Today I Learned #2: Gone for a Wiki Walk

[Hrothbern]

TIL

I never know that she is that awesome.

Spoiler Audrey :

source: https://workingclasshistory.com/podcast/

yes
She was born here in the Netherlands and speaks perfect Dutch.
Apparently she always hid having participated in the Dutch resistance... could be to protect her career... to avoid questions on her parents who lived in the UK before the war and were part of a fascist movement there.
But there are many more Dutch resistance people who never talked about that time until they became very old and only to close family.
Her mother moved after Poland was conquered back to the Netherlands with Audrey. Her father stayed in the UK.
Her uncle from mothers side was executed by the Nazis as reprisal for a local resistance action. He was a high ranking prosecutor and a baron (Audrey's mother a baroness).
They lived in Velp near Arnhem, near the paratrooper dropping locations of the Operation Market Garden that failed to secure the bridge over the Rhine to enable US troops to move fast into Germany.
Which did BTW not stop Montgomery stating afterwards that that operation was a 90% succes,

But the story that her mother hid one of those paratroopers could well be correct as so much more on Audrey's activities: teenage girls were perfect as couriers.

EDIT
experiencing as kid the hungerwinter of 1944-45, the food droppings from the international Red Cross, perhaps the reason that she was happy to become goodwill ambassador for UNICEF
Here a short speech from her, the declaration of children's rights, when UNICEF existed 30 years.
just hear the pitch of her voice !

 

[Cutlass]

TIL that when they take a nasal swab, they jam the swab all the way out of the back of your skull.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Ow.

 

[Colon]

She was born here in the Netherlands and speaks perfect Dutch.

She was born here in Belgium.

 

[Hrothbern]

She was born here in Belgium.

oh dear
looked it up, my bad
thanks

born and grew up the first years in Belgium indeed before they moved to the UK
Her mother was Dutch

 

[Takhisis]

I've always heard it said that the Dutch in Belgium are better than the Dutch in the Netherlands at being Dutch…

Not so much a TIL, but "Recently This Happened", a local TV weatherman (Sven Sundgaard) known for posting thirst traps on Instagram was fired because he retweeted someone who called the anti-quarantine protesters Nazis.

What's a thirst trap?

 

[Ajidica]

What's a thirst trap?

https://lmgtfy.com/?q=thirst+trap

Posting seductive images on social sites like Instagram, where the thirst trap is best known, is nothing new. The name for the practice, though, appears on Twitter and Urban Dictionary by 2011, drawing on thirsty, slang for “thirsting for attention,” and trap in the sense of “lure.”

Emerging from selfie culture, the well-staged thirst trap is a provocative photo, often with a coy or confident caption, that will trap (attract) thirst (attention, in the form of comments, likes, etc.). On Instagram, they are often hashtagged “#ThirstTrapThursdays.” What’s the point of posting if no one is going to notice?

By 2016, thirst traps had become such a thing that popular publications from BuzzFeed to Vibe compiled year-end “Best Thirst Traps” of celebrities, including Drake, LL Cool J, Kim Kardashian, and Serena Williams.

 

[Hrothbern]

TIL about the book "The Mirror & The Light" that turns the story of Henry VIII and Anne of Cleves 180 degrees.

The mainstream story is that he did not want to marry the ugly Anne and did therefore not consummate the marriage and could end the marriage after half a year.

The 180 degree turned story (in the book):
To seal a strategic international partnership Henry's 4th marriage should be with a German Princess. Cromwell arranging that deal.
When Henry VIII intruded Anne's room "as surprise" before the marriage date, she saw a fat, unhealthy, limp, and moreover a theatrical pageant... and could not hide in time her being shocked
And Henry's ego and/or libido could not handle that.

I like twists like that... upsetting the standard and/or convenient narratives on the past

King Henry was flirtatious, hypersensitive, shopping sick, and suffered from the beautiful woman's syndrome Hilary Mantel Henry VIII thought his bride Anne van Kleef was ugly.
But what did Anna think of him? Mantel shows this in the final part of her Cromwell trilogy, in which she again shines as a writer and clearer of history.

