This “Today I Learned” thread about the “Tiffany Problem”, or why reality is sometimes too realistic for fiction is super interesting. You would never guess that Tiffany is actually a medieval name which is short for Theophania because for whatever reason it sounds modern. To me the name Tiffany conjurers up an image of a blonde teenage girl from the 90s. Certainly not a lady from medieval times. Anyway, there’s lots more examples of stuff like this in this interesting thread:
(via: Geek Girls)
Do you know any more examples of the “Tiffany Problem”? Let us know in the comments below!
Hand stitched garments had huge visible stitching. Have you even been to the V&A costume gallery?
I showed my brother the movie Pathfinder, and he said “too bad those cultures never really interacted back then”
I’ve noticed a similar issue with people convinced that 19th-century Americans would think modern technology was black magic or something. Really? Between 1830 and 1871, the railroad and the telegraph both went from experimental technologies to basic national infrastructure, the women’s suffrage movement got organized, the Origin of Species was published, chattel slavery ended, Black men won the Constitutional right to vote, and the size of the United States more than doubled. The generation who saw all that happen would look at the Internet and say “is that ALL you did?”
The Colosseum in Rome had a retractable roof. We studied it in architecture school.