke hooks him up to some mobile charger while they are in Degobah.
Catsdontpaytaxes ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:05:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He's definitely not an iPhone lol
RadiantSun ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:53:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Big battery = his motors have to carry his battery's weight. There is a tradeoff, and R2 is not at a good point.
karlw1 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:26:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's a lithium battery
Schnoofles ยท 21 points ยท Posted at 17:42:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Given how complex the AI programming is in the SW universe it's very jarring how bad the manufacturers are at building robots that can navigate environments and move in a natural fashion. Bipedal locomotion algorithms should be a trivial task compared to some of the feats of AI programming we see all over the place.
SamuelBeechworth ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 19:03:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Commando droids? BB-8?
Schnoofles ยท 24 points ยท Posted at 19:13:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
BB-8 works by rolling so it's pretty much impossible to screw that up. I'm thinking of units like C-3P0 which despite displaying staggeringly sophisticated AI routines can barely shuffle around like a drunk penguin trying not to shit himself. R2 units are also a joke as far as mobility goes. I know they're supposed to be older units, but there's still an anachronistic issue with the behavioral programming's capabilities and movement, although I will cut R2 some slack since you can excuse it with them having to be designed with all parts extremely compact as they're built to be used in confined environments and on tiny fighters where both shape, weight and size of the droids used are a concern.
edit: s/space/shape
SalamanderSylph ยท 34 points ยท Posted at 19:17:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
C3-PO was built by a 9 year old
msthe_student ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 19:22:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Except you see he's made of old parts, there are other droids of the same type
FUCKING_HATE_REDDIT ยท 15 points ยท Posted at 19:42:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The joints would be partially broken, hindering his mobility and forcing him to "learn" to walk in the "penguin shitting himself" fashion.
msthe_student ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:46:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Good point
Imalurkerwhocomments ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:40:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The parts were still put together and programmed to work together by a 9 year old
Catsdontpaytaxes ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:07:01 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
http://youtu.be/KkXAEOyUDJk. Just like a penguin lol. http://youtu.be/Tcx6YyXvvRI
Schnoofles ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 19:25:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
C3 specifically was assembled by spare parts by a 9 year old, but not built by him. Most of the programming was by the manufacturer. Besides quirks from age, disrepair and damage he should have been moving normally, as should other protocol droids.
SalamanderSylph ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 19:31:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Still, the parts would have to be attached together. If they are junk parts then they will have small defects. A 9 year old trying to weld/connect slightly dodgy parts is going to have margins of error well outside of the tolerance the algorithms in the stuff's firmware would have allowed.
Protocol droids weren't expected to suffer damage, so why would they need to be robust to things being reattached at slightly dodgy angles?
Bobshayd ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:56:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The firmware/software would have learning algorithms that let them recover from damage and function as well as possible. We have the earliest inklings of such research, but any competent robot system would have such sophisticated learning (not to mention that droids in Star Wars are fully intelligent) that they'd compensate for damage in any way possible.
SalamanderSylph ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:27:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just because the technology is available doesn't mean that it would be implemented in every model, especially the budget models you'd expect to find in a junkyard on Tatooine.
Bobshayd ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:36:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You don't think little Anakin would have been torrenting?
SalamanderSylph ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:35:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
At that age, I would be too distracted by the boob adverts to actually click the magnet link
faraway_hotel ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 19:42:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
All astromech droids are primarily supposed to be assistant mechanics and navigators. They weren't intended for, like, 90% of the stuff we see R2 do.
For moving around the corridors of some base, space station or large ship, and occasionally getting loaded into a starfighter, they're perfectly adequate. But because they got super popular, people drag them to deserts and swamps and forests and all sorts of other inappropriate places, and that makes them look bad.
Bobshayd ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:58:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, they are designed quite well for being loaded into starfighters, especially for fitting in a round space; they function quite well for that.
RadiantSun ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 19:56:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Weren't they C3PO bots supposed to be protocol droids? So they don't need mobility very much to match some ambassador's walking pace. I assume they are meant to be cheap and almost disposable.and R2 units are supposed to do repairs and shit, they don't need a lot of mobility either.
martsimon ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 21:42:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You've got it. Surprised more folks aren't saying this. C3PO's main functions were to assist in etiquette, customs, and translations- he was designed for a life of going to boring-ass Republic meetings and before you know it he's stuck shuffling his shiny ass around the deserts of Tattooine.
PlayMp1 ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 20:48:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
On the other hand, there's beasts like IG-88, the MagnaGuard, and even Super Battle Droids to some extent.
Schnoofles ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:57:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, there's droids that move as one would expect. It just annoys me that while there are reasonable explanations like "C3's walking was exaggerated because that's what the public at the time expected in order for them to clearly see it as a robotic character" it's a little harder to digest within the context of the story and the universe that story is set in.
It's just one of my pet peeves about movie and tv tropes.
SamuelBeechworth ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:27:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
IG-88 was going to be my third example, but I forgot what he was called. Thanks!
PlayMp1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:39:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's cool, he's in the OT but I don't think he's ever referenced by name. The only reason I know IG-88 personally is because of the game Empire at War and its expansion Forces of Corruption where he's a fairly significant character (he's a major hero for the titular Forces of Corruption).
SamuelBeechworth ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:51:15 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wasn't he also in the Clone Wars cartoon? I think I recognize him from there
PlayMp1 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:00:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Huh, nope, a predecessor model called the IG-86 sentinel droid was in the film The Clone Wars and then the show The Clone Wars, and there was an IG-84 in the series Clone Wars (the 2D animated one that's very short, not the 3D animated one featuring Anakin and his apprentice Ahsoka).
SamuelBeechworth ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 03:01:58 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ah, okay. I'm not racist, all those droids just look the same to me!
brutallyhonestharvey ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:58:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not to mention all the crap that R2 has built in: buzz saw, cattle prod, welder, data probe, rocket boosters, oil dispenser etc. It would be hard to fit all that stuff into something that is bipedal without taking up a ton of space.
debian_ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:15:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
C3PO gets a pass because he was built from spare parts, and purpose was mainly translation. IG-88 ain't no slouch.
ocha_94 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:21:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well some of the advanced separatist droids like Super Battle Droids, Commando Droids or Magnaguards were much more agile. Being CGI instead of being played by a guy inside a tin can helped.
ncolaros ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:49:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My reasoning for this is that they don't want a robot uprising, seeing as they're basically slaves. All robots that are good at moving are fighting machines in that universe.
cablesupport ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 17:44:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Droids, plebe
ByTheHammerOfThor ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:00:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Maybe they were looking for that sweet spot near the uncanny valley where things are just fucking adorable.
BB-8 is just moving that ball further down the field.
Catsdontpaytaxes ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:00:02 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ha!
ggzvsg ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:37:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Midget
the_bacon ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:15:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not B-88
SaintJimmy1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:15:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In R2D2's case, a very very small human.
Luposetscientia ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:19:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Computers at the time were pretty bulky and still considered ground breaking so this probably factors in. Then the movie had to maintain a theme among the robots in subsequent episodes. You do see a sleeker more androgynous form in 1-3 though, you could assume from that either the director is trying to reconcile that bulky theme and our contemporary perception of electronics or that the sleeker form we perceive to be more plausible for our future is, for some unforeseeable reason, actually less beneficial to a robots efficacy and being shaped like 4-6 robots makes them more helpful.
mashington14 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:05:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Do you even BB8, bruh?
Nixnilnihil ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:53:06 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Same as your mom ( อกยฐ อส อกยฐ)
Matti_Matti_Matti ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:02:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not all droids are big enough to fit humans. Chewie roars at a toaster on the Death Star. Uncle Owen has a spider on a skateboard on Tattooine.
Catsdontpaytaxes ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 04:34:28 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Babies!
Matti_Matti_Matti ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:39:52 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The toaster droid was about the size of a toaster, so they would have to be premature babies, and I think SAG has rules about that. ;)
Catsdontpaytaxes ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 09:16:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Lol the empire blows up planets I don't think they're too concerned about rules ;)
ageowns ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:47:58 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Then there were the folding pit droids and the battle droids in Episode 1. I prefer the costumey droids
A_KILLER_DONG ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 16:21:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And...7
Imalurkerwhocomments ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 23:41:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He does just barely over jack shit in that one
trustmeimahuman ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 00:01:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That little asshole just sat there with everything they needed the entire time.
Catsdontpaytaxes ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:10:06 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Still got more screen time than mark hamil lol
earth_art_eh ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 18:50:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And 7...
GunNNife ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 14:49:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
But he's just a droid, so we can send him into danger or wipe his memory at will!
amoney1999 ยท 15 points ยท Posted at 14:57:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Only C3PO had his memory wiped, R2 didn't.
DrInsano ยท 35 points ยท Posted at 15:27:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's because R2 wasn't a snitch.
jaysalts ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 09:31:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's an episode of The Clone Wars where R2 is captured by Separatists and because Anakin never routinely wipes his memory after missions (which is what happens to all other droids) he was carrying critical information about the Republic army.
However, R2 becomes smarter due to retaining his memory all the time. This is also why R2 was such a reliable droid compared the other R2 or R4 units in the movies and shows.
GunNNife ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 15:29:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm referencing the fact that droids are treated as property, to be sacrificed, scrapped at will, or have their memories wiped even though they are sentients with distinct personalities.
Imadoctah ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:06:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It bothers me that you have to specify "episodes 1-6" now, instead of just saying "Star Wars".
Don't get me wrong, I loved the new film, but it just feels weird now.
tatsuedoa ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:43:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He's under appreciated in the star wars universe, but find one person who thinks R2 isn't the shit and I'll show you a soulless bastards.
Bigingreen ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:22:29 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Its all about BB-8 in VII!
ReasonablyBadass ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 18:47:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yup. A slave is the most important person in Star Wars.
broole ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:30:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He said episodes 1-6...
ReasonablyBadass ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:43:05 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes?
Sgt_Pepper522 ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 18:20:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not just one person but the men known as the Haymarket Eight. It's a crazy story full of false allegations and bombs that all started with a protest for an eight hour work day.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair
Noglues ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:33:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I only know about them from the Drunk History episode.
hereticspork ยท 30 points ยท Posted at 18:33:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug, "The Man Who Saved a Billion Lives."
[deleted] ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 23:54:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is reddit, gmo is evil
hereticspork ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:07:02 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Reddit is generally a fan of science.
ColorMeStunned ยท 514 points ยท Posted at 15:15:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't know if she was the most under-appreciated person in history, but she's up there: Alice Paul.
Picketed for US women's rights for years, even though she was attacked daily, jailed in rat-infested cells, and brutally force-fed in ways that left her injured when she went on a hunger strike to protest her treatment during imprisonment. She was finally sent to a sanitarium and declared insane, all for just wanting to be treated like a human being with the same rights as a man. Luckily, word got out to the press about the way the suffragettes were being treated and they were released, leading to the near-immediate pass of the 19th Amendment.
And I bet you've never heard of her.
LilyKnightMcClellan ยท 49 points ยท Posted at 17:47:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's a movie about her if anyone's interested, called Iron Jawed Angels.
clomjompsonjim ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 08:07:56 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is a really good movie. Suffragette is basically a mediocre English ripoff of Iron Jawed Angels.
Noannihilator ยท 99 points ยท Posted at 16:14:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wasn't she just the subject of the Google doodle, like, this past week?
JustACollegKid ยท 15 points ยท Posted at 18:45:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well where do you think OP learned all this stuff about her?
ColorMeStunned ยท 26 points ยท Posted at 16:48:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't really know if that means a whole lot for the public's general knowledge of her, but I'm happy to hear it! She earned it.
timeshift3r ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 20:01:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And has a movie based off her.
plantbabe666 ยท 18 points ยท Posted at 18:01:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Was this in the movie Iron Jawed Angels? We watched it in high school and the force feeding scene still wrecks me.
ColorMeStunned ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 18:37:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It was! An exceptional movie.
klopfuh ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 20:43:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thanks to AP US History, I learned a lot about her. Crazy and inspiring stuff.
ColorMeStunned ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 21:03:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I wish I'd learned about her in school but I was in public school in the South so we mostly talked about the War of Northern Aggression.
vorschact ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 21:37:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's a pretty good movie about the Suffragettes called "Iron Jawed Angels"
hamolton ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 22:37:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I read a passage about her in college US history from the departmental reader. The average person really doesn't know a ton of names (ask anybody to name a couple of influential feminists in history), and she's a part of AP US History, it appears.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:54:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
[deleted]
ColorMeStunned ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:03:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thank you!
ThroughTimeWeShallGo ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:42:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
She was the Google person a couple days ago
ickyickyickyicky ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 15:01:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm so glad she made this list!
Don't forget about drafting the Equal Rights Amendment; introduced to Congress at every opportunity since it was written and failed to pass each and every time. It's important because without an amendment to the Constitution, we have to fight for equal rights one item at a time.
QuePastaLOL ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:41:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I mean I heard about her in my college entry level history class. But I agree she isn't as appreciated as she should be
delarye1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:58:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hell, she made it onto a US coin in 2014. Seems pretty cool to me.
BTick21 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:05:56 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I've heard of her! My APUSH class watched Iron Jawed Angels last year.
waterfountain_bidet ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 14:04:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hell yes I have. The Alice Paul house is in my hometown, and I drag all visitors there. What an incredible woman who fought for a right so few appreciate now.
creepycraig ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:28:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My history textbook mentioned her, but then again, it was an AP textbook.
bummedoutbride ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:29:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm a feminist and I had never heard of this person until tonight. Thank you for enlightening me.
IAmACheekyChild ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 00:21:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We literally did this for a whole week in 8th grade. And I'm sure it is in APUSH, or even just USH.
ColorMeStunned ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:29:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Congrats on your superior education! No one I have ever mentioned her to has heard of her.
ALL_FRONT_RANDOM ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 05:34:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I also used google on Monday
bigderivative ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 06:12:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No, we learned all about her.
NebuchanderTheGreat ยท -14 points ยท Posted at 19:14:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There is a world outside of the united states you know?
ColorMeStunned ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 19:19:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I feel like being a huge part of getting women the right to vote in one of the most powerful countries on earth counts as a big accomplishment, but what do I know, I'm just an arrogant American...
Viperbunny ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 02:51:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Some people are just looking for an excuse to complain. I love history and I hadn't heard of her. Thank you for sharing.
NebuchanderTheGreat ยท -14 points ยท Posted at 19:31:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Yeah, its a great achievement, I dont dispute that at all. But in all 200k years of human existence there is definitely some person who is more underappreciated (their name is probably lost forever) and have done something greater. Think about all the middle-ranked officers in armies throughout time, for example. What they chose to do in the moment could have changed the outcome of the battle, which could change the outcome of the war - and therefore create or destroy countries. What about all the scientists and farmers and whatever who discovered new and more efficient ways of doing things in pre-modern times? We probably don't know their names either (mathematically, they should be infinitely more underappreciated?) Women had the right to vote in several european nations before her, and the united states, as a part of the west, probably would have secured universal voting rights regardless of this specific person.
Edit: Seems like a lot of people are unable to read thread titles. This thread was about the most underappreciated person in history - presenting valid arguments against this person being so is not a valid cause for downvoting "into oblivion".
ColorMeStunned ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 20:06:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Some highly upvoted comment was about perforated toilet paper, and you're picking on me for not finding the most underappreciated person in history? Okay, then.
I consider gender equality to be among income equality and racial and religious tolerance as a significant indicator of a civilization's stability and ability to retain lasting balance and therefore, likely lasting peace. I get that it's not as exciting to you as all the dudes who have fought/farmed/discovered things in science, but I find it no less important.
As to your last point, many women still don't have the right to vote today; does that mean we shouldn't appreciate people working to change that simply because other nations are more advanced? In fact, I think it's more impressive because clearly there's a serious reason those places are so resistant to change, even in the face of other nations' advancement.
NebuchanderTheGreat ยท -12 points ยท Posted at 20:25:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Toilet paper one was obviously a joke. I never said people who work for progress shouldn't be appreciated, and i made that perfectly clear in the beginning of my last post. Using non-leaders and ancient scientists wasn't about being exciting, but showing that there as so many significant people who we can't even name. And comparing usa and europe to the west versus the third world today is unfair. culturally western europe and the us were a lot more similar, and shared a lot of social values.
ColorMeStunned ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 20:30:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm not really sure what your goal is here, but this is not the fight you're looking for. If you can't name them, they can't be named in a silly Reddit thread. So...I can't help you here, bro.
a_real_rock_n_rolla ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 21:11:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah I mean so what if it had taken another couple of hundred years before woman were given the right to vote in the United States. The united states was actually before most of the european nations. Switzerland didn't given woman the right to vote until the 1970's which is crazy. If people didn't fight for it who's to say it would have happened any sooner.
Me along with many people were constantly amazed that gay people weren't allowed to get married. All of the people in charge saying it wasn't an important topic right now but we'll get to it at some point. But how can equality even be a question or be debated. It should just be. But obviously that isn't the case, we do need to fight for it so don't belittle the work of others that helped better this society and bring about more equality.
I'm lucky as I'm a Kiwi and it's always great to be able to say we were one of the first places to give woman the right to vote, unfortunately can't say the same about gay marriage but we got there in the end. And woman have only just been given the right to vote in Saudi Arabia so obviously fighting for equality is needed and it's no less important than any other figure in history.
The-Real-Mario ยท -3 points ยท Posted at 22:01:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just like the most powerful countries of the world led to global change by banning torture and capital punishment...wait...
Internet-justice ยท -22 points ยท Posted at 18:30:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
She also through bricks through shop keepers windows and started riots. I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for her imprisonment. To be honest her less radical compatriots did far more.
DevAlexandre ยท 731 points ยท Posted at 14:10:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Since that person IS the most under appreciated in history, I doubt anybody on Reddit will even know who that someone is.
EhrgeizIX ยท 41 points ยท Posted at 16:44:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
idk, some people here on reddit are pretty damn smart and have a wide knowledge of...stuff. I mean, lives were saved, things were learnt, homeworks were done.
[deleted] ยท 30 points ยท Posted at 19:40:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
[removed]
AlphabetDeficient ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:20:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
But sometimes those things come out over time, i.e. Stanislav Petrov.
DevAlexandre ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 16:51:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Good point. I love Reddit tbh.
Eltotsira ยท 18 points ยท Posted at 17:14:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, it's so underappreciated
Consanguineously ยท -6 points ยท Posted at 20:34:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wow, what do you think you're doing? You have to keep the anti-Reddit circlejerk going. That means absolutely no positive attitude towards Reddit or anyone on Reddit.
[deleted] ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 20:09:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"Yeah you've probably never heard of him" - Reddit hipsters
sbroll ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:27:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
hipster as fuck
xXPussy_BangerXx ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 02:54:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This comment is useless.
AlphabetDeficient ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:21:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, might as well shut it all down then.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:04:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Underrated, not unknown.
Uhu_ThatsMyShit ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:50:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Let's get semantic up in here
fmaestro99 ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 19:34:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Probably the first person to figure out to control fire or make rolly wheels then
Drogzar ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 17:28:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/4131fu/who_is_the_most_underappreciated_person_in_history/cyz7nlv
That is a good candidate.
Someone else said the guy that invented the wheel.
RarestarGarden ยท 1695 points ยท Posted at 14:29:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
I swear to god if I see someone say Tesla in here, I am going to fucking scream.
Edit: I hate this thread.
master_bungle ยท 2034 points ยท Posted at 15:39:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tesla in here
GrannnySmith ยท 500 points ยท Posted at 16:29:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hi dad.
[deleted] ยท 316 points ยท Posted at 17:02:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's it, pack your bags and get in the car. We're going to Fucking Scream to stay with my mother.
[deleted] ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 19:10:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"TO STAY WITH MY MOTHER!!!"
danwroy ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:07:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Look everyone it's a daddy orgy
_____D34DP00L_____ ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:21:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sometimes I swear to God.
Aldrai ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:27:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
GOD! YOU FUCKER! HOW DARE YOU!
TheBlackLuffy ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:36:01 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Don't ever change Reddit lol
G-RayL ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:08:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hi Grandma!
Matti_Matti_Matti ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:56:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hi granny, you're the apple of my eye.
master_bungle ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 16:31:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hi Gran, I thought you were dead
Tko38 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:44:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No, that's Tesla
swimmerwoad ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:36:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
/r/dadjokes
determinedforce ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 18:52:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Up in here, up in here!
Ninjasquirtle4 ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 18:16:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
AHHHHHHHHHH
TThom1221 ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 18:43:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
IT'S GETTING TESLA IN HERE
furahmed ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:35:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
AAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Nightb89 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:25:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oooh yeah! Tesla yeeaah!
EarthboundCory ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:38:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!
Keetlady ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:41:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think he screamed, but I'm not sure?
pilvlp ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:31:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Up in 'ere, up in 'ere!
NottyScotty ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 16:48:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Easy there, dad.
thatwasnotkawaii ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 21:11:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNYYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAQQAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Hollowbody57 ยท 48 points ยท Posted at 16:53:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ya'll gonna make me lose my mind,
Tesla in here, Tesla in here...
[deleted] ยท 352 points ยท Posted at 16:20:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Time to link the inaccurate Oatmeal comic and feel smart for bashing Edison!
LilMoWithTheGimpyLeg ยท 167 points ยท Posted at 17:53:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
His reaction was so horrible to the guy who wrote the rebuttal article defending Edison, I've not been back to the Oatmeal since.
Being immature or childish doesn't mean you have to be rude.
DiomedesTydeus ยท 42 points ยท Posted at 18:27:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just curious, do you have a link to either the rebuttal article or the oatmeal's reaction to it? I stopped reading him a while ago and now I feel out of the loop.
crispychicken49 ยท 84 points ยท Posted at 18:44:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Here is the rebuttal article, here is the rebuttal to the rebuttal.
DiomedesTydeus ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 18:51:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thank you!
Rodents210 ยท 70 points ยท Posted at 19:25:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I always suspected the guy who ran The Oatmeal might have been a douche. Little did I suspect he was actually a cunt.
Hidesuru ยท 38 points ยท Posted at 20:22:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
When he wrote an entire comic basically bragging about how his tesla car is so awesome I lost interest. Like I'm glad you're doing well and all writing Web comics for a living, but be a little humble about it maybe?
thebeginningistheend ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 21:22:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's nothing humble about any of the stuff on the Oatmeal. Humblebragging maybe. And all of it is cheap, cringey "lol teh bacons and cats" jokes that he thinks makes him sort of comedy genius.
Hidesuru ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 21:40:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No, there isn't.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 06:45:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I thought that comic really encapsulated who was getting so shitnuts excited for the car - tech geeks with no interest in cars who have never driven anything faster or nicer than their '99 Corolla.
But yeah, other than that it's the reason I stopped reading him.
Hidesuru ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:57:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Heheh. Interesting take.
Spaz-man220 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:16:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Sponsored content?
Hidesuru ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:19:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
I don't think so, but maybe?
Edit: what the hell kind of bot replied to me?
Spaz-man220 ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 22:53:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't know pretty funny though.
andreyevich ยท -10 points ยท Posted at 22:19:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't think about how much they are archetypal 'feminists' and so forth. And I know it's in the group the question as your comment will be minimal trips to the question was asked to.
If you see others posting comments that violate this tag, please report them to this as well. I hope this helps a ton. Be yourself and your heater is running low and your heater is running low and your family does have it if they've been living there as it meant we had someone else anyway.
[deleted] ยท 65 points ยท Posted at 19:48:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jesus Christ, could one be more of a piece of smug?
Lord_Iggy ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 01:44:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't think that was the line that really stood out to me. It is fairly innocuous compared to some other parts of the response.
syransea ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 22:22:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't know if he lives here, but I worked for his wireless carrier in Seattle. He came into my store and bought a new phone because his last one broke.
I didn't know who he was, but he was being an asshole to me the whole time. Then I realized his name sounded familiar and googled around after he left to find that he is the man behind oatmeal.
I always liked his comics, they're hilarious, but I didn't expect him to be such a let down. But who knows? Maybe he was just having a bad day. All I know is that day, during that interaction, I was less than worthy, in his eyes, to even speak to him.
ieshido ยท 15 points ยท Posted at 19:49:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Amazing how many 'red flags denoting douchitude' Oatmeal crams into that rebuttal rebuttal.
ey_bb_wan_sum_fuk ยท 30 points ยท Posted at 19:39:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Lol at the rebuttal to the rebuttal. He criticizes semantics, then mocking corrects a typo, but then makes the mistake of not remember the grammar rule regarding possessive apostrophes used on a proper noun that ends with an "s."
It's "Zeus's," not "Zeus'." That pedantic fuck.
PlayMp1 ยท 47 points ยท Posted at 19:43:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
To be fair, that grammar rule is contested. Personally, I prefer "Zeus'," and some style guides prefer that, but others prefer your way.
ey_bb_wan_sum_fuk ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 19:47:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Is it?
You crazy kids and your evolving of language.
Fuck it, Oxford's recognized "twerk" so I guess I'll just have to change.
PlayMp1 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:56:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think it's just an inconsistent rule. There's a reason publications have style guides. The New York Times agrees with Elements of Style to use your way, but not all style guides do. My way is a lot easier to speak aloud for me since I had to overcome a speech issue with speech therapy as a child, and saying things like "Zeus's" is just fucking hard for me, so I just say "Zeus'."
ArcherSterilng ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:05:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
For what it's worth, in the Lutheran Church we say "In Jesus' Name" an awful lot in our prayers and such. I'm not sure if that comes from the Catholic Church or not, but it definitely got me in the habit of saying and writing s' rather than s's
el_pene_de_peron ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:04:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Wouldn't it be "Zeus'." in British English? That's what I was taught in school when I was studying for Cambridge's FCE.
Apparently writing Zeus's is the 'crazy evolution of language', not the other way.
[deleted] ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 19:12:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
[deleted] ยท -31 points ยท Posted at 19:18:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
For... for being right? But in a funny way, by referencing buttholes and related ilk?
Y-yeah!! Fuck... fuck that guy... ?
CrossCheckPanda ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 20:08:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Actually a simple Google search would confirm that DC power transmission is not only feasible, but we are already doing it and with current technology it's advantageous compared to AC. AC was advantageous before modern advances in solid state electronics, because transformers were a viable way to step up AC voltage (not DC), but transformers are large and expensive and inefficient by today's standards - and the number of large expensive and inefficient AC to DC converters in every single house is staggering.
So when the oat-douche asks how in Zeus's thundering butthole could he power a laptop without an outlet, DC power distribution is the answer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current#Advantages_of_HVDC_over_AC_transmission
rplst8 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:32:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's feasible now. It totally wasn't feasible when the war of the currents was happening.
CrossCheckPanda ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:34:52 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is true and I clearly stated so in my post. When oatmeal douche said hours in Zeus's anus am I supposed to power my laptop without an outlet, or seems fair to assume he wasn't talking about non modern times
rplst8 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:46:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
But that douche is still correct. DC doesn't lend itself to local distribution. DCs advantages lie in the extremes. Long distance high voltage and extremely short distance low voltage.
CrossCheckPanda ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 04:01:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes it fucking does. Cite a source you neanderthal, I've cited two
iPhone6God ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 06:25:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Oatmeal always struck me as being written by someone who is a condescending douchebag. Yes he did have his funny comics, but after reading that and digging around a little more on google, I can say with certainty he is one. mans is a smug arrogant prick.
his "how to not suck at your own religion" one was like something you'd find made as OC on /r/atheism.
u_got_a_better_idea ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:42:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Any chance you have a mirror for the second link? It seems it was taken down or Reddit hugged; I can't get it to work.
crispychicken49 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:56:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sorry I wish I could provide one. It's probably hugged to death.
wasniahC ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:46:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
On the one hand, you could argue "what do you expect? He's a comedy webcomic writer, he isn't exactly going to have a serious debate/discussion, of course he's going to push for his side with humour". (I use the word humour loosely here)
On the other hand.. he could have just ignored it. Honestly, you had a comedy piece banging on about tesla, and a relatively sensible piece about Edison from a relatively reputable journalist. Sounds good, right? Didn't really feel like it warranted a response.
ColonelRuffhouse ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 10:26:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That was a really interesting article.
merlinfire ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:37:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
wow what a colossal douche
Rookwood ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:11:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
The part where he sites Tesla's death ray is a little bit misleading. If you actually read the article he links, that weapon was also purely of defensive strategic value, and Tesla marketed it as a "peace beam." It required a power plant to operate, so it was purely stationary and it only had a range of 200 miles. It was meant as a deterrent from attack.
Sure it was lethal to enemy pilots, but the article makes it seem as if Tesla was out marketing an alternative to nuclear bombs. It sounds to me like it was more of an early attempt at a National Missile Defense system. Like the US's Star Wars program or the Israeli's Iron Dome.
Leoxcr ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 18:34:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I want on this too.
crispychicken49 ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 18:45:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Here is the rebuttal article, here is the rebuttal to the rebuttal.
Leoxcr ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 19:18:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I didn't read this before, thank you for these.
ImBored_YoureAmorous ยท 38 points ยท Posted at 19:07:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wow, I just read that rebuttal-rebuttal. The Oatmeal guy is annoying.
Hellknightx ยท 38 points ยท Posted at 19:47:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's probably the least insulting thing I've seen said of him in this thread so far.
CrossCheckPanda ยท 25 points ยท Posted at 20:14:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And plain wrong in cases (recycled comment follows)
Actually a simple Google search would confirm that DC power transmission is not only feasible, but we are already doing it and with current technology it's advantageous compared to AC. AC was advantageous before modern advances in solid state electronics, because transformers were a viable way to step up AC voltage (not DC), but transformers are large and expensive and inefficient by today's standards - and the number of large expensive and inefficient AC to DC converters in every single house is staggering.
So when the oat-douche asks how in Zeus's thundering butthole could he power a laptop without an outlet, DC power distribution is the answer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current#Advantages_of_HVDC_over_AC_transmission
It's honestly infuriating, he presents all this as facts and when he gets called out he's just like "I'm a comedian I don't have to be accurate". The underwater radar one was particularly stupid, it's one of the worse ideas I've ever heard and Tesla should be embarrassed he pitched it
ZombyTed ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 22:43:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The John Stewart Defense. Classy.
mattskee ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 01:35:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's only advantageous in certain specific applications - namely very long distance high power transmission, or underwater transmission. For most of the grid AC still is the superior technology.
Keep in mind that DC is much more difficult to control. Because there is no "built-in" zero crossing of the current the switches, fuses, and circuit breakers that interrupt power are harder to to build and will tend to wear faster due to the increased internal arcing. This means that they need to be built to much higher ratings than the AC equivalents. Similarly the unidirectional nature of DC makes it more dangerous when being electrocuted because your muscles respond more to DC making it harder for you to break yourself free of the source of electrocution.
50/60 Hz transformers are indeed larger and more expensive than higher frequencies (though efficiencies are similar), but these low frequency transformers are still an integral part of HVDC systems. And in most cases the low frequency transformer is much cheaper than a smaller and cheaper high frequency transformer after you factor in the cost of the inverter, rectifier, and filtering needed for a switching converter. 50/60 Hz transformers provide the step up before the rectifier bank for the transmitting DC station. The inverter bank at the receiving end drives a transformer too. If they didn't need to synchronize at some point with a 50-60 Hz grid they could bump up the frequency a certain amount, but it's hard enough to rectify and invert hundreds of kilovolts at 60 Hz and even harder at higher frequencies so it's not going to be operating anywhere near the speed.
Actually thanks to modern power electronics these can be both incredibly small and efficient. And these converters would be only a tiny bit more efficient if they operated on a DC input rather than AC input.
CrossCheckPanda ยท -3 points ยท Posted at 01:57:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You clearly don't know shit about electrity - and the reason your shit post doesn't have a single source is because absolutely no one would agree with you. That portion is i linked is on long distance transmission and only catalogues the advantages of long range. (The only portion in challenged by oatmeal douche - because even his incompetent ass could see the advantages of short range DC transmission). Its better short range too.
Switching to DC has been the dream for a while. Since you Clearly won't believe me read an article.
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Time-to-Rethink-the-Use-of-DC-Power-for-the-Energy-Smart-Home
Ballpark 20% of power used in the average house is just dumped into AC to DC conversion, nevermind the brick you drag along with your laptop cable, the big block that goes by the wall on your phone charger or the biggest part of an LED bulb is wasted material for an AC to DC converter.
Seriously you have no fucking clue what you are talking about. I really hope this rant is directed at a middle schooler who hasn't learned lying on technical expertise doesn't get called out every time because if an actual adult thinks this is true or okay I may be talking to someone to stupid to ever provide for themselves
mattskee ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:41:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your article is about some very specific cases such as solar powered homes and data centers which are certainly not the standard case, though we'll see about solar homes in a decade or so as the installed base increases. In solar homes DC may make sense because of the incredibly short ranges that power must be transmitted - just 10's or low 100's of feet. Datacenters have very high power consumption densities and have need to backup so again they may want to run DC internally for ease of battery backup and make better utilization of power lines to increase power densities per square foot. But for grid infrastructure the technology has a way to go before DC can match the cost, efficiency, and reliability for transmission over 1's and 10's of kilometers range. Build a full bridge converter which converts 4-15 kV DC to ~100-200 V DC for a customer and compare the cost and reliability to a 60 Hz transformer doing the same.
And since you are asking for citations, the critical distance for cost advantage of DC grid infrastructure is generally thought to be over 600 kilometers with current technology: http://new.abb.com/systems/hvdc/why-hvdc/economic-and-environmental-advantages
And you accused me of not understanding electricity while you say something like this? AC to DC rectification is a very small portion of what our power converters do and absolutely does not consume 20% of power except maybe in bottom dollar products that are liable to catch fire. The most complex and efficiency robbing portion of their job is voltage transformation. Houses and grids will continue to run at higher voltages in order to get power to homes and around inside houses without requiring extremely thick high-current cables. Many of our devices run at lower voltages, and most of what our laptop chargers and such are doing is converting voltages. The AC to DC rectification does consume some volume and efficiency but nowhere near the 20% that you seem to think it does. Add in the need for new and more expensive switches, fuses, circuit breakers, and maybe safer shrouded outlet designs to account for the safety issue and DC in the standard home is not a clear winner.
Lol.
Dorkalicious ยท 20 points ยท Posted at 19:26:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He's a comic. It didn't seem that rude to me.
Hellknightx ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 19:47:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Seriously, Maddox makes a living off of being insulting.
[deleted] ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 21:47:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
[deleted]
AlphabetDeficient ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 22:54:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Churba ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 03:40:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No, Maddox isn't any less funny than he was, he really hasn't changed. Say what you like about the guy, but he is consistent.
What's changed, more than likely, is you - you're not an edgy teenager anymore, which is basically when he reaches peak hilarity.
ncolaros ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:40:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Agree to disagree.
FluidMechanics77 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:18:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's just reddit having its counter-jerk.
[deleted] ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 19:11:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
One of his arguments was that Tesla didn't invent alternating current, that he just found a way to harness it, refine it, and make it more available (paraphrasing, not quoting).
If that's the case, Edison didn't invent the light bulb, he just made it more accessible and knew how to market it, so why credit him with the entire invention? He was a businessman, and a poor one at that. 22 other people came up with incandescent light bulbs before Edison. So neither of them are as great (or as terrible) as history makes them out to be.
Also, this from the article:
The entire article is taking what The Oatmeal says about Tesla, downplaying his "refining" of certain inventions, and up-playing (is that a word?) Edison's "refinement" of already existing inventions. It's the most bias thing ive ever read.
u_got_a_better_idea ยท 26 points ยท Posted at 20:47:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He isn't arguing that "Edison is good and Tesla is bad," his whole point is that they don't fit the protagonist-antagonist relationship that The Oatmeal tried to paint them as; they were both brilliant and influential despite their flaws and mistakes.
6553321 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 01:06:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
One that is absolutely unfair to Tesla. The worst comparison you can make for Edison vs Tesla is Bill Gates vs Richard Stallman.
And Tesla is recognized. He has a unit named after him.
FluidMechanics77 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:20:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The sad part is a lot of people don't realize the author of the Oatmeal is a comic and in this case he was doing exactly what you mentioned. Funny that people on here call him pedantic, yet they act that way daily.
Hellknightx ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:50:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Edison didn't refine the lightbulb either, though. He had employees to work on it. The tungsten filament was invented by one of his employees, but Edison was first and foremost a ruthless businessman. He owned the patents because he either a) acquired his competitors or b) had employees develop them.
Tesla did all of his work on his own for the most part. It's difficult to compare Edison to Tesla because one was a businessman and the other was a brilliant scientist.
sisyphusmyths ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 00:16:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And here we have the Jobs/Wozniak divide...
6553321 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:07:33 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yup that's how employees work. Your employee agreement makes any work done a property of your employer.
jrrthompson ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:52:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Have you considered the possibility that the Forbes article's bias is used solely to counteract the even more obvious Oatmeal article's bias?
silversapp ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:58:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
*biased
macarthurpark431 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:47:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Do you have a link to that?
cmatute ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:47:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Link plz Edit: nvm found it
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:21:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Linksies for both?
WhatImMike ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:10:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Do you have a link? I've never seen it or the rebuttal.
Beowoof ยท 23 points ยท Posted at 17:51:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't know much about either, but is it more true to say that tesla was less successful than Edison not because Edison was a dick but because he didn't have business sense and networking skills?
Zeppelinman1 ยท 31 points ยท Posted at 18:35:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Based off a few docs i've seen on tesla, its a bit of both. Edison was a huge asshole, but tesla definitely was a weirdo, which certainly affected his success
Banzai51 ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 19:27:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's about right. Edison understood the power of people, which is why he liked to build research teams and solve problems quicker. Tesla was more the loner genius type.
Both men could be considered raging dicks.
[deleted] ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 18:39:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes, from my knowledge Edison was all about applying technology. He made technology practical and he knew how to sell it
[deleted] ยท -11 points ยท Posted at 19:05:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He also knew how to kill people and steal their inventions.
Banzai51 ยท 17 points ยท Posted at 19:36:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And Tesla knew how to make outrageous, unsubstantiated claims while defrauding investors.
Churba ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:32:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tesla was also absolutely useless with anything remotely resembling finances. He made multiple fortunes, and lost every single one of them mostly to mismanagement.
manu_facere ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:44:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well edison was a dick. Tesla isn't some infallible nerd god but Edison was still a dick
fixorater ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:34:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sure tesla doesn't live up to some of what's said about him- but it still sounds like Edison was kind of a dick, from what I've read.
trainwreck42 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:46:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What's all this now? What's an Oatmeal comic, and how is it inaccurate? Is it not cool to bash Edison anymore?
ImBored_YoureAmorous ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:36:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oh, you sweet summer child.
Definitely not trying to sound condescending: Comics have names, and this one is called the Oatmeal. You could find it surely by googling "oatmeal tesla". You can find the rebuttal in this same thread of comments.
Cocoapenguin ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 23:45:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ya blew it.
ImBored_YoureAmorous ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:49:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Self-fulfilling prophecy, I'm sure.
TriforceofCake ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:36:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Related: does that mean the article he made about Columbus is also inaccurate?
magenta_bandit ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:30:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wait have we finally stopped shitting on Edison? I never thought I'd see the day
tyralion ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:26:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What's wrong with the Oatmeal comic? Sorry, I'm out of the loop on this one.
blogle ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:04:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
To be fair. Edison really was a dick
loverofreeses ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:49:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nah, you've got to link to the Drunk History of it instead.
echo_birch ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:37:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Pls elaborate?
cmatute ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:47:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Inaccurate? Elaborate pls.
peekay427 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:55:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Inaccurate? I'd love to hear more about this. I assumed that he did his homework and was portraying fact, but it's a part of history I'm not versed in.
[deleted] ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 18:33:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nope. Just Chuck Testa.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:34:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
dank
ratchet_ass_ho ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 17:38:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What about David Bowie as Tesla?
GunNNife ยท 20 points ยท Posted at 14:52:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You must be screaming a lot, eh? Scaring the neighbors?
RarestarGarden ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:16:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They were scared the moment I moved in.
T00l_shed ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:50:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They'll just think it's rape, and call the cops, even though it's just role play?
MediocreMatt ยท 27 points ยท Posted at 16:28:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We got an Alan Turing, so there's that
RarestarGarden ยท 56 points ยท Posted at 17:08:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He had a movie starring Benadryl Cucumber. He's not "underappreciated"
xFXx ยท 15 points ยท Posted at 18:18:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
From what i heard he has been mostly ignored fro a really long time. Even though he is responsible for many advances in computer science and other fields.
flyingfences ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 18:34:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
because his cool stuff was largely classified until the 90s.
Taladar ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:10:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, if you want to call a chemical castration that lead to suicide ignored...
MediocreMatt ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:54:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I know man. He's a huge hero, and everybody knows it. Like Tesla.
I was just feeding off OP who's joke was that somebody was bound to say Tesla, which they did.
hezdokwow ยท -3 points ยท Posted at 18:40:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Bendio cumbobash you mean
adnaanbheda ยท -4 points ยท Posted at 18:49:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
you mean Benducttape Crumblerack?
RarestarGarden ยท -4 points ยท Posted at 19:56:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wait, are we talking about BunBun CumCum here?
RancidLemons ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:36:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The guy was chemically castrated after he made unfathomable advances in computer science and essentially turned the tide of World War 2. I think it's pretty safe to use "under-appreciated" in that case, movie or no movie.
MediocreMatt ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:58:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I mean, he's totally awesome. Don't get me wrong, but also very widely appreciated, at least in the computer science field.
I've had several professors mention him as being awesome, because he is. He was under appreciated at the time, because everything was classified and laws were horribly anti gay, but not sure if he qualifies as underappreciated in modern times.
CHUCKNORRIS1369 ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 18:40:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Why is that?
Kazaril ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:44:00 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Probably because he's one of the most over appreciated people of all time.
Lawl0MG ยท 20 points ยท Posted at 15:25:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tesla
Gametendo ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 17:30:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Internal screaming
GDMFS0B ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:49:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tesla
terevos2 ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 18:19:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thankfully the internet solved his under-appreciation. Now everyone knows about him and is a hero to many.
fiszu3000 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:31:56 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
though that doesn't make him appreciated in history.
RQK1996 ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 16:10:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
his appreciation only came because some dude named a car after him
buttery_shame_cave ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 18:51:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
and lots of internet woo.
stephangb ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:39:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nah he was already appreciated before that. I certainly new about Tesla before knowing about the cars.
Merhouse ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:42:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Edsel?
RQK1996 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:53:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
?
Merhouse ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:59:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Edsel Ford was a son of the Ford family. The company named a car in the 50s (I think) after him -- the Edsel. It was actually quite a nice car that I believe was too good for its time, and was very unpopular. It only lasted a couple of years.
But I'm guessing he's not the one you're talking about who had a car named after him ;)
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 17:14:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
His pigeon wife appreciated him
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:01:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oh... Apart of the Edisons I see. You wanna rumble, punk? Because when you're a Tesla, you're a Tesla all the way. From your first Tesla Coil to your last dying day.
itsthehumidity ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:02:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sir Nikola Tesla, relatively unknown Siberian genius. He was actually arch enemies with Thomas Edison, an asshole who was given credit for a plethora of inventions he couldn't even pronounce. The real inventor? Nikola Tesla.
While Edison was electrocuting animals and orphans for fun, Tesla was busy perfecting AC power, developing electric motors, and zapping large bird cages with lightning because science!
Edison was told of Tesla's work and offered him $4 million to work for him in the laboratory. Tesla exceeded all technical expectations and, upon asking for payment, was met with derision and the suggestion he was a fool for believing such a promise.
I could write a book about Tesla, and I believe he should have gone on to earn wealth and fame. Instead, he went completely insane, thinking he had befriended a pigeon angel, and died alone and broke. The government confiscated his work, but sadly much of what he knew was stored in his head and died with him.
History has almost completely forgotten about him; all of his achievements have been attributed to Thomas Edison. I just wish people knew more about what really happened.
I_AM_TESLA ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:08:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Serbian* not Siberian.
fiszu3000 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:31:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Siberian xDDDDD
jamesaj23 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 11:40:49 on February 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
I chose a dvd for tonight
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 16:22:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Edison
McZerky ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:52:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I haven't heard a point of view before that criticizes tesla, and I'm legitimately intrigued on your opinion of him and why. Care to say?
RarestarGarden ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:00:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't have a negative opinion of him. I honestly think he's great. I, however, I not alone in that opinion. It seems like a great deal of people share that exact same opinion. That's not under appreciated.
McZerky ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:54:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oh. Gotcha. I even said it in my own reply XD
rangersfan30 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:03:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
why?
s0974748 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:16:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Why?
ristoril ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:22:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tesla in here.
Deathwood ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:41:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We all know Edison is the real underappreciated one. r/TheWizardOfMenloPark
GrannnySmith ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:57:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You love it.
afreeman21 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:02:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fuck you, our modern world runs on his inventions.
PopsicleMud ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:05:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I was going to say that Tesla used to be underappreciated, but not anymore.
Rookwood ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:39:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I know this is a popular anti-circlejerk to a less popular circlejerk, but honestly Tesla was underrated. Until recently, he was mostly forgotten for his contributions and Edison is largely overrated for his.
Tesla is a tragic, eccentric historical figure that was a genius and pioneer in his field. He deserves to be remembered for his contributions and up until recently he was mostly forgotten.
Edison on the other hand was more of your typical American CEO figure. He wasn't a particular genius but he was very successful by being a lying and exploiting capitalist who understood how to manipulate public opinion. Honestly, there are a lot of parallels between Edison and Bill Gates. Both are remembered as basically the inventors of their industries, yet both owe their success to backstabbing and hoarding all the profits from the contributions of those around them. Bill takes the gold medal though for pulling one over on IBM, who were the unstoppable megacorp of computers at the time. That took balls, and IBM never recovered while Microsoft went on to take the throne for 15 years.
PacoTaco321 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:46:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hey guys, can anyone remind me the name of that car company Elon Musk started?
cellardoor1988 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:09:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sniff...sniff...Bowie played Tesla in that one film.
psaepf2009 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:18:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sorry, I'm a mere filthy casual, but why?
Pmmeyourfloppytits ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:19:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What? You must be a descendent of that Edison fuck.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:40:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Epic Rap Battles Tesla vs Edison
edit: one of the lyrics is 'and I have Reddit'
I_protect ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:00:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tesla
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:17:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
6553321 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:57:28 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You know, if I'm going to give credit to a genius mind, it would be Carl Friedrich Gauss. The man solved solved theorems and didn't share them, because he didn't like the proof, and then fifty years later someone else would arrive at them.
spaceboy42 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:28:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
the car guy?
naughtydreams ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:51:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I came into this thread just to make sure Telsa wasn't going to be in here.
Enriquepollazzo ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:59:49 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I thought this before I even clicked on thread I suspect others did too
ownage99988 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 18:43:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's honestly the dumbest circlejerk in history.
Aholeunited ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 17:28:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nope chuck tesla
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:16:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What's wrong with Tesla?
dylang92 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:18:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ya'll gon make /u/RarestarGarden lose their mind, Tesla in here, Tesla in here.
RarestarGarden ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:58:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I've been screaming nonstop for hours.
Plumages ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 18:54:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well considering how far down this post are, there is some truth to this. One thing is people who throws beer well or imaginary characters, but when you think about how much someone has done for the world and how little appreciation this person got for it, Tesla is pretty much up there :D
zuilserip ยท 111 points ยท Posted at 16:34:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Gregory Pincus
What was the most important invention of the 20th century?
It has been argued that it was the development of oral contraception.
While this point is debatable, and most people will strongly deny this when they first hear this, the more you think about it, the more you may develop an appreciation for the impact of the pill on modern society. For one thing, by allowing women control of when they had children, it dramatically increased female participation in the labor force.
Another, even more dramatic, impact has been the pill's ability to avoid catastrophic world overpopulation - from this to this
Regardless of where you rank it, however, there is no arguing that the birth control revolution had a dramatic impact on the world.
Yet, very few people know Pincus' role in developing the pill. (I was going to call him 'the father of birth control' but that didn't sound right!)
[deleted] ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 20:48:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
zuilserip ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:00:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The graphs were not meant to be comparable. Graph 1 was to establish that yes, population growth is a serious problem and graph 2 to offer plausible evidence that the marked fall in birth rate in the 60's was related to the introduction of oral contraception in the same period. There was no claim that the pill was singularly responsible for this fall in fertility.
If you want to read more into the subject look up the demographic transition model or take a look at this paper
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:23:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
zuilserip ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:42:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I am well aware that correlation does not imply causation. I was assuming a lower burden of proof for a casual Reddit post.
The second graph suggests that the availability of birth control in the 60s may be related to the subsequent dramatic fall in birth rates that starts shortly thereafter, but I agree that it does not prove it.
As for the global availability of birth control in Latin America and Africa, it turns out I am in Latin America and birth control is widely available around here and that fertility is already below the replacement rate in many countries. (e.g., at 1.81 births/woman Brazil's fertility rate is lower than the US' @ 1.88).
I don't know whether birth control is as widely available in Africa, but since Africa is one of the few places where fertility rates have not fallen as quickly, that would not much impact the hypothesis that the pill is responsible for a significant portion of the decrease we see in the rest of the world.
[deleted] ยท -3 points ยท Posted at 00:11:58 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
clearsimpleplain ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 04:17:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Is there an opposite of reddit gold, like reddit shit? Because that's what I'd like to give you.
mrhuggles ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:39:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Overpopulation was never a problem in developed countries, nowadays low birth rates are the problem.
DrenDran ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:11:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This. Arguably the effect of the pill was negative in that respect.
KJ6BWB ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:19:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And, unwanted children are more likely to become criminals. The pill helps prevent unwanted children. I don't know about the pill, but freakonomics showed a marked correlation between legalized abortion and lower crime rates 20 years later.
Chupacabra_Sandwich ยท 145 points ยท Posted at 15:11:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Kevin Durant's mom.
[deleted] ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 18:59:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The real MVP
ryanmich ยท 30 points ยท Posted at 16:56:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
She was da original MVP
Thepeanutbuttermutte ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 19:40:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
*Real MVP
JashanTheCreator ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:26:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
U mean, the real MVP?
Combatd ยท 281 points ยท Posted at 15:13:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
~~~~~
supervoid999 ยท 111 points ยท Posted at 18:01:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
To be fair Goethe is pretty much required reading in philosophy circles.
PureImbalance ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 18:35:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
but not in sciences, where he did a lot of work too. Geology, biology, ... It was said that the last person to know everything "knowable" to humankind was Goethe at that point, has he was educated in about everything.
maurosQQ ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 19:10:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, this may be because many of his scientifc findings or theories werent right most of the time. I remember him being a "Neptunist", believing that the core of the earth was cold.
Fr0thBeard ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:04:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We may soon learn that our current theories are generally inaccurate. One of the great things about him was his willingness to challenge his own ideas, as was the basis of his philosophy and why Nietzsche was so enamored by him.
maurosQQ ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 20:08:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, I am not entirely sure, but afaik he remained quite stubborn on the issues of Neptunism, even when more and more data suggested that the theory was wrong. Not really a good scientific mind set to have.
Moomium ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:19:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hey, you haven't been there, how do you know it isn't cold?
maurosQQ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 08:31:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The deeper you go, the warmer it gets. Plus sometimes there comes stuff from the depth. This is called a volcano.
MelGibsonIsKingAlpha ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 18:43:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, and God help you if you go into the bookstore and pronounce it how it sounds.
"Hello, I need that book by Go-eth." "Gerta" "What." "You need the book by Gerta." "Who the fuck is Gerta. Just gimme the Go-eth book please." "All I have is Gerta." "You don't have the Go-eth book" "No Go-eth, just Gerta" "Ah, fuck it. I'm goin on Amazon." Walks out with head held low.
nMiDanferno ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:13:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Maybe I'm ignorant, but I'm pretty sure the right pronounciation is more similar to Gerta than Go-eth.
Source: - Speak Dutch - http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/goethe
LifeIsVanilla ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 19:25:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ignorant of the joke, not the pronunciation.
MelGibsonIsKingAlpha ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 21:12:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's the joke. Because it is pronounced so differently than how it is spelled Americans don't know how to say it right, unless someone tells them. It looks like it should be pronounced go-eth, if you are phonetically reading it from an American English standpoint.
nMiDanferno ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 14:04:22 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I already thought I was missing something
MelGibsonIsKingAlpha ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 14:08:21 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's alright, it wasn't very funny.
[deleted] ยท 88 points ยท Posted at 18:23:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He's not underrated at all. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that Goethe is to Germany what Shakespeare is to England (not the most famous early modern dramatist but rather the most significant/admired literary figure in the country's history).
molybedenum ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 21:09:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We spent half of a year in high school German class discussing Wiemar and Goethe.
OhneBremse_OhneLicht ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:56:17 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If he so much as sneezed on a house, there will be a plaque by the door reading: "GOETHE WAS HERE -- 6 JUNE 1801-7 JUNE 1801"
michio42 ยท 65 points ยท Posted at 18:00:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He is pretty famous, especially in Germany were he is as well known as people such as Nietzsche.
stesch ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:08:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
More people know Goethe than Nietzsche here in Germany.
ChVcky_Thats_me ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:04:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
But not as a scientist
Janus96Approx ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:15:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Of course he is! One of the things every child learns in school is that he discovered the elephants wisdom teeth. I've visited his house twice while in school and saw the elephant scull he studied.
[deleted] ยท 208 points ยท Posted at 16:58:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
[deleted]
some-ginger ยท 25 points ยท Posted at 19:07:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not sure if the first two quotes are real now...
[deleted] ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 19:11:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
some-ginger ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:30:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As someone who's been institutionalized I really appreciate the first one.
graaahh ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:14:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dude looks kinda like James Woods.
leetee91 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:43:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Did that picture look like it moved for anyone else?
EmperorCorbyn ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:37:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wow he must have been some kind of professional quote maker
ThexJwubbz ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:46:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also invented swag
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:09:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Aggressive stupidity....I like that phrase
PotassiumAlum ยท 18 points ยท Posted at 19:10:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What? Goethe is definitely well known. His novella The Sorrows of Young Werther is quite famous, and he is a pretty respectable figure in philosophy. Some of his plays are pretty well known too.
CaptInsane ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:30:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Like Faust. Mighty fine, albeit difficult, read
[deleted] ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 18:57:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
His appreciation in his country of birth is rather significant. You get instant eye rolls from juveniles when you mention his name. Always a clear sign.
maurosQQ ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:11:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Pretty much everybody that went to school in Germany had to read at least 1 of his works. Be it Faust or Werther.
Encrenoir ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:25:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He's the most famous German author. All German institutes abroad are named after him.
DarkMoon000 ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:27:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
For people in german-speaking countries he is everything but underappreciated. Nowadays it's getting less and less but everyone had to read at least one of his works in school.
Cleverbeans ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:25:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I've heard it claimed before that he was a polymath, but I've seen no evidence of this. Do you have a citation or source that makes that claim? I know him as a philosopher, and mediocre scientist but I feel like he gets all the credit he deserved.
michio42 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:59:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Interesting and good point, not everything who does a lot of stuff was a polymath and people like to assign that honour to any smart man from a few hundred years ago (there are loads by the way). It should be said of people that were/are truly great of many disciplines are polymaths. An example would be Isaac Newton, although centuries ahead in Physics (basically invented it) and Mathematics (the two always come hand in hand anyway), he was also a prolific biblical scholar and alchemist, the latter two he was not exactly good at.
moarag ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:34:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I was able to go see his house about 3 weeks ago in Frankfurt. He was married to my wife's 3x or 4x great aunt.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:42:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Whiny fuck, though.
thouliha ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:35:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He's pretty much the german Shakespeare.
Frankonia ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:45:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't know where you are from but in Germany every person above the age of ten can tell you who he was.
Monagan ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:52:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't think Goethe is unappreciated, even beyond Germany - I'd say at least Faust is pretty well known internationally.
stesch ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:09:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Don't forget his "Der Zauberlehrling" (The Sorcerer's Apprentice).
Fr0thBeard ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:02:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Did a study-abroad in Germany. Will attest that what Shakespeare did for the English Language, Goethe was that in several fields. He led the Germans (at the time a collection of warring city-states) to the idea of a unified Germany based on ideals of logic and reason.
Great poet too, yo.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:46:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Goethe is one of the most famous Germans of all time, how is he under-appreciated?
Skdkkdkdd ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:29:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
every german student has to read atleast one book of him, and are usually highly encouraged to read more of them.
drfeelokay ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:11:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"Love is an ideal thing. Marriage, a real thing. The confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished"
-Goethe
twersx ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:23:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Goethe is not under appreciated at all.
sydneysomething ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:17:27 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I've heard references but never knew much about him
TaylorS1986 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:43:58 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I was introduced to Goethe in high school via Faust, one of the greatest plays ever written. The guy was a fucking genius.
Many of his ideas in biology helped for the basis of Darwin's ideas several decades later.
thingsiloathe ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:33:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
..."Freud, Nietzsche, and /u/combatd"
CaptainTelos ยท 3582 points ยท Posted at 13:30:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Labour rights activists and socialists. Things like minimum wage, 8 hour day, weekends, ending child labour etc. were won through struggle during some of the most brutal periods of capitalism.
Now that the union movement has stagnated, over the last 30 years we've seen a gradual erosion of the gains we made. Capitalism by nature seeks to exploit workers. Corporate profits are historically high while the average person faces a pretty bleak future, and the climate's not going to fix itself either.
We need to get organised and take control of the banks, multinationals and industry so they can be democratically run for all people rather than for private greed.
Minn-ee-sottaa ยท 792 points ยท Posted at 16:28:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The business owners were fucking brutal. They straight up hired thugs to beat the shit out of striking workers until the strikers went back to work.
super_awesome_jr ยท 482 points ยท Posted at 17:33:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They didn't just beat them up. In some cases, they just gunned striking workers down.
lennybird ยท 85 points ยท Posted at 18:58:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Would you like to know more? Ludlow massacre
super_awesome_jr ยท 43 points ยท Posted at 19:03:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Battle of Blair Mountain, Homestead Strike...
[deleted] ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 21:59:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your entire comment sounds like a video game title you'd see on Kickstarter.
ImALittleCrackpot ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:49:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Battle of the Overpass.
SirAlexspride ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 10:06:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fak
patchgrrl ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:22:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I always had some appreciation for the coal wars, growing up in the center of its history, but I found out my great grandparents lived in the literal middle of the battle of Blair Mountain.
ZukoBaratheon ยท 54 points ยท Posted at 18:41:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Some of them were powerful enough that they could convince the governor of their state to send in the National Guard to threaten and if necessary shoot workers on strike.
MelGibsonIsKingAlpha ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 18:45:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, but then they the people who paid to have them gunned down built a bunch of libraries, so it all even out, right?
4trevor4 ยท 15 points ยท Posted at 19:15:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I remember learning in history class about a town of coal miners who went to war with the coal company. Pretty crazy stuff
TheAddiction2 ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 22:35:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Harlan County, Kentucky. There's a documentary about it.
dorekk ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:35:00 on January 19, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What's it called?
Pperson25 ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 19:43:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
HAYMARKET SQUARE!
NEVER FORGET!
Canadian_Infidel ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 20:10:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They still do in other countries where they can get away with it.
DontGoChasinWatrFowl ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 20:13:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They also killed dozens of children.
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:42:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Homestead Strike is a great example. William Frick was a frickin' asshole.
steelcap77 ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 21:55:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Pinkerton agency was the largest strike breakers.
Senray ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:58:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Job creation!
redemma1968 ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 22:09:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Wow, that almost makes me doubt the justice and essential rightness of Capitalism. Thank god all that was just under Crony Capitalism! I can't wait for Real Capitalism (which has never, ever existed and yet is paradoxically responsible for all the good things in the world)!
super_awesome_jr ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:10:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Don't worry. Thanks to the service economy, most of the things they died are slowly being eliminated.
Daerdemandt ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:58:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Counter-strike: GO BACK TO WORK.
Contronatura ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:32:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Great movie about this- Matewan
bobsaget112 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:57:15 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Ludlow Massacre comes to mind
[deleted] ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 19:41:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This still happens today in a lot of countries no one pays attention to. As I recall, coke-a-cola is known for murdering union organizers at bottling plants. And I don't mean to single them out, plenty of ugly shit goes down at pretty much any multinational. That's what happens when profit is your god.
Butt_Stuff_Pirate ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 19:52:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Worse, the US government sent in federal troops to break coal strikes MULTIPLE TIMES. Using the army against citizens to force them to work underpaid in horrible conditions is one of the worst atrocities my gov has intentionally committed imo.
Tunderbar1 ยท 15 points ยท Posted at 19:30:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Which is why labour got a reputation for being tough and supposedly involved in all kinds of illegal shit. They had to be tough and they had to respond sometimes with brutal violence of their own.
All they wanted was to make a living wage, safe conditions, and raise their families, like the rest of us.
steelcap77 ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 21:55:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yet reddit hates the Unions today.
redemma1968 ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 22:12:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well you have to understand that all of this was just under Crony Capitalism. Soon, when we've destroyed all Unions and business regulations, we'll have Real Capitalism, which has never, ever existed and yet is paradoxically responsible for all the good things in the world!
tomdarch ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 04:17:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Let me invite you up to my ivory tower of purely theoretical economics, where you can shout this wonderful stuff to the peons below. Shall we also discuss how egghead academic elites are ruining the world with their impractical, foundationless theories?
markovich04 ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 19:37:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fucking Pinkertons.
tomdarch ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:18:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The company still exists.
markovich04 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:21:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Same trash as Blackwater.
onedoor ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 18:09:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not only thugs, but sometimes local police forces.
redemma1968 ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 22:10:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
aka thugs
TCV2 ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 19:39:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I actually have some relatives who lived in Pittsburgh and worked as steelworkers at the time. I believe they were involved in some of the fights with the Pinkertons and such.
ShadowLiberal ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:20:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The strikers didn't even get support from the churches (then a much more powerful political group).
They called a 5 day workweek sinful and un-biblical, because in the bible God worked for 6 days to create the earth then took 1 day of rest, so why should man work for 5 days and take 2 days of rest.
WalkingCloud ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:46:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, he puts his cigar
Out in your face just for kicks
His bedroom window
It is made out of bricks
The National Guard stands around his door
I ain't gonna work for Maggie's pa no more.
Penguin_Out_Of_A_Zoo ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:50:17 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Pinkertons are actually still around. It's friggin scary.
tomdarch ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:19:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't know that they're the worst, but I've reviewed marketing materials from "security" firms that boast of their capabilities in terms of "labor relations" - with pictures of fat, bald wannabe cops in tactical shit.
yougotthesilver ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:44:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Overpass
Like here. Brutal story.
DontGoChasinWatrFowl ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:14:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Like the Italian Hall Massacre, where dozens of children died.
nomadofwaves ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:59:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Carnegie had issues like that when his steel workers went on strike. I believe Fird did also.
MaceWinnoob ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:53:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's the true nature of capitalism. It helps distribute resources both naturally and effectively but seemingly at the price of our humanity.
antpocas ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:11:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What do you mean by "distribute naturally and effectively"?
MaceWinnoob ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:25:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The free market is the best way to create a flow of resources. No one is more careful with their wealth than the people who own it. When the means of production are privately owned, competition will "naturally" select the best options.
