Historical figures some may not have heard of.

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telsor said:
I know about him through watching West Wing :)
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I know about Eleanor of Aquitaine (see above) by reading about her. :)

I suppose the beauty of this thread is that those we may think are famous/infamous others may not.

Anyway got any more? All you have posted has intrigued me.
 
John said:
I know about Eleanor of Aquitaine (see above) by reading about her. :)

I suppose the beauty of this thread is that those we may think are famous/infamous others may not.

Anyway got any more? All you have posted has intrigued me.
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I mentioned in another thread Admiral Jacky Fisher...considering he rose to be first lord of the admiralty, he was a pretty wacky guy.

Actually, one you may know about, but probably don't know half of it is James Cook. We tend to just know him as the first European guy to find the east coast, but he was a seriously brilliant navigator/mapmaker.

Probably not worth looking up, but for navigational feats...Captain Bligh...After the mutiny on the bounty, he was given a 7m open launch, and in 47 days sailed from Tahiti to Timor (3,618Miles) using a pocket watch and a quadrant, without any maps.

Another you'll know by name at least, but worth reading more about...Julius Caesar...Probably one of the most arrogant pricks ever put on the planet, and (frighteningly) genius enough to live up to his ego. (BTW, the German title Kaiser & Russian Tsar are derivative of 'Caesar')

Actually, there were several Romans around that era...The Roman empire was built on having a bunch of absolute geniuses in a row (they overlapped, so were often working with/against each other, but ultimately they built on each others achievements). Marius, Sulla, Lucullus, Pompey, Caesar, Augustus & Agrippa.
 
A big part of the success of the Roman empire was also that they were, for the time, a highly specialised economy which meant that they could afford to employ (and equip) far more professional soldiers than any of the civilisations they encountered could.
 
telsor said:
I mentioned in another thread Admiral Jacky Fisher...considering he rose to be first lord of the admiralty, he was a pretty wacky guy.

Actually, one you may know about, but probably don't know half of it is James Cook. We tend to just know him as the first European guy to find the east coast, but he was a seriously brilliant navigator/mapmaker.

Probably not worth looking up, but for navigational feats...Captain Bligh...After the mutiny on the bounty, he was given a 7m open launch, and in 47 days sailed from Tahiti to Timor (3,618Miles) using a pocket watch and a quadrant, without any maps.

Another you'll know by name at least, but worth reading more about...Julius Caesar...Probably one of the most arrogant pricks ever put on the planet, and (frighteningly) genius enough to live up to his ego. (BTW, the German title Kaiser & Russian Tsar are derivative of 'Caesar')

Actually, there were several Romans around that era...The Roman empire was built on having a bunch of absolute geniuses in a row (they overlapped, so were often working with/against each other, but ultimately they built on each others achievements). Marius, Sulla, Lucullus, Pompey, Caesar, Augustus & Agrippa.
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Admiral Jacky Fisher is a new one. My naval and WW1 knowledge is limited so will be reading up. Just browsed the wiki and another amazing life led.

Interestingly I was reading about Cook last night and the 1769 Venus observation.

My Roman history is limited but it is hard to miss Julius Caesar's place in history. I can throw up a more obscure and that is Sir Julius Caesar. I have a love of Stuart history and have read it extensively. Sir Julius Caesar name periodically gets a mention. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Caesar_(judge)

I do need to get into Roman history though. I have read a bit of British Romana but need to head further afield. I read the Tom Holland book but it left me a bit cold though I blame the author. I have Fox's Classic World yet to read.
 
John said:
Admiral Jacky Fisher is a new one. My naval and WW1 knowledge is limited so will be reading up. Just browsed the wiki and another amazing life led.

Interestingly I was reading about Cook last night and the 1769 Venus observation.

My Roman history is limited but it is hard to miss Julius Caesar's place in history. I can throw up a more obscure and that is Sir Julius Caesar. I have a love of Stuart history and have read it extensively. Sir Julius Caesar name periodically gets a mention. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Caesar_(judge)

I do need to get into Roman history though. I have read a bit of British Romana but need to head further afield. I read the Tom Holland book but it left me a bit cold though I blame the author. I have Fox's Classic World yet to read.
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Not really related, but one thing I enjoy is what I call the myth/history bridge...Most myths are based on either an attempt to explain that they can't explain (why does the sun rise, why are we here, etc), which is all well and good, but a lot also seems to be based on actual events (embellished and rewritten any number of times). A good example of this is the Artherian legends...Part historical (it seems there was a guy who briefly united the celts/etc against the anglo saxons and held them off), part is celtic mythology (A lot of the individual knights tend to be from that...Read the Mabinogion sometime...written far later, but based on earlier celtic/welsh legends, but much of it probably 'exaggerated' real feats), and then there is the stuff added in later (such as Lancelot and the whole 'romantic' element), as well as some bits that are just twisted mishmashes of the above (the grail).
 
Edgar the Atheling.

Fascinating life. Born in Hungary. Proclaimed, but never crowned, King of England in 1066 at age 14-15. Kept in custody at different times in his life, led a couple of rebellions to claim his throne. Exiled to France, he tried to claim land in southern Italy at one point, possibly served in the Varangian Guard in Byzantium, went on the First Crusade possibly in conjunction with the son of the man who ousted him from the throne in 1066. He survived imprisonment, battles, shipwrecks, the murder of close family members and was involved in putting his own nephew and namesake on the throne of Scotland, before he died an old man, possibly in his 80s.
 
