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[Classic]

I've known the Sandwich story years but I still don't really believe it.

I take it you don't believe that it is actually the origin for the idea of a sandwich (which is ambiguously different than a wrap, with one theoretically unbroken grain product as an exterior binding). Do you also doubt the particulars of this inane anecdote meant to glorify Anglo-centric "discovery"?

[Thad]

Oh, I expect he was the first to do it in the same way that Amerigo Vespucci discovered America.

But I think it's reasonable to believe that it's named after him.

(I wasn't really aware that Sandwich was a place.  In hindsight of course I should have been, given that it's a description of terrain followed by a common English town suffix.)

HERE COMES A NEW REPLY: ...yeah, what Classic said.

[Shinra]

I've known the Sandwich story years but I still don't really believe it.  Wrapping meat in some kind cereal good is such an ancient practice that I refuse to believe it took thousands of years for someone to think of doing it to bread.

Wikipedia says that the term sandwich didn't come to be applied to the meal until after the Earl of Sandwich popularized it in the nobility. Given that the nobility were the only ones who were literate and educated, it's not exactly shocking that a rich guy determined the name of the food peasants had been eating for centuries before he came onto the scene. The sandwich had a storied history prior to the Earl, but through most of medieval europe they existed in the form of trenchers, which was basically stew served on bread, or as a dish simply called "meat and bread".

Also, consider that the city of Sandwich predates the use of the word to describe a meal in the english language by at least a few hundred years. The meal is named after the city, not the other way around. Some medieval british surveyor wasn't drunk and hungry one day and just decided 'we're gonna call that one sandwich!'

[Büge]

The sandwich had a storied history prior to the Earl, but through most of medieval europe they existed in the form of trenchers, which was basically stew served on bread, or as a dish simply called "meat and bread".

Actually, trenchers were a medieval substitute for plates used during feasts. They were stale, rock-hard slabs of unleavened bread that were cut into platters. Once the feast was over and they'd softened from soaking up gravy and sauce, they were given to the poor.

Sideshow Bob once called Homer a "trencherman."

[Classic]

There are still restaurants that serve things called trenchers. But the memory is very vague and could just as easily be a mis-memory.

[Mongrel]

I'm always surprised when I find out people don't know that, because it's one of those "Cliche one-sentence stories of history"

Well, to the point that it sounds FAKE.  Like something out of Peabody's Improbable History.  Or that story my high school history teacher told me about "fuck" being an acronym for "fornication under consent of the king".

In hindsight, given that he actually spoke German fluently, I'm sure he must have known that was bullshit and the word is Germanic in origin.

That, and acronyms being in common usage is a thing that's really only about a century old.

[Royal☭]

How did you not know the Earl of Sandwich created the sandwich? I learnt about it from this documentary:
Club Sandwich

[Büge]

I learned that Tony Jay was pretty hard up for money back in those days.

[Lottel]

No one watched Good Eats? Disappointed in you.

[Kayma]

No one watched Good Eats? Disappointed in you.

Honestly people!

[Ted Belmont]

I watched the salt one

[JDigital]

Neil Gaiman wrote the English language adaption of Princess Mononoke.

https://twitter.com/#!/neilhimself/status/202625414580027393

[Kayma]

Speaking of Neil Gaiman, he's a bee keeper. Incidentally, he also recently name dropped the educational graphic novel Clan Apis, created by a friend of mine. I'm kind of freaking out about it!

[Classic]

Cracked had an article about the myth-making surrounding the successful colonization of the Americas by Europeans. Some of these facts even coincide with stuff I already knew! But since it's Cracked, I'm now worried that what I thought I knew is wrong.

[Mongrel]

The stuff about Cahokia and the sophistication of the pre-contact North American civilizations is spot-on. Starr's spent a long time reading up on that stuff among other hobbies and has given me various bits of info over time.

The buildings they built may not have as durable materials as the south or central American civilizations (so, not so many massive obvious monuments), but the larger North American societies were every bit as organized and almost comparable in size to the Southern ones.

It's like, when you learn the history of Africa, you learn that Europeans just showed up about the worst possible time. The large structured empires had fallen, and Northern Africa was in something of a warring states period. That's a huge part of why Africa's been on the receiving end for so long. But even Africa didn't face the devastation the native North American population faced. Not only were several inter-national (as in Native nations) heating up, giving the Europeans plenty of local conflicts to exploit (a pretty standard pattern), this series of horrifying plagues came in and wiped everybody out.

Actually, looking over that article, all six points are a good summary of real historical fact. It's Cracked, so hey, they're being Cracked, but it's all solidly grounded in the currently-accepted-by-archaeologists-and-research-historians truth.

Well, except for the bit about "Two Native Americans shipwrecked n Holland in 60 B.C.". That's not one I've seen before, and can't find a corroboration for that anywhere but the one book they quote.

[JDigital]

On Windows 7, you can use Windowskey+Up to maximize a window, Windowskey+Down to unmaximize or minimize it, and Windowskey+Left or Right to maximize it in half the screen.

[Thad]

I use Win+Shift+[Left or Right] constantly on my two-monitor setup at work.  It does what you would expect it to do from the context of the thing I just said.

There's a pretty good list of shortcuts at LifeHacker; I'm pretty sure I linked it when it was posted but that was back in October '09.  I keep it bookmarked on the Win7 machines I use regularly.

[Mongrel]

That Fiorello LaGuardia was actually a combat veteran who flew bombing missions in WWI.

This only comes as a real surprise if you've seen pictures of LaGuardia in the first place of course.

[Büge]

I learned that Ivan the Terrible mortally wounded his son by bashing him in the head with his scepter and then immediately regretted the decision.

The moment was skillfully and hauntingly captured by Ilya Repin.

[Nickasummers]

I learned that anesthetics and I play very nicely together. Didn't say anything silly and 10 minutes after they stopped I was able to walk less impaired than the first time I drank.