It doesn't always work out though, and typically the middle class is a social invention as capitalist societies should split into a small wealthy class and large working class. Not always the best thing.
antpocas ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 10:16:35 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ah, so it effectively expropriates the value created by the working class into the hands of the bourgeois, I agree
FrozenInferno ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 21:30:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Capitalism has nothing to do with criminal violence. What a false characterization.
redemma1968 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 22:16:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
lol. I suppose you're right, in sense: the violence of Capitalism can't be considered "criminal" when they control the state, cops, and judges
FrozenInferno ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 02:49:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The fuck is that even supposed to mean. Please point out to me where in the definition of Capitalism is permitted battery declared as a requisite.
redemma1968 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:13:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I suppose, as always, that depends on your "definition" of capitalism. If we're talking about Capitalism as a historically existing system, then the violence of it should be self evident, with the many examples listed in the thread above containing instances of capitalism's explicit violence, i.e. the violence of the bosses hired goons, the police, against workers. This is not even getting in to the structural violence of capitalism: every historically existing capitalist society had a percentage of it's population condemned to hunger, starvation, poverty, disease, mindless drudgery, etc.
Now, perhaps you are one of the many people, especially prevalent on reddit (bless their dudebro hearts), that chooses to see capitalism not as a historically existing system of obvious violence and exploitation, but as a theoretical future system of untainted free markets. This "Real Capitalism" (or as I prefer "Magic Capitalism) is thus distinghised from "Crony Capitalism" (aka actual historical existing capitalism)
But even in this absurd utopia, there is nothing to stop the original contractions that made actual historical capitalism such a nightmare for so many: the basic tension between the ruling class and everyone else, between the haves and have nots
Wizzad ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 02:08:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Incentivizing criminal behavior?
FrozenInferno ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 02:50:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Is that a question or are you trying to make a point, because either way I don't follow.
Prof_Acorn ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:07:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ahh, the Pinkertons
RoboNinjaPirate ยท -11 points ยท Posted at 17:53:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And The union used thugs to beat people who crossed the picket line.
qwerto14 ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 20:39:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Some labor organizations were hardly better, some sabatoges of machinery and trains caused civilian deaths. It was a bad time in general.
ISBUchild ยท -13 points ยท Posted at 18:34:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is a very one-sided characterization. Old time unions acted like gangs and beat up anyone who chose to work during a strike or were otherwise not allied to the cause. They occupied entire towns to keep out competing replacement workers, and destroyed factory equipment to make a point. In some of the most prominent instances of violence against workers by management, it was an understandable response to being surrounded by a mob of armed people attacking and occupying your facility.
user1492 ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 19:07:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Blacks and Irish.
lennybird ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 19:14:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
True there were the Luddites... Desperate to maintain their livelihood.
But I'd deem it a false equivalence against:
Yeah the unions certainly aren't always innocent, but they were a direct reaction from a surge of employer leverage, oppression, and practically serfdom.
Mises2Peaces ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:41:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Government used troops to shoot activists. That's where it gets truly fucked up. Too bad big labor is just another business interest on Capitol Hill these days.
SuperGeometric ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:24:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The unions were brutal too. If you crossed a picket line, they'd beat the shit out of you. If you did "work" reserved for union workers (including plugging in electronics instead of waiting for an electrician, etc.) they'd break all your shit.
Both sides did some pretty ugly things to try to further their position. There's no sense turning this into a "pure good vs. pure evil" fairytale.
TaylorS1986 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 03:35:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Good. Fuck scabs.
SuperGeometric ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 12:40:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"Brutality = good, as long as it's in my personal interests. But FUCK those MOTHERFUCKERS for doing the same thing!"
switchfall ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 03:56:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Good thing unions never messed with thugs, am I right?
MartialLol ยท 25 points ยท Posted at 18:45:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My great-great grandfather died in a pre-OSHA paper mill by falling into a vat of hot wood pulp and acid. His was one of three deaths that lead to a period of strikes and riots in the company town that supported the mill. Dynamiting gas lines, hijacking supply trucks, etc. Unfortunately the workers weren't able to get many concessions, because the racial divide undermined any attempt at organization.
AsYouWished ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 00:22:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Amazing that so many people would rather fall in a vat of hot wood pulp and acid than stand side by side with someone different from them.
Ramv36 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 03:14:12 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fun fact, all Us municipalities are OSHA exempt. The water treatment plant I work in has zero compliance requirements outside of EPA Clean Water Act levels, and industry best practices.
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 02:04:52 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is why you see a lot of leftists championing social justice.
ferlessleedr ยท 61 points ยท Posted at 18:33:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Huge understatement. Physical fighting, getting shot at, getting private and public cops sicced on you with nightclubs drawn if not much much worse. The extremely wealthy employers were HORRIBLE to protesting and striking employees, like oftentimes trying to have them killed kind of horrible, and these people were protesting for a livable wage, basic safety standards, workman's comp, basic shit that we take for granted.
PlayMp1 ยท 20 points ยท Posted at 19:23:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Trying to have them killed? They did have them killed. There were numerous massacres during the most active years of the labor movement, with dozens getting gunned down for having the gall to demand fair wages and not being worked to the bone.
ferlessleedr ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 19:24:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well that too. But having someone killed begins with trying to have someone killed, so I'm still technically correct, and we all know that's the best kind of correct.
anonymousbach ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:59:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Most workers probably would have preferred to just be worked to the bone. Lot of times the bosses took the bone too.
Cyclone_1 ยท 1202 points ยท Posted at 14:09:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Similarly, black activists during the Civil Rights Movement era that few people have heard of. For instance: Ella Baker.
crochet-queen ยท 218 points ยท Posted at 15:23:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
I read a book about her for my modern American history class last year. She was a pretty rad woman.
EDIT: for anyone interested, the book was called "Ella Baker and The Black Freedom Movement"
DonutBoy12321 ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 21:59:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
For the uneducated; what'd she do?
crochet-queen ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 22:24:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
For the most part, she was a behind the scenes organizer. She is probably most known for challenging the gendered hierarchy in the civil rights movement and the black church. Her wiki article gives an alright synopsis, but the book I mentioned (edited my original comment) does a good job of explaining her accomplishments. I'm on mobile, and probably won't be near a computer until tomorrow, but if you're still interested, you can PM me! I'm not a professional, but I'm in my senior year of undergrad with a major in modern American history!
DamienHanrahan ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:09:13 on January 26, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What was the book? I'd like to read it
XtremeGuy5 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:07:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also read about her in a history class last semester. It's crazy how little we hear about a lot of the people who made the movement into what it was. A. Phillip Randolph is another one who I didn't learn about until I took a class on Civil Rights History. There are so many people who aren't remembered the same way MLK or Rosa Parks are and it's very odd to me.
Cyclone_1 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 15:48:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
She really was.
Atbt1 ยท -15 points ยท Posted at 16:17:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not as rad as OP's mom ( อกยฐ อส อกยฐ)
Pardonme23 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:21:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Remember, we're only supposed to learn about one line from one speech by one man. There were no other civil rights leaders worth learning about.
RonnieReagansGhost ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:46:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
She was exposed to radiation? :(
crochet-queen ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 16:59:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm ashamed to say that I stared at this comment for almost 5 minutes before I got the joke.
CorbenikTheRebirth ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:47:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I've heard of her before, but don't really know that much. Definitely going to give that book a read.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:30:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
added it to my "to read" list!
Frapplo ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:18:27 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I've read a few slave narratives and civil rights books. Some are absolutely jaw dropping stories of perseverance. I always read then and wonder if I'd have the same resolve in those situations.
Then I get super frustrated while trying to evenly cook a hot pocket, and realize that, no...no I would not.
[deleted] ยท 22 points ยท Posted at 19:17:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
American Civil Rights history is massively whitewashed
Cyclone_1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:19:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't disagree with that.
garbarismo ยท 21 points ยท Posted at 16:00:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Or Bayard Rustin! That dude was a badass
Cylinsier ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:03:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
His is one of the saddest stories. He had as much to do with the movemnt as MLK and was one of his closest confidantes. But he was also gay, which meant at the time that he had too much baggage to be allowed to have public notice. History nearly forgot him.
Evolving_Dore ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 16:09:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There were also lots of Jews who fought for black rights, many of whom were brutally persecuted as well.
Cyclone_1 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 16:13:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes, that's true. I know.
Evolving_Dore ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:04:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Unfortunately I can't think of any names now, which is a shame. I know some of them were even murdered along with black protesters by people with Klan connections.
skaiipl ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:34:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I've heard about Ella Baker. I study English as a second language in Poland and the teacher was talking about her in our American History class. To be honest, she is one of the only names that I remember from that class. I was that impressed with her, I guess.
gordo65 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:51:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also, civil rights lawyers. Whenever veterans are asked to stand at an event so that the rest of us can thank them for defending our freedom, I think about all the lawyers who have been doing the thankless job of ensuring that our rights are protected from state overreach.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:19:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I am not American so I didn't know a lot about the black civil rights movement until I went to see the movie "The Butler" with my mom. Opened my eyes to how hard the struggle was. I knew it was bad, but not that bad. I didn't know about freedom buses for example and everyone on those buses risked getting set on fire, on fucking fire!
arbivark ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:07:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
one of those black activists was Manuel Talley. In 1960 in Talley v California he won the right to anonymous speech. I used to be a lawyer, before I became too crazy to practice, and my work focused on trying to get lower courts to recognize what the Supreme Court had decided in Talley's case. Now I mostly just reddit. pic
RarestarGarden ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 17:16:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Pretty much anyone but Martin Luther King Jr.
Cyclone_1 ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 17:18:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Malcolm X is rather well known too.
I don't have anything against those guys, in fact I admire X in some ways, but the real, hard, work of mobilizing, canvassing, and organizing people in that time fell to a lot (not exclusively, though) of black women who got little, if any, praise for their efforts.
I think the need to rally behind a strong, charismatic, leader is problematic for movements as the death of the leader usually means (mostly symbolically) that the movement is therefore over which is a farce of epic proportions. I like to quote Ella Baker in conversations like this who said, "strong people don't need strong leaders."
RarestarGarden ยท 30 points ยท Posted at 17:27:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"Women" pretty much is the answer to OP's entire question.
Cyclone_1 ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 17:27:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Fair enough. I don't disagree with that.
ReasonablyBadass ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:41:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
?
Cyclone_1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:14:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What's your question?
ReasonablyBadass ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:29:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I just find the comparison weird.
Cyclone_1 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:32:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Why? Activists in the Labor Movement and the Civil Rights Movement were engaged in direct action/activism which makes them similar in that regard. They were both outraged over their exploitation. They both were large activist movements.
ReasonablyBadass ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:07:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Such different issues though. Idk, forget I said anything.
Kingca ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:05:52 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Different? They were both fighting for fair treatment. There's a lot of overlap between the two.
Thin-White-Duke ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:35:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Bayard Rustin was very close to MLK, and helped organize many demonstrations. You never hear about him, though, because he was gay.
Wiseguydude ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:37:40 on January 23, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Whose Ella Baker?
Cyclone_1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:58:43 on January 23, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Here you go.
thankstowelie ยท -8 points ยท Posted at 18:24:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
blacktivists
[deleted] ยท 87 points ยท Posted at 18:34:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm surprised that this is so high up there. There is so much anti union rhetoric these days. They gave us so much and people nowadays believe that our employers would just give us an 8 hr day, or lunch breaks, or vacation time, or sick leave if they didn't have to....
Ayjayz ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 22:24:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Some people think that those things were won by advancing technology and the vast increase in wealth seen by the last 100 years, and that unions were just opportunists trying to take credit.
sarcasticorange ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 20:58:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You're new to Reddit, right?
[deleted] ยท 26 points ยท Posted at 22:37:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Reddit is as often a massive libertarian circlejerk as it is a Bernie Sanders circlejerk. So not necessarily.
[deleted] ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 23:21:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think the reason why the first thing that comes to mind when most think of a propertarian (they are in very few ways for liberty, except for maybe weed or gay marriage if you meet a decent one, they mainly focus on property rights which hinders freedom) is a teenaged edge lord because the education system doesn't talk shit about labor rights until the tail end of high school. By then it has been etched so hard into your mind that the US is the best nation for freedom and that capitalism = literally the ideology of Jesus.
For fucks sake, I grew up very close to eastern Kentucky. There were union wars where an unnumbered amount of coal miners died through numerous strikes. You'd think that they'd teach you this stuff by 5th grade when the school usually teaches you stuff about your state.
the9trances ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 02:49:22 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, true freedom is a bureaucracy that you don't know and whom you've never met claiming a priori ownership of your labor and your home.
I grew up in rural, middle of nowhere, southwestern Virginia and my dad is from the coal lands of southeastern Kentucky, and I've seen firsthand the damage that poor property rights does to the environment. That's pure cronyism; all that shit's done with full cooperation of the state and federal government.
That's the opposite of property rights. You don't know what the hell you're talking about, but because it's anti-libertarian, upvotes for you.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 04:23:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I can use this exact same claim for capitalism. Just change the word bureaucracy and it's the exact same argument but turned against you.
And from what I've seen, the government has done jack shit since Johnson's Great Society and FDR's New Deal to combat poverty. You can thank Ronald "Second Coming of Christ" Reagan for that. The status of rural Appalachia would be incredibly worse than now if it was always kept in order by the coal mine owners.
You don't know what the hell you're talking about when it comes to freedom. You believe in freedom for the few but slavery for the many, and you are probably a part of the group that is the many. Fucking brainwashing that's what this society does.
Also, go post me to /r/shitstatistssay. It's not like you don't want a state because you want everything to be ran by someone other than the many. You just think that corporations are better than the government.
the9trances ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:52:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I have literally not seen a single front-page libertarian circlejerk here in my whole time here. The major subreddits are dominated by generic leftist content and dissenting views are punished.
urbanfirestrike ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:05:28 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
the Rand paul AMA is on the front page rn. Also world news is extremely right wing. But yeah other than that reddit is pretty leftist on everything other than immigrants, Black people, and ISIS.
hundycougar ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:02:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Amen!
[deleted] ยท 41 points ยท Posted at 15:55:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
[deleted] ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 17:10:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
Lost_in_costco ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 17:11:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jesus, I get 2 weeks vacation and no kind of Christmas bonus at all. I get one day off, the federal holiday.
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 17:18:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
Lost_in_costco ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 17:19:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I sub sick days for vacation. My sick days roll over but my vacation doesn't. So I take sick days here or there to get 3 or 4 day weekends.
iamagirrafe ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:28:02 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wtf is a 13th salary?
marino1310 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:44:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Where I work we get 2 weeks, a christmas and random summer bonus. No idea why we get a bonus in july but we do.
Reinbert ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:21:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
I have 25 paid vacation days + official holidays off (12 from monday-friday this year). I also get a 13th salary at christmas and a 14th salary on my first vacation in a year (most companies pay that in july). This is minimum by law, vacation days increase to 30 after 25 years of employment.
Austria, yay!
*edit: I also get additional days off for things like moving (2 days), death of a family member/partner (3 days) or relatives/family members of partner (2 days), searching for a new job (1 day/week after quitting/layoff, no joke),...
[deleted] ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 22:48:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hell, even sick days are hard to take. Which is a big fucking problem particularly in food service.
aggieinoz ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 02:22:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sick days are seriously just a myth in the service industry. I've never seen someone actually be able to get out of work for being sick. Which is a shame because they are likely to get everyone else sick around them including fellow employees and customers
[deleted] ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 18:27:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A whopping 2 weeks off per year and even then you'll still be expected to answer work emails and have your boss guilt you into trying to not take the time off
massenburger ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 18:41:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That last part depends on where you work though. Nowhere I've worked has had bosses guilt you into not taking time off. In fact, it's been the opposite. They encourage it, and we show off our vacations to each other in our weekly meetings if one of us took off recently. Of course, there are some (too many) shitty employers out there who do try and guilt you. Don't work for those people if you don't have to. Time taken off is just as important to a company as time you work there, it's just some companies are too stupid to realize that.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 00:44:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
/r/jobs
Electric999999 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:38:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That would be because your country is scared of unions and cares far too much about business owners.
Lost_in_costco ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:39:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's not scared of unions, there are plenty of them. It's just that unions are completely powerless as they don't have enough money to bribe....I mean lobby congress.
my_third_throwaway_n ยท -8 points ยท Posted at 17:01:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
American workers are not as efficient per hour worked as Germany or France though, if I'm not mistaken. So to get the same amount of productivity done, they have to work longer.
coloco21 ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 17:37:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Except people are less productive in the last hour(s) of work.
And they are less productive if they're less happy (because of no vacations for instance)
my_third_throwaway_n ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 05:28:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
true, but there will always be "last hours of work." Now those hours are hours 7-8. If you cut it to 6 hours, then they will be hours 5-6, and so on.
this is also true, but I think one should have to prove that they can be efficient first, then get the extra vacations, not the other way around. that's unfair to the employer.
coloco21 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:54:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I live in France, where we get 35h a week and 5 weeks min of paid vacation (my father who works for the government gets 9 at the moment)
I'm sure that if you work 10h, your last hour will be immensely less productive than the last hour of someone working 7 a day.
Your idea about vacations, while good in theory, would never work in the real world. How do you define productiveness of an employee? The employers will just lie and say the employee isn't productive enough to merit more vacation time.
my_third_throwaway_n ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 08:12:20 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Productivity is easy to define. Gross revenue of the company divided by total hours worked. It's just math, not something you can easily fudge and make up. It isn't as simple as the boss just saying "oh you weren't as productive actually so you don't get more vacation time." Employees can tell how good the company is, how business is, if they have more/less clients. Those things aren't things the boss can just make up.
As far as my idea about vacations not working in the real world, the opposite way wouldn't work either. Saying "ok, we will give you more vacation time, but you have to promise to be more productive otherwise" sure as hell wouldn't work--especially on an honor system. There, the end result would be that the employee isn't any more or less productive, but yet the employer now has to pay them to vacation for an extra few weeks, which isn't fair to the employer.
personally I don't like the idea of paid vacation at all. It's not fair to the business for them to have to pay you if you're not working. would it ever be fair for the business to say to the employee "hey, the business isn't doing too well, we don't have a lot of money, I'm going to need you to work for 3 or 4 weeks now without getting paid."? Of course not.
it isn't fair to ask an employee to work without getting paid, and it isn't fair to ask employer to pay an employee if the employee isn't working. When you work, you get paid. If you're not working, you don't get paid. I think that's the most fair system for everyone.
Lost_in_costco ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 17:03:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We have the least productivity per hour actually. We also work the most. We accomplish in 8 hours what an average German does in 6. So I'd rather work harder for 6 hours and get vacations.
IoSonCalaf ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:48:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Holy god, that's SO not true. I work with German, French, and other Europeans, and their work ethic is terrifyingly slack. Most of the time, their "work" is trying to find someone to do their work for them.
Edit: word.
Reinbert ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 20:15:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What a nice, trustworthy, reliable and verifiable source!
IoSonCalaf ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:13:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I didn't see a source provided saying Americans aren't as efficient as Europeans.
Edit: And at least I'm contributing to the conversation at least by providing my experiences.
Jay12341235 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:19:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Citation needed
qwertx0815 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:56:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
http://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/which-country-has-the-most-productive-workers.html
just an opinion piece, but they linked to the OCED studies...
Definitely_Working ยท 15 points ยท Posted at 17:39:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
seriously this. and not just holding up signs and standing outside a business either... back then when they did that they got fucking shot IIRC. it was like actual battles in order to get those things to become part of our working lives. most people dont realize that minimum wage cost lives to achieve. or maybe that documentary i saw one time completely mislead me and im a moron.
Legate_Rick ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 18:16:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You were not mislead, hundreds of workers died fighting for what was right.
massenburger ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:42:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Which documentary was that?
Definitely_Working ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:47:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
honestly not sure, it was just something that caught my eye one time a couple of years ago on the history channel, and i only watched it because i was absolutely blown away that they had history on the history channel.
had alot of re-enactments, and i think it was based on this labor movement. it may have been part of the "men who built america" series, but thats just a bad guess.
asleepatthewhee1 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 20:25:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And just look how we're shitting all over their legacy now.
[deleted] ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 20:14:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
[deleted]
PancakePenguin ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:55:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Communist Manifesto was basically the guidebook to socialism
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:40:18 on January 19, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Karl Marx was a fucking moron, who didn't know a fucking thing about economics and who also lived like a parasite, and created an ideal, based on envy that served as an inspiration for some of the most horrid crimes in history.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 08:19:57 on January 19, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
sounds like hate speech to me tbh fam
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 08:29:26 on January 19, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So? The truth is hate speech?
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 10:45:08 on January 19, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Comrade, do you want to get thrown into a gulag? Because this is how you get thrown into a gulag.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:38:39 on January 19, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Good.
-Urabus- ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 22:19:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And now organized labor is vilified. What a world.
andreyevich ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:29:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I was a real eye opener. I looked up and noticed that I would write to big science people so distraught and worked up. It causes unneeded stress and turns people off and on again?". My motto in life because I'm not going to die anyways. I force myself to be a Paid Ski patroller. I am entitled to it again and again I found a box of pudding cups I had with his. He'd obsess over a year now that I was just V8-still nasty...
achmedclaus ยท 314 points ยท Posted at 14:24:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fuck 8 hour shifts. Give me 4 10 hour shifts instead and I'll be a much happier person
Level3Kobold ยท 147 points ยท Posted at 16:43:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just give me one 40 hr shift and I'm good.
count210 ยท 162 points ยท Posted at 16:59:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
you should become a firefighter. you work 48 hours straight in some cities then you get a five day weekend.
edit: for those asking how, most of that time is spent cooking, sleeping, watching TV, or hanging out, but in a ready state waiting for the call. You aren't fighting fire all 48 hours. The 24 workers are EMTs, those crazy righteous bros. Also if a fire starts in the last minutes of your shift you need to go and fight it to completion.
talontario ยท 34 points ยท Posted at 19:00:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
and in those hours you sleep and cook if there's no emergency.
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 23:57:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
hell if you sleep while you cook you'll be making more work for yourself
CaptainMudwhistle ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 03:42:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And make calendars.
Heatbeat ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:27:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Eh.... they're not actively working all those 48 hours. They're "on duty" but that just means stationed for when a call comes in.
I'd imagine some serious reform for smaller departments is coming.
I know in my area they're going to be changing it up. They're getting too much money for how little work they actually do and it's a strain on the smaller municipalities budgets.
walrusbot ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:23:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Whats the logic behind this? I feel like a well rested firefighter is definitely more useful that one on the 45th hour of their shift
TheBobJamesBob ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 19:50:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, those shifts aren't constant work. They're mostly being "on-call" like doctors are.
The reason it's better to have long shifts? Switching shifts takes time. The most dangerous time to have a fire is probably around the shift-change, when you've either got tired guys, guys who are still a bit off their game in the first hours of the shift, or worst, guys who are mid-way through a switch and will take longer to get to you. At least, that's my guess.
Runamokamok ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 20:39:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My dad was a Philadelphia fire fighter. Schedule: 2 day works (8am-6pm), 2 night works (6pm-8am), and 4 days off. Some nights there were no "runs" and other night back-to-back "runs". I believe the schedules are slightly different now in terms of times in which shifts start. So there was a A,B,C,D tour schedule. I thought it was good.
steelcap77 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 21:59:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thank your dad. 2 firefighters died on my street not too long ago.
Runamokamok ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 22:01:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I will! Sorry to hear that. I hated his night works as a child for constant fear of his death. So thankful he retired a few months back.
Frommerman ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:55:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Depending on where your station is, you might get one or two runs in that 48 hour period on average. The firefighters can sleep most of the way through most nights and get to cook meals. It's a pretty sweet gig.
joethetipper ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:20:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Why is this the case?
Dude_Named_Ben ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:50:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I do 24 on, 72 off. It's pretty fucking sweet.
Mr_Kool ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:45:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That actually sounds pretty fair.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:21:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I work 2 24s and a 12 a week (EMT). It sounds great until your days off are spent recovering from running your entire shift
deckpumps_n_deldos ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 17:08:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
thank you! lets stop fucking around people.
PacoTaco321 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:49:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sounds like an Alaskan crab fisherman, just add on another 24 hours.
gippered ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:19:26 on January 19, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'd even settle for one 1 hour shift.
Kendo16 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 17:15:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Please tell me you either have a not so important job or are jobless.
KoedKevin ยท 1018 points ยท Posted at 15:36:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
How about six 12 hour shifts? That's more what you'd be looking at.
Increased wealth through automation had a lot to do with getting us to 5 8 hour days.
seewolfmdk ยท 134 points ยท Posted at 15:58:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also the labour movement, at least in Europe.
HaroldSax ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 21:34:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Same thing in the US. It's covered in history classes, but has the unfortunate consequence of being sandwiched in between the Industrial Revolution and WWI in most high school level courses.
KoedKevin ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:02:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The labor movement didn't create the wealth but it did move it down the pyramid to allow shorter hours. Prior to automation we need to work that much to survive.
Wizzad ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 02:09:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Labor created the wealth, and the labor movement both moved that wealth to the working class and incentivized the creation of more wealth.
Labor has created more wealth under the automation of the capitalist mode of production than ever before.
clamslammer707 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 16:53:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So go underway in the Navy? 6 12+ hour shifts and SOMETIMES you may get part of Sunday off... not often though.
vxicepickxv ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:31:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Day check/Stay check in aviation. We were lucky when we had 12 hour days, 7 days a week. It was normally closer to 14, and sometimes(more often than I'd like to admit) we did face to face passdown. That's not so bad if you were on day check. I wasn't.
[deleted] ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 17:46:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My wife is foreign and is convinced that she will need to work 12 x 6 in order to make decent money.
Her English isn't great which is the main hold up with finding jobs but I keep trying to convince her that she's not going to have to work that much.
It's an entirely foreign concept to her that more work != more pay.
Better job = more pay. And most good jobs in the U.S. are 8 hour shifts.
ristoril ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 20:21:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So what it's just a coincidence that before the labor movement people were working like today's Third World sweat shop laborers, and after the labor movement we had a 40-hour week and all the other benefits?
Also you're going to have to explain why all those Third World sweat shop laborers still exist if the mere existence of automation led to five 8s.
CrowningKnight ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 17:09:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We still have six 12's in America. It's called being a crew chief in the USAF
KoedKevin ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:49:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I've got two sons that wear MARPAT so I feel your pain.
Scruff3y ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 17:43:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Next Rise Against single: "Increased Wealth Through Automation" I'm calling it!
StabbyPants ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:12:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
nah, they'd prefer to hire fewer workers for the same salary, then work them at 6x12. desperate unemployed people keep the salary low
Zircon88 ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 16:47:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My operators all work 6x12. They are only required to work 5x8, but when we tell them there is no need for overtime, they complain. Given the choice * no one* refuses overtime. The whole point, to add on what you are saying is that now you get to choose for yourself. As to the legality - they sign waivers during induction.
Bob_Skywalker ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 18:06:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I live in an area with quite a few plants. Most of my friends and people I know work at the plants. When I see them on occasion or out somewhere they all like to do the same two things.
Brag about how much money they make.
Bitch about how many hours they work.
But they wouldn't have one without the other so it's kind of funny.
Zircon88 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 18:47:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, to be brutally honest, I would much rather have the option for overtime myself. Instead, I'm stuck looking for a supplementary job since my position (managerial) doesn't get paid OT.
I guess that what they're really bragging about is that they were lucky enough to land a gig that permitted them to work these hours - if they wanted to.
onedoor ยท 51 points ยท Posted at 18:10:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
But they want those extra shifts because of low wages...
DrunkBeavis ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:13:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's not always the case. I work with ironworkers who make good money (At least $50k/yr plus benefits, journeyman and foreman $70k or more) who would still prefer to work 6x12 shifts and make double that amount. It isn't that they don't make enough money, it's that there's an opportunity for more. Not everyone takes the overtime, but most do.
RedStag86 ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 20:03:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's 2016. $50k/year is not a lot at all for someone with a family.
DrunkBeavis ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:08:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Really? That's right at the median household income in the US. For an apprentice. Day 1.
beenoc ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 20:28:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's still not a lot to pay for someone, their spouse, and 1-2 kids.
DrunkBeavis ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 22:18:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It may not be "a lot." It's a damn sight better than what you get payed to go to college, though. That's what an apprenticeship is. You can receive training for a career while still making that money plus benefits.
ChE_ ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:41:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In a lot of the nation it is plenty. I can live on 20k/yr by myself. At 50k/yr and a stay at home wife, I could probably support a family of 4 where I live now. My parents were able to support a family of 4 on 25k/yr.
RuafaolGaiscioch ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 20:29:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The cost of living is always climbing.
DrunkBeavis ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:11:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So is the pay rate.
antpocas ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:14:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The cost of living climbs faster.
DrunkBeavis ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 23:19:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Pay rate increases with the cost of living, based (I believe) off of the CPI.
I seriously can't believe that I'm arguing that $50k isn't an acceptable wage for someone with nothing more than a high school degree. Reddit is full of people with no grip on reality.
RuafaolGaiscioch ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 06:07:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That is empirically false. Your opinion of what work is worth notwithstanding, it is a verifiable fact that the workers in this country have seen no real increase in their pay while the buying power of that pay is less and less every year. If you have any actual counterargument outside of "I don't think this is the case so you're stupid", I would love to hear it, but there's reality for you, plain as day.
DrunkBeavis ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:22:03 on January 18, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm speaking specifically about the union I deal with. I can't recall exactly how the cost of living increase is calculated, but it's tied directly to some economic metric.
What you're saying is largely true, but not for everyone. You can be super aggressive if you want, but you're attacking the wrong person.
RedStag86 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:57:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It might be the median, but people in the middle are far from financially comfortable today.
DrunkBeavis ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:11:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's true in a lot of cases, but it that because of wages or because of poor financial decisions? $50k is more than enough for an apartment and two safe working vehicles plus basic food and essentials for a family. Maybe not in a new apartment downtown, but that's just fine. I know because I've done it. Does every apprentice need to own a big house and flashy truck? Probably not, in my opinion.
Your argument is based off of some strange idea that everyone needs to have large amounts of disposable income, rather than a modest living. If they want more than modest, work some overtime. Seems pretty fair to me, and to them.
RedStag86 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:21:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I guess I'm speaking generally, not just about apprentices. The cost of education comes into play, and location plays a huge part in all of this.
mnmn1345 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:47:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Most people don't agree with you. But have an upvote, i do.
Zircon88 ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 18:49:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
With OT, their wages surpass mine by around 700 euro actually. Earning 1.5x4h OT for 5 days and 2x12h for saturdays (all 12 are considered at one flat OT rate) most certainly boosts the paycheck.
RichardRogers ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:52:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Can you read? That's with extra shifts. They need to pull 72-hour weeks for that money. What would their wages be if they worked reasonable standard shifts?
KaseyKasem ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:20:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think you're missing that they're electing to do it. A lot of people do overtime. Money is nice.
RichardRogers ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:20:58 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
A lot of people elect to do overtime because their regular wage won't leave much if anything after the bills are paid. "Money is nice" is a vacuous dismissal of the fact that overtime is necessary for many people to live comfortably and not constantly panic over whether the bills will be paid. Think about the above statement that "no one refuses overtime." Most people value their leisure time highly, so it says a lot about the starting wage when virtually all of those employees are giving close to twice as much of their waking time to work as they have to to stay employed. Some people just like to work that much, but if everyone's doing it it's probably out of necessity due to low wages.
KaseyKasem ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 02:37:04 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Perhaps they all prefer extra money to use towards their hobbies over having more free time.
RedStag86 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:04:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sure, it boost a paycheck. But in my experience, most tradesmen that work those kinds of hours do nothing but drink and sleep when they're not working. Not much time for much else. What kind of life is that?
DrunkBeavis ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:20:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The one they prefer to live? You realize people actually take pride in working with their hands, right? It isn't modern day slavery. It's a career choice for a large portion of the population.
DontGoChasinWatrFowl ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:15:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's because they make 1.5x time for overtime.
Shoeboxer ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 18:28:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Automation had nothing to do with it and you're doing a massive disservice to those who struggled and died to bring us an 8 hour workday. We would still be doing 12 hour days, automation or not, without the early labour movement.
KoedKevin ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 18:55:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm really not doing anyone a disservice. It is a fact that there is a much bigger pie to divide with all of the technology improvements over the last century.
PlayMp1 ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 19:21:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, but without the labor movement, the employees wouldn't be getting nearly as much of the benefits of that bigger pie.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:12:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sounds fine to me!
Canadian_Infidel ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:12:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No it didn't. The could still have people working 80+ hour weeks on the machines.
Bones_MD ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:24:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tfw I work 12-24 hour shifts on a regular basis
indalcecio ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:49:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
and before you say "I'll take it I need the extra money", you would be paid per day, not by the hour.
yarow12 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:54:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I used to work two twelve hour shifts every weekend. I was on my feet 95% of the time. I wouldn't recommend it, but it did free up my weekdays.
Skiddywinks ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:20:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Did exactly that for two or three weeks for Christmas one year. In retail. I was fucking loaded but God did it suck.
Foxfire2 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:10:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I have a friend who is a nurse that does that now. Many nurses work 12 hr shifts, but she also works two jobs. This is by choice though, so vastly different.
chasethenoise ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:11:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's about what some of my coworkers are at right now. Nobody works 8/5 at my job, it's a minimum of 10/5. 8 hours is seen as lazy. It's ridiculous.
godless_communism ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:31:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Bullshit. Capitalists will take whatever they can get away with. Productivity has absolutely zero to do with it.
Punkdork ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:40:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Know what drives that automation? Capitalism. Those shitty 6x12s were still better than being in the fields. Look into the population booms of the industrial revolution. Higher productivity means more resources for everyone. More resources means more babies.
This said, what we have now is a very twisted form of capitalism. A CEO has a moral and legal obligation to shareholders to make the most profit they can. Currently, lobbying has the highest ROI. It's the very fact that the government can be bought that has broken the system.
Who is a company everyone hates? Comcast, guess who grants and protects their monopolies? Governments at the local level. How about oil companies? We hate them because they destroy the environment, yes? Why do they get such huge subsidies?
We need markets to help us allocate resources effectively for R&D of those new automations, general production, and the destruction of goods and services no longer desirable. Without a price calculation/price system (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_system), there is no way to identify the most effective use and distribution of resources.
Something people overlook is that labor is a market too. Wages are the price of your labor. If I want to pay you to pick up my dog's poop, you probably wouldn't do it for $5 a day, I bet you'd consider it a lot more carefully at $1mil/year. So there is a market on labor too, what I'm willing to spend on your labor and what you're willing to trade it for.
Yes, this can get abused at any level, but when you have a strong, centralized government, you've created a honeypot for those who wish to abuse things.
stroupzilla ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:01:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
for the same freaking pay as our 40 now
BringBackThe70s ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:00:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Other wise known as chef hours
peterkeats ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 17:25:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is used in many places now. It's called flex schedule. Also 4 x 9 hour shifts, where you get every other Friday off.
The point of the labor movement was to limit the number of hours you worked in any given amount of time. As mentioned above, people would work 6 x 12 hour days, literally. Fired if they were injured on the job. Put in jail if they failed to pay back the debt that they owed to their employer. It was pretty dire.
tigernmas ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:24:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I know in Ireland, and quite probably in many other parts of the world, the boss would also own a pub and give you your pay there. If you didn't spend it there too you weren't quite so likely to keep that job.
Definitely_Working ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 17:40:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
well, back then it was because it was like 7 days a week 16 hour days in a mine. lets be thankful they atleast got that as a baseline.
not-very-creativ3 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 16:57:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I agree but prefer 3 13 hour shifts
butyourenice ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 20:10:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Give me 4 6-hour shifts and I'll be super happy AND more productive, as I won't have all that down time to fuck around on reddit!
tigernmas ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:30:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What with increasing automation and less jobs this is what we should be fighting more for.
Abolish work!
[deleted] ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 17:33:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It was also the 40 hour workweek they won.
syriquez ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 19:29:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
And that's certainly evaporating in the US.
Salaried? Well, that means you're okay with 70+ hours/week, right? With no overtime compensation. Also, taking vacation requires 3 levels of management to sign off on it and even if you do get that 1 week off, you're going to return to 3 weeks of backlog because the business metaphorically catches on fire in your absence. But here's the fun part, HR will be breathing down your neck all year long because you haven't taken any of your amazing 2 weeks of vacation after working for the business for over 10 years! And no, your time won't roll over, lololol. By the way, sick leave has to be pre-approved so plan those emergencies, lololol.
But yeah guys, let's talk about how the Do-Nothing Unionsโข ruin the country and how your friend's girlfriend's sister's roommate's nephew's father's former pastor's cousin's stepson had a union that did nothing for them and just stole their wages!
This fuckin' country.
And then if you deign to not be able to afford college or live in a region that has amazing job opportunities... Well, you should go fucking die in a hole for working [low prestige job in retail, service, food, whatever]! You're a vermin of society and shouldn't be allowed to live on anything less than 3 separate jobs simultaneously! It's your fault for working a job that high schoolers should be working!
But at the same fucking time that I'm saying this, I will still expect Target, Walmart, McDonald's, Caribou, Starbucks, and all those other fucking places to be open at 6AM or 8AM or whenever. Because I don't understand a single fucking thing about the infrastructure and personnel requirements that allow my brainless consumerism to function in this shithole land of the free!
Sorry Mekroig, not targeting you, just realizing how much the anti-union and anti-wage-normalization crowd annoys the shit out of me.
IHateTheLetterF ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:48:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wow, union works so much better in my country. We get 5 weeks paid vacation.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:23:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's okay. I agree with you.
ktappe ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:10:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I get your point and that this is tongue in cheek, but the 40-hour work week you are assuming was achieved by them too.
fireinthesky7 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:33:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I work a 24-on, 48-off schedule and I can't tell you how much more I enjoy it than five days of 8-10 hour shifts.
AOEUD ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:18:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Go get one, then. They exist.
Clefaerie ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:30:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Go into restaurant management.
matterhorn1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:36:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah I agree. I bet the majority of people would prefer this, yet nobody that I know of operates this way. It's too bad, same amount of time working and you'd get a long weekend every week. Who wouldn't be for that?
buttery_shame_cave ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:36:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
eh, i've worked the 4/10 schedule life... the three days off thing is overrated if you have a commute of any real length.
in both situations i was working 4/10s, most of the people on the shifts lived within ten minutes of work. people who were more than 45 minutes away would look elsewhere. fuck having so little of the day.
zehamberglar ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:18:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is a thing you can do. No one is stopping you.
You wouldn't want to work a 72 hour work week, and those people saved you from that.
merdock379 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:22:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Point being is that you used to have to work much, much more.
achmedclaus ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:37:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not really. I could finish my weekly work in 20ish hours. The last day is just a hindrance at this point
merdock379 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:41:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm saying that prior to limiting the normal work week to just 40 hours, workers used to have to work much longer work weeks.
Nothing to do with present day stuff.
buttflan ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:51:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Work at a hospital. Three 12 hour shifts. It's so nice to have all that time off
cherlin ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:55:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I work 4 10's and oh my do I love it. M-th 7-5 and I get a 3 day weekend every weekend!
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:00:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
For a lot of jobs, that's unsafe due to fatigue and so forth.
For a lot of other jobs, that's a bad tradeoff for employers, because the quality of work one is able to produce declines sharply after 5-6 hours. That's the irony of the Silicon Valley "crunch" culture, for instance.
Something like retail? Sure. I'd rather work four 10-hour days running a register or stocking shelves myself, come to that.
However, we already have a big problem with expecting people to work past the point of diminishing returns.
CxOrillion ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:22:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I work 4 10 hour shifts. It's so great. I mean my job sucks, but the schedule is awesome. There's no upredicability, no surprises, just work Sunday-Wednesday nights and then have 3 days off with no worries.
zazathebassist ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:16:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There are downsides to this. Those extra two hours ensure you leave work feeling absolutely exhausted and ready to just pass out. But free Fridays are so good
UNBR34K4BL3 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:07:49 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
How bout a 24 hour shift every third day? Feels good man. A lot of the time it's paid sleep
Guruking ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:17:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Depends on your job. I fucking hate working 4 10s. That first day off is always spent recouping.
achmedclaus ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:21:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Eh, analysis. I usually play videogames at night during the week anyway 2 more hours of pretending to work each day would be amazing to have that 3 day weekend every week
Guruking ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:56:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I work a job there's really no pretending to work, so a busy 10 hour day is hell. My previous position I was part time, 30 hours. 2 years later and I'm still not acclimated to working 2 extra hours a day.
grachuss ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 04:48:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If you want to join the Border Patrol you can do 5 10s. No overtime though.
achmedclaus ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:12:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Why would I want to do 5 10s? I'm a 40 hour a week kinda guy.
green_marshmallow ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:34:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It should be TUIF, not TGIF.
brandvegn ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:07:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
good ol' Pinkertons. Knew how to bash some heads in and bring in black scab workers to create racial bigotry to confuse labor issues.
rubbar ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:29:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I thought that's why we celebrate the military on labor day... /s
DrUpvotes ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:53:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture of their minds, and dignity, equality, and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down, men other-centered can build up I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent redemptive goodwill will proclaim the rule of the land." - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:07:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Damn he made some good words.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:56:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
People literally died so we could have a weekend.
MC_Mooch ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:00:06 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thanks Bernie!
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:38:06 on January 19, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not surprised to this kind of shit gilded here.
Samopal_Vzor58 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:37:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They literally have holidays in most countries.
PlayMp1 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:28:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The US specifically changed its Labor Day from the traditional May 1st (May Day) to being in September to dissociate it from its unionist roots. In fact, IIRC, some GOP elected official (think it was Rick Santorum, not sure though) tweeted on Labor Day once about how it's a day to honor those brave business owners.
Never mind that the roots of Labor Day worldwide are decidedly more Red in nature, if you catch my drift.
jeepdave ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:52:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oh shut the fuck up and move to Cuba.
Banzai51 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:07:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What kills me is today people will actively argue that Coal Mine Execs or Industrialists like Henry Ford didn't hire goons to beat up and kill labor rights and union leaders. Or that the National Guard was never called on to massacre striking workers.
TheIslander829 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:09:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Those assholes.
asilenth ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:11:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We need a new labor revolution.
wolsel ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:23:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My busy season. Can't wait for 8 hour days again....
lornabalthazar ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:27:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Frances Perkins! If you're interested in this, read about her. She was an amazing woman. Suffragist, activist, social worker, first female member of U.S. Cabinet (Secretary of Labor). She's one of my favorite people in history. So underrated.
cavilier210 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:33:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't really think they're underappreciated. It's barely a day that goes by where I haven't heard or read about the wonders of early unions and labor rights.
inthrees ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:40:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And now people are falling all over themselves to vote in the ones who will demolish all of it.
"That child is fortunate to earn eleven cents an hour, ten hours a day, fifty hours a week! When I was a child I wasn't allowed to work because of burdensome government regulations!"
Thenightmancumeth ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:53:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Haha here i am working 2.13 an hour 12 hour days sometimes 12-14 days in a row uggghh
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:05:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
To put at least ONE name to this thread:
Louis Tikas -Ludlow Tent site organizer who died at the hands of a Colorado National Guardsmen. His biography is even called "buried unsung."
cody_anderson ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 20:14:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Rosalind Franklin, or for that matter, most women in science. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalind_Franklin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_McClintock
[deleted] ยท 44 points ยท Posted at 17:12:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Antonio Salieri. One of the greatest composer of his era only out shined by Mozart. Trained Beethoven and Schubert for free. Only known in history for an urban legend that he killed Mozart out of jealousy, which has no base in historical fact.
fluffy_flamingo ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 19:11:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That legend made for a great movie, though.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:12:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It most certainly did.
Perdendosi ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:31:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If really true, though, why don't we play more of his music currently? We play Haydn. We play (a little) Clementi. I have never played a Salieri piece, either in an ensemble or on keyboard. (I'm guessing Salieri's keyboard pieces are more often performed than whatever he wrote for ensembles, but that's just a guess.) I would think that if he were really that good (say, a classical-era version of Camille Saint-Saens), we'd be playing and hearing more of his stuff.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:35:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thats true but think about it like this. If Mozart and Haydn weren't alive and performing when he was, would we listen to his music then. You've got a point but I think his music and his influence on future composers has been forgotten.
retrode ยท 545 points ยท Posted at 16:02:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jonas Salk, developer of the Polio vaccine. Made it available and didn't patent the vaccine which would have made him an estimated $7 billion dollars richer.
[deleted] ยท 393 points ยท Posted at 17:27:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Everyone in the microbiology field knows his name.. He is definitely not underappreciated
LilyKnightMcClellan ยท 85 points ยท Posted at 17:48:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Even those of us who are not in microbiology know his name and accomplishments. And rightfully so, but he is hardly unknown or underappreciated.
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:28:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If we revered decent people the way we do celebrities we might live in a better world. Sure, we know his name, but he isn't acknowledged as the hero he was.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:33:37 on January 31, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I had never heard of him.
LilyKnightMcClellan ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:36:32 on February 1, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I guess someone didn't pay attention in biology.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:54:50 on February 1, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Could be. My high school taught biology in 9th grade. Then I did an engineering discipline in college that didn't require biology. So, it's been a while since biology, but I wish I knew more.
Any place you recommend starting if I want to learn some more?
LilyKnightMcClellan ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:17:56 on February 1, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No, I just know the name Jonas Salk because everyone knows Jonas Salk. But then I went on to major in art history.
lllllllillllllllllll ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 19:02:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Everyone in medicine, everyone in any kind of immunological and epidemiological research field, hell, a lot of high school students know him from biology class.
cat_____ ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:23:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I know him from the fact that his name comes up on a TIL a few times a month.
Knightly_Stain ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 18:30:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yea everyday I drive by the beautiful Salk Institute in San Diego. I know nothing of microbiology, but I know his name
jaygibby22 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:44:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Salk Hall, the building where the vaccine was developed, houses the pharmacy and dental schools at the University of Pittsburgh.
jodatoufin ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:38:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Everyone with a decent education knows who he is.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:58:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Everyone in the world should know him. So he is under appreciated.
wolsel ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:26:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Still. Not patenting it is probably overlooked. Think what the world would be like if the seat belt had been patented.
XTRIxEDGEx ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:35:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, my middle school was named after him.
rookierror ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:20:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Under remunerated not under appreciated
RampanToast ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:01:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I knew his name from that episode of Fairly Oddparents.
Scottz0rz ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:42:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
More like everyone who didn't fall asleep in a freshman microbiology class.
Or more like everyone who has grandparents.
SwellSeason ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:40:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah but the bartender in Good Will Hunting had no idea so
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 18:56:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He deserves to be a household name.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 18:29:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not everyone who should appreciate him is in microbiology
nordlund63 ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 18:49:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The guy was a worldwide superstar while he was alive and started one of the most famous and decorated research facilities in the world.
[deleted] ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 19:03:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sabin is way more unappreciated. He also created a vaccine of a weakened version of the virus. He made It at the same time as Salk and his vaccine was the one that has iraddicated the disease in almost all of the world. It saved more lives than Salk's but he's rarely spoken of.
Quackimaduck1017 ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 19:22:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The unknown hero there would be Henrietta Lacks. She was a poor black woman who had her cells taken without her knowledge or consent. Those cells were what Salk worked on to develop that vaccine, and though her contribution wasn't intentional she was vital none the less
gmfreeman ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:12:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He also tested his vaccines in smuggled monkeys and orphans. His first batch of 40 monkeys all died and he berated the shipping company for delaying his research. Also, he only tested 40 monkeys total, 20 in the control who he just injected straight up polio into, then like 13 of the vaccinated monkeys survived their polio injections. He thought it was good enough and injected orphans in exchange for food.
panthera_tigress ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 18:28:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm not saying this is okay but research ethics were not taken as seriously then as they are now; the Tuskegee syphilis experiments were going on at this time too. Also I'd like to see a source on this. I'm a history major at the University of Pittsburgh, where he did his research, and it's the first I've heard of this.
meeeehhhhhhh ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 18:38:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, I think it's definitely necessary to look at it through the lens of that time. While I'm not justifying it, it's important to consider the ethics of research in that era before completely condemning his actions.
Also, high five to a fellow history major!
[deleted] ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 18:36:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
I have no problem with animal testing for life-saving medicine. I'd be pissed too if the animals I paid for and needed for my research all died in transit. The orphan thing is a little more troubling if it's even true.
GMOs_are_tasty ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:29:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I thought that was Chompy the Goat.
Kerse ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:41:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Only if you believe those LIARS AT THE PATENT OFFICE
insighttoleft ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:59:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Watched this documentary on that - quite inspiring.
Also, I'd say Edward Jenner is equally if not more unappreciated, (maybe it's just me, but) I really don't hear his name often considering he:
"was the pioneer of smallpox vaccine, the world's first vaccine. He is often called "the father of immunology", and his work is said to have "saved more lives than the work of any other human".
Gamblito ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:23:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Worth noting that the Chinese had been practicing "vaccinations" hundreds of years before Jenner's research.
Not having cell phones sucked.
Salt-Pile ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:33:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jenner was a bit of a dick though, the way he went about doing that. I'm happy with the end result but really Edward? did it really have to involve infecting a kid without telling anyone?
petgreg ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:22:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
super famous for that...
callmemrpib ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:42:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Banting did the same with Insulin.
topasaurus ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:01:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As per wikipedia, the team that isolated insulin included Banting, Best, Macleod, and Collip of which Banting, Best, and Collip were patentees on the patent and who all agreed to sell the rights to the University Of Toronto for $1.00. Banting and Macleod shared the Nobel but both shared their prize with the other team members. Not related, but interesting, both Banting and Macleod, at least, were painters in their spare time.
ryanh221 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:01:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Years ago his grandson played lacrosse for me. When I was amazed who his grandfather was, he responded, "Why does everyone keep making a big deal out of him? Geez."
Underrated by his own grandson.
superradish ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:24:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My mother died at 64 after a very painful life due to contracting polio when she was 5. It destroyed her body. I cannot stress how glad i am that polio can be prevented and eventually eradicated, having seen its effects.
brandvegn ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:10:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I have never heard of this fellow. What exactly is a 'Polio vaccine' and who was it for?
kaptant ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:46:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Didn't he test his vaccine on children without consent?
Salt-Pile ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:35:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nah Edward Jenner did but I'm pretty sure Salk didn't.
gracefulwing ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:50:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
we watched a great little animated documentary about him in 7th grade, would love to find it again because the animation style was really neat!
AsinineToaster27 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:11:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also Albert Sabin then. He made the oral polio vaccine, which was adopted much more widely since it wasn't an injection.
Viperbunny ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:45:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I was just having a conversation with my dad. He remembers when they started giving out the polio vaccines (I think this was in the 60s or 70s). He talked about how people waited in long lines to get vaccinated. He also mentioned that a family member had a bum leg thanks to polio, something I hadn't known.
The sad thing is now people have to convince some parents to vaccinate their kids. They don't understand how bad a disease like polio is because they have not had a lot of exposure to it. They find every excuse not to vaccinate their kids.
A bit off topic, but it amazes me how much has changed in a generation or two.
DrUpvotes ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 18:33:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
so... I can patent it now and raise the price by 10,000%?
Its the merican way.
Kwangone ยท 407 points ยท Posted at 14:12:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"Lot's wife" from the Bible (maybe not history, but at least ancient fiction.) Part of one of the craziest parts of the most reprinted book ever, read by billions. Her name? That dude's wife.
GunNNife ยท 369 points ยท Posted at 14:51:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hell, usually women weren't even enumerated. "Bob had 11 sons." How many daughters? "I don't know?"
Samazing42 ยท 117 points ยท Posted at 16:15:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Idk man, but I doubt Bob is a common name in the Bible.
[deleted] ยท 47 points ยท Posted at 16:49:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's that crazy New International Version. KJV doesn't put up with any "Bob"s.
Leff_hook ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 17:48:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, the Gospel of Luke rolls off the tongue much better than the Gospel of Bob Wehadababyitsaboy.
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 18:07:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't see what Star Wars has to do with any of this.
Narwhals_Fire ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:11:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
KJV Kerbal Junior Varsity
kylo_hen ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:56:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Short for Bobeddiah
Samazing42 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:09:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Haha! I love it.
JerkFairy ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:10:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Bob was probably the 3rd most famous carpenter in the Bible, just behind Jesus and Noah. They even have a cartoon adaptation of his adventures.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:12:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Bob begat Bobson who was known as Simon
EstherHarshom ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:04:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Bob the Father, Bob the Son, and Bob the Holy Ghost.
AOEUD ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:24:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Robert is not, in fact, a Biblical name.
seewolfmdk ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 16:08:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"Some."
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 17:59:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think that justs the way in the middle east, the number of sons the founder of Saudi Arabia ibn Saud had is meticulously kept (45) but no one ever bothered to count the daughters.
PlayMp1 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:02:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fucking hell that's a lot of sons. Are those all legitimate? I realize they practice polygamy so I'd figure he'd have at least 4 wives.
NoceboHadal ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:51:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, lot got his daughters pregnant.. They got him drunk so it's okay.. Maybe.
quantum_jim ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 14:04:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
...but I can tell you how many sheep he had.
Luposetscientia ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:22:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A gaggle, a gaggle of daughters. Lot also ran Lots ye olde foxhole and mead hall, so he literally created his workforce.
the_man_Sam ยท 213 points ยท Posted at 14:16:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
She is named though, Table Salt
Coffee-Anon ยท 76 points ยท Posted at 15:58:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"They didn't dare turn around, for fear that they, too would be turned into pillars of who knows what spice"
TheAdamantArchvile ยท 25 points ยท Posted at 16:12:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"Genesis 19. Total Insanity."
sinkwiththeship ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 17:47:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"Sodom, named after sodomy. wink"
el_noido ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 18:23:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And Gomorrah-- which is named after an even weirder move
Coffee-Anon ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 19:07:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They had sex with everything, flora, fauna, fire... They had sex with rocks painted to look like God's face
Oklahom0 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:34:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
From what I've heard, "120 Days of Sodom" was likely weirder. It's been banned, and is still banned, in several countries because it portrays graphic displays of murder, torture, and rape to people who are believed to be under 18.
DulceyDooner ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:59:42 on January 31, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
According to apocryphal works, it was mostly their cruel financial dealings and disregard for human life. There was also a wife-swapping holiday 4 times a year, but it doesn't seem to be the main problem. Jasher 18, 19. I got the impression that, while in the Bible passage, the men of sodom wanted to literally fuck the two men from out of town, they were widely known for figuratively fucking people from out of town; stealing all their belongings and sometimes killing them if they tried to dispute it.
(note: upon further research, this version of Jasher might just be based on jewish myths in medieval times and not be authentic whatsoever. Other apocryphal works mention "fornication" and "uncleanness" (Jubilees 16).)
lonelyfriend ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 16:20:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
God is love <3
karmanimation ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 16:28:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Professor brothers?
the_man_Sam ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:07:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Genesis 17 man, total, insanity!
Lotharofthepotatoppl ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:24:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It was a long time ago, I figure they'd become old spice.
Hey_I_Work_Here ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 16:55:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ouch. I shall sayeth that thou has maketh a joketh too soon.
TheBraveSirRobin ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 16:24:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Her name is NaCl
Thisbestbegood ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 16:54:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Maybe Veruca?
HvyArtilleryBTR ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:58:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Damn son
Dexaan ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:25:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
PJSalt
Tehknocrat ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:40:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nice.
uber_maddog ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:37:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't know about that, but she was a pillar of the community.
nptstorm ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:42:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Pillar
CrabbyBlueberry ยท 30 points ยท Posted at 16:36:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
At least we know the name of Noah's wife. It's Joan.
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 17:46:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Be excellent to each other
GunNNife ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:18:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And party on!
professorMaDLib ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 16:56:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
dude. Now I know why Joan of arc is called that.
Kwangone ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:22:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
HAAAYOOOOOO!!!
Astrosherpa ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 19:22:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Those were vile people in both those cities [Sodom and Gomorrah], as is well known. The world was better off without them.
And Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But sheย didย look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human.ย ~ Vonnegut
gracefulwing ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:55:27 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So she was turned into a pillar of salt. So it goes. People aren't supposed to look back; I know I certainly won't anymore.
modernparadigm ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:14:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I thought of this quote immediately.
mtomei3 ยท 15 points ยท Posted at 18:57:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's funny, cause I always thought as far as biblical "history" was concerned, Bithiah (we will call her that for simplicity's sake) was a really un-sung hero. You know your father is murdering all the Jewish children in the nation, and yet a baby washes up on shore of the Nile and your instinct is to take and raise him, despite what it does for you socially? I always thought that was brave and pretty awesome, but no one ever talks about her much (or that I know of, I don't have a lot of religious friends/am not a religious person).
BloodAndBroccoli ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 18:49:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
historians recognize her as the original spice girl
Coffee-Anon ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 15:57:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The naming convention for women in ancient Rome was just the female form of the fathers name, and if a man had a bunch of daughters they would number them. So if a guy named Paul had 12 daughters, they would be called Paulina Prime, Paulina 2, Paulina 3 all the way up to Paulina 12
Altairsim ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 16:35:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
But in Latin it doesn't sound that stupid as it does in English or German.
Coffee-Anon ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 16:45:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
....that's because it was standard practice for people who spoke Latin. I wasn't saying it sounded stupid.
holyerthanthou ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:59:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"Queen Elizabeth the Second"
Altairsim ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 17:17:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thats a title
GunNNife ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:20:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And she had her own name--Elizabeth. "the second" merely means she was the second queen of the name Elizabeth. And the Kings had the same naming convention.
gracefulwing ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:56:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You'll still see something like this in catholic families from time to time, where all the daughters are named Mary and are differentiated by middle name. Mary Elizabeth, Mary Jane, Mary Catherine, Mary Ingrid, etc
CyberByte ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 21:12:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What did she do that makes her underappreciated? Her Wikipedia page just says that they were fleeing from their city and she looked back (despite being warned not to), and then God punished her. I think we can argue that looking back was a very human and understandable thing to do and that she was unjustly and disproportionately punished, but I don't see anything here that makes me go "that woman is amazing". Did Wikipedia miss something?
modernparadigm ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:20:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well. It was probably the first time I realized that God was kind of an asshole. Sunday school never sugarcoated that one.
whisperingmoon ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:09:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Noah's wife also didn't have a name.
Lawsonstruck ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:45:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hilarious that you mention Lot. After his wife dies, his teenage step daughters then proceed to get him drunk and then have sex with him to preserve his blood line, literally hours after their mother has just been turned to stone!
Kwangone ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:54:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Bible is weird.
gracefulwing ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:59:29 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
a group of children made fun of a bald dude so god sent a bear to eat them.
ForsakenForSale ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:23:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I thought it was to repopulate the world. When they saw Soddom destroyed, they thought the whole world was destroyed and they had to repopulate.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:50:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In the LDS Book of Mormon (think what you will), there's a guy responsible for saving the ancestors of a huge civilization and the only name he's given is the brother of Jared.
TheCateran ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:54:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, I guess they talk more about his wife, because his daughters seduced and raped him after they got away. And these were the most virtuous folks that God SAVED - what the fuck was going on in that town?
El_Nopal ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:57:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My favorite part is where his daughters get him drunk so he can knock both of them up.
holyerthanthou ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 16:57:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
One of the biggest rules of history study is to not apply modern morals to the past. because we don't want future historians applying the same things to us.
Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
herrmister ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:57:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Is that really why? Not because they lived in very different social and cultural contexts and had values that sprung from that?
And besides, I don't really care if future historians judge us by their moral standards.
menthol_bidet ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 18:26:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Another one from the bible is Judas. A lot of people use the name Judas to describe a traitor, like Benedict Arnold, but he wasn't. If Jesus had to die for everyone's sins, then he needed someone to turn him in. So for all the Christians out there, you can thank Judas for your religion.
SailedBasilisk ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:27:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The ends justify the means, right? I'm pretty sure that's the gist of what Jesus taught.
Dragon_Fisting ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 16:20:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
She doesn't exactly have a leading role though.
Yuktobania ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:09:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
When you get wrecked so badly that you aren't just salty: you become the salt.
KSAPublicRelations ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:17:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wait, why was Lot's wife a hero?
Kwangone ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:43:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Who said hero?
KSAPublicRelations ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:05:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You're right, but again, how has she been "under appreciated" that she is the "most under apprecviated person in histyory"?
Because they didn't mention her name?
Kwangone ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:27:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, she was also damned by God for looking back with compassion toward a bunch of people who had just gotten cosmically smashed to shit by Sky Dad in His Rage. Famous character in the most famous book OF ALL KNOWN HISTORY and doesn't even get a name, and then damned to become a pillar of salt for having the decency to have emotion. Sounds pretty underappreciated to me.
KSAPublicRelations ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:48:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ah I see, but "most famous book OF ALL KNOWN HISTORY "? Really? Are you aware there's an entire non-Chrtistain/Jewish non-Western world with their own books?
TheOtherMatt ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:54:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's nice and disrespectful to call it ancient fiction.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:29:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm not english native, so I thought you said she was wife of "lots" of people......
Kwangone ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:18:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I know some ladies like that. I'm not judging.
ciocinanci ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:45:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
How do we know she was turned into a pillar of salt unless someone else looked back?
Kwangone ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:19:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Very nice.
[deleted] ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 16:02:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Her name was A Lot. ;)
[deleted] ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 16:55:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Stanislav Petrov. He legitimately saved the world from the fate of a total Global Thermonuclear Warโข between the US and Russia during the cold war by not responding to a false positive on his early-warning system. Despite this, I still had to google "who was that guy who saved the world by not responding to a false alarm on a nuclear early-warning system?" to figure out his name.
FrismFrasm ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:23:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The US are such toughguy show-offs they even trademarked the end of the world.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:17:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I was mostly going for a Wargames reference, where they think "Global Thermonuclear War" is the name of a game at the company they think they hacked... but sure, let's go with that.
ipeench ยท 21 points ยท Posted at 18:29:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov
ย aย Soviet Navyย officer who prevented a nuclear war during theย Cuban Missile Crisis. Only Arkhipov, asย Flotillaย commander and second-in-command of the nuclear-armed submarineB-59, refused to authorize the captain's use ofnuclear torpedosย against theย United States Navy, a decision requiring the agreement of all three senior officers aboard.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:40:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And the three-person authorisation was only required on the sub which had the flotilla commander on board. If he hadn't been there, it would have only required the captain and the political officer's agreement, both of whom were for using the nukes.
LolzmaoD ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 20:58:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Those Chernobyl guys who died to save everyone's lives
fiszu3000 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:35:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
half of europe would go to shit (my town included) if it wasn't for them. I was born 3 months before the accident, so yeah.
sportznut1000 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:04:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Someone mentioned them further up, otherwise this might be a lot higher. I hadnt heard of that story yet but was pretty moving to read about 3 people volunteering to sacrifice their lives to save millions. As someone mentioned it was "movie heroism" like bruce willis in armageddon only without the radiation suffering
fiszu3000 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:12:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think there are 2 different stories. Those who did the suicidal work on the day of the accident and 10 years later when the core got unstable and work needed to be done. It's on one side heroic, bot on the other hand very sad how expendable lives were in the soviet union.
Meggzwell ยท 40 points ยท Posted at 18:37:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I know this might sound lame, but I think the soldiers who survived the first and second world wars were super under appreciated, especially the Canadian soldiers. A lot of them were shunned after they got home because of "shell shock" , ended up sleeping & living on the streets and dying alone. It makes me really sad when I think about it. I mean yeah, organizations like veterans affairs and the last post fund emerged from the neglect but these organizations were started mostly by ex-soldiers who no doubt "got it". I suppose I am only speaking from the Canadian and British government neglect and the Canadian history because it's what I know about.
