"Tell Me Something I Don't Know": Trivia & Fact Thread

[Lugal]

A bit of gemstone trivia:

The stone we call Sapphire, a form of blue corundum was not originally what the ancients referred to as a sapphire.  The name comes from the Latin sapphirus which comes from the Greek word sappheiros (σάπφειρος) which itself came ultimately from Akkadian šipirtu which referred to the gemstone we call lapis lazuli.  The Greek scientist Theoprastus referred to "The sapphire, which is speckled with gold."

Sapphire

Lapis Lazuli

And since corundum occurs in various colors, you can get descriptions like green sapphire or yellow sapphire, except red corundum is always referred to as a ruby.  Sapphires come mostly from Sri Lanka and Kashmir but are also found in Montana.  Lapis lazuli has been mined in Afghanistan for 7000 years with other sources in Chile, the Lake Baikal region and California.

Besides being gemstones, sapphire has industrial uses in infrared optical components, and high durability windows, while lapis lazuli has been used as the base for ultramarine pigment.

[Blergh]

Mexico City with  over 9 million citizens in the city proper and a metropolitan population of over 21 million people, is 5th largest city in the world, the largest city in the Americas and the largest Spanish-speaking city in the world- yet also has a large number of Nahual speakers(the original Aztec language).   It is the oldest continuously inhabited capital city in the Americas and has been a capital city without interruption since its official founding in 1325 as the capital of the Aztec Empire. . then the Spanish colony of New Spain from 1521 on  before becoming the capital of the Republic of Mexico from 1821. Even at the time of Cortez's conquest in 1521, it had a population of no less than 200,000 people- the largest population of any city or town in the Americas at that time.

[Anduin]

You all know construction cranes. Did you know that they blow in the breeze? Not over*, but there's one parked not a hundred metres from my window. The operator leaves it parked in whatever direction it's in come knock-off time, but after a few hours the arm often slowly swings to point north. Yes, a strong breeze from the south will do that.

The crane and the building site have been there for two christmasses now. The building was topped out long ago, it's pretty much internal work now. I hope they finish soon. The crane is annoyingly noisy.

*Okay, a bad enough storm, but you know what I mean.

[Blergh]

According to Aztec legend, when the tribe was seeking out a new home to build their capital city, they saw an eagle perched on a cactus eating a snake- and took THAT as a sign as the ideal spot for their new home!

Regardless of the validity of that legend, it has remained a symbol of what's now Mexico City and even nation of Mexico itself with it being prominently featured on its flag!

[annzeepark914]

26 minutes ago, Blergh said:

According to Aztec legend, when the tribe was seeking out a new home to build their capital city, they saw an eagle perched on a cactus eating a snake- and took THAT as a sign as the ideal spot for their new home!

Regardless of the validity of that legend, it has remained a symbol of what's now Mexico City and even nation of Mexico itself with it being prominently featured on its flag!

Even though I can't stand snakes, the thought of that image (of the eagle eating Mr Snake) on one's country's flag is terrible--at least to me 😖.

[Is Everyone Gone]

I've got one: NBA player Kris Dunn had a mother who was in and out of jail growing up. He and his brother were afraid of being sent to foster care so Kris would get money by playing pick-up basketball and betting on the game. He and his brother managed to fend for themselves often.

[Blergh]

Corn AKA maize appears to have first been cultivated in what's now south-central Mexico c.7000 BC having been bred from a local grass with individual  husks around each seed on tiny ears instead of husks wrapping the entire ear to protect the kernels. Curiously this grain appears to have been reached the Cauca Valley of present day Colombia, South America as early as 5000 BC while not reaching present day New England, USA or New Brunswick, Canada until as late as 1400 A.D- keeping in mind that crossing the Isthmus of Panama including the treacherous Darien Gap jungle would have been no mean feat.

[Blergh]

OK, this may be as good a time as any to discuss what may be one of the oldest unsolved mysteries in what's now the United States: the Lost Colony of Roanoke.

While the Spanish HAD established  present-day St. Augustine, Florida in 1565 and the English would establish Jamestown, Virginia in 1607 then Plymouth, Massachusetts  in 1620, between St. Augustine and Jamestown's establishments there was Roanoke.

In the 1580's the English thought they'd break Spain's monopoly on the New World and try to establish their own colonies in the Americas despite the Spanish crown having claimed all the lands in North and South America at that time.

