Interesting Dead Person of the Day

[houseisland]

Murdered Bog Men Found With Hair Gel, Manicured Nails

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It is my pure and virtuous heart that
gives me the strength of ten!

[MobilePCPhysician]

Affectionately known as my ex-wife

[houseisland]

Infertility link in iceman's DNA

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It is my pure and virtuous heart that
gives me the strength of ten!

[houseisland]

Grauballe Man


Grauballe Man, found in 1952 ... had his throat cut from ear to ear and his skull cracked. His body concealed another mystery: Researchers found that his gut contained traces of ergot fungus, which produces an effect similar to that of LSD. Was Grauballe Man deliberately drugged? Or was he killed because he was believed to be bewitched or possessed when he displayed convulsions and hallucinations?


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It is my pure and virtuous heart that
gives me the strength of ten!

[TripleRLtd]

Affectionately known as my ex-wife

[houseisland]

C.J. Jung

Jung was a bit of a mystical dingbat, brilliant but a dingbat nonetheless.

Always liked this quote:

"One cannot be too cautious in these matters, for what with the imitative urge and a positively morbid avidity to possess themselves of outlandish feathers and deck themselves out in this exotic plumage, far too many people are misled into snatching at such "magical" ideas and applying them externally, like an ointment. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls. They will practise Indian yoga and all its exercises, observe a strict regimen of diet, learn theosophy by heart, or mechanically repeat mystic texts from the literature of the whole world -- all because they cannot get on with themselves and have not the slightest faith that anything useful could ever come out of their own souls."


C.G. Jung

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It is my pure and virtuous heart that
gives me the strength of ten!

[houseisland]

Lise Meitner

Female and Jewish: Two Strkes and You're Out -- No Prize for You!

"[Otto] Hahn believed nuclear fission was impossible until [Lise] Meitner demonstrated to him that it had happened. She was the first person to realize that the nucleus of an atom could be split into smaller parts. .... It was politically impossible for the exiled Meitner to publish jointly with Hahn in 1939. Hahn published the chemical findings in January 1939 and Meitner published the physical explanation the following month with her nephew, physicist Otto Robert Frisch, and named the process 'nuclear fission'. Meitner recognized the possibility for a chain reaction of enormous explosive potential. .... In 1944, Hahn received a solo Nobel Prize for Chemistry for the discovery of nuclear fission. In the opinion of many scientists, Meitner should have shared the prize."

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It is my pure and virtuous heart that
gives me the strength of ten!

[houseisland]

Harald Hardråda


Harald Sigurdson / King Harald Hardråda

When the Norwegian King was killed in battle in 1015, Harald Sigurdson, one of the King's half brothers, was forced to flee Norway. Harald was only fifteen, and he was wounded.

He made his way to Russia and eventually to Constantinople, where he became the leader of the Varangian Guard, an elite mercenary unit which served as the Byzantine Emperor’s personal bodyguard. Harald became wealthy.

In 1045 he returned to Norway and became King.

In 1066 he invaded England. He was killed at the battle of Stamford Bridge on September 25. The Norwegian defeat was the end of the Viking era: it is estimated that of the 300 ships which brought Scandinavian troops to England only 30 were required in the escape of the battle survivors; a substantial portion of the adult male population of Scandinavia died at Stamford Bridge.

Harold Godwinson, the English King, had force marched his troops north to meet the Norwegian invaders. His army also suffered heavy losses. Four days after the battle, William of Normandy landed his troops in the south of England and was, not surprisingly, completely unopposed. Harold had to march his battle weary troops south again. On October 14, the English army was defeated at Hastings.

Timing is everything. Had Harald Sigurdson waited a couple of weeks, we might all be speaking Norwegian.


Heimskringla


Stamford Bridge


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It is my pure and virtuous heart that
gives me the strength of ten!

[Guts3d]

A true humanitarian and scholar. "He could have added fortune to fame, but caring for neither, he found happiness and honor in being helpful to the world." - Epitaph on the grave of George Washington Carver.

[houseisland]

A true humanitarian and scholar. "He could have added fortune to fame, but caring for neither, he found happiness and honor in being helpful to the world." - Epitaph on the grave of George Washington Carver.

Cool. Carver was on my mental list. Everyone in North America who stayed awake in elementary school should know of him -- he was certainly part of the British Columbia shcool curriculum.

[houseisland]

Kennewick Man

This one is an odd choice for Interesting Dead Person of the Day -- Kennewick Man, deceased now some 8,400 years, is most definitely dead -- there is no denying this -- and thus he qualifies on this point. But he is not particularly interesting in and of himself -- we know next to nothing about him. However, the modern political controversy he has sparked is of great interest.

In 1996, his skeletal remains were found in the bank of the Kennewick river in Washington State. He was problematic right from the start. Anthropologist James Chatters, who looked at the skeleton initially thought, "I've got a white guy with a stone point in him.... That's pretty exciting. I thought we had a pioneer." The skeleton was of the Caucasoid type, and it had a stone point embedded in its pelvis. The problem was with dating. Both radio carbon dating of the skeleton and stylistic dating of the stone point indicated a date way too early for the bones to be those of a white pioneer.

