Trench warfare dominated the fighting in WW1. After the initial hasty digging of trenches in the early days of the war, as each side dug in to defend their lines, trenches evolved to be more complex and sophisticated, including digging them in a stepped or zigzag shape.

Why were trenches dug in a zigzag pattern? Zigzagging trenches with sharp corners helped remedy several fatal flaws learned from early trench warfare:

One of the key advantages of a zigzag trench is its ability to contain blasts. In a straight trench, the blast from mortar or artillery fire would travel unimpeded to either side. However, a trench with frequent bends could confine explosions to smaller portions of the trench, reducing casualties.

2. Zigzags help slow an enemy down after capturing a trench

A straight trench meant that breaching a portion of it gave a long line of sight and the ability to fire down the trench which could aid attackers. Angles and corners from the zigzag or wavy shape of a trench meant that line of sight was reduced and gave better defensive positions with cover and concealment.

So, the simple change from a straight trench to a zigzag gave defenders significant advantages, and both sides used the design during the war. It's painful to imagine the tragic lessons that led to this evolution in design.

I learned about zigzag trench design from a children's book about WW1: 50 Things You Should Know About The First World War, by Jim Eldridge. It's striking how such a simple design change can have a significant effect. It's also a great example of how a simple solution can seem so obvious in retrospect and yet may take time to develop.

One of the trends of evolution identified in the theory of inventive problem solving that always fascinated me and has myriad applications is how straight lines in products typically evolve to jointed or bent, then wavy lines. As the theory would say, a straight line has unused potential, and someone will find an advantage in introducing a bend or bends. I sketched a similar trend about flat surfaces having unused potential.

The Imperial War Museum has a great 9-minute video explaining trench warfare, which discusses the zigzag or stepped design in this sketch.

Zigzag trenches

The Olympic Flag, which consists of five interlocking coloured rings, was created by Frenchman Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympic games, and unveiled in 1914.

Coubertin said that the five rings represent the five parts of the world embracing "Olympism" and competing against each other: Africa, The Americas, Asia, Europe and Oceania. The interlacing of the rings represents the unity and coming together of athletes from all parts of the world. Coubertin did not associate individual rings with individual continents.

The six colours of blue, dark yellow, black, green, red and white—the field on which the rings are set—"reproduce the colours of every country", and at least one is found on every national flag (I believe that’s still true).

I was thinking of including a sketch of each of the Olympic sports, but depending on how you count them, there are 32 sports and over 300 events.

You can learn more than you ever wanted to know about the history of the Olympic Flag in The Story of the Rings by Karl Lennartz (pdf). 

The Olympic flag and various other Olympic Properties (like the rings, torch and motto) are © IOC.

Great Britain, the British Isles, the United Kingdom - eh?

The Olympic Flag

Theatre and amphitheatre (or theater and amphitheater) have the distinction that a theatre is one-sided viewing of a central stage, and an amphitheatre has viewing all around. The word amphitheatre derives from the Greek word amphi- loosely meaning on both sides or all around.

For years, I've used amphitheatre for any large open galleried seating, but technically, as for the spectacular Minack theatre in Cornwall, England, if it's one-sided, then it's a theatre.

You'll also see the same pattern in amphoras, which commonly have handles on both sides of the vessel, and amphibians who are at home on both land and water. Plus, related ambivalence, ambidextrous (amphi- Greek, ambi- Latin).

It's fun having an aunt who used to teach classics =)

Also see: classical columns, pyrrhic victory, the Rosetta stone

Amphitheatre and theatre

A Pyrrhic victory is one where your own losses or damage make it nearly as costly as defeat.

Perhaps that business rival finally went out of business after you lowered prices so much that you can now barely get by. Maybe you managed to prove you were right at the cost of ruining a relationship. Or it could be that the kids did in fact get in the car and go out on that blasted walk only for everyone to have a miserable time, angry at each other for the rest of the day.

Or maybe, as King Pyrrhus of Epirus found in 279 BCE, you won several battles against the Romans while losing so many of your best warriors as to make you wonder at the worth of the whole campaign.

Pyrrhic victory

The Norse Gods are still among us in the names of the days of the week.

Tuesday — from Old English Tiw, for Tyr the Norse god of combat

Wednesday — from Old English Woden, for Odin the one-eyed king of the gods

Thursday — for Thor, the quick to fight god of ordinary people with his magical hammer Mjollnir

Friday — for Frigg, wife of Odin and goddess of marriage and motherhood

While Saturday, Sunday and Monday follow the celestial bodies Saturn, the sun, and the moon.

As a wonderful introduction to the Norse myths and gods you could do much worse than the entertaining and beautifully produced Illustrated Norse Myths I was commanded to read by our 9-year old.

Illustrations based off of those by the excellent Matteo Pincelli.

Days of the week

Jared Diamond’s classic book Guns, Germs and Steel, proposes some remarkable hypotheses about how the pattern of history played out, notably trying to answer the question of why it was generally the Europeans that invaded much of the rest of the world rather than the other way around. One hypothesis, striking in its simplicity if you’ve ever looked at a world map, is the significant contribution of the general orientation of the major continents.

