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| History Department |
 Title text: When we take into account the recent discovery of previously-unstudied history in the 1750s, this year may have been an outright loss. |
Explanation
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This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by a HISTORIAN. There appears to be no explanation. Do NOT delete this tag too soon. |
In this comic Ponytail is a representative of the history department, which might be a department of a university or other organisation. She presents the year report of 2018. In this, she explains, the department has fully analyzed over four months of history. In the meantime, due to the passage of time, another year of history has been added to their workload (implied to be the year spanning between the current meeting and the previous one). This presents a cycle in which the department would only be able to keep up if they could analyze, within a one year period, more than or exactly one year of history.
A department in a business, such as the finance department, is typically required to keep up with their own workload and complete an entire year's worth of workload every year. A business that fails to manage this minimum would almost certainly fail: bills would not get collected, invoices would not get paid, employees would not get paid, etc. A history department fails to follow this model in two very important ways. First, the subject of history cannot be fully processed. New discoveries change what we know about certain time periods. Even current events cannot be fully processed, as future events will cause historians to see connections in things not previously thought to be connected. Second, the standard model for History Departments focusses on specific eras or specific subjects for the purpose of explaining the events to students. History Departments do not process years, but instead process the subject so that it stays relevant to the understanding of the current student body.
The title text further expands this problem by indicating the discovery of a new era of history that had previously gone un-analyzed, which would have added more undiscovered history than it removed. The 1750s decade is possibly a reference to the adoption of the Gregorian Calendar by the British Empire.
Events in the dates listed:
- November 1833: A Leonid meteor shower occurred in North America (Leonids#1800s); an 8.7 earthquake struck Sumatra.
- April 19-22, 1979: April 20: President Jimmy Carter was attacked by a swamp rabbit; April 22: the Albert Einstein Memorial was unveiled at The National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC.
- May 21-25, 585 BCE: Possibly a reference to the solar eclipse that actually happened May 28, 585 BCE, or to the war between King Alyattes of Lydia and King Cyaxares of Media that ended after said solar eclipse.
- June-August 1848:
- June – The Serbians from Vojvodina start a rebellion against the Hungarian government.
- June 2–June 12 – The Prague Slavic Congress brings together members of the Pan-Slavism movement.
- June 17 – The Austrian army bombards Prague, and crushes a working class revolt.
- June 21 – Wallachian Revolution of 1848: The Proclamation of Islaz is made public, and a Romanian revolutionary government led by Ion Heliade Rădulescu and Christian Tell is created.
- June 22 – The French government dissolves the national workshops in Paris, giving the workers the choice of joining the army or going to workshops in the provinces. The following day, the June Days Uprising begin in response.
- July – The Public Health Act establishes Boards of Health across England and Wales.
- July 5 – The Hungarian national revolutionary parliament starts to work.
- July 19 – Women's rights – Seneca Falls Convention: The 2-day Women's Rights Convention opens in Seneca Falls, New York and "Bloomers" are introduced at the feminist convention.
- July 26 – The Matale Rebellion breaks out, against British rule in Sri Lanka.
- July 29 – Young Irelander Rebellion: A nationalist revolt in County Tipperary, against British rule, is put down by the Irish Constabulary.
- August 6 – HMS Daedalus reports a sighting of a sea serpent.
- August 14 – American President James K. Polk annexes the Oregon Country, and renames it the Oregon Territory as part of the United States.
- August 17 – Yucatán officially unites with Mexico.
- August 24 – The U.S. barque Ocean Monarch is burnt out off the Great Orme, North Wales, with the loss of 178, chiefly emigrants.
- August 28 – Mathieu Luis becomes the first black member to join the French Parliament, as a representative of Guadeloupe.
- May 16, 2001: The neo-noir mystery film Mulholland Drive premiered at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival.
Transcript
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This transcript is incomplete. Please help editing it! Thanks. |
- [Ponytail is standing at a podium.]
- Ponytail: 2018 was a productive year for the history department - we were able to fully analyze over four months of history.
- Ponytail: Unfortunately, over that same period, an entire year of new history was produced.
- Ponytail: I'm afraid we're falling behind.
- [Presentation screen next to Ponytail lists studied dates:]
- Studied
- November 1833
- April 19-22, 1979
- May 21-25, 585 BCE
- June-August 1848
- May 16, 2001
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