EARLY EPISODE: The Istanbul Snowball fight
In the early days of English ambassadorships to the Ottoman Empire, an increasingly petty collection of grievances among European envoys and Ottoman dignitaries set the conditions for a single errant snowball to incite an anti-English riot. Witness the story of the snowball that got a bunch of English guys' beaten with oblong objects.
Research: Dr Joel Butler
Reources:
Public Records Office, The National Archives, Kew, London: SP 97/3; SP 97/4.
‘Bu bir nefret cinayetidir: Gazeteci Nuh Köklü, 'kartopu oynarken' öldürüldü.’ Radikal (2 February 2015).
‘Gazeteci Nuh Köklü kar topu oynarken öldürüldü’, BBC News Türkçe (18 February 2015).
‘Journalist Nuh Köklü murdered for playing snowball’, Agos (18 February 2015).
‘Life in prison for man who stabbed Turkish journalist over snowball fight’, Hürriyet Daily News (5 June 2015).
Atran, S. ‘The Devoted Actor: Unconditional Commitment and Intractable Conflict across Cultures’, Current Anthropology, 57/S13 (2016), S192-S203.
Brotton, J. The Sultan and the Queen: The Untold Story of Elizabeth and Islam (New York, 2017)
Brown, H.F. Calendar of State Papers Relating To English Affairs in the Archives of Venice, Volume 9, 1592-1603 (London, 1897).
Burian, O. The Report of Lello, Third English Ambassador to the Sublime Porte / Babıâli Nezdinde Üçüncü İngiliz Elçisi Lello’nun Muhtırası (Ankara, 1952).
Butler, J.D. ‘Between Company and State: Anglo-Ottoman Diplomacy and Ottoman Political Culture, 1565-1607’, unpubd. DPhil thesis, University of Oxford (2022).
_________. ‘Lello, Henry’, The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2023).
Coulter, L.J.F. ‘The involvement of the English crown and its embassy in Constantinople with pretenders to the throne of the principality of Moldavia between the years 1583 and 1620, with particular reference to the pretender Stefan Bogdan between 1590 and 1612’, unpubd. PhD thesis, University of London (1993).
Foster, W. (ed.) The Travels of John Sanderson in the Levant (1584-1602) (London, 1931).
Horniker, A.L. ‘Anglo-French Rivalry in the Levant from 1583 to 1612’, The Journal of Modern History, 18/4 (1946), 289-305.
Hutnyk, J. ‘Nuh Köklü. Statement from Yeldeğirmeni Dayanışması’ (20 February 2015) at: https://hutnyk.wordpress.com/2015/02/20/nuh-koklu-statement-from-yeldegirmeni-dayanismasi/ (accessed 8 March 2025).
Kowalczyk, T.D. ‘Edward Barton and Anglo-Ottoman Relations, 1588-98’, unpubd. PhD thesis, University of Sussex (2020).
MacLean, G. ‘Courting the Porte: Early Anglo-Ottoman Diplomacy’, University of Bucharest Review, 10/2 (2008), 80-88.
MacLean, G. & Matar, N. Britain & the Islamic World, 1558-1713 (Oxford, 2011).
Newson, M. ‘Football, fan violence, and identity fusion’, International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 54/4 (2019), 431-444.
Newson, M., Buhrmester, M. & Whitehouse, H. ‘United in defeat: shared suffering and group bonding among football fans’, Managing Sport and Leisure, 28/2 (2023), 164-181.
Purchas, S. Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas His Pilgrimes, viii (Glasgow, 1905).
Sheikh, H., Gómez, Á. & Altran, S. ‘Empirical Evidence for the Devoted Actor Model’, Current Anthropology, 57/S13 (2016), S204-S209.
Unknown Artist. (c1604). The Somerset House Conference, 1604 (oil on canvas). London: National Portrait Gallery.
Comments (31)
Latvian chiming in here. Carpet goes on floor. Walls are for shelves. Because storage space in the Hruščovka is scarce.
