History (and related interesting facts)

Also i must give special mention to this great man:
www.academie-sciences.fr/pdf/dossiers/Images/Portrait_L.jpg

Antoine Lavoisier, a truly great scientist.

Born in France in 26th of August 1743, born into rich family and actually studied law. His biggest achievement i would say its the discovery of conservation of masses law. Also metric system that we all use (well majority do) Antoine, Pierre-Simon Laplace and Adrien-Marie Legendre all invented it together and its rather astonishing. Moreover he recognized new elements like oxygen and hydrogen, established that sulfur that is actually an element not a compound, but also established water and air composition, improved gunpowder, Improved cities street lights (and became a chief tax collector for that achievement) just to name the main discoveries.

Unfortunately he was executed by a use of a guillotine in 1794, tribunal of french revolution declared him the enemy of the revolution, of course those were crazy times, there was much hatred for him for many reasons one being the chief tax collector, the president of the Tribunal declared that "The Republic does not need any scientists!"
A great shame that he died in such a horrible unfair manner.


Im currently doing a chemistry degree and this man is my idol!

Man that's a shame, but you might think its a mistake you rushed now but maybe in the future you'll find it to be otherwise! as i remember you did history and Urban Geography, both are interesting also both have potential for great job opportunities! 

There's a great color/HD doc on Netflix as we speak (appropriately named WW2 in Colour lol). Although I'm sure you can find it elsewhere.

Also a great WW1 color doc out there called WW1 Apocalypse

Yes, it is British.

This idea of a British POV is something I only see from Neo Nazis on butthurt YouTube comments though. Along with the standard "Jews are running the world" criticism. These people don't seem to like any documentary made. I hope you're not barking up that tree.

As far as WW2 goes the bear that was conscripted and served with distinction always gets me..

The very same. 

Since I've touched on it before I figured I'd bring it up here where it is slightly more relevant. This thread exemplifies the reason why I have a great deal of respect for both MasterWarderz and Arian despite the fact that I disagree with them emphatically on political issues. It's more of a shame that the World War 2 history that MWZ knows isn't taught in schools/universities (to my knowledge anyways) as it gives a more "human" approach to the Axis powers (specifically to why people would have fought for them). While the history teachers I had tried to stress that not everyone that fought for the (European) Axis powers fully believed in Nazi-ism (or were not "evil child eating monsters"), it wasn't something that was ever really picked up by the students besides myself (who was called a Nazi for trying to stress that in one of my presentations). The same of course goes for Arian, who has extensive knowledge of Persian/Iranian history, which is definitely not taught at all in schools/universities (unless you happen to diligently search the library for text books) for whatever reason. The only professor that ever really touched on them only did it because he was an Ancient Greekophile, and Persia was kind of their nemesis during that era.

I once considered a degree/career in history, however I always found the work (specifically writing the essays) to be too tedious, so it was one of the reasons why I pursued psychology instead. Ok, that's enough of my ranting for a bit. Carry on!

Getting hold of history books - particularly the more scholarly ones - can be a nightmare unless you have easy access to a good university library. There's a couple I've been on the lookout for that Amazon are quoting over £100 for the kindle edition, let alone an actual physical copy....

No it just argues a very, very, very Allies and British perspective.

Defense of Dresden, Churchill, Operation Market Garden, all these stupid choices and decisions that if undertaken by the AXIS would result in war crimes tribunals or you being laughed out of a classroom. I mean if I recall correctly it argued that despite Market Garden's ridiculous failure, it somehow aided the Allies in some capacity. When in reality all it did was cause the starvation of a bunch of dutch people and give the Germans something to shoot at that wasn't Russian for a day or two. Along with the deaths of 10,000 soldiers. 

I have studied that flop a little bit, and I can tell you that it was a rushed mess because the Allies did not respect the capabilities of their opponents in defensive war. And oh God would learn the stupidity of that in 1944.

Personally? I am the stance that if capable I would make my own documentary on the subject.

Speaking of the airplane, I did read a biography of the Wright Brothers this past year. It was pretty interesting. Random factoid: Apparently Wilbur was horribly beaten with a bat in high school which put an end to his plans to attend university as he spent most of the next three years at home in chronic pain. The guy who did it went on to become a serial killer.

Yes, actually I think that's right. I stand corrected.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_destroyed_libraries

It only mentions the famous ones in big cities. The real number is much bigger than this. There has been so many big and medium cities that their library is destroyed by Islamic and Mongol Invasions. In middle east, Persia and India. I know about Merv and Bukhara for example.

and Ctesiphon...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ctesiphon

Read what happened to the world's most important city in 5th-7th century. It was better than Constantinople and Chang'an (China). In 8th century it was Chang'an tho... alongside Baghdad (for a short time).