Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2017 June 21

Welcome to the Wikipedia Humanities Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

June 21

Iceland compared to American internet usage

How to Icelanders use the internet as compared to Americans?98.210.29.1 (talk) 00:46, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Can you explain what you mean? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 05:55, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Does Internet in Iceland help you?--Shantavira|^{feed me} 07:06, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

"Internet in Iceland" somewhat helps. I'm more interested in how Icelanders spend their time using the internet--- what sorts of information they are interested in, the demographics of the heaviest internet users, as opposed to how Americans spend their time using the internet. Thank you. 98.210.29.1 (talk) 15:28, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

This would be a good place to start, except that Iceland isn't included. You might extrapolate from how similar Icelanders may or may not be to, e.g. Danes, Finns or Norwegians. --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 15:44, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Thank you!98.210.29.1 (talk) 23:57, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Southern pride

What's the deal with southern pride in the US? I'm from the north, and never heard northern pride. What are they proud of? CTF83! 02:23, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Being racists.--Jayron32 02:27, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

LOL while true, I was hoping for a better answer. CTF83! 03:10, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

They lost the war, and southern pride is a way to try to feel better about themselves. However, southerners are more known for being expressive anyway, while northerners are stereotypically more stoic. (JFK quote: "Washington DC is a city of northern charm and southern efficiency.") Northerners don't talk about being proud to be northerners, they talk about being proud to be Americans. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:13, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Lots of people are proud of their heritage or region. (Try telling a native New Yorker that New York isn't the absolute most bestest wonderfulest city in this or any other universe.) That said, there's a certain identity to the South as a larger region that the "North" tends not to have. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 03:47, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

This reminds me of a joke that to most of the world a yankee is an American, to Southerners a yankee is a Northerner, to Northerners a yankee is a Northeasterner, to Northeasterners a yankee is a New Englander, to New Englanders a Yankee is a Vermonter and to Vermonters a yankee is a Vermonter who eats his porridge cold in an unheated outhouse below 0°F with his long john flap open (or something like that, as a non-New Englander if I remembered wrong I wouldn't know). Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 04:43, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Sagittarian Milky Way -- the 1941 Heinlein story "—And He Built a Crooked House—" opens with a discussion about how the world considers Americans crazy, Americans consider Californians crazy, Californians consider inhabitants of LA County crazy, inhabitants of LA County consider people in Hollywood crazy, while people in Hollywood point to Laurel Canyon as the craziest. AnonMoos (talk) 11:20, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

So like the joke "Did you hear Clark County got a new zoo? They put a fence around Powell County! Did you hear Lexington got a new zoo? They put a fence around Clark County! Did you hear Cincinnati got a new zoo? They put a fence around Kentucky! (context: Powell County, Kentucky is in rural Appalachia. Clark County, Kentucky is between Lexington, Kentucky (300,000 people) and Powell County, Cincinnati (2.1 million) is a Northern city across the river from Kentucky). Apologies to Kentuckians. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 12:41, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps there was one more level where a yankee is any rural Vermonter. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 16:39, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

It might be considered a sub-culture, based on the Confederate States' secession from the United States on ideological grounds. Look for the iconic image of the flag of the Confederacy, which has been compared with the swastika's having been banned in post-WWII Germany. An essential difficulty is that the Confederacy was racist at its core, and its loyal descendants in our time don't seem to reconcile this with equal status for African Americans. -- Deborahjay (talk) 05:43, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

CTF83! -- We have a long and detailed article Lost Cause of the Confederacy. Insofar as it was a movement to prevent Southerners from feeling that their ancestors were fools and traitors who had died in a bad cause without accomplishing much of anything worthwhile in the end, it was a natural and predictable reaction to the aftermath of the Civil War. Unfortunately, the resulting ideology contained certain elements of historical falsification, and nostalgically glorified things which involved flagrant violations of modern standards of human rights. AnonMoos (talk) 08:45, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

