Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2021 April 16

= April 16 =

Who's with Halifax?
Who is the military type seen in this picture with Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax? The picture is captioned "Lord Halifax, British Ambassador to the United States (left), with an unidentified military officer waiting for the arrival of British Prime Minister Clement Attlee at the National Airport in Washington, D.C., November 10, 1945". Thank you, DuncanHill (talk) 00:16, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Train of thought - if it's an ambassador waiting for the PM, the green job is probably the defence attache of the time. So a quick look for lists of UK defence attache's to the USA gives British Defence Staff - US and the one in 1945 was Henry Maitland Wilson. Looks about right to me. Nanonic (talk) 00:43, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Yup... looks like Jumbo Wilson to me. Blueboar (talk) 01:36, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you both, I'm sure you're right. - I don't know what you mean by "green job" - British soldiers are traditionally known as brown jobs (but not to their faces). DuncanHill (talk) 15:48, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Same thing, could call them Pongo's too but that'd be even more obscure :D Nanonic (talk) 15:18, 17 April 2021 (UTC)
 * "Where the army goes..." DuncanHill (talk) 15:28, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

Indian state boundaries
Per States Reorganisation Act, 1956, I know that state boundaries generally reflect linguistic boundaries. But on a really granular level, how were the boundaries determined? Did they draw lines midway between villages with different languages (e.g. this village speaks Kannada and that one speaks Malayam, so let's put the Karnataka-Kerala border in the middle), or were they partly influenced by physical geography too, e.g. let's follow a river or mountain for a while, even if it leaves a few people on the "wrong" side of the border by a couple of kilometres? I wondered if state boundaries might have followed boundaries of existing districts, but List of districts in India doesn't say anything about the history of the district concept, so I don't have idea how to prove or disprove this. Nyttend backup (talk) 14:27, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't know all the details, but essentially the process was political rather than ethnographic. Clearly the backers of this legislation wanted to avoid having a myriad of exclaves and enclaves. The number of linguistic groups that were given their own state was clearly capped (especially in relation to the North-East or the tribal areas of central India). The Hindi-speaking states where not merged into a single entity (which would have created a type of RSFSR situation). The 1956 reform didn't completely reset the provincial-division logic of British India. The districts of the British India administration were largely retained, I don't think many districts were bifurcated to fit the new states but rather prior district boundaries where retained. --Soman (talk) 15:23, 16 April 2021 (UTC)


 * Nyttend -- they had the results of the Linguistic Survey of India. Sometimes the old Princely State boundaries were changed quite a bit (see File:Karnataka_1956_Reorg.svg etc). AnonMoos (talk) 22:39, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

Who's with Lloyd George?
Who is this man on a postcard with David Lloyd George? Thanks, DuncanHill (talk) 19:15, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

, if you want to know who’s with Lloyd George, you need to tell me the name of the file.

Answermeplease11 (talk) 16:22, 18 April 2021 (UTC) Answermeplease11


 * Either you know or you don't. Knowing the name I gave the file when I scanned the postcard won't help you. DuncanHill (talk) 16:41, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

, do you have an Imgur account. If so, ask this in the comment section: “In the postcard, who is George Lloyd standing next to? Plus, why are you even asking?

Answermeplease11 (talk) 16:41, 18 April 2021 (UTC) Answermeplease11


 * 1) None of your business, 2) Who the fuck is "George Lloyd"?, 3) None of your business. DuncanHill (talk) 16:50, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

, I’m going to report you if you dont stop saying f**k. You even said it on your talk page. If you have issues, go get some help. Plus, when I said George Lloyd, I made a mistake.

Answermeplease11 (talk) 16:58, 18 April 2021 (UTC)


 * He's been identified as Tom Wing, a similar picture, but labelled, can be seen here. DuncanHill (talk) 00:33, 19 April 2021 (UTC)