A thread for cool stuff near you. Post pictures, tell stories.
Back in 1793 the British government decided to try and devalue the Assignat by flooding the economy with fake bank notes, in order to make the war against Napoleon easier. They commissioned several paper mills in remote parts of the country to make forgeries, then sent them to Flanders with the Duke of York. One of the mills is just down the road from me. I might explore it some time.
(from aarschot, belgium)
Spanjards settled in my town en masse and mixed with the population but somehow people here still manage to look inbred
Congrats I guess
Alexis de Tocqueville once visited my hometown in the 1830s and remarked on what a shithole it was
Famous Formula One racing driver Jack Fairman was born and lived in my hometown of Horley, Surrey. His old garage is now a Wetherspoons pub, named after him. Pretty good pub, actually.
Kitchener Ontario used to be called Berlin and has a major German background with our own Octoberfest
there's a place where the nazis put forced labourers right next to my house
took some pics a year ago
>>44246
this is the location
>>44230
What's a Wetherspoons pub?
>>43881
My village is called Humshaugh, I should have said.
Another interesting thing, the first proper Scout camp took place in the village district too. Whilst many believe the first to have taken place on Brownsea Island, there was no such movement called "Scouts" at the time, and none of the participants were actually Scouts. It was just a group of boys and Baden-Powell. When he had actually started it, the first place they came was here.
I'm from North Kent so a lot of interesting shit has gone on around here. Rochester Castle, where the film 'Ironclad' was set is only a few miles away. Charles Dickens set half his work here, and my Grandmother lives on the same road as the forge that inspired Great Expectations. Pocahontas is buried here somewhere, legend dictates under where Marks and Spencers now is. My house is located on the site of a Battle of Britain fighter station.
Just generally an interesting area.
This stone was erected between the 500s-700s AD. It's inscribed with runes that appear to be a transitional variant between the elder Germanic futhark and the younger Danish-Swedish long branch futhark. It contains a curse.
"HaidR runo runu, falh'k hedra ginnarunaR. Argiu hermalausR, weladauþe, saR þat brytR."
And on the back, "Uþarba spa."
This translates to " I, master of the runes(?) conceal here runes of power. Incessantly (plagued by) maleficence, (doomed to) insidious death (is) he who breaks this (monument)."
"prophecy of destruction"
It is one of the tallest rune stones in the world, standing 4.2 meters tall.
During the Indian wars, the Mormons were pretty much despised wherever they tried to settle so they decided to pack their bags and move to where no one would ever bother them, The Las Vegas Valley. Later on, the mob comes along and take over so that they can build casinos and brothels without being bothered by the feds.
>>44887
>>44887
Pretty fuckn neato
The General Sherman, the biggest tree in the world by volume. The Redwoods up north are taller and I was told that there is a tree in Africa with a wider trunk but just in raw size the Sherman is the biggest in the world. It's about 3000 years old.
Also, this was from a professor who may have been embellishing but during the Civil War, there was a "battle" at the local city park. As he described it, it was more like a drunken brawl with firearms involved that somehow did not end with any injuries or death and decided that the city would stay loyal to the Union.
Visalia, CA.
>>44668
Cool, the town I live near is the burial place of Pocahontas and where the plague pits ended
>>45096
We're talking about the same place. Gravesend masterrace.
>>45227
I fucking love being European sometimes.
>>45247
Denmark here, love the "free" healthcare and school.
pic related used to be the site of a house, Robert Louis Stevenson wrote Treasure Island there, literally just down the road from me
>>45149
Honestly it's a shithole. Just walk through town and listen to the voices.
also the Tolpuddle Martyrs got rekt in my county
>>45371
Its fine, everyone is convinced their town is a shithole. At least we're a shithole with history.
>>45441
One of my mates got stabbed a few months ago there, the only place worse is Gillingham
>>43881
Clinton, IA of the US. Big River town.
