What got you hooked on history?

[KevTheGooner]

What made you a history nut/scholar/buff/maven/whatever? I am making a prediction that WWII is a huge winner here...but family history is second followed by..ummm....anthropology.

[nicephoras]

I'm sensing this poll is set up for posters who treat history more as a hobby?

[topcatcole]

I'm sensing this poll is set up for posters who treat history more as a hobby? We can't all be professionals in everything. :rolleyes:

[nicephoras]

We can't all be professionals in everything. :rolleyes:

There's a difference between enjoying something and studying it (potentially) for a living. I could no more say what specific thing got me interested in law or history. I was always interested in both.
I could, however, tell you precisely what got me interested in Chelsea or Lazio. Because one's a hobby, one's not. I wasn't trying to be "professional". But yes, there is a difference between someone who enjoys reading books on military history (which I do) and someone who studies history (which I no longer do).

[Toon³]

Family history got me hooked. I only read history books and visit historical sites now for a hobby but I did study it in highschool and for a year at uni, before I realised that a History degree wouldn't be as useful as my current one.

[IntheNet]

Visiting battlefields of prior wars gives one a sense of historical perspective; visiting graveyards of prior wars provides a context to the sacrifice. I study history to know how others measured their lives, to give my own meaning.

[gaijin]

I study Literature, so a big part of that is studting the various historical and social aspects of that period, to gain a greater understanding of its context.

I enjoyed WWII in GCSE history... I would never turn down a documentary on that period.

[KevTheGooner]

I'm sensing this poll is set up for posters who treat history more as a hobby?

You sense incorrectly. Even professions (I was dang close to becoming a history teacher) have their origins with each of us..even if its blind luck or circumstance. If there was no "area" of history that drew you in, but rather its intellectual challenge, I guess that would be a good candidate for "Other (explain)"

[johan neeskens]

My history teacher in secondary school (I wonder why that wasn't one of the options? I'm guessing lots more people have been inspired by their history teacher). He was a brilliant story-teller who was particularly interested in the scheming and trickery of the ancient roman empire, it was better than watching a soap. The same teacher also got me interested in WWII. Before we started on the subject he asked everyone to write down what we believed had caused WWII, then he disected every single reason we'd given, teaching me not only about the war but also to question my own beliefs.

[nicephoras]

You sense incorrectly. Even professions (I was dang close to becoming a history teacher) have their origins with each of us..even if its blind luck or circumstance. If there was no "area" of history that drew you in, but rather its intellectual challenge, I guess that would be a good candidate for "Other (explain)"

As I said, I've always been interested in history. I can't point to any period/thing/idea/thought that made me think "hmmm, this could be interesting".

[yasik19]

When i was little, history was the 1st subject that i actually enjoyed in school. Well, that and PE. :D

"We learn from history that we learn nothing from history." G.B. Shaw

[Sempuukyaku]

Well I'm a current history major so...meh

[Malaga CF fan]

I voted politics, WWII and Other because I had excellent history teachers my sophmore, junior and senior years of high school. By far, the best line up for any subject I had in high school, so I would have to give a collective nod to them, but my junior year teacher, Mr. Brickley was by far the most influential.

He was eccentric, had been teaching for over 45 years, and was an accomplished piano player. One of the first days of class my junior year, before any of us knew him very well, he came into class, grabbed one of the big roll-up maps off of the wall, held it on his shoulder like a bazooka, aimed it at us and fired. "POW!!" he yelled. "I'm shooting knowledge bombs into your midst today!" He put the map down and took his seat at his desk to begin the lesson while we all sat there with our mouths wide open. He had our attention for the rest of the year.

He created a fun classroom environment. He called the seat that sat directly in front of him "Action Central" and the corner of the room where desks sat next to the wall (so you could lean your back against the wall and slouch) "Sloth Corner" - I was proud to sit there.

But his personality was only the conduit for what he taught us and how he brought history alive. Most of all, he drilled into us the need for asking the right questions. To him, learning was never about rote memorization of facts, people and places (he never asked a single date on all of the examinations he gave us - although he was a stickler for the truth) but about asking the right questions, which would lead us to the important answers that we were seeking. Often, discovering history isn't just about the stories and facts of the past, but about asking the right questions to discover the truth of what happened yesterday or 150 years ago.

