Quotes About History

The oldest crude stone tools came more than three million years ago, larger, well-crafted (bifacial) hand axes and cleavers followed only about 1.5 million years ago, wooden stone-tipped spears appear to be about half a million years old, and only about 25,000 years ago did the Upper Paleolithic hunters master the artisanal production of an array of composite tools, including adzes, axes, harpoons, needles, and saws, and accompanying pottery.

Actualmente, un habitante medio del planeta tiene a su disposición casi setecientas veces más energía útil que sus antepasados de principios del siglo XIX. Es más, durante la vida de las personas nacidas después de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, el índice se ha más que triplicado, de unos 10 a los 34 GJ/cápita entre 1950 y 2020.

Energy conversions are the very basis of life and evolution. Modern history can be seen as an unusually rapid sequence of transitions to new energy sources, and the modern world is the cumulative result of their conversions.

In 1901 the Maybach-designed Mercedes 35 was the first essentially modern motor vehicle: still without any roof but including four cylinders, two carburetors, mechanical inlet valves, an aluminum engine block, a gear stick in a gate, a honeycomb radiator, and rubber tires.

Every modern refrigeration system has the same four parts: compressor, condenser, expansion valve, and evaporator, and the Perkins cycle became the foundation of new industrial refrigeration projects. In 1855 came the first ice-making plant, in Cleveland; in 1861 the first meat-freezing plant, in Sydney.

The first commercial jetliner, the ill-fated British Comet (whose four deadly accidents were not caused by jet engines but by stress around square window frames that eventually led to catastrophic decompression), entered its brief service in 1952 at M 0.7, and the first successful and widely adopted jetliner, Boeing's 707, began its scheduled flights in October 1958 at M 0.83.

An average inhabitant of the Earth nowadays has at their disposal nearly 700 times more useful energy than their ancestors had at the beginning of the 19th century.

For nearly a century, pig iron's high carbon content was lowered, and steel made by blasting the molten metal with cold air in open hearth furnaces; only after World War II were these replaced by basic oxygen and electric arc furnaces.

Plath had gassed herself, but that was back before the days of natural gas. Then, stoves and household fires were fuelled by poisonous coal gas. People put their heads in the oven and turned on the gas and they died.

Edwardian house in Worcester

Neanderthals

The key to our present behaviour lies in our past.

Certainly, the sexual revolution influenced the course of fashion history. As we move into the twenty-first century and fashion becomes ever more erotic and taboo-breaking, we can clearly see how important a role the mini-skirt played in the development of women's fashion.

It is certainly possible that some women might have felt ambivalent or embarassed about pregnancy, which could have led them to try to conceal the condition under tight corsets. It is also possible that some women deliberately used tight-lacing in an attempt to abort the fetus.

In recent years scholars and costume curators have increasingly realized that fashion must be placed firmly within its cultural and historical context;the study of dress cannot be separated from women's history, for example.

The trauma pervaded and persisted in many ways. Since Constantinople was taken on a Tuesday, Christians regarded every Tuesday thereafter as an unpropitious day.

Once an event becomes a chosen trauma for the next generations, its historical truth is no longer the crucial issue for the group. What is important is that through sharing the chosen trauma, members of the group are linked together. The chosen trauma as a crucial identity marker becomes significant in the large-group's life.

Kolyma is Auschwitz without the ovens.

La historia de la humanidad es la historia de su libertad [...] El progreso es, en esencia, progreso de la libertad humana.

Everyone feels guilty before a mother who has lost her son in a war; throughout human history men have tried in vain to justify themselves.

When you think about new-born babies being killed in our own lifetime,' he said, 'all the efforts of culture seem worthless. What have people learned from all our Goethes and Bachs? To kill babies?

The longer a nation's history, the more wars, invasions, wanderings, and periods of captivity it has seen-the greater the diversity of its faces.

These camps – with their streets and squares, their hospitals and flea markets, their crematoria and their stadiums – were the expanding cities of a new Europe.

Time is always the enemy of opportunists and a friend to those who stand on the side of history. It exposes false strength and rewards true strength.