Random historical facts you only recently learned about

In Europe, mutton used to be more popular than beef in the 1800s.

R1, the American Air Force was on meth too

OP, that would make sense for the kamikaze fighter pilots of Japan going on their suicide missions -- to help work up their nerve.

I recently learned that besides Pearl Harbor, the Japanese also surprised bombed Darwin, Australia on February 19, 1942. Never read about that in school.

Canada declared war on Japan one day before America.

Switzerland had some weird child labor scheme going on right up to the 1960s.

Landlocked Bolivia historically had a coastline until the year 1904, when it lost land access due to war with Chile.

What they used was Amphetamine not methamphetamine.

R6, and Switzerland did not give women the vote until 1971. That is a plot point that is often deleted in The Visit, 1956 (Der Besuch der alten Dame). In spite of her great wealth and power, Claire Zachanassian cannot vote.

The US invaded, but failed to conquer Canada

That the Statue of Liberty was first offered to Egypt as a gift but they didn't want it, thought it was ugly. And France re gifted it to the US.

Build a wall to keep out the loser invaders.

That’s not a re-gifting, r11. Only the recipient of a gift can re-gift.

r13, I knew someone would point that out, but I wanted to say it anyway.

Every military, during WWII, was on speed.

“The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation’s history. I mean in this century’s history. But we all lived in this century. I didn’t live in this century.”

I did not know that the sport lacrosse was invented by the Algonquian tribe of the St. Lawrence Valley.

[quote] The US invaded, but failed to conquer Canada

Not only that but when the war ended Canada occupied what is today the state of Michigan. It was returned as part of the peace treaty.

It’s not recent, but I learned only last year of the Tulsa Massacre and that is courtesy for Watchmen.

Interesting article about how the war got the US and Japan hooked on amphetamines.

The Germans were on more methamphetamines than anyone else

Hitler was a junkie

Interesting stuff

Not surprised about the rampant drug use during WWII. Heavy, widespread use of narcotics often fuel periods of great violence: cocaine, opium, morphine, and heroin were available and widely used during the Wild West frontier of the 19th century.

JFK would have the White House operators find Judy Garland, put him on the line, and she'd sing "Over the Rainbow" to cheer him up.

Donald Trump's mother was a poor immigrant.

(So it's weird that he hates poor immigrants)

JFK was a junkie.

It was called hiropin (I don't know what the article said). It became a big social problem after the war during the Occupation. Also, the Japanese military and far right was running around China in the 20s and 30s selling large quantities of opium to finance their activities.

The loathsum, Trump pats himself for selling billions of dollars worth of weapons to the disgusting country of Saudi Arabia. These leaders have no morals and have attacked the innocent with those weapons. Trump is filth., history will show it.

R26 She was a LEGAL immigrant. People really need to realize there is a difference. 99% of the people I have met who are against illegal immigration, have little to no problem with legal immigrants.

Trump is a junkie.

R27: He got an early start - beginning as a Harvard freshman he was prescribed DOCA: (desoxycorticosterone acetate) one of the earliest forms of corticosteroids, administered by implanting glass ampules under his skin that slowly released the drugs. He did it himself:

"...in 1946, Paul Fay, one of Jack's friends, watched him implant a pellet in his leg. The way in which the medication was administered indicates it was DOCA. Fay remembers Jack's using "a little knife ... [to] just barely cut the surface of the skin, try not to get blood, and then get underneath and put this tablet underneath the skin, and then put a bandage over it." Then, he said, "hopefully this tablet would dissolve by the heat of the body and be absorbed by the bloodstream." In short, it appears that Jack was on steroids—still an experimental treatment, with great uncertainty as to dosage—for his colitis well before the Addison's disease diagnosis."

After Lady Bird and LBJs honeymoon, Lady Bird had to see a gynecologist because of LBJs huge cock.

Infamous spree killer Howard Unruh was gay

At the worst of their drug epidemic in the 19th century, nearly one-third of China's entire population was addicted to opium. Others probably knew this, but it was news to me.

My Grandpa caught Encephalitis Lethargica. In the 1920s and it made him a zombie. He used to stare at the radio (like we do the TV). He had a typical Wikipedia case. AND I LEARNED ALL THIS ON DataLounge! [italic] I knew he had “sleeping sickness”, [/italic] but it’s the same thing. He lost his businesses, all before Social Security.

It was a different and equally mysterious pandemic from the ~1919 flu that swept through briefly before. Some scientists think it was a related, secondary epidemic. You never hear about it. I thank you friends, because this was really interesting to me.

I wish I could say LBJ was a junkie, but apparently he was not.

There was once an entire war over nutmeg.

Gore Vidal liked sticking tampons soaked in vodka up his anus.

When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, the average American didn’t know where it was, or so I was told by Greatest Generation Brooklyners. Remember that Hawaii wasn’t a state then.

Also, Americans might not know that the Japanese bombed other European colonies, for the first time; and independent Asian countries on that day (or next), including Malaysia (was that British, then?); British holdings (Hong Kong, Singapore, more), Dutch holdings such as Indonesia; the Philippines (American, then),, etc.

I later worked with the son of the last Governor General of the Dutch East Indies. That is like the son of a President, today. He never told me who his Dad was, but did tell me he spent time in a Japanese POW camp, and went no further. I wish I asked, but it seemed too personal. (Wikipedia says he did not spend time in a camp, but I believe him.)

The video at 4:00 has a good, quick, clip on the scope of the attack.

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein and Adolf Hitler were schoolmates.

[quote]Not only that but when the war ended Canada occupied what is today the state of Michigan. It was returned as part of the peace treaty.

Is it too late to return it? I think I can find the receipt.

Incidentally, the Greatest Generation loves to talk about their war experience, too a point, so don’t demure from asking if you so care. I have no clue about Holocaust victims, though, but that would be fascinating, too.

My bro was once on the phone with me. He was at a WWII museum and overheard that the party at the next table was a WWII gunner. I encouraged him to ask the party for his WWII story. I really had to insist. And it happened that the old man loved telling his story - and was thrilled that anyone was interested, as was my brother. Unfortunately, my bro then had to listen to the old man’s son’s story about fighting in Vietnam - which was honorable service, certainly, but just not of particular interest to my bro.

I once got to listen to a WWI Vet tell his story about his service, at a Christmas party where I was a “plus one”. That fascinated me. I only wish he hadn’t been filling up on pepperoni, as his breath was as strong as mustard gas.

[quote] Also, Americans might not know that the Japanese bombed other European colonies, for the first time; and independent Asian countries on that day (or next), including Malaysia (was that British, then?); British holdings (Hong Kong, Singapore, more), Dutch holdings such as Indonesia; the Philippines (American, then),, etc.

Yes this is true. At first the Indonesians and Malaysians were happy to see the Japanese, but they quickly grew disillusioned when it became clear that Japan had no plans of giving them their independence.

Over one million Indians fought for Japan in WWII. It is easy to forget how much colonial peoples hated European colonialism.

R11, do you really think a muslim country would want a 300 foot high statue of a woman representing liberty? Some people are just so fucking naive.

This is not random but a big misstep in teaching misinformation to Americans. Here we do a poor job of teaching history without deliberate bias. In the US we were taught that Americans, Brits, and other Western European allies won WW2. This is because post-war anti-communism paranoia was so entrenched that journalists and scholars participated in this whitewashing of history. True historians with any sort of reputation would readily admit to the fact that USSR essentially won WW2, and without the Russians fighting for their nation's survival in the Eastern Front, Hitler's armies would have not suffered disastrous losses. Who know, but if Hitler had given up on taking the Soviet Union after a few months of unsuccessful battles, Germany's troops might have had a chance to hang on to rest of Western Europe.

By the time the Americans entered the war, the German military might was a shadow of its former self, having been worn down and decimated on the Eastern Front where they sent their best troops. Many expected Germany's invasion of Russia to only last 6 months but the Eastern Front was the stage for the largest and longest battles in WW2; it's still the largest military engagement in history. Troops from the USSR suffered between 95% of Allied troops casualties. Something along the lines of 80 Soviet deaths for every Allied death. In Russia WW2 is known as the Great Patriotic War, and every family had at least one member who died as civilian, fought or lost their lives fighting in the war. Both men and women fought in the front lines. Russia/ USSR had 27 million civilian deaths and 8.6 million military deaths.

Yet it is the Americans who insist on taking all the credit. It's easy to do some online searches if you want to read up on the real military history of WW2. What the Russians went through both military and civilian population was pure brutality. I personally think the experiences of WW2 hardened the Russian mindset both for the better and for the worse. Basically it made the Russian character more distrustful and secretive.

R46, One could also add the lie that the Germans did nothing. There were several assassination attempts on Hitler as well as numerous resistance groups such as The Red Orchestra and The White Rose. Unfortunately, many of the resistance groups were Communists or Socialists; so, it didn't sit well with the postwar agenda to make heroes out of them.

Also, the cathedral in Cologne was not spared bombing because it was of historic importance, it was spared because pilots needed a landmark by which to navigate.

The fire bombing of Dresden was solely revenge for the Siege of Leningrad. The allies knew exactly what would happen and the loss of civilian life. Keeping Stalin happy was more important that the painful and unnecessary loss of civilian life.

Ancient Sumerian was mostly a single syllable per word language. That's why it was logical for them to develop a phonetic written language. Mind you, a lot of those syllables had multiple meanings (to, two, too).

Hitler was also a vegetarian R22

One of the factors why the Soviets triumphed R46 is that they had NKVD troops behind the regular army who would shoot them if they tried to surrender, retreat or flee.

One of the untold stories of the Holocaust is the story of the Hungarian Jews. If you've ever wondered why such a high percentage of Shoah survivors are Hungarian, here's why:

The Hungarian government was an ally of Germany in WW2. And while they were antisemites who made life unpleasant for the 800K Hungarian Jews, they did not kill them. At least not in any organized manner.

Cut to early 1944 and the Russians are not far from the Hungarian border and gaining fast so the Hungarian government goes to surrender to the Soviets, thinking they'll get a better deal.

But there are oil fields in Hungary that the Germans need so the Germans invade Hungary and set up a puppet government.

The Gestapo and SS come along with the rest of the Germans and Eichmann decides that they need to kill off all the Hungarian Jews.

At this point most of the concentration camps have stopped killing people because all of the Polish, French, Dutch, Greek, German and Russian Jews have been killed.

But Eichmann decided to re-open the camps and in May 1944 starts deportations of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz. Now at this point the Allies know exactly what is going on and there is much controversy about why nothing was done to stop it--bombing the rail tracks, etc. One theory is that the SS were using trains and fuel and manpower that the Army needed and was thus hampering the war effort.

Another theory is that they feared that the German reprisals would be worse and a final theory is that the Allies didn't care much about Jewish civilians in Hungary when their own troops were at risk.

The camps were liberated by the Russians in January 1945, so anyone who was not immediately sent by Dr Mengele to the gas chambers only had to survive for six or seven months. (Versus the others who had been there for three or more years.)

And then survive the forced marches further into Germany because at that point, with the war lost, a good portion of the SS and German government was mostly concerned with killing as many Jews as possible and covering up the tracks of their crimes.

But that is why most of the survivors are Hungarian--because they were the last ones to face the Nazi killing machine, long after the was was clearly lost.

[quote] One of the factors why the Soviets triumphed [R46] is that they had NKVD troops behind the regular army who would shoot them if they tried to surrender, retreat or flee.

This is also why the Japanese tended to fight to the death. If they didn't, their own officers would kill them. It had very little to do with "emperor worship," "Shintoism," and all the other History channel crap that's taught about WWII.

WWII is taught with bias in every country. Probably Germany does the best job of teaching the history of the war. The Eastern Front is less known not just because of American bias, but because the Cold War prevented a lot of documents being accessible to historians for a long time. I personally find the Eastern Front fascinating and wish I knew more about it.

R40, thank you for that informative post. I love reading and learning more about the Pacific theater.