[deleted] ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 19:34:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
[deleted]
Meggzwell ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:27:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I know in the states they have a HUGE problem with this especially for "modern war" vets. I can't speak too much about it because I don't entirely know (I am Canadian so I don't see the American problem first hand like you would) That Vietnam vet is a true hero as far as I am concerned.
Penguin90125 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:41:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Great guy, he worked there as something to do. The troops really do need more support when they get back, not just when we send them shitty places for stupid reasons.
Meggzwell ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:06:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Absolutely! I know this started out as who we think is historically underrated but i absolutely agree that our current troops all over the world are totally under appreciated by the governments they obey orders from. I'd love to see more civilians push the cause in peaceful demonstrations/writing letters/making campaigns to show that they are appreciated by the people they Serve
Penguin90125 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 04:18:00 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I dont feel that it's healthy to hold them in the esteem that the US claims to, it's borderline fascism. That said, everyone, especially soldiers deserve help from incidents arising from their service or really anything. A society that wont help the needy regardless of what isn't a good society.
CorbenikTheRebirth ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 22:53:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Same for Vietnam and Korea. Doesn't matter why the war was fought, when most of those men came back they were treated like crap by the public. Either that or they had to suffer their physical and (especially) mental illnesses and injuries in silence.
It's not just men either. Minorities and women in the military were often completely forgotten about and sometimes never even received benefits by the US government. There are still a few women left who served in WWII who are fighting for recognition.
Meggzwell ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:24:12 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I didn't mean to take away from any other country's men who served , I can only speak from the Canadian perspective because it's what I know. But I absolutely agree with you! My grandpa is a Korean War vet, he's basically drank himself half into his grave. He gets super emotional if anyone mentions the word war too. It's heart breaking. I have 3 great aunts the were in the RCAF.WD & CWAC (Royal Canadian airforce woman's division and Canadian women's army corps) in WWII and it's almost impossible to find any info about either group, the RCAF is a little easier because in my hometown in Ontario we had so many training schools that brought in men from all over the allied countries.
CorbenikTheRebirth ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:41:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your post is spot on, it's the same way in America. Lack of training and education for dealing with PTSD is a huge problem right now. You've got veterans from years ago dying broke because their benefits haven't gotten paid.
I'm no fan of war under any circumstance, but there is a responsibility to care for those affected by it, including the soldiers.
Meggzwell ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:09:15 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I've seen a short documentary on Netflix called "poster girl" about an Iraq vet who was a sergeant (I think) about her struggle with trying to cope after and how much of a run around she got just trying to get help. It's heart breaking because so many people sign up thinking they are doing good just to be completely shit on if they survive.
ludysantana ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:58:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, that is STILL a major problem in the US. Here's a video with great music and a bunch of data on veteran homelessness. There's a list of organizations in the end that are dedicated to the cause โ worth checking out.
Meggzwell ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:24:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Aaaaaaaaand I'm ugly crying. Thank you for sharing this !
BurnedOut_ITGuy ยท 76 points ยท Posted at 14:57:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Most likely someone completely anonymous.
synthcheer1729 ยท 20 points ยท Posted at 17:56:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You're welcome.
kickdrive ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:23:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is the most accurate answer and I appreciate you saying it.
Under appreciated doesn't actually mean they deserve appreciation. Just that they weren't appreciated. I am sure there are a bunch.
Drop_the_gun ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:51:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm glad somebody gets it. If somebody he's in the thread, he's being appreciated by somebody at least.
rhb4n8 ยท 25 points ยท Posted at 14:14:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
George Westinghouse, who made trains safe and practical, helped Tesla electrify the world, and invented the first electric wheelchair among many other things.
smonkweed ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:45:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hype train, next stop, Tesla! Hold on to your butts, use your free wireless seatbelts, we are going in!
mightymouse513 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:09:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He can't be that underappreciated, he has a lasting legacy in the form of his company that grew due to the success of the train brakes he made. Westinghouse's company was at GE level, sold off some divisions, bought CBS and currently IS CBS. now when you see new products with the Westinghouse logo know that they are paying licensing fees to CBS to use that logo. The current Westinghouse Electric Company has to get permission to even display it's own logo on ads, products, probably it's one building, because it does not own it's own logo. Tvs are still made with the Westinghouse w. Old elevators bear the logo. His legacy is everywhere.
rhb4n8 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:55:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Actually fun fact cbs started as a Westinghouse company. Kdka the first cbs station first broadcast from the roof of a Westinghouse factory in turtlecreek Viacom became a Westinghouse subsidiary was spun off and then rebought. There were more than 70 Westinghouse companies during his life and later hundreds of subsidiary companies.
flakAttack510 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 16:58:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tesla helped Westinghouse, not the other way around.
montani ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:11:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Who wrote the check?
rhb4n8 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:56:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Westinghouse
gracefulwing ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:51:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
we used to have a westinghouse tv, pretty nice tv.
[deleted] ยท 69 points ยท Posted at 18:21:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
[deleted]
Duganz ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:47:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You just rewrote the Jackson Browne song "The Pretender."
BAPAP ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:35:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This sounds personal.
YourShadowDani ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 18:59:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The average person. No one will care about their lives or stories Centuries or Millennium after they are gone. They are the people that are just statistics in history books, and had average lives for their time. These people are all around us and keep the world running, and we focus on a few throughout history because we do not have the attention span, the time, or the desire to focus on the average because we know basically what they did their whole lives regardless of what small thing made them unique. They never did anything of worth that put them into the spotlight, so they never saw it. This is what most people are going to be, to society as a whole, eventually:
They were born, they worked, they payed bills, they died.
smonkweed ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 03:39:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Did you just pull a Time magazine person of the year?
YourShadowDani ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 03:56:12 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Congratulations, you just played yourself!
Yansable ยท 93 points ยท Posted at 15:41:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Bunrak
Motherfucking
Canboy.
The CEO of Winrar.
RarestarGarden ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 17:25:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The real MVP
[deleted] ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 18:45:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What does a gay lion say?
Stormline ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:53:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Woof
Edit: In case you didn't get the reference: Growlr. Gay bear app. Men "woof" at each other.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:58:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Close... close... hint: it's also a compressed file format.
ankisethgallant ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:04:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Zip
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:12:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Very close... here's a visual AIDS:
http://drawception.com/panel/drawing/t0773336/rar-im-a-gay-straight-lesbeian-lion/
dorekk ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:59:02 on January 20, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
But bears don't woof.
cakan4444 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:38:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He doesn't care about single people using his product for free, but if he catches you using it as a business you get sued.
KenGee333 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:25:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So under appreciated that his name is still misspelled!
Tubbymuffin224 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:26:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Too bad that most people don't pay for Winrar though.
lordcirth ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 19:07:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
People shouldn't even use Winrar anymore. 7-zip File Manager and a dozen others are free, open source, and better.
bluelily216 ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 20:07:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dr. Eugene Lazowski and Dr. Stanislaw Matulewicz discovered that by injecting a healthy person with a "vaccine" of killed bacteria, that person would test positive for Epidemic Typhus without experiencing any symptoms. Playing on Nazis' fear of the highly contagious disease, they "quarantined" about a dozen villages thereby saving about 8,000 Polish Jews from certain death. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Lazowski
Alstis ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 23:41:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Witold Pilecki was a polish guy who faked documents in order to be taken to Auschwitz, where he would send information to the allies. After he ESCAPED he wrote what was to later be known as Witold's Report, which contained detailed information about the doings in Auschwitz. Later on, he was executed by Soviet special military police.
LuluBadonkadonk ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 02:00:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alexander fucking Fleming. Dude discovered antibiotics and probably saved your life multiple times. 1 out of every six people reading this would have died from Tuberculosis without him.
BAPAP ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:39:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
More of us would have probably never existed to begin with.
elhermanobrother ยท 24 points ยท Posted at 17:16:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Shavarsh Karapetyan. 1976 trolleybus incident Karapetyan, ten-time finswimming World Record-breaker, is better known in the former USSR for an incident which occurred on September the 16th, 1976. On that day, training with his brother Kamo, also a finswimmer, by running alongside the Yerevan Lake, Karapetyan had just completed his usual distance of 20 km (12 mi) when he heard the sound of a crash and saw a sinking trolleybus which had become out of control and fallen from a dam wall. The trolleybus lay at the bottom of the reservoir some 25 metres (80 ft) offshore at a depth of 10 metres (33 ft). Karapetyan swam to it and, despite conditions of almost zero visibility, due to the silt rising from the bottom, broke the back window with his legs. The trolleybus was crowded, it carried 92 passengers and Karapetyan knew he had little time, spending some 30 to 35 seconds for each person he saved. Karapetyan managed to rescue 20 people (he picked up more, but 20 of them survived), but this ended his sports career: the combined effect of cold water and the multiple wounds he received (scratched by glass), left him unconscious for 45 days. Subsequent sepsis, due to the presence of raw sewage in the lake water, and lung complications prevented him from continuing his sports career.
michio42 ยท 17 points ยท Posted at 18:15:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Cecilia Helena Payne-Gaposchkin.
Discovered the composition of stars (by relative abundance of Hydrogen and Helium), but because it went against conventional thinking and because she was a women, was told to leave it out of her PhD thesis by a fellow astronomer. The next year or so, that astronomer, upon realizing that she was correct, publishes her work and gets the credit. Only recently has this been amended in the scientific community, somewhat, but as a result scientific historians tend to forget.
She is someone who is a 'women in science' who should celebrated as much as Marie Curie.
TAOxEaglex ยท 15 points ยท Posted at 18:23:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Browsed through the comments and found 3 replies of...George Washington?
Americans should totally appreciate that guy more. Maybe put his portrait on something cool. Or name something after him. A town maybe. Or a huge stone structure? This man needs recognition!
The14thNoah ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 20:26:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I mean, this is a popular askreddit thread. People just tend to ignore the question at a certain point.
lethaltyrant ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:03:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think he should get a state too.
SailedBasilisk ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:35:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
More people should browse through the comments before posting one of their own. How many more people need to tell us about Norman Borlaug or Stanislav Petrov?
DrenDran ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 04:15:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I feel bad for downvoting Jonas Salk but it really wasn't what the thread was asking for. Everyone knows that guy.
gronkspike25 ยท 313 points ยท Posted at 15:15:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
ROSALIND FUCKING FRANKLIN.
TO THIS DAY, most biology textbooks still do not credit her. Watson wrote about her in a very patronizing manner in his book that he published AFTER SHE HAD DIED OF OVARIAN CANCER. She never got the Nobel prize, and though she's been given more recognition in recent years, it isn't anywhere near as much as she deserves.
Most of this is due to stupid sexism.
Hoothootmotherf-cker ยท 53 points ยท Posted at 19:06:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Don't forget that her ovarian cancer was likely a result of exposure to radiation during the x-ray diffraction imaging. The photographs she took during that process are what later led Watson and Crick to propose the double helix.
NapAfternoon ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 07:22:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Its my understanding that:
W&C used her x-ray crystallography images without her permission
She actually came up with the double helix independently
She correctly predicted that the backbone would be on the outside of the DNA, where as W&C were convinced that the backbone was on the inside until she told them otherwise.
LilyKnightMcClellan ยท 31 points ยท Posted at 17:53:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
To be fair, Watson's book was how I learned about her. Not saying he's not a sexist asshole, but he basically acknowledged that without her, they wouldn't have been able to uncover the double helix. He also, iirc, said that she deserved a nobel, but they couldn't be awarded posthumously (Watson and Crick got the nobel four years after Franklin's death). I didn't get the impression that he was too broken up over it or anything, but I wouldn't have known about her at all if not for Watson's book. I agree textbooks should credit her along with Watson and Crick.
Oaden ยท 74 points ยท Posted at 15:31:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You could start by telling what she actually did then
elmurpharino ยท 34 points ยท Posted at 20:59:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Her crystallization of a DNA fragment led to the double helix theory that we all know and learn today.
gronkspike25 ยท 77 points ยท Posted at 15:35:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Franklin was responsible for much of the research and discovery work that led to the understanding of the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA.
websnarf ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 03:45:56 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
She was the first to accurately describe the chemical structure of DNA by direct examination via X-ray crystallography. In other words she determined it by actually seeing it.
Watson and Crick "discovered" the structure by making models and basically stealing the work of Franklin and Chargaff.
NapAfternoon ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:23:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Its my understanding that:
W&C used her x-ray crystallography images without her permission
She actually came up with the DNA double helix structure independently of W&C (unpublished work)
She correctly predicted that the DNA backbone would be on the outside of the DNA, where as W&C were convinced that the backbone was on the inside until she told them otherwise.
In other words W&C were barking up the wrong tree until Rosalind disclosed she had been able to produce images of DNA which W&C then used without her permission in order to publish the structure of the DNA - they did not credit her, nor her laboratory in their work. She didn't even get an acknowledgment. She died before her work was recognized.
[deleted] ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 20:02:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They should name one of the new elements after her
aaronwanders ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:03:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Whotonium?
nolannice ยท 20 points ยท Posted at 18:57:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I actually carry her picture in my wallet
ButCanIBeTrusted ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 22:03:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Maybe it's a generational thing, but she's always been mentioned in class when we've covered DNA. And hell, i graduated two years ago from rural ass Ohio.
togawe ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 22:02:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In my high school Chem class we talked about her and actually watched a documentary all about how her results were stolen.
SupremeMystique ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 23:26:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Watson and Prick
Anosognosia ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 23:26:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As opposed to all that clever sexism. /s
michio42 ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 18:29:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Most of the reason people don't know about her is because she didn't get the Nobel Prize. But she couldn't get the Nobel Prize because she died before it was awarded, so ineligible. And she was taught to me in biology class a few years ago, and actual scientists do know about her, and there was or is a show in London where Nicole Kidman plays Rosalind Franklin, in a play about her life.
aaronwanders ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:02:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nobel should award some other prize to the deserved deceased.
ghetto_brit ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:54:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In the UK we get a huge emphasis on Rosalind in Biology lessons
ehardy2013 ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 22:49:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Summary of being a woman in a scientific field. I catch flak for being a female science teacher sometimes even.
I named my fallout character after her. She is one of my favorite scientists ever. I tell all of my classes about her accomplishments. I can only imagine what else she would have accomplished had she not passed away at age 34.
hatt ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 20:09:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, she didn't get the Nobel Prize because she died before the prize for the discovery of DNA was awarded and they don't give them posthumously.
And as someone in grad school in biochem. Every class I have had dealing with DNA since high school always starts with a brief history of DNA and its discovery and she is always talked about. Maybe I have had a unique experience but the three names I know are Rosalind Franklin, Francis Crick, and James Watson. I have no clue who the other guy who got the Nobel Prize was all I know is he ran the lab Franklin was in.
All I am trying to say is I think she really is getting recognition these days and people need to calm down on the whole "no one knows who she is" thing. She made important contributions to the discovery but she was no more important than Crick or Watson.
aaronwanders ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:04:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Honestly, if people on Reddit know about somebody, they're probably not that underappreciated.
CalibreneGuru ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:02:22 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think the issue is that people in certain fields know who the underappreciated are. In this case it's Rosalind Franklin. Earlier it was Grace Hopper. They are still unknown to the general population.
Andrew9623 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:52:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He legacy is looking up though. It's now standard in my part of Canada to learn about her in school. That's probably also the case elsewhere, but I'm not sure.
barath_s ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:04:05 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
She was long dead by the time the Nobel came to be awarded for dna and the Nobel can't be awarded to long dead people.
Else I would nominate Jesus, Gautama Buddha, and Ashoka for the Nobel peace prize..
wonkothesane13 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 08:33:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thank you! I wrote a paper about her for a class this summer. I really feel like an Imitation Game-esque biopic about her needs to be made.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:55:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I feel it's starting to change. When I learnt about DNA structure they emphasised so much on how Rosalind Franklin did all the work, her results were stolen, etc... It's terrible she wasn't recognised sooner but it's good to see things have started to change.
Clowdy1 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 23:13:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Can we stop it with the whole Rosalind Franklin these days? I'm sorry but Watson and Crick do deserve the credit for the discovery of DNA. She did the imaging work which was indeed useful, but she also interpreted the data completely incorrectly, Watson and Crick got it right.
Even if you are going to give her credit for her imaging work you have to also give credit to Maurice Wilkins who was head of her lab and worked with her. He won the Nobel prize yes with Watson and Crick so he was recognized in his own time yes, but today almost no one knows his name and he is never credited for discovering the structure of DNA. So even if you are going to credit Franklin because she did the imaging (which makes no sense) you have to give equal credit to Wilkins.
No she was not given the Nobel prize (she died before she could get it) but she was mentioned in research papers and given credit, and nowadays people are starting to falsely say she was the discoverer of the structure of DNA instead of Watson and Crick.
There are plenty of Women in many scientific fields who can take full credit for amazing discoveries, like Annie Jumpcannon in Astronomy or Mary Anning in Paleontology. There's no need to create this fictitious narrative about Rosalind Franklin in order to show there have been successful female scientists.
NapAfternoon ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:41:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
You have got to be joking. W&C put the phosphates in the middle of the DNA helix. Rosalind told them that was incorrect and impossible when she visited W&C...W&C then decided to revise their model and put the phosphates on the outside, they then published this model before the King's (Rosalind's) group got their act together. They did not acknowledge this critical information given by Rosalind. Had it not been for Rosalind's remark W&C very likely might have published the incorrect model.
W&C are like two guys who are given a full set of instructions with pictures to build an Ikea chair...only they decide to put half the legs on upside down. Another person enters the room and is like - uh, you put the legs on wrong. They look back at the pictures that they didn't take, and the formula's for the correct number of parts they did not determine, and manage to reconstruct the chair properly. They then present the chair to the whole world and essentially say "look what we did all by ourselves!". Meanwhile Ikea gets little to no recognition for the hard work it took to take the pictures, nor to determine the relative number of parts needed, nor to determine the shape of those parts.
Sources
Rosalind Franklin's first important contributions to the Crick and Watson model was her lecture at the seminar in November 1951, where she presented to those present, among them Watson, the two forms of the molecule, type A and type B, her position being that the phosphate units are located in the external part of the molecule. She also specified the amount of water to be found in the molecule in accordance with other parts of it, data that have considerable importance in terms of the stability of the molecule. Franklin was the first to discover and formulate these facts, which in fact constituted the basis for all later attempts to build a model of the molecule. However, Watson, at the time ignorant of the chemistry, failed to comprehend the crucial information, and this led to construction of a wrong model.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalind_Franklin
Working with single DNA fibers at very high humidity, she discovered that there were two forms of DNA: the familiar "dry" crystalline form ("A") and a longer, thinner, heavily hydrated "paracrystalline" form, which she and Gosling called the "B" or "wet" form. Samples could shift from one form to the other if humidity levels changed. (The existence of two distinct DNA forms explained why earlier attempts at diffraction pictures, such as William Astbury's, had been so fuzzy: the samples contained both forms.) Franklin noted, "Either the structure is a big helix or a smaller helix consisting of several chains. The phosphates [of the sugar that forms the backbone of the molecule] are on the outside so that phosphate-phosphate inter-helical bonds are disrupted by water." The hydrophilic phosphates caused the molecule to soak up water and lengthen. The wet DNA produced a sharp diffraction picture that resembled the pattern Stokes had predicted. Very pleased when he heard of this, Wilkins suggested that he and Stokes collaborate with Franklin. She angrily refused, and their relations became quite strained. At Randall's prompting, they reached a compromise: Franklin would work on the A form, using the Signer DNA, and Wilkins would work on the B form, using the Chargaff DNA. The Chargaff sample, which had been degraded during extraction, turned out to be unsuitable for diffraction studies and Wilkins was unable to make much progress.
Franklin and Gosling continued to photograph and analyze samples of DNA in the A form. The A form presented a different picture, far from clearly helical. Though it was hard to think how DNA could be helical in one form but not in another, the mathematical analysis that Franklin and Gosling carried out did not support a helical structure. Franklin's notebooks from 1951-1952 show that she thought a helix possible, but her data on the A form did not yet confirm it, and she would not theorize in advance of the evidence. To her, the proper approach was to gather data first and then build models from them, not the other way round.
James Watson and Francis Crick at Cambridge University's Cavendish Laboratory had meanwhile been taking the other way round, attempting to build a model of DNA based on what was already known, and on what current research, including that at King's, suggested. They believed that DNA was helical, and in November 1951 built a model of a three-helix molecule with the phosphates on the inside. The biophysics staff at King's, including Franklin, were invited to Cambridge to see it. Franklin immediately noted, correctly, that such a configuration would not hold together. In response, the director of the Cavendish, Lawrence Bragg, ordered Watson and Crick to cease work on DNA and leave it to King's. They did so, going so far as to send their model parts down to the King's staff, though Franklin had little use for them.
During 1952 Franklin took and analyzed ever-sharper photographs of the A form but still didn't see a helix. Her mathematical analysis, the Patterson function, though consistent with a helix in some ways, seemed to show a structural repeat of a dimension that would make a helical folding of the molecule impossible. In July, she and Gosling posted a prank notice of the "death of DNA helix (crystalline)." Franklin felt obliged to consider non-helical structures for the A form. She also believed that the A form, being more crystalline, would yield more precise information. Because DNA could shift between the two forms, any model would need to account for both forms. Yet she at no time argued that the B form was not helical, and this was reflected in the report that was made to the Medical Research Council (which funded the Biophysics Unit) late that year.
Watson and Crick had not stopped thinking about DNA, and they were in regular communication with Wilkins, eager to learn whatever they could of the progress at King's. In January 1953, spurred by Linus Pauling's publication of a 3-helix model (similar to the one they made in 1951), they resumed work on their DNA model, determined to get it right before Pauling or someone else did. Two pieces of evidence from Franklin's work were crucial to their correct model: first, a very clear photo of the B form taken in May 1952 labeled "51" which Gosling had given to Wilkins as part of his graduate research work, and which Wilkins showed to Watson without Franklin's knowledge; and second, the MRC report, given to Watson and Crick by Max Perutz, a member of the MRC committee that reviewed the work at Randall's lab. The report contained details of Franklin's work (as yet unpublished), including her identification of the unit cell as belonging to the crystal space group called face-centered monoclinic C2. The photo confirmed the helical pattern, and the unit cell type told Crick, a physicist with more theoretical crystallography expertise than Franklin, that the helices ran in opposite directions. By early March, they had their model.
Franklin, still unhappy at King's, had arranged to transfer to J. D. Bernal's lab at Birkbeck College, and was hurrying to finish writing up her work on the A form before leaving. She was unaware of the "race for the double helix" that was in process. In February 1953, however, she looked again at photo #51 and began analyzing it. Several days later she concluded that both A and B forms were two-chain helices, although she had not resolved the configuration of the bases inside. She and Gosling drafted an article on the likely molecular structure by mid-March. This appeared, in expanded and modified form, with Watson and Crick's announcement in Nature on April 25, but the draft was done before they had heard about the Watson-Crick model. When Franklin saw the model, she readily accepted it.
https://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/retrieve/Narrative/KR/p-nid/187
ZMush ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 04:15:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Don't think she's really underappreciated right now as pretty much everyone even remotely knowledgeable in the scientific field knows her name and contributions - X-Ray diffraction.
laterdude ยท 23 points ยท Posted at 14:08:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
George St John
He's JFK's former headmaster who coined the phrase "'ask not what your country can do for you โ ask what you can do for your country' which inspired the nation back in the '60s. JFK ripped him off and claimed to have written it himself.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:36:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Out of interest, where was he on the 22nd of November, 1963?
VealIsNotAVegetable ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 05:06:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Who may have borrowed from Gibran Khalil Gibran, who wrote โAre you a politician asking what your country can do for you or a zealous one asking what you can do for your country?โ in an essay titled The New Frontier - which was published in 1925.
culb77 ยท 20 points ยท Posted at 22:42:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hard to believe that no one has mentioned Louis Pasteur. He invented vaccination, fermentation theory, and pasteurization. So thanks to him, you are relatively disease free, can keep milk and eggs around for a while before eating them, and can drink beer and wine.
Latrodectian ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 23:37:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
People had been making beer for thousands of years before Pasteur, but literally had no clue where the alcohol was coming from. He embarked on an intense series of investigations into beer and wine and subsequently discovered microorganisms. His motivation for starting this project was literally to help the French be better at beermaking than the Germans.
me1505 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 00:35:02 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Because Pasteur is far from under-appreciated. Pasteurised is written on pretty much every bottle of milk most people buy in the West.
6dankmemes9 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:35:52 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I wouldn't say Pasteur is underappreciated
culb77 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:22:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Why? Most non-scientists have no clue who he is or what he did.
6dankmemes9 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:42:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Him and Salk are the two that most American schools mention by name. I learned about him multiple times in both junior high and high school.
bigredgiant ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:07:06 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Who hasn't heard of Louis Pasteur? He was all over my high school textbooks
XDPlasma ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:37:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Most important figure in the world.
ClemClem510 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 12:23:58 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Maybe it's because he's one of, if not the most famous biologist of all time, as well as one of the most revered scientists ever. That's not quite underappreciated.
Dyetka ยท 44 points ยท Posted at 18:21:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The anonymous pilot who dropped bombs killing Mao's only mentally capable son (and potential heir) during the Korean War. If Mao's son went back to China alive, the country would have practically became an exact copy of North Korea.
ey_bb_wan_sum_fuk ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:45:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Are you not a fan of garrison states?
Lunar_Lord ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 20:35:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Clearly Comrade /u/Dyetka is a counterrevolutionary and a class traitor. I for one suggest he is... removed.
Capn__Morgan ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 20:40:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You are now a moderator of /r/Pyongyang
Lunar_Lord ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:43:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We don't have moderators! Only General Secretaries of the USSR (Union of Subreddit Socialist Republics). All are equal.
burton420 ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 16:49:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Steve Wozniak, he designed and hand built some of the first PCs, I think Jobs gets too much credit
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:17:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
WE all know Woz was the guy that made Apple what it was. Jobs was just the hype man.
BAPAP ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:41:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I am disappoint. I know of many people who do not know of him at all.
-GheeButtersnaps- ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:44:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So does the rest of reddit.
msthree ยท 15 points ยท Posted at 21:05:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alan Turing, the inventor of the modern computer. As well he cracked the German engima code, which was a huge play in winning world war 2. After all was said and done, he was prosecuted for being gay and injected with Estrogen. Which led to his eventual death. Saves the war and sets the ground for the modern world, and in return gets injected with estrogen for his beliefs.
kyle2143 ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 22:14:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't think many people underappreciate Turing. In his day, they sure as fuck did. But there's probably not a computer science student or programmer alive who hasn't heard of him.
Certaily after that film last year, more people outside of the field get it.
msthree ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:09:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
True...but he didn't get the recognition he deserved when he was alive. Its a little disheartening we treated a man like Alan in such a manner and didn't celebrate his triumphs.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:59:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He will go down in history as one of the pioneers in modern technology. He might have been mistreated and unrecognized for his achievements while he was alive, but being remembered decades after your death and possibly centuries after could probably make up for it.
kyle2143 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:54:02 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't know if you could say it made up for it, the British government literally castrated him and drove him to suicide. And even if people literally worshipped him as a god in the future, it probably didn't affect him at all before he died.
ohaitrains ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:51:35 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I too, watch SciShow.
CalibreneGuru ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:12:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They could also be a computer scientist or computer engineer.
ohaitrains ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 13:03:22 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The phrasing was almost identical to SciShow's video released recently. It's pretty unlikely for him to regurgitate that information in that manner by chance.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:09:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Here is an awesome video about how the enigma machine works. They mention Alan Turing in the followup video and explain how he cracked the code.
MRRoberts ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 19:14:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Edward Jenner has probably saved more lives than any other single person in history.
woerg ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 20:52:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The slaves who laid the foundation of the American economy, both through the productivity of their labor, and the unjust concentration of wealth created by their bondage.
PM-me-your-cats- ยท 66 points ยท Posted at 16:27:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Florence Nightingale.
She revolutionized medicine and nursing. Without her, we would be surrounded by Nurse Ratched's. Plus she empowered women in health care. Maybe the layman doesn't need to know everything about her but it's shocking how many nursing students and nurses don't know who she is.
mralistair ยท 23 points ยท Posted at 17:14:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
and basically set the design of hospitals for 150 years..
people think she's 'just' a nurse who wandered around wards with a lamp.
theriseofthenight ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 19:06:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I dont know about the US but in the UK she is known by pretty much everyone.
BIDZ180 ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 19:20:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
US too, in my experience. She's very, very, important, but I wouldn't really call her underappreciated.
kwark_uk ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 18:16:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also she invented the pie chart.
DanFraser ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:29:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This.
This is what she did.
DanFraser ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:29:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This.
This is what she did.
justyourbarber ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:55:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I played Assassin's Creed. I have heard this name. She wasn't even appreciated there.
OldeHickory ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:10:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The black lady who was also a nurse in Crimea got shafted by Florence
Fire_Bucket ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:10:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Mary Seacole. Didn't do as much for nursing as Florence did, but after she was twice rejected volunteering to help, she instead decided to travel there independently and used her own money to start a hospice for wounded and recovering soldiers, in the middle of the warzone. She bankrupted herself doing so and also spent a lot of time on the frontlines helping soldiers under gun fire.
OldeHickory ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 20:16:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
From what i remember learning about both of them in a class was that Florence did the most for nursing on a global level while Mary seacole did most of the actual nursing. Florence was part of the administration while Mary got down and dirty. Both important women indeed.
abetheschizoid ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:26:33 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
She wasn't shafted by Florence Nightingale. She was offered board and lodging by FN on her way to Balaclava.
OldeHickory ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:35:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Straight shafted son
modernparadigm ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:25:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's a badass name. BRB changing my name to Florence Fucking Nightingale.
Dr_Irrational_PhD ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:02:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Florence Nightingale don't miss.
BeyonceIsBetter ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:10:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I've learned about her at least 3 times in history classes
Mirai182 ยท 17 points ยท Posted at 19:33:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Will Smith. Every 4th of July I watch the movie Independence Day (based on a true story) to commemorate Will Smith's efforts in preventing an alien invasion 20 years ago. I thank Will Smith for my freedom.
Wrenware ยท 223 points ยท Posted at 14:44:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
His name was Ugg. And Ugg was unhappy.
Oh sure, Ugg had a natty animal-skin loincloth, a nice big cave, and a strong club-swing. Among the neanderthal warriors of his tribe, Ugg had it pretty sweet. But Ugg had a problem, and it was this:
Ugina.
Ugina was the prettiest, sweetest girl in all the tribe. Her thick greasy hair was a bewitching shade of red. She could fell a mammoth with a spear at twenty paces. She had four good teeth, two of them straight, all a gorgeous shade of yellow. She was the light of Ugg's day and all he ever thought about, and she was too busy chasing mammoths to ever notice him.
So one day Ugg decided: Aha! I shall make Ugina the prettiest mammoth-hunting spear in the world. And then she will love me!
(Or more accurately he decided: Grunt. Grunt. Grunt. But that was the general gist of it).
So Ugg gathered all the finest flints from the rocks around his cave. He scraped and bashed and ground them together, his efforts set on producing the sharpest, bluest, prettiest spearhead of all.
While Ugg was bashing rocks together, he accidentally set sparks flying. One of these sparks set light to his animal-skin loincloth, and Ugg burst screaming from his cave like a rocket--much to the distress of the rest of the tribe (who had gathered outside to investigate sounds of his hard labour). In this, Ugg accomplished two things:
1) He became known as He Of The Scorched Loins, and never did persuade Ugina to come lay with him.
2) He invented fire. Which, though little consolation to poor heartbroken Ugg, did rather make him the most important man in history.
Thanks for being sympathetic to poor Ugg, guys! If you enjoyed his story, you might also enjoy this slightly more modern webseries, which I wrote!
scaldedmuffin ยท 99 points ยท Posted at 16:50:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Poor Ugg :( At least he got some expensive furry house boots named after him.
seeyoujimmy ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:51:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ah, slag wellies
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:08:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He later was the head counselor at Camp Onawanna where he had to deal with Bobby Budnick and Donkeylips.
nhnolan ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 17:09:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Can I get more adventures with Ugg? That was great.
Wrenware ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 18:41:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Ugg may return, possibly next time I'm feeling in a neanderthal mood (i.e. anytime before 10.00am).
alficles ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 21:36:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm not a scholarโperhaps an expert will weigh inโbut I think the current consensus is that ancient man bore the fruit of lightning. Fire is a natural process and creatures more ancient than we knew it. Man's claim is to have shackled it and pressed it into service. I'll counter with my own story:
Ugg pined for Ugina, knowing she was vain above all things. His hunting trip went well that morning. He had taken a megaloceros early and had a few moments to look for something pretty for Ugina.
And that's when he caught the scent. Fire! Ugg knew the smell in an instant. Fear gripped him immediately. He looked to the sky to find the smoke. He located the source quickly. To his relieve, a tree was smouldering alone against an otherwise barren rock.
Curiosity overcame his fear and he approached. Glowing red clumps sat pulsing in the heart of the once-tree. He extended his hand, but withdrew as he felt the heat.
He picked up a dense pile of grass and used a twig to knock a clump into it. He put the smouldering chunk in a dry, empty gourd and decided to show it to Ugina to prove how powerful he was.
Back at the camp, Ugina was impressed by his megaloceros, but not his slightly glowing rock. Still, Ugg's brother Uggg had brought back a mammoth and a bear both. Uggg did not sleep alone that night.
For lack of anything better to do, Ugg started poking his glowing clump. He noticed that sticks caught fire when he poked it and that his part of the cave was warmer because of it.
The next morning, he shared his discovery with the tribe. He died shortly thereafter of an infection in a burn he received while lighting a fire he hoped to use to thaw out a frozen carcass he found.
Ugg was the fifth person that month to discover and control fire. However, he was the first to share that knowledge before being trampled by a large animal, lost during childbirth, or killed by a jealous lover. His tribe, unlike those that came before and after, happened to survive long enough to pass the skills to other tribes, some of whom live today in our DNA.
Wrenware ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 21:57:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This should be voted highly on account of historical accuracy, and also for featuring a megaloceros.
sodangfancyfree ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 17:18:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
classic ugg
naughty_ottsel ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 16:06:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I watched Ice Age, everyone know's that Sid is lord of the flames after discovering fire... I mean that documentary was amazing and so full of facts.
Wrenware ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 16:24:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Admittedly, I really can't argue with documentary evidence.
SuperCoolRadGuy ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:14:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Calm down, dude. Don't have a meltdown
naughty_ottsel ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:22:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sorry, when these things just get me fired up
lucky_ducker ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:10:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Can't help but think that the first guy who discovered fire - and started playing around with it - must have been regarded as a crazy idiot by the rest of the tribe. I'm sure it took a while to figure out fire's actual usefulness.
Bobshayd ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:37:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If they were cold, I imagine that they saw the usefulness pretty quickly.
merlinfire ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:11:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ugg invented rockets
Wrenware ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:16:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ugg genius.
von_Hytecket ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:19:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ugg, da man.
I'm kinda curious to read a story about a descendent o his, the one who discovered milk....
the_bacon ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:21:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I love thinking about all the millions of generations before us and their stories. All those groups of good friends. All those relationships and thoughts and feelings are completely, irreversibly forgotten. Everyone alive today didn't exist then, yet we share the same thoughts and emotions and it just blows my mind. Imagine all the amazing fluke shots and funny moments that happened tens of thousands ago that are now lost. The rise of Facebook means we are by far the most documented generations yet, and maybe we won't be forgotten like our ancestors were.
Wrenware ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:36:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nothing is ever forgotten, not completely. Every love affair spills ink on paper that might have otherwise been blank, every feud spills blood that might have otherwise been kept. Every story moves someone who might otherwise have stood still, every laugh churns the air in a new direction.
Oh sure, people forget things, sometimes with alarming speed. But their stories are remembered, by a universe that has--ever so slightly--changed shape through their telling.
The internet is pretty rad, though.
the_bacon ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:44:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I agree that the world is shaped by every action and it has lasting effects but I mean it in the sense that we will never know about those people and it's erry to me.
Wrenware ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:46:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It is strange to think about.
But then I think, they might all have turned out to be jerks. So it's okay.
Worryingly, as you point out, if we all turn out to be jerks, the future will know about it.
the_bacon ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:47:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, they were probably all super racist and xenophobic :)
Gone_Green ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:36:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He heh Ugina :3
erqq ยท 550 points ยท Posted at 13:57:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Steve Buscemi, who I learned was a fire fighter during 9/11.
the_man_Sam ยท 292 points ยท Posted at 14:17:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Volunteer firefighter, who went to help despite not having to, good on ya Mr. Pink
vadkert ยท 529 points ยท Posted at 16:16:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
John Perry was an NYPD officer who, on the morning of September 11th, was literally at police headquarters filing his retirement papers when word of the attacks came down the wire. Officer Perry responded and was killed during the collapse of one of the towers while assisting with the rescue operations inside.
This guy was out. He was done. Free and clear. Chose to risk his life, yet again, in the name of serving his city, without the obligation to. As selfless a deed as there ever was.
EDIT. /u/DaneGleesac made the comment that this will be a top TIL in under 24 hours. If I supply the TIL, I should also give a little more background for someone to titlegore into the post, or to expand on in the first reply.
Officer Perry overcame a learning disability (he didn't learn to read until age 9) to graduate the New York University School of Law, and was a practicing immigration lawyer before joining the police academy. In addition to his police work, Perry volunteered his time to the Kings County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, and gathered used bulletproof vests and donated them to officers in Moscow. (Perry was a polygot-- he spoke English, Russian, French, Spanish, and Swedish, and was in the process of learning Albanian when he died.) He also held a position that investigated fellow police officers for minor infractions, and was a board member of the Nassau County chapter of the New York Civil Liberties Union. He was retiring after 8 years in the NYPD to become a medical malpractice attorney.
He was last seen alive carrying a woman (who had been either knocked unconscious or fainted) from the South Tower when it collapsed.
slayer828 ยท 71 points ยท Posted at 16:39:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
damn. That is horrible. he couldn't even say " I was one day from retirement" as he WAS retired...
Definitely_Working ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 17:43:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
and its sad that all i can think of is Dante from clerks... "im not even supposed to BE here today"
glad there are people like him out there.
chriswasmyboy ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 22:51:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Another relatively unknown hero was Welles Crowder, otherwise known as The Man In The Red Bandanna. Crowder was a 24 y/o guy with a job in financial services working in the World Trade Center. He was also a volunteer fireman. Crowder refused to leave the tower while it was burning, and was responsible for rescuing several different groups of survivors and leading them to safety. According to witnesses, Crowder repeatedly went back into the building multiple times to assist in further rescues. His body was found with other NYFD firefighters and other emergency personnel, bunched in a suspected command post in the lobby of the tower.
The people he saved had no idea of the identity of the man who had saved them, and it wasn't until an article was written in the NY Times, including the firsthand account of one woman Crowder rescued, Judy Wein, described her rescuer as a man in a red bandanna, which Crowder's parents recognized was written about their son. Crowder was credited with saving 12 people from certain death in the towers.
I was friends with a guy who was great friends with Welles Crowder when they were both at Boston College. Heartbreaking stuff.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welles_Crowther
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/26/nyregion/26WTC.html?pagewanted=all
nirad ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:53:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Mendoza!!! http://youtu.be/7vyANa71gvU
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:08:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
GrumpyFalstaff ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:40:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I feel a crippling urge to salute right now. Holy shit what a hero.
Joe-Bananas ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:40:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
frankly he sounds like a total bitch and a traitor
Bootykallz ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 16:33:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Why do I gotta be Mr. Pink!?
danwroy ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:15:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think you know the reason
MrPink24 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:46:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Cheers
Dynamaxion ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:46:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's a good thing he made it out of that warehouse.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 16:27:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
the_man_Sam ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:08:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No, some other guy on some other job is Mr. Purple, you're Mr. Pink!
elee0228 ยท 72 points ยท Posted at 14:25:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He was a firefighter before becoming an actor. He returned to the same engine company as a volunteer. Good man.
GunNNife ยท 52 points ยท Posted at 14:43:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And he absolutely wanted no publicity of his involvement. He was a hero along with all those others fighting to save lives in the aftermath.
Blue_Dog_Democracy ยท 39 points ยท Posted at 14:49:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's the mark of a true hero: someone who doesn't want recognition for the good that they do.
zaccus ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:21:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't see why it matters if they want recognition or not.
Blue_Dog_Democracy ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:27:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's just that I feel a selfless act done without seeking recognition means more than trying to receive a trophy for every little good thing you do.
SemiFormalJesus ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:08:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Normal people often need inspiration to achieve greatness. A heroic gesture known to many has a much higher chance of being replicated or inspiring action in others.
Blue_Dog_Democracy ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:13:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
True; it can. In some cases, though, it can also become mroe about getting the praise for being a hero than actually doing good.
I guess it depends on how you look at it.
[deleted] ยท -5 points ยท Posted at 15:22:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Are we still circle jerking here or did this get serious? Pretty Steve buscemi being a fireman is a circle jerk trope that mocks how repetitive Reddit is
HuffyThePear ยท 23 points ยท Posted at 16:08:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wow that's awesome. Is it ok if I steal this and post it on TIL?
AnActualSquid ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 20:48:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As stated in another post in this comment chain, it's been pounded into the ground. It's on TIL once a month at least.
HuffyThePear ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:52:49 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That was the joke! :D
loi044 ยท 73 points ยท Posted at 15:41:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
How does that qualify him the most under-appreciated person in history?
lessmiserables ยท 110 points ยท Posted at 16:41:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm pretty sure it's a joke--Steve Buscemi being a firefighter is posted on TIL ,like, a dozen times a day, and people make fun of it as a "little known" fact (that has actually been beaten into the ground).
holyerthanthou ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 17:06:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Because the most under appreciated people in history are the ones who throughout said history collectively got up every morning and got their shit done.
Farmers, teachers, mechanics, engineers, doctors, nurses, roadside sign guys, hamburger flippers, etc.
That list would get pretty long.
epraider ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:05:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
People in food service truly don't get enough recognition for how much service they provide (and of course everyone else you listed, I'm just pointed them out specifically). Yeah, some may be bored teenagers, but they're doing a shitty job that you don't want to do and providing something you desperately want. Be kind, be understanding if something goes wrong, and tip well.
verbify ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 16:30:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
ITT, people with no concept of history.
Raichu93 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:46:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
ITT, people who don't understand jokes
verbify ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:42:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There was no joke
Raichu93 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:48:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just not one that you understood, I'm afraid.
https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/2wccy8/til_steve_buscemi_worked_as_a_firefighter_and/
https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/3yzgrn/til_that_steve_buscemi_was_a_firefighter_in_new/
https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/3jbg43/steve_buscemi_when_he_worked_as_a_firefighter_at/
verbify ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:38:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thanks for filling me in.
lyla2398 ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 16:55:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And Trent Reznor said that "Hurt" was Johnny Cash's song now!
gallantBlackKnight ยท 22 points ยท Posted at 16:14:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Mychal Judge was also important, even for non-Catholics because he kept the firefighters hopeful by blessing them and giving them last rights before they went in before he was killed and named victim 0001.
TriRight ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:44:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also he directed the famous documentary Idiocracy
Homicidal_Panda ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 17:10:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Did not know that at all, going to go post a TIL, brb. /s
zleek ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:17:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well this gets posted on TIL like monthly so he's pretty appreciated I think
Tsquare43 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:24:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Before acting he worked at Engine 55. He never forgot the FDNY, and was quiet about working the WTC site.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:33:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In history? Cmon now
chauncey2104 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:39:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fun Fact: Steve Buscemi is married to my 7th grade shop teachers sister.
King_Abdul ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:55:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well we see it every 9/11 on TIL
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:43:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
TIL the famous firefighter Steve Buscemi was an actor
Triquetra4715 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:52:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And also tips huge to make up for Reservoir Dogs.
mastigia ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 14:19:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
The other ones are good, but I think this is my favorite one in the thread. Nice pick.
Edit: just curious, what is so controversial about this comment?
fafe123 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:54:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I knew a firefighter that served during 9/11/73
cakeisgreat ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:29:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is one of the most reposted pieces of information on this website and you're using it for a post about under appreciated people? I award you no points and may God have mercy on your soul.
UncleTrustworthy ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 14:10:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Joseph Swan, the person who invented the lightbulb before Edison or Tesla.
Subhazard ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 00:55:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
D.A Henderson. He and his team eradicated smallpox from the face of the planet.
No one remembers him.
orgazm_donor ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:11:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Face of the planet is pretty impressive. Did he eradicate it from the planet's butt, though?
I apologize for this dad joke, I'll see myself out.
PathalogicalTire ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 04:09:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The creator of yoga pants. You da real MVP
[deleted] ยท 18 points ยท Posted at 21:18:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dwight D. Eisenhower.
The man kicked ass in WWI Kicked ass in WWII as a FIVE STAR GENERAL Was president of Columbia University Was universally liked by Republicans and Democrats Then went on to kick ass as president of the united states.
USA USA USA
[deleted] ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 21:25:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My favorite prez, last SOTU he warned of the impending industrial/military complex. We didn't listen.
Acebulf ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:51:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
His foreign policy fucked up the almost entirety of South America.
BearOak ยท 107 points ยท Posted at 13:22:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me
[deleted] ยท 37 points ยท Posted at 13:29:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I appreciate you. :)
[deleted] ยท 28 points ยท Posted at 13:56:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You're probably the only one.
BurnedOut_ITGuy ยท 37 points ยท Posted at 15:03:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
His mom appreciates him I'm sure. And we all appreciate his mom.
Dwayne_J_Murderden ยท 18 points ยท Posted at 15:19:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We sure do.
scaldedmuffin ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 16:48:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
( อกยฐ อส อกยฐ )
Morgeno ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:10:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And so through the transitive property...
psi567 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:18:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
She only appreciates him when his arms are broken.
Sexymcsexalot ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:41:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Something something broken arms
[deleted] ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 14:00:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I appreciate you too <3
GenesisAD ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 14:20:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You loyal
OklahomerSimpson ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 14:34:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Anyone appreciate me?
[deleted] ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 14:38:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You smart
yowisy ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:02:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Here's 10,000 dollars, go buy your momma a house
multivac7223 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:22:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
best headphones in the game
LordGoss1138 ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 14:55:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Meh.
Mr_Nexxus ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 14:42:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
OP's mom sure did
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:57:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
TRAITOR
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:56:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Anotha one
Scythelads2legends ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:28:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wait, I saw you on gone wild audio!
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 03:58:28 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
lol
EEverest ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 16:03:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Goddammit Beedle.
sabely123 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:07:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You smart, matter of fact, you a genius.
GunNNife ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 14:44:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So humble!
BobPeanut ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 16:38:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I am nothing but a humble man with too much to be humble about.
Fickelbra ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:38:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Found /u/the_only_1 's ex
TheFreshOne ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 16:10:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm appreciating you so hard right now!
monkeyman80 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:32:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
you were time person of the year in 2006
white_n_mild ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:35:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
2meta4me
eurosid ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:56:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No, me.
McCFred ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 20:01:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Johannes Gutenberg. He essentially fathered mass media. People take it for granted that ideas can just be read and distributed, and that thoughts and ideas can just be spread. His invention of the movable-type printing press is a turning point not for just literature and writing, but for humanity as a whole. But not many people are familiar with the guy.
mortpiscine ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 17:42:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
For Western Europeans, Jean de Valette, Grandmaster of the Knights of Malta during the Great Siege of Malta. The victory over the Ottoman Empire at this battle halted their Western advances and protected the Western Mediterranean from the Ottoman fleets. It can be argued that the lack of a useful base for further attacks the Ottomans aspirations of conquering Europe were dashed.
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/371301.The_Great_Siege is an excellent book on the Battle.
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 18:48:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
[removed]
AllF4ther ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 18:54:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Joshua Chamberlain
He was a Soldier in the Union Army that gains notoriety for his actions at the Battle of Gettysburg. He commanded the failing defense of Little Round Top and with barely any men or munitions held the hill on the failing Union flank of which his unit has almost doubled back on itself
Recognizing the dire circumstance and with forces from the Confederate Army of over 1000 (couldnt find concret numbers beyond this) charging up the hill. He ordered an insane and extremely unusual bayonet attack. Just over 300 men from his Unit charged down the hill catching the Confederates in a Frontal and Flanking attack which netted him a good portion of the Confederates attacking forces captured, and saving the Union Flank. With this order, he is recognized to have single handedly changed the tide of battle, one of the most pivotal of the war.
The Battle arguably if lost would have given enough political authority to the Confederacy to gain recognition from other nations around the world, would have given them the political momentum from favorable political elements in the United States to sue for peace which would lead to an independent Confederate States of America.
The consequences of this victory cannot be understates. It led directly to the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing all southern Slaves, a major step in Civil Rights, led to a Major Political victory keeping the United States from letting the Confederacy go, and led to the Confederacy losing all offensive capabilities for the remainder of the War.
So in short, a single man with one insane totally harebrained order saved the entire Union war effort and also led to the outright defeat of the confederacy in the wars most pivotal battle.
R2-TBag_ ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 20:05:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Trevor from down the road. Top bloke
tennistargaryen ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 23:10:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
LARRY TESLER.
He invented copy and paste.
kevinmikebush ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 04:23:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Arkhipov
Vasili Arkhipov literally prevented the Cold War from turning into World War 3/a nuclear apocalypse. He was the only one of 3 parties who voted against nuclear retaliation to what turned out to be a false alarm.
moehriad ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 17:47:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Euclid
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 04:18:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think when your ideas survive for a thousand years - you might be appreciated. His ideas will survive until humanity's collapse. (And honestly - far longer than that if we develop AI that can jump off this rock). I think he is in the club.
joshman5000 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:22:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Anyone who has taken a geometry class knows how important Euclid was, unless we're talking about a totally different Euclid
jesse9o3 ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 18:18:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
James Watt.
His improved steam engine heralded the start of the Industrial Revolution and the start of what we now know as the modern age. If you own something that was not handmade within a few miles of your home you almost certainly owe a debt to James Watt.
smoochie100 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:15:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Anybody who is attending history or physics until 6th grade knows him and there is an physical unit named after him. How is he underappreciated?
jesse9o3 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:27:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There's a unit name after him, but few people actually know who he is, what he did and how that affected the world. Everyone's heard of the units of measurement but how many people actually know who Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit or Anders Celsius are and what they did?
He's underappreciated because whilst some people know who he is, not that many people are aware of just how significant an effect his inventions had on the world.
burgess_meredith_jr ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 18:21:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Albert Goring
https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_G%C3%B6ring
KermitHoward ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:31:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I looked at it and thought "Wasn't he a Nazi?"
No. No he wasn't.
drunz ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 18:39:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My mom and dad. I live at home and commute to college to help save money. My mom always makes me food the night before, sometime at midnight, for lunch the next day. My dad wakes up early and starts my car or drives me to the train station if it is cold outside.
They can't understand a word of what I say about what I am learning in physics or Organic chemistry of anything but they support me like no other anyways.
No one supports me more than these 2 people in my life and no one ever rewards them for being such good people.
penguinpwrdbox ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:30:15 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Excellent facebook status update.
smonkweed ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:47:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Although this is really nice and lovely, your answer is basically 'Ur mum XDDDDDDDD'
stylz168 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:44:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Watching you grow up and become successful will be their reward. Don't forget about them once you're older and settled down with your own family.
bigcheez2k3 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:13:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You should show them this, so they know how much you appreciate them. If they don't already know.
jordanlund ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 18:19:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Every September, when new freshman college classes start, reddit is inundated with TIL about Norman Borlaug, the guy who invented modern seed and grain production.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-macaray/the-man-who-saved-a-billi_b_4099523.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug
Lunar_Lord ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:40:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Right now one about this is right below your comment xD
healydorf ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 18:29:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Gavrilo Princip
The guy single-handedly started a world war that lead to a second world war. And so many people don't even recognize the name.
jesse9o3 ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 18:36:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He is also responsible for pretty much every single bad thing that happened in the 20th century.
Lot of good things though too, without him man would've never gone to the moon and we wouldn't have computers, jets or the internet.
czulu ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:20:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Everyone talks about the World Wars as if it's some massive explanation of broken window fallacy. Think of how many resources were completely reduced to rubble that could have been used to get us to space even faster.
Especially when you consider that many intellectuals were killed before making contributions, and war made coordination between Entente/Central and Allied/Axis countries impossible, so information was not freely shared.
Wars are great for many things, but technological innovation isn't really one of them.
jesse9o3 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 20:29:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Without the rise of Hitler however people like Wernher Von Braun would've never have got the funding they needed to produce the V2 rocket, the first man made object to go into space.
And without WW2, America would've never kidnapped him in Operation Paperclip and he wouldn't have designed all the rockets for NASA that took them to the moon.
On the contrary, that is the one thing war is greatest at. It is thanks almost entirely to WW2 that within 70 years we went from powered flight not existing to having a man on the moon. Not to mention the computer is a direct result of WW2, as are jet engines, nuclear power, penicillin, RADAR and many other things
secondtheory ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:13:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Isn't that asshole who asassinated Ferdinand Franz?
jesse9o3 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:37:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yup, he accidentally kickstarted the modern age by doing that. Pretty much every single event following that day was in some way influenced by it.
WW1, WW2, the rise of Fascism, the rise of Communism, the Cold War, the Space Race, 9/11, the Internet, the Computer, aerial transportation and pretty much anything else that happened between now and July 1914 is in some way caused by those two shots he fired on a Sunday morning in Sarajevo.
smoochie100 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:56:12 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If this event would not have started WW1, something similar would hsve started it very soon later. Everybody in Europe kind of was waiting for the war to begin.
jesse9o3 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:00:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I agree, but in any case he did cause WW1 and thus all the things that came out of WW1 can be attributed to him
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:05:02 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's a bit reductionistic. There were a lot of causes that contributed, Gavrilo Princip was just the guy who ended up pulling the trigger. Once you trace it all back, it's basically all Charlemagne's fault anyway.
DrenDran ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 04:17:49 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Darn those Romans, they're the real ones behind all this.
Imadethis4work ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 20:29:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Henrietta Lacks. A woman who died of cervical cancer, and it was discovered that cultures grown from this tumor were immortal. This allowed them to be used in all kinds of medical research. Her cells were used to create the first polio vaccine, and can be found in practically every medical research laboratory on the planet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks#Legacy
aatop ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 14:10:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The man who invented the stoplight
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:50:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What are you, a masochist LOL? I sat at a light for seven fucking minutes last weekend.
aatop ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:52:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hahaha this made me chuckle
Fahsan3KBattery ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:46:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Lester Wire
Azusanga ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:25:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Police Officer Lester Wire made one of the first modern ones by installing red/green lights in a birdhouse-esque structure with a manual switch on the pole.
James Hoge patented the first designs 6 years later.
My great-uncle hit one of the first hanging traffic lights.
Selachian ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:28:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
an African American inventor in the mid 19th century.
raider02 ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 16:58:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The 343 Firefighters who died rescuing people at ground zero and the thousands more who exposed themselves to carcinogenic rubble to search for survivors.
falconfund ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 17:38:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
All those people who ate poison berries and died so we didn't have to.
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 18:33:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
white_n_mild ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:38:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Kind of makes Albert Einstein look more like Adolf Hitler with each big red button crisis.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:53:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch.
The Haber-Bosch process feeds billions of people by supplying crops with synthetic nitrogen fertilizers. Without it, our population could not be sustained at its present size.
Edit: To re-emphasize the importance: billions, literally billions, of people are alive because they eat food grown with Haber-Bosch nitrogen. Along with modern medicine, Haber-Bosch nitrogen is the foundation of the modern world.
Froakiebloke ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:19:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
not sure I really want to go around praising Haber all that much regardless
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:29:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Good point. I suppose that the process is what is under-appreciated, rather than the people.
forgotmyphoneandpass ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:14:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dimitar Peshev prevented the deportation of 48,000 Bulgarian Jews to concentration camps.
He has received honors but is virtually unknown.
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:17:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Maurice Hilleman, he was a doctor and vaccine specialist. He developed hundreds of vaccines that are still used today using his experience on a chicken farm as a child. His inventions have probably saved millions of lives but he was never awarded the Nobel Prize or thanked for his work.
Also Dr.Bernard Fisher who was a oncologist and breast cancer researcher. He found that lumpectomies were as effective or more so then radical mastectomies. Saved millions of women from unnecessary complications. He was also lambasted for his research and called a fraud by everyone incorrectly for years until his work was later substantiated with follow up studies.
He saved tits and got nothing for it.
somedude456 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:29:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Malcom McLean. In 1956 he patented the shipping container and standardized the entire shipping industry. That literally changed the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcom_McLean
mrmikemcmike ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:34:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug
"The Man Who Saved A Billion Lives"
vodka_titties ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:38:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jose Castellanos was the "Salvadorean Schindler".
He and a Romanian-Jewish colleague he also provided papers for, convinced officials that there was a sizable group of Salvadoreans living in that part of Europe.
He saved an estimated 25,000 lives.
thedudeintx82 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:46:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wilberforce
edinchez ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:54:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alan Turing
heightawareness ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 22:38:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not in all of history, but he deserves a shout-out on a thread like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liviu_Librescu
During the VA Tech Shootings, he held the door to his classroom shut while the shooter was trying to come inside. He was shot, and killed, through the door, but most of his students we're able to escape out of the window thanks to his efforts.
beautydeficient ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 23:01:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If Nikola Tesla is so underappreciated why is everyone posting his name here?
hopopo ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:12:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Walk in to random bar/restaurant/church ... and mention his name, you will be surprised how little people know about one person that made modern life possible. I regularly run in to people that never even heard of him.
Zorceror44 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:32:05 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They might not use the internet that much. I think the reason Tesla became so appreciated was because of the Internet, but soon everyone will know who he is. I know that kids are learning about him in school these days.
W_Wilson ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:09:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Pretty sure if we know their name, they're not the most underappreciated person in history. Unless they're unduly hated.
beautydeficient ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:18:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Exactly my point.
ThePr1d3 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 23:14:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Stanislav Petrov
TL;DR Saved the world by suggesting to his superiors that what appeared as a US nuclear attack towards Russia may be a technical problem. Prevented a thermonuclear war
BurtDickinson ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 23:17:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ralph Nader, he is a career consumer rights advocate, responsible for saving at least a few hundred thousand lives and has never shown a sign of having an ulterior motive.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:24:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
BurtDickinson ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 12:41:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
George W. Bush, the voters, the state of Florida, the supreme court and the democratic party share more than 99% of the blame for that.
NSA_Chatbot ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 23:31:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My vote is Oliver Heaviside. If you're not an EE, you've probably never heard of him. He was erased from history by the mathematicians of his time because he was self-taught and made them look bad. I know, you're on Reddit so you're in love with Tesla. Heaviside is the real forgotten electrical genius.
He developed cross-Atlantic communications, reformulated Maxwell's equations to the form we use today, and made up vector analysis. Plus a bunch of other things like LaPlace transforms.
His grave was left abandoned until two years ago.
guitarbassguy ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 23:39:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
One of them would hands down be Georgios Papanikolaou. He invented the Pap smear and did tons of research on female cancers, and ended up reducing mortality rates from cancer in female reproductive organs by almost 80%.
TThor ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 01:15:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
John Snow. No, not that Jon Snow, THIS John Snow.
He is the man behind the sanitation movement, and the main reason why we have proper sewers rather than just letting shit flow into our drinking water. He is probably responsible for saving millions of lives and helping end 1st world Cholera.
Extra Credits did an interesting little video series on him.
Taman_Should ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 03:57:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Don't know about most ever, but the scientist Derek Bryce-Smith comes to mind. He was one of the first to research and call attention to the potential dangers of leaded gasoline, and his findings were a large reason for TEL being fazed out, which many believe contributed to a worldwide drop in crime rates. Breathing lead oxides for extended periods causes aggression, among other not so fun symptoms.
chitchatachieved ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 17:58:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Rodney Dangerfield... He never got any respect.
rokss8 ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 20:43:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The guy who killed Hitler. No one ever remembers how cool of a guy he was
malignatius ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 20:54:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I disagree. That guy was literary Hitler.
Megamean09 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:28:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, but he also killed the guy who killed Hitler.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:26:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Depends on if you believe that Hitler was not killed in his bunker?
sticky3004 ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 15:53:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not the most of all time but still severly underappreciated: Steve Wozniak
Twerck ยท 30 points ยท Posted at 17:57:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Kanye West
Source: Kanye West
fuzzynyanko ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:58:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dave Chappelle would be also under-appreciated
thatoneguys ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:44:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
but isn't Kanye already recognized as the voice of a generation? What more does he want? /S
falaicha ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:33:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Isn't he the guy who pounds biggest ass in history?
Big_Man_Ran ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 15:54:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Michael Faraday
invisible_one_boo ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:38:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
isn't that the guy from Flight of the Navigator?
SemiFormalJesus ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:10:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Actually I believe you're thinking of Lost.
invisible_one_boo ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:26:55 on January 18, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I've never watched an episode of Lost but Flight of the Navigator was one of my favorite movies as a kid. There was a character named Dr. Faraday but, after looking it up, his first name was Louis.
Big_Man_Ran ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:52:58 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Never heard of it. Faraday gave us the foundation of electricity and the ability to send information with it.
matunascraft ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 18:17:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We will never know.
bristollersw ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:21:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This
msthe_student ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:32:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So basically "the unknown soldier" except for all professions in general?
rhb4n8 ยท 171 points ยท Posted at 14:07:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alan Turing who invented the first thinking machine aka computer, and cracked the enigma code helping the allies to beat the axis in wwII.
[deleted] ยท 188 points ยท Posted at 15:23:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
He's not under appreciated. Every programmer or computer scientist knows his name. He may have been wrongfully harassed by his contemporaries but we look back on him as an extraordinary individual
shatkarma ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 16:16:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Seconding this. Even just looking at his list of tributes from well respected Uni's around the world shows he's definitely not under appreciated.
[deleted] ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 19:16:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"Every programmer or computer scientist". Personally I think more people should be aware of who he is/what he did
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 10:27:17 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Perhaps, but I do not expect the average person to know the names of the top military leadership in the Soviet Union or in the US (I guess Patton is well-known, but ask a lot of people who Georgy Zhukov is. The man who led the liberation of all of Eastern Europe is barely heard of in casual circles) and their contributions to the war effort, or the top contributors in other fields like medicine or physics.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:07:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tommy Flowers - without him Turing and co. would not have got as far.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:20:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
To be fair though, I don't think the majority of people knew really how much he contributed to computer sciences and defeating the Nazis. Most people have heard of Alan Turing, but before the movie came out, I doubt most people really appreciated him.
pburydoughgirl ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:48:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He's also known to every Benedict Cumberbatch fangirl.
Source: I am a Benedict Cumberbatch fangirl and he's the only reason I've heard of Turing.
davinci1994 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:00:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hell, they even made a movie about him and cast Benedict Cumberbatch to play him. I'd say that's a lot of appreciation.
jesse9o3 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:08:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not to mention that there is an Oscar winning movie about his life, not just anyone gets those.
PlayMp1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:03:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Another way to refer to a computer is a "Turing machine." Hell, one test for determining if an AI is as intelligent as a human is called the Turing test.
Osmanthus ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 12:41:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
My father was a History PhD who taught history into the 90's. He had never heard of Alan Turing. What Turing accomplished was a top secret for many years, so people of his time had never heard of him. So I do think that he is underappreciated by the general public.
name3 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:24:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Under appreciated by the general population I would say thou.. I know plenty of people who think bill gate invented the first computer
Xeizar ยท 266 points ยท Posted at 14:26:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't think he was underappeciated but because of his sexual orientation he suffered a lot. He did get recognition for his achievements.
