17th Century and WWII Artifacts Revealed in Poland's River Vistula Due to Drought
History
Thanks, Leena.
Though the drought is not a good sign it is interesting to see everything that is being revealed.
Forum Activity for @tatiana-dokuchic
History
Childbirth in Medieval and Tudor Times
History
Childbirth is openly discussed in today's society. Images of pregnant women appear in magazines and women giving birth can be seen on television and in movies. Yet during the medieval period, childbirth was deemed a private affair. Giving birth in the middle ages was a dangerous time for women and childbirth did not discriminate. Young mothers, older mothers, poor or rich mothers, all could die not only in childbirth but also due to complications afterwards. Sadly, more than one in three women died during their child-bearing years.
Initially, some women would not have even known they were pregnant until they felt the first movement of their baby inside of them at around five months. This was known as the "quickening". It seems amazing to us that a woman would not know that she was pregnant for several months, but there were no reliable tests for pregnancy during the Tudor period. A woman may have turned to a doctor to see if she was pregnant, but the tests were far from reliable. One pregnancy test during the Tudor period was to examine the colour of the urine and if it was a pale yellow to white colour with a cloudy surface the woman may have been pregnant. Other tests involved examining a needle left in the woman's urine to see if it rusted, or seeing what happened when wine was mixed with the woman's urine. Also a women's lack of regular menstruation could be related to several factors including illness, breast-feeding, excessive fasting or even a poor diet.
There was no way of monitoring the baby's heart rate or to take blood pressures, and thus women replied heavily upon other experienced women to support and help them. Childbirth was predominantly women's business and physicians and doctors only attended under the most extreme circumstances, such as in Queen Jane Seymour's case when she was giving birth to the future king and had problems. More commonly if a woman had the funds or contacts she would have sought advice and support from a midwife, a woman who had a great deal of experience and knowledge in delivering babies.
There are very few accounts of what giving birth was like for the common, every-day Tudor woman, as not only was it a private affair but women generally did not write down or record their lives. However, if a queen gave birth, well that was a public matter as she could be giving birth to the next heir. Therefore we can turn to the pregnancies and births of royal women to see what giving birth might have been like for some women during the Tudor period.
Women of noble birth, such as the queen or of higher classes, would close themselves off from the world for a period before they gave birth. This was commonly known as 'lying in' or 'taking her chamber'. Before this, an elaborate service was held where the Church would ask God for his blessing for the birth. After the service and the prayers from the clergy, the queen went into her private rooms. The common woman may have gone to church or sought the blessing from the Priest before she too removed herself from the public eye for her own lying in. Other women, sadly those of the much lower class, may have had to work right up until they went into labour as there was no one to cover their daily responsibilities.
updated by @tatiana-dokuchic: 05 Jan 2017 06:45:54PM
Buckingham Update
Communty News & Events
Congratulations on this accomplishment!!
Very much looking forward to checking it all out 
121-year-old time capsule found at bridge near Kingussie
History
I love time capsules!
Wonder how long it will be until someone tries the whisky? 
back finally with a new gown
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Queen only days away from becoming longest-reigning British Monarch
History
The Queen is just 19 days away from becoming the longest-reigning monarch in British history, overtaking great-great-grandmother Queen Victoria.
According to Royal Central s calculations, The Queen will overtake Queen Victoria on 9th September at 4.18pm.
Reliable records show Queen Victorias reign spanning from 2.12am on 20th June 1837 to 6.30pm on 22nd January 1901, a total of23,226 days, 16 hours, 18 minutes!
The time of Queen Elizabeths accession however is slightly more obscure to calculate, as George VI had died in his sleep. Best estimates suggest he died around midnight on 6th February 1952.
Palace officials have been keen to stress that the momentous date will pass without celebration for The Queen, with official plans being made to focus efforts on Her Majestys 90th birthday instead next year.
Despite this, an official appearance will be made by The Queen on the day of the record being broken as she and the Duke of Edinburgh board a steam train fromEdinburgh Waverley Station in Scotland to Newtongrange and thenTweedbankas part of the trains historic journeyalong the longest domestic railway to be built in the UK in over one hundred years. The Queen will be joined by the First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeonamong other officials.
Read more (including a countdown clock) ...
