yuuago | Entries tagged with history

+ One of the bodies from the Franklin Expedition has been identified through DNA [CBC article]. It's Captain James Fitzjames! Very exciting! It's amazing that after so much time, there are still new things to discover. It would be amazing if more of the bodies can be identified in the future. Of coures, part of this requires relatives to make their DNA available; in Fitzjames's case, he had distant living relatives who were able to be tracked down for the project.

+ I'm very curious about the film Sinners [Trailer], which comes out next spring. Horror thriller set in the Jim Crow-era South. Michael B Jordan stars in this; I'm not familiar with his other work, but I've heard he's pretty good. Anyway, this looks super interesting. I'll have to make a note to see it.

+ I've decided to drop Polish and pick up Norwegian again. It's disappointing to give up on something, but on the other hand, I was mainly trying to learn Polish for a trip, and due to change in plans that won't happen in the foreseeable future. That's okay. Norwegian is still a lot of fun now that I've come back to it, though I feel like I've forgotten a lot.

CBC article in memory of John Banks, Canadian gay rights pioneer

Banks organized Montreal's first pride parade in 1979, among other things. He passed away on Monday.

Brief excerpt:

When Banks read a local newspaper article about Pride events that were held in different cities, he thought to himself: "Why don't we do it?"

"I was born in the 1940s, and it was illegal until 1969 to be gay," he recalled. "So I just thought, 'Yeah, let's have fun. Let's just do this and have fun doing it."

I translated three newspaper articles for practice, but after looking over them, I decided to only post the most detailed one, because most of the information is pretty much the same throughout. It was a very fun and interesting experiment, though, and I am glad that I decided to take the time to translate all three.

Brief summary of the conflict:

The Battle of Vågen took place in 1665, and was part of the Second Anglo-Dutch War. A fleet of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) had sought port in Vågen harbour at Bergen, and an English naval fleet attacked it there. The military forces in the Norwegian fortress, Bergenhus, were supposed to be under secret orders from the Danish king to aid the English, or at least not hinder their attack. However, Bergenhus did not receive the order to help the English, and they aided the Dutch, their actual allies, instead.

The Wikipedia article about this battle is pretty detailed, for those who would like to learn more.

Anyway, here's my translation.

( The great sea battle of Vågen | Det store sjøslaget på Vågen )

☆ Fascinating news! Sir John Franklin's ship, the HMS Terror, has been rediscovered in Nunavut. *_* So, that's two major discoveries from this failed expedition, in a very short period of time (the earlier was the HMS Erebus, rediscovered two years ago). It's really cool how Inuit oral history has been vital in finding this stuff. When I was a kid, I was fascinated by stories about the Franklin expedition, so I'm really looking forward to reading more about this when more information becomes available. (Though I do find it funny how in school, we learned so much about failed Northwest Passage expeditions, especially Franklin and Hudson, but the first expedition to actually succeed in completing the journey was never mentioned. MAN, THAT ROALD AMUNDSEN, WHAT A GUY. Ahem.)

☆ I'm finally able to play PokeGo again. HOORAY. Don't have the Buddy update yet, but that's all right. It was just nice to play it again. Didn't catch anything interesting tonight, but I did hatch... a Zubat. Shhhh, it has high CP and awesomely balanced attack+defence and Blanche was Very Impressed with it. I'm going to keep it and name it something cliche and vampire-y.

☆ My neighbourhood is kind of weird at night. Lately it's been dark at around 8, and by 8:30 it's pitch black, and because it's kind of chilly out, nobody goes out walking, unless they have a dog with them. But for the most part, the small sidestreets are empty. The lamps are widely-spaced, so there are lots of parts where it's almost entirely dark. It just gives off this eerie, weird feeling. ...Also, somebody had their Christmas lights on. What. Though, er, they were orange, so maybe they were meant to be Halloween lights. In which case - mate, you're still a month early. I don't mind starting Halloween a little ahead of the game, but think of your electrical bill, dude.

Crossposts: http://yuuago.livejournal.com/1323005.html

✿ Watched the 2015 remake of Poltergeist with the horror movie gang Friday evening. Verdict: It's not the worst remake out there, but it's nothing special, either. There were some nice extra touches in the form of callbacks to the original movie, and one of the kids got their own character arc in a way that was pretty well-done. But it isn't better than the original film, and it isn't one that I would suggest watching instead of the original. I'd mainly suggest watching it for those who have seen the 1982 Poltergeist and are curious about what a modern version might look like.

✿ Christ on a cracker, I can't believe it's already August. I have no idea where the rest of the year went. It just kind of zipped by. It's already starting to get dark at a reasonable time (around 9:30 PM, as opposed to around midnight). I'm kind of dreading autumn. The dark gets harder to deal with every year; when I was a kid, I didn't give a damn that in winter I'd be walking home from school in the dark. These days, it affects me way too much.

✿ August 1st is the anniversary of the beginning of the Warsaw Uprising. A few years ago, Sabaton released a song and music video about the event Uprising. It's a great song and a great video, I recommend watching it (though keep in mind it's obviously violent and such, due to the subject matter).

Crossposts: http://yuuago.livejournal.com/1236968.html

✿ Going to put it here so I don't lose it - a discussion thread that ended up with a handful of people giving me recs for WWI books and other resources... I should look into those when I have time. :D Since I've been so into that period lately. Kind of funny, though - I mean, I'm such a squeamish person half the time, but then the other half the time I'm like, YES PLEASE, TELL ME MORE ABOUT TRENCH WARFARE.