You might be interested in Shelby Foote, an American historian interviewed in the Ken Burns film, The Civil War. He said the Civil War is more important to who Americans are as a people than the War of Independence. But seriously, you're from the north, and you don't know this? Isn't it something you feel viscerally in the US? Like we in Australia feel the situation of Aboriginal people, either the politically correct side, the racist side, or (if you happen to be Aboriginal) the actual difficulties? Just surprised, that's all. You might also like Gone with the Wind, which is of course about the same thing. But Jayron's answer probably still sums it all up in a single take. IBE (talk) 10:41, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

If you want a real answer to this question you should ask a real-life Southerner. If you don't know any, there are lots of articles online written about Southern Pride by people who recognize its historical racist elements but are capable of articulating other elements too. Here's one: http://www.pajiba.com/think_pieces/how-to-show-your-southern-pride-without-being-a-racist-dipsht.php Staecker (talk) 11:30, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

You've never heard of Northern pride? This question is Northern pride. You are bashing an entire region and claiming that your personal region is better. That is pride. But, for the answer you appear to want, it has to do with being put down. If you want to portray someone as stupid, give them a Southern accent. If you want to find an example of racism, just point to anyone from the South. If you want to poke fun at someone being behind the times, pick any small town in the South. Over and over, the South is the butt of jokes and, for the most part, it is unrealistic stereotyping. Any group (South, black, women, gay, etc...) that is continually put down will eventually form a cohesive pride about their identity. Some will become assholes about it and do something stupid like wave a Confederate flag at a basketball game. Most will politely say "That's nice" as you brag about how proud you are to be Northern. 209.149.113.5 (talk) 12:05, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

How long did it take for South Carolina to get rid of the rebel flag on state property? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:43, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

54 years. Is there a point or are you stereotyping? 209.149.113.5 (talk) 16:55, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

By keeping it there so long, their own actions reinforced the stereotype. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:04, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

I think there's a wider point here namely that the idea that "Some will become assholes about it and do something stupid like wave a Confederate flag at a basketball game" which seems to suggest only a small minority who's "cohesive pride about their identity" includes embracing a flag with clear racist history is questionable. Clearly in at least some areas it's a significant proportion. This is not to suggest that those people are racist themselves. This isn't a problem unique to the Southern US of course. It's well recognised that certain figures embraced as heroes by many in the US, especially from the time of US independence, had histories now considered highly questionable. Post WW2 Germany was mentioned above, the way Japan treats their history and historical figures is quite different from Germany and is fairly contentious especially in other East Asian countries. Of course Japan's actions, beliefs and activities during WW2 may not have been quite as bad as Nazi Germany but it's unquestionable there were many atrocities. Then again as much as the Allies may like to present themselves as the good guys, and as much as they may have been better, some of their actions were likewise questionable, e.g. the internment whatever a certain president thinks of it. (Turkey would be another example.) In other words, people often like to gloss over their history and historical figures but the problem for those southerns who embrace the Confederate heritage as a core part of their southern pride is how bad part of that history was and perhaps also how recent it was. Nil Einne (talk) 07:13, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

To be fair, the South went through some genuine problems such as atrocities under Sherman's March to the Sea (though reading our article, it certainly downplays any such thing; I don't really know enough about it to say), and exploitation by carpetbaggers. They were not always the bad guys in every way, and so they had some genuine assaults on them that they felt they had overcome to form a genuine basis for some sort of feeling of solidarity. Wnt (talk) 19:44, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Ok, so bottom line, they're snowflakes, and are mad they lost the war. CTF83! 19:46, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

My parents lived in a few different areas (VA,GA,LA) in the south and expressed that there was not uncommon hostility to them as Northerners and Catholics. This was just after the end of segregation. Northerners might have contempt for the stereotype, making jokes of the Southerner, the Midwesterner, or the Appalachian, but I have never witnessed actual personal contempt in the concrete.

(People in NYC often asked me if I was a Southerner due to my South Jersey accent, specifically due to my o-fronting. But there was never hostility, and I got rid of the accent within a few months, so now I code switch.)

