4 ms·
A Sixteenth Century Pope Buried His Pet Elephant Under the Vatican
- ars 11y agoIt must have been something to live in an age like that where wonders still existed. (Yah, yah, I know there were drawbacks as well.) Today it's just so hard to get excited about things, since anything you want to see or know is available in an instant.
- vanderZwan 11y agoFor the sake of your own sense of wonder, you might want to reflect on the possibility that what you just described a perception problem on your side.
- moonshinefe 11y agoI still feel like there's plenty of wonder in the world if you go to the right places. Lots of stuff still isn't on the internet. But that being said, I also sort of agree and feel like the modern world pacifies me with instant information, I think I'm less adventurous as a result. Before: "I need to find out about a specific topic, time to take a walk to the library! Who knows what real life things might happen along the way." Now: "Meh, it's a 5 second google search while I'm on the couch." And so on.
- animal531 11y agoAgreed. I could be traveling around the world, or alternatively I can just load up MapCrunch and look up some random street views (albeit that they always include a street).
- drzaiusapelord 11y agoAs someone who went to an elephant sanctuary in Africa. Trust me, seeing something on a screen is very different than experiencing it in person.
- StudyAnimal 11y agoWhich is exactly what one should expect from a 16th century pope.
- creshal 11y agoStill beaten by his predecessors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadaver_Synod https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadaver_Synod
- peteretep 11y agoI came here to post that, but will instead have to mention Pope VIII, who drank the blood of 3 ten-year-old boys to try and stay alive...
- moonshinefe 11y agoamusing read, thanks
- creshal 11y agoThere's also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Benedict_IX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Benedict_IX : > Aged approximately 20 at his first election, he is one of the youngest popes in history. He is the only man to have been Pope on more than one occasion and the only man ever to have sold the papacy.
- tempodox 11y agoJust so. What's a bored, super rich megalomaniac to do?
- id_ris 11y agoJose Saramago, a Nobel Prize winner for fiction, wrote a brilliant and surreal book based around this elephant and mahout. I highly recommend it: http://www.amazon.com/The-Elephants-Journey-Jos%C3%A9-Saramago/dp/0547574118 http://www.amazon.com/The-Elephants-Journey-Jos%C3%A9-Sarama...
- provemewrong 11y agoI'll add this to my reading list next to Saramago's The Double, the source material for 2013 film Enemy.
- skimpycompiler 11y agoThe Double (2013) and Enemy (2013). One starring Eisenberg, one Gylenahsiadjkl.
- iSnow 11y ago>He wasn't such a large elephant (his shoulder reached about four feet tall) If I am not mistaken, that's 1.3m in the SI world. Isn't that a bit small for an elephant? That's nearly what a very large dog reaches.
- moonshinefe 11y agoPerhaps the elephant was still a juvenile or it had the equivalent of dwarfism in humans, but for elephants. Either that, or they bred elephants back then until they became very small not unlike ponies. Less likely perhaps.
- iSnow 11y ago>they bred elephants back then until they became very small not unlike ponies. Unlikely, considering the images of the elephant with a guy sitting on its back. Looks like a honest-to-god Indian elephant. Most likely, the size got lost in translation between whatever measuring system they had in the 16th century, SI and those measuring units from the colonies.