They should just ask them to name all 151 original Pokemon. Much more accurate...

Yeah, but I think she's aloud to sing her mom's song.

I think I have to disagree, to some extent. If someone, or even three someones accuses you of something, I don't think you should simply accept it as absolutely true. I'm black, and I've seen people pilloried for being racist in situations that I don't think they were.

It's amazing the difference in beauty standards, over the past 150 years. This is obviously a woman of standing and has a fresh and youthfulness presence but doesn't radiate with the overblown glamour and shellacking that today's definition of beauty demands. Thank you for sourcing and posting this for us!

Yeah, and the nineteenth century is notoriously difficult to encompass, because it was so incredibly complex politically. The whole of Europe was in turmoil, first with Napoleon, after that with liberalism, nationalist movements... I remember only studying my native Portugal's nineteenth century history in highschool…

The problem with K-12 "social studies" is that they don't teach anything new or interesting. It's the same old "America! Fuck yeah!" bs every year, and it's no wonder it was my most hated class growing up.

As an Austrian, I am actually much more interested in Maria Theresia. She certainly had her faults but reigned in a women-hating world where nobody wanted to recognize her as the empress (but she MADE them) while giving birth to 16 children. She was flawed in many ways (anti-Semite for example but came around later so…

Thanks for your comment. Yes, I think that U.S. education, in many respects, is quite lacking, although I also respect that there's only so much that can be reasonably taught during the K-12 years, and "Austria-Hungary" just might not be important enough to them. In general, though, I do think that there's such a…

First of all, it's Romy, not Romi. Second: Sisi was the spelling her friends and family used. 'Sisi' in Southern German dialects is pronounced like 'Sissi' in all the other dialects. They had to add the second s for the Romy Schneider movies, because without most Germans would have pronounced it as Zee-zee.

Marie Antoinette had the enormous pride of the House of Austria and I think she was secure in the knowledge that she had done nothing wrong and thought she was going to enter heaven. Also years of ruling over the most polished court in Europe could not be shaken off even in death.

Louis XVI, should not have burned his grandfather's papers. By doing so, he thought he was protecting the integrity of the monarchy but what he did was to insure that him and his wife were blamed for the mistakes of Louis XV. Basically he could have provided those papers to the revolutionaries and in one fell swoop…

"What's interesting about the romantic assassination is that she wasn't young anymore — she was 61 when she died. But she wouldn't let anyone take pictures or do portraits as she aged, so she's remembered as being tremendously young and beautiful."

Thank you! I do think there are many echoes between Marie Antoinette's and Sisi's stories, for sure. I think part of Sisi's problem was that she really was quite bright, but she had zero productive outlets for it (and didn't have the well-fuck-you-too-buddy attitude necessary to create outlets for herself, probably…

Huge historical female royalty nerd here...this was such a great piece that you obviously worked very hard on. Well done!

"the Gaypocalypse is still coming!"

Give it some time. Gays have only been granted marriage rights for a couple of years now, and it has to be nation-wide before we can really start destroying the "institution of traditional marriage". Heck, we haven't even had a chance to destroy the military yet. Patience people, the Gaypocalypse is still coming!

Plus the bonus side-effect is that every 10 - 15 yrs, you have the chance to throw a party to renew your marriage without seeming like a total wanker.

Yeah, this always bugged me about my relatives who got divorced. A lot of them were married 20+ years, had children, raised them together, grew apart and got divorced. That doesn't seem like a "failure." It seems like a partnership that ran its course.

Well, the 50% divorce rate was a little inflated anyway. It was really more like 45%, at least according to my studies in couples counseling class in grad school.

Yes! Maybe it's my west coast hippy dippy shining through, but wouldn't it be nice if we could change the narrative of marriage to it being about a long term partnership, rather than a lifetime commitment, to which the only way out is failure? Wouldn't it be awfully mature of us to be able to say "that was really…