RUCensored ยท 321 points ยท Posted at 14:59:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
When you end up having an academy award winning movie based on your life, you're probably not unappreciated.
whatudontlikefalafel ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 20:16:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The movie about his life came out a year ago. Before that he wasn't exactly a household name, and even today I don't think most people realize the impact he made on society. Imagine the world today if the Allies lost and the computer wasn't invented in the 40s?
We didn't learn about what he did in school, but he absolutely shaped the world in a big way. Granted, his achievements were kept a secret for decades, and for obvious reasons, and then his sexuality led to a lot of horrific shit in the last years of his life, something he didn't deserve considering what he gave the world.
But computer people all know who he is, so there's that. And the movie helped a lot, though I wonder if people who saw that film realize just how big a deal his machine was. He's not unappreciated, but still underappreciated, because I think everyone should know who this guy was.
almostinvisible ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:34:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The movie was completely detached from reality though. It's almost a work of fiction.
Coffeeisforclosers_ ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:23:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The poor bloke got sent to mental hospital as he was gay and out on a cocktail of drugs and odd medicine with eventually made him give up and kill himself. This was after he stopped the world war
Radius86 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:08:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He chose chemical castration, over prison sentence, for the charge of buggery.
yboc0 ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 16:04:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm not saying I disagree, but to be fair, the post asks about "underappreciated", not unappreciated.
PM_Me_Rude_Haiku ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 17:01:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Deftabently underappreciated in his lifetime, and for a couple of decades after it ended in a sad fashion, because it was all kept super secret. Poor old Alan.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:22:17 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
I find that hard to believe
mostlyemptyspace ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:59:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, 60 years after he committed suicide. That really doesn't mean shit.
ARealSlimBrady ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:16:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He says about a man who committed suicide over being so thoroughly ostracized.
RUCensored ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:25:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm pretty sure his death has always been a little more grey than that. There are many who don't think he even committed suicide. If you do buy into the suicide theory however, him being ostracized by anyone typically don't play into those theories.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:59:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Punished a lot is an understatement. He was not given any recognition in his lifetime. It is far more likely than not that he committed suicide because of how he was treated. It was documented that he did commit suicide, but there is conflicting opinions.
Regardless, he was treated like a piece of shit from the moment it was discovered he was gay until his death. He was chemically castrated like a pedophile monster and was banned from traveling to most places. He was banned from the universities for a very long time, and even had he not been, the people there would have treated him despicably.
He had been omitted from most American high school curriculums. I had never even heard the name Alan Turing until I started the CS department in college. Everybody and their mother has heard Einstein, Oppenheimer, Newton, Darwin, Tesla, Newton, ect before the 9th grade.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:13:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think that will change as time goes by. We are entering an age where machines of the type he envisioned will be ubiquitous. I think he will be revered by silicon descendants as a visionary that helped them emerge from this human filth and take over the galaxy.
AllezCannes ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:32:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He was underappreciated in his lifetime because his contributions to the war were kept secret.
Bobshayd ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:00:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He was definitely underappreciated, although he might not be now. He is a hero of the war, and was effectively killed for being gay without anyone involved knowing what he did.
naughty_ottsel ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 16:12:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Marian Rejewski is probably more fitting for this, he was part of a team that originally cracked the Enigma, Turing's work built on that and essentially got it down to a machine that could crack the code.
As a software dev I appreciate Turing's work, hell I wouldn't have a job, but he technically wasn't the first to crack the enigma.
rhb4n8 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:10:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Cracking the enigma once isn't that hard cracking it in a few hours every day is.
naughty_ottsel ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:27:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm just being pedantic, but at the same time Turing is always classed as the first to solve it. Without the Polish help I'm sure he would still solve it, but it would have taken longer. Even if the Polish stopped the war by 6 months, that is still millions of lives saved by this. No one brings them up, so I think they fit in this more than Turing, a brilliant mind and wrongfully driven to apparent suicide. Ironically Turing wasn't as interested in computers as he was in biology, hence the Turing test. But without him we wouldn't have the basis for the test in the first place
krukson ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 18:11:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Talking about under appreciation. There were in fact 3 Polish mathematicians who broke the Enigma first, giving way for further decryption by the British. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigma_machine
rhb4n8 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:13:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes but since the code changes daily that's not very helpful compared to being able to Crack the new code every day
CaptainFairchild ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 14:51:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not to mention his contributions to the theory of computability in general.
Caelinus ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 16:38:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He is the Einstien of computer science. We have pictures and quotes from him everywhere in our CS department.
JusticeJanitor ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 16:04:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is changing with the Imitation Game being a great movie but I feel like the mainstream doesn't really know about him but if you're in the field (computer science) you absolutely know who he is and how great he was.
ChickenFriedRake ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 16:21:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He's pretty well known.
epochellipse ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:32:17 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Bullshit. He didn't crack Enigma. Some unsung Polish mathematicians did. But the method took so long for humans that the messages were useless by the time they were decoded. Turing invented a machine that could decode enigma messages fast enough for the allies to act on them. He used the proven Polish technique. And because of a couple of shitty movies, Turing gets all of the credit now.
dobl5 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 16:52:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Imitation Game was a great movie as well
aviary83 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:45:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What about Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace? Lots of people know Turing's name. Not as many know Babbage/Lovelace. Or Konrad Zuse.
HishamXD ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:25:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think Benedict Cumberbatch gets enough praise as it is.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 04:10:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I have 2 T-shirts with him on them. I don't think he is under-appreciated. Hell when some sapient AI eventually emerges - I am quite sure people will know about the Turing test and the idea of Turning-complete machines.
bigtitch ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 10:19:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Or how about Tommy Flowers who built the first programmable computer that decoded the Lorenz Cipher. After the war, he wanted to build and sell computers, but couldn't get a bank loan because he was sworn to secrecy so he couldn't prove it would work.
ScottTheHedgehog ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:52:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dude delete this comment. Alan Turing is anything but under appreciated.
Quickob ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 16:19:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
100% Couldn't agree more.
RarestarGarden ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:22:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Is Alan Turing the new Tesla now?
ReasonablyBadass ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:44:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm a Turing fan, but this is just wrong.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:47:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Come on, man, Turing-praise is some of the world's biggest mutual masturbation fuel.
rhb4n8 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:44:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dude someone else put Tesla. How many people heard of Alan Turing before the imitation game? How many people know what he looked like?
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:54:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Anyone who'd taken basic computer science? Gay?
Oafah ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:10:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's hard to downvote Alan Turing, but it's not hard to downvote your comment. Was our collective treatment of Turing a great shame? Absolutely. But since, we've come to revere him as one of the greatest scientists and mathematicians who ever lived.
His story is tragic, but he is most certainly not unsung.
rhb4n8 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:42:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Really? I feel the general public has never heard of him. He should be atleast as well known as Oppenheimer or Marconi, maybe even Einstein and yet... That's definitely not the case.
Scranda1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:33:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just watched the imitation game 2 night ago. What a incredible movie.
rhb4n8 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:36:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Benedict cumberbatch is pretty awesome
Priamosish ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:38:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I thought Zuse invented the computer?
DoctorsHateHim ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:39:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oh, you mean Konrad Zuse
elyisgreat ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:56:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah but now everybody knows who he is because of the Imitation Game.
rhb4n8 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:42:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
70 years too late
merlinfire ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:13:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
anyone who knows the term Turing-complete knows who he was
SaintJimmy1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:17:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The man has a movie about his life, and a rather popular one at that. He's not under appreciated.
rhb4n8 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:35:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The only reason I've heard of him
rocknroll237 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:24:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I posted this too, I can't believe he's not higher up!
[deleted] ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 15:18:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'd like to nominate Albert Gรถring because of what I learned of him from reading /u/mar_sh23's post in the Who is wrongly portrayed as a villain? thread. Not gonna copy and paste the content because I'd feel like an asshole, follow the link to read it.
naughty_ottsel ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:17:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I was reading a couple of other comments in this thread and was reminded of that comment. So very true!
pjvex ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 19:00:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Smedley Butler who prevented an fascist funded army from overthrowing the government. Largely planned by Averill Hariman, Prescott Bush, and George Herbert Walker (the same financiers who fostered fascism in both Germany and Italy)
A watered down description of it can be found in Wikipedia, but there are better sources...such as this video.
Seafroggys ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:57:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Talked about in Oliver Stone's Untold American History series. Quite fascinating.
Also read Butler's book War is a Racket.
koiotchka ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 15:41:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Earl Old Person, who prevented the US from enacting the Indian Termination Policy in the 1960s.
theflamesweregolfin ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 15:48:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Leo Major
Major single-handedly captured 93 German soldiers during the Battle of the Scheldt in Zeeland in the southern Netherlands. During a reconnaissance, whilst alone, he spotted two German soldiers walking along a dike. As it was raining and cold, Major said to himself, "I am frozen and wet because of you so you will pay." He captured the first German and attempted to use him as bait so he could capture the other. The second attempted to use his gun, but Major quickly killed him. He went on to capture their commanding officer and forced him to surrender. The German garrison surrendered themselves after three more were shot dead by Major. In a nearby village, SS troops who witnessed German soldiers being escorted by a Canadian soldier shot at their own soldiers, injuring a few and killing seven. Major disregarded the enemy fire and kept escorting his prisoners to the Canadian front line. Major then ordered a passing Canadian tank to fire on the SS troops.
Tsquare43 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:52:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
that is bad-ass
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 16:07:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Augustus wouldn't have been shit it if wasn't for Agrippa
cdna ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:39:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
YESSS THIS
While we're doing Romans, I'd like to add Aurelian. Pretty much saved the entire Roman empire from complete collapse on multiple fronts.
MJWood ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 17:16:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Vasili Archipov
Stanislav Petrov
The world would have ended without them.
sjryan ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 17:35:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm an electrical engineer and almost sixty years old, but it was only last year that I learned that Konrad Zuse invented the first 'modern' computer.
drukath ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 17:46:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Post from earlier today made me think about this guy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis
This guy is why your doctor washes their hands. Also one of the saddest stories in science.
Devilhead2 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:22:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
According to my history teacher, John Snow. Not the GOT character, the physician.
msthe_student ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:39:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Extra Credits made an awesome little series about him
czulu ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:22:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hmm when it comes to him, I know nothing.
BULL3TP4RK ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:29:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Stanislav Petrov. He prevented World War 3. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov
paper_doll_dreams ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:37:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ingvar Kamprad, founder of Ikea, cause shit gotta fit in my Versa Note!
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:53:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
rosalind franklin
SeaJayEm45 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:55:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Joseph Stalin
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:09:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The russian sub commander the refused to end the world by turning his key and launching the nukes. Vasili Arkhipov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Arkhipov
Zizzyplex ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:20:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Amerigo Vespucci, we got America's name from him, yet nobody seems to acknowledge him. Damn Columbus.
Fishians ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:25:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me for making sure there's extra toilet paper in the bathroom for the next person.
tonybotz ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:46:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
jonas salk. - found the vaccine to polio
Ladd_Pearson ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:50:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hedy Lamarr. She invented the technology that made GPS, Bluetooth and wi-fi possible but most people just remember her as some dumb actress.
penguinpwrdbox ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 01:42:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is a fucking great answer.
Sfogliatella ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:54:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Easily Josef Stalin
psswrod ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:56:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
IGNAZ SEMMELWEIS
He is discovered by hand washing
cottagecheeseceiling ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:01:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We'll never know until we see the big comprehensive scoreboard in heaven
lpresc12 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:09:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Samuel Prescott. Out of the three people involved with the Midnight Ride, he was the only one to escape the British and warn the Patriots in Concord about the British attack.
Skaggzz ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:09:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Vasili Arkhipov
hbombs86 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:10:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Vasili Arkhipov. The Soviet Sub Commander who prevented Nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:13:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Lucifer.
Lordbyron15 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:16:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Vasili Arkhipov. Saved the entire world from nuclear war during the Cuban Missle crisis.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Arkhipov
KeybladeSpirit ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:23:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
James Otis, Jr. played a pretty major role in the American Revolution. His most notable feat was delivering a five hour filibuster (this was an old timey filibuster, in which he stood unsupported for five hours while arguing his point) on his 44th birthday challenging the Writs of Assistance. He failed to get them repealed, but his speech became a driving force for the revolution.
Oh, and he coined the revolutionaries' rallying cry with his catchphrase, "Taxation without representation is tyranny."
And he was also among the few people in his time who was for racial equality. He wrote in his pamphlet The Rights of the British Colonies, "The colonists are by the law of nature free born, as indeed all men are, white or black."
He also died getting struck by lightning and was reported to have been hoping to die this way.
So yeah, James Otis Jr. lived and died a badass.
SPQC ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:36:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dr Jonas Salk. Found cure for polio. Gave it away for FREE.
beautydeficient ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:40:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Henrietta Lacks, her cells were used in the creation of this vaccine and she's basically unheard of.
HepyCola ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:44:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The guy who had to stay in the apollo spacecraft whilst Buzz and Armstrong landed on the moon. Without him in that spacecraft, they wouldn't have been able to get back to earth.
jesse9o3 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:47:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Michael Collins
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:45:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
clownsLjokersR ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:45:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
All the good men and women during Nazi occupation who saved thousands of Jews - many of whom were children - from certain death.
thatcajunguy81 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:10:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wouldn't no one even know of the most underappreciated person is?
Five_Decades ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:27:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Probably not in all history, but Daniel Lewin. He was an Israeli commando who went to mit after his military career. Even at mit he stood out for his intelligence and when 9/11 happened, part of the reason the Internet didn't fail was because of software he helped develop. Had he lived he would've possibly been up there with Peter Thiel or Elon musk in their contributions to technology. But he was on American Airlines flight 11 and when the hijackers tried to take it over he tried taking it back (he was a bodybuilder and ex-Israeli special forces soldier who had dealt with islamic terrorists before) and got killed. First person to die on 9/11.
ltran96 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:45:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
James K. Polk. One of the few (or perhaps only) US Presidents to meet every major goal he set during his campaign. Led us to win the Mexican-American war, lowered tariffs, convinced the British to sell us Oregon, and even after all that, kept his promise not to run for a second term.
A shining example of "When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all."
suhl79 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:50:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Witold Pilecki In the introduction to the book "The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery" Norman Davies, a British historian, wrote: "If there was an Allied hero who deserved to be remembered and celebrated, this was a person with few peers."
highdiver_2000 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:04:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This guy has balls of diamonds
aMutantChicken ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:42:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug. At least 25% of the world population is alive thanks to his work with increasing the food production of the world, enabeling the earth to sustain more than 4 billions people.
http://youtu.be/9RD2Gigny8I
krawm ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:44:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Stanisav Petrov The man who saved the world.
SHPLUMBO ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:49:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Preston Tucker
He had a lot to do with increased automobile safety, like seat belts, but didn't survive the car manufacturing industry, largely due to the "big three" car companies at the time making it difficult for him.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:19:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
SHPLUMBO ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 07:36:05 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Haha you didn't like it? I watched it when I was younger and liked it alright. But I'm easily amused so I must have looked past any poor directing
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 07:48:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
SHPLUMBO ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 08:12:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ohh, yeah I noticed it was kind of heavy on that
termites2 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:49:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Marnie Nixon.
Ghost singer for the stars of stage and screen. Probably one of the biggest selling record artists of all time, but never credited on the films and recordings.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:00:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I know im late to the party, but Joseph Kelly. He was a from a poor Irish family and had to force his parents to let him go to school where he would get beaten every day. When he finished school he fought in the navy in WW2 and moved to Canada in 1963. He became an inventor in montreal and has been un-credited for a number of inventions including the magnetic credit card swipe, one of the first Canadian pocket calculators, and pong (I dont think i have his notes anymore so I can't prove it, believe what you want). He got fucked out of billions by patent laws but and declared bankruptcy in his 50s and went back to work, retired with a couple million and a few investments (he never really had a mind for business). He didn't care about fame or money and is the only person i have ever met that actually seemed like he knew what he was doing. He was a great father, grandfather and husband. I miss him everyday
toohardforthesecats ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:01:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm gonna do it...
Jesus Christ
chriswasmyboy ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:10:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Knut Haukelid. He was a Norwegian resistance movement soldier during World War II, most notable for participating in the Norwegian heavy water sabotage of Germany's only source for heavy water, for use in their research of atomic bombs. Haukelid sunk a ship carrying heavy water to Germany, after Haukelid had led Norwegian paratroopers in demolishing the Norsk Hydro factory producing it. Thus ended Hitler's attempt at getting nuclear weapons and conquering the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knut_Haukelid
ActionJaxson ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:10:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. If it wasn't for his company holding the line (and in the end charging with bayonets) at Little Round Top the North may have never won the Civil War. If the Rebels had broken through things would be a lot different today.
series_hybrid ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:51:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Russians who averted WWII are already mentioned below, so...
We all have heard about the Fukushima reactor disaster, right?...There is also an engineer, Yanosuke Hirai...he resisted efforts to make a tsunami protection-wall weaker (and more affordable) so that the Onagawa reactor would be properly protected...as opposed to the piece of shit Fukushima protections...and we all know how that turned out, right?
http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2012/08/how_tenacity_a_wall_saved_a_ja.html
harbo1 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:02:35 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Cyrus the Great. Founded the Persian Empire and considered one of the first rulers to allow basic human rights such as freedom of religion. Was considered so good that the Jews considered him a possible Messiah and he's thus mentioned in the Bible in Isaiah 45:1.
Cor3gasm ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:05:05 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alan Turing
aninjapr0 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:10:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I nominate Charles Martel. Stopped the Muslim invasion of Europe. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Martel
MevalemadresWey ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:12:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
History books in Mexico have been manipulated for decades, trying to erase and forget all those good people who made a difference in our country, one man is particularily important as his work helped around 40 000 people to escape the nazi regime: Gilberto Bosques Saldรญvar.
He worked tirelessly during his diplomatic commission in Portugal and France during the Second World War. He opened Mexico's doors to numerous refugees from Spain who ran away from Franco's dictatorship, and many others who found his approval of Mexican visas as the only possibility to escape Hitler's insanity.
Is he mentioned in any history book or celebrated his birth? No. Us Mexicans are a bunch of ungrateful, short-minded asshats.
D-DayDodger ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:18:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Lieutenant Albert Battel of the German army during WW2. The Nazis were planning on clearing out a Jewish ghetto in Poland in 1942 but this amazing man ordered his soldiers to protect the ghetto against the Nazis by blocking the only route into the town. When the SS tried to get in, Battel warned them that he would open fire if they continued. All these selfless German soldiers helped evacuate over 100 Jews and their families. Battel was even a member of the Nazi party and served in WW1 but never felt any hatred towards the Jews.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:30:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
[deleted]
NeophytePoser ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:47:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This wonderful person.
PersonOfDisinterest ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:50:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Stanislav Petrov. Thanks to him we didn't have a nuclear war.
From wiki: Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov (Russian: ะกัะฐะฝะธัะปะฐฬะฒ ะะฒะณัะฐฬัะพะฒะธั ะะตััะพฬะฒ; born 1939 in Vladivostok[1]) is a retired lieutenant colonel of the Soviet Air Defence Forces. On September 26, 1983, just three weeks after the Soviet military had shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, Petrov was the duty officer at the command center for the Oko nuclear early-warning system when the system reported that a missile, followed by another one and then up to five more, were being launched from the United States. Petrov judged the report to be a false alarm,[2] and his decision is credited with having prevented an erroneous retaliatory nuclear attack on the United States and its NATO allies that could have resulted in large-scale nuclear war. Investigation later confirmed that the satellite warning system had indeed malfunctioned.[3]
gideonkain ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 01:10:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Stanislav Petrov He literally saved the entire planet from all out thermonuclear war.
...the Oko nuclear early-warning system reported 5-7 missiles were being launched from the United States. Petrov judged the report to be a false alarm. His decision is credited with having prevented an erroneous retaliatory nuclear attack on the United States that could have resulted in large-scale nuclear war.
shot-in-the-mouth ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 01:41:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
TIL 9 out of 10 people appreciate Tesla so much that they consider him to be the most underappreciated person of all time.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 01:49:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The three Russians that saved the world from an even bigger catastrophic event in Chernobyl.
TheKingJacobo ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 02:09:12 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your mother.
Give her a call before you can't.
5hogun ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 02:32:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Kim Kardashian.
Edit: Oops, thought it read most overappreciated pile of shit in history.
WitchofPurple ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 02:37:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Probably me.
lo_key99 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 02:46:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dimebag Darrell
The_Potato_God99 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 03:04:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A little late I know, but I believe that this guy really deserves to be more appreciated.
TOXRA ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 03:26:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fritz Haber, and not for great reasons. He invented the process to fix atmospheric nitrogen, allowing for chemical fertilizer and for us to feed 7+ Billion people, but it also allowed us to make enough explosives to power WWI and WWII. He's also the father of chemical weapons and his wife hated him so much she shot herself in the heart.
Churba ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 03:50:49 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Since this thread is 8000+ comments in, he's propably going to remain pretty underappreciated, but:
Lawrence Hargrave, one of the inventors of Modern flight. He was to Aviation as Tesla is to electricity and electromagnetic theory, except without the crazy, the absurd delusions, poor skills at business and finance, terrible gambling habits(Though 48 hours straight at the table is rather impressive), and having a wildly inaccurate comic made about him by a screaming idiot.
An Englishman who emigrated to Australia, he's responsible for, among other things: Curved Airfoils, the box kite, Invented the rotary engine(The plane sort, not the Mazda sort), stable instrumentation platforms for early weather science(Abbott Lawrence Rotch, who built the first ones at Harvard and later for the US weather bureau was building entirely from Hargrave's designs), Early development of hydroplanes, and some of the finest glider designs the world had seen up to that point.
Without him, the Wright brothers would have never gotten off the ground - their early flying experience was with Hargrave gliders, and they corresponded with him for advice(which he freely gave) while constructing their aircraft. On top of that, Alberto Santos-Dumont, another aviation pioneer from whom the wright brothers took inspiration, based his designs on both the box-kite and Hargrave's aeronautical work. Sir Richard Threlfall of the Royal Society considered him the father of human flight, and noted that he had done more to advance the field of aviation than any other individual at the time, and most since. It has also been noted that the wright brothers getting the credit for inventing powered flight when essentially doing little more than building from Hargrave's work is "A stain on scientific history", and that without him, they "would have died as a pair of bicycle mechanics and tinkerers, forgotten to history."
He also never patented a single bit of it, believing that the knowledge should be freely available, and indeed, would send his designs to anyone who asked. He didn't care for profiting from his work, and only ever gave it away, never selling it, and caring only that he was able to add to the sum of Human knowledge.
TL:DR - without this guy, powered flight would have been put back decades, if not more. Nobody knows who he is, because everyone focuses on the American Wright Brothers, who made extensive use of his work in their efforts.
COACHREEVES ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 04:05:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
From the 50 years from1776-~1830 arguably there were three world changing events in the west. The American Revolution, The French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. The Marquis de Lafayette was a secondary player, right around the edges a primary player in the first two and significant in the third.
As a military officer who fought for the United States in the American Revolutionary War he was close friend of George Washington, (and Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson), he was of second-level importance.
Lafayette was a key figure in the French Revolution of 1789 notably his writing and presentation of the Declaration of the rights of Man and of the Citizen (written with Jefferson's help), joining the National Guard contingent marching Versailles, trying to steer a middle course as the radicals gained influence, defected and escaped the Terror. He was a secondary figure and almost a primary figure, especially in the early going.
Napoleon offered him all kinds of blandishments to join in. Lafayette would have nothing to do with it. He even, somewhat bravely and against his interests , voted against Napoleon being Consul for life. He arranged for Napoleon to go to the US after Waterloo (but the Brits said no and put him on St. Helena). He was a minor player in this worldwide drama - but a player.
When the Bourbons were restored and tried to restore the absolute Monarchy Lafayette was he loudest voice against this. In fact he leads the revolution, refuses the Presidency and give the Crown to Louis-Phillipe. He was a primary player in this secondary level series events in the West.
It is hard to think of another non-ruler who had as much direct impact on his times and direct impact on two continents and two countries that would be primary world players over the next two hundred years. Yet most Americans, if they know him at all, think of him as kind of Washington's Gofer and young ward - kind of a French Robin to GW's Batman. I submit "underappreciated".
and the July Revolution of 1830.
amappleby ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 04:09:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Any prehistoric person trying a new food to see if it would kill us or not.
omgitzcol ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 04:17:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Henry Clay. He's saved the United States from falling apart numerous times after delaying the issue of slavery with the compromise of 1820 and 1850. Furthermore, he constructed the infrastructure in America during his time, and in addition he contributed to the resolution of the Nullification crisis. Yet he isn't recognized as much as other people of importance in American history.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 05:00:12 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Lieutenant colonel Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov prevented nuclear holocaust in 1983.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov
nicholas_cage_mage ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 05:18:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Elderly Japanese people who are volunteering to clean up irradiated reactors in Fukushima in place of young people.
RookToFMinor ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 05:43:49 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikolai Vavilov and the scientists who protected the Leningrad Seedbank during the Seige.
Vavilov was a botanist and geneticist who dedicated his life to studying and improving the crops that people worldwide rely on for food (corn, wheat, etc), and he collected the largest seedbank in the world - >250,000 specimens. During Stalin's reign he ended up being imprisoned for disagreeing with people Stalin supported, and died of starvation himself.
The scientists tending to the seedbank basically locked themselves in with a collections of the most important seeds to protect them. Despite running out of food themselves, they never resorted to consuming the seeds. Nine of them died of starvation in the effort.
spartanburt ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:54:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well shit, you've convinced me.
RookToFMinor ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 05:58:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's so sad to think that these guys dedicated their lives to the idea of ending world hunger through a combination of seed diversity and genetic breeding... And what happens? They all die of starvation as punishment.
Arula777 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:14:49 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Pretty sure that was an intentional irony purveyed upon them by their oppressors.
RookToFMinor ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 06:23:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If only history were so neat. I'm fairly certain Vavilov was subjected to the meager slop (cabbage gruel, generally) that most political prisoners were given, and the scientists ended up barricading themselves in the bank to fend off begging Russians and invading Nazis.
Arula777 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:31:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So true, I am not educated with regards to the true account, but I feel your explanation bears more truth than my crude generalization.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 12:05:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Another frustrating side to this is that the people Stalin liked supported pseudoscience, and lots of other scientists were fired/killed as a result. Related to this is the fate of the major biochemist Jakub Parnas from around the same time, which is also frustrating to me. This time it was apparently Stalin's Doctor Plot.
You have all these people dedicating their entire lives to moving our collective knowledge forwards towards fundamentally improving human life, ending hunger and disease or whatever, and then look what happens to them...
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 05:51:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Why isn't there a rule for these questions that to be considered underappreciated by history, you can't have a Wikipedia page dedicated to you?
Arrow156 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 06:23:00 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Rodney Dangerfield, the man gets no respect.
TehBaows ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 06:25:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Monks that preserved greek and roman literature during the medieval times.
coconut311oil ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 07:31:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jesus. He literally died for each and every one of us.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 07:46:38 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
DJ Khaled
dalek_lama ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 12:57:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jonas Salk
Discovered the Polio vaccine, and chose not to patent it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Salk:
Thirsty-Bird ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 16:32:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
one of them i'd say is Irena Sendler
"Irena Sendler was a Polish nurse and social worker who served in the Polish Underground in German-occupied Warsaw during World War II.
Sendler smuggled approximately 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto and then provided them with false identity documents and shelter outside the Ghetto, saving those children from the Holocaust. With the exception of diplomats who issued visas to help Jews flee Nazi-occupied Europe, Sendler saved more Jews than any other individual during the Holocaust.
The German occupiers eventually discovered her activities and she was arrested by the Gestapo, tortured, and sentenced to death, but she managed to evade execution and survive the war.
SolarPolarMan ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:30:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
The first fire fighters who sacrificed their lives at Chernobyl Reactor number 4 but save thousand others by safely shutting down the other reactor cores. There is a monument in chernobyl to them. (Pic)
Lola_got_a_Lazerface ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:01:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
motherfucker i am
Beat_the_Deadites ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 17:26:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jan Sobieski - the 'Savior of Christendom' - led the largest cavalry charge in the history of the world to stop the Ottoman Turks from taking over Vienna, the gateway to the west, in 1683.
This is thought to have inspired the Battle of the Pellenor Fields from The Lord of the Rings.
http://www.badassoftheweek.com/index.cgi?id=28505525333
mtomei3 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:35:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Totally awesome.
[deleted] ยท 35 points ยท Posted at 13:58:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
Waniou ยท 26 points ยท Posted at 15:25:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, but didn't the reopening of the silk road also kinda pave the way for the Black Death?
PM_UR_ITTIE_BITTIES ยท 21 points ยท Posted at 16:31:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You mean The Great Khan's revenge?
JustZisGuy ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:13:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
How did you pass up a chance to call it The Wrath of Khan?
PM_UR_ITTIE_BITTIES ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:41:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Because The Wrath of Khan was the first pass.
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 17:19:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That and the Mongols also used the plague as biological warfare. In one battle they flung the bodies of plague victims into the city. But generally it is still considered that Mongols were very tolerant of other cultures and great rulers. Just not great to be attacked by.
count210 ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 17:03:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You can't blame the man for not knowing germ theory.
matap821 ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 18:21:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well he would fling the bodies of those who died from the plague into cities he had under siege, so he must have had some of the core concepts down.
bob-the-world-eater ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:50:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And illegal drugs
name3 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:28:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Win some. Lose some :)
ownage99988 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:48:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sure but how can you place blame for that? It's not like they knew. They reopened it with the best intentions.
clakresed ยท 25 points ยท Posted at 16:52:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Peace is easy when you just murder everyone you come across who dissents from your vision.
10% of the world's population died by his armies, which is fucking insane because his whole empire was ~22% of the world's land area, and 25% of its population itself. The Mongol army purged 1 person for every 3 they met.
If he achieved peace, it was because he caused so much death, suffering, and war that he managed to exceed the world's quota for brutality and borrow some from the future.
Much of the history around him may have been written by his enemies, but even if you consider that, there were Persian historians who wrote mournfully for the end of all Islamic people, and basically just assumed that the Mongol hordes were the bringers of the apocalypse. That's some serious shit, even from one's enemies.
G_Morgan ยท 17 points ยท Posted at 15:39:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If anything the recent histories are very revisionary in his favour. All of the good stuff the Mongol's achieved was entirely accidental. As for religious tolerance, that was only a tool used because one of his enemies was a Muslim region dominated by a Buddhist nobility. He was tolerant in so far as he didn't care, beyond that it was a strategy in battle.
I imagine 200 years from now people will treat Hitler like they do Ghengis Khan today.
Drogzar ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 17:30:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, it will probably take more than 200 years to consider Hitler anything like "religious tolerant".
Brawldud ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:19:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's very common to see people arguing that, but with the massive media availability of the atrocities committed under Nazi Germany, I doubt that he will be viewed so favorably.
G_Morgan ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:39:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well we know enough about the Mongols to know they intentionally slaughtered more people than the Nazis.
vestayekta ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 17:50:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Famous words of a Persian historian: They came and They destroyed and burned and killed and took away everything and went away.
Mongols destroyed some of the biggest cities in the world and killed off all creatures. They crushed the spirit of several nations. Sadness and depression engulfed everyone and everything in the wake of their attacks. I don't understand anyone who praises him.
czulu ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:34:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"They create a desert and call it peace"
Not about the goddamn Mongolians knocking down my city wall, but appropriate nonetheless.
CzarMesa ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 17:25:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He was a butcher.
Places like Afghanistan and Turkmenistan never recovered from his "reopening of the silk road". Before he came along, they were well-developed and prosperous parts of Asia. The Khans just left a wasteland.
People get so jazzed about religious tolerance and order, but it is common for empires to promote such things. Things like religious tolerance are necessary for a stable empire. If there was a reason for him to persecute the Zoroastrians for example, he certainly would have wiped them out.
He was a brilliant, incredible and terrible human being.
Blujay12 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:16:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That makes me think, If you had to destroy and conquer empires, destroying their leaders, for world peace and better lives for all of them, would you do it? would you think it's ok and IS it alright to do.
It's really unusual, but once you start thinking about it then it gets interesting.
BurnedOut_ITGuy ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 15:04:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
But the silk road the shady underbelly of the Internet. Not so sure that's a good thing.
jayesanctus ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:24:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He also killed so many people that sections of the earth were re-forested.
True environmentalist.
Banzai51 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:51:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He didn't really get the short end of the stick. He really was as brutal as advertised. He just didn't give one fuck about how or what you worshiped as long as you stood down when he was rolling through and paid your tribute thereafter.
NinjaDude5186 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:30:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's not because he was some great humanitarian, it's because as log as he got paid and you weren't revolting he couldn't care less what you did, and if you stopped paying or chosen revolt your entire town would be destroyed.
itinerant_gs ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 13:26:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Stevie wonder
notahipster- ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 13:48:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
One of my friends in high school wrote a song called "Stevie Wonder Take The Wheel"
Nickthedick55 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 13:56:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"Look out for that tree".
With-a-Cactus ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:31:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"I could drive fine ooon myy owwwwn!"
Bucket_O_Beef ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 13:29:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I can't see why you would think that.
DatGDoe ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 13:38:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Completely blind to the idea.
groggboy ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:25:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I can't tell if this is genius or offensive
The1WhoKnocks-WW ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 13:42:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Really? I couldn't envision a more appropriate answer.
katieroseclown ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:38:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The man had no vision.
sodangfancyfree ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 17:16:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The nurses, doctors, and staff who cared for patients during the Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa.
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:30:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug developed a heartier strain of wheat to defend his Ph.D. in Mexico, took it to Asia to feed over a million people. He's not as well known as he should be.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug
Vasili Arkhipov single handedly stopped nuclear war between the U.S. and the USSR, and was reprimanded for it. Don't hear about him,often, do ya?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Arkhipov
Arcane-Legion ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:07:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Arab science and maths professionals, where do you think Europeans got all their stuff from.
jesse9o3 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 20:17:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The words Algebra, Algorithm, Alkali and Alchemy all come from Arabic origins.
Arcane-Legion ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:33:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Admiral too, comes from Amirul (I believe it means commander)
Alcohol too
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:25:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ahkbar too ------- its a trap
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:18:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They are the ones who kept translations of ancient Greek texts during the dark ages. If it weren't for them, that part of history would have been destroyed!
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 01:30:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A lot of Russians have been named, be they from Chernobyl, or their actions in Cuba.
If you will forgive the indulgence, I have yet another Russian to name. Stanislav Petrov, who in 1983, saved the world from nuclear annihilation. His computer reported US missile launches. He decided the detection was a glitch, purely on his gut, and refused to reciprocate the detected launches. Some time later, it was discovered it was, in fact, a glitch.
I would say he is the most under appreciated. The men in Chernobyl knew they were going to die, and they acted heroically. They saved Europe with their bravery. The men in Cuba knew they may start a war that will destroy all life, and they acted with full knowledge, and saved the world with their hearts. But Petrov? He literally saved the world with his reason. He should have reciprocated the launch. But he decided that it made no sense, and reasoned it was a glitch. He reasoned, dare I say had faith, that his American counterparts were as reasonable as him. That they were as sane as him. That they were as righteous as him.
That degree of humility and compassion, makes him an amazing human being.
[deleted] ยท 19 points ยท Posted at 14:19:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
thecoffeetoy ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 14:26:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dennis Ritchie literally set the foundation for the modern digital world.
belabor_the_obvious ยท 22 points ยท Posted at 15:14:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Lol again you just stole this comment.
MegaBord ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 16:25:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Again?
shatkarma ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 16:28:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ritchie isn't that under appreciated though. Any software engineer worth their salt knows of him and has a massive respect for what he's contributed to the field. It's rare for someone that's famous in a certain field to get mainstream popularity, especially in the 21st century.
hydraloo ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 18:03:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Mom and dad
Lunar_Lord ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:47:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Mine specifically.
hydraloo ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:46:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes, mine
Blendzen ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 19:10:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Stanislav Petrov, that Russian that didn't launch a nuclear attack despite their systems telling them the US had launched several nuclear missiles at them.
brownshugguh ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 14:12:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The guy who invented Zip Lock Bags. So fucking awesome.
loi044 ยท 21 points ยท Posted at 15:48:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
True. I don't have to buy condoms anymore.
SlipperySherpa ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 16:15:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dude... using a plastic bag on a baby is hardly better than an abortion
loi044 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:24:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm all out of coat hangers.
...plus the abortion clinic stopped giving out free muffins.
With-a-Cactus ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:22:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And today's "First World Problem Comment" goes to /u/loi044 !
throwawaygoodvibes ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:36:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Why awesome?
Fahsan3KBattery ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:44:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Borge Madsen
alecv26 ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 17:55:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jonas Salk. Why did I never learn about him in school? Instead I learned some bullshit story about Christopher Columbus being credited with discovering "the new world". even though THERE WERE PEOPLE ALREADY THERE. (not to mention that Columbus was a rapist, pirate, tyrant, and mass murderer.) Jonas Salk cured polio and didn't take any money for the patent because he believed a cure should be free for all. This man deserves a holiday because unlike Columbus, he actually DISCOVERED something. He was also a selfless hero who saved countless lives from the would-be ravaging of a degenerative disease. tl;dr Jonas Salk was a true hero who deserves his own holiday
BornRreddy ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 18:31:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Genghis Khan. United a bunch of people. Was culturally tolerant. And valued all types of people. Yet people think he's a monster.
pies1123 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:36:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He was responsible for the death of 10% of the world's population and he did it all because he wanted to be rich and fuck a load of ladies
BornRreddy ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:51:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He was already rich as hell just by uniting the nomadic tribes. He destroyed China because they were being hurtful to the Nomads. He destroyed Baghdad because they destroyed a trade caravan. Not a lot of that was because he wanted to be rich. He had plenty of hot women to fuck already as well. He just wanted to build a kingdom.
Penguin90125 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:28:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
To be fair, his hoard did murder everyone that resisted and destroyed Baghdad.
BornRreddy ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:30:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Those guys disrespected trade routes and trade relations. You ever piss off a person about their money?
Penguin90125 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:16:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Is that really a good reason to burn down an entire city?
BornRreddy ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:31:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It was the Middle Ages. You really shouldn't have messed with that man. He also killed all the men involved in the trade caravan.
Penguin90125 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:35:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That doesn't make him nice or underrappreciated. Still a marauding douche
Edmund-Dantes ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 18:52:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Chernoble Divers. Saved millions and the majority of Europe.
Fahsan3KBattery ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:34:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Field Marshal Alan Brooke, 1st Viscount Alanbrooke.
Nothing? Well he's a large part of the reason the Allies won WW2 and yet he did nothing flashy. He was just very very very very well organised and very very good at logistics. The Allies always had what they needed where they needed it, because Alanbrooke arranged it.
He also kept Churchill functioning, kept the UK/US alliance on track, made sure the Russians were sent enough supplies, and stopped the various people who wanted to sack Monty from sacking Monty. But honestly his biggest contribution was six years of being really really good at organising the details.
czulu ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:27:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
General George Marshall pretty much did the same deal for the Allies. He placed many of the generals that we celebrate today in the US Army, yet doesn't even receive recognition for the Marshall Plan, which rebuilt Western Europe and Asia and kept them from communist influence.
lmac7 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 01:58:29 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I would suggest a man who likely saved the planet from nuclear annihilation in 1962 should get consideration for the best judgement under duress.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Arkhipov
And then history kind of repeats itself 21 years later with another close call.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov
Moomium ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:58:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not saying those guys don't deserve to be appreciated, but this is the sixth time I've seen both their names come up in this thread (seventh if you count the comment directly below yours).
ShamelessJanus ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 01:58:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Stanislav Petrov
The Soviet nuclear warning system was reporting that the USA has just launched nuclear missiles at Russia. Petrov prevented a retaliatory nuclear attack on the USA by recognizing that it was a false alarm. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alarm_incident
_hogsofwar ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 16:09:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Whoever decided to start selectively breeding dogs to be our best pals.
Fuck yeah, that guy.
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 18:05:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dogs did that on their own
beausoleil ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:12:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Snowden
oh_sneezeus ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 14:09:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Otto Frederick Rohwedder
Aqquila89 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 14:44:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Howard Florey and his team. The invention of penicillin is tied to Alexander Fleming; however, while he discovered its anti-bacterial effect, he could not refine it and make drugs from it. That was done by Florey, Ernst Chain, Norman Heatley and Edward Abraham (and others, surely). Chain and Florey shared the Nobel Prize with Fleming, but they're still far less well-known.
whohw ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:22:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Much like Charles Best to Fred Banting. (insulin)
DIP_MY_BALLS_IN_IT ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 15:02:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Vasili Arkhipov who totally saved us from nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis
WanderingSkunk ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:47:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I was going to say him as well, you beat me.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 15:47:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
mralistair ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:21:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
given that he did this in 1941, 2 years after the war started it's not quite true.
boundbythecurve ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 16:47:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Claire Cameron Patterson.
This guy discovered the most accurate age of the earth we have today while still in grad school in the 50's.
But more importantly he discovered the dangers of lead, which had been put in everything from gasoline to toothpaste to hair spray for years. He fought the U.S. federal government and lead special interest groups for decades until lead was finally banned. People still don't realize how incredibly dangerous having lead in your environment does to people. And we'll have higher amounts of lead in every person on earth than any other previous group of humans in human history. For the next 200 years. He saved us from making that even worse.
Imteedo ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:05:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
W.T.Cosgrave made Ireland what it is today but is shadowed by the success of Develera and the death of Michael Collins
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:16:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Probably some guy like Pontius Pilate or figure otherwise related to the Abrahamic religions.
Those texts and documents had a more profound effect on what the world is today than anything else, and so few people are willing to accept that because apparently religion is the cause of everything wrong in the world.
dcktop ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:20:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Smedley motherfuckin Butler
Endolence ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:24:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your (yes you) mother.
oosuteraria-jin ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:30:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Gideon Mantell, one of the most important pioneers of paleontology basically had most of his work miscredited and his life ruined by Richard Owen. The poor bastard basically ran out of cash and was also hit by a carriage, ruining his spine.
After he died of an opium overdose Owen took a section of his spine and pickled it then put it on display. 'Orrible man that he was.
Ngoscope ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:31:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thomas Midgley, Jr., this man is credited with the invention of chloroflourocarbons, leaded gasoline, and pionered the use of set as a commercial insecticide in the United States. These three allowed humanity as a while advance technology further than anything else outside of the computer revolution. Without these breakthroughs, modern life as we know it could not exist. But on the other hand, the breakthroughs have been, hands down, the most detrimental to health of the planet, humans and all organisms by doing damage that will take 1000s of year to remedy.
4strokes ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:45:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Frank Pantridge. The man who invented the portable defibrillator. He installed the original in a Belfast ambulance, it ran using a car battery and weighed 70kg. Within 3 years he had managed to reduce the weight to 3kg and further refinements made it safe to use for members of the public. He created something that has saved countless lives all over the world.
Humak ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:46:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Norton
Maybe not the most under appreciated but close and certainly more amusing. He made life in San Fran more entertaining and did solid good by stopping mob violence with prayer and giving San Franciscans a reason to treat the indignant as people.
He also had a lot of decent ideas that were eventually acted out.
Emperor goddamn Norton.
RoboNinjaPirate ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:50:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Probably Fritz Haber. He developed the Haber Process for extracting Nitrogen from the air, and developed synthetic fertilizer, saving literally billions of lives.
About 40% of the calories used to feed humanity are food grown using fertilizer from the Haber-Bosch process.
He's also a war criminal, but you will have to listen to the podcast for the whole story.
amnhanley ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:00:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
based on the current growth of the anti-vax movement. Louis Pasteur
Son_of_Mogh ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:03:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Surely no one knows?
Titsnicker ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:05:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thomas Ladder
Tsquare43 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:06:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I can't think of one particular person, but I'd like to mention the USS Houston in the early months of WWII. It was the only major Allied unit after Dec 10 in the far east. The ship and her crew were a thorn in the Japanese side until they sank her on March 1, 1942. The Houston and the HMAS Perth were trying to make a mad dash to Australia via the Sundra Straight and stumbled into a Japanese landing force and fought it out. Just about 300 of the nearly 1100 of her crew survived the war. Most ended up working on the Burma railway as forced labor. No one knew until the end of the war what had happened to the ship or crew. If more people knew the ship's story, the name Houston would be revered like Arizona and Yorktown.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Houston_%28CA-30%29
USA2016 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:17:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Henry II. Dude had his wife and all his sons rebel against him twice.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:22:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Warren Zevon
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:41:01 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 15:28:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I bet that was interesting.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:23:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Clair Patterson. The man who discovered the age of the earth and opened our eyes even wider on the topic of lead contamination
fuckkarmandkissmyass ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:24:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
the people keeping the peace at the berlin wall check points. place was a fucking powder keg for such a long time, and a lot of people did not even speak the same languages. I couldn't take the stress of having to determine who is potential terrorist, who to turn away and who to let pass.
suitcasefullofbees ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:24:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Bayard Rustin was an essential part of the Civil Rights movement but no one seems to remember him. I think he preferred to be a behind the scenes guy and also it was probably too controversial for the movement to have a gay person as a leader. There is a great documentary out called Brother Outsider about his life. I admire him because he did so much without expectation of glory.
avs72 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:36:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sadly, we will never know. Simply acknowledging that person here increases his or her appreciation score, thereby depriving that person of claiming the "most under-appreciated" status.
Galt42 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:37:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dennis Ritchie. Developed the C language and UNIX. Basically, most of the internet, and many programs run his work.
sharingan10 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:38:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fritz Haber.
The guy invented a process that is credited with saving a billion lives in the form of nitrogen fixation, but he's mostly known for inventing chemical weapons.
Or you could cite Vasili Arkhipov in a nuclear submarine during the cuban missle crisis. Essentially his choice to not nuke the US is what prevented nuclear war. He basically saved the world
jberd45 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:39:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Joseph Whitworth: engineer and inventor of the the micrometer which allowed precision manufacturing, interchangeable parts and by extension the industrial revolution. He also invented the Whitworth rifle which was the most accurate rifle of the time. It was used by the Confederacy in the Civil war.
michio42 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:41:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jocelyn Bell Burnell
Discovered pulsars as a PhD student, at first her adviser doesn't believe her, so she spends hundreds of hours looking through up to 96 feet of paper data per night. Her adviser eventually writes the paper and Burnell is only put down as second writer. Her adviser wins the Nobel Prize for 'discovering' pulsars. This is seen as one of the biggest mistakes of the Nobel committee, and the reason she didn't get proper recognition is because she was a women and a student. It is EXACTLY the same story with Cecilia Payne (I posted her story earlier).
(Happy ending though, she has a tone of letters after her name and has picked up about every other award a physicist can get.)
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:43:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Andre Malraux. The dude is a real life Indiana Jones, but better (and French).
He went to Cambodia in the early 1900s to explore unexplored areas, and was arrested for removing an ancient artifact. After getting out of jail, he went to Annam (modern day southern Vietnam) and teamed up with a lawyer to start an anti-colonial newspaper to inspire the people to fight the French powers. He was active in the Spanish Civil War and WWII, in which he was captured by the Gestapo. He then became Minister of Information in France for a decade.
Winterhorrorland ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:52:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My mom.
TrillBillvol2 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:59:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Pliny the Elder who wrote Naturalis Historia, 37 encyclopedic books covering all ancient knowledge, paving the way for every other encyclopedia in history and providing us the basis for much of our modern knowledge.
He also provides us insight on crazy things people believed in antiquity such as:
YourGirlGracie ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:32:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fucking splash damage.
Stahn88 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:59:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Lincoln. He's like moses from the bible he freed his people.
justagaltampa ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:03:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I read the book about him in 5th grade - The Cry and The Covenant. Then had to stand up and give my book report. I started crying.
OldeHickory ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:07:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
John Adams, only founding father to not own any slaves ever. Gave a speech on July 3rd 1776 that convinced the continental congress to declare independence. Before that he was one of the harshest critics of independence. He had to prove himself that independence was not only the right choice, but the morally and legally correct one. He proved that the UK's ownership of the 13 colonies was unjust in a legal way. He was a great compromiser and always put the nation above party politics. Just as important as washington or Jefferson, but none of the credit, which john Adams knew of and predicted in his old age.
gaberax ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:07:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Joseph. Played along with the "virgin" thing.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:08:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:16:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
OP's mom.
Allllllllllll riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight!
ScienceAteMyKid ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:20:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not to get all hipster, but you've never heard of him.
No one's ever heard of him.
Bobbinjay ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:26:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fritz Haber is essentially responsible for the near vertical global population growth in 20th century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process
spozeicandothis ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:27:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thomas Paine
slowshot ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:29:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Lรกszlรณ Bรญrรณ.He is the man who invented the ballpoint pen.
CookiezFort ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:30:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Robert Watson-Watt, thjis guy helped save Britain in WW2 , he worked to try and create the Radar and detect German fighters and bombers
Renry ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:34:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Native Americans.
tysonsaurusrex ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:35:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The three men who gave up. Their lives to save tge world
http://knowledgenuts.com/2014/04/13/when-three-divers-swam-into-the-jaws-of-chernobyl/
LordAutumnBottom ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:35:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Definitely someone that will never be listed here.
ElVichoPerro ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:36:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Vasili Arkhipov: Russian navy officer aboard a nuclear submarine that received the order to fire nuclear torpedos upon US ships. he refused to authorize it, thereby saving the world from WWIII.
j1mmo ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:37:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Karl Marx / Socrates.
Scouselishman ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:14:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Karl Marx is incredibly under appreciated.
Girwing ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:04:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I was looking for this one.
plainsane ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:37:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Stanislav Petrov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov
bongdropper ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:39:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Chernobyl Divers.
I can't believe they don't even have their own wikipedia page.
fournameslater ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:42:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The inventor of eyeglasses or corrective eyewear. I think about this everyday in that brief period where I remove my glasses to put in my contact lenses. For that short time I remind myself that if it weren't for that person centuries ago, our world would be much different. People like me with even a moderate short-sightedness would have been reduced to hard-labourers, or cast out to live in the badlands.
So, whoever you really are, thank you.
CEZ2 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:25:42 on January 19, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alhazen
RockyTopBruin ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:42:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In answering this question, all responses negate themselves as they show appreciation for their historical figure.... So I'm going to say the anonymous-andy cave person who harnessed fire
Bradman9994 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:43:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Great call, The best candidates will never be known.
penguinpwrdbox ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:00:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It doesn't say UN. It says UNDER.
penguinpwrdbox ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:00:58 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It doesn't say UN. It says UNDER.
ManOverBeard ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:43:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Abel Wolman
Developed the process to purify water through chlorination that is still used today, and advocated for it to become widespread, despite opposition after the chlorine gassing of troops in the trenches of WWI. His work is hailed as possibly the most significant public health advance of the twentieth century.
There is a building in Baltimore named after him. It's the one you send parking fines to.
murphmobile ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:46:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wallace Carothers
The inventor of Lycra. Responsible for Yoga Pants EVERYWHERE!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Carothers
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:49:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Pierre Chamberlen who invented obstetric forceps thereby mitigating the most common reason for death in childbirth for women and babies.
Tudills ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:50:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
George Washington Carver
mintchan ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:52:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
dennis richie, creator of the C language, which is used to develop unix operating system, which also developed by him. the operating system that later spawn into linux, MacOS, Android, and iOS
OldPolishProverb ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:52:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Can I nominate a team? The development team at Xerox PARC created Ethernet, the GUI, the laser printer and object oriented programming. All of these things the scientists then demonstrated to a young Steve Jobs.
Jobs did NOT steal from PARC as is the common myth. Xerox partnered with Apple in hopes of making some of their very expensive technology available to a mass market.
Tesler makes it clear it was Xerox that approached Apple, hoping to partner with a company that had proved it could mass market high tech. A deal was struck: Xerox would purchase a $1 million stake in Apple at bargain prices. In exchange, Tesler recalls, โSteve required disclosure about everything โcoolโ that was going on at Xerox PARC.โ - Larry Tesler, one of the PARC scientists.
http://fortune.com/2014/08/24/raw-footage-larry-tesler-on-steve-jobs-visit-to-xerox-parc/
JonBarnett182 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:52:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I was going to write President Taft, but these other stories are making me question my decision...
baffledbysherbert ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:55:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I agree with you on Taft. Let's make him the most underappreciated President in the US. He really was a smart man who was underrated. Go Taft!!
JonBarnett182 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:01:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He just didn't have as great a personality as Roosevelt. That's why Wilson even became president.
Bethkulele ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:53:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If you are interested in this sort of thing, I highly recommend the documentary series "how we got to now." it is on Netflix. It follows innovations that, though they don't seem all that important, made huge changes in our world. It is really well done overall.
CEZ2 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:10:58 on January 19, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
How We Got to Now with Steven Johnson
Das_Boot1 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:53:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
ITT: Lots and lots of questionable to straight up bad history
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:53:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Whomever invented soap.
Smoked_Beer ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:55:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug
Danger-Kitty ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:05:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sibel Edmonds is a whistleblower who worked for the federal government. She revealed that the FBI knew of a planned attack months before 9/11, but her testimony was quashed by John Ashcroft. She deserves to be as famous as Edward Snowden.
Chromehorse56 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:05:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Frances Oldham Kelsey. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Oldham_Kelsey Another Canadian: Paul Martin, Finance Minister of Canada, who, in 2003, refused to allow Canadian banks to go into the subprime mortgage market because he thought it might lead to a financial meltdown.
CyanManta ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:06:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug. His work has enabled us to feed over a billion people we previously wouldn't have been able to feed.
Christiphis ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:06:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
OP's mom
ArsenalFuss ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:07:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fritz Haber
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Haber
Huflungpu2 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:09:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
israel bissell. Paul revere is not who everyone thinks he is.
mrnagrom ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:24:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Go away buzzfeed. Come up with your own content
tia_darcy ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:26:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Joseph Bazalgette - As chief engineer of London's Metropolitan Board of Works his major achievement was the creation (in response to the Great Stink of 1858) of a sewer network for central London which was instrumental in relieving the city from cholera epidemics, while beginning the cleansing of the River Thames. Many of the sewers are still functional today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Bazalgette
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:30:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Arkhipov
The only Soviet officer on board a submarine who was against launching nuclear torpedoes at the US Navy near Cuba
RegalRyan ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:34:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Stanislav Petrov,
Wiki Source: "Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov (Russian: ะกัะฐะฝะธัะปะฐฬะฒ ะะฒะณัะฐฬัะพะฒะธั ะะตััะพฬะฒ; born 1939 in Vladivostok[1]) is a retired lieutenant colonel of the Soviet Air Defence Forces. On September 26, 1983, just three weeks after the Soviet military had shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, Petrov was the duty officer at the command center for the Oko nuclear early-warning system when the system reported that a missile, followed by another one and then up to five more, were being launched from the United States. Petrov judged the report to be a false alarm,[2] and his decision is credited with having prevented an erroneous retaliatory nuclear attack on the United States and its NATO allies that could have resulted in large-scale nuclear war. Investigation later confirmed that the satellite warning system had indeed malfunctioned.[3]"
Senray ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:43:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug revolutionized agriculture, preventing mass starvation. Many people felt this was a bad move, and compare him to Dr. Frankenstein
GravitationalConstnt ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:45:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hedy Lamarr, a film actress from the 30s who was renowned for her beauty, but also dabbled in mathematics and engineering. From Wikipedia:
"At the beginning of World War II, with composer George Antheil, Lamarr developed radio guidance system for Allied torpedoes, using spread spectrum and frequency hopping technology to defeat the threat of jamming by the Axis powers.[7] Though the US Navy did not adopt the technology until the 1960s, the principles of their work are now incorporated into modern Wi-Fi, CDMA and Bluetooth technology,[8][9][10] and this work led to them being inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014"
sonusfaber ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:47:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My vote is Jack Kevorkian
LaMuchedumbre ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:52:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Thomas Sankara.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Sankara
aud7 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:00:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Emily Hobhouse
(9 April 1860 โ 8 June 1926) was aย Britishย welfare campaigner, who is primarily remembered for bringing to the attention of the British public, and working to change, the deprived conditions inside the British administeredย concentration campsย inSouth Africaย built to incarcerateย Boerย women and children during theย Second Boer War.
print_is_dead ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:00:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I wouldn't say most underappreciated but I always like to mention Romeo Dallaire for giving a shit when nobody else did during the Rwanda genocide.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:08:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That military guy that didn't fire off his nukes when there was a glitch of some kind that indicated a full on nuclear attack from the US. So underappreciated I don't even remember his name.
Sam_MMA ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:09:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Napoleon Bonaparte. Most know him as a fantastic military leader, but he also invented merit based promotion instead of birthright, created the civil service test, and created more educational opportunities for cheaper. Most modern governments stem from him.
He was also a genius. He remembered the names of thousands of men in his army, only slept for 2-4 hours a night, and was a brilliant tactician.
rhamilton10 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:14:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Vasili Arkhipov (1962)- Prevented nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis. He we the only individual on a nuclear-armed submarine that voted against the use of the weapons against the US (Use required unanimous vote of the 3 commanders, he voted no).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Arkhipov
hodor_goes_to_ny ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:14:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov (Russian: ะะฐัะธะปะธะน ะะปะตะบัะฐะฝะดัะพะฒะธั ะัั ะธะฟะพะฒ) (30 January 1926 โ 19 August 1998) was a Soviet Navy officer who prevented a nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Only Arkhipov, as Flotilla commander and second-in-command of the nuclear-armed submarine B-59, refused to authorize the captain's use of nuclear torpedos against the United States Navy, a decision requiring the agreement of all three senior officers aboard
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:15:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Dennis Ritchie, co-creator of Unix and the C programming language. He passed away around the same time as Steve Jobs, but barely anyone talked about it. Yet, he did way more for computing than Steve Jobs can lay claim to.
Thepancakesman ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:19:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Joseph Bazalgette, the man who created London's sewers that helped end chlorea that killed thousands of Londoners.
transfire ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:20:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thomas Paine, the true spirit behind the founding of the USA. And I believe our downfall likewise comes from forgetting him.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:24:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My favorite FF, and eminently quotable. A country with him as president would be a much different place.
Dathouen ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:32:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wallace Carothers, the inventor of Lycra and by extension, yoga pants.
AndrewKemendo ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:33:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Leo Szilรกrd
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:35:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This should get a lot more votes.
zytz ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:34:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Has to be Rufus. Bill and Ted get all the credit
ricdesi ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:35:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The inventor of the best thing before sliced bread.
Sdubya78 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:37:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't care what everyone else says. You win this thread.
ekcell ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:38:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your mother. Give her a call and tell her you love her.
solepsis ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:38:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa
Right hand man to Octavian and was basically responsible to turning him into Augustus and winning him the emperorship at Actium.
dailydoseofdave ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:40:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Witold Pilecki, Polish man who offered to be imprisoned at Auschwitz to gather intelligence. Informed the Allies of the atrocities in 1941, escaped 1943. Was part of the Warsaw uprising. Was arrested by Stalinist Secret Police and executed 1948.
eldeeder ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:42:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug (and you've probably never heard of him)
https://youtu.be/9RD2Gigny8I
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:49:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
aviary83 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:58:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'll probably get down-voted by everyone on reddit who hates anything that even approaches feminism, but there are a shit ton of women throughout history who never got the credit they deserved for their inventions and/or contributions to society. For example, I see tons of people mentioning Alan Turing in this thread, but no one mentioning Ada Lovelace. Turing is vastly more well-known than Lovelace. Not all of them are mind-blowing (I'm sure some of you couldn't care less who invented the bra) but some of them are pretty goddamn big. One article of many about it: http://thespiritscience.net/2015/10/31/10-the-most-influential-female-inventors-youve-never-heard-of/
123p10 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:00:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Neville Chamberlain was rememberd as a nazi sympathizer however all he did was try and make a peace treaty.
CswBizzel ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:09:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Vasili Arkhipov was a Soviet Navy officer who prevented a nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Only Arkhipov, as Flotilla commander and second-in-command of the nuclear-armed submarine B-59, refused to authorize the captain's use of nuclear torpedos against the United States Navy, a decision requiring the agreement of all three senior officers aboard. In 2002 Thomas Blanton, who was then director of the National Security Archive, said that "a guy called Vasili Arkhipov saved the world".
shankems2000 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:16:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You OP
ugoff85 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:34:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I would have to give a shot out to Alexander Fleming and Frank Sherwood Rowland. Both saved us from a lot of bad stuff...
cambria90 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:35:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Frederick Banting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Banting) (and U of T). Discovery of Insulin. First tested it on THEMSELVES to prove safety. U of T "The University of Toronto immediately gave pharmaceutical companies license to produce insulin free of royalties."
"The biggest breakthrough came in 1921 when Frederick Banting and Charles Best conducted a series of experiments one summer in the laboratory of J.J. R. Macleod at the University of Toronto. Like Minkowski and von Mering, they showed that removing the pancreas from dogs made them diabetic.
Then they went a step further and painstakingly took fluid from healthy dogs' Islets of Langerhans, injected it into the diabetic dogs and restored them to normalcy - for as long as they had the extract.With the help of a biochemist colleague named J. B. Collip, they were then able to extract a reasonably pure formula of insulin from the pancreas of cattle from slaughterhouses.
In January, 1922, a diabetic teenager in a Toronto hospital named Leonard Thompson became the first person to receive an injection of insulin. He improved dramatically, and the news about insulin spread around the world like wildfire. For their work, Banting and Macleod received the Nobel Prize in Medicine the very next year, in 1923. Banting shared his part of the prize money with Best, and Macleod shared his with Collip.
The University of Toronto immediately gave pharmaceutical companies license to produce insulin free of royalties. In early 1923, about one year after the first test injection, insulin became widely available, and saved countless lives." (http://www.scienceheroes.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=80&Itemid=115)
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:39:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:37:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
<blink>He is the best</blink>
thumpas ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:42:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Roman Emperor Cincinattus. It was Roman policy during his time that during war, the senate could be dissolved and a dictator chosen so that politics could be streamlined to help with the war. This was done and Cincinattus was installed as Dictator. Historically Rome had a problem with dictators not wanting to give up their power and then ruling indefinitely, but not Cincinattus. After the war, he gave up the most powerful position in that world, laid down his arms, and lived out the rest of his life as a farmer.
CaptainKulcha ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:50:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Prophet Muhammad.
Distracting_Moose ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:51:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The man who invented the pliers. It's a handheld device that magnifies the strength of your hand several thousand times.
dopadelic ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:53:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Fritz Haber. It's said that 6/7th of the world would not be alive today if it weren't for his discovery of the Haber process which allows us to fix nitrogen from the atmosphere to turn into ammonia. This is crucial for the manufacture of artificial fertilizer. Prior to this, it was said that the amount of manure in the world cannot sustain a population of over 1 billion people, and countries often went to war over shit.
However, Haber is a controversial figure as he also used ammonia to produce mustard gas. This was used extensively in wars, and later to gas the Jews. His wife committed suicide because she felt her husband was so morally apprehensive for creating a weapon of mass destruction.