Anyway,  to that end, they established the Lane Colony in 1585 which soon ran afoul of the Native Americans and would soon be abandoned by the surviving men.  In spite that disaster,  the prominent artist John White (who had made detailed sketches of Native Americans and their communities during his time with the Lane colonists) persuaded Sir Walter Raleigh to make another attempt  but this time  by over 100 settlers including women and children. Mr. White was so confident that he even let his newlywed daughter Eleanor who was heavily pregnant by her husband Ananias Dare become of the colonists. As it turned out Eleanor would give birth to her daughter Virginia in the new colony on what is now known as Manteo Island, North Carolina on August 18,1587 and almost immediately the infant Virginia would be Christened before her maternal grandfather John White would set sail for England to bring in fresh supplies to the newly established colony just nine days after the baby's birth and another English woman colonist would bear her own child shortly afterwards . ..and this would be the very last historic certainty of the colonists' fates.

Of course, Spain and England's frosty ties would wind up with open war being declared after the Catholic heir to the English throne  Mary, Queen of Scot's execution and after  England had Sir Francis Drake burn Cadiz harbor on the southern coast of Spain ['singing King Phillip's beard' as it would be called by English propagandists] and not surprisingly the Spanish Armada would be launched though vanquished but would lead to a state of open war with England for quite some time.

Anyway, it wouldn't be until 1590 that Mr. White would return with ships and fresh supplies. . but what he'd discovered was that the Roanoke Colony was completely devoid of its citizens and even the colony's boats were missing. The ONLY possible clue was a single word carved into a tree 'Croatoan'- the name of the local Native American tribe.  Mr. White and his team could find no trace of his daughter, granddaughter or any colonist before their hasty search was cut short by them having to amscray back to England before [they believed] Spanish forces would find them and their ships proved so unseaworthy that they barely made it back.

When Jamestown was established in 1607, they were quite wary of Roanoke's unknown fate that they would only have men initially settle that colony. They would hear rumors of English captives for a few years and there was even a claim in 1614 that there were four Englishmen, four English teen boys and one English girl seen being forced to beat copper by their Native American captors in what's now the North Carolina mainland but, if this claim was true, no attempt was made to rescue them due to the Jamestown colonists believing themselves to be vastly outnumbered by the Native Americans in the area to have attempted to have done so. 

Some have speculated that maybe some if not all the colonists had attempted to set sail to England (which might have been an explanation for what had become of their missing boats) but had drowned on the way but that's also uncertain.

There HAD been a French attempt at colonization in the 1560's that had ended with the colonists abandoning their colony but somehow successfully sailing back to France over the Atlantic Ocean.

Some at the time thought that the Spanish from St. Augustine or elsewhere might have captured or done the colonists in. However, as late as 1600, the Spanish were still looking for them so it's doubtful they'd have been looking  a dozen years after the colony's last confirmed sighting had they already FOUND them.

Over the last few centuries, there HAVE been archaeological finds of an English musket, an olive jar, and other English commodities that had produced in the late 1500's  found  on nearby Hatteras Island and on the North Carolina Mainland which could be evidence of some of the colonists having attempted to relocate . .or could have simply been goods that the Native American tribes might have picked up out of curiosity upon coming to the abandoned Roanoke colony.

There also were reports of Native Americans  in the North Carolina interior who spoke Elizabethan English and Welsh who had grey eyes and even today the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina claims to have descent from the Lost Colonists who they believe decided to join their ancestral tribe to survive. 

However, even with current DNA testing it would be next to impossible to discover whether any European DNA they might possess could have been passed from the 1580's . .or from later  contributions.

In the 1930's there were some claimed 'Eleanor Dare Stones' supposedly discovered in North Carolina and  Georgia claiming to have been messages carved in rocks by Mrs. Dare to let her father Mr. White what had become of the colony including the claim that her husband Anaias and their daughter had been slaughtered by Native Americans and Mrs. Dare herself having married a Native American to help the other captured colonists to survive. However, most scholars believe these carved stones to have been hoaxes (and truly if Mrs. Dare HAD been captured, when would she have had the opportunity to have carved them and why would she have done so )?

What is currently known is that this has been a subject of endless speculation and every summer in Manteo, North Carolina 'The Lost Colony' outdoor play which gives one postulation is performed literally a few steps from where the colony had been.  Moreover, while nothing is known of baby Virginia Dare's fate after the age of nine days, she HAS been remembered and in fact the name of Dare County on the northeast part of North Carolina has been a memento to her and the  rest of the missing colonists. 

Whatever little Miss Dare's fate may have been, she did have a name that reflected what many contemporary English would have considered re attempting to establish a colony named after Elizabeth I [the Virgin Queen]  in an unknown land claimed by another country- the  Virginia Dare!

[Is Everyone Gone]

So with Damian Lillard snapping his Achilles tendon, I learned that players even returning from Achilles tears is a relatively new phenomenon. As recently as Kobe Bryant, it was considered a career ending injury.