R51 Me too, I find the Eastern Front history to be so much more enthralling simply because there's a lack of American self-promotion of behind it, because Americans weren't there so it's not well-known. It's a shame because it was more important to the defeat of Axis power in WW2 than anything else. Over 80% of German troops killed were lost on the Eastern Front. Hitler did the typical megalomaniacal, insane tactic which is to prolong a lost cause in the Eastern Front fighting the Russians. Both side engaged in sheer brutality against each others' troops. You might as well fight because you'll get shot if captured by the other side, and if you retreat you'll be shot (if you're Russian) by your own troops. The Germans at the end of the war would negotiate surrender or capture by one caveat: we do not wish to surrender to the Russians. They knew what was in store for them if they were captured by the Russians and it wasn't pretty.

I recently learned that the common mallow weed is edible. Not a bad thing to learn during these times..

God. Some of you people must have never seen Hogan’s Heroes. They were always talking about the Russian front.

Is that a historical fact, R54? Is it?

R56, the ancient Greeks used it in preparation for teas and ointments, so in a way, yes, it can be.

What did the meth do for the soldiers?

It made them want to PnP in trashy motel rooms, Rose.

Lithuania was once the largest country in Europe.

'the American Air Force was on meth too'

And that, children is how the Hell's Angels were born.

Every time you do some crystal meth, a Hell's Angel get's a blow job.

Or has to give one. I think it varies from angel to angel.

R58, to enhance performance during combat and to combat trauma witnessed after the violence. They believed it would improve stamina and eliminate fatigue. Many of their war crimes were probably committed under this influence.

I've never used meth but doesn't it cause hyper acuity?

R63, possibly? I've never and would never touch it either. By all accounts, it sounds like one of the most frightful drugs known to man.

German use of amphetamines:

Giving drugs to soldiers to make them more vicious and indifferent to the own welfare, there's a theory that the Viking Berserkers were on mushrooms or some sort of toxic herbs.

I've also heard that the followers of Dionisius in ancient Greece ate toxic ivy leaves as well as drinking wine, which led to, well, partying taken up to the level of human sacrifice and other such hijinks.

The Nazis were the kings of meth. It’s how they kept it together for so long, and also why they fell apart.

Before the invention of dentures, teeth were extracted from the mouths of dead soldiers to use as prosthetics.

R49: maybe he was, but only kind of.

[quote] R46: Churchill said the war was won with British intelligence; American steel; and Russian blood.

I don’t think this is the thread to argue this much debated point; however, I have read, and believe, that the USSR would have surrendered early in the war, as they eventually did in WWI, were it not for American “Lend-Lease“, in which the US sent military equipment to the allies on a future promise for later payment. Massive amounts of equipment was sent to Europe.

R53, interesting. What if Japan had focused its efforts in attacking/invading the USSR from the east instead of engaging with the U.S. in the South Pacific? Possible different outcome to the war?

What I was taught in public school in 1967 about Pearl Harbor was that not only did the Japanese attack without notice, but they did so early on a Sunday, when everybody was in Church! Those bastards! I have since learned that there are some problems with both points, but no matter for now.

The US government actually put poison in alcohol during prohibition.

[quote] Incidentally, the Greatest Generation loves to talk about their war experience

My father & all the men on my block growing up were WW2 vets & they never talked about it. They talked about army stupidity - hurry up & wait - shit on a shingle, c rations. But they never talked about combat or their personal war experience. I did learn when I was in my 20s that one man on our block, who never hung out with the other men on the block, had been a prisoner of war on a German submarine & was the cook. He used to eat with the commander because the commander wanted to better learn English. They kept in touch after the war with Christmas cards.

When I met my FIL he & his friend rambled on & on about their time in the war. I thought it was really strange.

What's going on in the OP's photo?

I was recently reading about the pandemic of 1918-ish, and came upon a study of WWII draft records. The researchers found that men that were born in 1919 were actually smaller (by an average of 1/2 an inch) than those who enlisted and were born in years not affected by the pandemic. The conclusion was that it was because of the “Spanish” flu. Perhaps babies were affected in uterus, or something occurred with the mom after being ill. Men born in 1919 also had a higher incidence of diabetes and heart disease, and quite possibly had more learning disabilities.

The article is a rather dry read but very interesting. For instance, it says, “ Subsequent influenza pandemics and epidemics, while less virulent, have been specifically associated with neurodevelopmental defects, for example, schizophrenia risk was three-fold higher in US cohorts exposed prenatally to influenza during 1959 to 1966”.

It made me realize just how much this current epidemic could affect fetuses, women’s reproductive systems, men’s sperm, etc. and not just the obvious lung scarring and respiratory problems. On one hand, this is terrifying; on the other hand, I find it intriguing.

This became boring and banal fast.

Madonna used to be a popular singer.

U.S. Army infantry were camped out on the ground floor of the White House during the Nixon Administration. It was feared that anti-war protesters would try to storm the White House.

Cleopatra's birth was closer in time to the moon landings than to the building of the pyramids.

About LBJ, sounds fake - but it's not: he had an amphibious car at the LBJ Ranch. He liked to take his guests for a ride through the ranch and then go full-speed ahead into the Pedernales River, shouting "we don't have any brakes!" They have the car on display at the ranch. Fun guy.

In WWII Finnish Jews fought alongside Nazis in Finland.

"There may have been German troops in Finland and the German command and Gestapo in Helsinki, but Finland rejected Hitler’s demands to introduce anti-Jewish laws. When Heinrich Himmler, the architect of the Final Solution, visited Finland in August 1942 and asked the prime minister Jukka Rangell about the “Jewish Question”, Rangell replied: “We do not have a Jewish Question.”"

R51 check out the book Bloodlands.

[quote] R71: [R53], interesting. What if Japan had focused its efforts in attacking/invading the USSR from the east instead of engaging with the U.S. in the South Pacific? Possible different outcome to the war?

The US had imposed an oil embargo and blockade of Japan due to Japan’s aggressive and brutal actions in China. For this reason, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was not at all “unprovoked”. Japan has virtually no oil on its home islands and wanted the oil fields in the Dutch East Indies, Indonesia. They knew they needed to destroy the British and American forces in the region in order to be able to take Indonesia, so that is why they bombed Pearl Harbor, to destroy US Pacific naval forces. The USSR had no significant oil in their East, so there was no reason for Japan to attack them. There was nothing in it for them.

During Vietnam, American soldiers were basically plied with all sorts of drugs.

Hitler had a tremendous flatulence problem.

Happy now, R77?

R74, true, but as 80 and 90 year olds, WWII vets love telling their story.

In post-Revolutionary France, "Guillotine Parties" were all the rage among the newly restored nobility. You could only be invited if you'd narrowly escaped the guillotine yourself or lost a close relative to it, and...

"The most coveted invitation in the late 1790’s Paris, France, came with its own set of manners and dress. To enter, rather than a graceful bow to the host, guests allegedly saluted à la victime, by jerking their heads sharply downwards to imitate the moment of decapitation."

Ladies would wear red ribbons around their necks to mimic the appropriate death wound, and some cut their hair short, as that had been done to female prisoners before execution. Weird, huh.

According to historian Niall Ferguson: "of the 125 major European wars fought since 1495, the French have participated in 50 – more than Austria (47) and England (43). Out of 168 battles fought since 387 BC, they have won 109, lost 49 and drawn 10", making France the most successful military power in European history—in terms of number of fought and won.

R88, oh those whacky French.

I learned something about the war from my mom who grew up in a small town in the Philippines. She was just a child when the Japanese invaded the Philippines. She said the Japanese would wake up everyone up early in the morning, force them into the town square and make them exercise for an hour. She said they weren't really mean (I'm taking this from a child's perspective at the time) except they were strict about this.. When the Americans arrived to take back the island and started fighting the Japanese, she and her family fled into the mountains. From there, she would watch the aerial fights in the sky, the American and Japanese airplanes would circle each other in a dogfight in the sky. The Americans eventually threw the Japanese out and the people went back to the village. They could finally get a good night sleep because the Americans never bothered them and were very nice.

I think that's why Filipinos are so fond America and especially General McArthur. My father would talk endlessly about WW2 and about General McArthur. The Japanese invaded the Philppines when McArthur's forces were there. He fled because he was outnumbered but promised the people he would return and he kept his word. There is a memorial commemorating McArthur and the American landing on the beach in Leyte.

R75 looks like they're waving good luck to the pilots.

Hitler didn't like Jews

There was no way Stalin was surrendering R70

It would have meant death for him and all the party leaders and the enslavement of the Russian people.

The plan was that if Moscow fell, they would just move everyone further back towards Siberia

From Wikipedia: "On 15 October [1941], Stalin ordered the evacuation of the Communist Party, the General Staff and various civil government offices from Moscow to Kuibyshev (now Samara), leaving only a limited number of officials behind."

+1 on the book "Bloodlands" mentioned at R83

It's about that area of Poland, Belorussia and Ukraine that was (a) destroyed by famine in the 1930s, (b) destroyed by the Germans pushing east early in WW2 and (c) destroyed by the Soviets pushing west later in the war.

It's a wonder anyone in that area was still alive in 1945.

Yep, r15. And not just the military: der Führer himself was on a multi-year meth jag during the war, although he may not have realized it -- his personal doctor told him they were vitamins, no joke. It's considered a likely explanation for why he went downhill so fast physically and mentally as the war progressed.

R96 JFK's doctor did the same thing to him later. Is it something about German doctors?

AFTER the war, when free Poland was nominally in Soviet/Allied hands, there was a Jewish pogrom where they expelled and beat and murdered a lot of Jews. Not the NAZIs, the free Polish people!

Historically there were tons of Germans settled in the East, as far as the Baltic countries. The German homeland, “Prussia”, is where much of Poland is today. After the war, all the German settlers East of Germany were either murdered, or sent packing. They had to walk to East Germany.

The pre-war free city-state, Danzig, was a German-majority port city. Hitler wanted a land corridor from Germany to it. The land would have to be ceded by Poland, cutting off their access to the sea, so they refused. Germany was determined to take it. This was one of the excuses for WWII. The city is Polish-majority now (see paragraph immediately above). You may recognize it, Gdańsk, as the place where the Polish anti-Communist movement in the 1980s lead to the end of Communism in Europe around 1989.

It is estimated that at least 3.3 million Soviet POWs died in Nazi custody, out of 5.7 million.

Approximately three million German prisoners of war were captured by the Soviet Union during World War II. The POWs were employed as forced labor in the Soviet wartime economy and post-war reconstruction. By 1950 almost all surviving POWs had been released, with the last prisoner returning from the USSR in 1956.

Basically, it sucked to be a POW on either side on the Eastern front.

All armies were on meth in WW2. Foot soldiers needed it for long marches with little food. Air Force needed it for long reconnaissance missions & bombing missions in Central/Eastern Europe. Navies needed it to stay alert watching for enemy ships, subs, planes, torpedoes at night.

They didn’t use it every day, though. No military force could support hundreds of thousands of meth heads. Psychosis would set in & they’d start killing each other. So it was only used when necessary.

Henry Ford was awarded and accepted Nazi Germany's highest civilian decoration, The Grand Order of the German Eagle. Hitler cited Ford as one of his greatest influences. The Nazi rallies were inspired by American, collegiate pep rallies, according to Ernest Hanfstaengl, Harvard man and Hitler's early political consultant and confidante.

No wonder. The heavy meth use explains a lot of the brutality of the War.

Yes Pierre/R98, that was the July 1946 Kielce pogrom, which took place a full year after the war ended.

When the war ended, the Jews had nowhere to go. They could not go to Israel at the time as the British had it blocked off (see the movie "Exodus" for details on that.)

Many lived in DP (displaced persons) camps in Germany waiting to go to Israel, the US, Canada, Australia, etc. But some tried to go back to their home villages to see if anyone else they knew had survived, if their houses or belongings were there, etc.

As for East Prussia-- two million people lived there -- Google "Kalingrad" on a map to see where the capital Konigsberg was. It was an integral part of Germany and the population was over 80% German. They were all driven west by the Russians and absorbed into Germany along with Germans from Pomerania, the area immediately to the east of the present-day German border.

The Russians basically took the eastern third of pre-war Poland for themselves and then gave the Poles a big chunk of pre-war Germany to the West in exchange.

This it why the plight of the Palestinians is so unnecessary--the Germans took in almost three million German refugees from the Eastern provinces in 1946. If the Arabs had done the same to the Palestinians (there were only a few hundred thousand) in 1948, there would not be the crisis we have now.

