Is History Important ?

[slygothmog]

Sometimes history creates itself and sometimes history is created by the people who present it.

 

Absolutly true, another classic example is the Dutch Artist Vincent van Gogh, he hardly sold any of his paintings during his lifetime and died in poverty, now he is regarded as one of the greatest Artists in history and his paintings are worth millions.

[jaysus]

mmh... i agree history is important lol, as vagrant quoted "we learn from the past"

hostory is what makes us, every event we lived through determines our behavior.

sadly we often forget about our past, most reminiscent imo is the israeli government for example who treats the palestinians like the nazis treated the jews, now israelis.

 

anyway...

 

to take up vagrants school timetable and show the german one i was taught as a comparision (it changed slightly now, we donthave a school system anymore, teachers are not allowed to tell you if you did somin wrong anymore for example lol):

 

nazis and jews

ancient greece (mostly their myth and "religion")

nazis and jews

ancient rome

natis and jews

napoleonic wars

world war 1 (had a really good teacher here)

weimarer republic

nazis and jews

nazis and jews

nazis and jews

 

lol... honestly its a wonder only one girl ever vomitted during class...

i also seriously regret that we basicly didnt learn anything about the germanic tribes which populated half of europe afterall or the 100yr war, the 30yr war and so on... i mean that stuff all happned basicly on our turf so why didnt we learn about it? we wasted most of the time being told how bad the jews in the concentration camps suffered, true, sad, pity, but couldnt they have told us maybe a bit about us too? or at least also about the jews that sipped champagne with hitler while he butchered the rest of them (rothshilds)?

 

in english class we had some american chick as a teacher who tried to fill us up with all those dates about US history but well... we were busy making %&$! jokes in english by then :D

 

@Bben and rome

i hate to disagree with you but the romans actually didnt invent all of that...

 

the first real highway system:

there were lots of cultures which had similiar ones, the celt in britain for example had an extensive road system which stretched throughout europe, remains of it can still be found in many places around britain and northern france

however it was made out of wood most of the time due to the swampy environment in which stone would have just vanished in the mud

but i agree the sophistication of the roman roads was really good (drainages, different layer, etc)

 

concrete: probably came from the persians, cant say for sure so ill keep my mouth shut :P

 

heated baths: basicly each of the civilizations of old had those... persia, greece, egypt, china, hititer, etc...

 

roman alphabet: agreed

 

latin languages:

agreed but tbh who cares? im speaking a germanic language, or two... imo those guys in france could speak gaelic if they like i still wouldnt eat frogs :D

would be a pity tho if those italien ladies would speak somin else but sexy italien... so well, agreed :D (oh posso baciarti mi amore?... who could resist that eh?)

 

the republic:

mmh... hard to say, greece's democracies were more or less of a republican system too, senates and such...

 

julian calendar:

only the russians still use it (or did..dunno if they still do), but ok it was quite useful for international trade back then, however the celts and other civs of old had their own calendars which worked quite well too and were sometimes even more accurate

still, our modern calendar is based on this one, hence agreed

 

central heating:

same as heated baths, hence disagreed

 

indoor plumbing:

disagreed, egypt, china, persia, greece, even some african civs had that, heck even catal hüyük (or however its spelled) had that... and thats the oldest human settlement found so far (over 10k yrs old, somewhere in modern turkey)

 

public mass entertainment:

greece theaters? the ancient olympics? persian horse tracks? all of those predate the colliseum...

 

architecture:

well, yes and no, thing is most of these "architects" (stone masons back then most of the time) were "imported", similiar to the us space program which was largerly based on german scientists, thats not necessarily bad but the only things that were truly roman about it were castels for example, they usually just adopted military things in their technical knowledge while the rest was done by outsiders in contract with or forced to by the romans.

 

terry jones once put it nicely in one of his history shows, the romans were warmongers, they were interested in tactics, weaponry, and bloodshed... obviously a bit exaggerated but he kinda hits the spot.

 

@meji restoration

watch/read somin bout the genki wars :D

now thats entertainment!

 

@chinese in america

that was truly some amazing feat... and they seemingly didnt screw up every place they came to, traded, chilled, had fun.

and the fleet...THE FLEET! for example did they have ships in wich you could open the bottom to send out marine otters to dive and catch fish for them!

just to name a bit... sucked tho that when they returned noone gave a damnn about their adventure cause the dynasty had fallen

read about it if you didnt yet dear reader, its really interesting

 

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so to make clear:

history is much more amazing than any hollywood movie imo, basicly all of the funk they come up with actually happened with real people in a real world just some years back...

even if you deem it unimportant or nonworthy to educate you (i would have to disagree with that), the entertainment value alone is tremendous and it also makes for good conversation topics/starters/arguments ;)

 

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btw:

 

history in other subjects,

 

i had acrhitectural history as a mandatory class back in uni... utter boredom! even if they talk about the defense systems of castles its soooo boring... you fall asleep... in the end you have to be able to recognize about 3000 building floor plans and be able to name the builder, owner, time, place and so on... well i failed at that lol...never saw the point in that at all for me to be able to build a house that doesnt crumble, neithr did i see any significance in it at all...

[bben46]

Sometimes history creates itself and sometimes history is created by the people who present it.

Barack Obama must have been pretty aware, that he will go straight into the books of history as the first black president of the US.

