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It seemed as if every other week on M.A.S.H. you'd hear the line: “Who do you think you are, Albert Schweitzer?”His granddaughter, Dr. Christiane Engel, carries on work with his foundation and gives piano concerts, mostly Mozart and Bach, all over the world. CDs available on Amazon. She is married to my wife's 1st cousin.
With tenacious research and the ability to write, one may be an historian of the military or any other area of History.
A secular replacement of a primal need for relics? If the bidders had lived centuries ago in Europe, they would have been collecting bones and cloths of saints, splinters from "the True Cross" and such.
You may be on to something here. I had not thought of it from that angle before. It actually makes sense that in an era of declining faith people try to hold on to secular relics. Wanting something from a murderer is a little different from a religious relic though.
Perhaps the religious believe and some seculars invest???? ;D
A secular replacement of a primal need for relics? If the bidders had lived centuries ago in Europe, they would have been collecting bones and cloths of saints, splinters from “the True Cross” and such.
My first was a Toshiba laptop, 10MB, 15 pounds for close to $5,000 I bought in 1987. And I do not miss the dot matrix printers, slow, separating edges and pages.
Antonia Fraser in her bio of Mary Queen of Scots traced haemophilia back to Mary.Also from the Hanoverians came porphryia, which afflicted George III and the fathr of Frederick the Great.
In the book Family, Sex, and Marriage and England 1500-1800, the author wrote that if one made it past the 21st birthday, barring death in battle or from Plague, one could live a long life with a great immune system. It was not uncommon for men (and women) like Michalangelo or my historical protagonist to live into their 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s in the 16th and 17th centuries.Another book I read gave life expectancy stats for the big European cities in 1900. From memory, I believe 28 seemed to be the median give or take a few years depending upon the city.
Dance of the Assassins is a novel that deals with the pre-WWI feud between the Obrenovich and Karageorgovich factions in Serbia plus the Black Hand. It complements Cowles' non-fiction The Russian Dagger.
Even in my lifetime I have seen a weakening/decline.I forget the author, but in a bio I read of Louis XIII and Richelieu he wrote that people were generally more uglier and deformed centuries ago but could take extreme cold and heat better than modern man. Poor birthing techniques, dentistry, and medicine compared to our standards were the main reasons causing deformities.Even this 78 year old grew up on greaseburgers at the beach and never heard of ecoli and salmonella, peanut allergies and such during childhood to early manhood. Is it that modern medicine is allowing many to survive who would not have 50+ years ago? No helmets and leg/arm cushions for bikes. Pecking orders at playgrounds with no mommies around to protect the little brats who mouthed off. Metal slides with sharp edges, chrome dashboards, dodgeball and more to toughen us compared to the little wussers today.Tough guys were those best at fighting with fists without fear of punishments. No knives or guns were used. No steroids. A built guy was natural, a real hunk like Burt Lancaster.
This time of year, I am always reminded of a punch line to an old joke about a communist Czech weatherman after he proves to his wife he was accurate about his prediction:Rudolph the Red knows rain, dear.
