• joneskind@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    My favorite facts about Halifax is that the first French people to get there starved to death the first year because they wouldn’t eat that weird vegetable the natives from the Mi’kmaq tribe gave them, because they didn’t like the taste. Turns out it was potatoes. Can you imagine that?

    • havid_dume@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      I mean, do we know how they were cooking them? Maybe the natives told them to eat them raw as a prank.

      Also, they were presumably unsalted?! I may rather die too

      • joneskind@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I do think some French dudes would have tried to at least boil and salt them. While it’s true Mi’kmaq people didn’t put salt in their food as they thought it was toxic, those French settlers couldn’t care less. Salt was used as a conservant pretty much everywhere in Europe, and Nova Scotia has very long coast line (meaning salt was abundant).

        My guess is that our tastes changed a lot since then. And “French” fries wasn’t possible yet, because frying grease was too costly and rare.

    • Holzkohlen@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      Sure, I don’t like them either. Now would I rather starve then eat potatoes? Can’t say until I’ve lived through it… well or don’t

  • pikasaurX4@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    My favorite Halifax fun fact: In 1917, a munitions ship exploded in Halifax Harbor. To commemorate the event, the City Council created ‘Splodey, the Halifax explosion mascot.

    In addition, each public broadcast of Shaggy’s “Mr. Boombastic” is followed by a moment of silence

  • I’d rather have that than be preserved for centuries. I honestly prefer cremation to burial. Heck, feed me to the birds for all I care, just let me unexist completely.

    There’s a sort of solace in that. That one day I’ll completely cease to exist. I don’t know why religious people like the idea of eternal life. I’d very much prefer not to exist after a while.

    • BamBamToxico@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      I got to tour a terramation (human composting) facility a little while back. You come out in a few burlap sacks of mulch. They even threw in some wicked t shirts.

    • mycatiskai@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      The atoms that you are made of will not cease to exist until our sun explodes and makes them into something else.

      You will either get buried and rot into sustenance for worms and bacteria or you will get cooked into carbon and calcium to be spread out and become intermixed with the soil.

      So will everyone that currently exists barring nuclear annihilation. I find solace that my atoms will maybe be a tree or a bird or even just grass.

      • emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        The sun isn’t massive enough to explode. It will just expand and get hotter, making Earth too hot to support life, and then burn out, making Earth too cold to support life. And even a supernova probably won’t destroy atoms. Most of our atoms will probably survive the ‘death’ of the sun.

      • Pelicanen@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        Well, no, but we’re all made out of atoms but I don’t think anyone would say that a human and an equivalent pile of raw material are the same.

    • Heavybell@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I do like the idea of eternal life, but I also like the idea of my earthly remains – be that all that exist sof me or not – being absorbed back into the earth when I’m gone. That doesn’t seem so bad.

  • Track_Shovel@slrpnk.net
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    1 year ago

    That’s just flat wrong. Soil pH out that way is about 4 at the lowest.

    On top of that bones are large, with low surface area, meaning it’ll take a long time for them to ‘dissolve’. Ok top of that, you would expect to see this in other locations

    • uphillbothways@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Somewhat interestingly, in acidic soils the minerals, bones, teeth and metal vaults dissolve more easily, but organic matter, wood, flesh, fats are more preserved.

  • SilentStorms@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 year ago

    Legitimately interesting fact. I was recently in Halifax and wandered the Old Burying Ground, really neat place. Weird to think there’s nothing under those stones.