Category: Know Your Fucking History
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The Change Anita Hill Created
Confirmation, the new HBO movie about the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, has brought the name and legacy of Anita Hill back into the spotlight. Those strange and painful hearings have never been forgotten, but it’s been a while since Facebook was filled with posts about Hill and Thomas — many, now,…
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Know Your Fucking History: Area Codes
I started thinking about area codes today when I was looking at my Snapchat contacts, and noticing how many people use their area codes as part of their user names. In part that’s intuitive because Snapchat is an app you use on your phone, but people identify with their area codes in other ways as…
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Know Your Fucking History: Catholic Indulgences, Pre-Twitter
It’s a shame Martin Luther isn’t around to read the news about the Vatican’s recent pronouncement that Catholics can reduce their time in purgatory by following the Pope’s tweets about his trip to Rio. Five hundred years after Luther called the Catholic Church out for letting worldly goods and activities get between God and His…
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Know Your Fucking History: Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot
You there! Stop poste haste! Thine pornstache is in most poor taste, forsooth! The mythos surrounding Guy Fawkes has gotten so diluted that even your average English hooligan probably can’t offer any more descriptive an explanation of the events surrounding the Gunpowder Plot than “Well he was this guy that tried to blow some…
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Know Your Fucking History: Columbus and the Flat Earth Myth
You’d have to be a Dummy McDunceFace to not already know that Christopher Columbus wasn’t all he’s cracked up to be. No, he didn’t “discover” America. He didn’t even technically land on the mainland, only getting as close as the Bahamas. The first known European to reach American soil was Norse Badass Leif Ericson, some…