Special thanks to Melissa Hollick ru-vid.com for singing the British vocals and putting the music together for us. :-) This video brought to you in part by our Patrons over on Patreon. If you’d like to support our efforts here directly, and our continued efforts to improve our videos, as well as do more ultra in-depth long form videos that built in ads and even sponsors don’t always cover fully, check out our Patreon page and perks here: www.patreon.com/TodayIFoundOut And as ever, thanks for watching!
She is singing on some of Simon's videos before, but I do not remember that she got credit for it. I even asked who it was on one. I was coming to ask again until I saw this credit for her....
You can't just describe "Nude and Voluptuous Native woman Riding an Armadillo and Brandishing a Tomahawk" and just leave it. Wth man? You gotta tell us how the hell that came about.
I've heard that exact version of Yankee Doodle somewhere and now it's bothering me. I'm thinking Simon or Daven did a video specifically on the song a while back with the same audio clips.
It’s fascinating hearing this version of the origin of “yankee.” I live in the Netherlands, and in Dutch, “Jantje” (Yan-tcha) would mean “little John.” However, I’ve been told by folks here that while “Jan” and “Kees” are both super common Dutch names, they were especially common amongst the poor and working-class Dutch at the time. So the story here, as I’ve learned it, has pretty much been that any person that went to colonize Nieuwe Amsterdam/New York instead of “making their fortune” in the Caribbean, Indonesia, or Bengal (aka, enslaving people in plantations in their much more profitable colonies) were seen, as you said, as backwater hicks. So basically, the Dutch elites in the the Netherlands and in the more profitable colonies considered anyone (of any nationality) who would move to a place as desolate and purposeless as New England must just be so poor, common, and desperate that there was nowhere else they would be wanted. In short, “Jan-Kees” was smooshing together two common names for poor folks at the time as a classist jab at their choice to go to New England. It isn’t too different from this version, but it’s interesting that there are so many variations on legends like this!
That is so interesting, in both this video and your description, I wish the European expansion into the U.S. stopped at the Yankees. Poor people escaping persecution and judgement to live freely, no need for government or armies or even to expand any further. But that was never possible. Europeans have enslaved, exploited, then deserted every single continent on this planet. No one gives a shit about “polite society” bs, it’s fake and meaningless. Liars and thieves pretending to be somehow superior than those that they exploit when it couldn’t be more opposite.
I do not know the old Dutch variations of diminuatives, but 'Janke' would be considered Flemish these days, rather than original Dutch. Then again, I think 'tje' is a relatively new development in the Dutch language.
I recall hearing a story about an American GI from the deep south who was stationed in Britian during WW2. He absolutely hated being call a Yank by the Brits.
I had to tell my British stepmother why Southern American soldiers in WWII would get into fights if you called them Yanks. She was amazed that Southerners were still angry about the Civil War.
It's actually hilarious. They've managed to fully reverse their intent for the word just by being so thin skinned about a war their ancestors started and couldn't finish.
Once a friend found himself living in England for a while. When he came back to the US he said, "Usually the British were polite to a fault except they kept calling me a yank"
I was just talking about this like an hour before you uploaded it, and wondering where the term Yankee and where Uncle Sam came from. Thanks for clarifying and keep listening to my conversations to teach me more interesting things.
I saw a music site years ago which said the tune was a longtime British song of derision with words adjusted for whoever was the group being ridiculed. It said macaroni was first used in a version composed to ridicule British debutants whose families sent them to Italy to immerse them in the symbols of classical European culture. Macaroni was considered a posh gourmet food then.
Uncle Sam and Columbia are also Superheroes from DC Comics !! On the alternate Earth of Earth-10 where the Nazi's won WW2 after a certain Kryptonian landed in Bavaria instead of Kansas...the Freedom Fighters led by Uncle Same opposed him !!
@@devonwoodrup 2:11 the Statue of Liberty was given to the United States as a tribute by France in honor of the nation’s centennial anniversary of independence from Britain.
@Irish381 Famous etiquette author Emily Post was a child when her father served as lead engineer for the erection of the statue, and Emily played inside the enormous hollow pieces before they were assembled.
@@suzbone Of this I am well aware, there are many books, articles, and documentary films about the Statue of Liberty 🗽, but the one that I found most interesting is by Ken Burns. It follows the story behind the Statue its creator and the voyage to New York, and the restoration of it in 1986.
To the old South mindset the term Yankee didn't just mean Northerner, it was said & meant as a slur with the most derogatory intent possible, even several magnitudes worse than they meant with the n-word towards Blacks. I couldn't hardly believe it when I lived there for four years in the 80's, but yeah.
I will agree. I lived in VA during the mid 90's and went camping several times. I actually heard the term Carpetbagger from a very elderly African American woman.
@MotoNomad350 Exactly! At the time I didn't give 2 shits about the Civil War OR the term Yankee. But they acted like it had only been a few decades since it ended. They were even doing battle reenactments frequently. Plus the phrase The South Will Rise Again was still a common phrase. I thought boy, sure are stuck in the past & still butthurt...
It’s still being used btw. My SIL casually threw it out in a conversation one day and she backpedaled very quickly when I asked her about her use of “all Yankees”. I am from Illinois, and I was surprised she didn’t give herself whiplash with her 180.
