The accidental find of a 4,000-year-old pagan god for this week’s History Thursday.
While fishing, Nikolay Tarasov caught up in his net. He was about to throw it back when he noticed a grim face staring back at him.
The Bronze Age figurine, believed to be a pagan god, was carved in a horn that has since fossilized.
Tarasov donated the figure to the Tisul History Museum.
The whole thing sounds like the setup for an apocalyptic novel.
Click here to learn more.
It’s History Thursday, Battle of Isandlwana.
British hopes to unite South African under a single confederation under British rule received a major setback when the invading army’s main camp, defended, by 1,800 troops, was overrun in an overwhelming attack by Zulu warriors.
The British had given the Zulu King Cetshwayo an ultimatum he couldn’t comply with so as to instigate the war. Lord Chelmsford led 15,000 troops into Zululand in five columns. The idea was to find the main Zulu army, encircle and destroy it before moving on to capture Ulundi, the Zulu capital. He was afraid the Zulus would avoid a fight, but these fears were unfounded.
The Zulus were a warrior society in which most able men constituted the army during times of war. They were armed mainly with short assegai spears, which they used for thrusting, and cowhide shields. While logistically they couldn’t stay in the field very long, they could travel large distances very quickly.
The king told the 24,000 warriors in his main army, “March slowly, attack at dawn and eat up the red soldiers.”
About 4,000 warriors were detached for a diversionary attack on another column. Chelmsford took the bait with the bulk of his forces, leaving Lieutenant Colonel Henry Pulleine in charge of the main camp. The Zulu main army discovered the camp and attacked immediately, deploying into a battle line as they ran.
Despite an advantage in cannon and musketry, the British were poorly led and deployed, and they had not entrenched. In the ensuing battle, more than 1,300 British troops were killed, while the Zulus suffered losses of about 1,000 warriors.
Isandlwana proved a major defeat for the British. King Cetshwayo attempted a negotiated peace but was rebuffed by Chelmsford, who hoped to restore his shattered reputation. The British invaded a second time and crushed the Zulus at the Battle of Ulundi before burning the Zulu capital, ending the war.
The terrific film ZULU DAWN depicts the destruction of the British army, check it out:
Russian animator Alexey Zakharov created a very cool little animated film from old photos of American cities in the early 1900s.
Pompeii was an ancient Roman city near modern-day Naples that was destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius over a period of 48 hours in 79 AD.
From June 26 to October 25, 2009, the Melbourne Museum hosted an exhibit, “A Day in Pompeii,” a 3D theater installation that allowed visitors to experience the horror of this event. Watched by more than 330,000 people, it was the most popular traveling exhibit staged by an Australian museum.
Check it out here:
ARCHAEOLOGY, a publication of the Archaeological Institute of America, recently published a short article about “vampire burials” uncovered in a cemetery in Poland.
Six bodies were found buried with stones under their chins or sickles across their bodies. According to local legend, that was how you kept the corpses from returning to consume the living. Legend also also promoted the belief that the first person to die during an outbreak of infectious disease (in this case, likely cholera) were likely to become vampires, so these six, among 285 skeletons found at the cemetery, were likely the first to die.
Read the story here.
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Every once in a while, a lucky reader encounters a series of books they just can’t read fast enough. These books aren’t read so much as inhaled.
That was the experience I had enjoying the HORNBLOWER series by C.S. Forester. Wow, what a ride. I plowed through the entire series of 11 books in no time.
I was drawn to the books after watching the great miniseries starring Ioan Gruffudd, which were based on three of the novels. The miniseries took a great deal of license with the books, making them quite melodramatic. When I picked up the first book, I expected some Victorian moralizing about how men who adhere to hard work, honor and duty can’t lose, while everybody else is lazy and villainous. Boy, was I surprised.
The books are taut nautical thrillers–very realistic and entirely gripping. The series follows the career of Horatio Hornblower, a man who is so self-effacing and doubting that he continually strives toward perfection, knowing England and its vaunted Navy, in a death grapple with France during the Republican and subsequent Napoleonic Wars, will not abide failure. He starts his career as a midshipman and ends as Admiral of the Fleet. Each book follows him at a different stage of his career, from midshipman to lieutenant to captain to commodore to a lord to admiral. He is at virtually every major event of the wars, minus its big battles such as Trafalgar, as Forester preferred to put Hornblower into situations where he could act on his own.
Hornblower’s successes are the result of continually paying attention, experience, innovative thinking and just plain luck, but as his second wife puts it, a fortunate man makes his own luck by optimizing his chances. He isn’t a superhero. In fact, he continually doubts himself and, being a melancholy sort and a bit of a pessimist, isolates himself from the company of others. His only real friend, Bush, with whom he serves through most of the series, is kept at arm’s length while they’re on duty.
The nautical aspects of the series are thoroughly enjoyable. I appreciate being treated as an adult by a novel, without every single thing explained to me. The books are packed with nautical terms and maneuvering to the extent they at times read like procedurals for wood sailing ships of the time. In my view, this only makes the storytelling that much richer. When the action occurs, it is completely realistic and therefore twice as gripping. The naval battles are edge-of-the-seat reading.
Published between 1938 and 1962, the series did very well–so well, there was a story circulating during Forester’s day that whenever his publishing company was showing poor profits, they sent a representative down to beg him for another HORNBLOWER tale.
Goodreads.com lists the entire series in chronological order here, which can be helpful to find out what’s next in line.
I’ve recommended HORNBLOWER to several friends, who all told me they already read it, so maybe (probably) I was the last to know. But if you haven’t read them yet, and you enjoy historical thrillers, definitely check them out. You’ll be glad you did.
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