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"Twenty centuries are stacked in 4 meters (13 feet) of earth — or about the height of two-and-a-half Napoleon Bonapartes standing on top of one another." Way t
by damnitbuilds 4mo ago
"Twenty centuries are stacked in 4 meters (13 feet) of earth — or about the height of two-and-a-half Napoleon Bonapartes standing on top of one another."
Way to get history wrong in your story about history.
- Insanity 4mo agoI actually was about to post this quote for another reason as well. Usually you make these references to “known sizes” so people can relate. But no one has seen Napoleon in the flesh _and_ they underestimate his size. This was a useless comparison. That said, the dig itself is pretty cool and I’m excited to see what they’ll unearth. I’m pretty interested in Roman history but haven’t gone as deep into the history of the provinces. Semi-related to that, if someone reading this is in the Toronto area, the bata shoe museum has an exhibit (Vindolanda) about unearthed Roman footwear in England
- samch 4mo agoThe author should’ve known that we already have an accepted unit for measuring things in terms of a person’s stature: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot
- pluc 4mo agoOr about 1/27th of a football field for the Americans
- irishcoffee 4mo agoComparing a height to a distance is pretty silly, for Americans and non-Americans alike. Also it's much closer to 1/23rd than 1/27th.
- Aardwolf 4mo agoIt's about two and a half Ford Tauri stacked on top of each other
- cucumber3732842 4mo ago>It's about two and a half Ford Tauri stacked on top of each other Or almost exactly one Companhia worth of Tauri stacked on top of each other. (there's a programming joke in there btw)
- plorg 4mo agoThe classic American height reference would make it, depending how you're counting, 1/100 of an Empire State Building.
- bluebarbet 4mo agoThe quip suggests he was 1.6 m tall. The best guess is in fact 1.68 m (5 ft 6 in), so it's not that far off.
- damnitbuilds 4mo agoThe author picked Napoleon because of the belief that he was shorter than average and included a sum showing that they think he was shorter than average. Napoleon was not shorter than average. -> Bad History.
- bluebarbet 4mo agoIndeed. Obviously the author was not au fait with the latest Napoleonic height historiography, because Napoleon's non-shortness is at this point almost a meme. Either way it's not very important.