The Pineys of the NJ Pine Barrens are an interesting case; they are like displaced Appalachians, with a distinct accent. I was asked at a bar I stopped in to have lunch where I was from, due to my accent, and did not feel well-treated. μηδείς (talk) 03:53, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

In Columbus, OH everyone seemed to talk Southern. (but still Midwesternish) Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 06:08, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

From South Park: "It's time that we retire our outdated, racist flag, which is particularly embarrassing, as we live in a Northern state." StuRat (talk) 03:51, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

I'm not the woman who was using this computer yesterday, but I want to point out that I was born in New York. I lived there for just over 18 years before I was drafted into Vietnam. After I was discharged, I moved first to DC, then to North Carolina, and then to South Carolina. I've lived in South Carolina over 40 years if my math is right. In the nearly 20 years that I lived in New York, I experienced far more racism than I've experienced in twice the time living in South Carolina. I strongly disagree with the claim that everyone in the south is racist. 209.149.113.5 (talk) 13:01, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

An obvious problem is that the time frames involved and ages and other factors are quite different making comparisons difficult. And notably, since no one here said everyone in the south is racist, your ability to interpret situations nowadays is perhaps questionable. Nil Einne (talk) 04:01, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

I should BTW clarify that I'm explicitly not commenting on whether the south or north is more racist. You will get various opinions based on various evidence (including personal experience that is a bit more current) [1] [2] [3]/[4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]+[10] [11] [12]. Even in terms of the history, there are those who would agree North tends to gloss over their racism [13] [14] [15] although it's probably few who would disagree the Confederate embraced a much more racist idealogy than what remained of the United States, whatever the reasons they did so. It's likely this will generally extend to the end of the Jim Crow era at a minimum. Nil Einne (talk) 04:26, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

One final comment is that I don't know anything about your experience and don't wish to demean it. The fact that no one here has said everyone in the South is racist is true. The closest is probably Jayron32's comment but they never said that everyone in the south embraces southern pride or even that all people that embrace it are racist. And yes it does call into question your ability to evaluate situations nowadays at least.

Although I admit I mostly say that because we have had a history of people editing from your hospital making questionable claims. Notably there was one well respected former long term editor who seriously disagreed with the SOPA+PIPA protest which okay was fine abd plenty of people respected them for it. However their response was a little extreme. Still most people forgot about it until they came back and started to make questionable claims suggesting some weird conspiracy involving the WMF.

Still your experience is your experience. The problem is no matter how valid your experience, and this applies to the other examples with singular experiences, is they don't actually tell us much about how things vary overall.

For example, I could spend 40 years in Malaysia without being the victim of a snatch theft, come to New Zealand and be the victim one. This doesn't mean that such things are more common in New Zealand (or the average person is more likely to fall victim to one). They are not. Such things are much simpler to measure so it's easy to disprove it. But it doesn't mean the person's experience is untrue or invalid, clearly it was their experience it's just not that helpful in trying to compare the situations between the countries. (Or at least at a such a simplistic level.)

Nil Einne (talk) 11:46, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

Cave art in France

Why France has so many prehistoric cave art paintings, seemingly more than other countries (perhaps aside from Spain)? Was it because the majority of prehistoric European people settled there? 212.180.235.46 (talk) 08:42, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Lots of factors. Partly patterns of settlement - it was a fairly easy area to live in. Partly geology - not all areas have accessible caves, and prehistoric painting in more exposed areas will simply not have survived. Partly tourism - there is a mass of such art in Africa, but caves have not been explored, preserved and sold as tourist attractions in the same way. Wymspen (talk) 09:36, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