This was hilarious. Etymology of slang terms is fascinating. Definitely check out Stan Freberg’s work. He has a skit specifically on this exact topic spun as a disagreement as to how the song is to be played. The fife player and the drummer want to do it one way and the singer and director wants to do it Uncle Sam’s way. Funny as a crutch! Like listening to Saturday Night Live. Trigger Warning: Period specific biases are often lampooned or embraced because, 60’s.
@@WaddedBliss endless laughs for sure. My brother and I used to go back and forth at dinner doing the lines verbatim. “Whaddaya meeen ya cooked the turkey, Charlie!?”
That ancient cartoon you showed at the beginning with the meat shop and sugar cubes running around was really weird. Anyway, my great grandfather on my motherst side was a "Wobbly." He reportedly got chased out of the Midwest to Seattle because of his political activities. This is a point of pride in my family!
I’m from Billerica, Massachusetts. The Yankee Doodle in our area is from Billerica. He was tarred and feathered by the British for some reason. We still have the “Yankee doodle” parade every homecoming Edit: his name was Thomas Ditson Jr. he was a minuteman from town. You can read the story by googling Thomas ditson jr Billerica Ma
Fun fact: the last evolutionary form of the dandy macaroni was in the Urban neighborhoods circa 1980. It was now MAC Daddy. If you were a (what's now known as metrosexual) high maintenance man who was well spoken and charismatic. You were a MAC. The more you know 🌈⭐
In New York it tends to mean New Englanders. In baseball circles it means New York. To southerners it means the East, Midwest or West. To the rest of the world, it means U.S. residents.
12:00 wearing the striped Uncle Sam hat we all remember. This style is still being sold today. Millions of people worldwide misremembering what Uncle Sam's hat looked like because of this one picture, and Apollo Creed
This is a great dive in to the etymology of the word: 'dude', not just the history of the term: 'Yankee'. I wish more channels would be just as nuanced.
I've been to his grave in New York. At first, he had a simple, flat grave stone. But one of his later descendants commissioned a tall stone, which tells Sam's history.
The music Yankee Doodle was a British song mocking the American Colonies. We turned their song against them, when we drove Britain out of America. They called us Yankee Doodles…Yankee stuck in The War Between The States. We became the Northern Yankees and the Southern Johnny Rebs or Rebel Army.
The lore goes so deep I had no idea. And I’m quite the avid armchair historian and an American. I knew the meat can ‘U. S.’ Story but I had no idea it went way deeper.
I'm from the Northeast & have called myself a Yankee when abroad or in the South. It's a neutral kind of quaint term no one really thinks about beyond baseball; Southerners may get miffed by it & Westerners confused. It's funny though, calling all Americans Yankee is like calling the Netherlands Holland. We never say Yank though, not even Southerners AFAIK. My favorite use of the word is for those Japanese biker delinquents, "yanki"
I remember hearing about the British Regulars jweeed Americans with the song yankee Dolittle, only to be forced back to the city this time with the colonials were singing it.
President Ulysses S. Grant's nickname, which he was given during his tenure at West Point in the 1840s, was "Sam" because his first two initials, U.S., could also be short for "Uncle Sam." Supposedly his friends called him "Sam" for the rest of his life.
Most Yanks are not familiar with this use of "thick" (as hasty pudding). It means dense, foolish, or dimwit. (From a Yank who lived in the UK many years.)
It's more often used as 'thick-headed' here, but I'm pretty sure I've heard people shorten it to 'thick' as well. I don't think I'd even think twice about it if I heard someone call someone else thick after they did or said something dumb.
@@chitlitlah I'm an old man, now, and the only way I've ever heard "thick" here in the States is when someone is talking about a person's figure. In the UK they just straight up say - either joking or serious - you're thick. And I promise it wasn't about someone's physique.
Whatever amount of AI you are using for the songs and stuff keep it right there no more no less. One of the best Simon videos I’ve seen across channels
lmao (Uncle Sam's Thanksgiving) while Simon was saying that the people of other nationalities and backgrounds in image 2 refused to eat the turkey and instead were "digging into their own national dishes", my gaze fell upon a possibly Chinese man literally about to eat what appears to be a fully intact, furry mouse - idk about that one! XD
The donkey for the Democratic Party was created and popularized during the presidential campaigns of Andrew Jackson in the 1820’s. 20 years before Thomas Nast was born.
I remember hearing the "thick as hasty pudding" line when I was a kid and thinking they meant the NUMBER of soldiers. As for Yankee Doodle itself, it sounds like the revolutionary war equivalent of a dank meme. XD Did Sam see this episode yet? Make sure he doesn't or all your brain blazes will have memes a couple centuries out of date loooooooooooooool!
I know you want to know, so this is what it said "We are coming, Father Pershing a billion tons or more !" And Even the frankfurters, mighty dogs of ar, forgot their Daschhund ancestry and answered the clarion call.
Uncle Sam was the first guy George Washington met up with in attempt to put together a kick ass team. They hunted down Benedict Arnold after he un-alived Abraham Lincoln in Wear wolf form.
