ilvalentinos:

okay so in 332 b.c. alexander was two years into his pissing contest with his dead dad when he realized that he had Seriously Miscalculated the situation and that oh surprise, the persians had ships and he had disbanded the athenian fleet bc he thought the athenians were untrustworthy pussies, and the athenians thought he was a short sunburnt virgin and also because he murdered a fucktonne of people and sold a lot more into slavery

and he realized, oh no! the persians are half way to macedonia and could possibly cut me off from the chersoneses and starve me out in persia! and if you’ve seen the princess bride you’d know: never get involved in a land war in asia. but not this kid! instead of DOING THE RESPONSIBLE THING AND TURNING BACK TO MAKE SURE THAT THE PERSIAN FLEET DOESN’T MAKE IT TO HIS HOME KINGDOM AND THEN SUBSEQUENTLY MURDER HIS OWN PEOPLE INCLUDING HIS ENTIRE FAMILY AND THE TENS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE WHO HAD PLEDGED HIM LOYALTY

HE DECIDES TO STAY IN PERSIA. WHY? because fuck greece, that’s why, he already did greece two years ago and if those motherfuckers have the bad sense to die when faced with a superior force when all their available men had been taken away on an idiot war to persia, that’s their problem and he really couldn’t give two fucks, kiss u miss u xoxo gossip girl

so he comes up with this DUMBASS SCHEME that wouldn’t have worked for ANYONE ELSE and decides to conquer sea by land; aka, take every major port on the eastern mediterranean seaboard so’s to cut it off from the persian fleet and starve THEM out

and one of these cities was a place called tyre; you might know it from the phrase ‘tyrian purple’ bc they manufactured the most expensive dyes in the ancient world

so when alexander showed up and was like, let me make a sacrifice in ur temple, also surrender? also maybe let me loot ur town bc im short on funds, ja feel?

the governor was like, um no, please, fuck off

and alexander got SUPER PISSED. like HOW DARE YOU NOT LET ME INTO YOUR CITY? WHEN I’VE RAZED THEBES TO THE GROUND AND SALTED IT AND KILLED 6000 SOLDIERS IN A DAY AND SOLD 30000 MORE WOMEN AND CHILDREN INTO SLAVERY? YOU DON’T TRUST ME??? THE OUTRAGE

everyone was like, bro

and alexander was like THAT’S IT THEY’RE GONNA DIE THEY’RE GONNA FUCKING DIE KILL EVERYONE LET’S GO LET’S FUCKING GO

and everyone was like, maybe chill first yeah? then we’ll think of something because a lot of people are gonna die and – 

YEAH, AND? said alexander

so in his infinite wisdom, this kid, this short sunburnt virgin decides to build a LAND BRIDGE ACROSS THE SEA TO REACH THE ISLAND OF TYRE

this is what tyre looks like now

keep in mind that tyre used to be an island

so then

it takes seven months and thooouuuuuusands of people die bc alexander was SO PISSED! ABOUT NOT BEING LET IN! and when he finally takes the city, he crucifies two thousand people up the beach kills seven thousand more sells 30000 people into slavery and then razes the city

but he spared the descendents of the poet pindar, bc he might be an asshole but he’s not a barbarian he cares about literature you guys

and then when all this is over

he heads up to the temple of melqart in the razed city

and, possibly while wearing raybans with both middle fingers up – the historical sources differ on whether he was wearing a ray gun shirt or a snapback –

makes his sacrifice. 

so how could you not like him

mythaelogy:

lyinginbedmon:

johannesviii:

prokopetz:

One of my favourite anecdotes about the first Golden Age of Piracy is that, at one point, Captain Henry Morgan left England in one ship, and arrived in the Caribbean commanding a completely different ship, and nobody knows why. What happened to the first ship and how he acquired the second one are entirely unrecorded.

At some point in his short career (1715 until 1718), the English pirate Ben Hornigold attacked a sloop near Honduras just to steal all the hats of the crew, because his own crew had gotten drunk the night before and they had tossed every single one of their own hats overboard.