It may also have been a dry climate, thus affecting the preservation of these paintings. There are plenty of similar caves in the UK without such paintings, and probably more due to them not having been preserved, rather than paintings never having been made there. Andy Dingley (talk) 09:43, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Most such cave art was painted during the last ice age, when France and Iberia were glacial refugia and Britain was under the ice. μηδείς (talk) 03:40, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Seek and ye shall find... Unprecedented Ice Age Cave Art Discovered in U.K. (2004): "For many years the total lack of cave art in Britain dating to the same period perplexed researchers... Now more extensive surveys undertaken this year reveal that the English caves may hold the most elaborate Ice Age cave-art ceiling ever discovered. Up to 80 carvings of animals, dancing women, and geometric patterns have now been discovered". Alansplodge (talk) 09:14, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Our Eartham Pit, Boxgrove article doesn't mention cave art, but our article on the other site mentioned above, Creswell Crags, does. Alansplodge (talk) 09:55, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Sorry, I misread that National Geographic article, the cave art was at Creswell Crags (not Boxgrove) and is already mentioned in our "Cave art" article. Alansplodge (talk) 17:08, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Getting to the Holy Land during the Crusades

Crusaders who couldn't afford or didn't want to go by sea to the Holy Land faced an enormous trek across Europe and Asia Minor in days when signposts were presumably few and far between, maps were very rare and extremely expensive and basic knowledge of European/Middle Eastern geography was presumably poor. So how did they find their way? I think the wiser Byzantine emperors were keen to keep things moving and may well have provided guides to get people past Constantinople, but what about the rest of the journey? --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 14:45, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

I think you're greatly underestimating the reach and effectiveness of the European trade network, and of the infrastructure underlying it (in terms of people, roads, vehicles, horses, inns, and knowledge). A thousand years before the crusades, the Romans had an extensive international trade network (map). The Silk Road has been reopened and running for hundreds of years by the time of the First Crusade, interconnecting with an extensive land and sea trade network (map). A Frankish crusader gets to the Levant the same way trade goods do - he rides or walks on the same trade roads. Every town has a road and everyone in that town knows where the road goes; every crossroads of those main roads has either a village or at least an inn, and there is no route in Europe or Asia Minor where he won't find somewhere to sleep and eat and refresh his horse every night. If he's confused as to the best route, he can ask someone in the inn at night - and a couple of silver coins and a grasp of latin can find some priest or trader who will translate. And the crusader is travelling with lots of friends, who will pool knowledge. The crusades are a package holiday, not a wilderness trek. -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 15:46, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

(ec) The assumption that knowledge of geography was poor needs some reasoning. By the time of the first crusade, the Roman Catholic church stretched from Italy to Britain. The church had no problem getting money from the shores of Britain to Italy. The Greek Orthodox church covered land from Southern Italy to Turkey. They had no difficulty moving money from city to city. The path many of the original crusade followed was simply a road to Rome (all roads lead to Rome). Then, they went to Greece to get to Constantinople. They obviously knew that Constantinople was the gateway to the Holy land. Then, after reaching Constantinople, they just headed south to take over the cities, one by one, until they got to Jerusalem. There was a group that followed the Danube instead of the road to Rome. From what I remember, they mostly starved and were inconsequential to the whole crusade. Now, after Constantinople, I said they just headed South - and that is exactly what they did. They first took Nicaea, which is a stone's throw from Constantinople. It was an easy battle. Then, from there, they took the main road south that ended in Dorylaeum. They took that. The road out of there went Southeast to Antioch. I believe they used a siege on that town, took forever. From Antioch, the road South goes straight to Jerusalem. So, as they did to get to Rome, they just followed the main road in a Southward way. 209.149.113.5 (talk) 15:52, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Dweller -- I wonder about your presumption that a land journey would be much cheaper than a sea journey. Until the rise of railroads in the 19th century, transport of commodities by water was almost always much cheaper than transport overland outside of a small local area, when distances were comparable. There are various examples of importing grain into a landlocked area to relieve famine being economically quite infeasible, though it would have been practical if the area had been accessible by seaport or navigable river or canal. In the early Christian era, there was a kind of special relationship between Christians in southern France and Christians in Egypt, which was made possible by ship journeys, and only cut off by the Islamic conquest of Egypt... AnonMoos (talk) 16:05, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Correct. By the third crusade, King Philip and King Richard took port cities between Italy and Jerusalem to aid in transport. However, they were still very weak when they finally landed. That is commonly attributed to the siege of the port of Acre. 209.149.113.5 (talk) 16:27, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

