Historical Figures ....that might be new to some of us

[North Star]

I've only read one short story... A story so traumatizing I've never wanted to read anything else by her.

Sarge

spoiler alert  0:)

[Sergeant Rock]

spoiler alert  0:)

I'd assumed John wasn't going to read the story    Still, it's better to have the ending spoiled rather than experience the intense trauma I endured 

Sarge

[Ken B]

I'd assumed John wasn't going to read the story    Still, it's better to have the ending spoiled rather than experience the intense trauma I endured 

Sarge

Guess I won't recommend The Life of Sharon Tate.

[Parsifal]

I've only read one short story: about a family that takes a wrong turn on the insistence of the grandmother who thinks she remembers the location of a plantation, and ends up murdered. A story so traumatizing I've never wanted to read anything else by her.

Sarge

That sounds like a strong positive recommendation! Do you recall the name of the story?  Would you say it is as good as "The da Vinci Code?"  (Sorry, couldn't stop myself.)

One of my favorite "unappreciated" novelists is Carson McCullers, and I see on her Wikipedia page that Flannery O'Connor described "A Clock Without Hands" as "the worst book that I have ever read."  Even more fascinating.

[Drasko]

That sounds like a strong positive recommendation! Do you recall the name of the story? 

The name of the story is A Good Man Is Hard to Find, it's the opening story from the same titled collection:
https://www.amazon.com/Good-Hard-Find-Other-Stories/dp/0156364654

A strong positive recommendation from me, fwiw. Startling writing. Sarge is right though, can get traumatic, she doesn't pull any punches. But she's never brutal for sake of being brutal, those wince inducing moments are almost always instrumental in search for some kind of redemption or salvation.

She was seriously ill, died relatively young and wrote very little: two books of short stories and two novels, one of which John Huston turned into a decent film of the same title - Wise Blood.
https://www.amazon.com/Wise-Blood-Dan-Albright/dp/B001TIQT70

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

My little sisters, especially the younger one who really interested in coding and computer programming, have pointed me in the direction of the first ever computer programmer: Ada Lovelace.



Pretty cool portrait too!

[snyprrr]

 

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Fatima al-Fihri

[Ken B]

Fatima al-Fihri

http://opcoa.st/PtdG2

[Jo498]

It is also fairly difficult to pin down what should be understood as a "university". Obviously today's universites are the heirs of the Western European universities that emerged in the high middle ages (but they were still quite different from research universities since the 19th century). And there were cathedral schools and scholars in monasteries  before that. There were also the philosophical schools and the "academy" in hellenist Greece as well as centers of learning in the Byzantian Empire and the dubiosity of the claim of a very early "university" in Kairouan should not distract from the concentrations of muslim (and sometimes Jewish) scholars in places like Cordoba or Baghdad.

[Ken B]

It is also fairly difficult to pin down what should be understood as a "university". Obviously today's universites are the heirs of the Western European universities that emerged in the high middle ages (but they were still quite different from research universities since the 19th century). And there were cathedral schools and scholars in monasteries  before that. There were also the philosophical schools and the "academy" in hellenist Greece as well as centers of learning in the Byzantian Empire and the dubiosity of the claim of a very early "university" in Kairouan should not distract from the concentrations of muslim (and sometimes Jewish) scholars in places like Cordoba or Baghdad.

To say nothing of Chinese centers of scholarship, with the system of credentialed civil service. Not the modern concept of a university, but not nothing either.

[Ken B]

These sorts of memes are all the rage. Here's an interesting discussion on the topic.

http://opcoa.st/PtdMy

(And of course the sentiment behind the Photoshoped picture is absurd and disgusting.)

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

http://opcoa.st/PtdG2

I've read this and I've still been looking for sources to back this up.....she did set up what was initially a mosque and it was not given the title of 'university' until 1965 despite the fact it was the first place to award tertiary degrees in education ever (based on the information I've come across at my own university library).

[kishnevi]

I've read this and I've still been looking for sources to back this up.....she did set up what was initially a mosque and it was not given the title of 'university' until 1965 despite the fact it was the first place to award tertiary degrees in education ever (based on the information I've come across at my own university library).

Well, your original source claimed it was in Fez, a totally different city, and that Maimonides studied at the university, which is flat out wrong: Maimonides studied with individual Jewish scholars, starting with his own father, and there is no trace of where and how he acquired his knowledge of GrecoArabic philosophy: most likely on his own without help of teachers.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Well, your original source claimed it was in Fez, a totally different city, and that Maimonides studied at the university, which is flat out wrong: Maimonides studied with individual Jewish scholars, starting with his own father, and there is no trace of where and how he acquired his knowledge of GrecoArabic philosophy: most likely on his own without help of teachers.

I admit I didn't read all of the link I posted, knowing that it probably wouldn't be as accurate as information I am unable to post here from historians themselves.

[Hollywood]

Sigfried Marcus (1831-1898). He was a German-born inventor and automobile pioneer who lived here in Vienna. He was first to use a gasoline-powered engine to propel a car (1870), which was one of his inventions that he did not get a patent on. Because of Marcus' Jewish ancestry, his name, inventions and all memorabilia were erased from the history books by Hitler who wanted all evidence of his existence to vanish. Hitler wanted the history books to say that Daimler and Benz were the first to invent a gasoline powered engine, not the Jewish Marcus. Hitler also wanted Marcus' "Second Marcus Car" (1888), which was on display at the Vienna Technical Museum, to be destroyed as well. Fortunately the museum caught wind of Hitler's plan so they hid the Marcus Car in the bsaement of the museum behind a false wall. The Nazis never found it and in 1950 the car was put back on display.   

[zamyrabyrd]

Fatima al-Fihri

Er, you might want to check this out, a university in India 1000 years earlier...
http://veda.wikidot.com/tip:world-first-university-takshila

[Cato]

I've only read one short story: about a family that takes a wrong turn on the insistence of the grandmother who thinks she remembers the location of a plantation, and ends up murdered. A story so traumatizing I've never wanted to read anything else by her.

Sarge

A Good Man Is Hard To Find: Flannery O'Connor's at her best in that one!  Yes, I understand your reaction, yet can also find a certain gallows humor in the story.

I am amazed that Alfred Hitchcock never tried to adapt it for the big screen.

[Cato]

Franz Jaegerstaetter

An Austrian often described as a simple man, he refused to fight for Nazism and Hitler, and proclaimed himself a conscientious objector on the basis that fighting for an evil man and his philosophy could not be reconciled with Christianity.

Hitler and the Nazis did not agree:

...On 9 August, before being executed, Franz wrote: "If I must write... with my hands in chains, I find that much better than if my will were in chains. Neither prison nor chains nor sentence of death can rob a man of the Faith and his free will. God gives so much strength that it is possible to bear any suffering.... People worry about the obligations of conscience as they concern my wife and children.

But I cannot believe that, just because one has a wife and children, a man is free to offend God".

Franz Jägerstätter, who would not bow his head to Hitler, bowed his head to God, and the guillotine took care of the rest. He was obviously called up to serve a higher order.

Obviously if every Catholic and all others had possessed and shown such moral strength, the Nazis (like other totalitarians) would have collapsed.

See:

http://www.vatican.va/news_services/liturgy/saints/ns_lit_doc_20071026_jagerstatter_en.html

[Florestan]

Franz Jaegerstaetter

Obviously if every Catholic and all others had possessed and shown such moral strength, the Nazis (like other totalitarians) would have collapsed.

Amen!