American author and filmmaker Michael Crichton once said: "If you don't know history, then you don't know anything. You are a leaf that doesn't know it is part of a tree." So let's take a look back at what events and people have 'planted' and 'grown' this tree we're all a part of called the present, shall we?
But since it's Friday, I think we can agree that something more refreshing than a textbook is needed. Luckily, we have just the thing. Two, actually.
Bored Panda decided to put together a follow-up collection to our earlier article and compile the best posts from the history memes Reddit page and HistoryInMemes Instagram account have recently released.
From making fun of the British Museum's never-ending thirst for artifacts to corrupt Presidents, continue scrolling, check the world history memes out, and upvote your favorites!
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A True Hero
Willem Arondeus was a moderately successful painter and writer living in the Netherlands. However, at the time his career began to improve, the Nazis had occupied his nation, and he decided to sacrifice personal success and wealth for the greater good, joining the Dutch resistance. Arondeus's skill as an artist allowed him to make fake ID cards, allowing Jewish refugees to hide more easily. However, the Nazi's Municipal Office for Population Registration made this far more difficult, as they kept exact records. With his resistance team, Arondeus devised a plan to bomb the office, which went off successfully. By doing so, they were able to steal a number of blank ID cards, and destroy enough records that any Jewish refugees could believably pretend to have had their files destroyed.
However, Arondeus was betrayed and captured. He refused to give information on his co-conspirators under torture, but after his home was raided, they found evidence that linked him to his allies. Arondeus then took full credit for the entire plan, allowing two of his friends to escape execution. His last words were "Let it be known that homosexuals are not cowards".
Sad But True
Contrary to what some might think, history memes aren't just for the internet. Historian, college administrator, amateur homesteader, and writer Joshua Wilkey, for example, quite often uses them in teaching. "I even sometimes assign my students to use memes as a way to present what they are learning in the classroom," he told Bored Panda.
These historical memes have been around in some form or another for thousands of years, too.
In 2016, archeologists uncovered a mosaic from the 3rd century B.C. in what was the ancient city of Antiocheia. The piece has three frames and seems to depict a bathing scene. The first frame is of a servant preparing a bath; the second frame, a young man running away from taking the bath, being pursued by an older servant who is unable to catch him; the last scene, a “reckless” but seemingly happy skeleton of the young man is sitting casually with a jug of wine.
The inscription below him reads: "Be cheerful and live your life." So you could say this historical meme is the original YOLO.
History Ain’t Pretty
Grandma
Sacrifice Sacrifice
But why bother with it and create one history meme after another in the first place? Well, Joshua Wilkey said that "as an academic pursuit, history teaches important skills like critical reading and analysis. For the average person, though, history is an important way of understanding the context of what is happening in the present."
"I do not buy the argument that history repeats itself - and I think few professional historians would say that it does. It does, though, as Mark Twain once said, rhyme a lot. When one looks at the world as it is today, one cannot fully understand it absent knowledge of history," Wilkey explained. "One cannot, for example, understand the Black Lives Matter movement without understanding the long history of civil rights activism in the United States. One cannot understand what is happening in Afghanistan without understanding the long history of that particular part of the world, specifically through the lens of imperialism. Current events do not happen in a vacuum. Trying to understand or react to them absent an understanding of the history is detrimental at best."
It Really Do Be Like That
Hah Get It
Game Changer
Elvis' Chance Of Getting Polio Has Left The Building; Thank You And Good Night!
Of course, that doesn't mean that you have to be familiar with every period of every civilization. "One of my favorite TV shows growing up was The Andy Griffith Show, and in one episode, Aunt Bee remarked that history must be harder to learn in the present because there's more and more of it being made every day," Wilkey recalled. "However, there are some good strategies to employ to learn the depth of history in a way that is useful for the present."
"Rather than broad surveys of history, whereby one attempts to learn the entire breadth of history for a given place, I think deeper dives are more useful. I prefer to study history topically rather than by place. For example, one can study the history of conflict, the history of racial inequality, the history of capitalism, or the history of imperialism, and follow the threads of those themes through both time and place, for a more comprehensive look at why things are the way they are."
The historian said that understanding how themes like economic inequality or political power have played out at multiple times and places is more useful for the average human than to learn facts about the history of a given place. "Ultimately, the goal should not be to learn history for the sake of being good at Jeopardy!, but for the sake of developing a more meaningful understanding of why things happened," Wilkey explained, adding that it's much more valuable than simply knowing what happened.