Everyone, well, almost everyone, knows that King Henry VIII did not like Princess Anne of Cleves so much that he could not stand it in this carefully arranged marriage between England and a German royal family. And yet precisely with that episode, Hilary Mantel prepares the readers of her historical novel The Mirror & the Light by surprise - by not assuming Henry's well-known dislike of Princess Anne, but by thinking about how she viewed him.
Mantel reconstructed their first meeting. The fact is that, against all protocol, Henry presented herself to Anna unannounced, also dressed in a freak costume. So, Mantel observes, Anna van Kleef saw her future husband for the first time: the king of England, fat, unhealthy, limp, and moreover a theatrical pageant. And then Mantel, you feel it as you read it, imagines what you would do if you were unexpectedly confronted with him. You are shocked. Well..just a minute, because you are a well-trained princess.

But what if Henry, suspicious as he was, realized?

The passage with the first meeting of Anna and Henry is not only a solution for the beaten track, it is a highlight in this book, and makes what happened afterwards more obvious than the official historiography. Henry, the infamous English king of those six women, therefore immediately wants nothing more to do with the German princess, with the argument of dominant men who cannot handle a woman: she is ugly. Which contradicts Anna's portrait of court painter Holbein, but alla.
More importantly, the king does not accomplish his marital duties.
And if the king doesn't get it up, then England won't get it up, it's as simple as that in a monarchy.

Mantle works it out into great pages full of man placements of nobility and court, who obligingly straighten what is crooked. And the reader who pays attention detects how her successor is already warming up as a result of Anna.

https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2020/05/07/anna-van-kleef-schrok-zich-rot-a3999007

Here the standard Wiki story:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_of_Cleves

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Today I learned (thankfully via google) that, in very rare circumstances, holding in your pee long enough can cause your bladder to burst.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

Today I learned (thankfully via google) that, in very rare circumstances, holding in your pee long enough can cause your bladder to burst.

It can also back urine up into your kidneys causing all sorts of havoc.

TIL that when they take a nasal swab, they jam the swab all the way out of the back of your skull.

When you get tested every day you develop bruises (internally) to enjoy as well.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Today I learned, that uh, Finnish is an interesting language.

 

[Colon]

I've always heard it said that the Dutch in Belgium are better than the Dutch in the Netherlands at being Dutch…

There was (is?) an annual language contest between Flanders and the Netherlands that Flanders would tend to win. I assume the Netherlands would win more often in a contest against Wallonia though.

 

[Takhisis]

Today I learned, that uh, Finnish is an interesting language.

Yes, yes it is, and it's a wonderful language to learn.

 

[Hrothbern]

There was (is?) an annual language contest between Flanders and the Netherlands that Flanders would tend to win. I assume the Netherlands would win more often in a contest against Wallonia though.

There are on TV language quizzes where Dutch and Flemish people take part, But I never watch them.
My guess would be that Flemish people would win more often,

Personally I do like Flemish more than Dutch for literature and talking when time does not matter.
Flemish has preserved more older words in daily language. Also more suited for poetry and rich literature language.

Another difference is the language battle in Belgium with French leading to some more purism as defence against French and as consequence, I guess, against English as well.
A cultural identity issue I guess of Flemish people who were the underlying people in the industrialising period up to WW2. (Heavy industry started in the French speaking part and French was also at that time the diplomat and upper class language).
Dutch has taken up and does take up easily words from foreign languages. Perhaps in the past because of all our trading and perhaps now because we are less obedient in general and also towards school teachers. (No joke... that does differ strongly)

 

[Cutlass]

 

[Takhisis]

It actually makes sense, to a point. You can test your missiles with your own flares and thus make them able to dodge your own flares, but not the enemy's.

 

[Cutlass]

It actually makes sense, to a point. You can test your missiles with your own flares and thus make them able to dodge your own flares, but not the enemy's.

But it's sort of a failure of planning and thinking things through on the part of both sides. Neither had any real idea of the concept the other was following. And that's despite the fact that they spent ungodly amounts of money spying on each other.

 

[Takhisis]

Indeed, which is why I've already saved a copy of that image to my hard drive, as a good reminder.

 

[Zkribbler]

Today I learned, that uh, Finnish is an interesting language.

A Finn once told me that Finnish is spoken both while breathing out and breathing in.

Swedes opine that the gibberish spoken by the Muppets Swedish Chef sounds more like Finnish than Swedish.

 

[Zkribbler]

...Operation Market Garden that failed to secure the bridge over the Rhine to enable US troops to move fast into Germany.

Operation Market Garden was a British operation. US troops in the south under Patton stewed because their badly needed supplies were diverted to Monty.