^^forgot to add -- the Jews who did return to villages in Poland were sometimes killed or beaten or chased out by Poles who had taken their businesses and/or houses. Their Christian neighbors were not happy to see them again.

Kalingrad, FKA Konigsberg, the capital of East Prussia, site of a major German university and the home of Immanuel Kant, the famous German philosopher.

Napoleon was the same height as Eva Longoria!

Wasn't he, like, 5'6"? That's taller than Eva Longoria.

R106 I always thought he was 5'2

Sorry if already mentioned, but so were soldiers sent to Tiananmen Square. Amphetamines in one form or another have always been used by militaries, including our own.

Benedict Arnold was one of the commanders of the American expedition to conquer Canada.

They had assumed the French settlers would see them as liberators from the English.

Viking helmets never had horns on them. The reason historians for years got this wrong is that the warriors were buried with their helmets, surrounded by animal horns, as a tribute. The helmets never had horns, which would have made fighting side by side almost impossible.

I learned about this story watching a NHK documentary on postwar Japan and how Japan-US relations remains one of the strongest in the world to this day. A 22-year-old naturalized American citizen who spoke 5 languages including fluent Japanese, Beate Sirota Gordon was part of the team of Americans who wrote/ drafted postwar Japan's new constitution. She inserted a clause in the constitution that stipulated equality in matters of marriage, money, property rights, etc...

General George S. Patton was (allegedly) assassinated to silence his criticism of allied war leaders.

The German Pickelhaube helmet, with the spike and used as late as WWI, was intended to deflect saber strikes. Sabers weren’t really used much in WWI.

There was a time when a saber scars were deemed to be dashing (page 2). Perhaps they were the tattoos of their day?

I couldn’t find a picture with both the Pickelhaube and the scar, so maybe the Pickelhaube worked as intended.

"There was a time when a saber scars were deemed to be dashing (page 2). Perhaps they were the tattoos of their day? "

Oh yes! Dueling was fashionable in 19th century Germany at least, and young men considered some nice facial scars to be way cool and proof of their idiotic bravery. But they'd wear nose guards like this one when fighting, possibly combined with goggles, because while facial scars were cool, having your nose sliced clean off would scare away the girls. And losing an eye was just inconvenient.

The stupidity of young straight men is infinite.

R114 Young men in general, not just straight ones.

It costs hundreds of thousands of $ to produce one military academy graduate. The school is free, as is health care & life insurance. Taxpayers pay it all & the students are mediocre to below average, since nepotism is the main prerequisite for admission.

Look at Pompeo. That shithead graduated first in his class

And what is the military nowadays? It’s a giveaway program to contractors.

How did they say Party n Play in Japanese back then?

R116, it's not true that most students at the academies are below average. Yeah, SOME may be dumb freeper assholes, but that's not true for everyone.

Wow. Crystal meth was invented in Japan.

[quote]JFK would have the White House operators find Judy Garland, put him on the line, and she'd sing "Over the Rainbow" to cheer him up.

More like, eight bars and off.

Fuck. It should have started at 8:30.

West Point and Annapolis are far from easy to get into R116

Corn Flakes were created to stop young boys from masturbating.

[quote] West Point and Annapolis are far from easy to get into [R116]

They require political connections & are awarded to relatives of big donors - who are mostly GOP. My fundy cousin’s son was admitted to West Point. His family is yuge in the local Alaskan fundy church. My cousin was sent to Alaska by her church in 1980 as her mission destination. She thought she was going to be sent to Africa ..nope. The church sent her to Alaska because pipeline workers mostly came from red states & had no friends or relatives in Alaska. The attractive girls from her church were sent there to be friendly to the poor lonely christian boys and to bring them to the church for punch & cookies. They were geishas for Jesus.

Common law marriage was outlawed in NY state in 1933.

“From January 1, 1902 to January 1, 1908 common law marriages were abolished. As a result of a legislative error, common law marriages were again permitted in New York from January 1, 1908 to April 29, 1933, when they were finally abolished.”

That's not true R124

You may have had a relative who fell into that bucket, but that is not the case for most students there

[quote] That's not true [R124]

But it is.

“They are centers of nepotism that turn below-average students into average officers. They are indulgences that taxpayers, who fund them, can no longer afford. They’ve outlived their use, and it’s time to shut them down.

No evidence shows that officers who attended civilian colleges, or any one of the U.S. Senior Military Colleges such as the Citadel, are lesser leaders than their service-academy colleagues.

We really have no idea how elite their students are. Admittance requires a nomination from a member of Congress, the vice president, a secretary of the respective military branch or other high-level officials. These nominations are doled out in a process with vague guidelines and nonspecific criteria, making political patronage inevitable. The academies admit recruits according to Title 10, U.S. Code, Section 6954 — which, for guidance, merely says how many cadets can be admitted, who can nominate them and where they can come from. According to an investigation by USA Today, nepotism often governs the nominations, with many going to well-connected families or big-name donors.

Bruce Fleming has complained in numerous media outlets about the low quality of the students he teaches at the Naval Academy, and he says three Freedom of Information Act requests about the admissions process haven’t gotten him any closer to understanding why some students are admitted over others.”

That the late, great Abraham Lincoln was a republican.

The best thread on DL in awhile.

This is completely from memory so some may be wrong. Correct me if you know better:

General Douglas MacAurthor was the last four star general to personally lead men in battle. He deserves another movie. He served in WWI, WWII, and Korea, plus other skirmishes.

In one WWI battle, his men were hesitant. Knowing that they would follow him, he jumped out of his trench and started running towards the German line, with only his sidearm. They did follow him, and won the day. His men were well decorated; however he was not, because he had not fired his sidearm.

Eisenhower once remarked that he studied “Dramatics” as MacAurthor’s aide for some years in the pacific.

He’d have been President if he wasn’t busy running Japan, too old, and if Ike hadn’t already jumped in to the race.

Here he is as military governor of Japan meeting the Japanese Emperor. He was criticized for not wearing a suit, but it was calculated. It established that he was the boss and needn't dress for the Emperor.

He’s my favorite general.

Babylonians believed every man who slept with a pregnant woman was equally the father of the child.

During WW2 a Japanese sub made it all the way to the coast of California and launched a couple of bombs that hit the El Wood Beach the shores in Goleta California, just north of Santa Barbara.

Graham Crackers were invented by Sylvester Graham with the goal of controlling your sexual desires.

The Utrecht sodomy trials

Mississippi - not surprisingly - was the last state to officially abolish slavery and ratify the 13th Amendment. In 2013.

Harry and Bess Truman were known for knocking boots every night loud enough that say, a guard in the hall could hear the thumping. One night Truman goes to his bedroom door asking for help, looking beyond sheepish and embarrassed....he had broken the bed frame with his powerful thrusts and couldn’t fix it.

When Truman had to run his first Presidential campaign after finishing Roosevelt’s term, Truman understood that he was the underdog. He traveled on the trains mostly alone, and would get off at every stop to work up a crowd and give an enthusiastic speech. Then he would get back on the train and nap for 20 minutes til the next stop, and he did this for weeks on end. He knew that he didn’t have enough stamina so he did everything he could to rest and recover from speech after speech after speech.

The race didn’t look good for Truman — not at all. He was predicted to lose. As vote counting wasn’t done but looked like a Truman loss, that is exactly what was reported to the papers....so the incorrect results were printed and sent out to all of America while the final results came in. From Wiki:

The 1948 United States presidential election was the 41st quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 2, 1948. Incumbent President Harry S. Truman, the Democratic nominee, defeated Republican Governor Thomas E. Dewey. Truman's victory is considered to be one of the greatest election upsets in American history.

Truman had acceded to the presidency in April 1945 after the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Defeating attempts to drop him from the ticket, Truman won the presidential nomination at the 1948 Democratic National Convention. The Democratic convention's civil rights plank caused a walk-out by several Southern delegates, who launched a third-party "Dixiecrat" ticket led by Governor Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. The Dixiecrats hoped to win enough electoral votes to force a contingent election in the House of Representatives, where they could extract concessions from either Dewey or Truman in exchange for their support. Truman also faced a challenge from the left in the form of former Vice President Henry A. Wallace, who launched the Progressive Party and challenged Truman's confrontational Cold War policies. Dewey, who was the leader of his party's moderate eastern wing and had been the 1944 Republican presidential nominee, defeated Senator Robert A. Taft and other challengers at the 1948 Republican National Convention.

Truman's feisty campaign style energized his base of traditional Democrats, consisting of most of the white South, as well as Catholic and Jewish voters; he also fared surprisingly well with Midwestern farmers.[5] Dewey ran a low-risk campaign and largely avoided directly criticizing Truman. With the three-way split in the Democratic Party, and with Truman's low approval ratings, Truman was widely considered to be the underdog in the race. Virtually every prediction (with or without public opinion polls) indicated that Truman would be defeated by Dewey.

Defying predictions of his defeat, Truman won the 1948 election, garnering 303 electoral votes to Dewey's 189. Truman won 49.6% of the popular vote compared to Dewey's 45.1%, while the third party candidacies of Thurmond and Wallace each won less than 3% of the popular vote, with Thurmond carrying four southern states. Truman's surprise victory was the fifth consecutive presidential win for the Democratic Party, the longest winning streak for either party since the 1880 election. With simultaneous success in the 1948 congressional elections, the Democrats regained control of both houses of Congress, which they had lost in 1946. Thus, Truman's election confirmed the Democratic Party's status as the nation's majority party.

Yeah R116 - that article is written by an enlisted man, the lowest on the ladder. Of course he'll bitch about the academies and officers. They always bitch about the higher ups - but they don't see everything. They just make assumptions based on the small amount they do see and interact with the officers.

The military has a way of separating the talent - it's not a foregone conclusion that the graduates will become generals or admirals. That's just stupid. And my partner is a 3rd generation Naval Academy graduate, so I do have some knowledge about this topic.

R116/R124/R127 is continuing in the DL tradition of "I read a random opinion piece once and now I am an expert"

Thanks for clarifying R137

So which military actually was more brutal during WWII? Germany or Japan?

Define "brutal" R139

Brutal to be a member of?

Brutal to the enemy?

Brutal to the civilian population in places it had captured?

R140 Brutal towards the enemy and to be captured by

R139 - Japan - in terms of how they treated civilians, captives and POWs.

The Japanese were more hardcore than the Nazis.

They kept on fighting after Hitler and the Germany had already surrendered. The Japanese fought to the death.

The Soviets were brutal to POWs--they would stick captured Germans behind a barbed wire fence and not give them food or shelter

The Germans killed almost one million Jews and Communist party members in Russia just by lining them up and shooting them in ditches. Then they realized gas chambers were more efficient and didn't use up ammunition and make soldiers go off the deep end.

Link is to Babi Yar, where over 100K civilians were killed.

I just found out that Trump is keeping medical supplies from states that have Democratic governors. I am not surprised.

I just found out that Trump is keeping medical supplies from states that have Democratic governors. I am not surprised.

R71: The tiny island nation of Japan had already won wars against the much larger China and Russia. Had they attacked a weakened USSR from the eastern front, it's possible they could have divided the spoils between themselves and Germany.

The Spanish Expulsion and Inquisition of Jews so terrified and traumatised anusim, Jews who were forced to convert under penalty of expulsion/death, that the first openly Jewish wedding was not held in Spain until 1989.

The Murder Hotel. I thought his was just a joke until I looked into it. A serial killer builds a hotel with secret chambers and hallways just to pray on victims who check in but don't check out.

R149, you're probably talking about H.H. Holmes. There's a great non-fiction book about him and the Chicago World Fair which was happening at the same time that's called The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America.

R11

Not quite "offered", as it was a different statue and project never got really going because Egypt realized they couldn't afford it anyway.

When I was in Grade 8 in Canada in the mid-70s (8th grade or junior high to Americans ears) we spent a month studying WWI (The Great War) in history class.

Our teacher would bring out a small projector and he would spool a roll of film through its rings. Then he'd set up the record player for simultaneous audio.

I was so freaked out by the war images of horror and brutality that I had panic attacks and nightmares for days, crying hysterically.