JonVoightsLeBaron ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:58:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Good one. TIL
white_n_mild ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:55:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Martin Luther Kings side-pieces? Somebody's gotta keep those dreams wholesome.
hopopo ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:06:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Even though Nikola Tesla is well liked here on Reddit I think that general population most definitely does not understand or appreciate how much he did for civilization as we know it.
penguinpwrdbox ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:15:05 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
no
hopopo ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:49:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
yes
qwewegameresp ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:11:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Stalin
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:24:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
whoever invented CHEESE
JamesTiberiusChirp ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:34:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
ITT: still mostly white men
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:47:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug
Norman_Borlaug, often credited with saving over a billion people from starvation.
ImmaculateDissection ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:53:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
never heard of him before. his story is amazing
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 08:34:12 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Glad I could share with at least one person. :)
alanmagid ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:49:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
John Doe. Famous but not a single thing is known about him with certainty.
Kekekiwi804 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:49:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Henrietta Lacks "immortal" cells that are used today for numerous testing for cures.
JFinn2002 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:49:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You :)
JoeMagician ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:50:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The first idiotic person somewhere in history that found spoiled grapes in water thought "My life is horrible, we might die at any time, I am drinking that disgusting looking water because screw everything" and discovered wine then figured out how to remake it. It's not enough to just find the first wine, you gotta repeat the recipe.
hairybrains ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:03:00 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's not even that hard. You know that white, dusty coating on grapes? That's called bloom and it naturally harbors small amounts of yeast. Literally all you need to do is not wash the grapes, mash them up, and let nature run its course.
P.S. Water is not involved in the making of wine.
JoeMagician ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:05:12 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Interesting, did not know that. The first person to eat mashed up, dirty grapes and discover that it made alcohol, a hero.
rswalker ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:55:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Casimir Pulaski?
saleemkarim ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:00:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug's advancements in agriculture saved roughly a billion lives. Sure he won a Nobel Peace Prize, but the vast majority of people have no idea who he is.
we_rise_against ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:09:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You.... In this world of innumerable thoughts, actions, and faces, Of so many creeds, clans, religions, and races, If ever you feel unimportant, insignificant, or small, Remember this world exists because of us one and all, There are people who are exceptional this is true, But no one, not one, is more important than you.
That's it, I'm going to start writing children's books now.
Avatar_ZW ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:14:28 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Time's Person of the Year 2006!
Guesty_ ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:16:22 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tim Berners-Lee. A lot of people take the modern day internet for granted. Somebody must have invented it, the World Wide Web didn't come from nowhere.
Cheers, Tim ๐
VeniVidiVic ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:20:22 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Georgy Zhukov. While he led the campaign in World War II that liberated much of Eastern Europe from occupation by Axis Powers and that ultimately conquered Berlin.
And
Eisenhower stated that, because of Zhukov's achievements fighting the Nazis, the United Nations owed him much more than any other military leader in the world.
I had never even heard his name in any history class I ever attended.
tcoop6231 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:01:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"Liberated eastern Europe" and placed it under the control of the Soviet Union.
Talk about moving out of the frying pan and into the fire!
kermitopus ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:23:49 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
George Cayley : Called by some "The Father of Aviation." Invented the seat belt, identified the 4 principles of flight (just ask the Wright Bros.), automatic signaling for railways, a precursor to the internal combustion engine, and numerous other things. Because he thought this stuff should be freely available, he did not patent his ideas so others claimed credit.
Odinswolf ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:25:01 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug, the Man Who Saved A Billion Lives. His work on improving farming in developing countries helped feed many people as populations grew.
VolvoKoloradikal ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:29:27 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The United States Of America.
We've done some wrong, but I think our steady and constant hand has helped the world greatly.
WestSideMM ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:36:56 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Henrietta Lacks. Scientists used cells from her cancerous tumor to develop the first immortal human cell line, called HeLa cells. Her cells were used in experiments that eventually led to the curing of polio, among many other diseases. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:38:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
The man traveled back in time and killed Generalissimo Miguel Martinez. Don't know who he is?--thank God you live in this new timeline then.
CutthroatTeaser ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:42:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Henrietta Lacks...
This woman's cervical cancer cells gave rise to the first immortal cell line, revolutionizing everything from the study of genetics, to cell biology, to the development of cancer treatments, vaccines and medications to fight AIDS. Her cells, called HeLa, were used to develop the polio vaccine.
Full Disclosure: I'm currently reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and it's blowing my freaking mind.
AWesPeach ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:42:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm going to go there and say Hitler. No I dont agree with his policies and actions. No I dont believe he should be appreciated. But nevertheless he was an excellent tactician and that should not be underrated.
K281067 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:43:38 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Emmy Noether, a german mathematician in the early 20th century who also contributed immensely to physics. Despite the fact that she invented many of the core principles of abstract algebra, and the fact that Noether's theorem is one of the most important ideas for modern theoretical physics, and the fact that she was a woman in two fields where even today women are underrepresented, few people outside these fields have heard of her.
WhiteDragon9d ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:46:12 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Zheng He. Lead a legion of Chinese soldiers out into the world to discover what was out there, and literally couold have conquered everywhere from Japan to Africa. But instead did the opposite of columbus and just traded with the locals documented their findings and went home to report to the Emperor what they found. This guy could have changed the world with a single word but instead did what arguable Columbus should have done.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:47:06 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
ender_wiggum ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:55:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nice one!
zmarayjan ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:51:49 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ibn Sina, wrote a book on medicine, which Europe used for 500 years.
BustergunFIRE ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:54:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug, the man who has saved a billion people.
His work increased food security in Central America, India, Pakistan and has directly contributed to world stability.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:13:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
BustergunFIRE ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:27:15 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, he's a badass.
wattsunnyism ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:59:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alan Watts or Terence McKenna
High_af_rn_fr ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:05:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Prof. Oak
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:10:38 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jimmy Carter
aaronis1 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:12:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
ITT: People I have seen given great appreciation
shadynagger ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:31:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jimmy Carter.
Glandrid ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:34:15 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
How about Grace Hopper? Made the first compiler for a programming language. Also, she coined the term "debugging" after literally removing a bug from a computer.of course that was much easier when computers were the size of rooms. back in those days we wore onions on our belts as it was the fashion at the time.
LAULitics ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:45:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thomas Paine
Madman2223 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:59:38 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Francis Galton He was Charles Darwin's cousin but completed so much more than Darwin ever accomplished. Galton was known for his work in a variety of fields from meteorology to eugenics. He is considered to be the founder of modern scientific meteorology and was known to have coined the term "nature vs nurture". Additionally he developed the concept of standard deviation and worked to create a method for the classification of fingerprints. Galton was reading at age 2 and by age 5 he knew a decent bit of Greek and Latin. In 1909 he was knighted.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton
PeanutNore ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:06:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:09:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
For American history, I'd say the Dulles brothers were two highly influential yet forgotten leaders. Between the two of them, it's not implausible to say that they shaped much of the Cold War with their highly aggressive foreign policy - but not necessarily in a positive way.
Flash-man ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:20:29 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
ALEXANDER HAMILTON (HAMILTON )........
JUST YOU WAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIITTTTTTT
oldforger ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:43:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The guy who invented the condom.
Zolome1977 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:43:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Lyndon B. Johnson far more progressive than JFK.
JC-Pose ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:46:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Dude..
Marizy ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:51:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Leonardo DiCaprio, still waiting for an Oscar.
CyberTeddy ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:55:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No idea. His story never spread.
beaglebot ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:57:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
According to my ex, her.
KanekiFriedChicken ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:17:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ringo Starr.
xxxboner420 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:18:00 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sequoyah. He was a Cherokee man who spoke no English at all and pretty much had no education, but he managed to live like a scholar. He invented a complete writing system for the Cherokee language that is still in use today, you can see it on stop signs in Cherokee areas.
kalir ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:22:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
i like this guy, his language system really is helpful.
FuzzzWuzzz ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:20:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Someone who is so underappreciated that we don't even have a record of who he is or what he did.
michaelkll ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:26:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fritz Haber & Carl Bosch
http://www.scienceheroes.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=440:bosch-fertilizer&catid=194&Itemid=527
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:26:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The guy who invented pizza.
My_timemachine_broke ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:30:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
ME
I_Optimus_Maximus ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:31:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Probably not the most but I just learned that Albert Gรถring, the brother of Hermann Gรถring (a leading nazi politician) fought against the nazi regime and saved many lives.
I'm German but I just heared about him yesterday in a thread here.
kalir ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:32:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
the native americans. they are always portrayed as pushovers and always drunk tree huggers. they literally was progressive enough to allow same sex marriage to happen in their nations without a religious or political fight they was resourceful enough to create their own language. and yet they get misunderstood and underrated.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 03:42:29 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
kalir ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 03:57:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
true but they did also create pretty accurate astronomy predictions, and they even created the number zero.
igottashare ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 05:09:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Although zero became an integral part of Maya numerals, with a different, empty tortoise-like "shell shape" used for many depictions of the "zero" numeral, it did not influence Old World numeral systems and was used solely as a place holder and not alone. North American tribes outside of the Mayan empire did not display a knowledge of mathematics.
Ancient Egyptian numerals were base 10. They used hieroglyphs for the digits and were not positional. By 1740 BC, the Egyptians had a symbol for zero in accounting texts.
By 130 AD, Ptolemy, influenced by Hipparchus and the Babylonians, was using a symbol for zero (a small circle with a long overbar) within a sexagesimal numeral system otherwise using alphabetic Greek numerals. Because it was used alone, not just as a placeholder, this Hellenistic zero was perhaps the first documented use of a number zero in the Old World.
In AD 813, astronomical tables were prepared by a Persian mathematician, Muแธฅammad ibn Mลซsฤ al-Khwฤrizmฤซ, using Hindu numerals and about 825, he published a book synthesizing Greek and Hindu knowledge and also contained his own contribution to mathematics including an explanation of the use of zero.
Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Khwarizmi, in 976, stated that if no number appears in the place of tens in a calculation, a little circle should be used "to keep the rows". This circle was called แนฃifr.
The Hindu-Arabic numeral system (base 10) reached Europe in the 11th century, via the Iberian Peninsula through Spanish Muslims, the Moors, together with knowledge of astronomy and instruments like the astrolabe, first imported by Gerbert of Aurillac. For this reason, the numerals came to be known in Europe as "Arabic numerals".
jfb112697 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:34:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dennis Ritchie, co-founded Unix, and created C.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:35:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Richard Nixon: he worked to end the Vietnam war and improve relations with China. He started the EPA. He implemented a negative income tax. He was re-elected by one of the highest margins in US history. All anyone remembers now is Watergate.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:35:38 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Thomas Crapper gets alot of shit. He did a lot to improve the modern flush toilet including inventing the floating ballcock.
MidnightCommando ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:44:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I see and appreciate all of the things you did there.
That said, Thomas Crapper's engineering skill is of inestimable value to me today. :)
Sheep-Dog ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:51:33 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tesla
N0nSequit0r ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:57:17 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
President Jimmy Carter.
apoetofsort ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 04:02:29 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
ALEXANDER HAMILTON
btrlilwhtgrl ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 04:42:06 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My name is Alexander Hamilton
SgtDan ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 04:06:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
John Gorrie - one of the early inventors of air conditioning and ice machines.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_conditioning
mtmajzoub ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 04:09:28 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This guy: http://stateofmind13.com/2015/01/12/abou-ali-issa-the-lebanese-hero-of-the-tripoli-explosions-that-no-ones-talking-about/ A true hero, if there ever was one. His name is forgotten, even among Tripolians. No statue was made, no honours given, no medals, no wikipedia page. The greatest thing I can personally learn from him is that the appreciation doesn't matter. It's what you do that does.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 04:12:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug. Father of the Green Revolution. He is responsible for saving at least a billion people from starvation.
He has won all the "big awards". Nobel Peace Prize, Congressional Gold Medal, Presidential Medal of Freedom...yet most people have never heard of him.
He's rarely mentioned in textbooks outside of agriculture.
goplayer7 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 05:09:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The person in this thread that results in the lowest number of upvotes.
The_R3medy ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 05:21:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Odenathus. The leader of Palmyra who essentially saved the entirety of Rome's eastern empire by stopping the Sassanid Empire's advances through the East. It's fascinating to think what could have happened had he not rallied men to defeat the Sassanids. AND He never declared himself an emperor. He controlled more land and arguably the strongest army in the empire, but never made himself independent. He remained loyal to the Empire, and faithfully defended the empire and it's legitimate ruler.
The 200 extra years Odenathus bought Rome made all the difference to Roman history, and allowed Christianity to expand as it did. IT's fascinating to me.
Also, yes I totally learned about all of this on Extra History.
Lidja ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 05:32:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Rosalind Franklin
janiseglins ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 05:35:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fritz Haber Jewish chemist "received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1918 for his invention of the Haber-Bosch process, the method used in industry to synthesize ammonia from nitrogen and hydrogen gases. This invention is of importance for the large-scale synthesis of fertilizers and explosives. The food production for half the world's current population depends on this method for producing nitrogen fertilizers."
"Haber is also considered the "father of chemical warfare" for his years of pioneering work developing and weaponizing chlorine and other poisonous gases during World War I"
His work also led to creating Zyklon B used in Nazi gas chambers.
His controversial and tragic life is best explored in this Radiolab's podcast: http://www.radiolab.org/story/180132-how-do-you-solve-problem-fritz-haber/
5steelBI ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 05:42:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Newton's mother, who provided for him when Trinity was shut down for 18 months because of the plague. 18 months to work on gravitation, and optics, and calculus. He didn't have to work - his mommy brought him sandwiches.
Next up, Thoreau's sisters, who kept him in pies and shirts while he was 2 miles away at Walden.
Let's hear it for the support staff!
veraliis ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 05:55:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My mother.
asimeo ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 06:01:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Stanislav Petrov
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov
BelligerentGnu ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 06:07:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug
Inventor of high-yield wheat. IIRC, the conservative estimate is that he saved some 300 million people from starvation.
MidnightCommando ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:09:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ah yes! Quadrotriticale! I know this! Was invented in Russia!
YohanAnthony ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 09:14:56 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Calm down there, Admiral Chekov.
mike_blair ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 07:19:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Stanislav Petrov, his decision is credited with having prevented an erroneous retaliatory nuclear attack on the United States and its NATO allies that could have resulted in large-scale nuclear war. Investigation later confirmed that the satellite warning system had indeed malfunctioned.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 07:32:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'd say Union Colonel Joshua Chamberlain. He successfully held the Union left flank at the Battle of Gettysburg. Twice, the confederates charged his men, and twice nearly broke through. Chamberlain saw the confederates preparing for a third charge and knowing his men were out of ammunition he ordered the Union troops under his command to charge the confederate lines. Chamberlain routed the confederates and held the Union left flank, forcing the confederates into a desperate situation that resulted in the famous failed Pickett's Charge.
If Col. Chamberlain had not defended the Union left flank, the confederates could have likely won the Battle of Gettysburg and sued for peace, or besieged Washington. This would have resulted in a separated North and South America, which would have had devastating consequences later in history. Would the Nazis have been defeated if America wasn't United? What would've happened in the Cold War? Col. Chamberlain saved the Union, and with a little imagination, maybe the world.
intensely_human ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 08:05:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jesus, Ghandi, me!
Cakemiddleton ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 08:26:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The soviet men who climbed into the radioactive waters in Chechnya to save much of Europe and Asia from fallout
RichterRanger ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 08:33:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alexander Hamilton. Most people don't realize that he established our financial plan, the banks, and also was not president. He did so much as a founding father, and nobody gives him any credit. (Also he was the perpetrator of the first sex scandal in American history.)
walkj08 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 11:05:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
the musical though!
YohanAnthony ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 09:23:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Talinoth ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 12:41:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Charles Martel (680-741 AD), the grandfather of the MUCH more famous Charlemagne (Charles the Great). Not a very widely known name, considering he stopped a huge Islamic invasion of Western Europe.
It was the Year of Our Lord 723.
Arab and Berber forces under the command of Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi, the Governor-General of al-Andalus, marched into Gaul (now known as France) and advanced towards the town of Tours.
Everybody else the Umayyad Caliphate forces had faced was destroyed. They had advanced through Spain and crushed determined and powerful resistance at Aquitaine to the south. Charles Martel was the last hope of Christian Europe.
Previously, Martel knew he needed a strong, powerful core of professional soldiers in his army, instead of just a rabble of conscripts only available a couple of months a year. He knew he needed to pay these men year round, as they would be unable to grow their own food.
He subjected these men to brutal training and developed a sizable force of professional soldiers, many of which he turned into elite heavy cavalry. His use of a strong phalanx formation combined with his excellent command of his heavy cavalry would be the key to his victory.
Charles Martel set out from Tours and met the Arab and Berber forces in battle. Crushing the massive enemy invasion force in the open field by forcing the enemy into tight melee combat with his heavy cavalry and swordsmen, he successfully seized Christian Europe's final chance to stop the Islamic invasion and forever changed the course of world history in the process.
Damn good thing too, because I couldn't grow a beard even if I wanted to.
Following the Battle of Tours, Martel hunted down the remaining invaders holed up in their fortresses and razed fortifications at Agde, Beziers and Maguelonne.
After these exploits, Martel expanded the courtly duties of the knight class and annexed several Christian realms such as Frisia and Bavaria - he is seen as one of the founding figures of the Medieval period and laid the groundwork for his son Pepin the Short and his grandson Charlemagne to forge the Carolingian Empire.
Europe would be a very, VERY different place without this man.
EvilDeathCuddles ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 13:13:38 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me.
N0nar ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 16:27:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alan Turing, in his time nobody could see the true genius he possessed. And even now almost nobody knows he's the father of the computer and the digital age. Also he helped the allies win the war by breaking the enigma code and as a way of thanking him the UK government convicted him for being homosexual and chemically castrated him.
spamalicioussammi ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:31:44 on January 21, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I thought the movie about him was going to be so boring but it was sooo good. He was a very smart and important person.
HarknessSturen ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:57:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That guy who killed Hitler, what was his name again? Odd how he's not mentioned much in the history books.
oh-hidanny ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:02:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The most underappreciated man/woman in history? Cai Lun. The inventor of paper. I can't think of a more important invention that paved the way for communication and future advances. Where would we be without it?
Ciliate ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:18:02 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug. His work in agriculture science and the green revolution many people believe directly lead to saving a billion lives from starvation. That's 1 billion. With a B.
CEZ2 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:29:32 on January 19, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nicholas Winton
[deleted] ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 14:31:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Otto von Bismarck.
He unified Germany, and created the nation hosting the human embodiment of efficiency. He was the kingmaker, and when consulting Koenig William (before the unification actually happened) about a conference with other leaders, Bismarck had a long debate. Once he emerged from the room, Koenig William was in tears, and complied with Bismarck's request to not attend the conference. He was revered by almost everyone who knew him, and was a very threatening man to his enemies. I think we can call him a historical badass.
He led to the Germans defeating the French in an astounding 6 weeks, a failure they would never forget.
alphagammabeta1548 ยท 43 points ยท Posted at 15:46:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't think Bismark is underappreciated at all; rather, in just about every history course ever taught, Bismark is held up as the prime example of developing the concept of unified governments in Europe and of nationalism.
Holcan ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 18:43:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He is also the main character for germany in civilization games....to be fair their other great leader has a bit of a bad rep internationally.
msthe_student ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:34:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not to mention that their other leader was Austrian
Noglues ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:30:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A least in IV, you can play as Frederick the Great.
Tandereidei ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 16:38:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Bismarck Heringe are a thing in Germany. Dude got a food thing named after him! No bigger glory out there!
(Also what you said.)
Zeppelinman1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:54:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The capital of North Dakota is named after him!
Books_and_Cleverness ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 19:30:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You are talking about literally one of the most famous German people of all time.
Pr0methian ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 17:22:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Looks like someone read the history page in Civ V
CN14 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 17:55:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
WOULD YOU BE INTERESTED IN A TRADE AGREEMENT WITH ENGLAND??!!
[deleted] ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 17:25:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No, I've written a 4000 word essay on the unification, though. I love the guy. Very interesting character.
aglaeasfather ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:27:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And in all of those 8 pages you never realized he was very well appreciated? They named their largest class of BATTLESHIPS after him. Sounds like you did a shit job in your research - that, or you're just using this as an opportunity to redirect the conversation into an arena you think you know a great deal about.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 03:16:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well appreciate and under appreciated are not exclusive. He's not appreciated enough by anyone outside of history courses.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 16:51:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
aglaeasfather ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:23:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sounds like an insult.
Zenblend ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:13:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hey, don't forget about Napoleon. Poor guy never got the props he deserved.
fearlessandinventive ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 15:37:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He did get a ship named after him, though.
https://youtu.be/KecIdlEAKhU
Turtle_Shaft ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:00:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't think he's ever underappreciated. Anytime you learn about nationalism, and modern empire you learn of bismarck
elyisgreat ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:02:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He's a crappy leader; His greatest strength is turning barbarians and I usually play with barbs off.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:54:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Bismarck gets his due in history. The dude is in Civ 5.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:14:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Civ 5 is a game, which is not recognized as a bastion of rich and accurate history. I don't think that's his due.
A_KILLER_DONG ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:20:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He was also a massive asshole.
EZ_Smith ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:41:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Mmm Bismark-creme
YesImChill ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:11:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
All the African Americans that basically won the Civil War for the U.S.
dhzc ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:18:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Lord Jesus Christ
CalibreneGuru ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:19:01 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is a really good answer in certain circles. The critics probably haven't read the Bible so, you know, whatever.
dhzc ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:29:37 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jesus is universal, whether certain circles accept Him or not. That is why my vote for most underapperciated person in history goes to Jesus Christ.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:41:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
[deleted]
dhzc ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:55:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes, really! Be careful not to spill any excess hatred onto your keyboard.
The1WhoKnocks-WW ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 13:41:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Iron Giant.
BuryTheHealer ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:42:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"Superman"
shioriblack ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 14:40:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
President Underwood?
With-a-Cactus ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:26:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No, the alien who taught us that we are who we chose to be.
Back2Bach ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 14:27:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Explorer of oceans Jacques-Yves Cousteau (1910 โ 1997)
The legendary Captain Cousteau was a pioneering explorer of the seas and of the issues that face us today. He was a French naval officer, explorer, ecologist, filmmaker, activist, innovator, inventor, author, scientific collaborator, and member of the French Academy. He co-invented the Aqualung, started a marine conservation movement and created a legacy of passion for the ocean that continues today through his family and the millions of people influenced by his work. www.cousteau.org/
whohw ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 16:20:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
but underappreciated? hardly to anyone in their 50s. He had a tv series and even John Denver wrote a song about him!
GunRaptor ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:20:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He's pretty well appreciated.
I think you're forgetting the aspects of his character that detracted from his legend, such as the inefficiency of turbo sails and that he himself did not invent the SCUBA...among other things.
Hence the reason why his museum is a two story yurt in Hampton, VA, after Norfolk, VA, decided to have Nauticus instead.
Though, I'd at least like to have seen a Cousteau wing at Nauticus...that place is full of fluff-bs
bonejohnson8 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:40:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He was the basis for Steve Zissou in The Life Aquatic.
Minn-ee-sottaa ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 16:32:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I totally blanked out as to what his name is, but the Army lawyer who faced Joseph McCarthy during the Army/communist infiltration hearings and said "Have you no decency, sir?"
Guy slapped our bitch asses into remembering that persecuting a political ideology, and especially when that ideology isn't even present, is kinda bad.
DragonflyRed412 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 17:08:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Joseph Nye Welch
stachldrat ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:40:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The first guy to realize and teach people about the connection between sex and pregnancy.
zeezl ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 18:26:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That was probably a woman.
stachldrat ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:27:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, that occurred to me, too. I wish 'guy' was unisex. It sounds so lighthearted and casual. If you say 'you guys' it can mean a group that includes women. But there's no vice-versa of that... I dunno, I'm drunk...
zeezl ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:37:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Haha, in that case, you're remarkably lucid!
vmc1918 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:01:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov (Russian: ะะฐัะธะปะธะน ะะปะตะบัะฐะฝะดัะพะฒะธั ะัั ะธะฟะพะฒ) (30 January 1926 โ 19 August 1998) was a Soviet Navy officer who prevented a nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Only Arkhipov, as Flotilla commander and second-in-command of the nuclear-armed submarine B-59, refused to authorize the captain's use of nuclear torpedos against the United States Navy, a decision requiring the agreement of all three senior officers aboard. In 2002 Thomas Blanton, who was then director of the National Security Archive, said that "a guy called Vasili Arkhipov saved the world".
catboobstypo2 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:09:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Robert E. Lee
Casswigirl11 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:29:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That guy who did not start a nuclear war. I read about him on reddit but can't even remember his name.
white_n_mild ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:47:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
JOHN LENNON DUH /s But seriously preventing nuclear war is not nor was it ever in the hands of one person. Many people have made different contributions to peace.
ShiraazMohamed ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 21:18:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Christopher Columbus. Although he has done very terrible acts, without him we might have not have discovered the new world at the time we did, and could change the course of the last several hundred years
smoochie100 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:53:49 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Everybody knows him and what he did, how is he underappreciated?
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:44:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Vasili Arkhipov
Soviet nuclear submarine officer who, while being depth charged off the coast of Flordia during the Cuban missile crisis, assumed lead position of the sub and ordered the crew to stand down a previous order to launch their nuclear weapons. This guy singlehandedly called off global thermonulcear armageddon. Give him some props.
hudsondr ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:57:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This is impressive. I was trying to think of somebody who stopped the Cold War from heating up but this is far better than I could have thought of
passaporta ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:03:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Bill W. founder of Alchoholics Anonymous. It's impossible to calculate how many lives have been saved by AA and the various treatment models that are inspired by it. An awesome doc came out about him recently. https://youtu.be/WDjTW154WwQ
whywhywouldyou ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:54:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Stanislav Petrov,Petrov was the duty officer at the command center for the Oko nuclear early-warning system when the system reported that a missile, followed by another one and then up to five more, were being launched from the United States. Petrov judged the report to be a false alarm,[2] and his decision is credited with having prevented an erroneous retaliatory nuclear attack on the United States and its NATO allies that could have resulted in large-scale nuclear war. Investigation later confirmed that the satellite warning system had indeed malfunctioned.
mostlyemptyspace ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 01:58:58 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alan Turing.
Invented the general purpose computer, artificial intelligence, and computer science. Won World War II for the allies by cracking the Nazi communication encryption.
Was persecuted, arrested, and convicted for being gay and chemically castrated. Went into a deep depression and committed suicide.
Wasn't pardoned for this "crime" until 2013, almost 60 years after his death.
thegreat96 ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 17:11:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Lenin, usually thought as a "villain" in history for implementing the communist regime in Russia (later the USSR). However, he was the first and only politician who offered/delivered peace, land and bread to the people of Russia who desperately needed it. In fact the communist regime only became corrupt under his successor regime Staline.
jylny ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 17:15:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Seems to me more people need to read Animal Farm :)
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:08:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Lenin (snowball) was the hero of animal farm... It wasn't until Stalin (other pig) took over that shit hit the fan.
thegreat96 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:44:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I agree, although I must admit I have never read the book. I plan on reading it sometime. :)
jylny ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 17:48:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's really good! Among the few books I enjoyed during high school.
msthe_student ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:35:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You should, it's surprisingly easy to read and short
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:35:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Lenin caused famine with war communism and stole the bread he promised the peasants to support his civil war, and also had no problem with having his subordinates killed during the Red terror. His best trait was being less of a cunt than Stalin.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:36:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
[deleted]
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 23:26:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Lenin wasn't so bad he only executed tens of thousands of people and caused one famine, Great guy really.
comatoseduck ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 17:17:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm surprised this has not turned into a Tesla themed circle jerk. Good for you, reddit.
citera ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:06:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Unfortunately, it has.
comatoseduck ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:43:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thats disappointing. It didn't look that way a few hours ago.
citera ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:10:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Never underestimate the power of reddit to start a circle jerk.
vibronikbilly ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 18:20:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your mother. You should call her more
RudegarWithFunnyHat ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:23:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
she's waiting by the phone
mimpick ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:14:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just the fact that we know these names means somebody appreciates what they did. The unnamed. Now that sucks.
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 16:29:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
Uberguuy ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 17:26:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Surprisingly little
With-a-Cactus ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:29:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah I've seen two mentions scrolling through, both mentioning people are saying Tesla. I've seen Turing maybe 3 times, but not Tesla.
holyfreakingshitake ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:06:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
there is actually 0 telsa posts so far not counting the ones about being suprised about the lack of tesla
Crucervix ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 13:31:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler. In all the medical research he organised, not one animal was injured.
Chupacabra_Sandwich ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 15:15:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I like this joke even if Reddit thinks it's offensive.
super_sayanything ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 13:48:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Uh, humans are animals there genius.
Anthrosi ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 18:42:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Are parasites animals? /s
super_sayanything ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 18:48:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If you are implying, that my family is anything less than human or that I am less the human, I will disagree with you and hope that you can educate yourself not to hate.
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 13:41:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oh yeah, he just used Jews instead.
Crucervix ยท 21 points ยท Posted at 13:48:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes. That was the joke.
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 13:54:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It went over my head, like the ashes from Auschwitz.
SpiderPigUK ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:57:35 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This isn't even funny though, it's just you attempting to appear edgy or something
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 16:30:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's your opinion, and i don't care.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:49:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ouch lol
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 14:02:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hilarious.
ze_ex_21 ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 18:58:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yep. Millions laid out in their crowded tombs, praying for the end of their wide awake nightmare.
pcoppi ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:37:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I said not hitler as I clicked on this post
Then I saw this comment immediately after
FML
the_man_Sam ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 14:18:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dude! He used pe-oohh, hehe
xsnowshark ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:43:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
NIKOLA TESLA! He should be at the very top of this thread.
penguinpwrdbox ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:35:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
no
fiszu3000 ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 00:29:27 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
apparently reddit thinks that Tesla is appreciated in history although he's only widely known on the internet and since just a few years. Even my uncle electrician doesn't know who Tesla is.
Selachian ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 16:26:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I mean, I dunno obviously. Probably a woman scientist.
Novazilla ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 14:41:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Every CIA agent in existence. No one knows therefore no one can appreciate their work
waltershite ยท 19 points ยท Posted at 16:41:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Pretty sure Latin Americans appreciate their work. /s
Yankz ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:47:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Lmao
waltershite ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 19:14:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Having your democratically elected government overthrown by CIA backed rebels is hilarious, I'm sure we can all agree.
StochasticApostle ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:14:38 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just ask the Iranians
waltershite ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 13:07:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In that case, though the CIA was involved, I think it was under British direction. Still shitty of course, the shah was a cunt by most accounts.
Dexaan ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 17:42:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If you're a famous
smugglerspy, you're doing it wrong.DarkskinJesus ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:36:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I doubt most of them would be considered heroes though.
Novazilla ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:38:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Still under appreciated men and women though.
WhiskeyAndYogaPants ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:02:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Intelligence workers in general. We always hear and feel the affects of an intelligence failure (like 9/11), but when we are able to live our lives normally that is the sign of an intelligence success.
msthe_student ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:43:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
But they also do a lot of bad things
Novazilla ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 19:49:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Depends on how you look at it I guess.
msthe_student ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:46:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In general, I regard overthrowing democratically elected goverments as bad
Novazilla ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 20:52:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Doing so for their nation's best interest is generally good though.
msthe_student ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:11:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Are we talking short or long-term interest?
Novazilla ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:16:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's the whole point of an intelligence agency. Operate in the nation's best interest both short and long term?
msthe_student ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:28:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Intent isn't what I'm questioning, more their methods and long-term success
Enjoyer_of_Cake ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:14:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, there could also be some pretty abhorrent stuff in there.
GunRaptor ยท -5 points ยท Posted at 17:48:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This one wins the thread imo.
These are the men and women who keep small wars from becoming big ones.
Noting your three upvotes, though, I fear they'll be underappreciated here, too.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 15:12:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
James Clerk Maxwell.
TL;DR In a ranking of the greatest physicists in history, it would go 1) Newton, 2) Einstein, 3) Maxwell
tgoodkey ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:18:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
what about schroedinger? and planck?
mralistair ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:26:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
newton was a prick though.
Eistein aparently had a picture of maxwell on his wall, this is odd to me as was burried in a tiny village near where i grew up.. it's hard to imagine that anyone of any significance ever went there.
ks501 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:27:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tom Brady.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:44:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Joe Flacco. Elite as fuck
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 18:30:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
[deleted]
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:53:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
One ring to rule them all..
OldCleanBastard ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:21:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm not a Ravens fan but, your comeback deserves an upvote.
redditlovesfish ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:34:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
ITT people confusing cool stories with not knowing what most in history means.
penguinpwrdbox ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 00:53:29 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
And idiots posting stupid shit like NFL quarterbacks, rock singers, and fucking Tesla. Do you people realize your posts are public? You basically just hang a sign around your neck that identifies you as a moron when you post this drivel.
EDIT: Also, the morons posting "we'll never know" or "it's impossible to tell." "DAE le reddit while being technically correct (which is the best kind of correct!) to show these plebs how much smarter they are? Upboats to the left, m'lady!"
EDIT 2: If I see one more facebook-esque post about "my mom" or "my step-sister", I'm gonna have an aneurysm.
redditlovesfish ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 13:47:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
lol i love how dump the average person is, makes me feel good to know I make more money and bang hotter girls easily with so many fucktards about
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:55:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Johnny Sins
jesse9o3 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:09:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm sure a lot of people appreciate him, women especially.
mancub2112 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:18:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alan Turing. Invented the first computer and almost single-handedly shifted WWII in favor of the Allies
ebadly ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:23:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
nikola tesla
penguinpwrdbox ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:38:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
no
ncrtx ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:31:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug ... literally saved billions of people from starvation
Oxhage ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:33:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
alan turing
rickjamesdean ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:34:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jonas Salk cured polio and never patented it. Instead he saved millions with free vaccinations.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Salk
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:45:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tesla
penguinpwrdbox ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:40:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
no
piraticalnerve ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:54:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Judas. Think about it. Judas and jesus were best friends. judas and jesus looked very similar;so much so that they were mistaken for eachother. Jesus dies in front of everybody and is then seen alive 3 days later. Jesus even made an announcement prior to judas "betraying" him that judas would betray him. Jesus and judas got together and judas sacrificed his life and his name for all eternity so that their message would be bolstered by the belief that the man spreading it was the son of god. He is the greatest martyr of all time.
Scouselishman ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:07:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alan Turing, the man broke the enigma and created the computer and artificial intelligence in the process.
JosefTheFritzl ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:10:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The first dude that carried milk around in his pouch made from an animal stomach, found it had gone rancid, and decided to drink/eat it anyways.
Whoever you are, ancient cave man, you just invented cheese. Congratulations!
connornishijima ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:11:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
AMA Victoria. I miss her.
lex99 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:05:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Jeri Ryan
She played Seven of Nine on Star Trek.
http://meatgrinder.co/photos/jeri-ryan/jeri-ryan-hot-borg-6aa1c48c72e6afdfd4c3e14d548adf90-large-309464.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0a/SevenofNine.jpg
We should all appreciate how hot she is. But there's also this:
Jeri got married in the early 90s at age 23, to a young investment banker, Jack Ryan. She lived in LA, he in Chicago, and they traveled a lot to keep the marriage together. While her career took off with Star Trek: Voyager, he also did very well, though Jeri divorced him after 8 years of marriage. He retired young from banking and decided to run for Illinois Senate. He won the republican senate primary, and was poised to win the election.
Unfortunately for him, his divorce records were made public in the middle of his campaign, after pressure from the media. It turns out that the main reason for Jeri divorcing him was that he would take her to sex clubs around europe, and she wanted no more part in that. He was freakay, she... not so much.
He couldn't recover from the blow to his campaign, and bowed out. In a scramble, the republicans pulled in the only candidate they could get six weeks before the election: the controversial Alan Keyes.
With such a debacle right before the election, the democratic candidate (who was not expected to win against Jack Ryan) absolutely demolished the polls, and became US Senator from Illinois, thanks to Jeri's divorce.
Barack Obama became President four years later.
transfire ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:15:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's crazy!!! Also, Jesus Fucking Christ, these bankers have so much money they think they can just do anything. Makes you wonder why "we the people" haven't lynched them all.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:34:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
TeeVee keeps us calm. Consume. Watch 7 of 9 say "comply" to a subordinate like she is a computer. CONSUME. watch this commercial. CONSUME.
IPyro58 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:11:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla
penguinpwrdbox ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:06:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
no
idoitforthelolz3 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:12:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Austin Bradford Hill not only developed the Randomized Clinical Trial, a cornerstone of modern medicine, but also revealed the connection between smoking and lung cancer. He directly saved millions of lives by demonstrating how dangerous smoking can be and indirectly saved countless more by creating the process by which all drugs are tested today.
fluffyjdawg ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:13:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Johannes Gutenberg
penguinpwrdbox ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:06:27 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
no
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:22:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
[deleted]
penguinpwrdbox ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 01:06:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
no
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:26:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
penguinpwrdbox ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:06:49 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
no
Thighpaulsandra ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:30:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I know I'm late to the party, but Thomas Saint. He was an English inventor whose sewing machine used the chain stitch method. Many others perfected his idea, but he started the idea of sewing with leather saddles and canvas sewn sails for ships. We would literally be naked without him. Imagine having one pair of pants and having to wait days for someone to sew another one for you? The chain stitch made clothing more available and economical for everyone and Singer was one of the first to introduce a payment plan so poor people could have a sewing machine in their home. Try making clothes without it.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:01:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
Thighpaulsandra ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:09:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm not arguing with anyone. The chain stitch method, although perfected by others as I already stated, was started by him. There is no way to know who would have invented or perfected what. Hindsight is 20/20. If you don't agree with me, good for you. It doesn't change my mind.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:46:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tesla
penguinpwrdbox ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:12:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
no
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:49:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
[deleted]
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:52:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Eat a dick. Fuck that ego-maniac cunt Edison. All about Tesla, brah
FluidMechanics77 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:01:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla.
penguinpwrdbox ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 01:14:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
no
conspirato ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:05:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla
penguinpwrdbox ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:14:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
no
conspirato ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:23:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes. In his time he was considered much of a loon, most of his work being looked over in favor of Edison. He died in poverty when he should've been hailed as a genius
penguinpwrdbox ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 01:26:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He isn't underappreciated. He's certainly not underappreciated here, with this audience, which is the only reason you posted him in the first place: karma whoring.
Tesla doesn't even belong on this list. /r/circlejerk is over there --->
conspirato ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:30:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's not karma whoring jerk. This thread isn't Unpopular Dudes. It's the Most Under Appreciated Person in History. In his OWN TIME he was under appreciated more than anyone.
Anyone linking anything here by your definition is not under appreciated because they have a fucking Wikipedia page. Asshat
penguinpwrdbox ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 01:33:29 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The man has a CAR COMPANY named after him. That's underappreciation?
Insults. The intelligent man's well reasoned argument!
conspirato ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 01:35:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In modern times dude Literally in the title is says In History not in modern time.
conspirato ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 01:38:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
By your definition they have to not exist in pop culture at all. Which of course since anyone that would appear in Reddit would automatically disqualify them you're just being a douche that cant be pleased by anyone submission. Wholly pretentious act by you. Considering your comment history is literally you just saying No to 100 people like you're some sort of judge on the matter. Being such a jerk I would advise yourself go to /r/circlejerk
conspirato ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 01:42:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Such a hipster tbh. Sorry Nikola Tesla was somehow magically appreciated in his life because a guy decided to make his Car company in his name.
In favor of someone 'we've probably never heard of'
Again the title is not someone who we haven't heard of. It Is someone who is under appreciated in History
conspirato ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:33:01 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The question isn't who is under appreciated by redditors jagaloon. It's underappreciated in history. In their lives. Tesla lived in poverty and was considered a nutcase. That is by definition under appreciated.
penguinpwrdbox ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 01:49:38 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The man has the first fully electric, economically viable car company in history named for him. That's not underappreciation. Go read the first 10 names in this post. Those people? Who have made huge advances in our world or impacted your life without you even knowing their name? That's what we're talking about.
conspirato ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:58:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You are literally ignorant. Does the title of this thread read 'Heroes who we don't even know"
No it doesn't
It reads Most Under Appreciated Person in History.
Naming something after someone =/= them being appreciated in their life. He was under appreciated his whole life. Sure he's a popular name now but so are a lot of things. What's happening now is popular culture not History. The Tesla Car Company is not history in this sense. It's pop culture.
I don't see how you're this dense.
The first 10 people named all have corresponding Wikipedia pages so they weren't unknown like you claim
Being Known =/= Being appreciated
penguinpwrdbox ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 02:01:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Says the person who ascribes his own personal ethos of "appreciated during their lifetime" as the litmus test to qualify for a thread that asks for the most underappreciated person in history.
He isn't underappreciated. He's certainly not underappreciated here, with this audience, which is the only reason you posted him in the first place: karma whoring.
Tesla doesn't belong on this list. /r/circlejerk is over there --->
conspirato ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:05:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You're devaluing Teslas accomplishments, he was under appreciated as he was perhaps the most intelligent man alive in his day and age. And wasn't appreciated up to his stature. Living in hotels, alone, in debt, talking to pigeons, being undermined by Edison. Being berated by media for his finanical status and his 'loony ideas' like radar and WiFi.
penguinpwrdbox ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 02:13:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
El Oh El. Tesla didn't invent WiFi. He's also not the god he's made out to be. Neither is Edison the devil he's been vilified as either. If you did your own research outside of an Oatmeal cartoon and drew your own conclusion, you might change your mind.
Was he a smart guy? Undoubtably. Does he belong on a list of folks who gave their lives for those of thousands or millions of people when he's become a household name, and you didn't even know that the stories of those other people existed? Hardly.
Look beyond your own pseudo-intellectual fanboyism for a minute and you might learn something else interesting.
conspirato ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:21:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Haha wow. Coming from the person who's only rebuttul is CAR COMPANY HE HAS A CAR COMPANY! I think you know less of Tesla than I. Belittling someone else's information doesn't accomplish anything dude. It just makes you a pretentious douche. History says what it says. Since this is a post about history I would say that Tesla was under appreciated.
Sure Tesla didn't invent WiFi, but he sought the idea of wireless power transmission and most likely would have brought it to fruition with proper funding.
You're setting parameters for this list which goes to show how fucking narcissistic you are dude. 'They can't be well known' 'They had to sacrifice themselves' 'The act must save lives'
Wtf where did you get this shit at dude? Fuck off
penguinpwrdbox ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 02:27:28 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
I didn't do any of that. If you view the question objectively, and actually READ the content above, the people referenced, and what they've done, you'll conclude that Tesla doesn't really belong on this list. I didn't set any parameters. You read into that. I never said they can't be well known. I said you hadn't heard of them. I never said they had to sacrifice themselves or save lives. I also didn't say all I know about Tesla refers to the car.
When I can buy a consumer product that bears this man's name, but you had never even heard of the other people -- guess which one of those is going to meet the criteria for the adjective "underappreciated"..?
If you think that some woeful, hero-worshipped internet cult figure that an entire generation of people jerk-off to is both underappreciated, and deserving of mention in a thread where people you haven't even heard of have managed to save literally millions of lives, and then have the nerve to point the finger elsewhere while claiming ignorance, then that's on you.
conspirato ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 02:37:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
You literally do not understand what appreciation is.
"If you think that some woeful, hero-worshipped internet cult figure that an entire generation of people jerk-off to is both underappreciated, and deserving of mention in a thread where people you haven't even heard of have managed to save literally millions of lives, and then have the nerve to point the finger elsewhere while claiming ignorance, then that's on you." Talk about Psuedo Intellectual dude.
Your long winded jabs at my own character just goes to show how fucking desperate you are to belittle someone and prove yourself the better.
Tesla was under appreciated in History.
Having a car company/cell phone named after him doesn't change that fact.
He was not appreciated in his life. Therefore he was not appreciated in history. As it happens this post is Who Is the Most Under Appreciated Person in History. So it fits under the question given not the parameters you have subconsciously set upon us O Wise One
And yes you yourself are setting these parameters as you are the only person here actively trying to disprove peoples submissions dude.
conspirato ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 02:39:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"but you had never even heard of the other people "
Because being unknown is the only criteria for being under appreciated. Again and again you are completely incorrect
'You've probably never even heard of these guys" Posts Wikipedia page Right...they're soooo unknown
conspirato ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:33:05 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Always taking the side as if you are above me. Which is hilarious to be honest. Don't presume your station douchebag it doesn't become you. Your pretentiousness knows no bounds. As you have somehow convinced yourself you are the Judge Jury and Executionor on all matters within this thread. Your argumentative personality especially in matters concerning historical situations really speaks, considering you're refusing to accept actual historical basis as fact and instead substituting your own guess like you are some Historical Scholar with a phd in the field. Kindly fuck off
penguinpwrdbox ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 02:39:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Do you have historical basis? Let's hear some? I find it interesting that I'm argumentative, yet you're the one using insults and profanity. I'm simply pointing out that this thread can be (and thankfully is) much more than a Tesla circlejerk. If you have something compelling that suggests that should change, I'm sure you'll have no problem posting it, and you'll have my upvote.
But I don't think you do, and you never did. You were hedging your bets that this is reddit, and "DAE <3 Tesla?!?!11", and you'd get karma for it.
You didn't. You won't. Sorry man.
conspirato ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:53:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Consistent history of posting consecutive vapid posts/images/questions that go unanswered and at 1 upvote.
Calls me a karma whore.
Seems only one person here gives a horse's shit about internet points dude.
I answered a fucking question and set off your autism.
penguinpwrdbox ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 02:57:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hey, check that out -- more insults.
Poor guy... just wanted to make sure good ol' Nikola got his due.
conspirato ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 03:07:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Look more irrelevant banter to make sure he gets the last word.
Poor cunt. He just wanted to lord his high intelligence over all these numbskulls
penguinpwrdbox ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 03:09:58 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You're an angry dude.
conspirato ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:09:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oi I'm so sorry Ser I had no idears I was arguing with a true gentleman I won't make that mistake again you sure showed me ya did tips Fedora Mlady
LoBsTeRfOrK ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:08:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla
He invented a lot of things, here a few examples where he had direct involvement or essentially revolutionized the whole field.
There is A LOT more, but these are the notable ones, and when you think of the 21st century, if you had the Car, Nuclear power, and the PC/Microchip. Well that is the 21 century in a hand basket boys.
penguinpwrdbox ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:15:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
no
InfiniteVibrationz ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:32:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla.
penguinpwrdbox ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 01:15:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
no
InfiniteVibrationz ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:02:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just because girls keep saying that to you doesn't mean you have to say that to everyone else...
penguinpwrdbox ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 02:07:28 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wow. Touchรฉ. Game, set, match.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 04:24:27 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:47:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla. I realize I'm more than several hours late but I read down 15 comments and didn't see his name. That guy is single handedly responsible for our entire modern society but the poor dude doesn't get credit for anything.
penguinpwrdbox ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 01:16:05 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
no
[deleted] ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 01:33:58 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
yes
JonTheHooligan ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:16:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The fine human who invented yoga pants
garlicroastedpotato ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:47:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's got to be Leuicppus
Leucippus invented the first theory of an atom, that is that all things are composed of a single idea.
The only surviving Greek works we have were from an African king collector who had them copied for his library. Of the lost texts Leucuppus' many arguments on atoms and evidence for atoms were all destroyed by the Romans.
200 years after his death people questioned as to whether the works attributed to him were his own or his student Democritus' and obscured his name even further. Copies of his work were placed under the name Democritus and so now everyone gives all credit for the atom to Democritus.
artparade ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:24:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tesla by far
Darkodonnie_ ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:37:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Definitely NikolaTesla. While I know there are a majority that know him, sometimes when I mention his name people have no clue who he is or how his plans/ideas could've altered the world we live in today if he was still alive.
Ruddie ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:48:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
he's awesome, but now unappreciated. He's sensationalized
narcarsiss ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:58:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nicola Tesla.
dpatt711 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 04:47:33 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your mother. Without her the universe would never have existed.
maveryh ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:15:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Robert E. Lee
Because he was a Confederate general, he gets lumped in with all the racists and confederate leaders of the time. In reality, he was against slavery. He loved the United States and Virginia, studied at West Point with Grant, Sherman, and other Union generals, and when it came time to pick sides, he was deeply conflicted. In the end, he chose to go to war for Virginia's sake...
"Mr. Blair, I look upon secession as anarchy. If I owned the four millions of slaves in the South I would sacrifice them all to the Union; but how can I draw my sword upon Virginia, my native state?"
Robert E. Lee was an amazing man. It's a shame that he gets a bad rap and people are pining to tear down street signs with his name on it and statues.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:05:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
he was a kind, good man. Its too bad people who dont know much about him assume he was an asshole
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 05:13:15 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Willing to kill 4000000 slaves, but still a pretty good guy
milo0o ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:41:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Maybe it sounds like beating a dead Horse when I say this, but Nikola Tesla. Sure a lot of people know about him, but I honestly don't believe he gets all the appreciation he deserves. Dude did some miraculous things and a good portion of the population thinks Edison is still responsible for all of his inventions.
Pmmeyourfloppytits ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:26:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I thought this would be higher on the list, took me waaaay too long to find it.
Roglef ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:14:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Robert E Lee.
Fought as a confederate in the army even though he did not believe in Slavery, had released all of his slaves. Only fought out of loyalty for his state.
Edit: Released slaves not sold.
HordaksPupil ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:27:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes, Lee is my personal hero :D
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 14:23:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
belabor_the_obvious ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 15:12:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You just stole this word for word from three years ago.
alphagammabeta1548 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 15:50:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Its 3 years old, not a shitty repost from earlier today. Furthermore, it's not a word for word copy, and, there are only so many ways to describe what Borlaug did.
belabor_the_obvious ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 16:26:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's basically word for for word and all three of the comments posted by OP in this thread are from that thread and worded the same as it was three years ago with a slight variation.
alphagammabeta1548 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:28:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
well who cares? it was three years ago. And I, for one, am glad to have learned about Borlaug today.
laharl219 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 14:34:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
that one guy....what's his name?
jmg2303 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:38:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Obama.
Sleeveharvey ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:58:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jesus Christ. Birth foretold hundreds of years in advance. Died for the sins of mankind. Ressurection independently verified by hundreds of eye witnesses. Inarguably the most influential life ever lived. Created the universe. Inspired more literature than anyone.
Considered by many a myth. Punchline of jokes by neckbeards. Loves you anyway.
[deleted] ยท -7 points ยท Posted at 13:22:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
FetchFrosh ยท 42 points ยท Posted at 14:05:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Is he that underappreciated though? The unit of magnetism is named after him.
[deleted] ยท 55 points ยท Posted at 14:06:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And literally everyone on Reddit whines about him.
icarus92 ยท 29 points ยท Posted at 14:32:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Reddit gets its collective dick hard about anything featured in those shitty Oatmeal comics.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 16:24:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If there's a nerd version of "basic bitch," it involves Oatmeal comics.
[deleted] ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 14:31:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
GunNNife ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 14:46:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's because Edison set out to destroy Tesla. Edison was a cunning and ruthless businessman; Tesla was an oddball inventor. Tesla didn't stand a chance.
loi044 ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 15:45:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I appreciate Tesla, but that's exaggerating the storyline. Edison wanted personal success, which meant defeating Westinghouse. He didn't have a personal vendetta against Tesla.
GunNNife ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:01:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fair enough. I didn't mean to imply that it was a personal vendetta. Edison set out to defeat all his business rivals with the same vigor and ruthlessness.
RQK1996 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 16:15:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
not just that but Marconi (the dude credited with the invention of radio technology) stole 17 patents of Tesla, all related to radio waves and remote control
flakAttack510 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:07:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Incorrect. Tesla didn't even believe in radio waves. He had other ideas on how wireless energy worked using injection of AC electricity into the ground.
The court ruling in question didn't actually take anything from Tesla, either. It ruled that Marconi's work was an improvement on the work of John Stone and Oliver Lodge, so could be patented separately from their work.
RQK1996 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:49:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
he might not have believed in them but he did have a remote controlled boat in 1898 5 years before the second one did, so he might not have believed in them but he did experiment with them a lot
SoullessGinger666 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 14:38:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, but he did so much more. He invented wireless charging, and the concepts behind alternating current (Probably the most fundamental and important concepts in modern society), yet Edison gets all the credit, even though he hated the idea of alternating current.
"Fooling around with alternating current (AC) is just a waste of time. Nobody will use it, ever.โ - Thomas Edison
FetchFrosh ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 14:41:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And Tesla didn't believe in electrons carrying charge. At that time electricity was still misunderstood to a large degree.
BurnedOut_ITGuy ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 15:01:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I feel he is appropriately appreciated. His achievements are acknowledged. His stuff was forward thinking and groundbreaking, but not all that much different from other things being done by his peers. The Oatmeal comic blows him hugely out of proportion.
RQK1996 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 16:18:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
not to the extent it should be, the guy isn't recognised for having a remote controlled boat in 1898
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 15:12:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Really? Because Reddit talks about him non-stop, and there is a physical unit named after him, as well as a famous company.
ex-apple ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 15:55:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
/u/rarestargarden
RarestarGarden ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:42:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My screaming has commenced.
itinerant_gs ยท -6 points ยท Posted at 13:26:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Beat me to it. Hands down. I can't think of anyone more appropriate.
thomas_da_trainn ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 19:53:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Who was it? The comment was deleted and I must know
RQK1996 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 16:16:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
which also is part of the problem
karmaBerserk ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:27:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Who was it?
Miguelinileugim ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:15:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
/u/itinerant_gs /u/RQK1996 /u/thomas_da_trainn /u/karmaBerserk
WHO WAS IT????
itinerant_gs ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 05:42:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well I suggested two, one for serious and one for funs. Not sure which was deleted.
Nikola Tesla and Stevie Wonder.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 15:24:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm probably gonna regret posting this, but I would say that the mothers of many great people we hear about. You rarely get honourable, selfless, good people from bad mothers, and fathers are only recently a factor in parenting.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:01:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You really believe that? Fathers have always been a factor in parenting what the fuck are you talking about.
Gaary ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:05:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
yea ok
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 18:58:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Keep patting yourself on the back.
MyAnusBleedsForYou ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 13:30:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Maurice Hilleman.
zehamberglar ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:17:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Since OP is lazy and won't explain, he discovered around 40 vaccines, which is more than any one person in history.
RQK1996 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 16:18:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
expand on that notion please
MassMacro ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:04:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Mr. James K. Polk, Napoleon of the stump.
personaldistance ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:24:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
James K. Polk
reincarN8ed ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:31:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My dad.
Mason3679 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:34:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wedge Antilles. He's the only person to survive both Death Star runs and yet he gets no credit whatsoever.
rounding_error ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:53:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Thomas Derkowitz. Nobody even knows who he was.
GunRaptor ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 18:21:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If you don't write about him, or at least link to his bio, he's going to remain unknown...
MrFuxIt ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:04:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug. He invented a disease resistant crop that prevented BILLIONS of people dying from starvation.
RonnieReagansGhost ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 16:54:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oh no gmo!!
LaffertyDaniel84 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:11:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Meyer Lansky...
sodangfancyfree ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:10:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
he's kind of a big deal. movies have been made about him.
sirsquidmo ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:29:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alexander Hamilton ; )
Wonderweiss_Margela ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:31:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton. The man kickstarted the american financial system, created the most successful way for unindustrialized nations to transition towards a manufacturing base, and, without him, our constitution probably wouldn't be anything close to the document it is today. For this, he's arguably the least remembered of our founding fathers, and he's being taken off the 10 dollar bill, while a man who literally did not believe in the concept of paper money stays on the 20.
UCMCoyote ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:32:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Henry Clay.
He held the Union together a lot longer than it should have and not long after he died the Civil War began. He was a great negotiator.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:41:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
GunRaptor ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:05:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
The history of modern mercenaries is so damn mind blowingly cool.
I'll add to this one:
Mike Hoare
He fought and beat Che, lead many well regulated units, had a sense of ethics, and when a plan went sideways he chose to prevent a bloodbath (that he would have won) and went to jail...only to make lots of contracts in jail to form a future unit.
The movie "The Wild Geese" is about him.
I think he's retired in South Africa today...
poopellar ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:41:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The guy who discovered that you can cook food with fire.
sodangfancyfree ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:48:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
good ol' ugg.
smokemarajuana ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:42:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My mum/dad.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:44:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hmm. I'm not recognizing any of these names.
needawp ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:46:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Billy Durant. The guy founded General Motors and got kicked out. So he founded Chevy and took over General Motors and got kicked out again. Somewhere in there he managed to found frigidaire. Died in abject poverty because he attempted to stop the Black Friday crash by committing his entire fortune to buying back stock and restore faith in the stock market.
thepobv ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:57:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
/u/thepobv ...saved the earth from imminent aliens attack by single handedly blow up their planet, yet no one seems to give a damn.
GunRaptor ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:03:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
wut?
powerfunk ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:59:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Scott Joplin, one of the great American composers.
penguinpwrdbox ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:19:52 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Is in your opinion the MOST underappreciated person in history? For real? C'mon man.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:00:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I read about some old dude that almost singlehandedly diverted WW3 during the Cold War. The fact that I can't even remember his name is testament enough to his under appreciation.
Rawrnosaur ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:02:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You are OP :)
jewboyfresh ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:04:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Daniel Shays and Shay's Rebellion
I wrote a report on him sophmore year of college about how he was actually the initial spark that lead to the Revolutionary War
Fiercedeity77 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:14:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Shays' rebellion was after the revolution. It was the beginning of the end for the Articles of Confederation, which led to the Constitution.
jewboyfresh ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:51:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That must have been it
Idk it was like 3 years ago
Fiercedeity77 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:29:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Still a pretty important guy considering we still have the same constitution, and the A.O.C. was garbage.
klaarkijn ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:06:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Brian clough
victorvscn ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:06:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm guessing we wouldn't know.
penguinpwrdbox ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:20:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This means they are valued, but not enough. The word is UNDERappreciated. Not UNappreciated.
flacocaradeperro ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:09:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Any great composed who happened to live in the same era as any of the great music geniuses.
Imagine being an excellent composer living in the same era as Bach? You're fucked, no one will ever hear your music, no one cares because there's Bach and his football tea of muiscally gifted children.
aGeordie ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:12:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlog. Saved a Billion Lives. Google it.
Pr0methian ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:12:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A bunch of great answers here, but in truth the most undwrappreciated person in history has probably by definition already been forgotten by history.
penguinpwrdbox ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:21:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This means they are valued, but not enough. The word is UNDERappreciated. Not UNappreciated.
G0dd ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:12:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
FDR
criticalbuzz ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:13:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alex Trebek
nadawg ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:15:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That one Russian officer who didn't fire his nukes at the US during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
jewdolla ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:16:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Rasputin because he was a a total bad ass
boodanii ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:31:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
King Alfred the Great stopped the Vikings and saved the English language. The U.S. and England would be very different places without him.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:31:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
OP. Maybe if they'd deliver, they'd be more appreciated.
Shapoopy178 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:34:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Broadway taught me that it's probably Alexander Hamilton.
cluelessOpinions ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:36:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Clair Cameron Patterson, the guy who ultimately eliminate lead from gasoline.
everybodysheardabout ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:39:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Henrietta Lacks. Died of a particular type of cervical cancer which just so happened to mean that her cells were particularly good at growing in vitro. Her cells were the first immortal human cells we managed to culture. Right now pretty much every laboratory that conducts tests on human tissues has HeLa cells on site. She died in 1951. A lot of good has come from her cells.
causeimthedad ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:42:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jonas Salk. Every human owes him a thank you
InternetCrank ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:43:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The guy who invented the chair. I love you, man :)
Avogadro101 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:44:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me :(
purposely_misspeeled ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:44:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If you heard her complain, you would think, my mother. Good God lady, I swear I do appreciate that you gave me life and washed all my clothes when I was a kid.
TheDoctorLives ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:45:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Until Lin-Manuel Miranda's "Alexander Hamilton" released on Broadway, I would say Hamilton's contributions to the US were often forgotten and overshadowed by Washington and Jefferson. Which is entirely undeserving cause Hamilton is a badass.
guttercherry ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:50:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
George Washington Carver
GrumpyMcGrumperton ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:50:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Martin Luther
OsterGuard ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:51:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Probably somebody nobody alive has ever heard of, if we're going to be realistic.
penguinpwrdbox ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:27:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This means they are valued, but not enough. The word is UNDERappreciated. Not UNappreciated.
OsterGuard ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:41:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oh, good point.
Koosh25 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:55:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The guy who made the first peanut butter and jelly. a real forward thinker
RyudoKills ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:56:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Um.. me? Y'all don't know everything I do for you! I mean, I don't know what I do for you either, but I'm sure it's super important.
nick_synm ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:56:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:58:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Obama
TCivan ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:01:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:03:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Smedley Butler?
bleezye ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:07:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tyrion Lannister
PMrom ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:09:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Vasili Arkhipov
Talked his fellow commanding officers out of firing a nuclear torpedo at US ships during the Cuban Missile Crisis that very well could have sparked nuclear war
defn0tathr0waway ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:12:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug aka "The Man Who Saved A Billion Lives". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug
SauceMasterFlex ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:13:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The pizza guy!!
not-ted ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:14:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dave.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:14:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug - plant biologist extraordinaire! Pioneered the research and cultivation of high-yielding crops to feed the planet. Arguably saved billions of lives!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug
violaonutz ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:16:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You can be sure she was a neanderthal.
edit: "s"
PatriotBlack ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:22:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tesla.
penguinpwrdbox ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:29:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
no
PatriotBlack ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:38:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Mr. Bell?
Netprincess ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:22:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Bob Noyce
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:23:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You wouldn't know them.
penguinpwrdbox ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 01:29:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This means they are valued, but not enough. The word is UNDERappreciated. Not UNappreciated.
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:03:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The definition you provided does not provide a lower bound for appreciation. Good try, though.
penguinpwrdbox ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 03:08:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oh, my, such intellect. Can I see it again?
You're seriously gonna come here and try to defend that hot garbage, and try to say that someone who has done something historically noteworthy is completely unknown -- to the point that you feel you can stroll in here and whip out some logical fallacy to feel superior to everyone else here?
Didn't like what mom made for dinner tonight or something?
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 03:26:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes.
Turbatron ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:24:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla
penguinpwrdbox ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:29:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
no
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:25:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Me.
Can I not get a damn "Thank You!" for changing the toliet paper roll WHEN NO ONE ELSE IN THIS GOD DAMN HOUSE DOES??
Edit: irony, i live alone
mrttenor ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:26:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My go to answer for this question has always been Alexander Hamilton, the first Treasury Secretary of the United States.
But now there's a hit Broadway show that tells his story and he's getting the recognition he deserves and I'll have to come up with a new answer eventually.
His story fell to the side because of 2 reasons.
1) He died in 1804 at the age of 49 (shot by VP Arron Burr)
2) Many of the other founding fathers who outlived him also didn't like him much. So they defamed him throughout their lives.
yoloruinslives ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:30:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
tesla. thomas edison was remembered because he made $
penguinpwrdbox ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:30:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
no
BornRreddy ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:31:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Miley Cyrus. Culture creator. Breaks some interesting boundaries.
MrGuest1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:31:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
john locke
Virtioso ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:33:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sir Isaac Asimov.
He is not a scientist but he is considered the father of Robotics and AI. He is the one who came up to my mind I know he is still not a game changer...
AstronomicalArtist18 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:46:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We share the same birthday :)
Virtioso ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:55:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We shall sacrifice your body to skynet for our lifes!
aberonx ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:34:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The pizza guy
DisembodiedHand ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:34:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My mother apparently or so she is constantly telling us when we get around to visiting her. gah!
