Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2019 December 19

= December 19 =

Right to speedy trial for president?
In the US, does the right to a speedy trial apply to president impeachment? I see house voted on impeachment but may not send to senate for trial. 67.187.171.171 (talk) 03:17, 19 December 2019 (UTC)


 * Little point really. The result in the Senate, if it goes there, is a foregone conclusion. HiLo48 (talk) 03:22, 19 December 2019 (UTC)


 * In any case, it's not a legalistic trial, so the rules are not the same. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 04:26, 19 December 2019 (UTC)


 * Another possibility... the Senate could decide (since the House voted to impeach) to hold a quick impeachment trial ANYWAY - without the House formally sending the articles of impeachment over to them. Blueboar (talk) 15:40, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
 * I’d be very interested in the authorship of any source that says the United States Senate has the constitutional power to vote on Articles of Impeachment it has not received from the House of Representatives.DOR (HK) (talk) 00:19, 21 December 2019 (UTC)


 * I for one cannot find any source that even remotely suggests that the House (either by collective action or by any one member of the House) has the power to block, revoke, or even modify any one of its own resolutions once the House has passed it (same for the Senate). Also, unlike passed bills which go to the President for signing, the Constitution has no "Presentment Clause" for impeachment resolutions.  The current Senate rules regarding formal presentation of the articles could be considered as for the purposes of decorum and record-keeping only, and could be amended by the Senate to take into account these (previously unanticipated) delaying tactics. DWIII (talk) 06:03, 21 December 2019 (UTC)


 * Josh Blackman at Volokh has described it as a "Schrödinger's impeachment" if the senate were to just go ahead and vote, but thinks a rule setting a time limit for transmitting the articles "could pass constitutional muster."&mdash;eric 13:53, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

Oldest image of a Chinese emperor
What is the oldest documented/verified depiction of a Chinese emperor? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.209.14.47 (talk) 04:06, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
 * A quick search found a third-century CE depiction of the first emperor Qin Shi Huang here (although the depicted scene is from years before he styled himself "first emperor"), and the same scene of his attempted assassination appears in the Wu Liang shrine on a stone relief on a stele dated 147 CE. During the Han dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE), murals showed the first legendary sovereigns Nüwa and Fuxi, as well as this painting of Emperor Shun. Wakari07 (talk) 12:37, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

‎Emily L.B. Forster
Please see my question at Reference desk/Science; it's a science/ humanities crossover! Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:41, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

Ships on Wheels
See Landship and the Afd entry. Apparently "tank" was a codename for British development of "Landships". The idea of ships on land was obviously around before 1914, but i can't find any reliable sources that would put the scope of an article wider than just "History of the Tank". Can anyone find a source that primarily discusses "Landships", beyond WWI tanks?&mdash;eric 16:37, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
 * We have land sailing. Wakari07 (talk) 16:53, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Or perhaps more in Eric's train of thought, Leonardo's fighting vehicle. Alansplodge (talk) 16:58, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
 * AFAIK, the word "landship" was only used as an early term for what later was called a "tank", as in here. The article that is currently at AFD, is, AFAICT, completely made up except for the bits about tanks.  -- Jayron 32 17:03, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Also Sea Scouts build landships, and Merriam-Webster fails with this entry unless there is something in the etymology of "prairie schooner" that we're missing.&mdash;eric 18:22, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Into the realm of sci-fi, there is The Land Ironclads (1903) by H. G. Wells about an all conquering armoured fighting vehicle. An ironclad is a type of ship, but whether or not Winston Churchill had read Wells's story when he established the Landship Committee, seems to be an unknown, as far as I can tell. However, I agree that the "landship" article is a complete dog's dinner and probably ought to go. Alansplodge (talk) 17:11, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
 * (ec)It would be a fun to combine Leonardo, Stevins, Wells, maybe "prairie schooners" and others (would have some neat pictures) and end with Swinton, Churchill and the Landship Committee. I think Jayron is right tho, if no one else has written anything like that then Wikipedia can't. Adding content to Land sailing would just ruin a nice looking article.&mdash;eric 18:07, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Someone took the idea of landship/ironclad and ran with it in 1917... WegianWarrior (talk) 16:23, 20 December 2019 (UTC)


 * H G Wells is generally seen as the source of much of the terminology here, in his novel The Land Ironclads and the later influence in The Land Leviathan (Leviathan was also a common contemporary name for a particularly large ship).
 * The British military naming comes from strange coincidences involving Winston Churchill and the RNAS, who had combined a naval background and the first mechanised armoured warfare. They then saw the larger "tanks" as having rather too much in common with a destroyer of the period, and spent too much effort thinking of multi-turreted vehicles with a bridge of command officers, even though this was far in excess of the sizes that were mechanically practical. Andy Dingley (talk) 18:05, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Some more Googling found Thomas Gerard Hetherington (1886-1951), an army major seconded to the RNAS, who came up with a "land battleship" 100 feet long and 80 feet wide, later known as the "big wheel machine". It never got off the drawing board but earned Hetherington a seat on the Landship Committee and a knighthood in 1918. Alansplodge (talk) 20:42, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Looks like there's a bridge and some signal halliards on that thing. Some random clicking from there found Wells in The New York Times 1917 and this from Chicago Examiner.&mdash;eric 15:59, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

Ships on wheels have been a thing since about 600BC, if not earlier. See Diolkos (Section "Track_and_transport" clarifies they were put on wheels.) The general term is portage. -Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 18:26, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
 * But this isn't about ships on wheels, it's about describing huge land vehicles as "ships" or "landships". Andy Dingley (talk) 18:31, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Maybe you read it that way. I didn't. --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 00:46, 20 December 2019 (UTC)
 * my fault, was trying to be funny.&mdash;eric 16:10, 20 December 2019 (UTC)
 * "A landship or landcraft is a large vehicle that travels exclusively on land" from the Landship article cited by the OP. Alansplodge (talk) 15:56, 20 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Does a "land yacht" count? ... Hey! There's an article: Land yacht 107.15.157.44 (talk) 22:02, 19 December 2019 (UTC)


 * If you're reading around the conception and introduction of tanks in WW1, you might give some attention to Ernest Dunlop Swinton, whose not-unimportant part in the process is often overlooked. His book The Green Curve (1909) collects stories by him concerning various potential military innovations, including the use of fixed-wing aircraft (as opposed to balloons, etc.) for reconnaissance and bombing. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.199.211.222 (talk) 10:14, 20 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Swinton was not only the leader of a long list of people claiming to have invented the tank (or at least the main credit was given to Swinton by the 1919 Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors) but it was Swinton who coined the name "tank" itself; Churchill's suggestion for a cover-story having been "Water Carriers for Russia" until it was pointed out that it would probably be abbreviated to WC. Alansplodge (talk) 15:31, 20 December 2019 (UTC)