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Author Topic: The "Famous people you've probably never heard of but should have" thread  (Read 61323 times)

Offline jim360

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I never knew Britain was ever invaded to begin with, at least within the past couple centuries, nice post!

Don't names like William the Conqueror, Claudius Caesar, Canute, Hengist and Horsa (to be fair, the last three are less well-known but still important) ring any bells?

Dates??

1066
43AD
c.900
c.450AD
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Offline ·WídgêT·

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That's why I said the last 3 centuries (well 4 so that it includes your post). That only covers a period from 1700-present day.

And yes I was familiar with William the Conqueror but not the other 3 :).


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Offline jim360

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Well, Claudius Caesar led the successful Roman invasion of Britain in 43AD (or ordered it, more likely). Hence "Britain" from "Britannia" - the Latin.

Hengist and Horsa were brothers of Saxony, and led the Saxon conquest of Britain after the Romans left. They were invited over, according to Bede, but decided to stay. Not sure why - certainly not the weather. Probably money had something to do with it. They landed at Thanet, which is just a random fact. (England comes from "Angeln", a region of Germany near Saxony).

Canute was a Viking, one of the first Kings of all of England, some time around 1000AD.

William the Conqueror was a Viking too, descendants of the Viking settlers in northern France, or Normandy as it would become known.

The last successful invasion of England is technically the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688 when William III forced James II to give up the throne. There wasn't that much actual fighting, though, and I think most of the English people preferred William III to James anyway. Especially after the "Bloody Assizes", which involved a lot of people being thrown into prison and/ or executed for no particular reason.
Check out my Short introduction... corner and my "Historical figures who should perhaps be better-known" thread!!

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Offline ·WídgêT·

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Hmm...interesting.

My Euro class only covers from The Black Plague on so I've never heard of those others, you've got an encyclopedia for a brain there three60 :interesting:


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Offline jim360

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Black Death is 1348 so the Glorious Revolution ought to be in there somewhere.
Check out my Short introduction... corner and my "Historical figures who should perhaps be better-known" thread!!

Exciting videos: 1.1 / 1.2 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6



              

Offline BFM_Hydra

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I was never intending to get into political debates. But I would enjoy dicussing it via PM if you like?

It was just a joke mate ;)


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Offline jim360

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Oh.
Check out my Short introduction... corner and my "Historical figures who should perhaps be better-known" thread!!

Exciting videos: 1.1 / 1.2 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6



              

Offline ·WídgêT·

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Yes it was, but again, I cut it off after 4 centuries so technically the Glorious Revolution is out of that range, and I don't really consider that a true "invasion" in a sense of conflict because there was very little, if any at all, bloodshed.


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Offline jim360

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Well, technically 4 centuries ago is 1610, slap-bang in the middle of James I's reign. Nrvend was there, he'll tell you all about it. :P
Check out my Short introduction... corner and my "Historical figures who should perhaps be better-known" thread!!

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Offline ·WídgêT·

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...Wow I legitimately thought it was 2100 not 2010.

I need a nap :undecided:


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Offline jim360

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Today marks the 183rd anniversary of the death of Pierre-Simon, marquis de Laplace (Why is it that everyone refused to die a nice round number of years ago?).

Some of you (e.g. Edison) will know a lot about Laplace. Others will be thinking "??". But Laplace really is another of the many overlooked figures in mathematical history.

You will have heard, perhaps, of Sir Issac Newton who developed the calculus. But people such as the Bernoulli family, Legendre, Euler, Gauss, Laplace and many others were needed to develop and further the work.

Laplace, though, has more than this to his credit. Among other things, we think of the following:

1. Laplacian Equation, ΔV=0. (here Δ is the "Laplacian operator".) This is a vital equation for all of physics.
2. Laplacian Transform, which is useful for electric circuits and much more besides. (It enables one to solve differential equations more easily).
3. Work in "celestial mechanics" - how the Solar System works. Here, Newton's work was, in fact, wrong and Laplace improved on Newton's method to derive much better answers.
4. An unusual sidetrack from all this was that Laplace predicted black hole existence 100 years before Einstein was even born, and in addition suggested that the universe was bigger than the Milky Way galaxy - anticipating the work of Hubble.