My mother had to call the principal and I was exempted from history for a few weeks, going to the library instead.

At the time, I was an excellent hockey player and track athlete so I never got too much grief for being a 'sissy wimp' because I couldn't handle war.

The next year -- high school -- and Canadian history was a compulsory course.

During a chapter on the Boer War I calmly told the class during a discussion on the subject that I thought it was crazy that Canadian youth were being killed fighting a war in friggin South Africa.

The teacher went apeshit on me.

I later discovered that his brother was a volunteer in the U.S. Army that fought in Vietnam.

So stupid.

President Theodore Roosevelt was so shocked (and quite frankly appalled) that a non-white nation of "yellow skinned people" were beating Russia's military badly he got involved.

It was just beyond the pale that a European nation was losing a war to a non-white nation, so TR mediated the Treaty of Portsmouth which brought an end to the Russo-Japanese war.

Czar Nicholas II paid a price for his stubbornness to negotiate with Japan early one, but he, the Romanov family and Russia paid a greater one about a decade later on July 31, 1914 when Czar signed an imperial order that begins full mobilization of Russia's military. That set into motion chain of events which pretty much began WWI, which was a disaster for Russia, and deadly for most of the Romanovs.

Russia had no business going to war with German or anyone else in 1914; but Nicholas II and others were still bruising from what they saw as defeat in Russo-Japanese war. Everyone believed the lunacy that it would be a short war, and Russia could use it to get some it's own back on the world stage. It didn't work out that way.

Some queen or princess in Spain or France or Portugal never changed her underpants and they grew into her cooter but never dissolved.

Cousin Jerry also told me Rod Stewart had his stomach pumped because he swallowed so many loads. Jerry knew all the random historical facts based on cooters and cocks.

Theodore Roosevelt loathed Chester Arthur's "homosexual" Tiffany & Co make-over of the White House, and had it all. The link below does not mention it, but Roosevelt personally demolished the Tiffany glass screen, which he loathed. He considered it "unmanly".

[quote] Virtually every prediction (with or without public opinion polls) indicated that Truman would be defeated by Dewey. Defying predictions of his defeat, Truman won the 1948 election, garnering 303 electoral votes to Dewey's 189.

And yet amazingly, Dewey and his supporters did not spend the next year blaming everyone and everything under the sun for his loss. He took responsibility and moved on.

Dewey took his loss on the chin. Like a man.

Truman was a racist, uneducated man who somehow ascended to the presidency against all odds. Horribly racist against Blacks and non-Whites and on a level that was quite awful even for a person of his time/ upbringing. He was giddy with joy upon hearing that the A-bomb was dropped, on his order, on Hiroshima. This despite evidence that it was unnecessary and most of the intel and military brass advising against. its use, including Eisenhower, MacArther among others. The main use of the A-bomb was not to end the war in the Pacific as it's been promoted against historical facts, as more documents are coming to light. Rather, it is to teach communist Russia a lesson, a sort of "see what we've got here and we're not afraid to use it on innocent civilians".

Despite the popular idea that majority of the top military and intelligence brass were for dropping the bomb on Hiroshima, most were definitely not. This was known then and more so in the past couple of decades as documents become available.

Mrs. Doubtfire looks great @ R111!

Meh - I don't give much credit to those theories about the A-bomb dropping being unneeded and a mistake. Nobody knows to what extent Japan was going to keep fighting, but we did have the past several years as an indication.

If it sped up the end, fine by me. You can't crystal ball and say they would have accepted defeat graciously - not after what we saw in their campaigns and how prepared the Japanese were ready to die for the cause.

Besides, we more than made up for that by helping them get back on their feet and become the industrial power they are today. Why isn't that talked about? We didn't seek revenge and keep them down - quite the opposite. Same with Germany. If roles were reversed, no WAY their governments would have been as humanitarian and forgiving as the Allies.

Don't give too much sympathy to what the Germans and Japanese experienced at the tail end of the war and just afterwards. Compared to the horrors they instilled on everyone else and the great economies they ended up with in less than a generation later, they did just fine.

"Truman was a racist"

R159 If so, why did end segregation of the armed forces in July of 1948 by an Executive Order (it was a move that would have never passed in the House or the Senate) when he faced 1: a Presidential election, and 2: the breakaway of Southern racists, aka "Dixiecrats", led by Strom Thurmond and dividing the Democratic vote in the South?

While plenty of military experts later expressed doubt or regret about using the atomic bomb, the scientists who built it were overwhelmingly in favor of its use. As for military opposition at the time, "In later years, several key figures, including General Dwight D. Eisenhower, General Douglas MacArthur, Admiral William Leahy, and Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy, claimed to have opposed using the bomb, but there is no firm evidence of any substantial contemporary opposition."

I didn't know that Venice, Italy was at one time an independent nation.

"While plenty of military experts later expressed doubt or regret about using the atomic bomb, the scientists who built it were overwhelmingly in favor of its use."

Gee, I wonder why. " If it works and kills a lot of people, we will become famous and make a lot of money."

England had a flourishing gay subculture as early as the early 1700s

Nineteenth-century prison governors in some coastal states of the US were forbidden to feed their prisoners lobster more than a few times a week, as it was considered a “cruel and unusual” privation.

I always knew that The Jazz Singer premiered at the Warner theater on Broadway, but I have always thought that the Warner was the same theater as the Strand, since the Strand had eventually changed its name to Warner.

I only yesterday learned/realized that the Warner and the Strand were two different theaters.

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, most cities only had three TV channels which you could only watch via an antenna on the roof or on top of the TV.

R164, the republics of Venice and Genoa used to battle it out for control of the Mediterranean Sea. Eventually, Venice came to dominate, launched crusades, and sacked Constantinople, which was the beginning of the end of the Byzantine Empire.

Before the Final Solution, the Germans planned to send all the Jews to Madagascar.

Up until the 80s and 90s, household appliances in England didn't come with power cords. You would buy a hairdryer/mixer and then have to buy a cord and wire it yourself. I think it was because it gave everybody a better working-knowledge of electricity. I can't find anything about it by Googling.

On that note--just learned this a few minutes ago-- legendary mime Marcel Marceau was a hero of the French Resistance who "Few people know that Marceau helped thousands of orphaned children escape the Nazis before he ever painted his face white, but Jakubowicz only uses that incredible factoid as the hook for a shoddy and generic war saga about the Jewish Resistance in France ."

I thought R172 was some kind of historical EST. What he claimed did not seem rational. But then a google search showed he was telling the truth.

R173 Was it because he was good at being quiet as a mouse?

r174 Please paste that?

"Virtually every prediction (with or without public opinion polls) indicated that Truman would be defeated by Dewey. Defying predictions of his defeat, Truman won the 1948 election, garnering 303 electoral votes to Dewey's 189."

[quote]And yet amazingly, Dewey and his supporters did not spend the next year blaming everyone and everything under the sun for his loss. He took responsibility and moved on.

Truman won the popular vote, too, not just the electoral, Boris.

"Nineteenth-century prison governors in some coastal states of the US were forbidden to feed their prisoners lobster more than a few times a week, as it was considered a “cruel and unusual” privation. "

There's a bit in "Little Women", where they're throwing a party for Amy's friends, and they can't afford chicken. And have to settle for lobster.

[quote] There's a bit in "Little Women", where they're throwing a party for Amy's friends, and they can't afford chicken. And have to settle for lobster.

Oh, those poor dears -- having to settle for just lobster!

When you think about it, lobsters are marine cockroaches, sharing the same common ancestor as your average household roach, Blattaria. It is easy to see why it was once considered pauper's meat, reserved for animals, prisoners, and indentured servants.

This thread is too much about war and not enough about actual interning historical facts.

MUST DEFEND QUEEN

MUST CALL ALL OPPONENTS OF QUEEN BORIS OR NATASHA

During the Great Molasses Flood of 1919, the tsunami of hot, sticky molasses reached speeds of up to 35 miles per hour.

My brother’s childhood friend was promoted to Navy Captain. My bro asked me if I knew what that meant. I said I didn't, but he insisted, annoyingly, saying that I knew this, so I queried that, “He outranks Commander Bond?” Hmm, no that wasn’t it. He meant that further promotions required Congressional approval. I did not know that.

The friend eventually became an Admiral in charge of the Pacific fleet of submarines, I understand. He was squeezed-out in middle age and now works for Google, reporting to a former Navy Lieutenant, which they both find hilarious, for some reason. He came in full dress Navy Whites to my Dad’s funeral and saluted, which was quite moving, too, as Dad served in WWII at probably the lowest rank possible.

An Air Force Captain, equivalent to a Navy Lieutenant I understand*, who I once knew, once remarked that he liked visiting Navy bases because, while he might “Captain” a multimillion dollar airplane or equivalent, he was not equivalent in rank to a guy who Captains a billion dollar nuclear submarine, though the Navy guys often didn’t realize this.

*correct me if I’m wrong here, military gays.

Anywhere from 50,000 to 500,000 people were killed for being witches in Europe from 1200 to the present.

Robin Quivers from Howard Stern occasionally mentions that she was a Captain in the Air Force. I knew she was a nurse, but if you enter the service with a college or professional degree like a nurse, you enter as a Captain.

One of the greatest events in the 20th century, IMHO, was the mostly peaceful fall of the Berlin Wall and associated end of European Communism. I recall watching the news as events unfolded and was amazed as events occurred so seemingly quickly. The world could have burned in Atomic war, but after decades of threats, we got out of it fairly peacefully.

Youngish DataLoungers, watch “Atomic Blond” for an entertaining movie situated in Berlin during the fall.

MacArthur secretly granted immunity to the physicians of Unit 731, including their leader, in exchange for providing America, but not the other wartime allies, with their research on biological warfare and data from human experimentation.

Unit 731 was a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that undertook lethal human experimentation during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) of World War II.

I was there, R187, on break from studies in the UK. It was the place to be, a huge party atmosphere. I went on to Poland and other Middle European destinations. Joyous times. Very cruisey, too, BTW.

The Ragusa Republic, now the city of Dubrovnik, was the first country to recognize the newly independent United States.

Continuing from R187...

In brief, the Berlin Wall fell by a mistake in communications. The East Germans intended to open the wall for some people for limited time on a limited schedule. The East German spokesman got a brief message and read it live on TV. He was asked when it was effective, and said, “I assume immediately.” (Wrong!)

The East German people swarmed the Wall and the guards there could not get through on the jammed phone lines to their superiors for confirmation. No one wanted to issue a “shoot order”, as the regime was unstable by then and they all feared being prosecuted, or had a conscience, so they did not, and people streamed through the crossings.

Cool, R189!

At link, East German border guard defects in 1961.

[quote]the republics of Venice and Genoa used to battle it out for control of the Mediterranean Sea.

And that's how Marco Polo came to tell his adventures. He was from Venice and had been fighting for them. He was captured and held in a Genoese prison. A cellmate wrote down the stories he told.

Both Germany and Italy have been a collection of small independent nations and city-states for most of the last thousand years, tiny nations that were constantly jockeying for position and going to war with each other. Both nations unified in the 19th century, and officially got rid of the royalty and nobility that had been petty-kings under the old system.

Sicily used to be an independent nation, with a king.

[quote] R58: What did the meth do for the soldiers?

Pilots needed it to stay awake on long, sometimes boring bombing runs.

R119, and amphetamine was invented in Germany in the 19th century.

Meth use in WWII definitely struck a chord here.

Sleepy little Salem, Massachusetts was the 10th largest US city as late as 1820.

That ol' George Washington bought his position with booze by supplying the most quantity and variety at the voting polls. That he's the first in a long line of southern bastards who screwed over soldiers who fought that war by confiscating their property when they didn't pay the fledgling country the first round of taxes. They didn't have the money because they weren't paid. Instead, the asshole gave pay raises to his officers and lots of land in the new 'frontier' to his favorites while folks like Daniel Shays had to run for their lives because they had the nerve to fight back.

America - drenched in hypocrisy since day one.

The only man who was executed as a witch in Salem, Massachusetts, was 80-something Giles Corey. They laid him down, then put boards on him, and put rocks on the board to crush him.