James Watt that in the 18´th century discoverd a frogs leg was moving when in water an exposed to zink or cobber, had no idea that today we named the power of electricity after him.

 

 

You must have studied a different history than I did. I thought James Watt developed a new type of Steam engine. And The Italian Luigi Galvani found that frog legs jumped when touched with a spark - I think he was playing with his dinner at the time.

[yugimawa]

either way history and any bit of it is important some more than others but lets say we didnt record how Einstien made his lightbulb?

 

One little piece goes away and so does life as we know it

[Balagor]

Sometimes history creates itself and sometimes history is created by the people who present it.

Barack Obama must have been pretty aware, that he will go straight into the books of history as the first black president of the US.

James Watt that in the 18´th century discoverd a frogs leg was moving when in water an exposed to zink or cobber, had no idea that today we named the power of electricity after him.

 

 

You must have studied a different history than I did. I thought James Watt developed a new type of Steam engine. And The Italian Luigi Galvani found that frog legs jumped when touched with a spark - I think he was playing with his dinner at the time.

 

Well, was it Galvani ? See how bored I must have been back then in highschool 35 years ago. :P Could it be Watt described the phenomenom later, actually knowing what it was? btw I knew about his steam engine :D

 

EDIT:: I Googled Watt. It is a term for energy unit, named after J. Watt. Doesn´t say why, exept that he introduced HP (horsepower) another energy unit. Perhaps a similarity to his steam engine.

[bben46]

Yes, it was Galvani who played with frog legs and thereby invented the science we now call bioelectricity. He also invented a form of battery known as a galvanic cell, which is what our present flashlight batteries are based on. It's actually very similar to what is known as a Baghdad battery http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad_Battery from much earlier times. It seems the Arabs invented it first. but since they didn't patent it, Galvani gets the credit.

 

James Watt did not invent the steam engine, a form of steam engine was demonstrated by an ancient Greek named Hero of Alexandria. What Watt did was make a new type that allowed it to be used to pump water from greater depths in coal mines. The use of horsepower as a measure of power comes from his replacing the ponies that had been used to power the older pumps - so, his new steam engine replaced 4 horses therefore it was known as a 4 horsepower engine. Except the 'horses' Watt was replacing were really ponies because it was easier to get the smaller ponies down a coal mine than a full sized horse - so the measurement isn't really a very good comparison at all.

 

Your History lesson for today.

[Balagor]

Yes, it was Galvani who played with frog legs and thereby invented the science we now call bioelectricity. He also invented a form of battery known as a galvanic cell, which is what our present flashlight batteries are based on. It's actually very similar to what is known as a Baghdad battery http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad_Battery from much earlier times. It seems the Arabs invented it first. but since they didn't patent it, Galvani gets the credit.

 

James Watt did not invent the steam engine, a form of steam engine was demonstrated by an ancient Greek named Hero of Alexandria. What Watt did was make a new type that allowed it to be used to pump water from greater depths in coal mines. The use of horsepower as a measure of power comes from his replacing the ponies that had been used to power the older pumps - so, his new steam engine replaced 4 horses therefore it was known as a 4 horsepower engine. Except the 'horses' Watt was replacing were really ponies because it was easier to get the smaller ponies down a coal mine than a full sized horse - so the measurement isn't really a very good comparison at all.

 

Your History lesson for today.

 

Thank you for the nice lesson, teacher :thanks:

Here we got a scholar example that approachs the original title of this topic. You are obviously competent with history, and me I would get a(what is it you use?) a C. Not that I do not find all history unimportant, I have stated so in earlier posts, but I sort out for my self what is, and what is not.

We both live our seperates lives with our families, our job, our social life, and we are both satisfied with our life. Also none of us miss anything in our life I take it.

So now to the original question; is history important. For me not very much, unless it is usefull experience I can use in this very moment to go on with my life.

[myrmaad]

Here we got a scholar example that approachs the original title of this topic. You are obviously competent with history, and me I would get a(what is it you use?) a C. Not that I do not find all history unimportant, I have stated so in earlier posts, but I sort out for my self what is, and what is not.

We both live our seperates lives with our families, our job, our social life, and we are both satisfied with our life. Also none of us miss anything in our life I take it.

So now to the original question; is history important. For me not very much, unless it is usefull experience I can use in this very moment to go on with my life.

 

That's wonderful for you. I only ask that if you have no interest in history, refrain from voting in any election that effects my life.

[Balagor]

Here we got a scholar example that approachs the original title of this topic. You are obviously competent with history, and me I would get a(what is it you use?) a C. Not that I do not find all history unimportant, I have stated so in earlier posts, but I sort out for my self what is, and what is not.

We both live our seperates lives with our families, our job, our social life, and we are both satisfied with our life. Also none of us miss anything in our life I take it.

So now to the original question; is history important. For me not very much, unless it is usefull experience I can use in this very moment to go on with my life.

 

That's wonderful for you. I only ask that if you have no interest in history, refrain from voting in any election that effects my life.

 

I don´t get you. What has it to do with the thread?

[bben46]

But you read it, and thereby learned something you did not know before. So my intent to educate worked. Now, the next tine the subject of frog legs and electricity comes up in casual conversation, :whistling: you will be able to discuss it with some knowledge of its historical background. :thumbsup: And thus, History becomes important to you. - You do discuss things like frog legs and electricity in casual conversations don't you? :P