And it makes sense. You start making connections and developing ideas rather than just working on your memory. You start thinking.
Typical
Thank You Very Much
Dirty Dog
Lol yeah, like Hera was Heracles loving mother. And Zeus had self restraint. That movie didn't do Greek myths any favours!
Mad Respec
Once you decide on a topic you want to dig into, you need to start collecting sources. This, in turn, will help you understand the world history memes, too. "At the risk of having my professional historian card revoked, Wikipedia is a great place to go to learn the basics of a given event," Joshua Wilkey said. "At this point, it's rather more accurate than most easily accessible sources, including most online encyclopedias."
"Apart from that, I am a big fan of podcasts. Dan Carlin's Hardcore History is great for those who can devote substantial time to listening. Slow Burn is also fantastic, as is the podcast that accompanies the 1619 Project. This Land is wonderful for those who are interested in indigenous history. I could go on for days with podcast recommendations, but there are so many good ones out there, the possibilities are limitless. For print readers, ProPublica also has a wonderful deep dive into many important topics. I especially enjoyed their piece a few years ago titled 'Firestone and the Warlord' about the history of the rubber industry in Africa."
I Am Confusion
There Goes Buck Franklin, The Impeccably Well Dressed Lawyer Who Practices Law Out Of A Tent
Not enough people know about Oklahoma Black Wall Street and the Tulsa Race Massacre. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre
This Happened To My Grandfather When He Was Teaching Second Grade. The Kids Were So Traumatized By What They Saw A Lot Of Parents Had To Come Pick Them Up From School
My husband watched it happen when he was a kid in school. They were so young that someone started clapping so they all joined i n. The teacher started screaming and crying for them to stop. He also remembers they had to each talk to a "special class friend" and draw pictures about how they felt after. Glad they thought enough to get them therapy...
Load More Replies...I was one of those elementary students. We never watched anything live again
We actually SAW the Challenger explode. We were on the playground in elementary school and all wondered what that twisty white thing in the sky was about. Our teacher who had been so excited about Christa McAuliffe being on board got very quiet, and we had no idea what was going on but we did, too.
They were originally going to put big bird on the challenger as well, as a way to get kids interested in science, but it was scrapped at the last moment because the costume wouldn't fit. Imagine what would happen if hundreds of thousands of kids watched big bird explode on live tv.
And the dude who said there was a problem with the O rings way before the launch gets crucified
He actually did get everything straightened out in the end. They tried to quietly get rid of him by stuffing him in a crappy department cause they couldn't fire him but he's done some of the best commentary on a few documentaries about it.
Load More Replies...I was in middle school at the time and my teacher knew the teacher who died on board. She was crying in the class room.
I remember this day well. 6th Grade. They brought us all into the science room to watch. First time I ever saw an adult outside my family cry.
Was there that day in science class. My entire class including the teacher screamed/shouted/burst into tears.
In my elementary school, they lined TVs up along the hallway and we all sat in the hallway as a school to watch the Challenger launch...and then explode.
I was one of the kids who watched the Challenger explode live at school.
My husband and I were both 6. My husband told me that he always wanted to be an astronaut when he was little. He was watching it at home with his dad and when he saw it, he told his dad he didn't want to be an astronaut anymore.
I was one of those kids. The only time I've seen teachers openly cry.
This was live on television and when the explosion happened millions of viewers like myself at first couldn't process what they were seeing.......and then the reality and shock set in. And Christa Macauliffe's parents were onsite and witnessed this. Heartbreaking and tragic.
Yes, I remember watching with my mouth wide open, not understanding or comprehending what had happened.
Load More Replies...I just had a teacher the other day describe his experience from when this happened while he was in school
That was the class next door when I was in 3rd grade. We were soooo jealous that they got to watch something... and then jealous that there was some sort of excitement going on... but I remember watching it on the news that night. It was probably the first time I ever watched the news.
Happened on my birthday. What a terrible, terrible, day that was. With a teacher on board!
It's true. You too Christine McAuliffe being on board this was aired to many more students than any other flight.
Funny when you compare the fact that on 9/11 all we watchee in school was footage of the planes hitting the towers.
