A Lot Of Ppl In The Notes Of The Previous Post Are Mentioning Museums Hoarding Stolen Cultural Objects

Before and after graduation!

I read your blog information and I also really love the Middle Ages! what is something you particularly like? or wish you could see more in media in which the Middle Ages are discussed?

The very messy marriage situation isn't used nearly enough. People could agree to get married without any witnesses or the church, and it wasn't uncommon for people to do that, then like the guy would deny they did it so he could marry someone else. The church really tried to get a hold of things, it's why it became a thing to announce to the church three Sundays in a row that you were getting married, so if you married someone else they could tell on you and such.

That said, there's something just wonderful about the idea of a couple in a stressful situation where all they have is each other, in a candle lit barn on the way to what could be death, saying whispered vows of devotion. I think this whole thing could be used way more.

Also I want more accurate clothing and hair. Give us the silly hats, cowards, hair shouldn't be so loose and visible. Let clothing be colorful, peasants dyed things too. Alack, modern fashions will always get in the way.

Embroidered head cloths and bag at the Museum of Scotland. Aren't they just beautiful? The dyes there in front of the second one is 1800s but the head wraps are 1500s if I remember correctly. Renaissance, but still, they are my beloved.

Please make a post about the story of the RMS Carpathia, because it's something that's almost beyond belief and more people should know about it.

Carpathia received Titanic’s distress signal at 12:20am, April 15th, 1912. She was 58 miles away, a distance that absolutely could not be covered in less than four hours.

(Californian’s exact position at the time is…controversial. She was close enough to have helped. By all accounts she was close enough to see Titanic’s distress rockets. It’s uncertain to this day why her crew did not respond, or how many might not have been lost if she had been there. This is not the place for what-ifs. This is about what was done.)

Carpathia’s Captain Rostron had, yes, rolled out of bed instantly when woken by his radio operator, ordered his ship to Titanic’s aid and confirmed the signal before he was fully dressed. The man had never in his life responded to an emergency call. His goal tonight was to make sure nobody who heard that fact would ever believe it.

All of Carpathia’s lifeboats were swung out ready for deployment. Oil was set up to be poured off the side of the ship in case the sea turned choppy; oil would coat and calm the water near Carpathia if that happened, making it safer for lifeboats to draw up alongside her. He ordered lights to be rigged along the side of the ship so survivors could see it better, and had nets and ladders rigged along her sides ready to be dropped when they arrived, in order to let as many survivors as possible climb aboard at once.

I don’t know if his making provisions for there still being survivors in the water was optimism or not. I think he knew they were never going to get there in time for that. I think he did it anyway because, god, you have to hope.

Carpathia had three dining rooms, which were immediately converted into triage and first aid stations. Each had a doctor assigned to it. Hot soup, coffee, and tea were prepared in bulk in each dining room, and blankets and warm clothes were collected to be ready to hand out. By this time, many of the passengers were awake–prepping a ship for disaster relief isn’t quiet–and all of them stepped up to help, many donating their own clothes and blankets.

And then he did something I tend to refer to as diverting all power from life support.

Here’s the thing about steamships: They run on steam. Shocking, I know; but that steam powers everything on the ship, and right now, Carpathia needed power. So Rostron turned off hot water and central heating, which bled valuable steam power, to everywhere but the dining rooms–which, of course, were being used to make hot drinks and receive survivors. He woke up all the engineers, all the stokers and firemen, diverted all that steam back into the engines, and asked his ship to go as fast as she possibly could. And when she’d done that, he asked her to go faster.

I need you to understand that you simply can’t push a ship very far past its top speed. Pushing that much sheer tonnage through the water becomes harder with each extra knot past the speed it was designed for. Pushing a ship past its rated speed is not only reckless–it’s difficult to maneuver–but it puts an incredible amount of strain on the engines. Ships are not designed to exceed their top speed by even one knot. They can’t do it. It can’t be done.

Carpathia’s absolute do-or-die, the-engines-can’t-take-this-forever top speed was fourteen knots. Dodging icebergs, in the dark and the cold, surrounded by mist, she sustained a speed of almost seventeen and a half.

No one would have asked this of them. It wasn’t expected. They were almost sixty miles away, with icebergs in their path. They had a responsibility to respond; they did not have a responsibility to do the impossible and do it well. No one would have faulted them for taking more time to confirm the severity of the issue. No one would have blamed them for a slow and cautious approach. No one but themselves.

They damn near broke the laws of physics, galloping north headlong into the dark in the desperate hope that if they could shave an hour, half an hour, five minutes off their arrival time, maybe for one more person those five minutes would make the difference. I say: three people had died by the time they were lifted from the lifeboats. For all we know, in another hour it might have been more. I say they made all the difference in the world.

This ship and her crew received a message from a location they could not hope to reach in under four hours. Just barely over three hours later, they arrived at Titanic’s last known coordinates. Half an hour after that, at 4am, they would finally find the first of the lifeboats. it would take until 8:30 in the morning for the last survivor to be brought onboard. Passengers from Carpathia universally gave up their berths, staterooms, and clothing to the survivors, assisting the crew at every turn and sitting with the sobbing rescuees to offer whatever comfort they could.

In total, 705 people of Titanic’s original 2208 were brought onto Carpathia alive. No other ship would find survivors.

At 12:20am April 15th, 1912, there was a miracle on the North Atlantic. And it happened because a group of humans, some of them strangers, many of them only passengers on a small and unimpressive steam liner, looked at each other and decided: I cannot live with myself if I do anything less.

I think the least we can do is remember them for it.

This is a really cool picture my sis took of me in England cosplay.

I cosplayed as Yurio from Yuri on Ice tonight!

SHAKESPEARE

Listen, you all knew I was a major dork already. 

These are the posters I made as decorations for the English dept. grad party. As this year marks the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, we obviously went with a theme. If you are into typography, you can see my freehand attempts at the First Folio typeface. But my pride and joy is the brilliant new party game, Pin the Beard on the Bard. 

Yes, the party was grand fun. And no, improvising cardstock beards for my friends to tape to a judgmental drawing of Shakespeare had not been a life goal, but I am proud to have achieved it nonetheless..

More of that punk Russian twerp.

Look what I drew! I have loved this song forever and I wrote that one story about it and now I drew this. My hands are messy and it's almost 12:30 am but it's worth it!

I never liked the quiet before.

Art by @zeefthecreator

Please don’t repost.

it REALLY annoys me these days when they show those simple, garishly painted versions of old marble statues and claim that the statues looked like that. like yeah, they were painted, we can find bits of color in various locations, so we know very roughly the color of various locations, but i dont think theres any more reason to believe they were painted in these flat (and matte!) colors than in more detail. like yes, we dont know what that detail was, but that doesnt make the flat version *more plausible*, i dont think you should have like, a stronger prior that they were flat than that they were detailed. these were expensive statues!

More Gravity Falls.