The law at the time was that, if he entered a plea of either guilty or not guilty, the city could seize his substantial property. So, after they added one heavy stone after another on the boards, and demanded a plea, he would call-out, “More weight”. Accordingly, he died and his children inherited.

He is said to haunt his execution spot, to this day. I can attest to seeing multiple ghosts in that cemetery, myself. When asked if they’re a ghost, expect them to deny it, and then ask you if you’re a ghost. That’s a sure giveaway.

Incidentally, there is a plaque in his memory at the Old Burial Point Cemetery in Salem, on the tourist route. He actually was executed and buried in another nearby location, which later became the much neglected Howard Street Cemetery in Salem, off of the tourist route.

The Holy Roman Empire was neither Holy nor Roman.

Discuss

In 1307, the French King, Philip IV, owed so much money to the Knights Templar, that he captured or killed all the French Knights, to abrogate his debt. The knights were not as poorly treated in other countries.

Also, the Nazis confiscated much of the European Jewish property during the 1930s.

Likewise, Saddam Husain borrowed a lot of money from Kuwait, to finance his long war against Iran, in the 1980s. He later decided it was cheaper to invade and pillage Kuwait, as he did, than to pay back his loans..

There are a lot of similar historical incidences. It doesn’t pay well to have more money than your neighbors.

The Bonus Army was a group of 43,000 demonstrators – made up of 17,000 U.S. World War I veterans, together with their families and affiliated groups – who camped in Washington, D.C. in mid-1932 to demand early cash redemption of their service certificates. The certificates were not to be redeemed until 1948, but it was the Depression and the Vets wanted payout early.

President Hoover ordered the Bonus Army’s disbandment and MacArthur to physicality dispersed the Bonus Army.

I recently learned that in the 1920s, women made DIY mascara from petroleum jelly and black soot or coal.

Around 1820, the trip from Newport RI, to Boston, MA, required a midway, overnight stay. (It’s two hours, today). They would prearrange a midway stay with a friend of a friend’s, who were eager to host, to break-up the monotony.

My Newport relative at that time also wrote about how hard it was to even get a letter delivered between the two cities. She once wrote that some acquaintance was planning on traveling by horse to Boston in a few weeks, and would hand-carry her letter then, to her sister in Boston.

In Boston at that time, the local newspapers would run a regular notice which listed the names of people who had incoming mail at the local Post Office, awaiting pickup.

Early in my lifetime, the Post Office would make multiple, regular home mail deliveries. Two or three deliveries, IIRC.

Canada did have Michigan at the end of the War of 1812. At the end of the Revolutionary war yes. They didn't have it after the war of the Fenian Brotherhood either. America has invaded Canada several times.

Canada DID NOT have Michigan, wonder how that got left out. They had lost it and were embarrassed when they were crushed at the Battle of the Thames near London ON

The Spanish Flu started out in Kansas.

R184 - My partner is a retired Navy Captain (equivalent to Colonel in Army and Air Force). The general public often mistakes Army and Air Force captains for the higher rank of the Navy Captain, but most on a Navy base would not.

Army and Air Force Captains are 3 officer levels lower than a Navy Captain, which is a huge gap. If you go 3 ranks up from Captain in Navy, you're right under Chief of Naval Operations (or Army Chief of Staff) - the highest level.

There may be some lower enlisted at gate security who may not know the difference, but I would think anyone in for a couple years or more would know.

Besides - they can tell by your stripes and symbol. Unless you have the outstretched Eagle symbol and all the stripes, they know you're not a Naval Captain.

Israel was planned to go in Paraguay after the latter had been depopulated in the Gran Chaco war, but the English Plymouth Brethren Christians, following an end times prophecy, demanded it be in Palestine.

Wasn't Baja California also put out there as an option for Israel?

The Nazis considered sending European Jews to Madagascar.

Speaking of which, despite its seeming proximity to Africa, Madagascar was first settled by people from the Malay Archipelago between 200 BC and 500 AD, not by Africans.

Romania was spelled Rumania or Roumania until around 1975, when it was changed to its current spelling.

[quote] MacArthur secretly granted immunity to the physicians of Unit 731, including their leader, in exchange for providing America, but not the other wartime allies, with their research on biological warfare and data from human experimentation.

We let the Japanese get away with a lot of shit because the Cold War intensified very quickly in the late 40s. The Japanese were happy to work with the US because they had feared a Soviet invasion far more than whatever the Americans would bring. They were genuinely shocked with the Soviets declared war on August 9 1945. Historians now believe that, and not the atomic bomb, was the decisive factor in convincing them to surrender.

R197, R199: in Colonial Massachusetts, Salem Town and Salem Village were two distinct settlements.

In 1692, the Salem Witch Trials took place in Salem Village.

In 1752, Salem Village changed its name to Danvers, at least partly to get away from the stigma of the trials. Afterwards, Salem Town became just Salem.

Salem makes a big deal of its — nonexistent — history of witchcraft, using it to attract gullible tourists. If you're in Salem and someone tells you about "Things that happened here back then… " the chances are very good that whatever you're being told is bullshit.

[quote] R213: They were genuinely shocked with the Soviets declared war on August 9 1945. Historians now believe that, and not the atomic bomb, was the decisive factor in convincing them to surrender.

Stalin was massing troops in the east as he had promised at Potsdam to declare war against Japan within a certain time period. However, he delayed and delayed until [italic] after [/italic] the US dropped the first A-bomb. He knew the war was almost over and entered it so as to claim some of the spoils.

If one argues that Japan only surrendered because the Soviets entered the war, one can argue that the Soviets only entered it when they did because the US dropped the bomb, meaning the bomb was still the decisive factor.

In order to make the A-Bomb, the US needed huge amounts of copper wiring for the manufacturing process, as it’s a cheap, efficient electrical conductor. Copper had other wartime uses, so it was a problem. The bomb-makers eventually borrowed tons of silver from the Treasury, melted it down, and used it in lieu of copper. It’s a better conductor, but far more expensive, of course.

"Salem makes a big deal of its — nonexistent — history of witchcraft, using it to attract gullible tourists. If you're in Salem and someone tells you about "Things that happened here back then… " the chances are very good that whatever you're being told is bullshit."

There are some very nice historical attractions in Salem that don't (directly) involve witchcraft. Lots of nice colonial architecture and I really liked the House of the Seven Gables.

[quote] but after decades of threats, we got out of it fairly peacefully.

It’s baaaack!

[quote] They were genuinely shocked with the Soviets declared war on August 9 1945. Historians now believe that, and not the atomic bomb, was the decisive factor in convincing them to surrender.

Haha.

Internet Russian propaganda.

Ya gotta love it.

Glory holes date back to 1707 (or even earlier)

Nobody was "shocked" when Russia invaded, least of all Hirohito. But the bomb did shock him.

R136, Somewhere I got the impression that Dewey was a huge crook, along the lines of our present occupant of the WH. Is this true? Was he involved with organized crime?

TIA

You're thinking of Snidely Whiplash, because he had the same mustache.

A few years before Queen Victoria took the throne, 96% of adult men did not have the vote.

R209/R210 -- Google shows no evidence of either of those scenarios nor does Wikipedia

[quote] Also, the Nazis confiscated much of the European Jewish property during the 1930s.

They confiscated property from GERMAN Jews in the 1930s, but WW2 didn't start until Sept 1939, R201

But the German Jewish community was fairly small--around half a million

Most of the German Jews escaped the Shoah--close to 60% of them emigrated before the start of WW2 given how hellish the Nazis were making life for the Jews

Of the 214K who were left, it is estimated that 180K were killed.

The Nazis took artwork from Jewish collectors in France, Holland, Belgium, Austria and Germany

Local inhabitants took most of the property the generally impoverished Polish Jews (there were 3.3 million of them)

Raven were almost wiped out in the British isles. Wild ravens are a locally endangered or extremely rare, and the famous ravens in the Tower of Lindon are semi-tame, and have a human keeper. (Or servant.)

Ravens were thought of as dangerous to livestock for centuries, do farmers killed them whenever possible, reducing numbers to a few thousand. Here in California I can sed hundreds out in the fields, doing no harm th o ygd farm country.

Another interesting Shoah-related fact:

There was a Jewish ghetto in Shanghai, China during WW2

It was populated by German, Austrian and Polish Jews who had fled the Nazis and somehow made their way across Russia to China, which was then occupied by the Japanese.

There were also Lithuanian Jews who were saved by the Japanese counsel in Kaunas, Chiune Sugihara and Viennese Jews who had been saved by the Chinese counsel there Ho Feng Shan. (Both have been given Righteous Among Nations award from the Israeli government)

Nazis being Nazis, the Germans tried to convince the Japanese to turn over the Jews in the Shanghai ghetto so they could gas them. (There were trials about this after the war.) This is how obsessed and insane they were.

Peter Max, Laurence Tribe and Michael Blumenthal were among the more notable names who lived in the Shanghai ghetto

R172 R176 I was taught how to wire a mains plug at school. I was also told that the reason why there were no plugs on appliances as standard is due to the wide variety of different sockets that had grown over the years since 1863 when the first house (Cragside, Northumberland) went electric. Sockets where of a different size according to current capacity, small 5 amp ones for table lamps, and a much larger 15 amp for electric fires etc. so appliances were sold without a plug so you could choose the one to suit your age of socket, and for that matter, your supplier. Why it carried on until the 1987 legislation forced it I would imagine to be a mix of we've always done it this way, and also for manufacturers to save money.

The now UK standard 3 square pin socket and plug first came out in 1947, and incorporated a fuse due to the high currents available in the ring main circuits that had been devised as a way to save on valuable copper just after the war. It's a clever design, perfect separation of the live circuits, cannot be pulled out by the cable, incorporates a longer earth pin that makes contact first and unsheathes the live side in the socket when inserted. I believe that US circuits are radial and so every outlet is fused at the main board but I digress.

Internet Russian prop that’s been going on since at least 2003:

1) Truman was a racist. That’s why he used the A bomb on Japan.

We’d firebombed German cities causing massive loss of civilian lives & more importantly, loss of our aircraft & their crews. Was that not heinous enough? What was worse about Hiroshima & Nagasaki? Nothing. What was better? No loss of US aircraft & crews. We’d surely have used an A bomb against Germany if we hadn’t already bombed their cities to rubble causing them to surrender.

2) Stalingrad! Stalingrad! Stalingrad!

The US did nothing & the UK was just barely holding on with its fingernails. But the glorious Red Army won WW2 singlehandedly! The Russian Front cause much more loss of life to Germans! The Russians slaughtered Germany while pinky-sized UK was only left standing because it was too far away for Germany to destroy. German bombs hardly killed anyone in the UK & the population was relatively safe while Russian civilians were bravely giving their lives across thousand of miles of frontier, defeating the Hun. Stalingrad ended WW2, nothing else. Puny allied bombing raids behind Germany’s European lines were like mosquito bites & the European land invasion was just a mop up operation because the majority of German soldiery had been transferred to the eastern front to fight the indomitable Red Army which was dealing the mighty death blows to the Third Reich, thus winning the Great Patriotic War.

German concentration camps were franchises. In the US we know the names of Auschwitz, Dachau, Bergen Belsen. But there were hundreds of concentration camps across Europe. There were 23 main camps & they had subsidiary camps. Or chain camps, if you will, 900 in total.

Tweak to that R231-- we know the names of the ones that were liberated because they were put back in operation to kill the Hungarian Jews in late 1944

But camps like Sobibor had been shut down because they'd already killed all of the Polish and Lithuanian Jews.

The most chilling thing about the Shoah is the way the Germans managed it, as if it were just another industrial project. with operations and logistics and goals and performance reviews.

Bear steaks used to be considered a delicacy during the Gold Rush era.

The nations of Panama, Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador used to be combined as one larger Republic prior to 1830 -- called Gran Colombia.

R186

In response to dire need and shortage of nurses during WWII US military gave all professional nurses officer rank upon enlisting. This even though vast majority of nurses in 1940's were gradates of diploma nursing schools and did not have an ADN or BSN degree.

You have to remember United States then nor now has ever drafted women (IIRC), so to get trained professional nurses (a profession largely made up of females), US military had to offer inducements. Yes, a good number of nurses or women willing to attend cadet schools did sign up voluntarily, but numbers just weren't enough.