The Americas are largely lined up north–south, while Europe and Asia (Eurasia) are largely lined up east-west. An east-west alignment means the land generally has a more similar climate, day-length and seasonal variations. The general logic of the hypothesis is that the similar latitude of an east–west alignment means animals, crops, as well as travel and trade, more easily spread across the continents than across those with a north–south alignment — of the Americas and Africa — which naturally encounter more different climatic zones.

As a simplified example, horses and other large animals and crops spread throughout the shared temperate latitudes of Eurasia. In contrast, South America’s only large domesticated animal, the thick-coated llama (and related species like the alpaca), couldn’t easily spread to North America through the impassable tropical barrier of the isthmus of Panama. They just aren’t built for it.

There are a lot of viewpoints on the theory, and Diamond includes many more factors of geography and others — like never being able to domesticate the zebra — that go towards answering his question of why Spain invaded the Americas and not vice-versa. But ever since reading his simple hypothesis, available to anyone with a world map, I’ve found it hugely intriguing.

The continental axis hypothesis

Marchetti's constant is the idea that people across history budget, on average, about an hour a day for travelling. Originally observed by Yacov Zahavi, it came from the observation that even as our means of transport sped up, instead of travelling less each day, we would just travel further. As in the sketch, this leads to a conclusion that the size of our cities increases partly according to how efficiently we can travel in and out—they generally increase to a size that maintains about an hour round-trip journey.

Cesare Marchetti observed that Greek villages and ancient walking cities, for example, as marked by ancient city walls, tend to share a radius of about 2.5km. Walking at a typical 5km/hr makes a one-hour round-trip journey. He also pointed out that: “Even people in prison for a life sentence, having nothing to do and nowhere to go, walk around for one hour a day, in the open.”

Unfortunately, if you live in London, the average round-trip seems to be an exception of 1h30.

This is also known as the constant travel time budget hypothesis.

Also see isochrones. It might be interesting to look at these according to transport method…

Image adapted from: Marchetti, C., 1994: Anthropological Invariants in Travel Behavior, Technological Forecasting and Social Change , 47 :75–88, Internal Publication, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.

Marchetti’s constant

The Union Jack flag is constructed from the Saltire of St Andrew for Scotland and St Patrick for Ireland—a saltire is the heraldic name for the diagonal cross-look—together with the cross of St George for the Kingdom of England. As Wales was a principality, not a kingdom, at the time the flag was created, it is not represented in the design.

Before Ireland’s emblem was added, there was actually an earlier flag back in 1606— the first Union Flag — with just Scotland and England present.

The Flag Institute explains why it's called a "jack"

Someone who studies flags is called a vexillologist, as I'm sure you know.

Curious about the difference between Great Britain, the United Kingdom and the British Isles?

The Union Jack

This is generally the source of much confusion. Even amongst those who live over here. If you look carefully at the description of the United Kingdom, you’ll see it’s the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. And the British Isles is the group of islands as a whole, including all of Ireland too.

The source I liked best for this explaining this and much more was Project Britain.

For much further confusion, think for a moment why there’s a UK passport, Great Britain in the Olympic games, and in football, we compete as England, Wales, Scotland and N. Ireland separately. 🤔

You might be interested in the Union Jack: The making of a flag

Great Britain, the United Kingdom and the British Isles: what’s the difference?

The sort of artefact that make history fascinating. Amazing to behold, a fascinating story, a controversial past and the key to the mystery of hieroglyphics.

The Rosetta Stone has inscribed on it a decree by priests honouring Ptolemy V, who was 13 at the time. The inscription is in hieroglyphic and demotic - both scripts of the Egyptian language - and Greek. Comparing the known Greek with the hieroglyphs with some remarkable talent became the key to deciphering the written language of hieroglyphs.

The Rosetta Stone can be seen for free at the British Museum. I highly recommend it. You could also read Professor Munakata’s British Museum Adventure a manga comic book featuring the Rosetta Stone.

The Rosetta Stone

Sadly it turns out that there is not reliable evidence for this derivation of the word POSH, but it’s so nice I’d finished the sketchplanation before I knew it. The story went that if you were travelling by boat from Western Europe to India and the Far East by boat back in the day the rich people naturally took the best cabins. And the best cabins on the way Out, were on the Port side so you got a great view of the coast all the way around Africa. And on the way back on the Starboard site to enjoy the view once more. Et voila POSH as a synonym for rich. After much digging I had to conclude that the story was apocryphal, but it’s nice nonetheless.

POSH: Port Out Starboard Home (apocryphal)

Always good to share with friends and family your knowledge of doric columns, ionic columns or corinthian style classical columns when you spot them in the wild.

Classical columns: doric, ionic, and corinthian

The Mediterranean sea was formed kind of how you think it might have happened from just looking at a world map — the mighty Atlantic ocean breaking free to fill up the giant basin from the African continent pushing into Europe.

I imagine it somewhat like the footage of when the sea reclaimed a tin mine in Malaysia in a few short minutes. Or when the waves finally overcame the walls of my sandcastle, just at a staggering scale.

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Category: history