Is this ottomonth
Hot take: hats are fine actually. The reason people stopped wearing structured hats in much of the world is that structured hats don’t work well with automobiles. The problem with the “milady” meme guy isn’t that he’s wearing a hat; the problem is that he’s wearing the *wrong* hat. If you have broad shoulders, you can wear a fedora. If you have narrow shoulders, you can wear a trilby. This skews towards fedoras being masculine and trilbies being feminine, but that’s only due to body proportions. If you’re AMAB and not trans, and you want to avoid having people stereotype you as a “fedora guy”… just get a hat that’s neither a fedora nor a trilby. Also, if you don’t have a strong sense of personal preference with regard to hats, go hat shopping with a person of the gender you are attracted to, so that they can tell you which hat looks best on you based on what their demographic thinks looks nice. If you don’t have a demographically appropriate shopping partner, your options include (1) going a store with actual sales staff who will help you decide what to buy (albeit probably for a significant premium) and (2) taking a bunch of selfies with different hats at the store and posting them on a fashion-advice subreddit specific to your gender and sexual orientation. This is me pre-transition wearing a beret from H&M: https://share.icloud.com/photos/0e41NL83m5KWg6b4fglAJQSGQ This is me pre-transition wearing a Fidel Castro hat (that was way too small for me) from some random mall store: https://share.icloud.com/photos/066xpx6VgWAWWQVmDb_NmsE8w This is me pre-transition wearing a tweed trilby from Target: https://share.icloud.com/photos/078BJc7iIZl6nZhbKDnGdGytA This is me pre-transition wearing a straw trilby from H&M: https://share.icloud.com/photos/012lM4tn9SU8JWAlLY4U6pM1g Same straw trilby: https://share.icloud.com/photos/07ba3cZFKHvf6YwpSelFWfl1Q This is me at Coachella in 2012 wearing a straw trilby I bought from a vendor there: https://share.icloud.com/photos/021E16nd74YnqxGNlbd_TSLBg (Coachella was a lot better back when they had shit cell service, so you couldn’t use Instagram on-premises, or, better, before Instagram existed yet.) This is me pre-transition wearing a Worth & Worth bowler I got on clearance at John Varvatos: https://share.icloud.com/photos/044LOnAflL9KKYijL03Yhj3ow This is me pre-transition wearing an inexpensive straw porkpie (?) I got at a random hat shop: https://share.icloud.com/photos/056amJG1dHherNFQfhpSLl-og This is me pre-transition wearing the same porkpie (?) while running my errands, photographed by a fashion blogger (because “blogs” were a thing back then): https://share.icloud.com/photos/0aaot8X9lrdr10MxkWmKNwc6A This is me early-transition wearing the same porkpie: https://share.icloud.com/photos/00fA0T4PS8mvX0xGRW5lnGdQQ (IIRC I still have this porkpie; I just haven’t worn it in a really long time.) This is me at Worth & Worth with a bespoke “Marfa” straw wide-brim fedora with pencil curl (?): https://share.icloud.com/photos/015SsuX3sH2eWdAz8chGGs5Vg This is me wearing a fascinator I got for fifteen bucks on Amazon: https://share.icloud.com/photos/059B6Yzu7dVegC757OMSQ-WJw This is me wearing the Worth & Worth bowler (having gotten it resized by the atelier so it would actually fit me): https://share.icloud.com/photos/075o11m-FzVAmBNNmy2-a9m9w Same bowler: https://share.icloud.com/photos/07dDWM51rRMJvqLwIzKIlIVTQ Same straw fedora: https://share.icloud.com/photos/0b3bmXHWJ0ighyEKs7ulhUpgw This is me wearing a secondhand Missoni beret (my go-to cold-weather hat): https://share.icloud.com/photos/01d5XAvAHcB4ZXS1KVXAqRR9A Same straw fedora: https://share.icloud.com/photos/04euJgXOZjwuqpwLFyJLiaoFw Same straw fedora: https://share.icloud.com/photos/0a6q0Xx6iof-Ob4mw76ZIje5w Same fascinator: https://share.icloud.com/photos/0d5_wPa36t_P0MCUyOw6tYEsg My partner trying on a (much, much, much more expensive) fedora at Worth & Worth: https://share.icloud.com/photos/099vd1knOCi_vuLL2MIKBLl0Q My partner trying on a (relatively inexpensive) fedora at REI: https://share.icloud.com/photos/0f2mJylQ6NXchwUW-HVFLiftQ AFAIK my partner still has yet to buy a structured hat despite using the picture of him at Worth & Worth as his profile photo on social media. Anyway the point I’m trying to convey is structured hats are fine actually. Also if you have a big noggin like I do FYI it’s worth it to get hats that actually fit you (and they don’t have to be silly expensive if you don’t want them to be). Oh, and a few weeks ago I saw a (boy) Gen-Z kid on the subway wearing a trilby, and my thought was “ooh, it’s 2009 again?!?”. It’s worth mentioning the guy wearing the trilby was skinny, so a trilby was a correct choice for his body proportions.