Giving professional nurses officer rank also was meant to cope with issues they had dealing with enlisted men who often worked in field, ship, and other hospital/healthcare settings as orderlies or whatever. Men in general back then didn't like being told what to do by females even in private life, and certainly balked in military setting. Telling another enlisted solider, sailor or whoever to fuck off is one thing; saying that or ignoring a direct order from an officer OTOH could cause serious trouble.

"Bear steaks used to be considered a delicacy during the Gold Rush era. "

California gold rush era miners ate piss-poor diets, they'd take some flour, beans, or jerky into the mountains and that would be what they'd live on, some of them probably got scurvy if they didn't hunt and get some fresh meat.

If they had a big strike and had money to spend, they'd go into town and get hammered, and order the miner's ultimate luxury food - a Hangtown Fry! That'd be a big plate of eggs and oysters fried up, and was fantastically expensive because oysters had to be hauled from the coast to the Gold Country and kept chilled in the era before refrigeration. I'm told hangtown frys have made a bit of a culinary comeback these days, but I've never seen one on a menu.

Mommy served in the WACS in the Philippines.

I’ve to,d this story on DL before. My high school friend’s mother was a nurse on a ship in WW2. They were told they were to be ready to. invade Japan. The Catholic nurses were told by their Chaplin that they had a special dispensation from the pope to commit suicide if they were to be captured by the Japanese. Suicide is a mortal sin in Catholicism but the Japanese has been so brutal in Nanking & other areas that the nurses were told it would be better to die by their own hand than be captured & tortured by the Japanese.

R237

Was she really up on things?

Why, yes, R239, she was.

R240

Did she warn you off certain persons because "you never know what you'll catch"?

R238 An older Australian friend who has since gone on to her reward told me a lot about life in Australia in the early 1940's. Two things that I remember...

The first was that in the event of a Japanese invasion her father, a farmer, told his wife and daughters he'd shoot them and then himself if the alternative was surrender to the Japanese.

The other (and even more surprising, given her generation's blatant racism) was that as a teenager during WWII, she said nothing was more intriguing to her and her girlfriends than the newly arrived American GI's, most especially the black GI's because they were 1: perfect gentlemen "unless you didn't want them to be," and 2: they could dance far better than any Australian male they'd ever met.

R236, that Hangtown Fry actually looks pretty good.

Speaking of diets, John Muir apparently was always near the verge of starving -- he would subsist on bread and tea that he would take on his wilderness expeditions. Occasionally, he would indulge in manzanita berries.

R241, yes, but Mommy wasn’t one of those, I’d known her all these years.

In 1919 there was a huge gay scandal in Newport,Rhode Island where sailors were enlisted to entrap gay Navy personnel and the civilians they hooked up with. The local gay hangout was the YMCA (of course)

R245 You forgot the most headline making part of that scandal. Franklin Roosevelt then Assistant Secretary of the Navy was rebuked by Congress for his role in orchestrating the entrapment.

Regarding the numerous conflicting theories about the use of the bomb at the end of WWII - I can strongly recommend an excellent documentary from PBS American Experience named "Victory in the Pacific".

Done in 2005, about 2 hours long, this documentary describes what was happening politically, diplomatically and militarily in multiple countries during the last months of the war in the Pacific.

It starts with VE Day (Victory in Europe) and contains interviews with historians from the USA, Japan, and Russia. Discusses the debate about the bomb in the US. Parallels with the huge ramping up of Japanese preparations for the invasion they knew was coming, including training civilians, including children to combat the expected Allied troops. Add to that was, as the diplomatic scenarios were being discussed (Japan would not surrender without maintaining it's military), and Japan's attempt to get Russia to act as an intermediary between Japan and the USA, it clearly showed the ongoing increase of Japanese troops that were being pulled out of the rest of the Far East (including China) and being stationed in the part of Japan that was likely to be first invaded (a correct assumption).

This excellent documentary shows historical documents from the US, Japan, and Russia and interviews historians from multiple countries to clarify what was happening in all the countries involved.

An excellent, excellent documentary.

^^ I forgot to add that "Victory in the Pacific" can also be found on Youtube.

The Irish were considered non-white when they immigrated to America. Monkey people. Oh, wait, wrong thread. Pandora's box. Sorry.

For a serious, in depth picture of military actions on the Eastern Front during WWII, I suggest you watch the episodes of "The World at War" which dealt with that campaign.

Brutal, brutal battles, often with whole Russian armies being captured and marched away as POWs (only a small percentage of whom came home).

The WWII campaign in North Africa is usually described first, as the brilliant actions of the German General Rommel and then later by the brilliant actions of the British General Montgomery.

While both of these men had healthy egos, the truth is that the success of both was due significantly to the intelligence they received. In Rommel's case, German spies were providing him information about the Allied army and later, when Montgomery arrived, he was receiving intelligence derived from the Bletchley codebreakers.

In WWII, after Dunkirk and the Fall of France, Germany was planning to invade the UK. However, for the plan (known as "Operation Sea Lion") to succeed, the RAF needed to be destroyed.

To that end, the Luftwaffe's air campaign targeted British air fields and installations. They were succeeding at having a devastating impact.

During one bombing run, a German bomber became lost in the fog, and failing to find its target, simply dropped its bombs and headed home. The bomb load, quite by chance, landed in London.

Churchill, enraged that the Germans would bomb London, ordered a huge RAF bombing raid on Berlin.

Hitler, after the RAF raid on Berlin, was so enraged at the RAF bombing Berlin, he ordered that the Luftwaffe abandon their strategy of attacking airfields and installation and instead begin to bomb British cities and civilians.

Therefore, the RAF was able to survive, since their airfields and installations were no longer the primary targets.

Result was that Hitler had to abandon plans for "Operation Sea Lion".

I'm grateful to all of you who did not take this opportunity to share long-winded military history geek posts about World War II. Much appreciated!

In the late 19th century, Heroin was marketed under that trademark name as a non-addictive morphine substitute and cough suppressant.

r45, maybe the designer, Bartholdi was naive. It was supposed to be at the entrance of the Suez canal.

The American Indian wars didn’t entirely end until 1924. Less than 100 years ago.

There have been two modern attempts at connecting the Pan-American highway between Panama and Colombia through the Darien Gap -- the 100 mile stretch of thick jungle, marsh, swamps, and rivers that otherwise prevents a complete 29,000-mile stretch of road between Alaska and Argentina. Both attempts, one in the early '70s and another in the early '90s, ended in failure.

r162, Japan was ready to surrender they were just trying to get the emperor off the hook by adding it as a condition. The bomb was not needed but they US wanted to test it. They were also worried about the Soviet Union and wanted to send a message about what they had.

Eva Peron could have collected frequent flyer miles after she died.

Her embalmed, some would say mummified, remains traveled almost 15,000 miles before finally being returned the Argentina 23 years after she died. When Peron's regime fell in 1955, it was eventually decided that "nowhere in Argentina was a safe place to keep the body and the military junta ordered it to be transported to Europe. It was shipped to the West German capital Bonn and buried in the garden of the ambassador’s residence. Next it was whisked to Milan and buried in a cemetery under the name Maria Maggi. Finally in 1971 Argentina’s new military leader, General Alejandro Lanusse, struck a deal with Juan Peron, where the exiled president would give his blessing to the military regime as long as Eva’s body was returned to him.

When the body arrived in Madrid with Peron and his new wife Isabel, he is supposed to have cried: “She is not dead. She is only sleeping.”

The coffin was kept at the Peron mansion, usually in a bedroom, but often on the dining room table.

There are reports Isabel used to lie inside the coffin with the body, “to soak up Evita’s magic vibrations”.

I am a historian with a specialization in Asia. I just wanted to say that this thread has a lot of interesting and accurate stuff in it. It's actually very impressive, considering this is an anonymous message board.

[quote] For a serious, in depth picture of military actions on the Eastern Front during WWII, I suggest you watch the episodes of "The World at War" which dealt with that campaign.

I just recommended those episodes to students the other day. There is no better series on World War II than The World at War.

In the late '30s, with Hitler's anti-Semitic decrees being adopted throughout Germany and Austria, the Jews were looking for places to escape, but were met with many countries closing their doors. Philippines President Manual Quezon, however, instituted an Open Door policy and wished to welcome tens of thousands of them to the Philippines and settle them in Mindanao.

However, the Philippines was still a commonwealth of the US around this time, and the US refused to extend that many visas, so a limit was imposed: 1,000 Jews a year, over a ten year period. An estimated 1,200-2,000 German/Austrian Jews arrived in Manila the first couple of years, but the Japanese invaded and captured the islands the following year, putting an abrupt end to the exodus. Ironically, the Japanese left the Jews alone because they carried German and Austrian passports; and hence, were considered their allies.

R259 I've often thought ALW should write a sequel to Evita, focused on Isabel, who actually became President of Argentina but was forever in the shadow of and compared to Eva.

[quote] R258: Japan was ready to surrender they were just trying to get the emperor off the hook by adding it as a condition.

For Japan, the Allies discreetly changed earlier demands for “unconditional surrender”, to “unconditional military surrender”, so as to allow for the condition that the Japanese could keep their emperor. The allies also realized that they needed the Emperor to control the population, since the Japanese accepted orders from the Emperor. It was a smart move, even if it meant ignoring the Emperor’s and other royals’ complicity in war crimes.

But I have to disagree with R258 that the A-bombs were unnecessary; or for that matter, more merciful, that continued firebombing of Japanese cities.

The $2 and $5 bank notes from 1862/1863, linked, were in the first series of bank notes issued by the Federal government, under President Lincoln, to help finance the Civil War. Previously and for a while afterwards, bank notes were usually issued by individual banks.

If the Japanese did not surrender, the next step in Allied bombing was to be the Japanese railroads.

This would have meant the death by starvation of thousands of Japanese civilians with food coming into the cities by rail.

The death toll by starvation would have been high.

The seaside town of Marblehead, Massachusetts was blockaded by the British during the Revolution. Lacking an income, many of the mariners there joined the Continental Army.

At one point, Washington had his back to the East River, with the British surrounding him. The British were going to charge in the morning to destroy Washington’s army. Washington called on the Marblehead boys to re-assemble the disassembled boats that they carried, which they did. Being expert mariners, they were able to silently ferry Washington’s entire army, including cannon and horses, across the river overnight. The British were clueless, and stormed an empty American campsite in the morning.

Practically the exact same thing happened the following Christmas Eve, this time with the Marblehead boys ferrying the army across the Delaware and escaping the British there. The Americans marched on Trenton that night, surprising and capturing a Hession fort there. His success that night gave hope to the Colonies, as the American side was better at avoiding battles than at winning them.

At the link is a painting done about 1820, by my first cousin from Marblehead. It’s a copy of the 1819 Thomas Sully original.

The Marblehead Militia marched from their town, 16 miles to Boston on June 17, 1775, in time to join the Battle of Bunker Hill. They were the only unit to engage the British in artillery fire that day. The Marblehead commander was misidentified and arrested immediately after the battle for disobeying orders and refusing to engage the British. It was straightened out rather quickly, but when the heroic commander was released, he was so disgusted that he walked home and refused to take up arms again.

My 14 year-old, 4th great grandfather, served as a drummer boy and marched with the militia to Bunker Hill. A week later, he and other former Marblehead militiamen enlisted in the Continental Army and served 9 months in Cambridge, under Washington, during the siege of Boston.

Elbridge Gerry, signer of the Declaration of Independence, 5th Vice President, father of the political process of ”gerrymandering”, and my namesake, was also from Marblehead.

Marblehead is sometimes referred to as the home of the US Navy.

Cornwallis, apparently not wanting to face Washington, claimed to be ill on the day of the surrender, and sent Brigadier General Charles O'Hara in his place to surrender his sword formally. Washington had his second-in-command, Benjamin Lincoln, accept Cornwallis' sword.[64]

At the surrender at Yorktown, British General Charles Lord Cornwallis, apparently not wanting to face Washington, claimed to be ill and sent British Brigadier General Charles O'Hara in his place to surrender his sword formally. Washington stepped aside and had his second-in-command, Benjamin Lincoln, accept Cornwallis' sword.

