Friday Thread- Historical facts that are hard to fathom now

Most workplaces had smoking rooms.
It seems like a completely different age now

when I started in the civil service in 2000, there were smoking offices and a subsidised on-site bar open 12-2 and 4 onwards…

Cool thread.

The smoking thing is nuts. As an ex heavy smoker myself it does feel like another lifetime ago. I remember walking into corner shops/newsagents with a fag on. Rented my first flat from an estate agents that was literally brown, one ‘agent’ sat behind a massive overflowing ashtray.

Even as a reformed non-smoker I do think the ban has ruined pubs and clubs though. The fug of smoke has been replaced with the stench of cheap aftershave and farts. And being clean safe spaces with all the smoke, atmosphere and interesting characters removed, are now populated by children and their whiney cockbag parents ordering food.

Oh and also: violence, remember that? It was everywhere up until the mid 90’s then… gone!

Greybeard
Full Member
As a 17 year old, I found a sheath knife with a 16cm blade (similar to the one I wore on my Scout uniform). I handed it in to the Police. Six months later it was returned to me as unclaimed lost property.

Similar happened to me, found a Bowie knife when I was 12ish, took it to police, months later they called to say could collect it, but had to have a parent with me.

Go to Copenhagen if you miss that smoky bar ambience. Or at least it was when I was there a couple of years ago. Was like a step back in time.

johndoh
Free Member
This is a good visual representation of the timeline of Earth…

Yeah, thing that gets me about this, is humans took 200k year to develop, 5/600k years ago we were defo proper apes at least, flip that, what is the human race going to look like in the future?

Life started about 500k years after the earth formed atleast, took another 4 billion years till us…

Now we are well on in the development of earth and in the window for life on Earth, but there’s still around 1 billion habitable years left on the Earth.

But, as I said flip that, in 200k years what are we going to look like? unrecognisable I suspect. Now take that further.. I suspect, we’ll be a footnote in Earths history tbh.

I think Planet of the Apes got it spot on, we aren’t the pinnacle of evolution on this planet never mind elsewhere!

Say even life evolves into something different in say 1 million year loops. That still gives us around another 1000 times for evolutionary turnovers on this planet. (I’m wildy generalising here obviously, but it does become 5000 times if you go with 200k loops, lot of life left in the old yin yet I think!)

I know I’m going the opposite direction, but I think they are related, The past does give us some insight into the distant future!

Speaking of smoking, I mind I went down to England in 2006. Just automatically got up and went outside to have a smoke.

Felt like an edjit when I walked back in and seen the ashtrays everywhere. 😆

I was well in agreement with the smoking ban before that anyhow, but it never really crossed my mind much before that. It was just obvious at that moment how quickly my whole attitude changed without even really noticing.

Belgium was the first country to achieve a life expectancy of 40. That was achieved in 1800.

Psalms 90:
The days of our years are threescore years and ten;
and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years,
yet is their strength labor and sorrow;
for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.

So in biblical times it was expected a person would live 70 years, and had a good chance of making it to 80.

Also:

Aboriginal people enjoyed good health before the arrival of Europeans. They had abundant, wide ranging sources of fresh food including meat, fish, honey, fruit and vegetables. Accounts from First Fleet officials observed Indigenous people to be living to a great age and that children and elders were well cared for. Estimates of the age of older Aboriginal people at that time range from 60 to 80 years, although it could be that due to a healthy lifestyle Aboriginal people looked younger than their chronological age. In contrast , in 1788 the life expectancy of Europe’s poorer classes ranged from 15 years to a high of 40 years.

https://www.answers.com/Q/What_was_the_lifespan_of_Australian_aborigines_before_white_man

easily
Free Member
Belgium was the first country to achieve a life expectancy of 40. That was achieved in 1800.

Psalms 90:
The days of our years are threescore years and ten;
and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years,
yet is their strength labor and sorrow;
for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.

So in biblical times it was expected a person would live 70 years, and had a good chance of making it to 80.

what does the bible say about child mortality back then?

I have no idea. I also doubt that the Psalms did a rigorous, peer reviewed study.

