Footnotes in History

By Alf B. Meier

What they're saying about Footnotes in History:

It’s an interesting read, but in no way academic and schoolmasterly. It will, if nothing else, give you a few real, little-known facts, with which, if you’re still at school, you can really annoy your history teacher!

~Keith Kellett
travelrat.wordpress.com

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From the Great Library of Alexandria to the airplane, from Alchemists to Engineers and from Nero to Catherine the Great, Alf B. Meier examines facets of history deeply sunk in the fog of legends... and comes to funny results at times.
He shows that one should question things that are generally accepted as history, recommending readers to investigate themselves.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alf B. Meier
• Release date: Apr 3, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458160829

Alf B. Meier

For most of his life, Alf B. Meier has been a press photographer, reporter or writer. Time permitting, he also dabbles in history and archeology. His professional publication credits include 100+ print media outlets and he has translated, edited or published print media and books.

Book preview

What they're saying about Footnotes in History:

It’s an interesting read, but in no way academic and schoolmasterly. It will, if nothing else, give you a few real, little-known facts, with which, if you’re still at school, you can really annoy your history teacher!

~Keith Kellett

travelrat.wordpress.com

Footnotes in History

by Alf B. Meier

Copyright 2011 by Alf B. Meier

www.alfbmeier.com

Smashwords Edition

ISBN: 978-1-4581-6082-9

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy.

Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Cover design by Alf B. Meier

About the author:

Alf B. Meier is a professional photojournalist with a strong attraction to history, archeology and paleontology, especially to looking beyond popular myths sold as history by certain historians. Besides newspaper and magazine articles, he has edited, translated and contributed to several books. He has also published and edited other authors.

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For Robin, 'cause she had the idea

Acknowledgments: I'd like to extend a special thanks to Keith Kellet and Michael Kingdom-Hockings for their editing assistance and for pointing out some omissions and one or two obvious (and embarrassing) typos. To Keith I owe also the reference to the coachman of Sir George Cayley, who could have been the first person in known history to fly.

Table of contents

Preface

I. So what is history?

II. How did history start?

III The historical exception

1.The wonderful world of science

The Great Library of Alexandria

A Brief History of Perpetual Motion

Horses of steam

The long way to the automobile

Fly like a bird

And yet, it moves anyway...

A computed surprise

Where strangeness meets mental institutions

The guild of traveling quacks

The call of the gold

3. Very misunderstood people

Was Nero really a monster?

Bluebeard and a cellar full of bones

Mme. de Montespan, trying to keep her man

Catherine and the horse

Bibliography

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Preface

When I started writing about history, it was not my intention to write a book, or even a book about history.

It is true that most of my life I've earned my bread writing about one subject or another or taken photographs of one subject or another, but as a journalist not as a historian.

What always has fascinated me about history is how things are always presented so smoothly, without loose ends, when my life experience researching themes indicates the reality is quite the contrary. There are always plenty of loose ends and rough corners.

When I decided to use the same approach I used to investigate news to investigate history, all the rough ends appeared like magic. To investigate modern incidents nobody would limit himself to the official, or even the officious versions, one would ask many questions.

Asking questions about history became one of my hobbies and even though my collection of unusual endings and other historical incongruities grew, it was still not in my plans to write a book.

During 2001, I was approached to aid in the writing of a book about passages of history that are either funny or interesting - no boring the reader with unnecessary details.

After a few weeks, I had 60 pages by just skimming the top of my Weird History Archive.

That book never materialized.

It was my wife and colleague who first suggested that I write my own book about forgotten or weird history.

What I have tried to do in this book is take some events in history that are so obscured by legends that hardly anybody knows how things really happened. Sometimes the truth just appears as footnotes.

So here it is, book number one of my Weird History Archive in ebook version, mostly compiled by checking up on footnotes.

Alf B. Meier

Karpathos Island, Greece April 02, 2011

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I. So what is history?

Something we had to learn in school, you say? Where we memorized endless tables of data with events that our teachers tried to convince us were very important to our lives ...

Not really. The object of history can be found in the origin of its word, historia, which means inquiry in Ancient Greek.

The ancient Greeks had a much more pragmatic approach to chronicles than any of the more modern historians. History was written in public view on slabs that were displayed on the agora and it contained all good, bad and hilarious data about the elected or self-imposed ruler of the time.

What we learn as history nowadays is the result of the work of historians who studied older works, papers, books about a person or persons and places in the past. It is obvious that every writer, myself included, has a tendency to include or exclude certain aspects of an event that he/she deems relevant or unimportant. Or perhaps the person who pays for the writer's work deems something unimportant, or embarrassing, or unfit or …

In most aspects of world history, we find that it was either censored by those who supervised the chronicles, by those who copied or memorized the data or, much later, by the chronicler himself.

A good example of what I am talking about is a book by a certain Gaius Julius Caesar called De Bellum Gallicum in which the author chronicles his battles in the Gallic Wars - referring to himself in third person as if he were an impartial observer and not the commander of the Roman forces.

Naturally the Gaul are depicted as a rude, uncivilized and bloodthirsty gang, resisting with brute force the benefits of civilization that the Romans were bringing them.

We could leave it at that and consider that tome of martyrdom for many generations of Latin students as being history. Or we could inquire a little into other sources which reveal that the Gauls were highly civilized, had a complex hierarchical structure, were highly skilled craftsmen and all but uncivilized.

After the Romans, many aspects of the old history were altered, faultily copied, embellished with legends and Christianized by well-meaning monks... who were in the position to do so because they had the monopoly on writing.

Not many a time do we find a piece of paper like one conserved in the Spanish National Library where at the end of a letter, there where the signature is supposed to go it says: 'The Lord dost not sign, not knowing how to, as he spent his youth with more knightly tasks such as hunting and jousting.'

In many Hollywood films one can see a messenger arriving at some castle and handing a scroll to its owner. The Lord opens and reads... not. Between the end of the Roman Empire and the end of the Middle Ages there was hardly a person in Europe (other than monks) capable of reading. More likely the Lord had the scroll given to a monk to read its contents... sometimes telling the truth and other times what he thought was appropriate about it. It was most likely this monk who also chronicled the history of that castle or country, again mixing truth with what he thought was appropriate.

So it happens over and over again that what was learned as history is more a product of fantasy, that what we learn as history is something other than what people in another countries are taught and that events get adapted to national needs in many different versions.

A good example would be the so called Battle in the Teuteburg Forest that was adapted to the needs of an emerging German national state. It was portrayed as the battle of oppressed people against the tyrannical Roman Empire that ended in a gigantic battle in which the German spirit of freedom destroyed the Roman host. The reality is a little more complicated.

The things that should make one wonder start with the name of the leader of the battle for freedom, Arminius. Not very German, so it was changed to Herman in the German version. The fact of the matter is that Arminius was not against Roman rule, being educated and trained in Rome, he only refused to pay Roman taxes. Most of those rebelling against Roman tyranny were in fact very happy about the civic advances the Roman occupation bought with it. What they did not reckon with is that civic advances have to be funded.

A wise governor of the Rhine province of the Roman Empire would have never caused a riot, but Varus, appointed by Emperor Augustus to keep the peace in the Germanic province, was not wise.

Right after assuming his appointment, he noticed his coffers were quite empty, which was unusual for a Roman provincial governor. The cause of