The British soldiers were allowed to march out after surrendering their weapons and pledging not to re-engage in military operations further. When they marched out, their band played the song “The World Turned Upside-Down”.

The Berlin Wall ran between the Brandenburg Gate, symbol of Germany; and the adjacent German Reichstag Parliament building, obviously as a giant, symbolic FY to the Germans.

If you were an orphan in NYC prior to the end of the practice in 1929, you could have been taken to the midwest on what was called an "Orphan Train".

I'll ask my creative writing teacher if your stories are true R136. Bess was his aunt and they all lived together at the family home in Missouri before during (vacations) and after the presidency, so I'm sure he'd have heard Harry slamming to the Mrs. at some point.

Just finished reading a new play; Springtime For Hitler. Did you know, I never knew that the Third Reich meant Germany. I mean it's just drenched with historical goodies like that...

I didn't know the Japanese military managed an attack against a mainland American military site -- when a submarine attacked Fort Stevens at the mouth of the Columbia River along the Oregon coast.

Are all these long-winded history lessons things each poster has "only just learned?"

I recently learned that R275 was an insufferable boy in class back in the 1960s.

R275

As is wont to happen with DL thread has veered off course, but still entertaining none the less. Ride the wave.

Last battle of the U.S. Civil War was at Palmito Ranch in Texas. It was a decisive Confederate victory.

Ms. Boleyn had a double nail and a bulge of flesh on the little finger of her right hand that was apparently the beginnings of a sixth digit, and she also had a strawberry-size mole on the front of her neck. Conceivably the latter was a vestigial nipple, a benign congenital defect occurring in about one percent of the population.

You could have knocked me over with a feather, when I found out that the color of Washington's white horse was white, or that U. S. Grant is buried in Grant's Tomb! A feather, I tell you!

Wrong again, R280!

I demand a hearing, R281. I was as equally bowled over to find out that Julia Grant is in there, too!

Kurt Cobain was at the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Gold was once so plentiful in the American River (near Sacramento) that bean-sized nuggets of it could be picked with your finger.

I just read about the Battle of Messines explosion (WWI) at the MapPorn subreddit. The Allies dug shafts under the German line at Messines (Belgium). These were filled with explosives. When they were detonated, the explosion was so intense, it could be heard in London. The French thought there had been an earthquake.

For our Portuguese friends:

A lot of people debate the morality of the atomic bomb. But I wonder how many of them would still wonder about it if they knew the Japanese were planning on executing biological warfare against California. Thankfully, they surrendered before this happened.

R287 = racist right-winger

"The Allies dug shafts under the German line at Messines (Belgium). These were filled with explosives."

These tunnels were dug by "sappers" and the tunnels were just dug into the bare ground with no supports, and tended to collapse and bury the diggers alive. Sappers had huge rates of psychotic breaks, suicide, PTSD, getting deliberately shot by the enemy rather than go back into the tunnels, etc.

I found this out in a historical novel I read recently, something set in the 1920s, and which talked about the aftermath.

I just found out from my Evangelical pastor that the planet is ONLY 6000 years old.

Who knew?

When he told me, I had a couple of questions, but I couldn't say anything with his dick in my mouth.

I didn't know any of this until BOM.

Didn't Susan Atkins admit that she and Tex were on meth on the night of the Manson murders?

Enough of WWII shit. This is much more educational.

errrrrr

The world's first apples originated from modern Kazakhstan, then traveled the Silk Road through to Europe.

r272, every story I posted including the one you refer to cane from “Truman” by David McCullough.

I didn’t even share how awful their daughter was at singing but that Harry insisted on the audiences giving her a warm reception. But my favorite part was how he ran his campaign for President.

R293

Government Literally Poisoned Alcohol During Prohibition

This one knew for years having learned about it at school and later college chemistry classes.

Grain alcohol is a purified form of ethyl alcohol (ethanol), and various alcohol substances are used for scores of other purposes such as scent (perfumes/colognes), fuel, pharmacology, etc.. that it just wasn't possible to ban alcohol entirely. People got wise to this so instead of buying gin they bought various other alcohols for consumption. This had been going on for years anyway hence Scarlet O'Hara taking a swig of that eau de cologne in GWTW to hide fact she had been drinking.

So US government decided to adulterate alcohol meant for other uses so it couldn't be consumed. Tragically knowing full well it wouldn't stop people from buying, scores if not hundreds of people were poisoned to death by their own government.

This continues still today in that denatured alcohol sold in USA is adulterated to make it unfit for human consumption. OTOH denatured alcohol isn't taxed heavily or at all as opposed to booze.

For those interested there is a great book on the development of modern medical examiner/post morteum science juxtaposed with history of poisoning deaths in USA.

The Poisoner's Handbook is a gripping and interesting read going from a time when medical examiners in this country were treated as a joke (they were often political hacks) to the science driven professionals of today.

Shout out to New York City where medical examiner Charles Norris was one of the first professionals and put the city and its ME office at forefront of using forensic medicine to solve crimes and for public health.

From the book The Poisoners Handbook:

“By mid-1927, the new denaturing formulas included some notable poisons — kerosene and brucine (a plant alkaloid closely related to strychnine), gasoline, benzene, cadmium, iodine, zinc, mercury salts, nicotine, ether, formaldehyde, chloroform, camphor, carbolic acid, quinine, and acetone. The Treasury Department also demanded more methyl alcohol be added — up to 10 percent of total product. It was the last that proved most deadly.”

The effects were catastrophic. In one day (Christmas, 1926) the emergency room at Bellevue Hospital in New York saw more than 60 patients severely poisoned by bootleg alcohol; eight died. Blum cites estimates that by the end of Prohibition in 1933, more than 10,000 people were killed by denatured alcohol. Some were unconcerned: “Must Uncle Sam guarantee safety first for souses?” editorialized the Omaha Bee. However, some important figures vehemently opposed to program. New York City medical examiner Charles Norris declared:

“The government knows it is not stopping drinking by putting poison in alcohol. [Y]et it continues its poisoning processes, heedless of the fact that people determined to drink are daily absorbing that poison. Knowing this to be true, the United States government must be charged with the moral responsibility for the deaths that poisoned liquor causes, although it cannot be held legally responsible.”

/end quote

Mr. Charles Norris died on 11 September 1935, and his assistant Alexander Gettler took over continuing where the former left off.

For those that want something visual; PBS series "The American Experience" covered The Poisoner's Handbook.

Have posted first episode/chapter, balance should be easily found.

R298 Bravo, I was going to add info about the book as well. It also covers the story of the Radium Girls, which was the first time I heard that story. It is covered as a movie starting Joey King, releasing, hopefully, at some point this year.

R301

This clip covers the Radium Girls.

Don't think people today realize just how much they own to Mr. Norris and Mr. Gettler and the NYC ME office.

It was Dr. Alexander Gettler who was able to prove workers at those watch making plants were subject to radiation poisoning. Out come set many legal, health and social precedents.

Eli Whitney wasn't the first to invent the cotton gin. An unknown man in Winnsboro, SC did.

The Radium Girls

You can thank Dr. Alexander Gettler/NYC ME office for first bans on leaded gasoline in USA (New York, NJ, Philadelphia). Though initial victory was short lived; Standard Oil fearing bans would spread nationwide went to POTUS Calvin Coolidge to make sure that didn't happen. In short order laws were passed making leaded gasoline legal in all fifty states. It would take about another forty years before lead was finally banned from gasoline, but the damage was done.

[quote]by David McCullough.

McCullough, made one mistake with his book. He didn't interview any of the family who were still alive.

R305, interesting.

When you think about it is is only until fairly recently rodenticides and pesticides containing serious poisons such as arsenic, strychnine and even Thallium were rather easy to lay hands upon. Well into the 1960's or so you could go into any gardening supply store, pest control place, etc... and purchase. Of course by this time thanks to Dr. Norris and Dr. Gettler American medical examiners finally caught up with European counterparts in discovering death by poison; but that is cold comfort to person who was now dead.

People would boil down flypaper to leech out the arsenic, then get to work....

Thomas Midgley Jr. one of the leading developers of Tetraethyllead (leaded gasoline) went on a PR binge to prove TEL was safe. He subsequently came down with lead poisoning.

Mr. Midgley also was involved in the development of Freon, another substance widely hailed at the time that later became known as one of worst things for environment. It took many decades but finally both TEL and Freon were seen for what they are; and now rank in the top fifty of "worst inventions"

Triceratops is the most commonly recovered dinosaur in the uppermost Cretaceous deposits of western North America, and its remains have been found throughout the region.

Arthur M. Sackler was a genius in several domains and a life-long sociopath.

Tokyo became the world's largest and most populous city in 1968.

A famous story in the history of science is that of the trial of Galileo Galilei. Galileo believed that the Earth moved around the Sun, but this conflicted with the theological position of the Catholic Church, which held that the Earth was fixed in the center of the universe. This conflict came to a head when Galileo was put on trial, and was forced to renounce his assertion that the Earth moved around the Sun. As the story goes, after making his public renouncement Galileo muttered under his breath “Eppur si muove!” which in Italian means “And yet it moves!”

Miss Ida May Fuller paid in less than $25 to Social Security, got the first Social Security check, almost broke even the first month she got one, and eventually collected almost $23,000 - the bitch lived to be 100.

"On January 31, 1940, the first monthly retirement check was issued to Ida May Fuller of Ludlow, Vermont, in the amount of $22.54. Miss Fuller, a Legal Secretary, retired in November 1939. She started collecting benefits in January 1940 at age 65 and lived to be 100 years old, dying in 1975.

Ida May Fuller worked for three years under the Social Security program. The accumulated taxes on her salary during those three years was a total of $24.75. Her initial monthly check was $22.54. During her lifetime she collected a total of $22,888.92 in Social Security benefits."

Who wants to die when you've got a good thing going?

$23,000 over 35 years? That's about $650 per year. Doesn't seem like much; averaged out and adjusted for inflation, that's still below the poverty line.

Yes, R315. Social Security payments are indeed below the poverty line. It has been that way from the start.

the "dole" in all countries (that have one) is always solidly in poverty range. What's differs is the scope of other benefits depending on the degree of "socialism" and a country's wealth.

[quote]I didn't know that Venice, Italy was at one time an independent nation.

I didnt know until recently the word Ghetto refereed to Jews who lived in Venice Italy. In traditional Catholic doctrine, lending someone money and trying to profit from their need is a sin. As a christian, you are supposed to help those in need not use them to enrich yourself. Venice was the economic center of the world back then and people needed to barrow money for trade. Jews being the money changers from the days of Christ were exempt from christian law and took advantage of this by being the ones who would lend money (for a fee) so that trade could continue without sin. They were bared however from living in Venice by the Venetian Republic because they were seen as destructive to Venetian society. They finally relented and allowed them to move in to one little island, which became knows as the ghetto. The ghetto was connected to the rest of the city by two bridges that were only open during the day. Strict penalties were to be imposed on any Jewish resident caught outside after curfew.

Sultana was a Mississippi River side-wheel steamboat, which exploded on April 27, 1865, in the worst maritime disaster in United States history.

Although designed with a capacity of only 376 passengers, she was carrying 2,137, mostly Union soldiers returning home, when three of the boat's four boilers exploded and she burned to the waterline and sank near Memphis, Tennessee. Survivors had to choose between burning to death or attempting to swim the chilly waters at a time when many people never learned to swim.

The disaster was overshadowed in the press by events surrounding the end of the American Civil War, including the killing of President Lincoln's assassin John Wilkes Booth just the day before, and no one was ever held accountable for the tragedy.

In early New England America, towns with burial grounds would often have above-ground crypts in which to store the dead during the Winter, when the frozen ground was too tough to dig. The bodies would be buried after the frozen ground melted in the Spring. They still do this in some places.

Here’s one I thought was interesting. It’s right out of the Poltergeist movie. For youse Brooklynites.

There was a Methodist burial ground in Brooklyn that the Church decided to sell to developers. They dug-up the bodies, the ones they could find, and moved them elsewhere. There were also more bodies than they were expecting. Then they built housing over the former cemetery. Do any DataLoungers live there?