The place used to be filled with then millionaires from the logging business on the Mississippi. Clinton also has the thinnest and widest parts of the river right next to each other. There are some old houses with hidden rooms used during the Civil War to smuggle slaves.
Town isn't great now, main business is a factory that makes half the town smell, crime is bad, and business isn't great. Also goddamn the roads are terrible.
Not the greatest, but there you go. Pic related is from what used to be a popular beach spot in the 70-80's, only used for fishing now.
Sydney Nova Scotia
An interesting fact was that here was where most of the slow merchant navy convoys of WW2 were launched as many as 500 a year from one small base about two miles from where i live
>>45227
Do you still know where that was? I'm curious.
I'm from Berlin. I don't even know where to start with the local history.
>>43881
And then Flanders got conquered and the usual British retreat happened
Brits are truly the masters when it comes to evacuation following a military disaster
On a side note, Napoleon wasn't in power in 1793
It was war against Revolutionary France
>>44887
/x/ will go crazy if you post this there
>>43881
In my home of AR we were home to the Judge Parker aka the hanging judge he hung over 79 people in his lifetime and we also had Bass Reeves a very famous Marshal. It's a lot of history to it
>>44955
This fort is in Fallout: New Vegas
>>45026
>biggest tree
Biggest undisputedly single organism in the known universe
>>46333
Huh, never thought about it that way. I'll have to tell whoever bothers to come visit us that.
Tegucigalpa, Honduras
During the XVII century the production of silver near the city was so high, nearly every inhabitant had almost every of their cooking utensils made of silver. Heck, I even remember reading about silver horseshoes.
>>46280
That game (and the Hoover Dam, I guess) are the most exciting achievements of this city. Not much history desu
>>46333
>Biggest undisputedly single organism in the known universe
There are single organism rhyzomatic plant networks in Tasmania that are bigger.
>>44356
Wetherspoons is a pub chain in the UK. It's kinda like Starbucks, but with pubs.
>intern at the local history museum
>scanning this guy's diaries in for our records, new england farmer around 1800 or so
>young guy, talks about his romance with this woman every now and then, they meet and talk
>after a while they have a very messy falling out as she begins to subscribe to another branch of Protestantism, he basically calls her a heretic and tells her to get out of his life
>next diary has written under the name "Sherman Greenfield" "Bachelor for Christianity"
>mfw
It was a nice reminder that people in the past were just as human as we are today. I'd like to think he'd be shitposting right alongside us if he lived today.
>>46680
I believe there are some pretty huge aspen groves in Colorado as well. Aspens are usually one organism with multiple treetrunks so there are some pretty huge ones.
>>46333
There goes my tourist trap pitch.
Bump for cool thread.
The only thing even remotely interesting about my town would be that Bonnie and Clyde were once held the the town jail before making bail and taking off.
>>43881
This is Leschi. He was appointed chief of the Nisqually and Puyallup tribe by the first governor of the Washington Territory, Isaac Stevens. He was to represent these tribes in the signing of the Medicine Creek treaty, which would make the tribes secede all or part of many modern day counties.
At some point he protested the treaty in Olympia, and was declared a threat by the acting Governor, who sent local militia to chase after him. This started the Puget Sound war.
Leschi became a war chief, and raided local white settlements with 300 men, which obviously freaked people out. This continued on for a year until he was captured, tried, and hung at Fort Steilacoom.
One of the few noteworthy tidbits of history in WA state.
Aint really that much to say about Milton. We've got a sawmill from the early 1800's way up in the hills that was an extreme financial failure four times in a row, and kept burning itself down despite being built under a waterfall.
The vaccine revolt. The public health secretary Oswaldo Cruz wanted to erradicate smallpox here, so he had the brilliant idea of forcibly vaccinating the locals. It obviously didn't go well and the city was a chaos for some time, order was put back into place later though
>live in the US
>don't have any culture or history
Feels kinda bad
>>50546
>US doesn't have history or culture meme