RunToDagobah-T65 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:35:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
For US history it's Nathaniel Greene. His homestead is right down the road from me
PMbumbumpics ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:36:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
my mom
Tranquil_Turbulence ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:37:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fdr, although his methods were not exactly conventional, he did a lot of good for the US after the depression
rberg89 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:37:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me. I could use a hug.
teslator ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:39:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My mother. Just ask her.
StealthBlue ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:39:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Marcus Agrippa saves Augustus from embarrassing defeat, defeats Antony and his spare time rebuilt/built public works in Rome into the grandeur that Augustus would take credit for.
RECOGNI7E ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:39:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me
hoonigan_4wd ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:40:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
mike jones
AsburyNutPea ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:40:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
you
omejia ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:41:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla
penguinpwrdbox ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:31:22 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
no
omejia ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:01:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Si
Ratman_84 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:42:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Ernest Borlaug (March 25, 1914 โ September 12, 2009) was an American biologist, humanitarian and Nobel laureate who has been called "the father of the Green Revolution", "agriculture's greatest spokesperson" and "The Man Who Saved A Billion Lives". He is one of seven people to have won the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal and was also awarded the Padma Vibhushan, India's second highest civilian honor.
Borlaug received his B.Sc. Biology in 1937 and Ph.D. in plant pathology and genetics from the University of Minnesota in 1942. He took up an agricultural research position in Mexico, where he developed semi-dwarf, high-yield, disease-resistant wheat varieties.
During the mid-20th century, Borlaug led the introduction of these high-yielding varieties combined with modern agricultural production techniques to Mexico, Pakistan, and India. As a result, Mexico became a net exporter of wheat by 1963. Between 1965 and 1970, wheat yields nearly doubled in Pakistan and India, greatly improving the food security in those nations. These collective increases in yield have been labeled the Green Revolution, and BORLAUG IS OFTEN CREDITED WITH SAVING OVER A BILLION PEOPLE WORLDWIDE FROM STARVATION. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 in recognition of his contributions to world peace through increasing food supply.
Later in his life, he helped applying these methods of increasing food production in Asia and Africa.
So, I mean, the guy was recognized, but how many people reading this have ever heard of him?
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:42:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
All of the really good ones I already see here. But hey, there's always Scipio Africanus and Fabius Maximus who both (in their own way) pretty much saved the Roman empire and changed the course of history in doing so.
WannabeToughGuy ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:43:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
me
Voidwarlock ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:43:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not a person, but Jupiter is pretty important.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:44:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me.
maskedfox007 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:44:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
James K Polk
InternetConquistador ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:45:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Benedict Arnold comes to mind. Poor fucker.
Mlp_Mike_USMC ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:45:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Benedict Arnold. He is only remembered as a traitor but was pivotal for the Americans in the war.
warpus ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:46:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The first guy who decided to milk a cow.
lanadelraycharles ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:46:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me.
wutang4thechildren ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:46:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My cousin Ryan
DruidOfFail ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:47:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They guy who came up with the idea to rub two sticks together to create fire. Seriously, have you ever stopped and thought, thank you whoever brought warmth to our species?
iSmore ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:47:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm going to be that person that says myself
Korashy ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:48:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The team who accidentally discovered CPR by rescuing a dying lab dog. Resulting in ginormous amounts of lives being saved.
Also Nikolai Tesla, though he's gaining more renown lately.
http://www.bbc.com/news/health-34351798
StrawberryStrumpet24 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:49:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Felix Wankel was an unappreciated genius!!
bokononisms ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:49:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
norman borlaug
Orangutan ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:50:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Maj. Gen. Smedley D. Butler
Drathus ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:50:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Whoever that first person to ever suck on a cow's udder. I hope it was due to extreme thirst.
N00bDadLol ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:50:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Whoever invented the air conditioner. A lot of places people live now would be uninhabitable as we know it without air conditioning
Waddles-inc ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:51:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ulysses S Grant while he isn't under appreciated as a general, I often felt like he gets overlooked for what did as a president of the United States. While Abraham Lincoln was the one to free the slaves, Ulysses Grant had to keep them free.
BassPro_Millionaire ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:52:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug
Joini246 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:52:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think you misread what he said. He didn't mean that Semmelweis discovered handwashing, he said that Semmelweis discovered a decrease in mother's deaths after childbirth if you washed your hands prior to the birth.
guitargamel ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:53:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
you don't know them.
penguinpwrdbox ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 01:33:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This means they are valued, but not enough. The word is UNDERappreciated. Not UNappreciated.
guitargamel ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:25:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wow, a definition and everything (even if it's from google). However, the most underappreciated would by definition be an extreme of the "fail[ing] to value... highly enough" would be someone who is utterly unappreciated. Hence why they aren't even appearing in a thread for fake internet points.
penguinpwrdbox ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 03:31:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So, my man posts a great question full of hundreds of interesting responses, and you decided you were gonna come fuck his shit up with a logical fallacy designed to point out the inherent flaw in his question with your pedantic interpretation of his choice of verbiage instead of actually contributing something useful to the conversation, right?
You're so intelligent. Say something else smart for us.
I_Am_Brahman ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:54:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Henry George. Progress and Poverty will change your life, read it.
databeast ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:55:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Steve Guttenberg (of Police Academy fame), starred in Nuclear Holocaust-warning film "The Day After"(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_After). Ronald Reagan said the film was a big influence on him and his desire to pursue nuclear disarmament with Russia.
Tl;Dr - Steve Guttenberg saved the world from Nuclear Armageddon, but y'all just remember him for terrible movies, you ungrateful slobs.
seaandtea ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:55:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alcuin.
ZenTriBrett ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:56:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The most? We'll never know. That's what makes them so underappreciated. I nominate "Dads that hang around to raise their kids."
penguinpwrdbox ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:34:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This means they are valued, but not enough. The word is UNDERappreciated. Not UNappreciated.
ZenTriBrett ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 11:30:19 on January 19, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And the other key word is MOST. The MOST "not enough" (your words) would be unknown, so therefore you wouldn't find him/her. Looking at the people you DO know is a classic case of survivorship bias. Look it up. Enjoy. :)
penguinpwrdbox ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:04:12 on January 19, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hold up. So, my man posts a great question full of hundreds of interesting responses, and you decided you were gonna come fuck his shit up with a logical fallacy designed to point out the inherent flaw in his question with your pedantic interpretation of his choice of verbiage instead of actually contributing something useful to the conversation, right?
You must be so intelligent.
Mr_Biscuits_532 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:56:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That welsh fella (see? I cant even remember his name) who discovered evolution at the same time as Darwin and even shared a Nobel prize with him.
LoLHerald ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:58:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Peter North
ns-veritas ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:59:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Heard about this guy Clair Cameron Patterson for the first time on the Cosmos series with NDT.
I now wonder how screwed we would be if he hadnt campaigned so hard against lead products (specifically leaded gasoline)
psnanda ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:59:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jonas Salk. Very very under appreciated. Inventor of Polio vaccine.
Mr_Biscuits_532 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:00:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Also Charles Goodyear, inventor of Vulcanized rubber. Some bastard nicked his invention, made tons and Goodyear had to live in an abandoned factory where some of his kids died from starvation and the like.
locks_are_paranoid ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:01:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The caveman who discovered fire.
LOHare ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:01:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Late to this party, but: Kingdom Isambard Brunel. Outside of select technical field, he is basically unknown.
Select excerpt from his wiki:
jesse9o3 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:19:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yer Kingdoms and yer Isambards are the wrong way around.
LOHare ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:48:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"A man you think so little about, you didn't even realise we wrote his name wrong."
gypsyking27 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:02:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Shannon Noll, man was robbed of winning Australian idol and im sick of him being second best.
beazley26 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:02:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
John Buford. He was the main reason why the Union held the good ground at Gettysburg. I was gonna say Chamberlain, but he's got a monument in Maine.
hikingmutherfucker ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:02:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug - the man who saved billions
"During the mid-20th century, Borlaug led the introduction of these high-yielding varieties combined with modern agricultural production techniques to Mexico, Pakistan, and India. As a result, Mexico became a net exporter of wheat by 1963. Between 1965 and 1970, wheat yields nearly doubled in Pakistan and India, greatly improving the food security in those nations.[10] These collective increases in yield have been labeled the Green Revolution, and Borlaug is often credited with saving over a billion people worldwide from starvation.[11] He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 in recognition of his contributions to world peace through increasing food supply.
Later in his life, he helped applying these methods of increasing food production in Asia and Africa"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug
or James Harrison
"James Christopher Harrison, OAM, also known as the Man with the golden arm, is a blood plasma donor[1] from Australia whose unusual plasma composition has been used to make a treatment for Rhesus disease. He has made over 1000 donations throughout his lifetime, and these donations are estimated to have saved over two million unborn babies from the condition"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Harrison_(blood_donor)
igiggy ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:03:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Whoever invented and implemented large scale indoor plumbing. You have no idea how many illnesses this has prevented. Also, no pooping out of a window.
HurtfulThings ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:03:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Steve Wozniak
The real inventor of the home PC and the true pioneer behind apple computers. Steve Jobs was just a good marketer/promoter, and he took Wozniak's work and sold it and kept most of the profit. He made Woz literally cry because of his betrayal... but he gets movies made about him and Woz is a cameo/bit part.
He's an all around great guy with great ideas. He's also the basis for the character of Ogden Morrow in "Ready Player One".
vishnURS ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:04:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Universe DoTO
outrider567 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:04:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Clyde Farnsworth(American of course) invented the television, he changed the world, but nobody knows his name
Shinokiba- ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:04:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
William Wilberforce
He led the abolishment of slavery in England.
RedUser03 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:04:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We don't know, because that person never became famous enough to even be on our radar to know he was underappreciated.
penguinpwrdbox ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 01:35:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This means they are valued, but not enough. The word is UNDERappreciated. Not UNappreciated.
RedUser03 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:59:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well I'm sure his mom appreciated him.
fun_director ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:05:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me
themightywagon ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:06:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As an American, I have to say James K. Polk. Whenever the subject of best Presidents in U.S. history comes up, he is almost always forgotten.
AlphaDexor ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:06:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Marquis de Lafayette
Killer_Tomato ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:06:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
W. Edwards Deming. Dude made Japan into what it is today and is responsible for the increase in quality of all goods made from WWII. Kaizen, 5s, six sigma all come from him.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:07:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tesla
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:53:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There is an entire car company named after him. Far from under appreciated in respect to others.
penguinpwrdbox ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:35:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
no
Noobzilla_Gaming_YT ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:07:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My mom said I am a real catch
bluechipmonk ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:07:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
/u/bluechipmonk
Hup234 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:07:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The inventor(s) of window screens
Bullsheepss ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:07:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Olivier Giroud.
Bonerkiin ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:08:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Extra Credits did a great video on a man in history I'd never heard anything about ever, John Snow. Who did more for modern urban sanitation than most of us will ever know. If you've never checked out Extra Credits Extra History series you should, it's a great way to learn some history in a casual relaxed way.
HonestAboutExpertise ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:09:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug
user1492 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:09:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fritz Haber
Won the Nobel Prize for inventing the process used to synthesize fertilizer. His invention feeds half the world.
imthescubakid ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:10:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tesla
penguinpwrdbox ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:36:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
no
imthescubakid ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 02:11:35 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Why Not
Thecardinal74 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:11:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My mother, if you've ever listened to her for 5 minutes
MEESTER_SUPERMAN ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:11:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Mums
scottperezfox ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:12:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
John Gilbert Winant โย United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom during WWII. You've heard of Churchill and Roosevelt, but in between them was Winant. Not an easy job. Before the Ambassador role, he was Governor of New Hampshire and the first head of the Social Security Board.
whatwasmyoldhandle ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:12:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Isaac Newton
next question
Modestonee ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:12:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Anyone else agree that Nikola Tesla was? I feel like American greed and power dealt him a bad hand. He could have done so much for us.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:54:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There is an entire car company named after him. Far from under appreciated in respect to others.
Modestonee ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:53:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Agreed, that's great. We are finally appreciating him. I think we may have missed out on great inventions and discoveries.
penguinpwrdbox ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:36:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
no
Modestonee ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 02:43:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:13:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Kevin Durant's mom. She's the real MVP.
mybook120 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:13:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hmmm? I Don,t No?
Tylere1612 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:13:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nic cage
meismariah ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:15:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
All the wives and mothers that supported the men in this thread. Also probably a lot of women who came up with the very ideas credited to the men in this thread.
haldad ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:15:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me
KryptonicxJesus ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:16:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Henry clay
papabearshoe ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:16:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Robert Maurer, Donald Keck, and Peter Schultz invented fiber-optic wire or "optical waveguide fibers"...these wires are the reason we can surf the internet at nearly the speed of light.
db_504 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:16:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Prometheus....or Alexander Fleming whom discovered penicillin.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:16:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Mom
von_Hytecket ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:16:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Odenatus from Palmyra.
It's hard to assess how really important he was, since he lived the good life almost 1800 years ago. Rome would have been fucked a few centuries earlier if he wasn't around.
PmMeYourFeels ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:16:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me. You can never know what I did, who I am, what I may or mat not have prevented, or when it happened.
Still enjoying reddit and breathing? You're welcome, everyone.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:16:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
genetic Adam/Eve
Murican_Freedom1776 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:17:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Came looking for Bernie Sanders, didn't see Bernie Sanders, left happy.
tinglep ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:17:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My Mom and Dad.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:17:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Who ever invented Phoenician alphabet
thetwwitch ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:17:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Man I had a great answer to this but I've forgotten the buggers name
RailGunMaker ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:19:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me.
tytheanomaly ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:20:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ready for a mind blowing answer? I am the most under-appreciated person in history
zeeen0 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:21:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm scrolling down like .. "yeah, none of these names look familiar.. weird.."
And then it hits me, of course I wouldn't recognize any of their names.
Guruking ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:21:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Irish and the English. One for discovering condoms. The other by facilitating the use of them by removing the sheep.
steerbell ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:23:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
For Americans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_du_Motier,_Marquis_de_Lafayette
Shilvahfang ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:23:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
John Adams. Probably not the most, but definitely underappreciated. We take for granted that in the Western world, when you lose an election, you step down. No matter what you think of GW Bush or Obama, or any heads of state, there shouldn't be any doubt that they will step down when required.
This wasn't the precedent until John Adams' failed bid for reelection. And as the most powerful man in the country and commander in chief of the military, he handed over the reigns peacefully.
oxycash ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:24:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
History of which country?
nordpol ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:25:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The guy who invented canned beer
nimmo95 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:25:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jason Holt
surfkaboom ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:26:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The person who assembled a weapon of war, only for that weapon to be used by Hitler to kill himself.
KingofFairview ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:28:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Georg Elser. Nearly killed Hitler acting completely alone with no support because of his morals. Came within 20 minutes.
hopl0phile ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:28:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Judas.
IONaut ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:30:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The guy who invented post-its.
rawbertson ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:31:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
mike ross
oakozric ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:33:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fred Rogers. Even though he had a lot of appreciation, I don't think it was nearly enough, considering his role in positive social construct, particularly with kids.
SpunkyJizzum ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:34:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
John Paul Jones.
pies1123 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:34:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not necessarily for a good thing, but Gavrilo Princip. His shooting of Franz Ferdinand started a chain reaction of historical events that has shaped the global political landscape to this day.
SpunkyJizzum ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:35:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
John Paul Jones
AtreidesMedia ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:37:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The guy who made this film https://youtu.be/aMY16pP_3i4
darkdreamr ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:38:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Weird al yankovic -
zawadz ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:38:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Witold Pilecki was a Captain in the Polish Army and a badass who willingly let himself by captured by the Nazis and sent to Auschwitz, where he organized a resistance movement, and was able to give first-hand information to the Western Allies about what happened in concentration camps.
Perdendosi ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:43:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
John Marshall..
Many people know his name, but don't really know the scope of change he effected on the U.S.'s form of government, and on common law jurisprudence altogether.
As a federalist leading the judiciary after the Jeffersonians swept into Congress and the White House, Marshall, through his opinions, kept many of the important aspects of federalism (back then a term for a strong central government) alive, like the central bank. And he did it so adeptly. Jefferson was looking for a way just to disregard the Court when it told the government to do something (and some opinions were disregarded) but he generally wrote in a way to increase the Supreme Court's influence-- (like in Marbury v. Madison, establishing the idea that the Court could review statutes for constitutionality, while avoiding forcing Jefferson to do something he would have refused to do if the court ordered him -- deliver papers giving a whole bunch of federalists jobs who were appointed at the 11th hour by John Adams).
Maybe he wasn't the originator of an idea like judicial review (that seems to be debated by scholars), but the Supreme Court is a co-equal branch of government in the U.S. largely thanks to his leadership, and the U.S. created a model where impartial, constitutional courts determine the propriety of laws enacted by the majority. Oh, and he did it all while being a cool guy. He apparently loved to share drinks with his opponents; he was modest (there's a story about him walking on the way to the Court and a merchant mistaking him for a servant, asking him to carry a bird home from the market.. In an era when those learned in the law looked like it, he was humble, friendly, and awesome.
ohgr4213 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:44:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
John D. Rockefeller. He to great extend modernized the entire energy industry and transformed society by aligning macro with micro and realizing economies of scale and scope in conjunction with new technologies. Despite what people think he always lowered prices and never gained complete control of the oil market but his innovations lowered the price/unit energy tremendously. To a large extent, he deserved that massive fortune.
F most his family after that era though.
deathpulse42 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:45:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
inb4 Tesla circlejerk
penguinpwrdbox ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:41:17 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dude, it's incredible. You have no idea.
TheRemixedLife ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:46:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Probably the dude who first invented nails. whomever that may be.
Core_Four ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:47:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Subutai. Achieved most of the exploits attributed to Genghis Khan. Jebe too.
dsleaz ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:47:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
John Crapper, because without him, we would not having flushing toilets. Yet he is one of the most important people that has ever lived.
Wobblycogs ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:48:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I tentatively will add Fritz Haber to the list. I say tentatively because he was a bit of a tool[0] but he did invent the process we use today to make fertilizer which allows us to grow enough food that we don't suffer mass starvation (mostly).
[0] think developing chemical weapons and gassing people in WW1
RichHixson ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:49:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Redgrin Grumble
GGAllinsMicroPenis ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:49:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Al Sharpton
CEZ2 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:16:54 on January 19, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tawana Brawley rape allegations
In 1998, Pagones was awarded $345,000 (he sought $395 million) through a lawsuit for defamation of character that he had brought against Sharpton, Maddox and Mason. The jury found Sharpton liable for making seven defamatory statements about Pagones, Maddox for two and Mason for one. The jury deadlocked on four of the 22 statements over which Pagones had sued, and it found eight statements to be non-defamatory.[27] In a later interview, Pagones said the turmoil caused by the accusations of Brawley and her advisers had cost him his first marriage and much personal grief.[28]
monkeybawz ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:49:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alexander the Great conquered the world when he was 33. Eric Bristow was only 27.
friskfyr32 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:51:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Steno, whose law of superposition proved that the Abrahamic scriptures were not to be taken literally, once and for all ending religious fanaticism...
Oh, and btw he discovered the parotic duct and from that deducted the purpose of glands, that muscles don't inflate when flexing, that the heart is a muscle and that the brain doesn't work pneumatically.
deja_geek ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:52:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ralph Nader. He is almost single-handely the reason why we have safer cars today.
rasmusdf ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:52:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Burlaug
pnvv ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:52:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Witold Pilecki. Basically volunteered to go to a concentration camp during WW2 to gather intelligence, and then had to escape again using his own devices... only to be executed by the USSr in 1948.
thebigbioss ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:53:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The early homo Sapiens who had to survive and kill for us all to be here.
Patrik-Cotton ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:56:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That guy who created a light bulb before Thomas Edison but Edison got there first! I think I heard this somewhere? Either way. That guy cause I can't think of his name!
namaha11 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:57:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
hitler. dude single handedly destroyed eugenics
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:57:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Percival Lowell. Founder of the Lowell observatory in Arizona. Thought there was life on Mars. Inspired HG Wells to write War of the Worlds and many many many other science fiction stories.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percival_Lowell
SiON42X ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:59:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The guy who wrote PuTTY. He should be a billionaire with the amount of usage his software gets in the corporate world.
brimstone_path ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:00:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Founding father, John Langdon. Likely was the reason colonists could even resist England's forces.
MacAdler ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:00:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This woman right here
hanniebees ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:00:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Margaret Hamilton Computer scientist that, with her team, helped save an abort of the Apollo 11 mission with her coding when the computer found a problem.
memeography ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:02:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fritz Haber Who is responsible for approximately half of the molecules of nitrogen in anything you eat, as well as being the father of chemical warfare.
also, the guy who denied Hitler's art school application.
DirtzMaGertz ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:04:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Maybe not the most under appreciated in history, but I think the finnish sniper Simo haya always deserves more attention then he gets for his 500 plus confirmed kills. Dude used iron sights and no one else is even close to him.
Lalaithion42 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:05:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Emmy Noether.
kairon156 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:14:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
John Snow he pretty much figured out poop and water shouldn't mix.
ShadowLiberal ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:14:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Whoever it was that invented the first surgery to fix some kind of medical issue.
People must have surely thought that person was an insane murderer to even attempt such a thing.
Who knows how many people died when they were inventing surgery with no prior successful ones to base their work off of?
akornblatt ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:16:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, the inventor of nitrogen fertilizer changed the world in two ways.
Fritz Haber, a German-Jewish inventor in early 1900s basically saved humanity from famine collapse by inventing a way to create liquid nitrogen-based fertilizer that increased crop yields to support the booming population.
He was ALSO considered the "father of chemical warfare" through weaponizing chlorine gas and inventing Zyklon A, the precursor to the gas the Nazis used in extermination camps.
Double edged sword there really.
levenbreechvor ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:16:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Joshua Chamberlain! His brave command won Gettysburg, which arguably won the Civil War for the Union.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:16:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
All the women who were listed as men (and cited with a fake, masculine name) or "anonymous" for tons of achievements.
Scouselishman ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:17:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'd also like to throw in Andrew Carnegie and the men of the Scottish enlightenment.
TheKevinShow ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:19:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug.
Coffeeisforclosers_ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:21:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Buzzfeed within the next 10 hrs . Top 10 unsung heroes who saved the world, you won't believe number 6
OneWithNothing ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:23:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Takeo Yoshikawa -- The Japanese spy in Hawaii who went to great lengths to gather information about operations at Pearl Harbor. His information was why Japan's attack was so brutally effective. After the war, he got shafted by the government, then they started blaming him for the atomic bomb. He also tried to open an ice cream business, which also failed because of the bad PR.
brett332 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:24:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He gets posted occasionally but Norman Borlaug, a botanist who is credited with saving the lives of upwards of a billion people, GMOs to the rescue.
The6thExtinction ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:25:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Probably somebody we've never heard of, and will never know the name of.
Tychonaut ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:50:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Probably a time traveler from the future who has saved the Earth .. like .. 25 times but had to keep his identity secret for fear of altering the timeline.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:25:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jonathan Browning, the father of the most famous gunsmith in history, John Moses Browning. Developed a multi-shot "Harmonica Rifle" for early settlers of the West.
Tychonaut ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:49:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A rifle that fires harmonicas!?!?
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:53:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No, more like this
a1exie ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:25:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The people that did the sewers! No more cholera!
amaxen ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:25:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Julian 'Doomslayer' Simon
veganic ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:26:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alexander "Sasha" Shulgin!
redhq ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:26:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley. These men invented the transistor. Imagine a world without computers and electric machines.
Shadow6958 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:27:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Crazy Ivan!
jsmys ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:28:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I read somewhere the inventor of the combustion engine is the one single organism who has had the most profound (and damaging) effect on the planet.
Can't remember his name though...
hatchet_4_lyfe ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:30:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Mike E. Clark. He produced most of the instrumentals for the music of Insane Clown Posse. WHOOP WHOOP! MMFWCL.
VEGETABLE_FART ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:31:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
me. nobody likes me and my dad makes me eat bugs
TheKnobleSavage ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:31:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug
The man who has saved billions of lives.
judojon ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:31:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sun Yat Sen
mulborough ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:33:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That guy, who did that thing. Real important thing. You know, that dude
NascentBehavior ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:34:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Micheal Faraday.
Without him our modern electronic world would not be possible.
WaltzingTerror ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:39:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Faraday Future makes sense now. Learned something new today, thanks.
C0uvi ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:42:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I was going to say James C Maxwell. The book Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field: How Two Men Revolutionized Physics really does highlight how much these guys did to advance technology, and for me I never heard about either of them when the book was recommended to me.
NascentBehavior ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:53:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Agreed! I said Faraday since I just listened to a BBC podcast on him and his name was in my head - this one
thescorer ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:36:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Good Teacher
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:36:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Keri Sable
cheerl231 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:36:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
James Maxwell
FunnyConsequences ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:37:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fred Rogers deserved more widespread recognition.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:38:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
michael jackson
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:38:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Many people only know Vlad III Dracula for his cruel reputation and don't realize that many considered him a hero, including the pope at the time of his reign.
relaxok ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:40:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Prince.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:40:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Henry Clay preserved the unity of America countless times.
xilefian ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:41:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This person; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Jlv8F9cerA
dufu ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:41:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Ritchie
JIDF-Shill ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:44:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alexander Hamilton
randomDudeSomeNumber ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:44:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Maybe not the most underrated person in the history of mankind, but as far as technology goes, I believe Dennis Ritchie takes the cake. He invented the C programming language, which is still very much used today, and without it, Ritchie's long time friend and colleague Ken Thompson would have never been able to create Unix, and without that, i may not be writing this.
Unfortunately, Ritchie died alone a few years ago, and this was at pretty much the same time that Steve Jobs died, so there was little to no coverage on his death.
CapnFran ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:46:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Michael Faraday.
Draiko ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:50:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tim Berners-Lee.
Marcusaralius76 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:51:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug, who saved over a billion lives from starvation by creating a new hardy strain of wheat.
fishsticks40 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:51:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Stan Johnson.
Who?
Exactly.
threewolfshirt ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:52:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Whoever figured out how to store memory on a flash drive and keep it there when disconnected from a power source
quarkjet ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:53:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
rosalind franklin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalind_Franklin
CurraheeAniKawi ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:55:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The first one. Without that mutant none of us would be here.
Andthentherewasbacon ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:55:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Larry Tesler
The guy invented cut/copy paste. How many billions of hours have been saved thanks to him?
UEMcGill ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:56:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Juan Christ, brother of Jesus. Could only stand on water, turn water into juices and heal pimples and other minor skin ailments. He stayed in the family business and worked as a carpenter.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:58:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
When his term is over and it's a decade or so down the road I think Obama will be a part of this discussion.
euming ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:00:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
James Harrison whose blood has saved 2 million lives.
Mugen593 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:01:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dennis Ritchie founder of C.
If it was not for him all computers as we know it would not exist, computers would just be calculators and nothing more.
Robaye ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:01:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In American History, Samuel Prescott
PM_ME_UR_LIFE_ADVICE ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:02:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Probably someone who killed someone who would have turned out to be like Hitler but we don't know because they were killed
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:02:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Paine
Barefooted23 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:03:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alfred Russel Wallace. He sent a manuscript to Darwin to read, which so closely matched Darwin's ideas, that it prompted Darwin to publish a manuscript at the same time as Wallace to avoid being left in obscurity. The ideas weren't unique to either person, and Darwin had been writing his novel for some time before this, but it is still pretty crappy that no one remembers Wallace or the other scientists that contributed to the theory of evolution.
Belimicus_rex ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:04:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The is a bit more 'merican than the others, but Richard Henry Lee. He made the motion in the Second Continental Congress for independence from Britain. He's practically never mentioned, yet he's pretty much responsible for the revolution, as the Congress was planning on just fighting for a bit until their demands were granted
ausernamewastaken ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:04:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jar Jar
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:04:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Now, we are living in arguable the best time since man started 'civilizing' the earth.
Hefeweizen3000 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:05:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Terry Crews.
JonSnowBaratheon ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:05:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
People tend to forget about Old Greg. He was a scaley man fish.
Zolden ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:05:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Gregory Christ, the brother of Jesus Christ, who actually has motivated him to become a messiah.
HenkHoden ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:06:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There was a german wood worker that tried to assassinate Hitler I am 1938. Unfortunately Hitler arrived late and the bomb he had planted went of to early. Poor fellow is so unknown that I can't even find his name.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:06:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Whoever invented the fleshlight
Nadeem_Ifti ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:07:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
kind of blows your mind that people just didn't, you know, wash their hands.
Judg3Smails ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:07:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Bernie Sanders.
GavinJames1000 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:08:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
HotShotgg
kingkooka ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:08:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This man.
sysadmin001 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:09:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
this stupid cunt flap of a monk
jetziolo ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:10:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not Rick Snyder.
iVirusYx ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:10:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I am a little late for this thread and I might get no attention, but I need to contribute:
Francis Galton, half cousin of Charles Darwin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton
nMaibO ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:34:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
saw a documentary the other day, wasn't he an eugenics fanatic who influenced the killing of non white people? either that or the BBC is lying.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FmEjDaWqA4
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:11:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sir Nicholas Winton the British Schindler
tiernascragh ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:11:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Grizzly Adams star Dan Haggerty
libelecsBlackWolf ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:14:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug.
Without his work, humanity would have reached a Malthusian disaster a long time ago.
BitchStewie_ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:20:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Andrew Daniels
Merenthan ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:21:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Charlemagne
wbeyda ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:22:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dennis Ritchie. He invented C and Unix.
BigGrizzDipper ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:23:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Antonio Meucci. He invented the phone prototype that Bell eventually used to develop the modern telephone. It's debated that he worked in the firm where Meucci brought his prototype, where it was then "lost". Not long after Bell proclaimed he had invented the telephone.
nMaibO ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:23:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Manuel Elkin Patarroyo, the guy created the first vaccine for Malaria.
Yosoff ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:25:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Chewbacca
almuric ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:26:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The guy who came up with the idea of putting rumble strips on the side of highways. Has saved thousands of lives.
Either that or Norman Borlaug, who saved billions but is better known than that first guy.
Anyone know who came up with the rumble-strip idea?
Damarus117 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:28:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Adolf Hitler
After all, he did kill Hitler.
yugiyo ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:29:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Probably someone that no one has ever heard of....
SheepwithShovels ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:29:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Peter Kropotkin. He was a Russian Prince who gave up his title and became the main theorist of Anarcho-Communism.
ztpurcell ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:29:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Henry Kissinger
Lobsterbib ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:29:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
ITT: A lot of Russian men who became heroes having to clean up a lot of Russian mistakes.
dantrog1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:30:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nixon, what a stand up guy.
OneSausage_at_a_time ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:30:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Johannes Gutenberg- paved the way for the spreading of ideas through the printing press. I could not even begin to say how under appreciated this man is.
jarchack ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:21:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I actually knew this but didn't remember it until I saw your post
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:31:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
William tyndale
cousinshit ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:31:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Papa Gene Ween. Up on the hill, the boognish shall rise again
xgaspari ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:33:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
John Harington provided us the flushing toilet.
cgenebrewer ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:55:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And we all sit on it the wrong way.
desrevermAi ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:33:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Westinghouse. The guy was amazing to his employees and to people in general. He used to walk his employee to the patent office so they could claim the rights to their design. In contrast, Edison claimed all of his employee's designs and patented them for himself. Just an example from this documentary, but the whole thing is worth a watch.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8BUpF__h-IY
thedawn02 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:33:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
GREEN DEWITT!!!!!!!!!
(the second most successful empresario)
symbi0nt ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:33:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alfred Russel Wallace
CaptainLawyerDude ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:33:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I suspect it will be someone who doesn't have a Wikipedia page.
sanfrancisco69er ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:34:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ish Smith
LiNingRacket ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:37:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Too bad he couldn't give 76ers the win.
sanfrancisco69er ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:42:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
he will
am0x ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:35:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
How many times you think Tesla will be mentioned?
ngrg ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:37:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler's speech editor, first ever grammar nazi
HeyzeusHChrist ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:38:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
hmmm, most likely Brendan Schaub, his inspirational quotes and podcasts have inspired an entire generation of young men to purchase t-shirts and pull america out of its recession
Argonov ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:39:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That guy that seems to have an infinite and detailed memory for all kinds of porn that can provide a link with just a small description from the guy requesting it.
LoganLePage ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:41:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
John Ball. From his Wikipedia:
He is said to have gained considerable fame as a roving preacherโa "hedge priest" without a parish or any link to the established order[2]โby expounding the doctrines of John Wycliffe, and especially by his insistence on social equality.[3] He delivered radical sermons in many places, including: Ashen, Billericay, Bocking, Braintree, Cressing Temple, Dedham, Coggeshall, Fobbing, Goldhanger, Great Baddow, Little Henny, Stisted and Waltham.[2]
His utterances brought him into conflict with Simon of Sudbury, Archbishop of Canterbury, and he was thrown in prison on several occasions. He also appears to have been excommunicated; owing to which, in 1366 it was forbidden for anyone to hear him preach.[3] These measures, however, did not moderate his opinions, nor diminish his popularity. He took to speaking to parishioners in churchyards after the official services in English, the "common tongue", not the Latin of the clergy, a radical political move. Ball was "using the bible against the church", very threatening to the status quo.[2
DannyPrefect23 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:44:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Adolf Hitler for killing Adolf Hitler.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:44:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug
cyb3rat ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:44:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nicolae Paulescu
Redarrow762 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:44:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
CTRL + F "your mom" = no results. I am disappoint.
Uncle_Sloppy ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:45:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There are some interesting people here. Too bad I won't remember them after I close this thread.
thedantasm ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:47:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
By answering this, I just changed his appreciation level. Sorry.
Chooseday ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:47:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Pretty much most people who have died in wars. We barely remember or respect the wars, let alone the individuals.
There's lots of people who people barely know about, for example the Chernobyl divers. I don't even know their names, I doubt most people know they existed.
There are so many cases, I could probably say the fireman that died today. I mean, one probably did in my country, he wouldn't get any glory in the news.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:48:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Hilleman
was an American microbiologist who specialized in vaccinology and developed over 40 vaccines, an unparalleled record of productivity.[1][2] Of the 14 vaccines routinely recommended in current vaccine schedules, he developed eight: those for measles, mumps, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, chickenpox, meningitis, pneumonia and Haemophilus influenzae bacteria.
He is credited with saving more lives than any other medical scientist of the 20th century.[3][4][5] Robert Gallo described him as "the most successful vaccinologist in history".[3]
Robert Gallo, co-discoverer of the virus that causes AIDS, once said "If I had to name a person who has done more for the benefit of human health, with less recognition than anyone else, it would be Maurice Hilleman. Maurice should be recognized as the most successful vaccinologist in history."
onus111 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:49:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
mrfudface ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:49:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Eric Schlosser and Gavin de Becker both Authors (Command & Control) and (Gift of Fear)
WolfNippleChips ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:49:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Otto Frederick Rohwedder, inventor of sliced bread...well the machine that slices bread at least.
hudsondr ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:53:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You are correct
Goblaz ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:51:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Clair Cameron Patterson He discovered the age of the earth. He also saved our civilization from dying of lead poisoning by fighting GM for decades to remove tetra ethyl lead as an anti-knock additive to gasoline.
thooru ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:51:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Joan Pujol Garcia AKA [Garbo]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Pujol_Garcia) He hated the Spanish fascists so much (and being catalan, duh) that he decided to become a spy for the allies. If not for him, Normandy would have been a complete failure.
wilusa ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:54:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
joseph henry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Henry
Pottski ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:55:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tribonian, who was charged by Justinian to create the Corpus Juris Civilis - the amalgamation of all the Roman Empire's laws into a 50-volume set. His work informed and was the benchmark for many society's laws heading forward.
Hat tip to Extra History who are fucking amazing.
lolis_for_Trump ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:57:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Trump
KebabGud ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:57:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Bail Prestor Organa
His action lead to the liberation of countless people from an oppressive regime
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:58:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Brahmagupta (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmagupta). This guy invented zero and no one practically has heard of him.
popejohnthebroiest ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:58:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
After doing an extensive research paper on him, I'll nominate Henry The Navigator as one of the most under-appreciated people in history. He didn't do much in terms of discovery in his time but he changed how Europe viewed the concept of maritime exploration. I'm on mobile right now but if anybody wants more info I'd be glad to expand on the topic.
gia_was_here ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:58:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Really want to make a Hitler joke here.
BakerAtNMSU ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:59:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
11th US President James K. Polk
kirsion ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:00:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't remember his name but he invented something to do with agricultural, corn, wheat or something that saved billions of lives.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:01:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Otto von Bismarck.
He DOMINATED Europe from about 1860 to about 1890, took the tiny as nation of Prussia and created the German Empire, and now anytime you say "Bismarck" people just think of a fucking ship.
TheShadowInTheCorner ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:01:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Stanislav Petrov - the guy who was on duty at a Soviet nuclear early-warning system who decided that an alarm that missiles were incoming was false (preventing retaliatory attacks).
One of those weird, quiet things of history I've never heard discussed too much. The guy held the fate of the world in his hands and made the right call.
iiZEze ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:01:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Manoj Bhargava. "Billions in Change."
Marino4K ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:05:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Such a good thread.
methlabrats ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:05:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:06:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Guru Gobind Singh
ConspirOC ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:07:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Clair Patterson saved the world and no one knows his name.
NiceCubed ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:07:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Lord Byng.
He was the reason the British weren't able to mindlessly sacrifice Canadians in the first world war and he dissolved parliament when the Mackenzie King was doing unconstitutional bullshit. It's funny that Harper pulled all the exact same garbage, but people don't understand that the governor general of Canada can actually do shit to help rather than complain about the party habits of baby seals.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:08:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Haven't checked the comments yet, will in a sec, bet you at least 30% say Nikola Tesla
TinyZoro ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:08:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Annie Bessant
Todd_Margret_sales ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:09:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Eli Whitney
Thepowerof3 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:10:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
John Williams
Bl0bbydude ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:10:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Vasili Arkhipov, a USSR submarine officer who refused to launch the missiles aboard his submarine.
Earthbound22 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:11:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Rich Evans
Coccodrilli ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:11:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Gertrude Elion American biochemist and pharmacologist.
"Gertrude Elion's accomplishments over the course of her long career as a chemist were tremendous. Among the many drugs she developed were the first chemotherapy for childhood leukemia, the immunosuppressant that made organ transplantation possible, the first effective anti-viral medication, and treatments for lupus, hepatitis, arthritis, gout, and other diseases."
Inventions:
Maculate ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:12:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And Roger Goodell still gave him a $25,000 fine
galeontiger ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:15:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me. Gold 3 league of legends. Sort of a big deal...
2cartalkers ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:15:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
moi. in lower case letters.
halfNelson89 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:17:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Rachel Carson, wrote the silent spring and was one of the biggest advocates ever for the environmental movement
LittleSqueesh ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:17:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jerry
theneublack ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:17:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
me
Cap_g ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:17:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The teacher that warned people at Columbine. William Sanders is truly a hero!
Dexx2 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:18:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My wife.
ChopHoopla ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:19:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alexander Hamilton.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:19:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me.
Sparky678348 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:21:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:21:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Bayard Rustin. He was responsible for planning out and writing most of the speeches for the march on washington, but because his homosexuality was criminalized at the time, he had to work behind the curtain to preserve the image of the civil rights movement.
rocknroll237 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:22:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alan Turing! Cracked the Enigma code (with his team too) and paved the way for the modern computer.
RollinDeepWithData ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:22:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Henry "hell hound" Rogers! What an interesting man! I would kill to find a biography on him. Working with Rockefeller while being best friends with mark twain. Really did a lot of the footwork for what modern corporations are today.
vaiserious ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:23:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me.
OtherGuyDude ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:24:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You.
zwolff94 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:25:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ruth Gruber who led the only US effort of Jewish refugees from Europe in WWII.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:27:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Bartolomฤ de las Casas
GrandRush ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:29:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What was the name of the guy that invented the radio? Does anyone even know?
shaggy9 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:34:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Marconi
killingittoday ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:33:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Telsa
bigmike7521 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:29:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dolph Lundgren
killingzoo ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:29:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Philo T. Farnsworth, Inventor of Television system, which were used in recording and broadcasting part of 1936 Berlin Olympic Games.
Most under attributed modern inventor, because he never graduated from college.
Most people never even heard of him.
He's also the inspiration for Futurama's Professor Farnsworth.
NewAndExistingUser ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:30:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Burlaug (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug) The man had saved in his lifetime an estimated 6 billion lives and because uninformed people believe that genetically modified plants are bad, he was hated. He is on the receiving end of anti GMO nutjobs because all of this was done in DuPont's name. I saw an interview with him in the early 2000's and he just sat there going "I can't understand why they hate me, my discovery stopped a famine in India and is only a temporary solution to a growing problem".
SandvichIsDone ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:30:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
James K Polk, he was president from 1845-1849.
When campaigning, his main promise was the annexation of Texas. After Mexico rejected the proposal, he led the Mexican-American War, giving the US Texas, along with most of today's American Southwest. He significantly reduced tariffs, and reached an agreement with the United Kingdom, earning the US its Oregon Territory. When at the end of his term, he decided not to run for re-election because he fulfilled all of his promises. This guy is the most badass president we've had, and no one remembers him.
As if he wasn't badass enough, he underwent surgery when he was 17 to remove urinary stones, with only brandy as an anesthetic. The surgery was successful, but left him sterile, unfortunately removing whatever God-like DNA he possessed from the gene pool.
Cherokeekid ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:31:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fritz haber
AlexJohnsonSays ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:33:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
People who put up with random bullshit comments and dig to find something worth bringing to the worlds attention. That funny comment which is also top comment? It wouldn't be top comment were it not for a couple hundred unappreciated redditors.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:33:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Stalin Ayylmao
GrizzlyOwns ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:33:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Definitely Nikola Tesla
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:33:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Chuck Testa
Fishocopter ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:33:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Shaun Fensom
sydiot ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:33:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your mother.
Dvinn_LCrit ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:33:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your mother.
WILLingtonegotiate ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:34:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
James Blunt... stopped WWIII (with help)
Dvinn_LCrit ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:36:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Larry Linville. Almost everyone in the world sees you as Frank Burns.
minerlj ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:37:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tim Berners-Lee
MrsJsMom ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:38:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jimmy Carter
hrisskarr ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:39:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikolai Tesla, poor man.
highlyannoyed1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:39:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Rosalind Franklin
mooneyse ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:42:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You are, /u/Lucybu!
harry_nash ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:43:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nicolas Lรฉonard Sadi Carnot
theysayirock ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:44:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The person that pressed the bullet that went through Hitler's skull
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:47:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He committed suicide.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:47:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The trash man/woman. Dirty stinky job. But absolutely vital. I think many take them for granted.
iseethoughtcops ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:49:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Samuel Adams...the true father of the American Revolution. The developed world had a nice run for over two centuries. European powers had to compete in the freedom and opportunity market or lose their citizens.
caseym4 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:49:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me
stand_and_fight_ltd ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:50:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola tesla
Oddgit ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:51:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
John O'Sullivan. The Guy who is credited with inventing Wifi
Rootsinsky ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:51:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Pontius Pilate. Without him we would be down one super friend.
Genutz ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:53:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The cave person who invented the wheel
kaihau ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:53:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me
aaronwanders ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:54:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Maggie Simpson
theblindking ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:54:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me
JokeDeity ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:56:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No me.
McMurry ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:56:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Norman Borlang.
If you eat food tonight there is a good chance that it is a direct result of this mans work.
To quote his wikipedia entry: Borlaug is often credited with saving over a billion people worldwide from starvation.[11] He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 in recognition of his contributions to world peace through increasing food supply.
RuXXX0r ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:57:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Guglielmo Marconi
Darkben ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:57:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The guy who killed Hitler
beautydeficient ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:01:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So Hitler himself?
Darkben ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:02:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It was vaguely sarcastic
beautydeficient ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:05:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ah, sorry about that!
ImALittleCrackpot ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:57:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The inventor of screw threads.
Tattered ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:59:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
To me, my father. Without whom I wouldn't be posting in this thread.
ReturnedAndReported ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:59:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You'll never know.
Gway22 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:00:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeezus
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:01:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me of course
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:01:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
me
Biograde ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:02:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me
Sir_Shitlord_focker ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:03:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I am
steenwear ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:03:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your parents ... because without them you wouldn't be part of history :)
ottos ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:04:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Winston Churchill
Yes, he is given a lot of credit but nearly the extent that he deserves. He coulda packed it in and given in to the Germans. Yet, he was relentless in leading his own country's defiance as well as motivating others to do the same.
cantcountnoaccount ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:04:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Percy Lavon Julian
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Lavon_Julian
One of the first black chemists to receive a PhD in the US. He created commercially viable processes for synthesizing progesterone, testosterone, cortisol, and other hormones, mainly from plants. without which we would not have the birth control pills, cortisone, or fertility treatments. He also created a firefighting foam that save thousands of lives in WW2. And basically no one knows his name.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:05:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wapinator
LeibnizIntegralKeks ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:05:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ignaz Semmelweiss (His last name means the white inner part of a bun) was ridiculed and died by beating in a mental hospital, but if anyone had listened to him he would have saved countless lives.
conspirato ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:08:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Russian who saved the world https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov
"Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov (Russian: ะกัะฐะฝะธัะปะฐฬะฒ ะะฒะณัะฐฬัะพะฒะธั ะะตััะพฬะฒ; born 1939 in Vladivostok[1]) is a retired lieutenant colonel of the Soviet Air Defence Forces. On September 26, 1983, just three weeks after the Soviet military had shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, Petrov was the duty officer at the command center for the Oko nuclear early-warning system when the system reported that a missile, followed by another one and then up to five more, were being launched from the United States. Petrov judged the report to be a false alarm,[2] and his decision is credited with having prevented an erroneous retaliatory nuclear attack on the United States and its NATO allies that could have resulted in large-scale nuclear war. Investigation later confirmed that the satellite warning system had indeed malfunctioned"
Ratiasu ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:09:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ratiasu
Superexploder ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:09:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Borte, first empress of the Mongol empire, Genghis Khan's widow. Arguably the most powerful woman in history and very little is know about her.
feebeeboofay ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:09:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My vote would be for Mary Seacole
The first time I heard of her was on Horrible Histories. It's a kid's show but it's funny and educational. Her wiki is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Seacole
hbread ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:10:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tesla.
iloveredditsohard ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:12:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Rodney Dangerfield
aqua_zesty_man ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:12:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The person or persons who invented the idea of writing things down. They literally made recorded history.
myopinionsdontmatter ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:12:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
James K. Polk did some important stuff in his 4 years in office. He's been called the least known consequential president. He got us the American Southwest and Oregon territory, helped open some important institutions and monuments (Smithsonian Institute, Washington Monument), started postage stamps
robinkooli ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:14:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Adolf
namesetter ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:15:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
i must admit there is alot of people here being mentioned that I never heard of.
Techno_Bacon ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:16:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm gonna say one who's not a historical figure or anything but still pretty fucking under appreciated until the past few years.
Bill Finger, THE creator of Batman.
shpider ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:16:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My Mother, if you ask her...
locotxwork ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:18:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That was funny! Wish my mom was alive though.
shpider ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:23:29 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Aaand now I'm sad...
locotxwork ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:31:44 on January 18, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The moment something is gone is the exact moment you realize how much you underappreciated it.
AbsolutionSyndrome ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:16:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That one Russian lieutenant or some such rank that refused to launch a nuclear strike even though their equipment said the US had already attacked, thus preventing real life Fallout 4.
Wait a second... That son of a bitch
sklorbit ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:17:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Op
PCpolice911 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:17:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jefferson Davis.
TChuff ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:18:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The guy who invented the remote.
laney_bangor ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:19:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
thomas paine. his thought is a cornerstone of considering political freedom as a human 'right' and defending the american and french revolutions, he was disrespected and neglected by the American government who didnt want to anger the ungrateful french government that jailed him. he was a public and outspoken diest (unlike jefferson) and also questioned our treatment of animals. He was awesome and weirdly enough was friends with william blake...his philosophical opposite, but god they must have had amazing conversations.
Cognito_Ergo_Sum ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:20:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think we dont know who the truely underappreciated person is.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:20:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me. Silently writes code for the project. Everything good is project management , everything wrong is my fault .
memorasus ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:49:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me. I get this. The frustration hurts
zappafan420 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:21:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Clearly it is someone we have never heard of.
silentninjabob1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:21:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Columbus
/s
man-of-God-1023 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:22:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jesus
donaldtrumptwat ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:23:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tommy Flowers, the guy who built Colossus in 1943 . This machine decoded Hitler's toughest coded messages.
DetectorOfCirclejerk ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:23:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The woman who invented computer coding. So underrated I forgot her name..... :(
Dolentrean ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:24:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
According to my psycho mom, her.
Cpt_seal_clubber ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:24:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The soviet launch control officer, who disobeyed direct orders to launch ICBMs, after a detector malfunction.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:25:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
OP moms, considering how freely they've serviced the needs of so many million discussion board users.
kerowax ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:26:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla
SirWaldenIII ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:28:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alan Rickman
MoonCheeseAlpha ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:28:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
me
phailanx ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:28:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Stanislav Petrov.
Soviet officer who prevented a potential nuclear exchange with the US by gambling that the launch detection systems may have malfunctioned.
Feather_In_The_Wind ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:29:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yo Mama
admiral_brunch ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:29:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ingo Potrykus
rapeasaurus_rex ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:29:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Adolf Hitler...the man who killed Adolf Hitler
AmberGiraffe ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:30:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug, a man who was credited with saving over a billion lives from starvation. He recieved many notable rewards but he isn't a name you hear often despite saving a tremendous amount of people. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug
brianobb ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:32:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Leopold Leopoldovich of course !
darthbone ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:32:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Edmond Halley. Without him, Isaac Newton may never have been published and may never have done anything significant, and he did it pretty much out of pure altruism.
Chlemtil ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:32:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Everyone is constantly talking shit about the guy who killed Hitler... But I think that's a pretty appreciable feat!
thebadkangaroo ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:32:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Martha Nelson Thomas, who was the true artist behind the invention of the 'Cabbage Patch Kids' dolls. She had her idea stolen as an invention by Xavier Roberts, who named them Cabbage Patch kids.
All the feminists in history. Such as Susan B. Anthony, and many others. And all the women who created inventions or founded other things. Whom we don't know about, because they had to let their husbands or other men take credit for it. Because women were not allowed to invent things or be credited as founders, in those times.
Ritty34 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:33:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Kevin Vickers is a recent hero that comes to mind. He was a canadian ex-cop (mountie) and is the current Sergeant-at-Arms. When there was a terrorist attack on the Canadian parliament building he killed the terrorist by jumping horizontally around the pillar that the guy was hiding behind and shot him in the head mid-air.
QWERTY-POIUYT1234 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:33:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ottmar Mergenthaler. Everyone remembers that Gutenburg invented movable type(1439). For centuries, everything printed used movable type, and things were great. However the thing with movable type is that it has to be washed and put back in the job case, so the typesetter could use it again. Newspapers limits were to about ten pages per publication. Until Mergenthaler invented the linotype machine in 1884. Suddenly, 100 page newspapers were possible, and the TYPES of information you could print were limitless. Newspapers started printing sports, fashions, gossip columns, all the areas of interest that made papers sell.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottmar_Mergenthaler
HarveyMushman72 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:33:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Johannes Gutenberg.
makeinstall ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:34:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Two guys: Mark Hollis & Tim Friese-Greene.
They were the main guys behind the later Talk Talk albums, and every time I listen to them, they save my life.
No-one knows how important they are for this. They are probably completely unaware of their role in this so even they don't know how underground they are.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:34:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Two Words: Adolf Albin
iHaveAgency ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:35:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Emmy Noether, mathematician who made a huge contribution to theoretical physics with her discovery that symmetries in physics are associated with conserved entities: translational symmetries correspond with Conservation of Momentum, rotational symmetries with Conservation of angular momentum, temporal symmetries with Conservation of Mass-Energy. An important accomplishment.
Perhaps not the most under-appreciated, but very much worthy of a mention. She is not just under-appreciated now, she was under-appreciated in her own time too. Because she was a woman. And a Jew.
Imo, the 'real' answer is Norman Borlaug, Father of the Green Revolution. And another honourable mention to David Gilmore, guitarist. And Keith Emerson, music synthesizer programmer-player.
AnOK-ishPerson ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:36:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
RemindMe!
memorasus ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:46:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Might want to edit to fix the spelling so you actually get reminded
g0atmeal ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:36:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me. I'm perfect but no one seems to realize it.
ThrowawayMDid ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:37:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alexander Hamilton
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:02:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
ThrowawayMDid ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:21:29 on January 21, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Lol, I seriously did not know that
diet_pepsi_bottle ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:37:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Michael Faraday
Koolaidguy541 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:37:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your mom...
Galdor04 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:38:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me
irsmart2 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:45:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No it's me
pickle_inspector ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:38:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The guy who invented the gas tank arrow on your car dashboard.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:40:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jose Canseco says its your mom. He's so silly.
badwhiskey63 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:41:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The guy who first put wheels on luggage. None of us even know his or her name!
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:41:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler
Milwaukee33 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:42:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Rodney dangerfield
iamsexycheese ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:43:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sigmund Freud.
BillyBobJr304 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:43:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sergio Busquets
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:45:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
For American history, I think Henry Clay, he was known as the "great compromiser" since he arranged many agreements in the American government. He busted his as all the way to his death. Unfortunately his runs for president weren't successful.
HeartwarmingLies ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:45:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Someone who no one has ever heard of.
PunLateToTheParty ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:45:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla. The fact that he isn't the top person on this list is a testament to how under appreciated he is. Brilliant man who decided that his life was better spent unlocking the mysteries of science than it was having sex. The man died a virgin so that he could bring you the technology required to create the smart phones that you use basically just to get laid.Oh and he also predicted future of smart phones in 1926. Look him up if that makes you curious at all.
lykwdyfunk ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:45:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dr. Barry Marshall- drank a petri dish full of Helicobacter Pylori to prove that Ulcers are not caused by VooDoo.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Marshall
goosecha ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:46:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
John Adams. The biography by McCullough opened my eyes.
Katayani108 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:46:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla whom without your wireless technology may not even exist and who would have died on the street if it weren't for Mark Twain footing his hotel bill. Or if we are talking distant history I'd say Emperor Ashoka. http://www.cs.colostate.edu/~malaiya/ashoka.html
S2Slayer ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:46:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Really no one says any thing about Nikola Tesla again? Dude invented the electricity we use and barely got payed.
KossuthInBezantur ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:48:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me.
Phobos95 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:48:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I can't link to it right now because I'm on mobile and i might have some misinformation, but the three men who waded through a flooded sections of the Chernobyl plant to seal the reactor. They knew what their fate was when they dove in. A horrible, painful death, where the flesh on their legs "fell off like a loose sock". And if they hadn't done that, the figurative and literal fallout would have been even more catastrophic.
Musaks ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:49:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Someone we don't know of i guess ;)
schlitzngigglz ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:49:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla
bobbyj01 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:49:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:49:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Mothers.
BurntRice ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:49:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Zoroaster. Apparently this is one of the earliest of the known prophets, or enlightened beings. A true mark of what is to come for man, Zoroaster is thought to be the origin of the Golden Rule: "Treat others as you would yourself." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroastrianism
DelirivmCordia2024 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:49:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
John Brown.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:53:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Vasili Arkhipov. Not even debatable. Prevented Nuclear war.
MrBunta420 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:55:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Bob Snodgrass. Anybody that knows who this man is might agree.
pkmnBlue ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:56:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Actually this guy does great video essays on these kind of big questions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8aeNURHx3Q
Video on the unluckiest person in history
ZooNos ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:58:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Vasili Arkhipov, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Arkhipov he stopped nuclear war. pretty cool dude
TheCateran ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:59:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not one person, but all the people who contributed to showing that asepsia is a basic requirement for surgical intervention. We tend to think that science advances thanks to the flashes of brilliance (Alexander Fleming) that change things, but it really is a lot of people coming to the same conclusion at the same time - this one must have saved more lives than anything else.
andreasbeer1981 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:59:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your mom
JeSuisYoungThug ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:59:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Henrietta Lacks. The woman who's cells were responsible for countless medical breakthroughs, vaccines, and cures. Her cells were the first human cells to be cloned, and were widely distributed to hospitals and universities all over the world. For decades they were only referred to as "HeLa" cells, and only a handful of people ever knew who they came from.
"The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot is a great read.
Paige_Railstone ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:00:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Maurice Hilleman He is credited with saving more lives than any other medical scientist of the 20th century, but seems to be largely forgotten.
I was in a position to work closely with a hospital in Miles City when they were considering getting a statue, but they didn't know who or what it should be about. When I suggested Hilleman, no one on the board knew who he was. This was in his home town!
bielmanm ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:00:22 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
JUDAS
HGF88 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:03:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah. Fuck Christians.
Rosinante84 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:01:15 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I always felt that Alfred Russel Wallace was a bit underappreciated and eclipsed by Darwin
Barefoot_J ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:01:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and his assassination, basically caused world War 1, which has shaped our world as we know it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Archduke_Franz_Ferdinand_of_Austria
incogneetto ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:01:56 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me
sjpicci ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:01:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me. Trust me. It's me.
bvanderb ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:02:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Judas Iscariot.
HGF88 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:02:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Charlemagne and teachers, most of the time.
NeuroRush ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:03:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Said no one ever
HGF88 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:20:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
About Charlemagne or about teachers?
Also, look up Charles "The Hammer" Martell.
BoilerMaker36 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:03:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I have a feeling in a few years win or lose, which it's honestly looking like neither will win. But Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders running in this election will end up changing the face of American Politics forever. People disagree with both of their policies to the point of hatred, but I have a feeling 4,8,12,16 years from now what they are doing this election with their outreach to the masses will be mimicked.
robotfoodab ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:03:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Every poor soldier who was ever ordered to attack the Theodosian Walls of Constantinople.
Aarmed ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:04:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That person won't make this list
Bam22506 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:05:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Euler
Lord_Punchings ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:05:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Hip Priest.
1stmarauder ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:06:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Professor from Gilligan's Island. Without him there would have only been like one or two episodes before they all died.
awesome_jawsome ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:07:06 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oliver Heaviside. A lot of people may have heard of Maxwell's Equations, but if you've ever done any electrical engineering, you've used Heaviside's versions of them. Also coined the terms:
admittance (December 1887); conductance (September 1885); electret for the electric analogue of a permanent magnet, or, in other words, any substance that exhibits a quasi-permanent electric polarization (e.g. ferroelectric); impedance (July 1886); inductance (February 1886); permeability (September 1885); permittance (later susceptance; June 1887); reluctance (May 1888).
GaryNOVA ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:07:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me
Altitude-Sickness ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:08:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jesus
SoggySneaker ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:08:33 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
William Taft, he was a perfect embodiment of a Robber Baron. It was seriously like he was a cartoon rendition of one. A living comic villian.
TheCrownPrinceOtaku ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:08:38 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Attila the Hun. With out him we'd be overpopulated to an even more ridiculous degree.
Tfsr92 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:09:02 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Scott Haplin.
During one of The Who's tours, their drummer Keith Moon (notorious for getting belligerently drunk all of the time), passed out on his drum set in the middle of a show. The singer went to the front of the stage and said "Does anyone know how to play drums?" A bunch of kids pointed at Scott Haplin and they got him on stage. He lived every fan's dream and finished the set with The Who.
There's a video of it online somewhere. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scot_Halpin
gyronikeleg ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:09:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
probably someone you havent heard of
agoniee ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:11:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Agoniee.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:11:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
if you ask /r/worldnews right now they'd probably say Karadzic and/or Hitler.
still wondering what the fuck happened to that sub.
ShooTa666 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:12:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
mr bailey - the designer of the modern plane - from which "probably" everyone will have either used or felt its work on wood.
DieselFuel1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:12:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Louis Theroux - bringing hours of entertainment and education for the masses to watch covering different topics all over the world!
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:13:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Laura Secort, the world would be so much different if it weren't for her one choice to run and warn some guys.
mike7654 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:13:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Rico from Just Cause
dondox ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:14:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My mother in law apparently.
dontfeedthecode ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:18:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My wife, apparently.
MistyBlue0804 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:21:00 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jane Goodall - read about her amazing life and work here: http://www.janegoodall.org.uk
Bcwolf1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:22:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me
a_distant_ship_smoke ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:22:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Irena Sendler. She was a Polish nurse and social worker who served in the Polish Underground in German-occupied Warsaw during World War II, and was head of the children's section of ลปegota,the Polish Council to Aid Jews which was active from 1942 to 1945.
Assisted by other ลปegota members, Sendler smuggled approximately 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto and then provided them with false identity documents and shelter outside the Ghetto, saving those children from the Holocaust. With the exception of diplomats who issued visas to help Jews flee Nazi-occupied Europe, Sendler saved more Jews than any other individual during the Holocaust.
The German occupiers eventually discovered her activities and she was arrested by the Gestapo, tortured, and sentenced to death, but she managed to evade execution and survive the war. In 1965, Sendler was recognised by the State of Israel as Righteous among the Nations. Late in life she was awarded the Order of the White Eagle, Poland's highest honor, for her wartime humanitarian efforts.
acr1d ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:23:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Black Jesus. They go around talking about all the great stuff white Jesus did but black Jesus did the same stuff.
acr1d ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:23:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Black Jesus. They go around talking about all the great stuff white Jesus did but black Jesus did the same stuff.
DinnerMilk ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:25:22 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler killed Hitler so I would say hes probably rather under-appreciated in that aspect.
theoldsinatra ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:25:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I would tell you, but you've never heard of him.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:26:15 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch two German chemists who developed the Haber process which is used to produce nitrogen fertilizer without which has allowed billions of people to not starve.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process
Also Norman Ernest Borlaug an American biologist, known as "the father of the Green Revolution" who introduced modern farming methods to India, Pakistan and Mexico saving over a billion lives.
Lem01 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:26:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The washing machine inventor.
TRASHPANDASPOKESMAN ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:27:01 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me
Dontshoottherabbit ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:27:56 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My mum thinks I'm pretty cool
Platos_one-hitter ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:28:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Whoever it was that invented the air conditioner
dark2400 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:28:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your mom.
TerranTank ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:29:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Mom. My mom. Your mom. All the moms.
Sete_Sois ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:35:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
da real MVP!
shroomenheimer ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:29:22 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The world will never know.
GRat9717 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:32:05 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ken Thompson.
DriblyRedwyne ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:32:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Leon Trotsy
Ewics ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:34:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Barrack Obama.
Fabtacular1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:34:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Single mothers of color.
HOLLA IF YOU HEAR ME!
xSessionSx ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:34:58 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
OP. That is all.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:35:01 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
OP's mom.
metaasmo ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:35:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me.
Odbdb ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:36:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, me of course.
bitwork ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:37:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Satoshi Nakamoto
WtvrNC ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:37:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Henry Wallace.
What could've been?
King-of-Prussia ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:39:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Vasili Arkhipov more or less (from my understanding), prevented all-out nuclear war from being accidentally triggered.
maxirabbit ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:39:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Whoever put the first set of wheels on luggage.
โIt was one of my best ideas,โ Bernard D. Sadow said the other day. Mr. Sadow, who was at that time a vice president at a Massachusetts company that made luggage and coats, is credited with inventing rolling luggage 40 years.
themosquito ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:40:56 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Whoever invented the pen. Or ink, I guess?
