TIL: Today I Learned

[Arakhor]

I seem to recall that James Garfield was killed by his doctors' malpractice, indicating that even crazy people can occasionally be right.

 

[The_J]

You aren't that old .

The wiki article of Garfield also says rather “not really“ to this.

Looks like I used the wrong adjective for the guy heh.

Garfield's article says it could have been neurosyphillis, so maybe you're not wrong .
That would also be a lot more believable. There are estimates that before the discovery of antibiotics roughly 50% of all patients in mental institutions had neurosyphillis. Phimosis on the other hand...

 

[Kaitzilla]

The 1800's were really weird.

Check out what happened to President Lincoln's son Robert.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Todd_Lincoln

Robert Lincoln was coincidentally either present or nearby when three presidential assassinations occurred.[44]

• Lincoln was not present at his father's assassination.[45] He was at the White House,[46] and rushed to be with his parents.[47] The president was moved to the Petersen House after the shooting, where Robert attended his father's deathbed.[48]
• At President James A. Garfield's invitation, Lincoln was at the Sixth Street Train Station in Washington, D.C., when the president was shot by Charles J. Guiteau on July 2, 1881, and was an eyewitness to the event. Lincoln was serving as Garfield's Secretary of War at the time.
• At President William McKinley's invitation, Lincoln was at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, where the president was shot by Leon Czolgosz on September 6, 1901, though he was not an eyewitness to the event; he was just outside the building where the shooting occurred.[49]

Lincoln himself recognized these coincidences. He is said to have refused a later presidential invitation with the comment, "No, I'm not going, and they'd better not ask me, because there is a certain fatality about presidential functions when I am present."[50]

Hopefully he wasn't buried in Dallas after passing away in 1926.


His life was also saved by the brother of John Wilkes Booth.
John murdered his dad the following year.

Robert Lincoln was once saved from possible serious injury or death by Edwin Booth, whose brother, John Wilkes Booth, was the assassin of Robert's father. The incident took place on a train platform in Jersey City, New Jersey. The exact date of the incident is uncertain, but it is believed to have taken place in late 1863 or early 1864, before John Wilkes Booth's assassination of President Lincoln (April 14, 1865).

Robert Lincoln recalled the incident in a 1909 letter to Richard Watson Gilder, editor of The Century Magazine:

The incident occurred while a group of passengers were late at night purchasing their sleeping car places from the conductor who stood on the station platform at the entrance of the car. The platform was about the height of the car floor, and there was of course a narrow space between the platform and the car body. There was some crowding, and I happened to be pressed by it against the car body while waiting my turn. In this situation the train began to move, and by the motion I was twisted off my feet, and had dropped somewhat, with feet downward, into the open space, and was personally helpless, when my coat collar was vigorously seized and I was quickly pulled up and out to a secure footing on the platform. Upon turning to thank my rescuer I saw it was Edwin Booth, whose face was of course well known to me, and I expressed my gratitude to him, and in doing so, called him by name.

 

[Josu]

TIL that Margrethe II of Denmark, under the pseudonym Ingahild Grathmer, illustrated british and danish editions of The lord of the rings

 

[Arakhor]

Huh. That is interesting.

 

[Hrothbern]

Grathmer almost the anagram of Margrethe
just that 1 e less

 

[Commodore]

TIL from a short YouTube documentary about how improper handling of dioxin wiped the town of Times Beach, Missouri off the map in the 80s.

 

[bernie14]

No. I think so. Why do you think they are?

Also please speak English. The term is forbidden. I'd hate to have to forward your post to I.C.E. for talking like a terrorist border jumper.

TIL... @Bugfatty300 threatens immigrants

 

[Takhisis]

TIL that Margrethe II of Denmark, under the pseudonym Ingahild Grathmer, illustrated british and danish editions of The lord of the rings

I learned that years ago, either on Wikipedia or TVTropes, after an hourlong+ wikiwalk.

 

[Berzerker]

The term 'gaslighting' comes from a movie called 'Gaslight'

Spoiler :

Charles Boyer murdered a woman for her jewels, but couldn't find them in her house. So he married her daughter to gain access to the house and tried to drive her insane to put her in an asylum. He had all her mother's belongings stored in the attic so he could leave the house at night and sneak up there via the roof to search for the hidden jewels.

When he would turn the gaslight on in the attic to look for the jewels, his wife saw the lights dim a bit. When Boyer stopped looking and turned off the gas the lights in the house would brighten. The wife thought she was going crazy, but the gaslighting was just him needing light for his search of the attic.

so the term is somewhat of a misnomer

 

[Birdjaguar]

The term 'gaslighting' comes from a movie called 'Gaslight'

Spoiler :

Charles Boyer murdered a woman for her jewels, but couldn't find them in her house. So he married her daughter to gain access to the house and tried to drive her insane to put her in an asylum. He had all her mother's belongings stored in the attic so he could leave the house at night and sneak up there via the roof to search for the hidden jewels.

When he would turn the gaslight on in the attic to look for the jewels, his wife saw the lights dim a bit. When Boyer stopped looking and turned off the gas the lights in the house would brighten. The wife thought she was going crazy, but the gaslighting was just him needing light for his search of the attic.

so the term is somewhat of a misnomer

Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation in which a person seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or in members of a targeted group, making them question their own memory, perception, and sanity. Using denial, misdirection, contradiction, and lying, gaslighting involves attempts to destabilize the victim and delegitimize the victim's beliefs. Instances may range from the denial by an abuser that previous abusive incidents ever occurred to the staging of bizarre events by the abuser with the intention of disorientating the victim. The term originated from the 1938 Patrick Hamilton play Gas Light and its 1940 and 1944 film adaptations, in which a character tries to make his wife believe that she has gone insane to cover his criminal activities. When he turns up the gas-fueled lights in the upstairs apartment in order to search for a murdered woman's jewels, the gaslights in his own apartment grow dimmer but he convinces his wife that she is imagining the change

Subtle changes but still pretty close.

 

[Berzerker]

I thought it was interesting the gaslight was a consequence of him looking for the jewels and not his intentional effort to drive her nuts, albeit once she mentioned the gaslight he used that too.

AMC (?) just had the movie on last night so I watched it

edit tcm, not amc

 

[Synobun]

I just edited a chapter on gaslighting. Interesting coincidence.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I just edited a chapter on gaslighting. Interesting coincidence.

They were quite popular in big cities into the early 20th C.

 

[Imaus]

TIL of two daring RAF raids into occupied Europe during the war. If these were turned into movies, no one would believe it.

 

[Synobun]

They were quite popular in big cities into the early 20th C.

The next project I'm working on is set in 1910s Toronto, and the gas lighting switching over to electric is a common trope in it. So your comment is accidentally appropriate.

 

[Birdjaguar]

The next project I'm working on is set in 1910s Toronto, and the gas lighting switching over to electric is a common trope in it. So your comment is accidentally appropriate.

To you it seems accidental, but to me it was well planned.

 

[Kaitzilla]

"I'm going to the Lordy", yikes.

So apparently this was turned into a musical at some point starring Neil Patrick Harris (Doogie Howser) and Denis O'Hare (America Horror Story 3rd/4th/5th/6th season).

I guess Charles Guiteau got his wish for an orchestra to play with his poem (some of it) after all.

 

[BenitoChavez]

¡Today I learñed how to üse the internåtional keyboarð for wíndows 10 sø I càn type nôn-english çharacters easily!

 

[Timsup2nothin]

¡Today I learñed how to üse the internåtional keyboarð for wíndows 10 sø I càn type nôn-english çharacters easily!

Teach me, oh Win10 master!