Category talk:Historical Figures

I was toying the idea that making the various OTL sub-cats (POTUS (OTL), PM (OTL), etc.) sub-cats of this category might be a "user-friendly" thing to do. TR 18:30, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Hmm--I dunno. They really don't quite match up for that kind of nesting relationship to my mind. And it is cool to have a category that's huge and is not sub-divided.Turtle Fan 08:49, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Categories made up of historical figures don't match up with the category "historical figures"?

Categories showcasing positions don't match up with categories showcasing people, even people who happen to have held the position. If I were to kidnap you and send my dad to take your place in your home life, I doubt Mrs TR would say "Oh, well, a lawyer's a lawyer."

That being said, now that my position's been clarified I'm not sure how strong it is. Turtle Fan 04:26, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Other than that, I don't see much use in doing either. Again, it might make things a little more new-user friendly (Here are all the historical figures in one place, here are some sub-categories they fit in), but I don't see much use otherwise. TR 16:11, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Keep in mind that the sub-cats are already available, and in places in which someone interested in, for instance, the Prime Ministry of Britain would already be more likely to look. Turtle Fan 04:26, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

713

That's the number of articles we currently have for historical figures. 600 are here, the remaining 113 in the old category. HW will probably generate a few articles. I'll probably get around to getting FP in here in the next couple of months. I think that between those two books, this category will be well past 800 by the end of the year. I'm doubtful we'll get to 1000 until sometime next year, though. TR 15:46, September 5, 2009 (UTC)

One more and we'll be tied with Babe Ruth on the all time home runs list. Might be appropriate to hold that spot for someone who's got some sort of relation thereto. Hmm, the kid who won Game 3 of the 1938 World Series is named in HW.

LA will probably yield some historical figures. Maybe not too many, though; Atlantis is independent now, and the independent nation is full of fictional characters, and according to the short stories they're about the most isolationist, xenophobic nation this side of Lamaist Tibet, if not the Tokugawa Shogunate. Turtle Fan 16:28, September 5, 2009 (UTC)

Not THAT isolationist. They don't kill foreign sailors who wash up on their shore, after all. TR 17:41, September 5, 2009 (UTC)

Which is why they're still on this side of the Shogunate. Turtle Fan 21:17, September 5, 2009 (UTC)

Just remembered GMBML!. I was flipping through it at the library during recess. Something like six historical figures at least referenced in the first pages. TR 02:20, September 6, 2009 (UTC)

Ah, yes, GMBML!. That would be a happy hunting ground.

I think your estimate on getting to 1000 is optimistic. I think that if we go back over old books with a fine tooth comb, we could get to 800 or maybe even 900 quickly, but beyond that? HT's only planning one book in a historical setting next year, and it's a WWII story. HW yielded a few heretofore unseen historicals, like Choibalsan and various Slavic strong men, but the leadership pools of the main combatants, those who produce most POVs who would interact with historicals, must be approaching the saturation point by now. We'll probably see Americans in the next book, but the President, Vice President, Secretary of State, Secretary of War, Ambassador to London (surprised we didn't hear from him this time), Speaker of the House, House Minority Leader, and most of the generals likely to play a role have all been done to death. Turtle Fan 05:50, September 6, 2009 (UTC)

Well, my estimate of 800 by the end of 2009 was completely off. We still haven't reached that goal yet. I doubt we'll see 1,000 before the end of 2011. If anyone still cares, of course. TR 18:41, March 11, 2010 (UTC)

777

So somewhere along the line this went past 191 characters, and we're astonishingly close to 800. When did that happen? TR 02:31, April 26, 2010 (UTC)

A prolific author of historical fiction can dp that to you, I guess. As for no longer being dominated by 191 characters, well, over the years we gradually stopped spending most of our time there and gave many of the others equal treatment. That'll do it.

However, your predictions in the above section were certainly overly-optimistic. Which I see you've already acknowledged so apologies if it's a dead horse I'm beating. Turtle Fan 03:18, April 26, 2010 (UTC)

785

Damn, so close. Surely we have 15 freaking historicals we can add! TR 18:03, May 24, 2010 (UTC)

You mentioned Bela Kun. There's one. A terrible thing to say but maybe some of the Living People will die soon. Mrs Thatcher is in a fairly advanced stage of Alzheimer's, I believe. And there was that Canadian MP last year who lost his cat by that name, Tweeted "Thatcher is dead" at a state dinner, and came quite close to putting Harper in the embarrassing position of having publicly issued condolences for a living person. Thankfully Harper's people called their counterparts in No 10 to confirm.

Umm . . . We could write articles about ourselves, I guess. We could give all the Literary Allusions people articles, or in some cases give them back their deleted articles. We could run around reanimating Jennie Jerome and Robert Dudley and all of those. Or we could wait for W&E. I have to think that will put us over the top. (Then again, apparently I thought LA would do the same, and I don't believe we got one damned historical to show for it. The closest we came was probably "Colonel Mustard.")

I have to say that I find HT's current slowed down pace slightly more annoying than I would have thought. Again, that's surely due to our project. It will also be cool to be able to say he's published novels in five different decades, but that will have to wait for W&E. Turtle Fan 20:43, May 24, 2010 (UTC)

I see ML4E is also writing up GMBML! Flipping through the afterword last year, I was left with the impression that all POVs were historical, as were nearly all the speaking parts. So, taking the drastic step of adding ourselves or the Literary Allusions is probably overkill. I'm slowly but surely adding Fort Pillow, but I think I've reached the point where all the major historical characters have been introduced, so I'm not counting on that for much help.

