Summary of Greg Jenner's Ask A Historian

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 The real woman behind the myths of Anne Boleyn is surprisingly elusive. She was neither accused of witchcraft nor of having a third nipple. She was a Catholic exile in Rome, Madrid, and Ireland who launched rebellions and undermined Elizabeth’s monarchical integrity.
#2 The sixth finger is a staple fact in many modern novels and websites, but it seems to have come from a comment made by George Wyatt, several decades after Anne’s death. He wrote that there was some show of a nail on the side of Anne’s nail, which was so small that it was often hidden by her other fingers.
#3 The idea that Anne Boleyn had a third nipple is a product of the 1920s, when anthropologist Margaret Murray argued that Anne and other historical figures had belonged to an ancient, secret pagan cult. But in a trial that was a political witch-hunt, Anne was not tried for witchcraft.
#4 The story of Anne Boleyn is one of the most gossiped-about in history. She didn’t have three nipples, six fingers, or five lovers, and her story is already interesting enough. But writers are always looking for a fresh angle.

Sujets

• Catholicisme
• History
• Histoire
• Social History

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 18 juillet 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798822544277
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Greg Jenner's Ask A Historian
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5 Insights from Chapter 6 Insights from Chapter 7 Insights from Chapter 8 Insights from Chapter 9 Insights from Chapter 10 Insights from Chapter 11 Insights from Chapter 12
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The real woman behind the myths of Anne Boleyn is surprisingly elusive. She was neither accused of witchcraft nor of having a third nipple. She was a Catholic exile in Rome, Madrid, and Ireland who launched rebellions and undermined Elizabeth’s monarchical integrity.

#2

The sixth finger is a staple fact in many modern novels and websites, but it seems to have come from a comment made by George Wyatt, several decades after Anne’s death. He wrote that there was some show of a nail on the side of Anne’s nail, which was so small that it was often hidden by her other fingers.

#3

The idea that Anne Boleyn had a third nipple is a product of the 1920s, when anthropologist Margaret Murray argued that Anne and other historical figures had belonged to an ancient, secret pagan cult. But in a trial that was a political witch-hunt, Anne was not tried for witchcraft.

#4

The story of Anne Boleyn is one of the most gossiped-about in history. She didn’t have three nipples, six fingers, or five lovers, and her story is already interesting enough. But writers are always looking for a fresh angle.

#5

The 900s were a time of chaos in the Papacy, as seven of the twenty-four Popes weren’t doddery dudes with dodgy tickers, but were healthy men murdered by their rivals.

#6

Pope Stephen tried to execute Pope Formosus, but his corpse was instead tried and convicted in a show trial. The name Formosus translates as handsome in Latin, but there was nothing pretty about a rotting human being dragged from the ground and dressed up in papal robes.

#7

Pope Formosus was the first Pope to be tried posthumously, and he was killed for it. Pope John X and Pope John XII were also killed by their mistresses’ jealous husbands. Being a Pope in the late 800s and 900s was about as dangerous as being a fighter pilot in the First World War.

#8

Being a historian is difficult. There’s the learning of foreign and/or dead languages, the remembering of archaic legal terms, the decoding of scrawled handwriting, the contextualizing of long-forgotten slang and jokes, and the frustration of lacking key sources.

#9

The first question is: who is the richest person in history. The simplest answer is John D. Rockefeller, the American oil tycoon. If we do a simple calculation of inflation over the past eighty-five years, Rockefeller comes in at a disappointing figure of $22bn.

#10

The first emperor of Rome was Caesar Augustus, and he was both the first emperor of the Roman state and a mega-minted private citizen whose personal property was bolstered by the conquest of Egypt.

#11

Augustus was the first emperor to amass a large fortune, and he did it by combining two revenue streams: his personal finances and the resources of the Roman imperial state. He was the wealthiest person of all time.

#12

The story of Atlantis, an advanced island superpower that was destroyed by a natural catastrophe, comes from the ancient Greek philosopher Plato. However, archaeologists, scientists, and ancient historians quibble extensively over the hard facts.

#13

The theory that Atlantis was located in the Atlantic Ocean, and was a superpower, was first introduced in the Renaissance by Islamic and Byzantine scholars. But when the amateur German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann discovered its mighty walls in the 1870s, it was clear that the Atlanteans were not a real superpower.

#14

The Survey of American Fears shows that we are increasingly fascinated by Atlantis. This is because Hollywood is obsessed with the idea that aliens walk among us, but many of these stories go further and interpolate their visits into our ancient history.

#15

The German writer and occult philosopher Helena Blavatsky believed that Atlanteans were the originators of the Aryan race in India, whose superior wisdom and technology inspired the great civilizations.

#16

The idea that ancient monuments were built by aliens is not only denying the engineering ingenuity of non-European civilizations, but it is also drawing ideas from a poisoned well: the toxic ideology of the Third Reich.
Insights from Chapter 2

#1

The holly joke is a good example of how modern people overthink things and misunderstand the point of jokes. It would not have been delivered in isolation, but after several challenges that tested the brain, the expectation was set up that this was an ingenious work of devilishly delicious wordplay.

#2

The oldest joke in the world is a fart joke from ancient Sumer that went like this: Something which has never occurred since time immemorial: a young woman didn’t fart in her husband’s lap. The double negative of never happened and didn’t fart makes the joke difficult to understand at first, but it has a lovely visual quality.

#3

The Sixty’s raucous banter is lost to history. But we do have a later jokebook, the Philogelos, which was compiled by Hierocles and Philagrios. It contains 265 jokes, but most are terrible.

#4

The idea that Mondays have to be invented is not something that people usually think about, but it is a fact that we have to work on Mondays. The history of timekeeping is interesting, and it can be traced back to the Bronze Age in Iraq.

#5