• mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
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    4 hours ago

    The Babylonians knew a * b = 1/4 * ( (a+b)^2 - (a-b)^2 ), and and used tables of 1/4 * x^2 to do multiplication by addition. It took three thousand years for Napier to discover modern logarithms. The slide rule was invented eight years later.

  • altphoto@lemmy.today
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    10 hours ago

    A man named Peter, who had escaped slavery, reveals his scarred back at a medical examination in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, while joining the Union Army in 1863.

    Yup, that’s far alright:

      • LePoisson@lemmy.world
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        6 hours ago

        We’re bringing slavery back. Edit: not that it ever went away. You’re allowed to enslave people as punishment under the 13th amendment. Hence the prison industrial complex.

            • altphoto@lemmy.today
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              5 hours ago

              Do just technological innovation? Don’t Google this but rockets and turbines and basically whole branches of propulsion, thermodynamics, encryption, flight dynamics, fluid dynamics, computing all had a start in this time frame all related to the old baddy Germany and all might have a rebirth? Not LOL but having all sorts of science groups ignored, refunded and marginalized along with the more personal gender identity, migration status and such, all of that is repeating history.

  • Lovable Sidekick@lemmy.world
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    10 hours ago

    My grandmother was an adult through that 66-year period. Lived to be 99. She rode to town on a horse as a kid and took trips on jets before she died.

  • WanderWisley@lemmy.world
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    10 hours ago

    The Brooklyn Bridge and the battle of Little Bighorn happened the same year. And there were Native Americans who fought in the battle that were still alive to see man walk on the moon. So in the span of one lifetime we went from Custard’s last stand, to one giant leap for all mankind.

    • loweffortname@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 hour ago

      Good point, but it’s “Custer”, not " Custard".

      Although I kinda like the idea of a trembling, gelatious shape being the asshole that led the charge at Little Bighorn…

  • AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.world
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    8 hours ago

    I feel like the pictures over-exaggerate the difference a bit. The wright flyer was literally made by two people in their spare time while the space program was around 4% of all federal spending and had almost half a million people working on it in some capacity.

  • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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    13 hours ago

    One of the Wright brothers managed to live to see the end of WWII. Imagine the weird janky flying machine you and your dead brother designed in a bicycle shop in Dayton is being used to decimate Europe while boats full of the things are redefining naval warfare across the whole of the pacific before one drops a weapon so powerful that it becomes the basis of mutually assured destruction

  • samus12345@sh.itjust.works
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    11 hours ago

    I’ve thought from time to time about how being able to see significant societal change in a person’s lifetime is a very recent phenomenon. For many thousands of years, things stayed pretty much the same from birth to death unless you happened to live though a significant event. It’s neat that I’ve gotten to witness change in a way that one would have to time travel to experience in the past, but monkey’s paw, the change isn’t always good…

  • rustydrd@sh.itjust.works
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    11 hours ago

    And only 30 years after that, we’re surfing the interwebz, sailing down the data highway at the speed of light. I’m running out of metaphors to chain together…

    • jol@discuss.tchncs.de
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      9 hours ago

      And just 20 years later we have destroyed the concept of truth. What a time to be alive.

      • girsaysdoom@sh.itjust.works
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        8 hours ago

        Do you mean the actual philosophy of truth or do you just mean that we currently have a cult of personality spewing lies and people en masse accept it as truth?

        Because I’ve heard arguments for both.