Without detailed records of child deaths it’s impossible to make an accurate guess of historic life expectancy at birth. Mid-second millennium Europe seems to have had low life expectancy compared to some other civilisations however. I guess living in hovels in a damp climate is not as conducive to long life as being in a place with plenty of fruit and sunshine.

My school had an indoor shooting range for 22 rimfire, and an armoury.

My sons school still has one…..

When I did A level maths we learnt how to code in basic. The school didn’t have a computer, but the local college had one (yes just one). All the A level maths teachers from the towns schools would go there and take turns on it so that they could come back and tell us what computers were like.

I used to be fit and healthy but now, well, less said the better.

This happened DURING my lifetime!!!

Yeah, thing that gets me about this, is humans took 200k year to develop, 5/600k years ago we were defo proper apes at least, flip that, what is the human race going to look like in the future?

Your timelines are a bit off. Homo Sapiens have been around for about 200,000 years, maybe longer. But Homo Habilis A sort of hairy human (but not a thing that looked like an ape*) first emerged 2-2.5 million years ago, and between 2.0-0.3 million years ago you’ve got all the archaic species; erectus, ergaster, neanderthal and so on.

Most evolution was mostly driven by environmental pressure. But humans are the first species that can probably (with cybernetic and AI) modify themselves, I think there’s now a gap that humans have created that’s largely broken the  “natural selction” (at least until we die off) so the question “what will we look like in the future” is probably moot.

*noting that we are obviously; apes

Vaguely related, more recent.

My parents knew people who were in service.

My dad worked for people who couldn’t read or write.

When he was younger one of my dads mates was a strapping six foot well built copper. One night at the dancing he went awol, dad eventually found him out the back not too far from the bins, he wasn’t drunk but was sitting there crying his eyes out. It turned out he’d been a pow in the Far East for 3 years and had watched as his friends died of starvation, malnutrition and bad treatment, seeing people throwing away good food had made him so angry that he wanted to deck them, but he knew he couldn’t do that so he just sat down and wept.

seeing people throwing away good food had made him so angry that he wanted to deck them,

I feel like that now & I’ve never known real hunger.

We had a wine tasting club at school run by the Headmaster. This was in the early 80s.

I joined at around 12 years old.

2.0-0.3 million years ago you’ve got all the archaic species; erectus, ergaster, neanderthal and so on.

Neanderthals were still around during the last glaciation and cohabited with homo sapiens in some areas. Fossils dating up to about 25 000 years ago have been found. They live on in us: 2-3% of our genes are Neanderthal with up to 20% of Neanderthal genes preserved in one population or another.

We had a wine tasting club at school run by the Headmaster. This was in the early 80s.

Sophisticated grooming

A vicar as well and not uncomfortable with doling out ‘the whacks’, i.e. corporal punishment, for misdemeanours.

But we all liked him!

Corporal Punishment for school kids being another of those hard-to-fathom historical facts.

I used to be fit and healthy but now, well, less said the better.

This happened DURING my lifetime!!!

Well you did do most of the damage yourself

Our secondary school first year video club was showing 18 rated horror movies at lunchtime. And very popular they were too. Around about early 80’s.

Aboriginal people enjoyed good health before the arrival of Europeans. They had abundant, wide ranging sources of fresh food including meat, fish, honey, fruit and vegetables. Accounts from First Fleet officials observed Indigenous people to be living to a great age and that children and elders were well cared for. Estimates of the age of older Aboriginal people at that time range from 60 to 80 years, although it could be that due to a healthy lifestyle Aboriginal people looked younger than their chronological age. In contrast , in 1788 the life expectancy of Europe’s poorer classes ranged from 15 years to a high of 40 years.

That looks like the same confusion from further up the thread: older Aboriginal people could live to 80, but so could they in Europe. Life expectancy is massively skewed by the deathrate of the under fives.

I used to be fit and healthy but now, well, less said the better.

This happened DURING my lifetime!!!

Well you did do most of the damage yourself

No, most of it was done by the planet hitting me, hard.

