cross-cultural stuff

Al-Khwarizmi Does the Math

February 29, 2012

Quick:  multiply DVII by XVIII.  Before you could work the problem you translated it into Arabic numbers didn’t you? The person you can thank, or blame, for your ability to multiply and divide is the mathematician and astronomer Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi (ca. 783-847), whose name lives on in a mangled form as “algorithm.  (Honest.  [...]

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The Other First Thanksgiving

November 26, 2011

Unless you live in the American Southwest, the grade school version of American history* typically leaps from Columbus and 1492 straight to 1620, when the Pilgrims landed in Massachusetts.  There is a vague awareness that the Spanish and the French were “out there” doing something, but the story focuses on the development of the thirteen [...]

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The Great Sea

October 25, 2011

As so often happens when I pick up a history book, I was recently whacked over the head by a factoid that was both obvious and illuminating: the name Mediterranean literally means “the sea between the lands”. It’s a good name, but it’s by no means the only name that sea has gone by. The [...]

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Splitting the Difference

September 30, 2011

“Split the difference” is My Own True Love’s favorite way to solve a difference of opinion.  It’s a pretty effective tactic when you’re negotiating a contract, eyeing the last piece of pie, or deciding what time you need to leave the house to catch a 6:00 AM flight.  Win-win. When it comes to settling geopolitical [...]

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Who made the map of the modern Middle East?

September 23, 2011

The simple answer is:  Great Britain.  You want the long version? In The Makers of the Modern Middle East   historians T.G. Fraser, Andrew Mango, and Robert McNamara tell the story of how today’s Middle East was created from the remains of the Ottoman Empire during the peace negotiations at the end of the First World [...]

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A Crusade by Any Other Name….

September 8, 2011

Sometimes the name you give to an historical event says a lot about where you stand in relation to that event.  Is it the Civil War, or the War of Northern Aggression?   The Sepoy Rebellion, the first Indian war of independence, or (my personal choice) the violence of 1857? Other times, what you call an [...]

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Public toilets, heads of state and –teddy bears?

July 28, 2011

A few people have weighed in with answers to my question on a previous post outside the comments box.  Some of them were too good not to share.  In addition to vespesianos and London bobbies, here are some more eponymous tributes to heads of state, statesmen, and mere politicians: 1.  The Teddy bear, named after [...]

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The First Common Market?

July 26, 2011

  My Own True Love and I leave next week for Belgium and my thoughts are turning toward Waterloo, Flanders Field, and the Hanseatic League.*  Especially the Hanseatic League. I’m fascinated by traveling merchants, from the Silk Road caravans that brought luxury goods from China and India to the Muslim peddlers who sold dry goods [...]

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Public Toilets and Heads of State

July 19, 2011

As those of you who are reading along know, I recently learned that public toilets are called vespasianos in Italy, after the Roman emperor Vespasian, who introduced the concept to the empire.  This led my brain to London bobbies, named after British Prime Minister Robert Peel, who founded the London police when he was Home [...]

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Slouching Toward Jerusalem

July 12, 2011

I’ve been fascinated by the Crusades for several years now.  Not surprising, I suppose, given my basic interest in the times and places where two cultures touch (or in the case of the Crusades, whack at) each other and change.   I’ve read accounts of what the Crusades looked like from the Muslim perspective. (Barbarian invaders [...]

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