Can confirm: lines (queues) don’t exist in China. You join a blob of people and somehow you eventually get your turn.
Oh, I would have assumed that you get in a blob of people and wait for the thing you’re waiting for to WeChat you. Isn’t everything in China WeChat these days? The only queues I remember from China were at Expo 2010, which had basically theme park queues. (WeChat timed entrance ticketing probably would have worked better, but that didn’t exist in 2010.)
Do you guys still have any of those veterans' discounts?
I love the mickey mouse Jumpscare, never stop
Sorry about your loss Joe
I worked at a smoke shop for 4 years. I promise that stores sell 'oil-burners' that let you hit two rocks at once
The Cars 2 Brain Rot that grew out of Kill James Bond has infected the LLBD hosts.
The Istanbul snowball fight sounds like an act of sodomy that could only be invented by a Hapsburg
Title had me expecting this would be about an incident in a Turkish bathhouse
Nate lived in Britain so long he still looks at the sun like my cat looks at the ceiling light when I wake her up by turning it on
Colorado here. Can confirm, shatter is Greek fire
Poland put beef in leafs first.
ngl when Nate said "Frenchmen with various oblong objects," my immediate thought was that of the varied improvised weapons, multiple people had brought baguettes
Same!
Finally, Joe has been awakened to Bisexuality. Truly there is no power greater than co-hosting a podcast!
And definitely, don't EVER ask for Turkish coffee in Greece... and don't ask for Greek or Turkish coffee in an Arab country. They're all made roughly the same way, but there's different roasts and additives. Turkish coffee is generally the darkest roast, Greek is medium and Arabic is generally medium-dark. Turkish is most often drunk straight, Greek most commonly has sugar and Arabic tends to have sugar and spices (typically cardamom). Don't ask for milk. Ever. Or that horrendous creamer shit. And definitely no flavoured syrup.
I got coffee at a Jordanian restaurant in Manhattan last week, and the Jordanian lady who sold it to me referred to it as Turkish coffee. (I went into the Jordanian restaurant to get a coffee specifically because it was not Starbucks.)
As an architecture/interiors geek, I can explain the carpets on the walls if anyone had an interest.
Go on.
More Oh Brother references!
I was Freddie Mercury for Halloween in 2010. I had a full head of black hair combed over and an awesome mustache. White baseball pants with a red stripe and the tank top/chest hair sealed it.
The “you turn into a car” was actually the point of the heavily drug-influenced ‘80s cartoon Turbo Teen.
I was enjoying a pleasant morning jog, listening to my favourite podcast. When it was suddenly hijacked by Mickey Mouse. I nearly fell over!
Average response for this show. When Mickey Mouse voice got me last, my banana fell out of it's peel.
I just want to say, Joe, hello. 😏
Nate needs to write a sarcastic history novel
I look forward to seeing an AI-generated short of 9/11 in the Cars universe on my feed soon
Donk time while sick on a Sunday. Let’s go