The skeleton opens up many issues. There is the Clovis/Folsom technology debate. There are the arguments about migration of first peoples to the Americas -- some theorists hold that Europeans, using Clovis point technology, were the first humans in North America -- see Wickipedia. Washington State First Nations peoples, who, like aboriginal peoples everywhere, have no good reason to trust anything that white (or other foreign colonizing) people do or say, have stopped the investigation of Kennewick Man by claiming him as an ancestor -- even though it is patently obvious that his remains are completely dissimilar to their physiology. It is all too touchy. If Kennewick Man were a "white guy," there are probably people who would use him in an attempt at discrediting aboriginal land claims, etc. So once again the pursuit of "truth" is perceived as a threat, and it is sacrificed to preserve an ethnocentric "Political/Mythological Truth." It is disappointing, but in the end humans are humans, and aren't we all highly skilled at self-deception and self-rationalization, especially when feeling threatened?

We may never know "the truth" about Kennewick Man. He is Caucasoid, but this does not necessarily mean he was a white European Caucasian. There are Asian Caucasoid peoples.

Further Reading


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It is my pure and virtuous heart that
gives me the strength of ten!

[street1]

http://www.youtube.com/results.php?search=skeleton

Little Richard in 50 years.

[houseisland]

Egil at Wikipedia


910-990 AD -- Egil Skallagrimson was one of Iceland's more interesting historical characters. In addition to being a farmer and a lawyer, he was a highly skilled and fearless killer, one who had started young, performing his first axe murder at the age of six. He was also an extremely talented skaldic poet. Both his poetic and murderous talents found service with English kings -- poetry in court -- berserk fierce killing on the battlefield. He was in many ways the archetypal Viking adventurer.

His story is told in Egil's Saga.

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It is my pure and virtuous heart that
gives me the strength of ten!

[houseisland]

The Execution of Tupac Amaru

If you wish to have some understanding of current events in South America (as in Bolivia for example), it is helpful to have an understanding of the past.

The story of Tupac Amaru is most enlightening. See:
Tupac Amaru, The Life, Times, and Execution of the Last Inca by James Q. Jacobs

The story explains much about the resentment felt by the aboriginal peoples of the Andes. Tupac Amaru led the last Inca revolt against the Spanish during the early years of occupation. He was captured in 1572 and executed. Some two hundred years later, his great-grandson led another rebellion against colonial authorities. He too was captured and executed.

The situation for native people was bad.

From Wikipedia:

"In Cuzco in 1589, the last survivor of the original conquerors of Peru, Don Mancio Serra de Leguisamo, wrote in the preamble of his will the following in parts:

'We found these kingdoms in such good order, and the said Incas governed them in such wise [manner] that throughout them there was not a thief, nor a vicious man, nor an adulteress, nor was a bad woman admitted among them, nor were there immoral people. The men had honest and useful occupations. The lands, forests, mines, pastures, houses and all kinds of products were regulated and distributed in such sort that each one knew his property without any other person seizing it or occupying it, nor were there law suits respecting it...the motive which obliges me to make this statement is the discharge of my conscience, as I find myself guilty. For we have destroyed by our evil example, the people who had such a government as was enjoyed by these natives. They were so free from the committal of crimes or excesses, as well men as women, that the Indian who had 100,000 pesos worth of gold or silver in his house, left it open merely placing a small stick against the door, as a sign that its master was out. With that, according to their custom, no one could enter or take anything that was there. When they saw that we put locks and keys on our doors, they supposed that it was from fear of them, that they might not kill us, but not because they believed that anyone would steal the property of another. So that when they found that we had thieves among us, and men who sought to make their daughters commit sin, they despised us.' (Markham 300)"

As bad as things had been for native people under colonial rule, they only got worse with independence from Spain.

It was not until the liberal/leftist military juntas of the late 1960s that any attempt at redress was made.

The weight of history on the land is oppressive.

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It is my pure and virtuous heart that
gives me the strength of ten!

[El_Squid]

Ah, how we do love to romanticize our native cultures! Not defending the Spaniards in any way. They were brutal, greedy, lying, back-stabbing conquerors. But, the Incas, Aztecs, etc. were not quite as innocent as we would like to believe. I refer you to your #9 entry on this thread, Juanita the human sacrifice, for example. The native peoples of America were simply the victims of superior technology and politics, wielded by the Europeans. (That, and horses.)

No Empire was ever built by a peaceful people. The Incas, Aztecs, Olmecs, Mayas all built their Empires on the blood and bodies of other tribes, whom history has forgotten. Who knows what really went down back in those pre-Columbian days, when those cultures got their start?

Was the great Quetzal, in reality, a lost, wandering Viking? Will the rest of the North American tribes ever get a chance to stomp the hell out of the Crow? Are puppies really tasty? I don't know; go ask Stalemate.