There were stories that the first batch of crusaders, the People's Crusade, did not know where they were going and thought every city they came across was Jerusalem. But that is probably not true, and in any case, they knew where they were going because Europeans had been travelling to Jerusalem for centuries already. Some of the crusaders may have even been there before. Robert II, Count of Flanders, who was one of the leaders of the crusade, had not been there, but his father had; Bohemond of Taranto and some of the other Italian Normans had not been all the way to Jerusalem but were quite familiar with the Byzantine Empire. There was also a large German Pilgrimage of 1064-1065 only a generation earlier. Once the crusade reached the Byzantine Empire and Asia Minor, they knew where they were going because they had guides (a Byzantine general named Taticius, among others). Asia Minor all the way up to Antioch had been part of the Empire only 20-30 years earlier, it wasn't a mysterious wonderland. And as mentioned, sea travel was the preferred method of transport once it was feasible - but they had to conquer some ports and islands first, so they couldn't travel by sea for the First Crusade anyway. Later crusades were largely, or only, conducted by sea. Adam Bishop (talk) 10:34, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks all. --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 10:51, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Grenfell fire: how many survived/escaped?

Death toll is currently at 79 dead or missing. The article infobox says that there were an additional 74 non-fatal injuries (although I can't see the source for that), and that the building housed "up to 600 people". What I haven't been able to find, either in the article or any of the news reports, is how many people are known to have escaped (or even how many are being rehoused). Has anyone seen this information given anywhere? (At the very least, it would give an indication of how accurate the casualty figures are). Iapetus (talk) 16:09, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

If anyone knew this it would already have been publicised, because everybody wants to know. There are several inter-related problems, including:

(a) the Local Council's Emergency Plan (or whatever it's currently called) was either poor, or badly implemented, or both (to the extent that some of those responsible were forcibly replaced by Whitehall in the aftermath);

(b) in the circumstances of such an event it's difficult to compile centralised and complete records, because some lesser- or un-hurt victims will undoubtably have dispersed to friends or relatives and not reported to an appropriate authority;

(c) while the Council probably knows the names of those who were officially living there, some of those individuals will not have been present, while an additional number of others will have been living there unofficially, being homeless and in some cases being unregistered illegal immigrants. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.9.80.133 (talk) 23:32, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Even if people were living there perfectly legitimately, they might not be known to authorities—or not all known to the same authorities, so it might take time to gather the information. For example, voter records will not show immigrants who cannot vote because they are not yet citizens; school records will only show people who are of an age to be in school; income tax records will only show people who have (or have had) taxable income; the landlord's records may not show family members sharing an apartment unless the tenant is required to disclose them all. I'm not familiar with the details of any of these things in England, so I can't cite references on the subject, but the general principle will apply in any country that doesn't have a requirement for all residents to keep the government informed of their residence, and I don't think England has that. --76.71.5.114 (talk) 23:51, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

See also Mayor of London Sadiq Khan backs amnesty on illegal immigrants who lived in Grenfell Tower at time of fire. Alansplodge (talk) 20:48, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

NB sublets (whether of council-owned or privately owned flats) may be against the rules or the law, without the individuals in residence being illegal immigrants. They may be British citizens or others with no reason to fear immigration authorities, eg EU nationals. Carbon Caryatid (talk) 17:17, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

I don't want people to get unduly alarmed about this. There's a difference between subletting part of the property (usually legal) and subletting the whole of it (usually illegal). Council tenants have the right to take in a lodger subject to the council's permission (which must not be unreasonably withheld) and private landlords/mortgagees may make similar provision. Taxpayers can let out a room (up to a qualifying amount) and do not have to declare it to the Inland Revenue. Leaseholders, of course, have full powers to grant tenancies. 94.195.147.35 (talk) 18:32, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Democrats changing their stance on illegal immigrants