[Lugal]

The Virginea Pars map (created by John White himself) may provide a clue what happened to the colony. In 2012 it was examined with a lightbox and showed a symbol for a fort under a patch at an area about 100 miles inland from Roanoke.  In 2007 archaeologists found artifacts in that area indicating an English presence (ceramics and metal artifacts).  They may have sought help from a Native village known as Mettaquem.

I've also read theories that rather than trying to sail across the Atlantic to England, they may have attempted to sail up the coast to Newfoundland.

As for the Dare Stones, the later ones are almost certainly hoaxes, the first one might be authentic.

On 4/26/2025 at 11:11 AM, Blergh said:

Of course, Spain and England's frosty ties would wind up with open war being declared after the Catholic heir to the English throne  Mary, Queen of Scot's execution and after  England had Sir Francis Drake burn Cadiz harbor on the southern coast of Spain ['singing King Phillip's beard' as it would be called by English propagandists] and not surprisingly the Spanish Armada would be launched though vanquished but would lead to a state of open war with England for quite some time.

Ironically, a lot of what Drake burned in Cadiz were barrel staves that would have supplied the Armada.  His doing so delayed the launch by many months.  If he hadn't, the timeline may have been different and John White may have been able to return sooner.

[Blergh]

Two of the odder 'hanging threads' of English history have to do with Eadward the Exile (c. 1016-1057) and his only marital son Edgar Aethling (1052-fl. 1125?).

Right about the time of Eadward's own birth, England got invaded by the Danish king Canute which resulted in the defeat and death of his own father Edmund Ironside when he was just months old. Canute sent Eadward and  his evident brother Edmund to the court of King Olof in Sweden with the instruction to have these infant heirs slaughtered so there'd be no impediment to his own conquest of England. However, Olaf had had been an ally of their paternal grandfather Aethelred the Unready and refused to kill them. It appears Eadward and his brother somehow survived infancy and early childhood before reappearing in (of all places) Kiev in their early teens working as mercenaries with Eadward befriending the exiled heir to Hungary Prince Andrew recruited them to help retake his throne in Budapest. There, he'd be granted an estate and would marry a Hungarian noblewoman named Agatha and the two would become parents to at least two daughters (Margaret and Christina) and one son (Edgar AEtheling). In 1057, Eadward's childless half-uncle Eadward the Confessor decided to name the exiled Saxon prince as the heir to the English throne. By this point the Eadward of our story was about 41 but he decided to return to the land of his birth that he'd left as an infant and brought his nuclear family with him (his brother Edmund appears to have likely already died but that's not entirely clear).  While one may wonder if the one called Eadward the Exile knew ANY Anglo-Saxon English while having evidently learned Swedish, Kievian, and Magyar during his lifelong exile, his grasp (or lack thereof) of his mother tongue is unclear. However, literally within DAYS of his return to England in 1057 for reasons unclear Eadward the Exile DIED. Graciously, his namesake half-nephew King Eadward the Confessor allowed his entire Hungarian-born family to remain in England with the intention of making his only surviving son Edgar AEthling as his eventual heir.

It also should be mentioned that even though Eadward had been spirited away when he was only months old and there was nothing close to facial recognition, DNA tests,etc., not even his bitterest foes seemed to ever claim  that he was NOT the exiled heir to the English throne despite spending virtually his entire life away from anyone who might have seen him as a newborn. His daughter Margaret's own daughter Edith (Matilda) would eventually marry William's son Henry I and ALL the Anglo-Saxon lineage in the current British Royal family is based upon the descent from this rather . ..tumultuous progenitor.

Well, 1066 happened and almost immediately Eadward the Confessor's brother-in-law Harald Godwinson made his claim and got the council's permission but Duke William of Normandy invaded and killed Harold then claimed the English throne for himself! All this prompted Edgar's mother Agatha to flee with her children to Scotland where his elder sister Margaret would catch the eye of Malcolm III and become Queen Consort (then after her death be known as St. Margaret) while Christina became a nun. Edgar  held onto London and seemed to tried to press his luck against William but the latter's forces proved too strong and Edgar would be captured by William but  then seemed to have either been released or even escaped for he would soon attempt another rebellion on his behalf in 1069. Edgar would flee to Scotland and seek the protection of his brother-in-law but then would be compelled to go into permanent exile (though he would particpate in the First Crusade and enter Jerusalem itself in 1102 then returned to Europe to try to make trouble for William's heirs in Normandy. It appears he would live to at least 1125 and perhaps lived past 100 as late as 1167 but this is also unclear.

 

Anyway, those two were the  the last of the known marital Anglo-Saxon male line of monarchs.