✿ It's forest fire season! Business as usual. It's super smokey out, ugh. There are some fires in my region, but a lot of the smoke is also blowing over from Saskatchewan. I'm not too worried - this happens every year. But for the time being, it's pretty inconvenient. I'm just glad that I don't have asthma or anything; the worst I have to deal with is watery eyes. Still, not cool. Hopefully we'll get some heavy rains soon.

✿ In a Hetalia-related discussion, anon compared how they see the early stages of Denmark and Norway's intimacy to accidentally eating half a bag of Doritos and... yes. Yes it is. I can't think of a more perfect description than "It's kind of awful, but next thing you know half the bag is gone and you feel a little sick but at the same time you regret nothing". It's so perfect that I'm saving it here for reference, that's what I'm going to look to for inspiration. Because some day I really do want to write about their first time being intimate, which I prefer to imagine was spectacularly mediocre. Just like Doritos.

✿ I've been seeing a lot of discussion of Mercedes Lackey's novels lately and oh man, now I want to give them a re-read. Except I never read most of her work, because I didn't have access to it. But I do remember loving the Last Herald Mage trilogy, and also the Bardic Voices novels. I think I have some of them, I'm just not sure WHERE... maybe after I finish with my Pratchett re-read (which I put aside for a while), I'll pick up with those.

Current Music: Ravi Shankar - Raga Multani
Crossposts: http://yuuago.livejournal.com/1227692.html

Yesterday (09 April) was the 75th anniversary of the Nazi invasion of Norway. So, this meant that there was a lot of interesting stuff flying around the internet relating to that.

... And of course, most of it was in Norwegian. I certainly got a lot of practice, even if it was a frustrating experience and I still have so much difficulty reading anything, let alone articles relating to serious historical events.

A few things I came across (mooostly stuff from Aftenposten, I haven't poked around much beyond that because there's so much stuff) - I can't read most of them very well, but as my Norwegian improves I might be able to understand them better, so these are for my own reference, I suppose.

*Aftenposten front page from 09 April 1940
*Detailed breakdown of the invasion
*Photos from 09 April 1940
*Personal stories of the invasion
*NRK broadcast informing citizens of the invasion

I have a lot of difficulty understanding the NRK recording, even though the broadcaster speaks very clearly, because my listening skills for Norwegian are so poor. But, for me, it's one of the most interesting pieces I've come across so far. I saw the link in a discussion thread on ffa (here) and the anon who posted it did a translation. So, at least I know what's being said.

( Read more... )

I found it very chilling.

...So, it seems, I really do need to work on Norwegian more. Both reading and listening. (And writing too, though I'm already working on that).

Crossposts: http://yuuago.livejournal.com/1206314.html

So, as I've mentioned before, work has been nuts. I've been keeping myself a little bit more sane by listening to university lectures downloaded via itunesU. Turns out, it's a lot easier for me to concentrate on my stuff while I'm listening to them. But my job requires a lot of mind-numbing data entry, so I guess it isn't that surprising.

And more than anything else, it reminds me just how much I miss going to university lectures. It's something I always really, really enjoyed. Well, okay, most of my classes weren't lecture-based; they were discussion-based. This is because my university was small, and most of the literature classes were really small. But y'know what I mean.

I've been rotating through these:
-Ancient Greek History
-Epidemics in Western Society
-Early Imperial Russia
-France Since 1871

( And a bit about those )

Anyway. So, yeah, I'm really enjoying listening to these. And when I'm done with them I'll poke around and find some more to listen to. Both because I miss being able to go to lectures - and also because it's an easy way to learn a few things without having to read through a brick of a history book. ... Not that this kind of thing replaces books, of course, but sometimes it takes me ages to read 'em. And history books aren't very easy to get where I live unless you order them. (The cost! The time! UGH. But I think I've complained about the lack of variety that's readily available here before).

I'm also still listening to Welcome to Night Vale. It's not bad. I think that I mostly preferred the earlier episodes (I just finished ep 28 today) but I do plan to listen to the rest and form my judgment after I've finished what's available. I find myself very Not Interested in Cecil and Carlos's relationship so far. I like Cecil! I like Carlos! But Cecil's verbal flailing just makes me go "Can we please get back to the news already?!" ... Well, okay, I mostly just had that reaction in the date episode. Maybe I just prefer them together in small doses? Well, we'll see how the rest of the episodes play out. (Mostly, what I want to hear more about is wtf is going on with Dana and the Dog Park. But since ep 30 is titled after her, I'll probably find out something soon! No spoilers, please. :D )

I've also been listening to A Prairie Home Companion. Well, okay, just the News From Lake Wobegon segments that get put up for free on itunes. I've been really, really enjoying it, and I'm so happy that there's a huge backlog of segments for me to listen to because I'm completely in love with it. It's very funny and witty, and I keep coming across cultural aspects that I identify with/recognize from my own family. That's a little odd, since there is little cultural crossover - my family isn't from Minnesota, isn't of Scandinavian descent, isn't Lutheran - but there seem to be some things that are common to small northern towns in North America no matter what the details are. Maybe. ... Also I really love Pastor Liz as a character and if I weren't so terrible about getting good ideas for stories outside my main fandom, I would totally write canon-flavour fic about her.