This really is a lot more than it seems. Laplace's work underpins modern physics and really is very important. It is a shame that so much of it is inaccessible without a lot of explaining.
Check out my Short introduction... corner and my "Historical figures who should perhaps be better-known" thread!!

Exciting videos: 1.1 / 1.2 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6



              

Offline Marty

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I never knew Britain was ever invaded to begin with, at least within the past couple centuries, nice post!
Don't names like William the Conqueror, Claudius Caesar, Canute, Hengist and Horsa (to be fair, the last three are less well-known but still important) ring any bells?

Don't forget the invasion of Harald Hardrada, also in 1066!

Generally, the English king in 1066, Harold Godwinson, had taken the throne against a lot of people's wishes. William the Conqueror was one - but less known is Tostig Godwinson, his brother. Tostig was banished from England by Harold so as to create a unified England to oppose William of Normandy with (Tostig was whipping up a rebellion in Yorkshire). He went to Normandy, and took a small fleet to invade the Isle of Wight, but was defeated. Then he went to Scotland, and tried to persuade Malcolm III of Scotland to invade England, but he refused. Finally, he sailed to Norway, and convinced Harald Hardrada (who himself had a distant claim to the English throne) to invade England. 300 Longships and 15000 men landed in North-East England. They won the Battle of Fulford against an outnumbered English force and, believing that King Harold wouldn't fight, he took less than half his men, with light armour, south. On September 25th at Stamford Bridge, near York, King Harold's larger and heavier force defeated the invaders. Both Tostig and Harald Hardrada died.

King Harold was then forced to march his men, in full armour and carrying lots of supplies, more than 200 miles south to meet William in battle on the 14th October at Senlac Hill, 6 miles north-west of the town of Hastings. But then, The Battle of Senlac Hill doesn't have the same ring.


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Offline jim360

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You've been playing the game "1066" haven't you? :P
Check out my Short introduction... corner and my "Historical figures who should perhaps be better-known" thread!!

Exciting videos: 1.1 / 1.2 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6



              

Offline jim360

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Well well, English History of the Early Dark Ages is perhaps understandably not everybody's strong point. No matter!

In fact it was 1600 years ago (a round number at last!) that the Dark Ages (in England at least) started, when an appeal to Rome for help was rejected. In 410 AD, you see, the Western Roman Empire was being over-run by Vandals, Goths, Visigoths, Huns, Ostrogoths, Saxons, Jutes, Germanii, Franks, Alemanii, and general riff-raff from Northern Europe and Western Asia. This led, anyway, to the Roman withdrawal from Britannia. The Picts of Scotland and Scots of Ireland (don't ask...) took the opportunity to invade and so began, it seems, a long period of fighting across the whole of Britannia.

Now the reason this period is called the Dark Ages is because we don't know much of what went on, and what we do know is probably in part myth. (In fact, the legend of King Arthur starts in histories written about this time - if there was such a person then he wasn't a knight but a warrior.)

What is true, or very likely to be true, is that outof this period one Briton took a central role in the defence of Britannia. That person was Vortigern - which isn't actually a name but a title  meaning "overlord". Again so little is known about him but most histories tend to agree that Vortigern, in seeking to protect England from the Pict and Scot invaders, asked the Saxons under Hengist and Horsa to come to Britain and fight for Vortigern. This didn't exactly go to plan, and eventually the Saxons too became an invading army.

The dust settles somewhat by about 600AD, when the four Kingdoms of Wessex, Mercia, Northumberland and East Anglia are established as the main Saxon Kingdoms in Britain. Curiously, despite the fact that the main invading force was Saxon, the new country would become known as England, from the lesser tribe of the Angles.

So anyway, my person-of-the-article is Vortigern, the man who made England.
Check out my Short introduction... corner and my "Historical figures who should perhaps be better-known" thread!!

Exciting videos: 1.1 / 1.2 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6



              

Offline Marty

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You've been playing the game "1066" haven't you? :P

I knew about Hardrada before I played that game :P

Would you allow other people to post people in this thread often?


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