Cross-cultural “Stuff”
History Carnival #108-April, 2012
Image from the Library of Congress Collection Welcome to the Carnival!* In the spirit of April 1st, I’ve sought out blog posts from the last month** that celebrate the foolish, the topsy-turvy, and the quirky. Blog posts that stand historical truths on their head, or at least gives them a little shake. No clown noses.…
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Al-Khwarizmi Does the Math
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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Word With a Past: How Did Germany Become the Hun?
The original Huns were a tribe of nomadic horsemen from Central Asia who rode fast and fought hard.* When they reached Europe in the second half of the fourth century, the Huns triggered a mass migration of Germanic tribes that contributed to the fall of Rome in the fifth century. Under the leadership of Attila,…
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