Some of the Irish have no Celtic blood. My cousins in the south West of Ireland were genetically tested and our nearest ethnic group were bronze age peoples from Spain. Long before the Celts got there.
Might explain the “black Irish” (no sun but olive skin).

Long before the Celts got there.

The idea that Celts migrated across Europe was based on the dating of Celtic style finds. However the current thinking (IIRC) is that there was no migration of Celtic people, it was a cultural movement that spread. That style of art spread from region to region.

Some of the Irish have no Celtic blood. My cousins in the south West of Ireland were genetically tested and our nearest ethnic group were bronze age peoples from Spain. Long before the Celts got there.
Might explain the “black Irish” (no sun but olive skin).

Apparently Ireland was a big place in the 9th to 12th centuries where slaves were bought and sold. In the 11th century, Dublin had the largest slave market in western Europe, so its possible thats why so many different ethnic groups show up on dna scans.

 is that there was no migration of Celtic people

Of indeed; Celtic people.

it was a cultural movement that spread

A lecturer I listened to a few weeks back likened it to future archaeologists finding Heineken beer bottles, Ikea tables, and Levis all the way from western Russia to Ireland and concluding that it’s a homogeneous single tribe of folks

I used to be fit and healthy but now, well, less said the better.

This happened DURING my lifetime!!!

Well you did do most of the damage yourself

No, most of it was done by the planet hitting me, hard.

I know the feeling 🙂

There is Spanish blood in parts of Ireland thanks to the failed armada.

My uncle was a decent spud and for a man of his age pretty open re gender, sexuality and colour. BUT he hated, with a passion, anyone from mainland China.

Took a while to get him to say why but he was posted in Hong Kong on national service and one of his duties was to collect the corpses of female babies that were washed up, thanks to the single baby policy

<em class=”bbcode-em”>I used to be fit and healthy but now, well, less said the better.

This happened DURING my lifetime!!!

It could have been worse. It might have happened at the end of your lifetime.

We used to have to remember peoples phone numbers. I knew all my friends numbers off by heart and now I sometimes have to double check that I’ve got my own number correct. I also remember that we had about three neighbours on our street that owned cars and we thought they were weird.

We had a wine tasting club at school run by the Headmaster. This was in the early 80s.

I joined at around 12 years old.

We had a bar open at lunchtimes at AWE Foulness. Seems odd now to have that in any workplace but on a firing range!

At my school in the 80’s, there was only one fat person.

My uncle was a decent spud and for a man of his age pretty open re gender, sexuality and colour. BUT he hated, with a passion, anyone from mainland China.

Took a while to get him to say why but he was posted in Hong Kong on national service and one of his duties was to collect the corpses of female babies that were washed up, thanks to the single baby policy

Not wanting to be that guy, but the one child policy was started in about 1980. National service ended in 1960 and the last national service serviceman discharged was in 1963.

Our secondary school first year video club was showing 18 rated horror movies at lunchtime.

one of my teachers ran a lunch time film club . It sounded pretty boring because he used a 16mm projector rather than the ‘teachers got a hangover’ big telly and vhs. So bound to be boring old films. All those that could be bother to go to it managed to keep it a secret for quite a long time that he was actually screening porn films.

There is Spanish blood in parts of Ireland thanks to the failed armada.

There is some evidence indicating it goes back rather further. Which given the Book of Invasions origin story for the Milesians is interesting. Possibly some history turned into myth or just a random coincidence.

The Spanish Armada had little affect on the Irish population as most died and those that survived the shipwreck were hunted down.

The sheer number of decades it took before someone realised that suitcases are easier to shift if you add castor wheels to the base.

Spoke with my dad about uncle. It wasn’t single child policy. Probably just the high level of starvation and related deaths due to China’s hard line communist policies.

Roger Moore claimed to have come up with the idea for the Magnum ice cream by suggesting that a chock ice would be better if it were on a stick.

Walls however dispute this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnum_(ice_cream)#:~:text=The%20actor%20Roger%20Moore%2C%20best,than%20%22a%20brilliant%20story%22.

‘Black’ Shetlanders too alledgedly related to the Spanish Armada.