[Dr. Wankler]

I took three history classes in college, and my grades were decent, but surprisingly, no better than my grades in pre-calc and calc. I wasn't that good at history class, in other words, and I probably would've made an entirely un-employable historian and a barely servicable history teacher in secondary schools (I would've been kept around because my soccer teams regularly contended for state titles, that sort of thing).

So I answered "humanities." I've learned to appreciate historians who have a good sense of narrative, and when I got into Cultural Studies in grad school, I learned to appreciate the works of E.P. Thompson, one of the guys credited with founding the field (and indeed, one of the guys who made me suspicious of some of the sloppier, trendier work common in Cultural Studies in the '90s).

[argentine soccer fan]

I was hooked on history (yes, as a hobby, Nice) when I saw as a kid a movie about General San Martin crossing the Andes and surprising the Spanish Army in Chile. The movie was superficial, very patriotic and strongly exagerating the general's virtues, making him into a sort of superhero. But for a nine year old it was awesome. (Of course, leaving aside the movie, General San Martin's was by all accounts an awesome military campaign.)

But I was always very interested in history, not just military history. Most kids in class were bored, but I always found history fascinating. World history, Argentine history, wars, intrigues, politics, culture, everything about it, how it fits together. I could spend all my life studying and arguing history and philosophy and soccer, if only I was rich and didn't need to engage in business activity.

[Coach_McGuirk]

I placed out of 6 hours of World History through the AP Exam, so, with the required 6 hours of American history I only needed an additional 6 hours to cover my minor. Plus, you know, the Civil War.

[pething101]

I began to enjoy history because my family had lived in the same area of Georgia (Darien, Brunswick and the Golden Isles) for over 200 years and many of my ancestors played a role in the history of that area. Every time we would pass a historical marker on the road, my grandfather would point out that so and so person was a relative on my mom's side of the family. It made me interested in knowing about what happen in the past.

Didn't hurt that my grandma was a school teacher for 40 years or that my grandfather was a teacher, principal and then superintendent over those same 40 years, so their house was packed with old history text books. I still have some somewhere after my grandfather passed away and my dad sold the house ... which actually surrvived Sherman's March to the Sea. The outer edges of Sherman's troops burned Darien but did not ride out the three miles to the Ridge where my grandfather's house was. Pretty cool.

It must have had an impact since I am now a history teacher in the public school system of Phenix City, Alabama.

[Pauncho]

I have to confess that the one major part of American history in which I am least interested is the Civil War. It isn't that it is unimportant, it's just the way most of the people ( overwhelmingly men) who get 'into' it get elbow-deep in tactical minutia. It's one thing to learn about, and dispute, the underlying causes and consequences of the most important event of the nineteenth century - at least to Americans. It's very much another to get excited about a passage that goes something like this:

At 11:45 the Confederate cavalry screen was withdrawn a half mile, to just behind Miller's Creek. This exposed the left flank of the 13th North Carolina Infantry to enfilate fire from the battery of three 12-pounder Parrot guns under the command of Major A.P. Dunwich, which the Federals had moved to the forward slope of Jones Hill during the lull in the fighting at about 9 A.M. Recognizing this threat immediately, Colonel Green sent forward his company of sharpshooters under Captain Norwich to take a position behind the old stone fence along Gunner's Hill, which marked the boundary of Nail's and Bunner's farms. This position would overlook the Union battery but still be protected from a flanking attack because of the entrenchments set up by the neighboring 2nd Arkansas the previous evening, which were then occupied by a regular infantry company under Captain McGillacuddy.

A typical Civil War book will be 80% this stuff. I have a limit of how much of that I can take, and a normal discussion of the Civil War will greatly exceed that limit.

[IntheNet]

...the way most of the people ( overwhelmingly men) who get 'into' it get elbow-deep in tactical minutia...

Regular Union Captain McGillacuddy? That's Major McGillacuddy and you know it! ;)

[bigredfutbol]

I don't remember NOT being interested in history. Even as a kid, I wanted to know why things are the way they are now, and how people lived in the past. It's just always been with me. I'm not studying to be an archivist for nothing, after all.