Hürrem Sultan (Roxelana). She was born a Ruthenian (modern-day Ukrainian) commoner, captured by Crimean Tatars in a slave raid as a teenager, and taken to Constantinople, where she entered the imperial harem. She eventually became Sultan Suleiman’s favorite concubine. In a complete break with Ottoman tradition, Suleiman freed and married her, making her his legal wife. Until then, sultans generally married freeborn foreign noblewomen, if they married at all, and had children with slave concubines instead. Hürrem went on to become one of the most powerful and influential women in Ottoman history and the first of the prominent women of the Sultanate of Women. She’s widely considered the first, and perhaps the most powerful, Haseki Sultan. It’s probably the most fairy tale-like rags-to-riches story I’ve ever come across.
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1 dayBecause he went scorched earth on the 19th century’s version of MAGAts.
Big big big fan of Josephine Baker.
For those who don’t know, she was a woman of color who fled the US right before WW2 and moved to France, where she flourished as a burlesque dancer. After Hitler rose to power and invaded northern France, she used her stardom to become a spy for the allied forces and to secretly help escaping refugees. Fantastic force of nature and an absolute icon.
Unfortunately, to no one’s surprise, the US remained hostile towards her
- DagwoodIII@piefed.socialEnglish2 days
Ben Franklin was fucking nuts.
Scientist, statesman, and filthy pervert.
When he went to England he fell in with the notorious Hellfire Club.
These guys would hire ruffians to steal corpses, then do autopsy parties, because “science.”
Franklin also published abortion recipes. And fucked his way all over paris.
truly a renaissance man.
https://www.npr.org/2022/05/18/1099542962/abortion-ben-franklin-roe-wade-supreme-court-leak
- DagwoodIII@piefed.socialEnglish17 hours
No! All the Founding Fathers were devote Christians who believe everything Donald Trump told them to.
man I’d love to see Trump get time-travelled to the constitutional convention with a list of his crimes and watch the OG racist freedom lovers beat the ever lasting shit out of him for his heresies against our nation
John Brown. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown_(abolitionist)
He believed that he was “an instrument of God”,[3] raised to strike the “death blow” to slavery in the United States, a “sacred obligation”.[4] Brown was the leading exponent of violence in the American abolitionist movement,[5] believing it was necessary to end slavery after decades of peaceful efforts had failed.[6][7]
Yep. I’m a non-believer, but I have so much respect for the way he embodied his faith and saw that slavery was so terrible murder of enslavers was justified and he could not wait on the sidelines.
- 2 days
Spent 7 years developing a vaccine for polio. Didn’t patent it or attempt to make any money from it. Polio transmission eradicated in the US 25 years after his vaccine. Spent the later part of his life researching a vaccine for HIV/AIDS.
- 23 hours
My grandpa was in Korea when polio hit his family. Four siblings dead within 10 days, and just a few months before the Salk vaccine was available. It was a huge story at the time, you can find old articles about them. I won’t post them here because I’m kinda doxxing myself already just by posting this.
- 2 days
I only remember him because an online friend of mine went to a school named after him. So glad there have been people like this throughout history who didn’t decide to just profit off of others suffering.
- 2 days
Diogenes. Guy had it right and also produced some of the sickest burns in history.
- 2 days
Stede Bonnet, Gentleman Pirate. The HBO show Our Flag Means Death was a highly fictionalized accounting of his story, but the general outline is right: wealthy landowner gets tired/bored of life with his family and buys a ship to go become a pirate. He is, understandably, terrible at it, and runs into Actual Goddamned Blackbeard, who pretty much just steals his lunch money then and there, but after a time decides to help a brother out and actually teaches Stede to be a not completely shit pirate. Neither one lasts much longer before getting caught and executed, but what a bizarre and hilarious journey.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-gentleman-pirate-159418520/
- 1 day
Aneurin Bevan, a true Cymro and a humanitarian. Focused on the local ideal of providing healthcare to all no matter.
- 1 day
Favourite? Kondiaronk as introduced to me by Graeber and Wengrow in The Dawn of Everything.
I have spent 6 years reflecting on the state of European society and I still can’t think of a single way they act that is not inhuman and I generally think this can only be the case as long as you stick to your distinctions of “mine” and “thine.” I affirm that what you call “money” is the devil of devils, the tyrant of the French, the source of all evils, the bane of souls and slaughterhouse of the living. To imagine one can live in the country of money and preserve one’s soul is like imagining one can preserve one’s life at the bottom of a lake. Money is the father of luxury, lasciviousness, intrigues, trickery, lies, betrayal, insincerity—of all the world’s worst behavior.
Most … (I don’t even know what to say about this guy except to say I’m surprised he exists): Adrian Carton de Wiart
Just… look him up. Served in six wars including BOTH World Wars.
YouTube videos have titles including, “The Unkillable Soldier”, “The Man Who Would Not Die”, “Invincible”.
Actually, here’s one quote from the top of his Wikipedia page:
He served in the Boer War, First World War, and Second World War. He was shot in the face, head, stomach, groin, ankle, leg, hip, and ear. He was also blinded in his left eye, survived two plane crashes, tunnelled out of a prisoner-of-war camp, and ripped off his own severely injured fingers when a doctor declined to amputate them. Describing his experiences in the First World War, he wrote, “Frankly, I had enjoyed the war.”
- harmbugler@piefed.socialEnglish2 days
Leonardo da Vinci.
… his love for animals, likely including vegetarianism and … a habit of purchasing caged birds and releasing them.
Cassius Marcellus Clay. No, not the name Mohamed Ali was given at birth. Cassius was a badass abolitionist who fought slavery with a printing press when possible and a gun/cannon/big knife when not.
- 2 days
George Washington Carver. Born enslaved, became a chemist, and proceeded to look around his community and ask, “What do we need? What do we have?” Most famously, what they needed was crop rotation. What they had to rotate in was peanuts, so they needed a market for peanuts, so GWC set out to create a bunch of peanut- and peanut-oil-based products. That’s just the most famous example out of many; he spent his whole adult life doing this over and over.
Bismarck. Because he is controversial.
Being german my first exposure to Bismarck was “He’s the father of our Nation. His schemes allowed the geman states to become one” which is true. But later we learned how he created out-groups as a tool to unite people. Groups like “jews” or “catholics”, and probably many others I don’t recall.
He is not my favourite because he is such a golden boy, but because he is the complete opposite. And because the way he was discussed in history class throughout the years: It was a wonderful decunstruction of his myth.
- Sergio@piefed.socialEnglish1 day
My favorite history textbook was written right after WW1 and follows the “great man” approach. The chapters on the unification of German (focusing on Bismarck) and the unification of Italy (focusing on Cavour) are a lot of fun.