Colonel Thomas Rainsborough.

http://bcw-project.org/biography/thomas-rainsborough

"I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest he: and therefore truly, Sir, I think it’s clear that every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent put himself under that government." As the brilliant historian Charles Carlton wrote "Rainsborough’s magnificent phrases still blaze down across the centuries as an inspiring declaration of the rights of man, the rule of law, the consent of the governed—even of democracy."
 
OK, someone you probably would never have heard of...

Alfred Becker.

German guy, a Mechanical engineer and at the start of WW2 he was called up into the military as an artillery officer.

His unit took part in the invasion of Holland, and while they had a bit of a pause at a dutch barracks after they surrendered, he looked at his horse drawn artillery, looked some of the dutch vehicles and motorised his artillery regiment (and the divisions recon battalion).

A bit later, having been through France and serving as garrison there, he found some more stuff and with his men and an arc welder mounted several of the guns on top of the captured vehicles.

Anyway, his unit got moved over to the invasion of Russia, and after a while, word finally got through to the German high command about what he'd done, so they summoned him to Berlin, along with some of his modified vehicles for a demonstration to Hitler who was mightily impressed. So much so that they gave him a French tank factory and basically decreed that he had 'dibs' on all captured equipment.

Wind forward and by the time the plant was captured, he'd created around 1800 Armoured Fighting Vehicles mostly from spares and junk. Much of which was considered better than the 'purpose built' stuff.
 

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As a young bloke I liked The Stranglers. They sang about stuff that made me think and read. I was a big enough admirer to buy the solo stuff and had JJ Burnel the bass players solo called Euroman Cometh. He had a track on it called Euromess that had an effected vocal through out the track with a lyric at the end that said "Don't forget young Jan Palach he burnt a torch against the Warsaw pact" I checked out this at the time and discovered that Jan Palach had self immolated in Wenceslass Square in Prague during the Soviet backed invasion of Czechoslovakia during the Prague spring of 1968.

I found the Euroman Cometh album tonight while Youtubing and recalled that line in the song.

Here is the usual wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Palach and can add this very good site http://www.janpalach.cz/en/default/zive-pochodne

I highly recommend this last site and draw attention to the page called Living Torches.
 
Poland's national hero Tadeusz Kosciuszko

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tadeusz_Ko%C5%9Bciuszko

I remember spending time with a couple of Poles I met in Tanzania, discussing mountains in Australia and they were absolutely horrified by my pronunciation of Mt Kosciuszko - the correct pronunciation is closer to "Cos - jus - shko". He is one of their major historical figures and I later visited his tomb in Wawek Castle, Krakow and heard more stories about him.

Very interesting tale and still a polarising figure in some respects.
 
Mofra said:
Poland's national hero Tadeusz Kosciuszko

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tadeusz_Ko%C5%9Bciuszko

I remember spending time with a couple of Poles I met in Tanzania, discussing mountains in Australia and they were absolutely horrified by my pronunciation of Mt Kosciuszko - the correct pronunciation is closer to "Cos - jus - shko". He is one of their major historical figures and I later visited his tomb in Wawek Castle, Krakow and heard more stories about him.

Very interesting tale and still a polarising figure in some respects.
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I think at this point most Australians know that out pronunciation is wrong...but it's our pronunciation of our mountain. I would not, however, use the same pronunciation for the man himself.

How he got to have an Australian mountain named after him is one of those great little oddities.
 
The Speaker said:
I think at this point most Australians know that out pronunciation is wrong...but it's our pronunciation of our mountain. I would not, however, use the same pronunciation for the man himself.

How he got to have an Australian mountain named after him is one of those great little oddities.
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Strzeleki named it after him according to wiki FWIW.
 
John said:
Strzeleki named it after him according to wiki FWIW.
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Another mispronounciation that shocked them :)

The Poles really do punch abo0ve their weight sometimes - France lasted barely 2 weeks against the Germans in WW2. The Poles lasted over 6 weeks against the combined might of Germany & the Soviets despite having a smaller population & military.
 
Mofra said:
Another mispronounciation that shocked them :)

The Poles really do punch abo0ve their weight sometimes - France lasted barely 2 weeks against the Germans in WW2. The Poles lasted over 6 weeks against the combined might of Germany & the Soviets despite having a smaller population & military.
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Not really...

The battle of France might have been effectively done in 2 weeks, but that lasted about 6 before they surrendered. By the same standards, the Poles were effectively done in the first few days (and the Russians didn't come in until late, so were hardly a factor).
 
My knowledge of Hungarian history, other than WW2, is non existent but Patrick Leigh Fermor's magnificent Between the Wood and the Water has brought to my attention John Hunyadi. He also is held in reverence by Rumania even though relations between both nations have historically been tense.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hunyadi

The idiosyncratic badass even gives him a gig:thumbsu: http://www.badassoftheweek.com/hunyadi.html

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/277182/Janos-Hunyadi

And with all this in mind I need to go to both nations to explore!! Patrick Leigh Fermor has a lot to answer for.
 
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