Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2014 August 1

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August 1

Sunita Williams and Islam

Hello, I mostly contribute to Persian language Wikipedia, in recent days, some users claimed that after Sunita Williams returned from her last space mission, she converted to Islam, I reverted those edits since they were unreferenced, but since this was claimed by several different users, I wonder if she really converted to Islam. I found nothing about this claim in the Sunita Williams article. Thanks -- Bkouhi (talk) 08:00, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Many discussions of this exist [1] (admittedly an anti-Islamic website); Muslim blog. It seems it's some ridiculous claim that's been circulating in which the Indian astronautrix is supposed to have seen Mecca and Medina shining from the moon: "Sunita Williams, the 1st indian lady who went to the moon on 02/07/2007 said that from the moon, the whole earth looked very black and dark, except the two places which were bright and shining when she saw through the telescope. These places were MAKKAH & MADINA (Saudi Arabia). Also, at the moon all the frequencies failed but still she could listen to the AZAAN..s'allah". Strange that Armstrong and Aldrin never reported this. They must have been got at. Paul B (talk) 11:15, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

No human has been on or near the moon for about 40 years. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:02, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Not only that, no woman has left low earth orbit, ever, in the history of humanity. --Bowlhover (talk) 22:02, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Different Date of Deaths

While answering questions at the Teahouse, I came upon a quite complex question. At first it seemed pretty easy. The user was just asking how to edit. But then I saw the info the user was trying to edit. The user wanted to change the date of death for F. F. E. Yeo-Thomas from 1964 to 1972. This was the hard part. I searched some references on the web, From the book at this page over here [2], it says that tommy died in 1972. But on the other hand, over here [3] [4] it states that he died in 1964. I would assume that he died in 1964, but I am still curious about the death date in the book. Does the book still count as a reliable reference for that person then? Thanks, TheQ Editor (Talk) 15:31, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Your best bet might be to look for a contemporary obituary in both 1964 and 1972. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:07, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Or contact the cemetery indicated in Findagrave. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:09, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

The New York Times had an obituary on Feb 27, 1964. It's behind a paywall, but if you go to the search results page you can see enough to confirm the 1964 date in our article. The book must have made an error, or be speaking of a different person. 184.147.144.166 (talk) 18:30, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Figure on a title page

Please, can someone tell me what the figure on this title page represents?

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/29178/29178-h/images/title.jpg

C7nel (talk) 15:32, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Is it the printer's mark, perhaps? Gabbe (talk) 16:25, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Gardner's usual mark is quite different - [5] -- Finlay McWalterᚠTalk 16:48, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

I only see a warning to not direct-link to Gutenberg images and I can't seem to work around it. Even searching for the book title fresh wouldn't help. Matt Deres (talk) 16:27, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

The book is Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland By D. T. Holmes, B.A. -- Finlay McWalterᚠTalk 16:39, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Project Gutenberg wants you to host your own public domain PG images, not link ("inline") to their hosted copies of images. See Information About Linking to Our Pages: Image Inlining

You'll find the identifying book metadata and the directory of both images from that book (title page and bookplate) here: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/29178/29178-h/ Navigate up for more versions of text: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/29178/ -- Paulscrawl (talk) 16:48, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

(redundant after multiple WP:EC) -- The book is Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland, published "by appointment to the late Queen Victoria" in 1909. If you go to this link [6] and click on "read online in HTML", you'll see the title page. It has this quote from Juvenal, ""Gaudia, discursus, nostri est farrago libelli" at the bottom of the cover page, translated here [7]. However, none of that helps me identify the figure that OP wants to know about. It reminds me of a cartoon of a uterus, e.g. here [8]. I suppose it could be a printer's mark, but in my limited experience of books from that era, the printer's mark would have some words on it. SemanticMantis (talk) 16:54, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Thank you all. As the OP, I wonder whether the URLs and associated navigation notes provided by Paulscrawl and SemanticMantis are suggested as ways of identifying the title page in question without creating a direct link and thereby offending the good people at Gutenberg.org. Are they so, or are they merely suggested alternatives which are more likely to work than my initial attempt? Thanks, C7nel (talk) 21:52, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

I suspect that it's just a symmetrical and highly-stylized and abstract quasi-floral or vegetative decorative design. See Art Nouveau for the prevailing decorative style at that time... AnonMoos (talk) 22:20, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

C7nel, you can certainly use the links provided to identify the source to satisfy your personal curiosity. PG can have no problem with that use. However, if you were to post your findings on a blog, for instance, PG policy cited above asks you first download a copy and then save to your Web space, linking to your copy of the image you are discussing in your blog entry. That saves their bandwidth for their primary purpose, distributing public domain books, not serving as a free image host. Paulscrawl (talk) 23:17, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

I made my link by following their page on "canonical URLS" [9]. So it is specifically the way they want us to link their content. BTW, I agree with AnonMoos overall; I have no reason to think it's anything more than a pleasant abstract/floral symbol. SemanticMantis (talk) 22:05, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

POW Camp in Ried, Austria, WWII

I just realized that I have an interesting historical artifact. I found a plastic case with an engraving on it. It says that it was given to "F. DeLoughery," (my father, an Army Sgt. in WWII) by a Russian Captain whom he freed from a prison camp in Ried, Austria, in April of 1945. I find this very interesting, as there was a massacre of Soviet Army Officers who escaped from a camp near Linz, not far away. Unfortunately the name of the Russian Army Captain is unknown. My father was born in 1911 and died in 1992. The notation was inside the small, engraved case and was written in pencil on a scrap of paper... but I recognize my father's handwriting. He eventually became an archivist and was very careful about what he documented.

So... I am wondering what you may be able to discover on this. My father could speak German, so I suspect he could converse with the Russians who had learned it in captivity. He did speak with some German soldiers upon capture and I suppose after the surrender.

I would appreciate anything you can come up with. Daniel DeLoughery, Port Orchard, Washington — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.113.110.185 (talk) 20:10, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

You probably already know more about this artifact than anyone else possibly could. All Wikipedia has to offer is a couple of sentences in Ried, Austria article for WWII associations: Ried_im_Innkreis#Contemporary_history. Shop it around some military antique dealers in Seattle, one of whom just might be able to decipher or at least identify the source of such an engraving. Paulscrawl (talk) 20:52, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

24.113.110.185 (Daniel) -- the word "plastic" is slightly suspicious, since I'm not sure what plastics other than bakelite would have been commonly available in continental Europe in 1945... AnonMoos (talk) 22:13, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

No, plastics beyond bakelite would have been widely available in the 1940's; though certainly not as pervasive as today. Plastic#History covers a lot of it. A generation before, bakelite would have been about it, but by then several plastics, including polyethylene and polyvinyl chloride were used commercially at the time, as were various cellulose-based plastics (Cellophane, Celluloid) , which were in wide use at the time...--Jayron32 23:22, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Maybe -- I get the impression that most early post-bakelite plastics only started commercial production in the late 1930s or afterwards and/or were commercially produced in the US or Britain (not continental Europe) and/or were mainly useful for sheets and films (not molded solid objects). This doesn't absolutely exclude the existence of a plastic case in Austria in 1945, but it means that the word "plastic" rings a faint warning bell in my mind in this context... AnonMoos (talk) 01:49, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

What shape is it and what's its size? It could be a snuff case. Can you post a picture? KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (Chin Wag) 19:17, 3 August 2014 (UTC)