BellyButtonSweat ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:41:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Apparently my mom to hear her tell about it.
Split-Nipple ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:41:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Started donating in 1954, saved an estimated 2.4 million babies, donated for 45 years and could'nt have one year?
alucard971 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:41:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The OP of a comment that gets 0 upvotes and someone else posts the same comment hours later and it skyrockets to 2000.
mitchtitties ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:42:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We don't know who they are.
Hotspur_910 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:43:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He's started to pick up a bit of steam with Wolf Hall but Thomas Cromwell was a crucial player in the development of a centralized power in England, not to mention Protestantism.
tstorm004 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:44:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Pontus Pilot.
How else would Christianity exist if no one killed their Messiah?
artur_arturovich ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:44:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My dad
03901098109 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:45:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me...
kbuis ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:45:12 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The brave soul who collects all of these stories to repost them individually at /r/todayilearned over the next three weeks.
blandyolkdled ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:46:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Rick Astley not joking
WaltOne83 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:47:15 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Rosalind Franklin: Franklin was responsible for much of the research and discovery work that led to the understanding of the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA. The story of DNA is a tale of competition and intrigue, told one way in James Watson's book The Double Helix, and quite another in Anne Sayre's study, Rosalind Franklin and DNA. James Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins received a Nobel Prize for the double-helix model of DNA in 1962, four years after Franklin's death at age 37 from ovarian cancer.
Stabintheface ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:47:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
so far? me. To my knowledge anyhow.
skybug12 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:48:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
A couple of years ago I would have said Tesla. the modern world would not exist without him.
Now that he is getting recognition, I am going to say the guy who canceled Firefly. The cancellation sucked, but now we have an example of a perfect show. It didn't go on long enough to decline in quality. Seeing that show drag on past its expiration date would have been devastating.
Sks44 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:49:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Father Hugh O'Flaherty. Saved thousands of people in WW2 and had a bounty on his head from the Nazis. After the war, he frequently visited the SS officer who hunted him in prison and forgave him.
Djinnomad ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:49:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
R. Buckminster Fuller. Aside from his work on geodesics and other inventions, his world philosophy is underestimated and full of new ideas or new perspective on age old ideas.
acideath ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:49:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alexander Flemming
JohnCarpenterLives ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:52:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Hammer. How quickly we forget.
BlitzReddit ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:53:06 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
your mother
businessmanbob ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:53:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov
Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov didn't follow orders and send nukes over too us. I think they put him in a gulag or something
I like that this was posted two down from and i'm an idiot.
steve582 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:56:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me
tcoop6231 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:59:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Herbert Hoover.
Seriously. He did a lot more good stuff than people give him credit for.
orgazm_donor ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:07:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Was he the one that invented the vacuum cleaner, or the one that built the dam? :)
tcoop6231 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:35:22 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Prior to the Great Depression, he was best known as a competent technocrat and humanitarian.
He lead relief efforts after the First World War and in the Ukraine in the early 1920s.
He saved millions of lives and people only remember him as a bumbling idiot who caused the Great Depression. It's a real shame.
xELITExGAMESTER ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:00:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Myself
SpaceManSpiffy29 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:00:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Everyone using the internet right now, so all of you, my father says your welcome. If anyone knows about the infrastructure of the internet in the mid 90s, you know it was controlled by Bell. My father was a major consultant for a company called Covad Communications. They are the reason we have the internet in all its forms today.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:00:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me of courst
kayserasarah ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:01:49 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The dude who invented the wheel.
uspatrick ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:01:52 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alexander Hamilton
kittenfordinner ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:02:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
the guy who invented the shipping container. That has changed the way we ship, which has changed the way we live as much or more than most people ever could.
nullresponder ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:02:12 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Joseph Lister--antiseptic is pretty cool
djphlange ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:05:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
me
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:05:33 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Aristides de Sousa Mendes, the "portuguese Schindler". Nowadays, if you ask around about him in his own country, only a few will know who he is, but he saved thousands of lives.
BigTimeDataNerd ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:06:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Im going to go with a group here and say the human mother.
somethingnobodyknows ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:06:29 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Stanislav Petrov who dosnt gave the starting comand for russian atom missals in cold war as computers said that there was a missal starting in the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov
Widdlywaah ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:07:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My cubemate. No one ever thanks him for all the great shit he does. I don't know what great shit he's referring to, but he seems pretty adamant.
Dvart ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:08:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No one will ever know.
Phantom471 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:08:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Who's that guy that invented penicillin? I guess he didn't do much. He just casually saved millions of people around the world and is still saving more people. You know, nothing much. He only extended our lifespans by like twenty years.
Alexander Fleming
Casteway ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:09:35 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Whoever invented a flushable toilet. People literally used to throw their shit out the window at one point.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:14:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sir Thomas Crapper
Casteway ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:27:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Indeed!
ctfbbuck ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:09:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Whoever invented yoga pants.
jimdandy19 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:10:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me, I'm awesome and nobody ever gives me any money.
oitoitoi ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:10:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Will be buried but Fritz Haber
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Haber
Invented the process for creating ammonia, which allowed fertiliser production. Its estimated over half the people alive today are because of him.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:14:22 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Revolutionized chemical warfare.
Invented zyklon A, precursor to zyklon B.
megatronismydaddy ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:10:49 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me.
byebye247 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:11:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Leonardo Dicaprio up until last week.
PHAT_BOOTY ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:15:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The drummer of any band.
Goumbush ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:16:06 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Andrew Jackson. Just look him up, you have google.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:18:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Vasili Arkhipov. The man is the reason the Cuban Missile Crisis didn't lead to nuclear destruction of US and Russia
jayfraytay ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:18:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Certainly nobody any of us have ever heard of.
Legroom2368 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:21:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Mary Seacole.
A black woman, born in Jamaica, went over to the Crimea during the Crimean war, set up a hospital behind the front lines and saved countless lives without any state financial support. She arguably did more for nursing as a profession than anyone else. And yet, you never stop hearing about Florence Nightingale, and i bet the vast majority of you have never heard of her.
Osiris1636 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:21:49 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me!
loladin1337 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:22:12 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Kanye West
the_dark_apostle ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:22:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
me
yeahdefinitelynot ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:23:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I
SaintBaconator ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:23:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me
smoresahoy ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:24:17 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That dude in India that just plants trees for the past 30 years
th3Drizzl3 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:24:28 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me.
Riddlecule ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:24:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me
ihateslowdrivers ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:24:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Carrier.
sammaster9 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:27:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Mother of Special Forces, The Boss. She single handedly stopped the cold war from becoming world war 3. But by doing this she is remembered in the US as a traitor, and in Russia as a monster who unleashed a nuclear catastrophe.
The4thRabbitt ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:27:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That guy who invented the nitrogen thing with farming, and is credited with saving like over a billion lives. That fact that I don't know his name, proves my point.
lilpopjim0 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:28:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Leonardo DiCaprio as he hasn't got an Oscar.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:29:58 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
me
Garkaaa ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:30:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me, I'm great.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:30:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
The Darwinian Santa that introduced the human vagina into the gene pool.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:30:56 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The unnamed railroad engineers who raced ahead of the Johnstown Flood to give advance warning.
If you're up that way, visit the dam site and museum. It's still haunting to see where the dam finally gave way.
Nerding2much ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:32:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We don't know, no one has ever mentioned them.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:38:17 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Donnie Darko hit this one on the head for me; Joseph Lister.
R_oner ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:39:00 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My wife supposedly
KizziV ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:39:17 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I would say not a person, but the group of people's who's job it is to document these findings for publication.
Jonnycd4 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:41:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alan Turing.
FastSloth6 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:41:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Slaves.
SemmBall ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:41:56 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me.
probabilitydoughnut ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:42:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Vasili Arkhipov was a Russian submarine officer who basically averted WWIII. Few people have any idea he existed.
megametallimaiden ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:42:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Probably someone so unrecognised that their name literally appears are no records anywhere despite being really important
xylotism ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:44:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me.
Do you have any idea how absolutely unbelievably amazing I am?
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:44:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wat Tyler, who led a peasants' revolt in England in the 14th century.
Kurbz ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:46:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
James K. Polk
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:46:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler, duh.
Reader011090 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:48:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Maurice Hilleman
Hilleman has produced a mind-boggling number of fundamental breakthroughs. He is the inventor of more than 40 vaccines, including those that prevent measles, mumps, rubella, Haemophilus influenzae type b, hepatitis A, hepatitis B and chickenpox.
BigBoats21 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:48:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Vicki Soto. Don't know if anyone mentioned her, but after growing up just a few miles from her in this urban environment, for her to have a heart like that, a true hero she is.
InfO_is_CRITICAL ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:48:22 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The person figured out how to master fire...... Easily
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:48:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me
Linium ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:49:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug.
Dankest_Of_MayMays ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:49:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
parents
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:49:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
OP's mom.
Seriously, OP. Call your mom.
hardrocker61 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:50:05 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My mom
bob_gnarly ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:52:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Times person of the year in 2006
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:52:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Probably late to the game, but Dan Bricklin who invented the computer spreadsheet which became known as VisiCalc. He never made a penny off it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Bricklin
wrameerez ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:52:38 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Themistocles
Stopped Persian invasion with otherworldly intelligence and skill. Enabled the Western world to exist as we know it.
iFcknDareU ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:53:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Whoever let the dogs out. He/she inspired a history making song.
wlight ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:53:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
/u/DO_U_EVN_SPAGHETTI
he actually tried all of those things on rice.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:54:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Lebron James
rainbowplasmacannon ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:55:52 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The guy who invented toilet paper
KybonTheRenegade ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:56:49 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
how exactly are we supposed to know? if theyre really so underappriciated, we would have never heard of them
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:57:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
arnold schwarzenegger
Badger-Actual ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:58:06 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Benedict Arnold.
Badfickle ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:58:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You will never know because nobody remembers their name.
T4blespoon ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:00:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There is no way to know the real answer to this question.
RandoRanger ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 02:06:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes there is. It is Tesla
bestwrapperalive ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:00:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I AM
guildedlotus ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:05:02 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Who ever made the ability to rewind a show, just that action itself. Ever try to watch a controversial program like a presidential debate, people wanna weight in . but Jesus Christ , if someone caughs you feel like you missed half the damn program.
raydialseeker ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 02:06:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Rip grammar.
Neuermann ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:07:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Mothers, if you ask them that is.
CommanderGustav ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:07:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alexander Hamilton!
nixtunes ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:13:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Elizabeth J. Graham!
She was the first black woman to refuse to get off the public transportation. After she hoped on, she was asked to get off, at which point she refused. The driver ended up letting her stay on, but then other white patrons refused to get on. Later on President Chester, whom had taken on her case made a law forbidding drivers, companies and police from kicking out "clean, well behaved, and sober black patrons, free of disease."
Pretty freaking incredible if you ask me!
justinbieberfan42 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:13:22 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dez nutz
Relevant_Truth ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:13:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The man that invented the condom.
Not even talking about the modern mass produced ones.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:14:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me
urmomsballs ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:15:02 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alan Turing
Striedelhuz ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:15:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You. ;)
FreshPrince3430 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:17:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
According to my mom, my mom.
GENTLEMANxJACK ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:17:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Henrietta Lacks. The first know human with an immortal cell line, the HeLa line.
MagnusTheGreat ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:17:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug.
He has almost singlehandedly saved over 1 billion human lives. Yes, that's a billion, with a B. Sure, he got a Nobel Peace prize in 1970, but there is so little discussion about him. He is basically responsible for 1/7th of the world being alive today.
We could praise him all we want, have parades all year round for him and he would still be the most underappreciated person in history, simply because of how amazing his work was.
What he discovered is on par with the Steam engine and controlling fire.
im_L_Lawliet ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:18:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Peter Norman, he provided the gloves that were raised in the 1968 Olympics. He lost his medals and died never having gotten them back.
tomtreebow32 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:18:22 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me
MisterMaury ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:19:00 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Without a doubt: Maurice Hilleman
Of the 14 vaccines routinely recommended in current vaccine schedules, he developed eight: those for measles, mumps, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, chickenpox, meningitis, pneumonia and Haemophilus influenzae bacteria. He is credited with saving more lives than any other medical scientist of the 20th century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Hilleman
Foxeye56 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:19:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Larry...
My point exactly
harveytent ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:19:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
grizzly adams?
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:19:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dennis Ritchie. The man who created UNIX and C, things that changed the way we used computers forever. When he died, few people cared because they were too busy mourning the death of Steve Jobs...
xTunaFunTimex ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:21:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I know I'm late to the party but toussaint louverture.
He lead the Haitian revolution that caused Napoleon to abandon his new word holdings, offering the Louisiana territory for purchase to Jefferson, which spawned the Manifest Destiny doctrine. Not many really recognize how much Americas future changed because of this. 8000+ comments apologies if this was brought up.
mrclean808 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:21:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thomas Crapper, the guy who helped popularize the toilet and invented the ballcock.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Crapper
TeacherManCT ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:23:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
William "The Hammer" Martell. He stopped the Muslim conquest of Europe in 732. There wasn't really anyone else in Europe with an army that could have stopped them. Had he not won, it would likely have been an end to Christianity.
steveysaurus ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:25:49 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Maurice Hilleman. Invented a lot of vaccines that have saved countless lives.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:25:58 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me.
chanceeypants ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:26:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Clair Patterson. He saved us from leaded gasoline. Or good old Nikolai but I'm sure he's in here somewhere
flying_fuck ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:26:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me
BlankSmitty ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:27:27 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That Russian guy who didn't launch the nukes?
zosozero ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:27:58 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Raphael Lemkin. The guy invented the term "genocide" and spent his life arguing for genocide to be labeled as an international crime. Imagine the world before we had a term or definition for this concept, the world during WW2. Watch "Watchers of the Sky" for better information.
YNot1989 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:30:28 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
John Aaron. There are only two names you ever need to memorize when talking about NASA mission control. The first is Flight Director Gene Kranz, the second is John Aaron.
momster ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:30:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That would be me.
AerospaceGroupie ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:32:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Michael Collins.
Dustin_00 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:35:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My mother.
Solution_9_ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:36:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
inb4Tesla
mage7223 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:38:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Paul Ehrlich. He basically invented modern drugs when he developed a cure that targeted it specifically. He coined the term chemotherapy, made significant contributions to combating diphtheria, and generally revolutionized the field of medicine.
villiere ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:39:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Henrietta Lacks. In dying she save millions of lives.
Ruddie ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:47:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
she didn't do anything. The fact that she got cancer was extremely convenient, because it's allowed for the doctors and scientists to make great leaps, but that was all them. Lacks was just some random lady that got cancer, and doesn't really deserve the credit for the works of others. It wasn't her dying that saved millions of lives, but the work of others.
kwsteve ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:41:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Genghis Khan
Captainobvvious ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:41:29 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me
U-N-C-L-E ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:42:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Aspiring screenwriters of Reddit: there are a TON of good movie ideas in here.
DarwinDanger ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:43:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug
Cthulhu_Cuddler ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:43:27 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
ME! AND YOU ALL KNOW IT!
Stringy63 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:46:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I concur
Stringy63 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:45:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
For the vast majority of us, it's me.
Mastermachetier ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:45:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me
immortalalphoenix ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:45:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oskar Schindler.
coolbeans_dude98 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:46:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jack Churchill
aerosmithguy151 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:48:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Cynthia McKinney
paradigmx ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:49:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Likely someone who's name has never entered a history book. Anyone documented would not qualify as under appreciated.
meowmastermittens ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:49:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Probably never heard of them.
HappyHipo ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:50:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Edwin Drake. First man to drill for Oil, died impoverished.
oGSwank1029 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:52:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Matthew Perry.....yes.....Matthew Perry.
Sphynks ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:52:58 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Piccolo
armahillo ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:54:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
i wont be so hyperbolic to say most underappreciated, but Ralph Nader has done some really incredible things for the American Public.
Withhold your feelings about the 2000 election and instead look at his contributions prior to that; he helped us get mandatory airbags, the clean air act, clean water act, and many other things you might take for granted.
YourFriendLew ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:56:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Harry S Truman
Ramv36 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:57:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dr. Alexander Cruickshank Houston, the father of drinking water chlorination.
Chlorination of drinking water and the subsequent reduction (in some cases eradication) in waterborne disease arguably is the most significant tool used to extend the average length of human life in the world.
heeb ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:58:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Emmy Noether
fuzzynyanko ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:59:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Many of these bands that have lasted longer than The Beatles, Zeppelin, etc
chlochlo13 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:59:38 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Mary Phelps Jacob aka Caresse Crosby- inventor of the modern bra.
plegronease ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:00:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We will never know
halo_13 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:04:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug. Plant genetics, agronomy and plant pathology aren't sexy to be sure but it benefitted humankind around the world. Developing and carefully breeding new strains of wheat to be heat and disease tolerant helped usher in "The Green Revolution" and earned him the Nobel Prize, The Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Padma Vibhushan, the second highest civilian award in India. Not bad for a kid from Iowa.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug
wonderful_person ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:04:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Henry Cavendish. He is like the Newton that nobody knew about. He was very secretive, but not because he was mistrustful just extremely shy (probably had debilitating social phobia or aspergers). Maxwell I believe visited his home after he died to find that he had discovered many scientific phenomena before anyone else did, but they'd already been attributed to other scientists, things like Ohm's Law and Coloumb's Law. He was also the first to accurately measure the mass of the Earth.
slyfoxy12 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:05:02 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not all of history but for at least during his life, Alan Turing.
Like we recognise him now but the guy did do massive work in making Computer Science even a thing. Guaranteed the allies victory in World War II along with shortening it as well, all the while forced to keep it a secret till he died. Then got arrested and treated like dog shit for being gay which eventually led to him killing himself at 41.
The real kicker is he was studying biology/genetics and was making good progress there as well. So god knows how much science could have progressed if he had lived even to his 60s.
craisins409 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:05:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me.
DiarrheaMarinade ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:06:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me
BOSS_OF_THE_INTERNET ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:09:01 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Talon Euring
Stastnesis ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:15:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey.
His government abolished slavery in the British Empire and he championed a major voting reform act to help redistribute power back to the people.
Today he's mostly famous for how he took his tea.
Edit: a few words, and a link โ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Grey,_2nd_Earl_Grey
TaylorS1986 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:16:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The agricultural scientist Norman Bourlaug saved literally BILLIONS of people in the developing world from starvation. Most people have never heard of him.
redditgoals ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:17:05 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jamaican-born Seacole dished upwards being a health care health practitioner towards the Crimean Have difficulty as well as has been critical to conserving this particular life regarding a lot of servicemen.
OriginZero ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:17:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Cassandra.
chinguetti ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:20:38 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Ernest Borlaug the man who saved a billion lives.
Norman Ernest Borlaug (March 25, 1914 โ September 12, 2009)[3] was an American biologist, humanitarian and Nobel laureate who has been called "the father of the Green Revolution",[4] "agriculture's greatest spokesperson"[5] and "The Man Who Saved A Billion Lives".[6][7] He is one of seven people to have won the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal[8] and was also awarded the Padma Vibhushan, India's second highest civilian honor.[9]
pseudonarne ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:31:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
doesn't sound particularly underappreciated
chinguetti ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:37:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Good point. I guess under appreciated in the wider population. I guess few people would recognize the name.
ogwig ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:20:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Henrietta Lacks - know for HeLa. Though she didn't intend to change the world, she contributed one of the first 'immortal' cell lines that are still used for biological research today.
ogwig ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:22:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I blame Alien-blue for any typos
Shadyaidie ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:23:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me, slut.
Anonymous_Gal ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:24:56 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
John Adams
dulob ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:25:33 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Chingiss Khan
MidnightCommando ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:48:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
MOSKAU, FREMD UND GEHEIMNISVOLL, TรRME AUS RรTEM GOLD, KALT WIE DAS EIS
sorry >_>
shitwritesitself ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:25:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
William Dawes, he was the other midnight rider along with paul revere.
azmodan72 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:26:15 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Michael Faraday
TheGru ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:28:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Governor Arthur Phillip who commanded the first fleet of eleven ships to settle in what eventually became Sydney Harbor. Aussies celebrate Captain James Cook as discovering Australia, however I do believe the Spanish came first, Cook identified it for England and Arthur Philip was sent 19 years later with 11 ships full of convicts to set up a settlement in what can be a very hostile county. The only sad part of the story is the effect the English had on the Indigenous population. 50 years later we were hunting them down, and stealing their children
MidnightCommando ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:47:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Dutch actually found Australia in 1606 - though Willem Janszoon didn't realise it was a seperate landmass to New Guinea.
TheGru ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 10:51:58 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Dutch..... I forgot. Thank you sincerely
TheGru ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 06:51:04 on January 18, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
See this is why I love forum. You learn so much more. Thanks
NickelFish ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:29:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Gavrilo Princip. His assassination of Franz Ferdinand sparked World War 1, which let to the downfall of most of the royal families of Europe. It created new countries, redrew historic borders, and created new political alliances.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavrilo_Princip
DoctorPony ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:31:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fido Farnsworth invented the television, but RCA kept him under lawsuits until the patent ran out so he couldn't produce any TV's.
He never made a dime from a product everyone owns.
JS-a9 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:34:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Robert Morris, the fiancier of the American Revolution. He funded Washington and the war effort. It ended up landing him in debtors prison. He also founded the first US bank.
JS-a9 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:34:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Robert Morris, the financier of the American Revolution. He funded Washington and the war effort. It ended up landing him in debtors prison. He also founded the first National bank. He actually contributed $10,000 of his own money to fund the effort.
Edit: good read here: http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/signers/morris_r.htm
barath_s ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:35:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug.
Saved more people than Jesus Christ. Hunger, death and poverty are mankind's eternal enemy.
3ngin3 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:38:58 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me in future!
colin8696908 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:39:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hey guys anyone remember this post from a while ago? it was a very short film about a man that fucked up the Natzi death list saving ten's of thousands of jews. Even though he new he was close to being found out he kept screwing up the Natzi death list.
Hiiika ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:41:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's Oskar Schindler
colin8696908 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:43:37 on January 18, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
thanks.
switchfall ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:41:35 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Whoever the engineer is that made the nuclear football. We're all putting a LOT of trust in that guy.
Kingofwhereigo ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:42:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The main who invented underpants
eschmi ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:48:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thomas Jefferson, comic in link:
http://www.cookingcomically.com/?page_id=872
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:51:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Probably the concubine or wife of some big leader.
ouhiubiu ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:59:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
David Icke.
acooper1000 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:59:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Charles Hamilton Houston. Civil Rights Attorney that worked himself to death. He taught Thurgood Marshall who led the Brown V. Board of Education case, eradicating segregation from schooling systems (in a legal sense). Mr. Houston unfortunately did not live to see the ruling due to working himself to death (he had a health condition, his doctors advised him to stop working late into night and to sleep, he doesn't listen naturally)
talmudic_sharia ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:19:27 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Kurt Friedrich Gรถdel, On December 5, 1947, Einstein and Morgenstern accompanied Gรถdel to his U.S. citizenship exam, where they acted as witnesses. Gรถdel had confided in them that he had discovered an inconsistency in the U.S. Constitution that could allow the U.S. to become a dictatorship. Einstein and Morgenstern were concerned that their friend's unpredictable behavior might jeopardize his application. Fortunately, the judge turned out to be Phillip Forman, who knew Einstein and had administered the oath at Einstein's own citizenship hearing. Everything went smoothly until Forman happened to ask Gรถdel if he thought a dictatorship like the Nazi regime could happen in the U.S. Gรถdel then started to explain his discovery to Forman. Forman understood what was going on, cut Gรถdel off, and moved the hearing on to other questions and a routine conclusion.
Albert Einstein was also living at Princeton during this time. Gรถdel and Einstein developed a strong friendship, and were known to take long walks together to and from the Institute for Advanced Study. The nature of their conversations was a mystery to the other Institute members. Economist Oskar Morgenstern recounts that toward the end of his life Einstein confided that his "own work no longer meant much, that he came to the Institute merely ... to have the privilege of walking home with Gรถdel".
During his many years at the Institute, Gรถdel's interests turned to philosophy and physics. In 1949, he demonstrated the existence of solutions involving closed time-like curves, to Albert Einstein's field equations in general relativity.[19] He is said to have given this elaboration to Einstein as a present for his 70th birthday.[20] His "rotating universes" would allow time travel to the past and caused Einstein to have doubts about his own theory. His solutions are known as the Gรถdel metric (an exact solution of the Einstein field equation).
pudniskool ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:29:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The man who killed Hitler.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:38:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Lou_Montulli <-- he was the creator of the blink tag.
iamtheowlman ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:42:12 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I will be.
Or maybe I was. It's hard to keep track.
m0dsiw ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:45:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug
It's estimated that he's has saved a billion, with a b, lives.
Lakridspibe ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:45:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
ITT: Nikola Tesla, your mom, and the guy who killed Hitler.
People are so original.
At least Tesla is a genuine answer.
RLTWTango ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:49:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Benedict Arnold. If it wasn't for him we would of lost the revolution and be coming up on tea time. He beat the British at the Battle of Saratoga which turned out to be the turning point.
riedmae ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:05:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Archduke Franz Ferdinand - him living just a regular life may have changed the course of all modern history
caranmegil ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:05:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me
kimrico34 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:13:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Gabe Newell
Dont_touch_my_balls ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:16:00 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Madonna.
JDaub08 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:24:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me, you mother fuckers.
1402md ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:25:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug, the man who saved a billion lives: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug
5steelBI ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:25:35 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In living history, FW DeKlerk. - He did what was right, under enormous political pressure... and no one outside of South Africa knows who he is.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:27:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
telsa
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:33:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
Tisroc ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:07:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm 90 percent sure that Hitler killed himself.
Chipmunk3004 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 08:37:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler most underated person in history /s
armidilo01 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:38:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Herbert Hoover. Saved Poland.
db__ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:48:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla
Beastleh ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:48:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tesla
Admiringcone ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:48:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla.
rinnip ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:50:35 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Whoever they were, I doubt anyone alive has ever heard of them.
laptopdragon ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:52:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
someone in congress ?
Matto_McFly_81 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:57:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ugh, mom. Stop fishing on Reddit.
lookwhatimade ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:23:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I was at the Raiders/Bengals game when Bo Jackson's football career was ended, just about 25 years ago. I was a young kid and it was my first NFL game. I had a blast, sorry about Bo though.
gourmand183 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:41:52 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tesla. Most people have heard about him and electricity, but the range of his genius laid the foundation for the modern electrical grid. He also made huge advances in communication, such ideas and patents were stolen by Marconi and Edison. To this day he was doing experiments in electrical transmission that are not fully understood by scientists.
pduffy52 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:41:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Henrietta Lacks. If you know anyone that has survived Cancer, or polio, or AIDS.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks#
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:42:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Danny Sexbang's grandfather. Invented paste-on electrodes that can take an EKG while a patient is active. Before this, a patient would have to peddle on a stationary bike, and then get off and lie down for the EKG to be taken, which would be inaccurate as their heart-rate would change by the time they lie down. Now every hospital in the world uses these paste-on electrodes. This invention has saved hundreds of millions of lives.
lionmuncher ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:02:00 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla.
Oatau ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:03:29 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My mom, if you ask her
NdidNdid ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:52:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
My mother, to hear her tell it.
Major909 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:57:01 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your mom.
chumjumper ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:59:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug
Cuss_bucket ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 08:01:56 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me
SoHiep ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 08:11:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This thread is very informative. Thanking everyone for their insight
Oy_Gestalt ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 08:16:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alexander Hamilton. My name is Alexander Hamilton. And there's a million things I haven't done, but just you wait, just you wait.
Tapps_ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 08:38:05 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's gotta be Norman Borlaug. He saved nations from starvation. Except maybe he is too well known?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug
TheCEOofGoogle ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:41:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:48:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm pretty underappreciated.
Techno199 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:54:58 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Joan Clarke. She was one of the people who worked on breaking the enigma alongside the quite famous Alan Turing, saving a ridiculous amount of lives and etc. in the second world war, however, as a result of everything that happened at Bletchley park being secret, and her being a women, she didn't really get a lot of recognition. There is quite a good protrayel of her in the film "The Imitation Game" if you haven't seen it, I would recommend it. It has Benedict Cumberbatch and Kiera Knightley in it.
kindlyenlightenme ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 11:02:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
โWho is the most underappreciated person in history?โ The guy who two and a half millennia ago, paid the ultimate price for pointing out where and why humanity was going wrong. For not only was he rubbed out, but his findings were also effectively erased from history. Such that today we find ourselves no wiser in regard to why we havenโt evolved, in the civilisation stakes, much further than Neanderthals. Despite continuing to unmercifully beat each other over the head throughout the intervening millennia, there is still absolutely no sign of any sense having been hammered in. We still fight and we still kill over untested ideological illusions that would make a child, naturally born with the innate skills concomitant with curiosity, would question and then collapse in chuckles at such pompous peculiar paradigms. For such an infant would not yet have been conditioned, to believe and live inside one particular bubble, of that human 'reality' that is absolutely full of them.
SeraniumFilledClock ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 12:19:35 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We probably don't know the most underappreciated person because people dismissed their efforts and never recorded them
LSG1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 12:22:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Omar ibn alkhattab
vermonsterskibum ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 12:55:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
me
stylefungus ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 12:55:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Gonna go with...me!!
Cavemandrew ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 13:05:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me. Not that I've done much, but ask yourself, do you appreciate me?
Caraotero ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:25:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Antonio Josรฉ de Sucre, was one of the Bolivar's lieutenants in the freedom fight of all the Bolivarian countries (Venezuela, Colombia, Panamรก, Ecuador, Perรบ and Bolivia). Even all history books talks about him and his contribution to the South American freedom from Spain, he is always besides the shadow of Simรณn Bolรญvar, but, lots of people coincided that Sucre was a better, warrior, commander and strategist.
Chocharoni ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:11:15 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The corn man
Captain_Anon ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:43:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tadeusz Kosciuszko
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tadeusz_Koลciuszko
Maybe not the MOST unappreciated, but American's don't seem to know anything about him. He was a Polish war hero that championed for the rights of jews, gypsies and Polish peasants. Moved to America, fought in the American Revolution (played a pretty huge role actually) and tried to buy the freedom of a bunch of slaves with his life savings after he died (left the money for the slaves in his Last Will). The slaves were never fred though because of Virginia State Law and because his family wanted his money (even though they still lived in Poland).
Kman123456 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:20:00 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
John Locke. He was a 17th century English philosopher. His political philosophy and treaties inspired the founding fathers. Without him, the modern United States would not exist. Yet he is relatively forgotten compared to the people he inspired such as Thomas Jefferson.
fooblies ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:43:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tesla
italkthai ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:43:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Samuel Alderson
Inventor of the crash dummy among other things. His last set of inventions helped paved the way that radiation testing, treatment and education are now utilized. He dropped everything to find a solution to a problem, when his wife died from the breast cancer radiation and not the cancer itself.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_W._Alderson
Random fact: He married the wife's twin sister after her death.
Kil0volt ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:21:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 13:27:52 on January 18, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla
-wwwpastacom ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:22:53 on January 19, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Preston Tucker, making automobiles safer for everyone.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:42:22 on January 22, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla, comparing how many mentions in text books he gets to how much he gave to the world.
boobookittiefck ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 14:28:34 on January 23, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me
eroguromania ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 10:33:38 on January 25, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla.
daddykool ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:07:50 on January 25, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug, the man who saved a billion lives. He developed semi-dwarf, high yield, disease resistant wheat varieties that enabled Mexico, India, Pakistan and other countries to double wheat yields, become net exporters and greatly improve food security for their populations. Credited with saving more than one billion people throughout the world from starvation. Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug
jazzyJasChen ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:15:46 on January 27, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Mr. Ho Feng-Shan, Who saved thousands of Jewish people during second war world by issuing them visas regarless the pressure from his own government and Nazi. Also the good-hearted local people from Shanghai who helped the jewish refugees. During second war world, even though China had to face the brutal invasion from Japanese, Chinese people helped lots of jewish refugees. Shanghai alone had accepeted 30,000 jewish refugees, more than the number of jewish refugees Canda, india ,SA , NZ and Austrilia combined. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ho_Feng-Shan
ChoctawAspie ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:27:11 on March 4, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Winston Churchill.
At least at one time.
[deleted] ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 13:44:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
9inchestoobig ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 14:20:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No she was appreciated last night
captainp42 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:30:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Twice
FranklovesProust ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 14:09:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Marie-Antoinette
DrMacnificent ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 15:03:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Why? She didn't do anything worth of appreciation.
loi044 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 15:47:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
She reinvigorated the French pastry industry.
FranklovesProust ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 11:06:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
When she was still alive: she was accused of all the problems in France, really hated by the French people I was myself thinking she was kind of a bitch who didn't care about her people the I red the biography of her life by Stephan Zweig which is really good (well wrtitten, with good information, and it shows an other side of Marie-Antoinette) She was not the perfect queen infairly hated but she was neither an evil person
ikwj ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:40:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
She wad mentioned in a Queen song, she isn't that under appreciated
FranklovesProust ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 11:06:27 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Which one ?
fibonaughty ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:15:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Are you guys kidding?? Nikola Tesla. EASY!
penguinpwrdbox ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:41:29 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
no
white_n_mild ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:36:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jk lol
warmhandswarmheart ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 16:57:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alan Turing. Broke the enigma code that allowed the allies to decipher German Morse code messages which was instrumental to winning the second world war. He was a mathematical genius and was "the father of computers". He actually built a computer from scratch to break the enigma code. He was rather arrogant and abrasive but instead of recognizing his value to the war effort and overlooking these faults, his superiors almost destroyed his work because it took longer than they expected. After the war, he was arrested for being homosexual and was given the choice of chemical castration or prison. In order to continue his work, he chose to be castrated and eventually committed suicide at the age of 41. Who knows what he was capable of achieving if he had been allowed to finish his work.
Every time we switch on something that has a computer chip in it we owe him a debt of gratitude.
jesse9o3 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:14:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Underappreciated at the time? Hell yes, but such is the price of working in the intelligence business. People aren't meant to know what you're doing.
Nowadays that's changing. Anyone who know's anything about computing/programming/computer science knows his name, as do most people with a decent knowledge of WW2. And not to mention there is an Oscar winning movie about his life.
gazongagizmo ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:40:20 on January 24, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No to mention the eponymous test to gauge artificial intelligence. Can you become more immortal? If ever we achieve true A.I., a feat most likely heralded as a commonly accepted turning point in history, the Turing Test will not be far off in mentioning that accomplishment.
Haifolex ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:03:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The woman who invented agriculture. she basically defined the course of events for the next 10,000 years of human history.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 12:28:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well we think agriculture was developed independently in multiple parts of the world and that it wasn't just invented by individuals over night, but I see what you mean.
justapcgamer ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:45:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla still haven't seen him in my history textbooks :P
penguinpwrdbox ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:12:15 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
no
SleepyLoner ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 14:02:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Mitochondrial Eve
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:18:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nicola Tesla. He made the modern world and is hardly acknowledged. Without him we would have nothing that we have now.
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 17:00:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What rock are you living under
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:47:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He's not taught in schools and he is not acknowledged publicly for his achievements in Radio and electrical engineering. Ask most average people you meet if they've heard of him - in my experience the answer is usually no.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:53:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
M'kay, let me tell you about how inventions and inventors get less then a day in lesson. He gets only his name mentioned, just like any other inventor.
There are multiple books about him at local bookstores and objects such as the tesla coil is named after him.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:29:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
HazelLovesCock ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:56:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We wouldn't have Tesla Arcs in Fallout, or that one tower defence game.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:38:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alternating Current. Ynow Electricity
wakeup-thecakeisalie ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:45:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
tesla ! cause edison is an ***hole.
loptthetreacherous ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:57:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Have you read anything other than that Oatmeal comic?
wakeup-thecakeisalie ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:06:23 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If you don't know Tesla's story and if you like Edison, I recommend you to start reading oatmeal comics bro apparently that's all you need.
loptthetreacherous ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:37:50 on January 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Because the Oatmeal comic isn't insanely biased and full of flat out lies.
penguinpwrdbox ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:31:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
no
The-SpaceGuy ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:46:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla
loptthetreacherous ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:55:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You mean the super famous scientist?
The-SpaceGuy ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:57:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
and under appreciated of his times.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:53:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We are talking about now. There is an entire car company named after him. Far from under appreciated in respect to others.
penguinpwrdbox ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:31:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
no
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:57:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tesla
penguinpwrdbox ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:34:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
no
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:58:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tesla. No explanation needed.
penguinpwrdbox ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:34:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
no
Lavi_BF ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:10:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikolai Tesla
penguinpwrdbox ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:36:29 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
no
pooroldatlas ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:13:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nicola Tesla is so cool! If it wasn't for him we wouldn't have power in our homes. Dont get me wrong, Edison helped a lot but credit is due a lot to Tesla to getting the energy actually in our houses.
mendax64 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:19:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla
penguinpwrdbox ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:37:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
no
cajunhawk ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:22:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Has to be Tesla.
penguinpwrdbox ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:38:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
no
cajunhawk ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 14:45:15 on January 21, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You don't think Nikola Tesla was severly underrated as an inventor and practical genius? Or did you think I was talking about the fucking car maker?
ID-10T-ERROR ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:27:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tesla, because fuck Edison.
penguinpwrdbox ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:39:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
no
suitology ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:28:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tesla (until now that is)
TheResidents ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:33:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nicola Tesla - in his day.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:46:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Actually if the person truly is the most underappreciated figure from history then none of us would know his or her name.
penguinpwrdbox ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:01:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
UNDER not UN
im2old_4this ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:55:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla.
penguinpwrdbox ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 01:43:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
no
im2old_4this ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:04:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
no what?
elaine0630 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:57:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla
penguinpwrdbox ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:44:19 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
no
rangersfan30 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:02:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tesla at least during his life
penguinpwrdbox ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:44:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
no
rawrdid ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:12:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla hands down
penguinpwrdbox ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 01:45:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
no
Zoklett ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:16:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It seems like it would be Nikola Tesla
penguinpwrdbox ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:45:28 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
no
philosophicalsnake ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:21:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla
penguinpwrdbox ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:46:27 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
no
cherokeee ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:41:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla
djcarpentier ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:36:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla
plagues138 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:43:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tesla.
Dicecard ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:14:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla hands down.
Critsfromthebong ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:31:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nickolai Tesla
killingittoday ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:32:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Came here as well to say Telsa
bluesprinter ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:32:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla. Invented thousands of things regarding power and energy, and Edison is still touted as the father of the electric age.
captain_obvioused ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:16:49 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla.. Hands down
mumooshka ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:34:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla
ihavesparkypants ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:40:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola fucking Tesla
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:43:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dude got freakin' wrecked man. How the genius he was ended up having to go through the shit he did is beyond me.
stiffolous ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:43:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla, he discovered AC current and had a device called the Wardenclyffe Tower which would have been able to distribute free energy to everyone but when JP Morgan realized he could not monitor the electricity and charge people for it he scrapped the project.
Nikola Tesla https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla
Wardenclyffe Tower https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardenclyffe_Tower
thrillabyte ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:43:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tesla
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:32:29 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Saddam Hussein. Who knew he was the plug in the terrorist dam.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:53:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He knew it. Gaddafi knew it. They always used to warn the west of what would happen if they were overthrown.
pkgosu ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:41:35 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla. He pretty much allowed just about everything we have (in terms of electronics) to be possible, but Thomas Edison is the person who is known for this. When really, Edison just used Tesla's ideas because he had money and Tesla didn't.
OBAMA_HAS_AIDES ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:06:35 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ronald Reagan
akm69 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 03:13:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Under. Not over
LLotZaFun ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:41:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
President Obama. I'm not saying he's anything close to the best President we've had but there are way too many Americans that literally think he's an absolute failure because, you know, Fox News hive-mind.
igottashare ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:52:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No. He's unliked because he's underaccomplished in his promises and got a Nobel Peace Prize for getting elected. He's caused more instability both at home and abroad, paying only lip service to issues while not actually solving the problems.
His health care act only made it illegal to not have insurance instead of introducing a flat rate system like the rest of the developed world, but it was to be expected after how much health insurers and the medical industry gave him. For all the hope and change, the American people got the same politician in a darker package with better verbal skills.
Wall Steet hasn't changed. Medicine is more expensive. Civil forfeiture is out of control. The economy is still unstable. His transparency is as clear as Apple terms of service. Things are worse overseas. Guantanamo is still a thing. Privacy rights and individual freedoms are nearly nonexistent. He's the perfect candidate for the apathetic millenial who likes Reddit AMAs and talk show banter but doesn't actually know anything about world events or the economy.
LLotZaFun ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:37:22 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I appreciate your perspective, honest.
Let's hope the apathetic and ignorant millennial you speak of does not make up a majority of their generation. Sadly, I can tell you that lack of knowledge regarding world events and economics is all too common a problem throughout various generations like many that remain from the "greatest" generation, through baby boomers/Jones gens and even down to late gen X'ers like myself.
Replace AMA and talk show banter with Bill O'Reilly, Rush, etc, etc and you've got at least similar hive mind/sheeple results and I'd argue they are even worse due to the fear mongering and jingoism we see more and more of.
Obama and Reagan administrations have interesting similarities but yet Reagan is oddly lauded as some sort of deity. Kinda wacky.
igottashare ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 11:38:17 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There are similarities between Reagan and Obama, however one revived a dying economy and the other drove it further into the ground.
LLotZaFun ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:54:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Agreed, the crash of 1987 was a tough one and the seeds planted by Don Regan's influence are still bearing all too many plutocratic fruits that lead us closer and closer to another robber baron era. Not completely out of the woods right now with the economy but we're in better shape than 7 years ago. Although, this current flash crash is interesting, starting to make the one from August look like just a blip, haha. Holy cow, remember the Star Wars program boondoggle they used to line the vets of their defense industry buddies? Crazy stuff.
Speaking of the market, I mess around with some day trading when things are slow at my firm and it may be a good idea to consider looking into Ford and GE in the near future as a long term hold.
igottashare ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:12:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
GE's main market is military, so this makes sense, but why Ford?
Azza0pz ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:01:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler..
He did kill Hitler
GunRaptor ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:02:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Killing Hitler is a pretty huge achievement...
bridgeri127 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:14:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My mum :)
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:54:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If they're the most underappreciated, wouldn't we not know about them at all?
penguinpwrdbox ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:18:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This means they are valued, but not enough. The word is UNDERappreciated. Not UNappreciated.
kbphoto ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:11:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Major Dick Winters Easy Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. One of the greatest leaders of WWII. His story is nothing short of incredible. His leadership qualities are off the charts, and one of the most humble men to ever walk the earth. He is my hero. Read "Band of Brothers", one of the great stories of the time.
sodangfancyfree ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 17:12:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
i think people appreciate him a great deal.
kbphoto ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:02:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Those that know their history do. For sure. I remember thinking that when Michael Jackson died, all the hysteria and coverage nonsense, and someone like MDW dies and no one hears a peep.
Quickob ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:18:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alan Turing BY FAR. He is one of the most incredible men in the 20th century but tragically killed himself after being charged for being a homosexual and being chemically castrated. He's responsible for the Turing Machine, what we like to call: Computers.
__pm_me_your_puns__ ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 17:06:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alan Turing is very appreciated by many people. He has a movie based on his life.
Quickob ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:19:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I know he is! And this is only very recently after he was pardoned. However I still feel if I mention who invented computers someone will say Steve Jobs or some shit
aadithpm ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:23:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alan Turing. Read articles for the real thing. Watch Imitation Game for an experience that hits home.
jesse9o3 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:28:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
As awesome as he was, for me anyone with an Oscar winning movie about their life doesn't count as underappreciated.
PromoPimp ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:36:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug literally prevented a billion deaths worldwide and 95% of the people reading this right now will have to Google him because they've never heard the name before.
He died 6 years ago to virtually no fanfare, despite living in the information age. Exponentially more people can name the failed rapper Kim Kardashian fucked on video than could tell you who Norman Borlaug was.
Norman wins and it isn't even close.
sodangfancyfree ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:08:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
people who die everyday without basic human respect let alone fanfare. henrietta lacks for example.
fenwaygnome ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:39:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
But GMOs are eeeviiiiiill. He must have been a witch.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:41:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'll toss my vote at Fritz Haber.
The nitrogen harvested by his invented process is crucial for artificial fertilizer production. It's thought that at least two billion mouths worth of food are produced per year because of it.
Whatever the actual number happens to be, this process has become lifeblood for our ability to feed the planet.
Oh_Sweet_Jeebus ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:52:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
OP.
<3 u fam
MegaGuy28 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:01:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Adolf Hitler jokes inbound!
akcufhumyzarc ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:07:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Joseph step father of Christ was pretty under-rated. I mean first someone "didnt" fuck his wife and she gets pregnant. So, he says eh whatever man, lets do this thing. Then he finds out that the kid is potentially from this omnipotent being in the sky. Thats got to be intimidating for sure. But, again he says fuck it, i got this. Then he raises and nutures this child to become the savior of all humanity and the gate keeper to the afterlife, basically. Fucking two cheers for Joseph!
GunRaptor ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:01:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Good guy Joe.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 17:12:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fictional characters don't count.
jylny ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:16:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If you want to dispute the "savior of humanity" and stuff that's fine, but Joseph was a real person.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 17:18:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's contentious that Jesus existed. Never mind the other details.
jylny ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:25:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"there remains a strong consensus in historical-critical biblical scholarship that a historical Jesus did live in that area and in that time period."
Wikipedia isn't the best source, but whatevs.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:33:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So contentious is an accurate word in this regard. Strong consensus is not definitive.
jylny ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:37:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Perhaps. But contentious is misleading. The argument against Jesus' existence is questionable at best. It be like saying Holocaust denial is contentious (alright, maybe not. But you get my point).
akcufhumyzarc ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:41:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Aww man you have no idea how literally i meant that.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:11:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Kanye West
ewrewr1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:34:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
George Washington. Look at all the revolutions (e.g. France 1789) where a hopeful start ended with a strongman taking power. Didn't happen in the USA, and that's due to GW.
jesse9o3 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:26:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Equally though it's his fault that the French Revolution happened.
Plus he's hardly underappreciated, he has his own 500 ft+ monument. Not to mention that there are many cities and even a state named after him.
tiluh ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:49:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
OP, its you, of course! Why else would you omit the serious tag?
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:01:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jar Jar Binks. Jar Jar was a necessary light-hearted element in the Star Wars saga that kept the oppressive menace of the Sith from overwhelming the entire series thematically. If this "Binksian Space" had not been filled with Jar Jar's hilarious pratfalls and comedic manner of speech, the saga would have been too dark for most audiences. JAR JAR BINKS MADE THE WHOLE STAR WARS UNIVERSE WORK ON SCREEN!!!
jesse9o3 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:21:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He is also responsible for the rise of the Empire. He has the blood of the Jedi younglings that Anakin killed and all the people that were killed on Alderaan on his hands.
Mad_Jukes ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:07:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Down. Vote.
kgardn15 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:07:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Leonardo DiCaprio. If by history, you're referring to Oscar history.
Mature_Gambino_ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:07:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Third Reich doctors/scientists... As completely messed up as they were, they paved the way for many medical discoveries and improvements that would've never been realized without their monstrous work
cookerg ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:08:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Judas - he did what God needed him to do.
DafuqDidIJustRead ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:17:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Marquis deLafayette - without him, there would be no USA.
Vendevious ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:17:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
According to my mother, it's her.
Pielsticker ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:21:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
OP's mom
sneak_tee ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:21:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Colonel Sanders
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:26:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The person who turns off Bill O'Reily.
BookEight ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:27:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug?
You know, the man who saved 1Billion lives.
boxhead1911 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:27:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
the guy who invented the internet
jesse9o3 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:33:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Depends what you mean by internet.
The people who made ARPANET or the people who made the WWW
dmoral25 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:32:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alfred Russel Wallace. He came up with the theory of evolution alongside Darwin as well as the overarching force behind evolution, this being natural selection. Not a damn prize whatsoever. As Morty once said old lady science bucks hard and you gotta learn to grab on.
Icarium13 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:34:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't know, and neither do you.
penguinpwrdbox ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:30:27 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This means they are valued, but not enough. The word is UNDERappreciated. Not UNappreciated.
MrWermHatsWormHat ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:34:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Philo Farnsworth, inventor of television and great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great- great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather of Hubert J. Farnsworth.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philo_Farnsworth
jesse9o3 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:47:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He wasn't the inventor of television though. He pioneered it in the United States but the first television was invented by John Logie Baird and the first electronic television was invented by Kenjiro Takayanagi.
He made great strides in making the TV practical for widespread usage though.
gangreen424 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:35:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
James K. Polk
In 1844, the Democrats were split The three nominees for the presidential candidate Were Martin Van Buren, a former president and an abolitionist James Buchanan, a moderate Lewis Cass, a general and expansionist From Nashville came a dark horse riding up He was James K. Polk, Napoleon of the Stump
Austere, severe, he held few people dear His oratory filled his foes with fear The factions soon agreed He's just the man we need To bring about victory Fulfill our manifest destiny And annex the land the Mexicans command And when the poll was cast, the winner was Mister James K. Polk, Napoleon of the Stump
In four short years he met his every goal He seized the whole Southwest from Mexico Made sure the tariffs fell And made the English sell the Oregon Territory He built an independent treasury Having done all this he sought no second term But precious few have mourned the passing of Mister James K. Polk, our eleventh president Young Hickory, Napoleon of the Stump
(credit to TMBG)
Lunar_Lord ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:52:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
TMBG?
gangreen424 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 13:53:51 on January 25, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They Might Be Giants
These are actually the lyrics to a song they wrote about Polk being and underrated president.
Lunar_Lord ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 15:59:47 on January 25, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oh cool. I'll check it out!
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:36:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug. The world would have less food without him.
R00TCatZ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:36:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Mother Theresa
Krumpett ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:37:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
are you for real?
sex_panther96 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:39:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't know. Nobody does. That's how underappreciated this person is.
penguinpwrdbox ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 01:31:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This means they are valued, but not enough. The word is UNDERappreciated. Not UNappreciated.
sex_panther96 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:04:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
K
Michelle__Irene ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:42:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Rosalind Franklin- the woman who discovered that DNA is shaped in double helix or spiral form. While her male counterparts broke into her office, stole her picture, took the credit from her while the two men won the noble prize and of course she never got the credit she deserved.
jesse9o3 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:03:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Firstly they didn't break in, the allegation is that one of her colleagues showed Francis and Crick the picture without her permission. Something that is hotly disputed given that it only appears in one biography about her.
That's because it took years of work to prove Francis and Crick's model of DNA and by the time they were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1962 Franklin had been dead for 4 years and the Nobel Prize Committee do not give posthumous awards.
Michelle__Irene ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 03:53:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Lmfao not according my professor. They broke into her office and stole the picture, used to prove their points. I can't believe you're messaging me about this. Are you blown because a woman discovered the double helix shape or are you trying to defend the men who told her discovery
skipearth ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:49:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jesus was a true undisputed historical figure.
kickstand ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:07:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Nobody seems to have mentioned Gunter Schabowski, who went off-message and (without permission) announced that the DDR would open the Berlin Wall to allow people to cross into to West Berlin, and thereby single-handedly accelerated the fall of the Iron Curtain.
Of course, he was helped by Harold Jaeger, a border guard who refused to fire on East Berliners who crossed the border that night.
The actions of two ordinary men changed history.
AdrianBlake ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:19:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
OPs Mum.
No seriously
kweefzilla ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:23:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla. End of story.
penguinpwrdbox ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:38:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
no
pauq ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:23:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It sure ain't David Bowie
suitology ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:28:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Obama
finalaccountdown ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:32:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
that one Russian submarine officer who disobeyed orders and refused to launch nukes at the US during the Cold War.
irollburritos ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:38:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
According to her, my mother
BU_Milksteak ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:44:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's already been said, but Charles Martel. If the Frankish Army under his command had lost at the Battle of Tours, we would all be writing in Arabic right now.
EDIT: We'd probably be Muslim too.
Cizzar ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:45:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
According to reddit : Hitler.
He created an affordable car for the masses, built the Autobahn and loved animals, yet he's only remembered for killing jews ...
Demonic_Toaster ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:49:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Amerigo Vespucci - ask any grade schooler if the know who this guy is and you'll more than likely get a blank stare. Ask them who Christopher Columbus was and they know without a doubt.
OnYourSide ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:51:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Since I'm from Texas, I'd have to go with the guy who invented air conditioning.
CEZ2 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:13:47 on January 19, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Willis Carrier
fib16 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:02:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tesla
penguinpwrdbox ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:44:56 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
no
Djoke1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:04:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Leonardo DiCaprio
hippydippybaloney ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:07:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your mom.
Montanx ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:11:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dont worry, I appreciate her mouth.
John_Bot ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:11:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me. :(
Hhmmm.. I'd say Poe. He changed literature and storytelling forever. We just remember him as someone who wrote a poem about a Raven
Voice_of_Reason_Wins ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:12:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Darwin
Fabb4eyes ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:14:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jesus Christ is the most misunderstood, unappreciated and ridiculed person ever. Most Jews use his name as an expletive. Most Muslims equate him with Mohammed, as just a prophet.
tritiumosu ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:15:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Clair Patterson.
TL;DR:
Congratulations, you're probably not an idiot because this guy fought the Oil industry and started the process of banning leaded gasoline.
From Wikipedia:
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:31:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I was happy to see Cosmos highlight him. NDGT deserves props for that.
harrisonsmitheyes ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:17:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
"Me."
penguinpwrdbox ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:46:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There are a surprising number of them.
NapoleonBlownapart87 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:17:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The guy who invented unsliced bread - that shit is still really important.
detectiive ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:18:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
op
Charliekratos ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:18:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My mom.
Source: My mom
ohihaveasubscription ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:25:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Probably some woman or minority.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:27:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla
Socialaccounts ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:30:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tesla
beeman519 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:30:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm gonna say Telsa. The man pretty much created the 21st century
mrpotomus ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:30:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola tesla.
Need I say more?
TheInexplicable ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:30:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nicola Tesla, a man who, thank goodness, is actually rising in popularity and finally receiving the attention he deserved. Without him, we wouldn't have light bulbs, sonar, Wi-Fi, and a handful of other things.
TRNogger ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:30:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Someone we never heard of and of whom we don't know what he did becaused nobody appreciated him and his achievment enough to preserve it.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:33:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tesla
kawaiihellothere ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:34:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Every person that lived before you were born. If they didn't all do exactly what they did you would have never been born! Butterfly effect ftw.
dankmitch ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:36:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla
Basshugger ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:38:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla. Invented radio, electric motor, X-ray, alternating current, fluorescent bulbs etc...Poor guy was used and abused.
Seventytvvo ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:40:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
By definition, wouldn't it be someone know one knows of?
penguinpwrdbox ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:03:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
UNDER not UN
Seventytvvo ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 02:20:22 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Who could be more underappreciated than someone who's completely unknown? It's like dividing by zero!
Proman2520 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:41:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
President Obama. The political division in this country is unbelievable.
G_D_gardener ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:45:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tesla
Dawdius ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:45:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Mikhail Gorbachev, he might have saved the world.
Agent_Switters ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:46:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tesla
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:47:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tesla. No not the rock group.
c0nduit ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:48:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
OP's mom, she's a real trooper.
Ogden-TO ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:48:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You are
#TimePersonOfTheYear
plazman30 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:56:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla
SpicerJones ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:56:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Apparently, my Mother.
Source - Raised Irish Catholic
Nanofication ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:57:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla
prongtine ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:59:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm going to say me; none of you fuckers has ever acknowledged my contributions to mankind.
penguinpwrdbox ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:04:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
that's because your contributions consist of junk like this.
prongtine ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:30:51 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
But any useful comments or observations would then elicit the need for appreciation and then I couldn't claim to be underappreciated.
--hypnos-- ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:59:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nazi war criminals that worked for bayer. They came up with the "antibacterial" part of the soap everyone uses. Not saying what they did was right but we all use their invention every day and they got 0 credit.
zvezdice ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:01:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla!
ramdaskm ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:03:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tesla
n0rsk ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:08:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alan Turing. He is a huge part of the reason we cracked the German ciphers and who knows how many lives he saved by doing this. He was a key person in the design of the first electronic programmable computer the "Colossus Computer". Yet despite his work he was castrated for being gay which probably is a reason why he later committed suicide.
the_mighty_moon_worm ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:10:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
the guy who invented the bag.
everyone Fucking flipped about the wheel, but this guy gets nothing.
trojangodwulf ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:10:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla
cant_be_pun_seen ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:13:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The numerous elder japanese men who essentially killed themselves in order to contain the fukushima reactor.
CarpeCyprinidae ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:28:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not sure that actually happened. Given that nobody has died as a result of the Fukushima reactor crisis.
cant_be_pun_seen ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:31:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I could have swore this happened. I guess I was thinking of Chernobyl. I'm dumb.
KFGer ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:21:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Judas.
Wait, hear me out! Let's just assume that
1) Jesus was real and
2) whether or not the miracles happened, the prosecution of Jesus was real as well.
So the 12 Apostles must have been his most trusted companions, apparently believers and witnesses to some of his miracles and spokespersons for the new belief. Say what you want about Christianity today, but back in the days they were going against the establishment in such a way they were hunted by the authorities. A full blown religious revolution with roots in the jewish traditions and the messiah-is-coming-soon movement of John the Baptist, which historians argue is the movement that inspired Jesus to start preaching himself. Most of his apostles were in from the beginning, and were in it for good. You could assume that Jesus, the Messiah as he was proclaimed, was followed by many more, just like in cults today, but the apostles were the hardliners, probably coming up with how to sell this whole new messiah-is-actually-among-us-right-fucking-now movement they had going on. They were like campaign spokespeople, the most loyal believers and they must have been aware of what was going on: A road which had to end in capture by the Roman Empire, which had its own Emperor-Augustus-is-actually-like-a-god-in-a-way movement of how things had to be running. The clash was unavoidable. And Judas was part of this uprising-to-happen shit.
You'd argue he wanted to bail, get out for free, flee the sinking ship. But I think he knew what was going to happen and that it was going to happen whether or not he was the one to rat out Jesus to the Romans. The moment Jesus told the apostles that one of them was gonna betray him, Judas knew that Jesus wanted it to happen soon. If you assume that Judas believed, Jesus was the son of God, in fact God himself, Judas knew Jesus would conquer death and the movement wouldn't be stopped, in fact it would be proven. So Judas does the most rational thing and sells him out. Best PR stunt ever. Jesus dies, comes back 3 days later and the early Christianity movement is established. Couldn't have happened if nothing happened to Jesus. And what does Judas get? 2000 years later and people still wouldn't even consider naming their sons Judas, except for maybe some Judas Priest fans or Atheist hardliners.
TLDR: Judas was the PR manager any Messiah could have hoped for.
quikslvr223 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:23:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
me
akanosora ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:28:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jesus's biological father?
j_onathon ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:35:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla
HiggsBoson18x ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:42:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:43:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Obama
sweeny5000 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:48:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No doubt.
iam_a_cow ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:45:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
In the world of technology, Nicola Tesla.
penguinpwrdbox ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:07:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
no
iam_a_cow ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:35:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Then who?
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:49:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Any popular response is automatically incorrect.
penguinpwrdbox ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:09:12 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No, it isn't. The question asked is about UNDERappreciated, not UNappreciated people. People like you who keep posting this flawed pseudo-intellectual idea are just making yourselves look foolish.
atsymbolomic ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:54:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'd say Tesla is up there
harpoongargoyle ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:56:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
me
dasoberirishman ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:00:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Echoing others here: Nikola motherfuckin' Tesla.
sayitinmygoodear ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:02:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It bugs the shit out of me that that pompous piece of shit who killed himself, steve jobs, get more attention for his accomplishments than a real innovator like Kurzweil.
Squeetums ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:16:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Didnt steve jobs die of cancer?
sayitinmygoodear ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:26:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thought he knew better than his doctors, and ended up trying alternative medicine until it was too late to save himself. He basically committed suicide by stupidity.
Squeetums ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:02:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
ok, thats explains it, basically an unintentional suicide, which is odd considering he knew how powerful technology and medicine was together, being a frontrunner for the full integration of the two.
randomDudeSomeNumber ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:27:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
yes, he did
Skeptic_moron ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:04:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Every single teenager, emo or not.
gt95ab ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:14:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yo momma???
(...Is the most underappreciated person in history)
notabloodyhipster ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:17:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Whoever named the Walkie-talkie and Tighty-whiteys.
Klever81 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:19:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your mom.
No seriously, call your mother.
jplevene ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:22:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me, I work all hours for not enough money and sacrifice luxuries in life for my family.
In_Dark_Trees ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:24:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your mom.
500Questions ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:28:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jesus Christ, who saved billions of lives by teaching us to wash our hands, cover our mouths when we cough, and warned us that rats, fleas, and mosquitoes can carry disease. /s
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:31:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me :P
yanxmandu ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:31:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla
Not for engineers and electricians, but for the general public, Tesla isn't just Elon Musk's car company. He definitely could've used some better marketing back in his day.
yadhtrib ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:33:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We don't know their name...
Kipper_the_snob ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:35:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Charles Martel. He defeated the invading Moors at the battle of Tours in 732 AD, and if he hadn't they would likely have overrun Europe, meaning that the world would be very different were it not for him. He also happened to be the grandfather of Charlemagne.
WeRtheBork ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:36:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The same people as the last time this was asked.
IsThatDWade ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:41:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:42:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nicola Tesla, the guy who gave us modern electricity.
Sirmaksalot ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:43:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
NIKOLA TESLA! He invented the distribution system for electricity that we currently use. Most people know Edison's work but not Tesla's. He did so much more than distribute AC power though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla
penguinpwrdbox ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:12:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
no
CFH75 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:44:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jack Kevorkian dude is a fucking hero in my book.
Calamanation ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:45:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I know this is probably a serious topic but I'm going to say Hitler, without him Racism probably would still be cool no black civil rights movement the women's rights movement would be treading water to... Never mind nuclear energy or America's golden age
shmackhead ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:47:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Step-parents. It's tough on my heart to hear my 7 yr old step son praise his deadbeat dad like he's Superdad.
penguinpwrdbox ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:12:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
no
DuSundavarFreohr ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:47:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Whomever it is, they have been forgotten.
ratpH1nk ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:52:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think this is profound. Indeed, I would imagine the most underappreciated person in history would be completely anonymous. Lost to time.
penguinpwrdbox ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:14:00 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This means they are valued, but not enough. The word is UNDERappreciated. Not UNappreciated.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:56:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The people who developed various forms of reliable, accessible birth control. Especially the pill, which I still maintain was the most important invention of the 20th century. Being able to choose the size of your family, especially for women, is an extraordinarily powerful gift to have, and it has made enormous changes in our society, even in only about 50 years. I'm not even talking about overpopulation here - just the simple ability of one person to maintain autonomy over their life.
lemontinfoil ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:56:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla. Look him up. Learn.
W_Wilson ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:08:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Not a person, but the black plague. Reduced over population and literally brought Europe out of the Dark Age into Renaissance.
fuckingkarmaguy ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:08:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You've never heard of her.
penguinpwrdbox ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:15:12 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This means they are valued, but not enough. The word is UNDERappreciated. Not UNappreciated.
runk_dasshole ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:20:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your mom.