Yes, sporadically. Your recollection is correct. There are about a half dozen Roman POVs to add which are historical plus several more non-POV historicals and several German historicals too. ML4E 03:21, May 25, 2010 (UTC)

Ooh! Daniel Gooch remains to be written. For some reason I never got around to doing him when I first read FP and was confining myself to the easy ones. Then I just forgot about him. Turtle Fan 21:24, May 24, 2010 (UTC)

But there is W&G (and HW still, really), so I guess we'll be 800 by the end of the year, anyway. TR 21:12, May 24, 2010 (UTC)

791

Nine more to go. . . .

Why does this feel like we're watching someone creep up on a home run record? Turtle Fan 03:19, June 4, 2010 (UTC)

Ah, fuck it, let's add Edwin Everett and Pius XI. It's hard to stay patient at a time like this. Turtle Fan 03:20, June 4, 2010 (UTC)

We also have the few German generals involved in the coup attempt in HW. TR 14:49, June 4, 2010 (UTC)

We do? I hadn't noticed. We've talked before about how forgettable that book was, but the search for historical figures was one of its great pleasures. (I hope W&E proves an equally fertile hunting ground.) Turtle Fan 16:12, June 4, 2010 (UTC)

798

798, thanks to Anne's art exhibit. By the way, Matisse was conspicuous by his absence, and I'm not just saying that because I'm desperately wishing I could come up with two more. Turtle Fan 02:48, June 14, 2010 (UTC)

I'd like to make our 800 a complete one of a character with some consequence. Maybe Varina Davis? By all rights, it should be Mollie Bean but that will require much re-reading. TR 02:59, June 14, 2010 (UTC)

Let's do Varina Davis. She narrowly missed out on the honor of being our 5000th article so this would be a good consolation prize. If we want to give a more dignified reason for denying Molly Beane her rights than the fact that we're lazy, we could say we're saving her for the higher honor of being our 1000th HiFi.

Good, now we can keep putting her off till 2000. Turtle Fan (talk) 05:56, July 7, 2013 (UTC)

Now who should be 799? Turtle Fan 03:03, June 14, 2010 (UTC)

Well, we're diving into GOTS anyway. Surely we can find some Sec of the Navy or something. TR 03:58, June 14, 2010 (UTC)

James Seddon. Turtle Fan 04:24, June 14, 2010 (UTC)

Now that I've discovered the reference to Patrick Cleburne, I'm wondering if he deserves the honor; he was a bad ass motherfucker, after all. Still, I believe Mrs Davis's name has a number of red links to it, whereas to my knowledge, Cleburne has only the two I just made, here and in the Seddon article. Turtle Fan 05:12, June 14, 2010 (UTC)

Wait, we're still only at 798. The Template for the infobox is in this category and contributes to the 799 total. So we have to do two more, not one.

I was going to say it will be cool to push onto a fifth page, but we already did that thanks to the subcats taking up space. I think Braque is the one who gave us five pages. If I'd realized that was going to happen I would have tried to choose someone with a little more import. Turtle Fan 17:46, June 14, 2010 (UTC)

800!

Or 801, since the infobox apparently counts. Cleburne put the category at 800, Varina Davis gave us 800 people. Even though Varina actually appeared and Cleburne just got mentioned, his wound up being the meatier article. In each of her scenes, Varina was pretty much there for fluff. Turtle Fan 22:03, June 14, 2010 (UTC)

850

While "Eyewear" isn't going to take us to 900, we will easily clear 850, and might even get to 860. TR 16:30, March 28, 2011 (UTC)

900

Glenn Miller was 899 and Django Reinhardt was 900. Aaron Copland and Dmitri Shostakovich will be the first steps towards 1,000. TR 20:26, September 27, 2011 (UTC)

995

Somehow, when I wasn't looking, we got to 995. TR (talk) 15:41, February 23, 2013 (UTC)

1000

Constantine III appears to have been 1,000. TR (talk) 05:50, July 7, 2013 (UTC)

Damn, I feel cheated of the fanfare that should've gone with it. Turtle Fan (talk) 05:54, July 7, 2013 (UTC)

Last Orders

For the record, Manuel Azaña, Douglas Edwards and Muhammad Ali Jinnah are the only three brand new historical figures we're going to get out of LO (unless I missed someone). For the remainder of the book, we'll be adding pre-existing historical figures to the TWPE characters category (e.g. António de Oliveira Salazar). TR (talk) 16:26, July 26, 2014 (UTC)

On Page 352 Lemp and Kapitan zur See Rochus Mauer are looking over new Type XXI U-boats (Elektroboots as far as I can tell) when Mauer complains that they could have brought the type into service two years early if they didn't waste time on a new hydrogen-peroxide powered engine developed by a Dr. Walther. Think it could be this fellow: Hellmuth Walter? ML4E (talk) 23:59, July 31, 2014 (UTC)

Ah, good get. I think it most certainly is. TR (talk) 02:19, August 1, 2014 (UTC)