Junior year physics class. My physics teacher was one of the finalists for the Teacher in Space program
I watched it in school, I was in the fifth grade though. The teacher screamed . We were all just looking around at each other like "Did. Did it just ... blow up?". Then the teacher started crying , and a lot of us started crying .
Saw this when I was in Kindergarten. They made every student watch since there was a school teacher on board.
My grandma watched it, they canceled school for the week bc of it.
Still too soon for me for both of them as a kid who grew up less than 5 miles from mission control. My dad worked for NASA both days. I remember very quite dinners and everyone just going to bed.
We watched it live in school and definitely didn't go home. Just went back to class.
I was one of those kids. However, we were pretty young. I don't think we could really appreciate the gravity of the situation.
This actually happened to me in class. Although it was 7th grade. Messed up
That was so awful. I remember Sally Ride and how proud the women I knew felt that she was included.
I remember that day in school. The other half of the class got to see it happen live, we didn't. I still remember all of my teachers filling out the form hoping to be the one that went up into space.
Funny, in 2001, a much, much, much worse thing happened and we had the opposite response. After it happened in 9/11, we all SENT our kids to school. No one talks about that madness - that we all did that, including me.
Yup, I was a teacher that day and was told not to talk about it
Load More Replies...They wheeled tv's into my son's ELEMENTARY classes to watch the attacks on 9/11. It's a wonder the school was still standing after all the parents found out!
I was in the military, on night crew. For some reason, the first words out of my mouth on waking, alone in my room, were "uh oh" - the final words of the captain of that flight. That was a rough day.
I cried that entire day long. That was the last launch that was televised that I'm aware of.
When I was in school they handed out stereopticons and we watched Custer get massacred
Maybe not in the school you attended. I lived in a community where astronauts and their families still live (near Johnson Space Center) and we watched every launch in all the public schools, including that one.
Load More Replies...Uhh Sir?
As for sourcing accurate materials, Wilkey said it's important to employ information literacy skills to vet any potential source. That includes these history memes, too.
"While there's much to be said about the elitist and often-problematic nature of academic gatekeeping, the solution is not for anyone to publish anything they want, but rather, for us to engage with the public as much or more than we engage with each other as academics."
The historian likes to tell his students that if they are not engaging members of the general public with their work, then the public will be engaged by idiots, liars, and fear-mongers. "The average reader should make it a point to ask why they should believe any given source (including academic literature!). The fact that they found it via social media is often an argument against believing it," he said.
However, if it's more history memes that you're after, check out our piece on History Memes Explained, a cool social media project that not only collects but also dissects the best memes about our past.
200 Iq
Yoink
Trying To Get Rid Of The Evidence? Not On Mr Eisenhower's Watch!
You Can Always Rely On The Wise Words Of Captain Holt
Brooklyn Nine Nine was a fantastic show and one of those rare gems that only got better in later seasons. I'm so sad this show ended.
Money Money Money Moneyyy
It Do Be Like That
Damn Son
Any Great Historical Figure Would Be Honoured To Be Played By Cillian Murphy, I'm Sure
Uhh Excuse Me
Feels Bad Man
This must be a reference to the famous Greek hero Homercles, like Pythagorous, "Homercles cares not for beans"
If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It
I seriously think one of the arguments some Americans have against adding Puerto Rico and Washington DC as states is that they don't want to add more stars to the flag. (It's not a good argument.)
Pain
Gotta Do Whatcha Gotta Do
that's all very well but that shows seven women leaders. As a percentage of male leaders (something like 2000 or so worldwide in the same time period ... the first picture being cleopatra I believe) ... means that the chances of a woman starting a war is quite a lot lower. What we'd really need to know is the base rate of women leaders vs women leaders who started wars. I am pretty sure these seven are not the only women leaders in the last 2000 years...
Must’ve Been Sloppy
I Think We Can All Agree On This One
'man, I Love This Skirt! Also, You Heard Khomeini's Latest Speech? That Guy Sure Is Whacky, Huh?'
"If There Was An Allied Hero Who Deserved To Be Remembered And Celebrated, This Was A Person With Few Peers"
Feels Bad Man
Abc News Called It "The Poster Child Of Excessive Lawsuits" But Most People Don't Believe That Anymore
No Fair
Don’t Give Into Peer Pressure
Does Mythology Count?
Dammit, Marilyn! Not In Front Of The Democratic Party!
A woman exploited since childhood self-destructs in front of millions while they laugh. Wonderful that we’re so far beyond that today
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