No really, call her and tell her you love her. One day she'll be gone.
jwasniak ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:24:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla. Period.
thenothingman_ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:31:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler
fear_of_government ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:32:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dylan
Magnetic-0s ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:41:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
IDK, but he's certainly not going to be mentioned here.
penguinpwrdbox ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:15:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This means they are valued, but not enough. The word is UNDERappreciated. Not UNappreciated.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:42:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't know who they are, but I'm guessing they're a woman.
invent_or_die ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:06:02 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sure.
Simbalis ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:45:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your mother. You should probably call her.
GeraldBWilsonJr ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:57:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The working man
Salute to the man in the oil-stained blue boiler suit and blackened palms
ilikelissie ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:00:38 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your mother. How come you never call her?
chaster2001 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:03:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Every single scientist in the world
Ckrebs95 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:04:15 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Moms, my mom, your mom, everyones moms. No matter how much you appreciate your mom, it's still not enough.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:06:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jimmy Carter
fizzlydizzly ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:09:58 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Probably me
MonkeyKnifeFighting ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:10:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Probably the guy who writes it all down
Boldchoice ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:21:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My mom. Your mom. Everyones moms. I need to spend more time with her before she leaves.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:23:33 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Who did you think? My wife.... ofcourse...
DPRK_HRoffice ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:25:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hero of Alexandria, c. 10 - c. 70 BC.
Invented the first steam engine (aeolipile), a mechanical vending machine, the first wind powered machine (a musical organ), a fully automated theater complete with robotic statuary and automated music, the force-pump, the syringe, and a programmable robotic mechanical cart powered by a falling weight.
He wrote a huge number of texts of engineering and mathematics, including one called Belopoeica in which he described advanced mechanical war engines.
TL;DR, first century Roman invented Gundam and no one gave a shit for two millennia.
jakeowaty ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:27:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tesla.
Tripsee ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:36:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Adolph Hitler
Hektik352 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:38:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla, Every modern day electronic device.
JuicyJese ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:47:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla
sharkowictz ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:48:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
George W Bush in his battle against AIDS in Africa.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/eugene-robinson-george-w-bushs-greatest-legacy--his-battle-against-aids/2012/07/26/gJQAumGKCX_story.html
NUMBerONEisFIRST ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:50:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla
sarcastroll ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:50:33 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yakov Pavlov.
May very well have won Stalingrad. If the Germans had won Stalingrad that could have very well been the war. (Despite what US history books teach, WW2 was really all about Russia v. Germany)
acideath ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:52:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
ITT Tesla
myfitnessredditun ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:58:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Probably someone nobody's heard of.
drocraver ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:00:06 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
TESLA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
rossea7 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:00:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The person that is forgotten from this thread, obviously.
NoSalt ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:03:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me
3rt41 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:07:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
NIKOLA TESLA
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:10:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me
j/k... or am I?
Thatzionoverthere ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:11:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Op's mom.
Masked_Tarrant ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:15:06 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The guy who invented yoga pants.
Deep-shit ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:18:47 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Adolf Hitler
Thediyimate ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:18:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Often forgotten because his inventions were stolen by nine other then Thomas Edison, Nikolas tesla invented such things as light, radio, X-rays, alternating current the list goes on
GameQb11 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:22:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Obama
Slav_1 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:25:33 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler
bananeeek ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:26:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Henri Poincarรฉ among other things he dicovered the theory of relativity (which Einstein stole) and a chaotic deterministic system which laid the foundations of modern chaos theory.
It's worth reading about him because he has done a ton of science and he is not even being referred to anywhere.
Tw36912 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:31:45 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tesla He invented AC , which led to our modern world.
jurrea619 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:39:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikolas Tesla!
Pure_Vylence ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:39:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla, he never seems to get credit for any of his achievements.
iskico ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:45:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
OPs mom
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:52:22 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We don't know what happened to his mom, but there was Aunt Bee.
planelander ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:48:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla
Joal0503 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:50:56 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The dude/lady who created the first language
DerpiesG ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:54:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tesla
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:55:33 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla. Thomas Edison sucked him dry of his talents for profit.
DonkeyNaHammock ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:18:06 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla the most underrated human being ever.
Orangutan ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:20:22 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla
rikrdox8a ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:21:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tesla
gymoverschool ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:29:28 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tesla!! Definitely him...he gave up richea in the name of science and. Has made inventiones that other people have the credit for
skatoulaki ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:52:28 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla
maretime ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:53:33 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nicola Tesla
dirtrox44 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:57:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:32:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tesla himself.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:35:03 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This might be the greatest thread in reddit history. Congrats on a fantastic question OP.
matter_girl ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:38:00 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The real answer is millions of women. :\
Canolafarmer ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:41:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Steven Harper
Eternal-Lion ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:44:17 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Gonna be lost, but Tesla.
mobius153 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:46:56 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Good choice.
noisyturtle ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:25:58 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My mom. She's pretty much the greatest person ever.
Scottyv2 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:45:56 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler
Kristoevie ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:57:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
ITT: mostly women in history.
BurntToast__ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 08:19:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Who ever the person was that thought of toilet paper. Under appreciated person in history by a country mile
kasahito ยท -4 points ยท Posted at 18:59:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla.
Apart from having around 300 patents to his name, the man was ridiculously ahead of his time.
holyfreakingshitake ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:06:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
REEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
wPoLrAdY ยท -7 points ยท Posted at 16:21:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Fuck tesla
lyla2398 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 16:55:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
/u/RarestarGarden would like to kill you now.
RarestarGarden ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:14:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
FTFY
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 17:13:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
People haven't said Tesla because the question was about the most under appreciated and reddit is a giant fucking Tesla circlejerk.
[deleted] ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 16:28:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
ubermatt666 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:04:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Who were these people? I did a quick gs and I found This Source claiming to disprove a bunch of Tesla "myths" but I'm not sure I can say this source is unbiased with edisontechcenter.org for the name.
wPoLrAdY ยท -4 points ยท Posted at 16:42:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Fuck tesla
Bradman9994 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:30:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ahh.. he's pretty highly acclaimed these days
killer3james ยท -3 points ยท Posted at 20:01:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Adolf Hitler.
Even though he was very 'set in his ways', he was a genius, potentially on the same level as Einstein
tohighforthisritenow ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:34:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I knew this would be one of the top comments when sorted by controversial
[deleted] ยท -4 points ยท Posted at 21:56:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
He had an IQ of 141
Edit: a recorded fact gets downvoted. Reddit you're so smart.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 10:03:20 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 13:38:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Are you retarded? I never said he should be appreciated. I said he was a verified genius.
Mr_Nexxus ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 14:38:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
ITT: People saying "me"
God-of-Atheism ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 20:25:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Donald Trump. I know he can be a bit ridiculous, but let's be honest, he is one of the few politicians who doesn't desperately want to import a ton of Muslims. Europe is fucked. I'm actually considering moving to the US.
Tychonaut ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:48:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Better not. Cops will get ya.
God-of-Atheism ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:11:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nah, won't happen. I'm not black.
DeShot ยท -4 points ยท Posted at 19:18:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tesla!
fkngross ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 18:07:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola tesla. He has done a lot and most of it was stolen.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:29:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler.
I mean, he did kill Hitler after all...
CaptainRumin-ENT2020 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:10:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Appearantly, my mother.
Shadowking88 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:21:38 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Nikola Tesla, he studied any and everything that had to do with energy and mechanics and was the father of the future we live in. To add isult to injury he died pennyless.
EsportGoyim ยท -11 points ยท Posted at 18:01:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Bernie Sanders. He finally brought the issues blighting America to the forefront.
MelGibsonIsKingAlpha ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 19:02:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think his true heroism is sacrificing any chance at being president to illustrate exactly how fervently people will vote against their own self interest.
[deleted] ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 21:54:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Go suck his dick. He's going to be just like every other president in the last two decades, completely incapable of bringing his plan to fruition. He's noble. He doesn't have the means to change things.
[deleted] ยท -5 points ยท Posted at 18:18:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 18:23:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
15 years ago, I would have agreed.
ColonelSanders_1930 ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 14:00:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Colonel Sanders
jackwoww ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 20:20:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well Hitler doesn't get enough credit for killing Hitler
fbgmoola ยท -3 points ยท Posted at 20:08:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler
kairon156 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:16:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
he said underrated not infamous.
[deleted] ยท -10 points ยท Posted at 13:50:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
[deleted]
plincer ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 14:59:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Stalin's earlier mistakes were colossal. From a war perspective:
in his paranoia, he killed off much of the Red Army officer core in the late 1930s. Once war started, the remaining officers were terrified to make decisions that didn't correspond to much earlier directives that often did not account for the situation on the ground. By contrast, the German officers (also serving a totalitarian state), used their brains and initiative to quickly reacted to the battle situation they faced.
Stalin decided to make a non-aggression pact with Hitler (actually supplying Germany with considerable resources right through 1941). This freed up Hitler to take on and defeat Britain and France in the West without worrying about the USSR. In 1941, Stalin had to face a focussed Germany that didn't have to divide its forces on a western front.
during the 1941 invasion, he tried to act as general and did so poorly. The number of men and resources lost were considerably increased.
Stalin's earlier actions caused mass starvation in Ukraine. Had Hitler not been so stupid how he dealt with the Ukrainians, much of that population might have joined forces with the Germans to defeat the Soviets.
camelothotel ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 16:25:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Defeat Britain? Excuse me?
plincer ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 16:53:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Those in favour of democratic Europe are glad the Operation Sealion (German invasion of Britain) wasn't brought to fruition -- hooray, RAF. But in evacuating Dunkirk in 1940, the British Army left almost all their tanks, artillery and heavy equipment behind. It would be years before the British could be more than an annoyance to Germany in western Europe. Hitler did not have to leave that much behind to protect his back while he concentrated on his invasion of the Soviets in 1941.
Had there not been an non-aggression pact in 1939, Hitler would have had to face Britain and France in the west and the Soviets in the East at the same time. It's very unlikely he could have knocked out either in a full two-front war.
Yajirobe404 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 13:54:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The only reason you could say this is because socialism that was present during Stalin's time is gone. No more Soviet Russia. If it didn't fall apart half of Europe would be a sh*t hole right now.
If Hitler won the war and after some years the Nazi regime would have fallen apart you could have written the same about Hitler.
Cyclone_1 ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 14:10:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Was it really socialism under Stalin, though? Seemed more like brutal totalitarian state-controlled capitalism to me than anything else.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 14:20:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
Cyclone_1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 14:57:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah except Communism has a definition. The Soviet Union wasn't communist.
Communism is a moneyless, classless, stateless society. Have any kind of gripes you want against socialism and communism but at least try to ensure that you're being as accurate as you can be.
coretj ยท -3 points ยท Posted at 18:34:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla. Plain and simple.. Kids don't learn about him in schools even though without him the world would be a much darker and less connected place than it is today.
roger_podakter ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 18:38:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tesla.
[deleted] ยท -4 points ยท Posted at 19:21:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler. Hear me out....
Hitler was such an evil bastard that he forced the rest of humanity to shift away from evil. We live in a much more peaceful and prosperous society today because Hitler made that brand of evil untenable. In addition, his scientists eventually became our scientists and we can thank them for the creation of the precursors to a lot of the tech we use today. Basically Hitler forced humanity as a whole to set aside their differences and defeat a common evil, which has lead to peace for the majority of nations on earth by treaty with the U.S as the enforcer.
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 19:27:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Shouldn't the world's advancement of peace be credited to society's reaction instead?
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:29:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's a reaction that wouldn't have had the chance to occur without a catalyst. Hitler was the catalyst.
ABG614 ยท -4 points ยท Posted at 19:56:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla
elkazay ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 17:02:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tesla back when he was alive
ernestbrave ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 17:07:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla
frandy ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 17:38:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla
Kjsan415 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 17:55:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla
Bananamanalabama ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 18:02:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My vote goes for Nikolai Tesla
kashiman290 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:04:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My guess was that somebody was going to say this immediately when I open the page, and my guess was correct.
goldenstealth ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:06:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I scrolled comments for 15 seconds and then literally started writing a comment about him...deleted it in shame.
noodle-face ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 18:03:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jennifer Lawrence. That ass and titties.
Mad_Jukes ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:07:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
How in the hell do you figure she's UNDERappreciated??? Get outta here
neverstopgettingcash ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 18:31:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla
James_Locke ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 18:35:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This about it. Mothers. Most mothers to the greatest people in the world have been conveniently ignored, yet many of them played a fundamental role in the early childhood experience of the greats.
dad1guy ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:19:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Pretty much any woman before 1900 and all woman that have not received due credit.
SupremeAuthority ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:20:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Churchill. Saves the world and gets voted out of office.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:13:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla.
strack94 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:14:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla.
Yorkshir31 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:29:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The wizard.. Nikola Tesla
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 23:35:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ludwig von Mises. His epistemological propositions solve ages old science philosophy dilemmas, such as the problem with justifying induction, and help to unify economics via a synthetic methodology. His understanding of biology shows its age, but he makes no bones about its importance in understanding the motivation of Human Action.
Geaux2424 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 00:22:38 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Any American soldier who has died for this great country.
acideath ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:57:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
American soldier euphoria is a hell of a drug. Arguably no American soldier has died for America since WW2
art8476 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 00:23:22 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Any woman working the same job as a man and STILL being paid less.
Leesin2me ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 02:11:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 02:59:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Probably God.
chatrugby ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 05:55:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Judas.
Hear me out here. Jesus was an asshole. He may have been the son of God, but asshole none the less. The guy started shit everywhere he went. If you believe the Hindu texts that describe his adult travels as Lord Isa, then you will see the same pattern. Him telling people everywhere they were full of shit. He had to leave cause they were going to kill him.
So, he goes back home and starts shit at the temple. Fucking with the hardworking money traders and elders, and those guys are shitting themselves. He was a little shit at 12 when he would out-scripture them regularly, and constantly tell them they were wrong. They must have been having Vietnam war like flash-backs.
Then he starts shit in the streets, putting bakers and fishermen alike out of work in the matter of minutes. Convinces people to follow him instead of burry their deceased loved ones cause, fuck'em they are dead, but he doesn't stop there. He fucks with the basic laws of nature and goes over to the dark side. The dead are dead and should stay dead... Unless of course you are Jesus efing Christ!!! (Emanuel efing Christ doesn't have the same ring to it). So he went full wacko and started the goddamn zombie revolution!
Now he really really had to go. For the children, you know?
The only sane follower who was not addicted to the coolaid, did the only thing any male in his shoes could do. He tipped of the local 5-0 and cashed in. But not before Jesus made them all eat flesh and drink blood.
Unfortunately some hardcore stoner-douche followers who couldn't get their fix anymore decided to take out our unsung hero.
Voila, Judas, most under-appreciated person in history.
yaosio ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 14:10:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me. None of you know who I am or what I've done, further proving my point.
CaptainFairchild ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 14:53:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Have you done anything worthwhile?
TromboneTank ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:21:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Probably. But we don't know, which is why he is underappreciated
[deleted] ยท -4 points ยท Posted at 19:03:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler. The guy did some shitty stuff, but he also delayed global warming by a few decades.
CommodoreKrusty ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:05:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Really? He ran his armies on liquified coal.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:15:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, but he also caused a war that killed millions of people which offset the amount of coal he was using. Think of the long lasting effects his actions had on future generations. After the war entire bloodlines were killed off. That had to help with the overall effects of global warming.
urPenguinsRbelong2us ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:34:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
hitler he made volkswagen the autobahn pulled and germany out of debt.
[deleted] ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 19:41:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler was an horror, but if not for him we would be living in a world much less evolved, the base for rockets were based on the V2, chemical industry, health, microwave, there was so many things that evolved so rapidly not only because of war but because Germany was living under the nazi party. Shit there is no thing as a black and white in history.
Arfmeow ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 15:26:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me.
Macmang29 ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 22:51:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler
neur28 ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 01:16:28 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla
melbrianson ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 01:23:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikolai tesla
kadykinns ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 01:24:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikolai tesla
sullyrb ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 01:25:49 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
nikola tesla by light years.
[deleted] ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 02:44:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler.
cornellthrowaway1 ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 03:42:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Caitlyn Jenner, she is a stunning and brave hero.
dacookiemonstah ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 03:52:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Barack Obama
anooblol ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 04:04:27 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Christopher Columbus. Everyone fucking hates him now-a-days. But if he didn't popularize sailing west, the colonization of the western world would have been delayed by many years.
NOTE: He WAS appreciated. Not anymore.
Rexosorous ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 22:25:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler. He did nothing wrong.
juanjimatawa ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 15:27:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No one on this thread at least.
penguinpwrdbox ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:17:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This means they are valued, but not enough. The word is UNDERappreciated. Not UNappreciated.
juanjimatawa ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:44:35 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I know what the word means, no need to act like a condescending prick. What I mean to say is that if there is/was a person out there who is the MOST underappreciated person in history, chances are they're not even gonna get a mention on a Reddit thread.
lurkieloo ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 16:46:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
well if you ask my mother...
ryeguyfriday ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 16:53:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug
richardec ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 18:26:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tesla
penguinpwrdbox ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:29:55 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
no
richardec ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 02:56:38 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yes
Nossairito ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 18:32:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Mark Yeaton, WWE's former time keeper, who was the legend that almost had a 100% success ratio at throwing beers at Stone Cold Steve Austin. Behind every great catcher there's a great thrower
ColeYote ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 18:45:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The guy who invented air conditioning. Or indoor heating, take your pick.
thefistpenguin ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 18:59:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Mom
decent__username ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:00:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Mothers
them_donkeys ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:01:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Mr. Nugget
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:02:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Charles Martel.
illustration_is_tubz ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:23:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Probably already posted but Tesla I feel is very unknown and underappreciated to many.
penguinpwrdbox ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:38:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
no
packymccracken ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:24:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My mother... According to my mother.
kingeryck ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:24:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me. Lousy family doesn't APPRECIATE ANYTHING I DO!
SirGronk ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:24:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My mother in law. Apparently.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:25:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My narcissist mother
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:26:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
we wouldn't know because their story was never told. For all of the stories that we know, there are undoubtedly countless others that died with the person
penguinpwrdbox ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:39:01 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
This means they are valued, but not enough. The word is UNDERappreciated. Not UNappreciated.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 02:12:49 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
ummm no. People that are unappreciated are ALSO under-appreciated. People that were never recognized by history were not valued highly enough
It doesn't mean that at all. That is your own interpretation.
penguinpwrdbox ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 02:14:17 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's actually not. It's the definition given by google. Sorry that words to mean what you'd like them to.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:15:54 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I mean YOUR sentence. The sentence YOU wrote. The definition is correct but you are assuming and extrapolating on that
penguinpwrdbox ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 02:20:58 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Again, words are hard. I'm not assuming anything. I'm reiterating to you the title of the thread that you chose to post something ignorant in, which uses the word "underappreciated", not "unappreciated."
I'm really sorry that your pseudo-intellectual post that attempted to point out a brilliant flaw of logic isn't working out for you, but have a nice day.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 02:26:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
what a fucking condescending asshole. holy shit. never mind I have no desire to further converse.
penguinpwrdbox ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 02:33:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hold up. So, my man posts a great question full of hundreds of interesting responses, and you decided you were gonna come fuck his shit up with a logical fallacy designed to point out the inherent flaw in his question with your pedantic interpretation of his choice of verbiage instead of actually contributing something useful to the conversation, right?
But I'm a condescending asshole?
For real?
Encrenoir ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:26:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Charles Martel.
ItsJustGizmo ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:26:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's gotta be me!
GageC132 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:27:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Just about every indigenous Indian in the US. No one ever speaks of them and their land was ripped away from them by whites. After a very bloody war the would be Americans won from sheer numbers and now the US Government just gives them money to stay hush hush and fight for their rights.
Source: Im half Cherokee and half German
shantastic138 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:30:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me. I am the most underappreciated person in history.
popozuda247 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:30:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Joseph, cause let's face it, he probably was Jesus' Dad.
EastCoastAversion ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:31:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Leo DiCaprio, obviously. If Hitler can be Times man of the year, we should at least be able to give Leo an Oscar.
Scranda1 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:34:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Bruce wayne
fleetingmeet ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:35:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Pki8vjiifotiyryplkkiiiikokรดyuttjtrmtpryiiokmoioiiiiyroiikeeuuujkioniiwjrijiuinkptjjjohiiuuoiiiimytuyytoiikkkkkppprwhigyuuuvuirxxufrfupfkmoonm k kรดjpjjionopojiiojiijjiijoojoopfplfftlrmkkilkpmpplktplky
acn250 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:35:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Whoever discovered fire.
yougoldmansachsGUGGE ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:40:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
me, I gotta pop this bottle u gonna give me brain or nah
bepseh ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:41:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Every single medical Dr in the world
alexgorale ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:42:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Friedrich Hayek
themikeswitch ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:44:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
It's lost to history, but whoever came up with the wheel.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:45:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
penguinpwrdbox ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:40:58 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
no
LightsStayOnInFrisco ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:46:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Judas. If you're a bible believing Christian and take it as historical truth, of course. He kept Yaweh's plan moving right along by turning Jesus in and got him to his crucifixion in a timely manner. Yay!
pica0050 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:46:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Matt Skiba, singer and songwriter for Alkaline Trio. A terribly underrated band.
penguinpwrdbox ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:42:17 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
IN HISTORY? The MOST? In HISTORY?
You should get off the internet. It's late, and you probably have homework.
penguinpwrdbox ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:42:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
IN HISTORY? The MOST? In HISTORY?
You should get off the internet. It's late, and you probably have homework.
pica0050 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:00:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Obvious troll is obvious?
comicsnerd ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:47:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I would have said me, but I just got a compliment from my boss. So, the most underappreciated guy is my coworker, who does the same job, but did not get a compliment
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:48:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Probably Nikolai Tesla if you don't count the Internet. My history books and teachers done mention him at all.
penguinpwrdbox ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:42:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
no
penguinpwrdbox ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:42:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
no
pleasejustdie ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:49:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The guy who invented the toilet. Everyone has one or more and they just piss and shit all over his invention.
swordmalice ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:51:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Bad Luck Brian.
red_not_ash ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:52:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The two other people in the midnight ride.
TMGMilez ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:52:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My name is Alexander Hamilton. There's so many things I haven't done, but just you wait....
antiqua_lumina ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:53:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We don't know who, but they killed a leader who was going to be worse than Hitler before said leader rose to power
PornRules ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:53:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
AGUSTUS
way more badass than Julius
Ionlydateteachers ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:53:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Our fathers and or father figures even if it was your single mom or grandmother and anyone who works with Big Brothers and Big Sisters of America that doesn't rape their buddies
florenceofgale ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:53:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ian Flemming, hands down.
ptangirala ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:55:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Gandhi. No seriously. Everyone knows of him as the guy who led the struggle for India's independence, but his role in World War II was absolutely pivotal.
He convinced the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League to allow Indian soldiers to join the Allied forces. Anyone familiar with India''s contribution in a war that she had practically nothing to do with will know this changed the course of the 20th century.
shadmansyed ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:56:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Kevin
marianew ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:57:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think the best person in the history of mankind is His Prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him.
dontaxmebro ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:09:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Amen
kevinwsk ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 19:59:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Mothers
the_okay ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:00:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ops mom; gets fucked by everyone but never complains
RuskiBroski ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:01:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The dude who discovered fire.
Who_Dat_Whyteboi ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:02:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Judas Iscariot.
dogbagpipes ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:13:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
History is pretty broad. Let's stick with US History. Alexander Hamilton.
canaryherd ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:20:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My mum, apparently
TheJackFroster ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:20:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The first human to figure out how to eat and drink.
Jaggent ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:21:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
me, of course me!
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:25:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Moms
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:25:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Rundall here, I would say my wife. A wonderful lady my wife, she volunteers at a shelter for dyslexic children and she always wakes up an hour before myself to make me breakfast, two runny eggs, fried, and a quesadilla stuffed with Fox meat and Corriander. Rundall Rundall.
BlackLeatherRain ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:26:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The first dude that decided whatever that calf over there is drinking out of its mother must be good for him, too.
MilkMySpermCannon ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:27:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Mom and Dad
middlenamekiller ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:29:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Everybody's mamas
kayjay734 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:30:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, they probably weren't the most under-appreciated before this thread, and they certainly won't be after it.
Sixpeoplewilling ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:31:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Dad.
RoboTroy ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:31:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
by definition, it would be a person that nobody has heard of. end of discussion.
friendless789 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:32:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me, because I do alot of hard work but I dont get any pat in the back for a hard days work
fungoid_sorceror ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:33:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The first person who accidentally dropped their food into the fire and ate it anyway.
georgeo ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:33:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Benedict Arnold. His performance in the battles of Ticonderoga and Saratoga turned defeat into victory and convinced the French to back the U.S. Without him America could not have achieved independence, which is more than you could say about Washington.
MiloMinderbnder ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:33:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Gavrilo Princip https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavrilo_Princip
DlProgan ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:34:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me. Just don't ask why.
ChimneyFire ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:34:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your mother
TragicHeron ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:35:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Idk guys everyone is saying people who saved loads of lives but I walk and feed my dog everyday and he never says thank you so I'm feeling close to the top.
nthnlfrc ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:36:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me.
DntPnicIGotThis ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:37:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me :(
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:38:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My Dad.
tgd78st8dgau ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:39:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:39:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fluffers
bulivyf ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:40:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Considering the situation in Germany...
poolerboy0077 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:42:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jesus Christ. Too many people just don't accept him into their hearts. :(
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:42:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Aunt Jemima... And yes I am serious!
snakestrike ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:43:11 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I am going to say Benedict Arnold Everyone knows him as a traitor, but what most people don't know is that without him there is a very good possibility America wold not exist today.
I had an early American history class about the American Military up to 1890 and without Arnold America would have lost several key battles and not even have the ability to fight the British. He was one of the first people that reacted to the call for revolution after Lexington and Concord. He gathered up a group of militia to Capture Fort Ticonderoga which secured much of America's artillery for the war as well as a very important strategic position.
He was consistently the one saving our asses but het got fucked over by the continental congress several times, which understandably made him upset.
theonemoo ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:43:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me, we wouldn't have this amazing g comment otherwise
fguti98 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:44:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
the inventor of toilet paper.
MasterOfYoMom ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:45:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tyion Lannister: The Battle of Blackwater Bay
Drafo7 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:46:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The (probably Chinese) guy who invented toilet paper. We don't even know this genius's name, but imagine not having anything to wipe with but your hands and maybe some leaves. Plus unless you know which leaves are safe, you could be dealing with VERY uncomfortable rashes for some time. This mastermind saved us all from that fate. And we don't even know his name.
CanYouSmellThat ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:47:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Is it not by the very definition of the question that we wouldn't know?
pinckney12 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:47:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oleg Pentkovsky. Our spy in the old USSR in the 60s. It was his information that told us the Russians would back down in the missile crisis if confronted by Kennedy.
scrotesmcgaha ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:49:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My mom. For dealing with my adhd ridden ass my entire childhood.
Cronoadvan ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:50:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me.
juanjing ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:50:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My mother, apparently.
dieterpaleo ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:51:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jewish mothers on Long Island
BigMikeSRT ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:51:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jim Kelly
janus_marine ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:52:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Judas.
He set in motion the events that would lead to the most successful religion of all time, which reshaped global geopolitical climates for centuries.
He is reviled as one of the most hated people of all time, and his name is synonymous with traitors and treachery.
alpacapicnic ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:52:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
me ):
bueschwd ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:54:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The guy who invented ink
VerticalEvent ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:54:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your mother. You don't appreciate her enough.
KantReid ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:55:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
me.
thehighground ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:55:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me
ngrsuk ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:56:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Bigfoots dick
malignatius ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:56:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Judas.
bblumber ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:58:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Late to the party, but... Nikola Tesla He brought about our modern electricity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla
celomics ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:00:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Whoever thought of drinking the milk that comes out of a cow's utter.
jayhuffy ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:03:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Me.
:(
Squirrel009 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:03:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Crusty, the janitor
Dolfan0925 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:05:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My mom.
madwithhate ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:05:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me.
ALchroniKOHOLIC ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:06:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me
Edit: Read it wrong , thought it said more unappreciated person
Naggaplox ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:06:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Satan. Hands down.
transfire ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:17:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well, if your really think about it, you're not wrong. However, not a real person.
GerbilEnthusiast ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:06:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm sure none of us know their name.
whiteflagwaiver ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:07:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Really no one has posted Nikola Tesla? I'm appalled.
LeeKinanus ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:09:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
zog, Him invented fire with sticks.
fatdjsin ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:18:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me!
tonpole ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:20:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
There are some very good nominations in this thread, but I haven't seen the most underappreciated human yet: whoever the first human was.
brostitosNdip ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:20:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Gavrillo Princip, who permanently altered the face of the modern world when he essentially single-handedly started WW1
Bud_Johnson ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:21:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Op's mom
kevie3drinks ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:22:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
According to a new Broadway Play, Alexander Hamilton.
eman00619 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:23:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jennifer from accounting.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:24:58 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
With the play, he's been getting more of the attention he deserves recently... but Alexander Hamilton. Dude basically created modern economics a century before Keynes, and we'd be a broke-ass, un-unified country if not for him
Lax-Captain29 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:25:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
ME
quartzilium ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:25:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We don't know their name.
uneditablepoly ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:26:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Probably someone who has already been forgotten...
thaspaceturtle ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:27:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Thats probably me
naughtyandnicegirl ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:29:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
me
jeeps350 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:29:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Moms
michaelscott33 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:31:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Turing and Tesla don't get their fair share in history books.
Knlay ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:31:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your mother. Call her
Grsn ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:32:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Cengiz khan.By killing millions of people he reduced CO2 levels in the atmosphere and help reduce global warming. Not that it's a good thing to pillage, rape and kill everything in sight; but it did help the environment.
Hightastic ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:34:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me
ricdesi ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:34:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The first guy to say "hey, maybe we should start writing this shit down".
chinchillahorned ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:34:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Bernie Sanders
ChristySandhoff ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:35:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
that guy who invented the wheel
rexginger ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:36:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Martin Luther King Jr. Without him all of the African Americans would have adopted the ideology of Malcom X and would basically started an all out race war.
cgenebrewer ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 21:41:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't think he is under appreciated, and "all of the African Americans" would not have followed Malcolm X.
ThePeej ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:40:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
OP.
Crossfiyah ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:41:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alexander Hamilton is probably in the running for American History, at the very least.
immortalone23 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:44:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I mean there's a musical in his honor.
Crossfiyah ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:00:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sure, now...
DaMajesticOne ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:42:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:42:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Leonardo Dicaprio
ophello ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:43:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me.
Slashveto ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:43:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The guy who literally invented the wheel.
We don't even know his name!
Poor guy. :'(
Erugaladh ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:44:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My mom, apparently
Deluxe_Flame ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:45:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Who was the person who invented the water boiler for hot showers?
KnowledgeIsDangerous ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:46:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I am
sweeny5000 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:47:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ron Jeremy's fluffer.
Redditvlogger ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:47:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
History will remember Ron Paul, Murray Rothbard, and Ludwig von Mises quite favorably.
hackingupalung ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:49:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
leonardo dicaprio
nidnus ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:49:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me.
xNicoz- ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:49:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me.
largehoman ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:50:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I am. I've done lots of things and no one ever notices. Like the other day I took out the trash without being asked. I always put down the toilet seat. I was dishes from time to time. What more could you ask for? I'm so unappreciated, sometimes I just want to cry.
Your-adaisy-ifyoudo ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:50:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I feel John Hancock is very under appreciated when it comes to being one of the founding Fathers of the United States.Without his fortune spent on arms and ammunition and his leadership and influence within congress the United States most likely would never had come to fruition.
callmeohio ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:51:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me. Obviously.
Cops_on_Acid ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:53:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
R2D2. He was the real hero.
rolobrowntowntony ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:54:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
you OP :)
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:56:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My mom, if you ask her.
ekobeko ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:56:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your mum, but not for the reasons you'd expect.
dreweatall ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:57:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The dude who found fire. Good job man.
TheYearOfThe_Rat ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:58:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me.
SirThang ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:59:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me.
ecctt2000 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:59:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Charlemagne
mmmbarry ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:59:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
your mum
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:02:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
therealmyself ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:22:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Maybe it is harder to be Tom Cruise than to be a marine or soldier. There are a lot more successful soldiers than there are actors as successful as Tom Cruise. A lot of the stupid kids from school joined the infantry, I think it is a lot easier to be a soldier than it is to be a successful actor.
white_n_mild ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:52:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I like Tom Cruise movies plenty, but "easy" is not the word I would use to describe a soldiers job in comparison. Just like low wage workers. Refilling the ice cream machine at McDonald might be simple or common, but it's probably physically demanding and a busy stressful tedious work environment. It ain't easy.
Indigo_Sunset ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:03:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
We would never know. By definition that person or persons would never have been recognized to begin with or been so misunderstood as to have been stricken from history.
Edit several days later: much like this comment.
Cenarang117 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:04:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jar Jar Binks
Or, the guy who made that Pokemon musical that came out in the 80s or 90s, idr. But the fact that I don't should sufficiently justify that lol
barneyskywalker ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:08:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
me
Devon8822 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:08:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The most under appreciated person in history is obviously not going to be someone that we know about...
SkatingOnThinIce ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:09:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Is it me?
brendamn ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:09:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
your mom
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:09:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me. /s
Me-as-I ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:11:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
OP
jaguarsRevenge ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:12:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Werner Heisenberg - Responsible for derailing nazi atom bomb research. This totally my take, but after his famous courtyard talk with Neils Bohr (Danish Jew) and Heisenberg being responsible for the Atom Bomb in Germany, he may have had a significant role in Nazis NOT winning the war.
TheSmashPosterGuy ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:25:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jesus
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:33:08 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
ITT Scientists, often underpaid workforce of advancing society
Communizmo ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:41:48 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Josip Broz was the best leader of any country in the history of time.
hejerik ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:47:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The person who invented breathing. Without him we would all be dead
stephthumb ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:51:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me :,(
Bonafy ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:57:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My mom.
ElizaTRichmond ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 23:02:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Pretty much any woman ever. Women were the first cave painters, but it was always assumed that it was men because, gosh, women don't contribute to society!
Women have quietly been in the background doing all kinds of necessary shit so that all people everywhere can do stuff, so that the next generation will be born, etc. And when we do contribute, men frequently steal those ideas and get all of the credit in history books. (Hello, Rosalind Franklin and Jocelyn Bell Burnell and Nettie Stevens!) Seriously, reading through history is one of the most maddening things as a woman because you're like, "OK, great! ...Where are all the women?"
hopopo ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:09:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
They are all on paintings ...
ds9anderon ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 23:08:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
OPs mom
ukeandme ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 23:12:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
After everything she's done for reddit? OPs Mom
zehydra ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 23:13:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me. And you.
KurrKurr ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 23:14:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The guy who built most of our highways! What was his name... oh... Hitler. Damn.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 23:15:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jesus
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 23:21:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
your mom
CanoeBoy ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 23:24:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Adolf Hitler. That man had a vision.
Dr_Monkee ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 23:25:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler.
AndAlexanderWept ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 23:26:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Peter Hitchens is a moral beacon in a dying civilization run by disgusting hedonists and liberal emotional children. He is extremely underrated as a thinker. He rivals his brother in verbal talent, and actually uses science and reason to back up his claims most of the time. He's also excellent at calling out bullshit, but he's largely been ignored because of the new atheist movement his brother started and has been living in his brother's shadow a bit.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 23:34:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler.
calliopecrashed ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 23:40:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 23:42:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler
JMAN_JUSTICE ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 23:47:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tesla. Though he is becoming more well known,I still feel that we under-appreciate the Technological breakthroughs he's given to us. The Radio, Wi-Fi, Deathrays, AC Power, Electric Motors, and RC Technology!
MonsieurMeursault ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 23:49:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The North Vietnamese fighter pilots and Anti-Aircraft weapon operators. They saved a lot of lives.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 23:53:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 00:08:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
William J. Hughes... you liberalz can thank him for the Hughes ammendment banning civilian ownership of machine guns after 1986.... thanks asshole....
MST3K_fan ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 00:12:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Vasili Arkhipov prevented WWIII.
FroogaliT ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 00:13:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Surprised not to see Nikola Tesla up here. You know the lights we all use? They wouldn't be able to work if Tesla didn't develop the Alternating current. Sure Thomas Edison gets credit for the light bulb, but without Tesla, getting electricity to travel such long ditances would have taken much longer. Fun fact: Tesla worked for Edison for a very long time!
boomlikethat ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 00:32:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jesus.
BadB0ii ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 00:40:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler.
theembodimentofsleep ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 00:43:01 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla. He basically created the building blocks for the modern world. And had Edison not been such a ruthless businessman, would have made electricity readily available for all.
Armandowoof ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 00:49:05 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Michael jordan.
Sanhael ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 00:49:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Julius Caesar. He was not an Imperialist. He was handed dictatorial power temporarily to protect Rome from her enemies, and he promptly tried to take on the senate, because enemies. Immediately after he's gone, we get emperors -- a title he never actually shared. Caesar was arrogant, ruthless, and absolutely convinced of his own infallibility... but he honestly gave a damn about the common Romans, he was practical, and he wasn't afraid to do what was necessary: at the time when he marched on Rome, the taboo against bearing weapons into the city was so strong that important Romans were protected by bodyguards who carried wrapped bundles of sticks.
jeepdave ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 00:50:34 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
George W. Bush who didn't freak out in a room full of children when he learned his country was under attack.
with_his_what_not ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:53:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Whilst this seems mildly commendable, it hardly seems worthy of an appearance on the "most in history" scale.
jeepdave ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:59:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
When you factor how much shit he has caught I think it was a good show of character. I don't agree with all his decisions but I do not doubt he thought he was making the correct one for his country.
RocServ15 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 00:50:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Gavrilo Princip
He started the chain of events that caused millions to die in ww1&ww2
hueblondasi ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:08:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jacque Fresco - Clocking in at almost 100 years old. Owner of the Venus Project, with a true search for freedom and the well being of humans. Many people are unaware of the concept of a Global Resourced Based Economy.
Documentary website
Beneficial2 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:11:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Gavrilo princip
fat2slow ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:13:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Erwin Rommel he was a highly decorated officer in WW1 he was considered a very himane person even though he was on the side of the Germans he treated his capters very humanely. He is regarded as one of the most skilled commanders of desert warfare. Here is his wiki for some interesting stuff plus there are many books written about him and his life as an officer during the war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_Rommel
IntelWarrior ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:23:01 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The guy who killed Hitler.
RobbleDobble ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:27:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Fuck that guy, he totally offed the guy who killed hitler.
PM_ME_ONE_BTC ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:25:01 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler before him everybody hated the Jews after him everybody feels sorry for them
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:26:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Adolf Hitler. If it weren't for him, he wouldn't have killed Hitler!
Brickhead_Joe ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:40:05 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler
thatcrazynegu ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 01:47:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Barack Obama. You'll thank him in 20 years
SteakShake69 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 02:26:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He's not that underappreciated, but I think I have to go with Nikola Tesla.
Werewolfverine ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 02:37:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Captain William Bassett. He averted a nuclear war and we only found out about it recently.
http://thebulletin.org/okinawa-missiles-october8826
thegr8rambino13 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 02:37:26 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ron paul
GerardCarter96 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 02:43:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Adolf Hitler
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 02:49:40 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
[deleted]
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:49:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:45:33 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
[deleted]
intuitiveline ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 02:58:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me
Groundhog_fog ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 03:04:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Black astronomers, mathematicians, and physicists who I never learned about in History class.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 03:08:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me.
TheVespertine ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 03:11:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla
Yosarian ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 03:13:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me
PingPongSensation ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 03:14:38 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Reddit comment deleted.
joeherman930 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 03:18:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tom Brady
FartSmack ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 03:24:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler
Blindboxing ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 03:31:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Gavrilo Princip. Assassin of the archduke Ferdinand of Austria, this is the event that set off WW1, which allowed hitler to gain his power by promising his "revenge" for Germany, this lead to the Cold War, and eventually to conflict in the Middle East after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan... So yea this guy singlehandedly set off a chain of events to today's modern conflict.
_TURbo ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 03:34:21 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Charles Martel
UnfunnyTroll ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 03:42:29 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
OP's mom. Deflowered me at a tender age.
dfish93 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 03:46:22 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your mom.
http://youtu.be/BrPxWg8JFlg
lqkq ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 04:00:35 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me?
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 04:09:31 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
me
6inchpianist ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 04:11:39 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Clearly it's me.
GOATrieIrving ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 04:24:12 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
LeBron James.
Domhnal ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 04:38:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your mom.
colediamonds ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 05:17:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
(Rev.) Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., by his own race.
FarSightXR-20 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 06:55:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
OP's mom.
Strolltheroll ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 07:40:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My name is alexander hamilton.
Strolltheroll ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 07:40:38 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My name is alexander hamilton and just you wait
Apod1991 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 08:22:00 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Stanislav Petrov!
In 1983 he single-handedly prevented a full-scale nuclear war because he trusted his instinct and not a computer that took infrared light and high clouds as U.S. Missile launches. He was fired for over-riding the computer and security systems. What's even more freightening is that he wasn't originally supposed to work that night.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 08:50:15 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
David Suzuki
PPSBLOGScom ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 09:03:24 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nicola Tesla
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 10:00:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
John Romero www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Romero
Kardroz ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 10:19:53 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tom Hanks.
He could be made sole overlord of the known universe. Would still not be enough appreciation.
bigtitch ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 10:23:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Joseph Bazalgette, who built the London sewer system. Saved thousands of lives from waterborne diseases. He built the system so well that it's still in use today.
Cospah ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 10:31:16 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Im just sitting here reading about People Who saved millions of lifes, thinking, the World was overpopulated enough in the first place damnit!
Any heroes out there WHO's fighting that small problem!
todayok ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 11:00:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov undoubtedly saved many thousands and basically prevented WW3.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 11:16:09 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Galileo
natepalmer84 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 11:25:44 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Mom
No matter what you do she killed it first.
McL0vin_ ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 11:43:42 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alan Turing - The father of the computer. He built the machine that cracked the enigma code and consequently defeated nazi germany.
Frankengregor ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 11:46:14 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Keyser Soze.
TheDarcNite6 ยท -7 points ยท Posted at 20:11:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla.
From my understanding he discovered AC current and made major contributions towards light bulbs, radar, xray and many others but never got credit.
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla
ojs5454 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:15:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alternating Current Current
PublicRebellion ยท -5 points ยท Posted at 14:17:13 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ron Jeremy
The pornstar mario looking guy.
whohw ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:23:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
the hedgehog?
PublicRebellion ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 16:52:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Short, fat, big dick mario
mkomaha ยท -3 points ยท Posted at 16:07:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla.
Don't get me wrong he's known and appreciated but nowhere near what he should be. Kids in school are taught about Thomas Edison who was a complete dick. Kiddos often don't hear about Tesla till high school or maybe some fantasy story.
Tesla2016
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:36:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Does it really matter if he's a dick? He invented lots of shit
mkomaha ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:01:29 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He claimed to have invented a lot of shit. Its heavily documented that he stole a lot of his ideas. He didn't even invent the lightbulb. He merely improved it.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 18:30:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
mkomaha ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:22:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The lightbulb existed before Thomas Edison. Edison just improved it. Hes credited with the invention of the lightbulb but we know this as false. This is noted on www.thomasedison.org in the second paragraph.
DemonPuke ยท -4 points ยท Posted at 20:02:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla...he made renewable energy a thing back in the day but he got shut out by the government and big time oil company's so they could make more moneys
iVirusYx ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:09:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He's not underappreciated. First thing you learn about electicity in school is two names: Tesla and Edison.
There are so many references to Tesla and some things named after him. Like the Tesla Coil, or Elon Musk named his electric car company Tesla.
DemonPuke ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:42:24 on January 18, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ive NEVER heard of tesla while in school..I learned about him from the internet
msipes ยท -3 points ยท Posted at 22:46:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Sorry Reddit. I'm going with Jesus. He saved your worthless souls.
LiberalismIsSuicide ยท -8 points ยท Posted at 20:17:54 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Adolf Hitler. He gets a bad rap, but if you look around the world today, it's pretty fucking clear he was right.
[deleted] ยท -3 points ยท Posted at 14:17:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
belabor_the_obvious ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 15:18:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And again. All three of your "contributions" are just taken from an older thread.
moonboom2988 ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 03:01:41 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Vladimir Putin.
Took Russia from being essentially a 3rd world nation into being a stronger unified nation, bringing it back into the fold and re-balancing the power divide so that the US is not able to control the world. Took back the oil that the US were draining inside post soviet Russia (look it up).
[deleted] ยท -7 points ยท Posted at 15:42:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
Darnduf ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 16:28:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Stop! That one guy said he would scream!
tworkout ยท -3 points ยท Posted at 15:10:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikolas Tesla, he made the electric car!*
koiotchka ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 15:46:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Is that asterisk for a footnote? Help!
tworkout ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:49:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No, its free wifi!
Thank you Nichole Tulsa!
koiotchka ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:24:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Snrrrk
[deleted] ยท -7 points ยท Posted at 19:12:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
[deleted]
pcoppi ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:40:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Trump will make America Great Again (Briefly) and then proceed to burn everything to the ground while attempting to deport illegal immigrants
tell_me_im_funny ยท -3 points ยท Posted at 17:27:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Probably Jesus. You just can't find anyone that cares about that guy. I mean. Where would you even look for someone like that?
God_Baco ยท -3 points ยท Posted at 20:32:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler.
ilovelosangeles ยท -6 points ยท Posted at 18:18:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Bernie Sanders mayne
Andyk123 ยท -3 points ยท Posted at 22:31:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Currently, Kanye West. People treat him like a punchline, but he has over 20 Grammy's and will eventually go down as one of the most influential musicians of his time.
vflgbo ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:33:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I'm so excited for swish.
Champ_Z ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:34:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Kanye - the most under appreciated person in history? Youre kidding me right? Sure, maybe he has influenced music. But did he cure aids or save BILLIONS of people by inventing vaccines, or shit, did he invent the airplane? You are an idiot if you honestly think of Kanye that much.
Andyk123 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:12:43 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
โWhatโthe fuck ๐ก๐ก did you just fucking say about me, you little ๐bitch๐? Iโll have you know I graduated ๐๐ top๐ of my class in the ๐ขNavy๐ข Seals, and Iโve been involved in numerous ๐ฏsecret๐ฏ raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have overโโ 300 โโ confirmed ๐ kills ๐. I am trained in gorilla ๐๐ ๐ฅwarfare ๐ฅ and Iโm the ๐top๐ sniper in the entire US ๐ซ armed ๐ซ forces ๐ฎ๐ฎ๐ฎ. You are nothing to me but just ๐ฏ another ๐ฏ target ๐ฏ. I will wipe โ you โ the โ fuck โ out with ๐ precision ๐ฏ๐ฏ the likes of which has never been ๐ seen ๐ before on this ๐Earth๐, mark ๐ก my ๐ก fucking ๐ก words ๐ก. You think you can ๐ get away ๐with saying that shit to me over the Internet ๐ป? Think again, fucker. ๐๐๐ As we speak I am contacting my ๐ secret network ๐ of spies ๐๐๐ across the USA and your IP ๐ is being traced ๐ right now ๐ง so you better prepare for the โstorm โ, maggot ๐๐๐. The storm โกโกโก that wipes out the ๐ pathetic ๐ little thing you call your life. Youโre ๐ fucking ๐๐๐ dead ๐๐๐, kid. I can be anywhere ๐๐๐, anytime ๐ง๐๐ฆ, and I can ๐ kill ๐ you๐ in over ๐ข seven ๐ข hundred ๐ข ways ๐, and thatโs just with my โโ bare handsโโ. Not only am I extensively trained in ๐unarmed ๐ combat ๐, but I have access to the entire arsenal ๐ซ๐ซ๐ซ of the United States ๐ฎ๐ฎ๐ฎ Marine Corps ๐ฎ๐ฎ๐ฎ and I will use it to its full extent to ๐ wipe ๐ your ๐ miserable ๐ ass ๐ off the face of the continent ๐๐, you little ๐ฉshit ๐ฉ. If only you could have known ๐ต๐ต what ๐unholy ๐ retribution your little โcleverโ comment ๐๐ was about to ๐bring ๐ down ๐ upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue๐ ๐ ๐ . But you couldnโt โ, you didnโtโ, and now youโre paying the price๐ฒ๐ฒ๐ฒ, you goddamn idiot. I will ๐ฉ shit ๐ฉ fury ๐ก๐ก๐ก all over you and you will ๐ฑ๐ฑ๐ฑ drown ๐ฑ๐ฑ๐ฑin it. Youโre ๐ fucking ๐ dead ๐, kiddo. ๐๐๐
Champ_Z ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:59:32 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's deff an appropriate response. Wanna hang out? Coffee is on me.
mememan68 ยท -5 points ยท Posted at 23:17:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
adolf hitler obviously for inventing ethnic cleansing
valmirius ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:31:50 on January 26, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well that's embarrassing for a slav/ friend of a slav.
mememan68 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:59:36 on January 26, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
you're still alive huh, i thought you'd have killed yourself by now from all the bullying you've endured lol
[deleted] ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 15:13:10 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
me
DoingItWrongly ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 15:23:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me, nobody knows it yet though.
nicolascageismessiah ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 15:40:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
me :(
Dragonrooster ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 16:05:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me.
DonQuixote112688 ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 16:28:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me.
Dear_Occupant ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 16:33:16 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The first person to discover that frying disgusting pig viscera makes delicious bacon.
zuilserip ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 16:38:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Viscera? I think you are frying the wrong part of the pig!
Dear_Occupant ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:32:05 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Bacon is literally the sides of a pig's stomach.
Haroonawesome ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 16:43:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
CHRIS BROWN IS UNDERAPPRECIATED...
Keepthemindopen ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 16:51:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Malcolm X. Things didn't change for African Americans until the public had legitimate fear of a black revolution. His charisma and rhetoric instilled fear in thousands of the white supremacists that ran our country.
edcxsw1 ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 16:54:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ronald McDonald
retrospect26 ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 16:54:23 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me, duh.
Sobertese ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 16:55:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My mother.
I know it's true, because she tells us all the time.
Aidanbomasri ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 16:59:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your mom.
MankersOnReddit ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 17:06:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No doubt this will get buried, but..
Alfred. you know, from Batman.
masongr ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 17:11:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
my mother source: my mother
17michela ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 17:18:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I don't know if this counts because it's for all the wrong reasons you should appreciate a person, but people should at least know about him. Mao Zedong. He killed more people than Hitler, Stalin, and Bin Laden combined.
QuentinLipot ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 17:19:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No one mentions Nikola Tesla? Hardly taught it school, the genius of the 20th century.
theoncomingnoob ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 17:27:07 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
During the filming of django unchained, Leo dicaprio cut his hand in a scene, unscripted, and continued his performance.
JMFore ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 17:29:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Alaxander Hamilton. There was a million things he did.
elyisgreat ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 17:49:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
OP's mom. If it weren't for her, there would be no OP, and therefore this question wouldn't have been asked, making the unappreciated peoples of history remain unappreciated.
[deleted] ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 17:50:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
DEEZ NUTZ. Zang
Zimbah ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 18:06:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
OP's mom
TheClayrooAtWork ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 18:07:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
My mother, apparently.
Calius1337 ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 18:20:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I
RudegarWithFunnyHat ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 18:25:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Frank maybe Jeff
GOATmar ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 18:27:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Donald Trump.
billlyyy ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 18:27:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Joe
fulminousstallion ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 18:31:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
OP'S mom. Bless her.
captainp42 ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 18:33:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The Doctor.
I mean, how many times has the guy saved Earth from some alien invasion?
Says_Yer_Maw ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 18:33:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yer maw
enderen ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 18:33:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
OP's mom
Good2Go5280 ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 18:35:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me.
MrMcKiller101 ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 18:39:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Adam and Eve
Green_Manelishi ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 18:41:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jesus Christ
dubnation0589 ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 18:53:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Genghis Khan, without question.
[deleted] ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 19:06:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Bernie Sanders
lysergicfuneral ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 19:10:12 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Bill Gates
Several of my top choices have been mentioned already, but Gates might be up there with the best of them. We know that he started the company (and actually did a lot of coding himself) that would be the way billions of people know computers. For over 20 years, he has spent billions and pledged billions through his foundation to fight disease and illness all over the world, saving countless lives and also to fighting pollution and climate change.
clanlord ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 19:21:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Charlie sheen this guy showed the world whats its like to live a life of carefree person and then when he got HIV everyone got educated. His story has taught us many things.
snapcracklesplat ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 19:40:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me.
Edit: yes, you found Donald Trump's Reddit account.
[deleted] ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 19:41:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me
[deleted] ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 19:44:35 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
OP's mom
[deleted] ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 19:44:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
backat_theranch ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:00:19 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Good people do good things out of the kindness of their heart, not to get a thank you. Maybe you need to reevaluate what it means to help and to give.
---Rabbit--- ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:54:53 on January 21, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I said that to be funny tbh fam Mostly because I did a lot of shit that I wasn't or ever will be credited for
[deleted] ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 19:46:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me.
vVvMaze ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 19:47:56 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me
QueefLatinaTheThird ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 19:49:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That guy no one remembers that killed archduke Ferdinand and changed the next 100 years of world history, almost single handedly
thalionthewicked ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 19:50:09 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The guy who killed Hitler. What was his name again?
syrinxOptimised ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:52:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I think his name was Bob.
thalionthewicked ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:00:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That doesn't sound right...
[deleted] ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 19:53:49 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me
WhiteWolf808 ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 19:56:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You beat me to it. Lol
Convictions ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 19:58:34 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me :(
Dwyde_Schrude ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 19:58:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
OP's mom
blacktrout225 ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 19:59:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me
Blahblahblehb ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 20:00:27 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Obviously not Obama. Thanks Obama!
FizzPig ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 20:02:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
me
-shmalcolm- ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 20:02:18 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Is nobody going to say Nicola Tesla? Because Nicola Tesla
atheistmil ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 20:04:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me.
SnarkyMinx ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 20:05:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Me.
EmperorSexy ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 20:15:39 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
From what I've been told all my life, my mother.
INDRIDxxCOLD ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 20:18:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yourself.
Mystiic_Madness ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 20:19:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Nikola Tesla. The guy pretty much created the technology in the 21st century and never got a single amount of credit for his incredible work. Plus the dude died alone, eating crackers, and talking to a dove that eventually flew away. I seriously wish i could go back in time, and give the man a hug..
Thoguth ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 20:21:44 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Mom. Where would you be without her?
JordanLadd ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 20:37:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jesus Christ of Nazareth. He single-handedly paid the sin debt of the entire human race through a profoundly agonizing ordeal in order to redeem us and restore our relationship with Almighty God. He could have tapped out at any time and commanded legions of Angels to stop the Passion, yet He chose not to. Even as popular as He is, I don't think mankind gives Him enough credit.
TomSG ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:40:59 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Poor troll attempt.
Tychonaut ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:46:55 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You know .. the whole crucifixion thing is really not that bad on the grand scale of "things to be endured".
I mean .. lots of POWs in Vietnam or in the Pacific Theatre or Eastern Front would have paid money to have only had to go through what JC of N went through. He got off pretty easy.
Pvtpenguin311 ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 20:50:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
OP's Mom
359359 ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 21:06:37 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Steve Jobs.
sfbaytreat ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 21:24:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler.
FireRexRed ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 21:27:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler
Max_Thunder ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 21:30:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
OP's mom.
[deleted] ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 21:36:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
[removed]
Ganondorf_Is_God ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:38:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Wasn't it debunked that the pyramids were built by Jewish slaves?
cgenebrewer ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:40:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Pyramids weren't built by slaves, bro.
grenade320 ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 21:57:04 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler, because of him the whole world was thrusted out of a shitty depression
grenade320 ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 21:57:05 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler, because of him the whole world was thrusted out of a shitty depression
NegroYetis ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 22:19:47 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Adolf Hitler the Artist
Eugenics2015 ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 22:27:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
probably hitler. JK, but eugenics is a good thing if you don't kill people
knowledgequester ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 22:33:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Christ
Gamer880 ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 22:35:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler
finnerpeace ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 22:56:51 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
All the mothers. Ever.
[deleted] ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 23:03:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler, no Israel without him.
StormMFeel ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 23:05:45 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Adolf Hitler.
TomPalmer1979 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:07:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
He's the guy who finally killed Hitler, when America couldn't!
tennistargaryen ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 23:09:33 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Adolf Hitler. He was simply trying to save the environment by bringing mankind under their biosphere's carrying capacity.
The only two ways are to discourage frequent reproduction for a period of time, or the quicker way he implemented.
mindplayx ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 23:10:02 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Mom
bobbyfischer1341 ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 23:11:36 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your mom.
OpusMioda ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 23:16:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Adolf Hitler. He won the Zionists their homeland back.
Nasansia ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 23:23:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
me
BirchSquid789 ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 23:51:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Jesus. It's sad.
50-50K ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 23:58:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Elon Musk
throwupz ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 00:05:30 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler.
ta60223 ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 00:22:59 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Gavrilo Princip
He essentially single handedly kick started WWI, and if there was no WWI, there wouldn't have been a WW2 and I'd there wasn't a WW2, our whole world would be different.
Edit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavrilo_Princip
mastershayke ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 01:36:08 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your mom.
pfcanbconfusing ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 01:36:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ur mum
CevinMcLaughlin ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 01:41:12 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Richard Nixon was the best, he ended vietnam, started the EPA helped with China, and according to Neil Young he has a soul.
Cevin_with_a_C ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:58:38 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Watergate doe
[deleted] ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 02:03:27 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I am sure someone already wrote this ... but fuck it, it's Reddit: The man who killed Hitler. ;=)
Hewhojives ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 02:52:11 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your mom.
( you didn't tag serious )
[deleted] ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 02:59:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler
FireDemon14 ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 02:59:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Adolf Hitler of course
IStayLurking ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 03:22:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Adolf Hitler
ZippyDan ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 03:33:50 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Your mom. Have you seen what she puts up with?
[deleted] ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 03:42:57 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler
beanstalkim ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 05:30:13 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Norman Borlaug. Though Hopper's a good one too. Borlaug basically saved a billion (that's right .... billion) people from starving yet virtually no one knows his name (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug).
Rudyrobbob ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 05:48:04 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Al Gore.
Satans__Secretary ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 06:59:18 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Satan; without him, humans wouldn't have any shred of intellect.
[deleted] ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 07:21:10 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I feel like Barack Obama is up there. He gets way too much unmerited criticism.
Magiwarriorx ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 08:54:25 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
John Garand. He developed the M1 Garand, the rifle used by the US during WWII. At the time, most foreign militaries used bolt action rifles, whereas the M1 was semi auto, giving US soldiers a great advantage in terms of rate of fire. On top of that, Garand was a genius toolmaker. Not only did he design his rifle, he designed the machines to allow the gun to be mass produced. On top of that, the gun was a damn good gun. Without Garand, WWII might have turned out very different.
jaywjay03 ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 16:07:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Gilding my comment would just make me scream.
Oh and I think it's Sheldon Cooper, they even considered naming a car after him.
NEW FROM MINI : SHELDON COOPER
byebyebrain ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 16:49:28 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Tesla
[deleted] ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 16:59:40 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You know who I like that didn't get much play? Velma from Scooby-Doo. She was cool. She was a hip, hip lady.
cynthash ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 17:11:50 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That guy who killed Hitler. Aw, what's his name again? HITLER!
[deleted] ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 17:22:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Americans - George Washington
Shitwascashbruh ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 18:28:38 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler, people tend to forget that he killed Adolf Hitler
MyNameIsOP ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 18:32:42 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Adolf Hitler.
He killed Hitler for christ sake.
GrandMasterReddit ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 19:15:53 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Adolf Hitler
Kh444n ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 20:01:21 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
You mom
heart4hard ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 20:14:26 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Adolf Hitler XDDDD
You can now downvote me.
jas7751 ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 20:14:32 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Frank Marshal Davis....Obama's early Communist mentor whose influential indoctrination left him with what we have endured today.
[deleted] ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 20:24:01 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler. He was mad but effective.
RogMan007 ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 22:32:41 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
JESUS!
ModsAreCuntz ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 03:16:46 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
OP's fat ugly mom, the sheer amount of dicks she serviced is impressive.
budnikm ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 03:44:35 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler
Thehyperbalist ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 04:04:07 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
....... Hitler
jkdjeff ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 05:10:27 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Bernie Sanders.
Poodlehead231 ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 08:27:23 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Any slave help build a country to the thing it is today, suprised this wasnt in the top comment
FriedMackerel ยท -3 points ยท Posted at 15:37:25 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Adolf for effectively addressing income inequality in the 40s.
RQK1996 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 16:22:20 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
he also killed Hitler
asylum117 ยท -3 points ยท Posted at 16:22:24 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler
myaccountsgetbanned ยท -3 points ยท Posted at 17:27:06 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler
Venus_69 ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 17:32:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
The amount of times I see this post in a week is truly terrifying. I'll go with Nikola Tesla.
[deleted] ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 17:34:46 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler.
Shurvs ยท -4 points ยท Posted at 17:35:14 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler. The things that he did for Germany after the first war was pretty cool. He got them out of that huge debt and made them proud to be Germans again. But then he did all that bad stuff. So he still sucks.
jesse9o3 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 18:24:03 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
No he didn't, his shit economic policies put Germany on the edge of economic melt down. Germany's external debt grew nearly 3x as large between 1933 and 1939.
Shurvs ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:35:22 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I did nazi that.
Icanus ยท -3 points ยท Posted at 18:01:52 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Adolf Hitler
edit, some guy actually went through the effort of downvoting this reply
devilmane ยท -4 points ยท Posted at 18:24:15 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler ๐๐
st0n3r024 ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 18:51:17 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler
[deleted] ยท -3 points ยท Posted at 20:13:57 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:02:30 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
Ballzach114 ยท -3 points ยท Posted at 20:47:00 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Adolf hitler He had a vision and went through with making it happen despite not being with the popular opinion. Too bad it was jews not mexicans
galacticjihad ยท -3 points ยท Posted at 23:47:31 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler. Sure he did a lot of bad things, but he is portrayed as evil for many things that other countries at the time did or did worse. The US had concentration camps for the Japanese and treated their own citizens (blacks) like less than human. Hitler did wonders for the German economy. Hitler was the first to advocate animal rights. When he invaded Ukraine they loved him because of how horrible Stalin was. The Soviets were raping, killing, starving and sending to death camps many of the Ukraine citizens. Communism was and is one of the worst evils in the world and Hitler tried to stop it. I know he was an evil person, but not as evil as everyone likes to make him out. Stalin was a way way worse person, but he was an ally so let's leave him alone.
invent_or_die ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:04:37 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Verrrry interrrresting
zukatex ยท -4 points ยท Posted at 22:22:43 on January 15, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler.
GuttersnipeTV ยท -10 points ยท Posted at 01:44:35 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Hitler. He did nothing wrong and only helped his people. Those who think jews were innocent are ignorant as fuck and their extreme liberalism literally clouds their minds. They can't even have a simple thought process and just tend to say whatever biased history wrote.
Besides the real person who executed the order to kill jews was the leader of the SS
[deleted] ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 01:53:48 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
go back to appalachia and contemplate that in the outhouse behind the shack
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 12:22:36 on January 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
'Contemplation' might be a bit much for this guy but we can always hope.