26 Signs You Were A History Major

 

 Yes, I'm a history major - and fiercely proud of it. Other people have master's degrees in things like communications, marketing, business administration etc. I have one in modern Japanese history and I've never regretted it - either personally or professionally. And as far as I may have strayed from the academic path as a historian, it's still in my blood. And if you too are an incurable historian, you'll probably recognize more than a few of these personality quirks.

1. Your Mexican holiday travel plans include the National Archives in Mexico City.

Source: archivista.blogspot.com

2. Your credit card and online banking PIN numbers are dates of battles or obscure treaties.

Source: @1066TheMovie

3. You edit Wikipedia content on a regular basis.

Source: blogs.ec.europa.eu

4. You acknowledged that the TV show Deadliest Warrior was a horrible show and you cringed while watching it - yet you continued to watch it religiously.

Source: sky.com

5. You've used Ancient Sparta and Alexander the Great as arguments in favour of gays in the military.

Source: chechar.wordpress.com

6. You get positively tetchy when people joke about the French being cheese-eating surrender monkeys and immediately bring up William the Conquerer, Napoleon Bonaparte, the Battle of Algiers and other examples of Gallic bellicosity.

Source: wikipedia.org

7. You actually know what the Latin motto of your university means - and you've tried to mess with people by making up obscene alternates to it.

Source: meanfellas.com

8. You've had sexual fantasies involving Queen Boudica. Or Abraham Lincoln.

Sources: http://tessfragoulis.files.wordpress.com / soulsmithy.com

9. You know that the "Meiji Restoration" isn't a digital data recovery function.

Source: bigglobe.ne.jp

10. You think the History Channel has sold out by pandering to religious zealots and conspiracy nuts and you scoff at its mere mention - and yet you continue to watch it.

Source: ascensionearth2012.com

11. When somebody asks you what historical figure you'd like to meet you can't give a straight answer, prefacing that it's a "complicated question."

Source: vivian-folkenflik.org

12. You wish that they would make a Star Wars movie set immediately after Return of the Jedi centred on the "Coruscant War Crimes Tribunals" wherein the surviving Imperial officers are tried for war crimes Nuremberg-style - and have actually thought about writing a piece of fan fiction along those lines.

Source: japantimes.com (originally)

13. You can't watch a sci-fi or fantasy movie without deconstructing it along the lines of what historical civilizations inspired it.

Source: comicvine.com / primeswormhole.blogspot.com

14. You've been on holiday in a foreign country and found yourself explaining the origins of place names in that country to people who live there.

Source: wikipedia.com

15. You know Napoleon wasn't really that short - and that he was actually an Italian guy named Napoleone di Buonaparte.

Source: blameitonthevoices.com

16. You've reached for a condom in a moment of passion and your mind immediately starts to fixate on how bad a name "Trojan" is for a condom given that the Trojans were indeed "impregnated" by the legendary wooden horse.

Source: seniorlearn.org

17. You "celebrate" Columbus Day by raging about colonialism and cultural genocide via social media.

Source: transformcolumbusday.org

18. You've used the word "historicity" in conversation without even realizing it.

Source: dayvidnightowl.wordpress.com

19. You know that the Iroquois Confederacy served as a model for the United States of America and its constitution - and was far ahead of the latter in racial and gender terms.

Source: fnx.org

20. New-age bookstores and alternative healing fairs make you angry - not for all the pseudoscience but for all the brazen cultural appropriation and modern inventions that purport to be "ancient knowledge and practices."

Source: fyeahcap.tumblr.com

21. You actually know what the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World are and get mad when people get them wrong.

Source: blog.wisdomjobs.com

22. You understand that Tintin au Congo, a comic book widely condemned for its caricatured portrayals of Africans, was actually an anti-colonial statement by an author who was deeply critical of his native country's abuses in former Belgian Congo.

Source: danhf.wordpress.com

23. You have a pet historical figure who is traditionally maligned but you are convinced has gotten a bad rap  (e.g. Richard III, Neville Chamberlain, Jan Smuts). Likewise you have a historical figure you love to hate while the rest of the "historically ignorant" world loves them (e.g. Christopher Columbus, Mohandas K. Gandhi, Che Guevara).

Source: telegraph.co.uk

24. You own the complete Blackadder DVD set - and tend to preface ideas with "I have a cunning plan."

Source: croftinglawblog.com

25. Niall Ferguson's face make you want to throw things.

Source: telegraph.co.uk

26. When you're asked if you could time-travel to either the past or the future you choose the future without a second's doubt because you know enough about the past to know how horrible 99.9 percent of it was.