Bartholomew Roberts, arguably the most successful pirate in history by ships captured (a whopping 470 in 3 years), didn’t actually want to be a pirate. His ship was captured and he was forced to join the pirate crew. After the original pirate captain was killed, he was democratically elected captain of the pirate crew less than 6 weeks after being captured by them.

Stede Bonnet, sometimes known as “The Gentleman Pirate” decided to become a pirate one day due to marital problems. He’d never sailed a day in his life, but he bought a ship (rather than stealing one) and then paid his crew wages instead of giving them a share of the plunder. He was such a useless and inexperienced captain that at one point, his crew abandoned him for Blackbeard’s and he just stayed on the ship as a guest.

lovelyladylunacy:

lovelyladylunacy:

lovelyladylunacy:

perfectlynormalhumanbeing:

lovelyladylunacy:

lovelyladylunacy:

lovelyladylunacy:

socialjusticethespian:

lovelyladylunacy:

lareinaxcvi:

lovelyladylunacy:

why does no one ever talk about how lewis and clark met why isn’t that taught in history classes it’s like some rom-com meet-funny trope and i’ve literally never heard it brought up. literally the start of one of the most famous friendships in america and no one talks about it.

Wasn’t Clark just Lewis’ commanding officer? I guess I don’t know this story either. Can you tell it?

yes!! oh my god!!

so at twenty-one years of age, stupid stubborn hotheaded ensign meriwether lewis decides to get hella drunk and crash the party of one of his superior officers, starting an argument over politics (namely, defending thomas jefferson, his neighbor and veritable father figure) and insulting his host and basically being an embarrassment. so, he’s arrested and leveled with a court martial!! because this ridiculous boy can’t mind his fucking manners when he’s tipsy apparently!!

but instead of having to explain to his poor mother why he got booted out of the continental army, he’s acquitted (”with honor” bc apparently i’m not the only one who plays favorites when it comes to meriwether lewis), but he has to be reassigned so he doesn’t piss off his commanding officer again (awk). and whose brand new sharp-shooting rifle unit does he get transferred to?? take a wild guess!!!! that’s right, william clark’s!!!! and over the next six months meri falls deepfuck in totally platonic bro-love with him until clark resigns his commission for family reasons. then, roughly eight years later, lewis writes him to ask if maybe he’d like to travel to the ends of the earth by his side and, well, the rest is history.

But how do you know it was platonic

i hope you guys understand that when i say “platonic” i say it in the patronizing sarcastic tone of voice i always use when i talk about meriwether lewis’s big ol’ crush on his bff. maybe i can’t prove totally that he was v gay and probably at least a little bit madly in love with clark, but damn i wanna believe love exists ok.

lewis’s obvious sexual repulsion of women, his inability to find a wife, his desire to live with clark after the expedition, that last letter he wrote to clark before his violent death that we don’t have because clark burned it – we can read a lot into all of this if we want to, but even besides all of that the point remains that meriwether lewis was intensely fond of clark, and that they cared deeply for one another, and that their personalities complemented and completed one another in a way that makes you think twice about soulmates.

sooooo, was sacagawea, covering for their relationship?, I need to know history!!. (via @adaywithoutlightis-night )

actually, sacagawea was a sixteen-year-old kidnapped shoshone girl sold into sexual slavery to a french trader named toussaint charbonneau, who pissed power couple lewis and clark off to no end due to generally just being who he was as a person.

whereas lewis had no real interest in women from what we can tell from his writings, he actually wrote about how much he admired sacagawea’s extreme fortitude and numerous skills that helped them throughout their journey. lewis also actually delivered sacagawea’s child!! she had a very difficult birth (probably because she was a child), which sent lewis into multiple kinds of panic. clark, however, really doted on sacagawea and her son; he gave them both nicknames, looked out for their safety during the trip, and was very close to them even after the expedition and ended up adopting sacagawea’s son. he was also a notoriously bad speller and i don’t think he ever spelt charbonneau’s name correctly ever not even once (which makes me think of the blenderdick cucumberpatch meme tbh).

i mean yeah there’s also a lot of angst here too because after the expedition their lives went in very different directions. 

clark comes home and immediately acclimates to a hero’s life. he gets married and has a son who he names meriwether lewis clark after his best friend. he has a respectable government position and lives a long and happy life.

