The WrestlingSmarks History Club

[Chris]

 

[Barry Poppins]

Had a bit of a lark on the potential for how things would have been different had 1066 been a full-scale civil war rather than an invasion.

There's a whole timeline where:

- Edward the Confessor dies
- Harold Godwinson is elected King
- Edgar Atheling is pissed that his birthright was robbed so he tries to convince King Bleddyn of Gwynedd to invade on his behalf. When that fails, he convinces Duke of Brittany Conan II to give him troops and support.
- Harald Hardrada is convinced by Tostig Godwinson to invade England after failing to convince Malcolm II and Sweyn II of Denmark.
- William of Normandy makes his plans, which includes a monetary alliance with the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor.
- Harald invades, Sweyn then also invades, Edgar Atheling rebels against Harold, Bleddyn then declares war to throw off Anglo-Saxon overlordship, Malcolm II invades from the north for Northumbria, and then William lands in Pevensy.

 

[Barry Poppins]

Okay so question for the gallery. Who is the worst Dictator in your personal opinion, not from an international standpoint (cuz Hitler, obviously), but in terms of just sheer incompetence and completely destroying his own country.

 

[Barry Poppins]

Okay so question for the gallery. Who is the worst Dictator in your personal opinion, not from an international standpoint (cuz Hitler, obviously), but in terms of just sheer incompetence and completely destroying his own country.

@Loochquake, @Chris, @Hoss, etc etc etc

 

[Barry Poppins]

Also I definitely recommend everyone listen to the Behind the Bastards podcast on Henry Kissinger. It's baffling shit.

 

[Chris]

@Loochquake, @Chris, @Hoss, etc etc etc

Current American one making a strong case

But some quick googling pointed me to Pol Pot in Cambodia and that seems hard to beat. He thought their society was too smart so he killed all the smart people including anyone that wore glasses

 

[Barry Poppins]

Current American one making a strong case

But some quick googling pointed me to Pol Pot in Cambodia and that seems hard to beat. He thought their society was too smart so he killed all the smart people including anyone that wore glasses

Precisely who I was thinking when I wrote it, like it's crazy to think like Pol Pot is the complete opposite of Josip Tito.

Also Elon Musk strikes me as a fascistic billionaire version of Pot who doesn't understand anything he's doing.

 

[Chris]

I think a clear difference is their end goals tho. Elon wants to put a man on Mars so he threw all his money at that which involved hiring some of the best scientists so with that financial backing their naturally still going to do a lot of cool shit when with him breathing over their shoulder. Pol's end goal was regressing the human race

 

[Chris]

I was learning about the explorer Ibn Battuta today and similar to Marco Polo, a lot of people suspect his stories are very made up to the extent they discredit them entirely and that's very annoying. Yeah you can expect some embellishing but too many other sources back it up that you just have to extrapolate yourself what's unlikely out of the stories, writing off everything is so lazy

 

[Barry Poppins]

I'm 99% certain the story of him visiting the Mali Empire is true though, right down to him being an absolutely ungracious guest.

 

[Chris]

I'm 99% certain the story of him visiting the Mali Empire is true though, right down to him being an absolutely ungracious guest.

That was the funniest one lol

A rule i tend to go to is that if it makes someone look bad and the source normally wouldn't want to do that, it's probably true. It's why I believe a lot of the stories of Jesus tbh

 

[Barry Poppins]

That was the funniest one lol

A rule i tend to go to is that if it makes someone look bad and the source normally wouldn't want to do that, it's probably true. It's why I believe a lot of the stories of Jesus tbh

It's also why I definitely believe in the funny story of Caesar landing in Africa and falling flat on his face the moment he tries to get off the boat, only to announce to his men, "Africa, I have hold of thee!"

 

[Barry Poppins]

I have a new vote for probably the most consequential assassination in world history, and it isn't Franz Ferdinand.

Patrice Lumumba was a Congolese freedom agitator during the time of the Belgian Congo, and had one of the greatest speeches in world history during the independence ceremony of his country.

Of course, Belgium was pissed that they lost all of that land, so they Jumpstarted the Congo Crisis by supplying guns to rebel tribes, and when Lumumba begged the UN for aid, they gave little to no help. Lumumba, an avid Socialist, then turned to the Soviet Union for help instead.

The CIA, under directions from Eisenhower, had Lumumba ousted, and practically given over to the rebels where he would be executed on January 17, 1961.

As a result, the CIA became more bold over the next decades, couping more countries and democratic regimes out of their incredible paranoia of Communism.

Congo's coup would set up the dictatorship of Zaire until 1997, but the people of Congo still suffer to this day, with constant civil wars, disease, poverty, etc.

Long story short, Leopold II should be demonized at every single step.

 

[Chris]

The Franz Ferdinand one is hard to quantify really bc you can reasonably assume within 5 years, something else would have set off a very similar chain of events, but at the same time Ferdinand's killing is what actually did it, and if even one power was swayed otherwise by some different event that started the conflict, the outcomes could have been so drastically different

 

[Barry Poppins]

I should have clarified I meant 20th Century, not the entire history, cuz Caesar or other figures were pretty fuckin important.