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Kind of cool that this will happen in our lifetimes
updated by @tatiana-dokuchic: 06 Oct 2016 06:36:20AM
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updated by @tatiana-dokuchic: 06 Oct 2016 01:58:51PM
Exiled! - A Royal Family in Greenwich Connecticut - Casting Call
Communty News & Events
This is an exciting new twist!
Looking forward to seeing the story unfold.
Have researchers unlocked the mystery of Mona Lisa’s famously enigmatic smile?
History
Researchers from a British university believe they have unlocked the mystery of the Mona Lisas famously enigmatic smile by analysing another, recently-discovered masterpiece by Leonardo da Vinci .
By looking at La Bella Principessa, the portrait of the daughter of a Milanese nobleman, researchers found intriguing clues as to how the Renaissance genius managed to paint the Mona Lisa in such a way that her coy smile appears most pronounced when viewed from an angle and less so when looked at directly.
The researchers, from Sheffield Hallam University, believe that in the case of both portraits, the same effect was created by a painting technique known as sfumato, meaning soft or pale in Italian , in which subtle colours and shades around the mouths of the subjects create a clever optical illusion.
If one focuses on the eyes of the subject, the lips appear to slant delicately upwards in a tentative smile, but if one looks at the mouth directly, they appear flatter.
In both paintings, Leonardo expertly exploited differences between our peripheral vision and direct sight.
The research suggests that the Mona Lisas dancing smile was no fluke , but a deliberate technique by Leonardo that he had already perfected in La Bella Principessa, an earlier work.
As the smile disappears as soon as the viewer tries to catch it, we have named this visual illusion the uncatchable smile, wrote the researchers, Michelle Newberry and Alessandro Soranzo, from Sheffield Hallam University.
They organised a series of experiments in which people were asked to look at the Mona Lisa and La Bella Principessa from different distances and angles.
They were also shown digital copies of the paintings which had been blurred to different degrees.
The blurring mimicked the effects of peoples peripheral vision, in which objects are seen less distinctly. The more blurred the images were, the more Leonardos subjects appeared to smile .
If you look at Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa at different angles, her mouth appears to change slant
La Bella Principessas mouth appears to change slant depending on both the viewing distance and the level of blur applied to a digital version of the portrait, they wrote in a paper published by the journal Vision Research.
Through a series of psychophysics experiments, it was found that a perceived change in the slant of La Bella Principessas mouth influences her expression of contentment.
The volunteers involved in the experiments said that both the Mona Lisa and La Bella Principessa appeared more smiley when viewed from a distance or when their portraits were slightly blurred.
The scientists also showed the people in the tests images of the two women with their mouths or eyes blacked out.
In the images with the mouths obscured, the volunteers reported that they could discern no change of expression in the portraits, suggesting that the key lay with the mouths.
Read more: Have researchers unlocked the mystery of Mona Lisas famously enigmatic smile?
updated by @tatiana-dokuchic: 06 Oct 2016 06:36:20AM
Elizabeth I’s Challenge to the Masculinity of the Royal Body by Susan Bordo
History
I agreeBordo used the term "monarch" rather loosely when she spoke of Anne Boleyn & Katherine of Aragon as they were each aQueen Consort rather than a Queen Regnant. As an interesting note, both Katherine of Aragon and Katherine Parr were granted temporary powers to rule the country while Henry was off fighting in France.
I didn't get the sense thatBordo thought they should be portrayed in a more masculine manner but rather that their primary function (in Henry's eyes at least) was to produce a male heir. This failure meant (again to Henry) they were not mystically aligned with God and therefore had to go. Anne's image was later rehabilitated as the "mother ofa new age" by the Protestant faction.
I quite enjoyed this assessment of Elizabeth:
The more plausible idea, and as suggested by the historical evidence, is that Elizabeth was both a smart politician and a woman who genuinely enjoyed and did not merely simulate courtly banter, flirtatious teasing, and the admiration of the men around her. She didnt have to fake either side of her personality; if her father and mother are any evidence, she came by both quite naturally".
From what I understand Elizabeth believed that rulers were chosen by God and it was one of the reasons that she "allowed" her successor to be James I who had the best claim with regard to primogeniture but whose line had been skipped over entirely by Henry VIII.