meanwhile lewis struggles to get accustomed to civilized life again. he misses the freedom of the expedition. he still sleeps on buffalo skins spread out on his bedroom floor. he writes that he is determined to find himself a wife but no woman can seem to stand him; one even flees town in the middle of the night to avoid seeing him again the next day. with his lifelong history of depression (which comes in bursts which, to me, seem a lot like manic depression), lewis spirals downward. he’s hated and conspired against in his political career, he starts to drink heavily, he stops talking to all of the people who had been closest to him. 

he finally works himself up to taking a trip to dc to deliver his journals to jefferson and on the boat trip up he attempts to kill himself multiple times. he’s described as appearing frantic and afraid, and tries to calm himself down by repeatedly telling himself that clark is on his way, that clark will be coming to save him. we know that at this time he wrote clark a letter, but clark burned it so we don’t know what it said. i’m ashamed of the things i’d do to get my hands on that letter.

lewis dies in an inn on the natchez trace of two bullet wounds, and it’s still debated whether it was suicide or murder; everyone close to him seemed to accept it was suicide, including clark, who wrote, “oh, i fear the weight of his mind has overcome him”.

But what happened to Sacagawea and her son?

ok, more on sacagawea, because she deserves any and all the credit she gets plus a whole lot more honestly:

when sacagawea was about 12 years old, she was kidnapped by the hidatsa tribe and sold alongside another shoshone woman to charbonneau as his “wives”. charbonneau was officially hired by lewis and clark not just because he was a french fur trader who knew the pacific northwest territory as well as the hidatsa language, but because sacagawea’s knowledge of the shoshone language and people would benefit them as they traveled through their lands. sacagawea was not just some inconvenient extra, she was a purposeful and valued addition to the corps.

sacagawea had her son, jean-baptiste, while l&c and co. ™ were still wintering at fort mandan, so she was literally carrying this child on her back for the entire journey. she was also the only woman travelling in the corps! and she was given duties! strong and capable and literally perfect i love her so much!

while travelling on a riverway, the boat sacagawea was travelling on capsized, and along with saving her son she also rescued valuable supplies and papers; both the captains were blown away with how well she acted under that sort of duress (and how badly her husband did lmao). travelling through native lands, tribes were more likely to think these men were not dangerous purely because sacagawea was with them, so she literally saved their white asses through association. she was a necessary and important figure in council meetings between the corps and tribal chiefs. clark called her “janey” and called her son “pompy”. (cute.) when they do get to the ocean, sacagawea literally demands clark (which she would have to do through like three layers of translators) to let her go to the shore with them, because damn it she worked just as hard as anyone else and she wants to see the fucking whales man.

perhaps most remarkably, when the corps finally did encounter the shoshone tribe, among the very first group of people they encountered was sacagawea’s brother, who she hadn’t seen for five years. that’s. so incredible. like, that’s one of the most amazing things to me. this survivor of child sexual abuse bravely treks across huge stretches of territory with a military expedition and is reunited with her family, however briefly, and. god. i’m crying.

sacagawea was not paid for her contributions to the expedition, because the contract was with her husband. she gave birth to a daughter, lisette, six years after the expedition. she died at 25 years old of a sickness she apparently had throughout her adulthood (which may have been further complicated from her early abuse and pregnancies). after her death, clark adopted both of her children.

i love this beautiful brave bird woman just as much if not more than i love my adventurous southern sons.

probably most iconic is that time lewis thought taking a half-blind frenchman hunting with him was a great idea and got mistaken for a deer and shot in the ass. cruzatte was so scared he’d killed his commanding officer he fled the scene and lewis was basically like “cruzatte you bastard i’m still alive and i know that was you now get back here you piece of shit”. and then lewiss was pretty much left in the soggy bottom of a canoe for the next few days and clark took one look at him and got MAD. he was so livid that he was pretty much ready to straight up kill the dude. they didn’t, obviously, because that’s a bit harsh and also cruzatte could play the fiddle.

bonus round: clark named his firstborn son “meriwether lewis clark”, and lewis was still living when this happened.