Has anyone proposed that the Democrats change their stance on illegal immigration in order to win more votes?Uncle dan is home (talk) 19:02, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

What do you mean? Be harsher on illegals? The "more votes" they might gain, would be at the expense of votes they lost due to a more hard-line approach. CTF83! 19:44, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Unless it's reverse psychology. If the Dems start taking a hard line on immigration, the Reps might decide to soften. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:03, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Such a sudden shift would be great news for the Green Party.

But sure, lot's of people have said things along those lines. here is a couple of articles roughly like what you want. ApLundell (talk) 21:33, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Not a good long-term strategy, as the percentage of Hispanic voters is steadily increasing, many of which were once illegal immigrants, have family members who are illegal immigrants, or may have, in the future. Also, being stopped and asked to present their papers by police or immigration agents is annoying, even if they have such papers. (There are some Hispanics who are Republican/support tough actions against illegal immigrants, but that's a small percentage.) StuRat (talk) 03:38, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

• There is no such thing as "the Democrats" in the way there are, say, the Mammals, or atomic gold. Certain politicians who run on the Republican or Democratic tickets and caucus with those nominal parties vote differently from their colleagues on different issues, and the typical party line varies over time. The parties have even pretty much given up having or promulgating platforms. The fallacy here is treating loose, non-uniform coalitions whose real purpose is to obtain office by getting the votes of disparate constituencies as real things such as cars which can either move in reverse, rather than the cumulus clouds they are. μηδείς (talk) 21:36, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

There are plenty of people complaining about the harshness of Obama immigration policy. [16] I've even seen that Trump deported fewer immigrants [17] though he did arrest more. There's a cynical logic to that - the private prison companies that favor Trump obviously have nothing to gain by actually deporting the immigrants... on the other hand, Trump does claim a big intimidation factor, keeping people from ever trying to enter. [18] Though that page also gives some credit to Mexico having some recovery by several measures. (whether that survives Trump's apparent threats of destroying progress toward marijuana legalization, resulting in renewed cartel activity, is another question) Wnt (talk) 00:03, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

Lord Milton

Who was 'Lord Milton' in early 19th century? Say, before 1820, and who were his children at that time? --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 20:07, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

In that period, "Lord Milton" would probably have been a reference to Charles, Viscount Milton, only son and heir of the 4th Earl Fitzwilliam, who was styled by that title by courtesy between his birth in 1786 and the death of his father (whom he succeeded as 5th Earl Fitzwilliam) in 1833. Our article has details on his children. There's also an outside chance it could be a misspelled reference to the 2nd, 3rd or 4th Earl of Milltown. Proteus (Talk) 20:23, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Thank you, excellent (got another one coming up). --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 20:40, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

The other possibility (depending on the context of the reference) would be George Damer, 2nd Earl of Dorchester who was styled Viscount Milton until 1798 - though that is a bit early, perhaps. Wymspen (talk) 15:50, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

3 per cent reduced

I'm looking at a (UK) Will dated October 1820. The Will refers to "...I give and bequeathed to my two sons ... all of the money which I may be possessed on at my decease, which said money is now principally in the 3 per cent reduced, together with the interest and profits arising therefrom...". What is the '3 per cent reduced'? --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 20:50, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

• This [19][20] sounds as if it may be related, apparently some type of government bonds? Fut.Perf. ☼ 20:57, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

This dictionary gives as a meaning of the word percent: "[pl.] Brit. securities bearing regular interest of a (stated) percentage: the four percents". Not in wiktionary... AnonMoos (talk) 01:17, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I think you're right, a government bond issued by the Bank of England in 1757, usually referred to as 'three per cent reduced annuities'. Thanks, Malcolmxl5 (talk) 03:20, 22 June 2017 (UTC)