My 3rd great grandpa was buried there in 1840 and my family refused to allow the body to be moved. The Church sued. I found a newspaper notice from about 1890 where about 20 family members were all sued at once, and I wondered how that could be possible? Then I realized that they were all descendants of grandpa, and therefore were interested parties. The family lost the suit, and the body was moved to Green-Wood Cemetery, where there is a family plot today.

The suit Included one woman who is buried in my family’s Green-Wood plot, and helped identify her as an aunt. She’s listed everywhere as “Mrs. so-and-so”, without the maiden name. The wedding record was hard to find, so she was hard to identify.

R320

Those were called "receiving vaults" where yes coffins or caskets (yes, there is a difference) were held during colder times of year when ground was frozen. Today most graves are dug with a backhoe or other machinery so burials can take place regardless.

Receiving vaults were also used when a family crypt or mausoleum wasn't ready to receive the body for interment. Finally bodies that were going to be transported elsewhere for final burial or internment would be placed in a receiving vault until arrangements were made.

For families who couldn't afford to avail themselves of a holding crypt or for whatever reasons if winters were cold enough the coffin/casket was simply placed in a barn or some other out house on property to await a time when ground could be worked.

Final use of receiving vaults were when there were too many bodies to be buried at once, and or if an epidemic or plague killed large numbers. Those who died from whatever illness were often placed in receiving vaults until it was deemed safe to handle their remains.

Furthermore:

It varied by local ordinance, but in 1800's through early 1900's (and for all I know through or past WWII and still on books), receiving vaults had to be cleaned and disinfected by 1 May of each year. There were often time limits as to how long a body could remain (sometimes little as 72 hours) from usually 1 May through October (warm weather). Often restrictions were placed upon leaving flowers or plants inside receiving vault as well.

Thanks, R316 and R317. I was more addressing the implication of the headlines that $23,000 was a ton of money. Granted, it's a hell of a lot more than she put in, but that's the way SS works, especially considering that she retired soon after the program was instituted.

It's almost thousand times more, which is not a bad return on an investment you contributed to for three years and the benefits of which you were able to collect for thirty-five years.

Social Security was never meant to be sole support. I'm sure as a single, thrifty Vermonter, Ida Mae lived a simple life and saved for her retirement. It's not likely she'd have lived to be 100 if she hadn't.

The modern homicide rate is only a fraction of what it was during the medieval ages, where people commonly walked around in a drunken stupor, with daggers and blades, there were no permanent police forces, and violence was often considered an acceptable means in which to settle disputes and communicate certain messages.

R45, She is the Egyptian goddess Isis.

Khmer Rouge was NOT a girl group!

[quote] “History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.”

-Winston Churchill

Julius Caesar was another autobiographer. He was constantly sending reports from Gaul as to the progress of his subjugation of the tribes there. His missives back to Rome made him very popular.

Caesar claimed to have killed a million Gauls and enslaved a million more. This represents between 10% to 25% of the entire population.

I’ll be a son-of-a-gun. I wrote just today in R321 about my grand father’s remains that were moved from Williamsburg Cemetery in Brooklyn, to Green-Wood Cemetery, in the late 19th century.

Tonight, I turned on Amazon’s [italic] Hunters, [/italic] and coincidentally found an opening segment which features my family plot in the background. It’s directly behind the caption “I’m sorry, Ma.” There are about 20 of my family members buried there.

It’s a really pretty location with all old growth, and huge elm trees.

The Pantheon in Rome is one of the most beautiful (interior) buildings in the world. When Rome has first sacked, the barbarian leader told his men that they were prohibited from touching it, because it was too beautiful to destroy.

There originally were two bronze lions that flanked the front entrance at a height of about 35 feet. They survived 2000 years there, until the Nazis had them removed and melted for war material in WWII.

[quote]... until the Nazis had them removed and melted for war material in WWII.

That reminds me... the Casino de la Jetée-Promenade in Nice, completed in 1882, became a popular winter playground for the well-to-do and mostly British vacationers to the Côte d'Azure during the fin de siècle. It quickly became a popular subject of postcards and a landmark of Belle Epoque Nice. However, around 1943, the occupying Nazis stripped it of all its brass, bronzes, statues, silverware, electrical wiring and other metals to serve the German war effort, and used the building as an entrenched camp, before finally dismantling the structure in 1944.

During the 18th century, pink was considered to be a man's clothing color, and pink satin was thought of as a perfectly manly material for men's suits.

But then, that whole era had such a feminine aesthetic, everything from walls to men's britches was pastel and had gold frou-frou all over it.

Until recently, I was assured that Shakespear made up the bit about King Richard III being a "hunchback", because he was writing to please the Tudor court, and the descendants of Richard's enemies.

Then Richard's skeleton was found a few years ago, and surprise surprise, the man had had a nasty case of scoliosis.

Until recently, I was assured that Shakespear made up the bit about King Richard III being a "hunchback", because he was writing to please the Tudor court, and the descendants of Richard's enemies.

Then Richard's skeleton was found a few years ago, and surprise surprise, the man had had a nasty case of scoliosis.

R333, not just the 18th century, but as late as the first half of the 20th century, the popular convention was pink for boys, blue for girls.

From the Ladies Home Journal, 1918: "There has been a great diversity of opinion on the subject, but the generally accepted rule is pink for the boy and blue for the girl. The reason is that pink being a more decided and stronger color is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl."

Pink, being closer to red, was dynamic, bold, and aggressive; while calm, cool blue was associated with the Virgin Mary. This color convention changed around the 1950s.

R336, interestingly what really cemented the pink is girls, blue is for boys is dolls. Generally speaking, pink and blue were not really for boys *or* girls. Blue was for blonds and pink was for brunettes. Babies were considered to have no gender, therefore, the color did not matter as a signifier of gender. Around 1900, doll manufactures realized that they could double their sales by selling twins. To make it less obvious that they were selling two identical dolls, one would be blond/blue and the other brunette/pink. Not surprisingly, girls also decided one was a boy and the other was a girl. This notion of which was a boy and which was a girl trickled up to children's clothing.

Another interesting point is that, just like the hanky code, which color was fro boys and which was for girls seems to have been reversed on the east and west coasts of the USA.

Also, this was considered "American". The notion that blue is for boys and pink is for girls is one of the many things that the Nazis deemed "too American" and strongly discouraged.

R335, who "assured" you, Christopher Marlowe?

R335 doesn't remember but thinks it may have been Edward de Vere or possibly Bacon.

I recently heard that in Jane Austen's time, elegant Regency-era ladies had to leave balls and parties and go home when they had to pee. Or poop.

There were no flush toilets or indoor plumbing, the well-to-do peed in chamber pots, which were emptied by the housemaids. When people entertained there were no guest bathrooms or guest outhouses or guest chamber pots, no guest facilities at all. Gentlemen could go out and pee in an alley in the city or on a tree in the country, but apparently ladies didn't dare, so when they had to do, the only respectable thing they could do was go home and use their own chamber pot. So because ladies liked to stay and dance and have a glass or two of wine, they spend the day of the fall forswearing liquids and taking diuretic herbs so they'd be dehydrated when they went out.

Oh yeah, the palace of Versailles, the most glamorous and wealthy king's court in the 18th century world, reeked like a campground pit toilet!

Because yeah, the well-to-do courtiers peed in their chamber pots and the servants emptied the pots, but there were no toilet facilities for the army of servants, and that was one garden nobody dared to pee in. So, the servants would piss and shit in the corridors, or in quiet corners, and the whole place stank to high heaven. Just think of that, courtiers dressed in silks and diamonds, bowing deeply to the Louis IVX's dinner as it passed and saluting "Le viand du Roi!", in a hall that smelled like a filthy pigsty.

When you look at toilet and hygiene habits of Regency/Georgian England (before and long after for that matter) it isn't any wonder cholera and typhoid were rampant.

By most accounts gentlemen at dinner parties or balls simply went behind a screen, pissed or whatever, then returned.

Ladies at a dinner party for reasons of modesty likely wouldn't go behind a screen, but wait until that sex "withdrew" from dinner table then went somewhere to do the business. At a ball where there are so many persons things would have been slightly easier; a lady just did what most still do today; make an excuse to leave the room then find a pot or place to piss.

R340 Taking the subway into Manhattan is the modern day equivalent of this.

Under the reign of Sun King/Louis XIV Versailles for all its beauty and grandeur was a foul, filthy smelling place infested by armies of vermin.

Besides fact royals, nobles nor anyone else regularly bathed, people often shat and pissed where and when they wished.

Versaillies was open to the public, and as such there weren't nearly enough loos (if you could call them that) to accommodate; so people pissed or whatever in corners, off balconies, where they stood, etc... One princess of Bourbon family simply peed herself where she stood or walked at court; servants followed behind with reeds and straw to put down in attempt to absorb.

Subsequent French kings (Louis XIV and XVI) instituted some reforms and changes, but of course everything came to a halt during French revolution.

Despite shows like Bewitched showing time travel and persons from modern times totally unaffected by being transported back to say 17th or 18th centuries (or before), first thing most of us would do within a short time upon arrival is retch if not vomit. The stench both indoors and out (especially in cities/urban areas) was just that bad.

People largely didn't bathe, toilet paper was unknown as was mostly indoor plumbing. Only under garments along with bed and table linens were washed with any sort of regularity. If meeting anyone from royalty on down from 17th century or whatever you'd be well advised to stand upwind.

One of the reasons royal courts like Henry VIII routinely moved about was to get away from the build up of filth, vermin, stench etc... all caused by humans and animals in one place too long with nothing remotely approaching modern sanitation or hygiene.

Royal courts or noble households would move from palace to palace to escape mounds of filth and armies of vermin that infested buildings, grounds and persons. After they left servants would air the place out and undertake what must have been cleaning on an industrial scale (for the time anyway) to get places somewhat clean again.

Most of these grand homes/palaces had middens or cesspits beneath them where human and other waste was held. There it sat festering until servants or someone opened them up to dig/clean out contents then carry filth away. Needless to say the stench from fetid and often blocked middens filled buildings above. And when they were opened to be cleared out, whoa Nellie!

Despite shows like Bewitched showing time travel and persons from modern times totally unaffected by being transported back to say 17th or 18th centuries (or before), first thing most of us would do within a short time upon arrival is retch if not vomit. The stench both indoors and out (especially in cities/urban areas) was just that bad.

People largely didn't bathe, toilet paper was unknown as was mostly indoor plumbing. Only under garments along with bed and table linens were washed with any sort of regularity. If meeting anyone from royalty on down from 17th century or whatever you'd be well advised to stand upwind.

One of the reasons royal courts like Henry VIII routinely moved about was to get away from the build up of filth, vermin, stench etc... all caused by humans and animals in one place too long with nothing remotely approaching modern sanitation or hygiene.

Royal courts or noble households would move from palace to palace to escape mounds of filth and armies of vermin that infested buildings, grounds and persons. After they left servants would air the place out and undertake what must have been cleaning on an industrial scale (for the time anyway) to get places somewhat clean again.

Most of these grand homes/palaces had middens or cesspits beneath them where human and other waste was held. There it sat festering until servants or someone opened them up to dig/clean out contents then carry filth away. Needless to say the stench from fetid and often blocked middens filled buildings above. And when they were opened to be cleared out, whoa Nellie!

While WWI was responsible for killing many soldiers, the Spanish Flu epidemic that followed it killed many soldiers that survived the war (including my great uncle Niles - RIP).

Germ theory only became widely accepted in the West between 1850 and 1900.

Which country invented modern day hygiene standards? Clearly we've come a long way from the Versailles days--well, except for a lot of China and parts of South Asia.

R349, the English are pretty fussy, maybe them? And then carried it across the world in the 19th century.

R349, I don't know who invented it but the Japanese, IMO, took it to another, fastidious level.

In days of old, when knights were bold,

And toilets weren't invented…

They laid their loads upon the roads,

And walked away contented.

R350, I don't know about that. The English have this really weird, lazy way of washing their dishes(they don't really fully wash them the way Americans do) and, I mean, have you seen their teeth?

Brits are not shy of dirt.

[quote] The British are particularly bad, other research suggests. Many of us also lie and claim we have washed our hands when we haven't, especially after going to the toilet.

[quote] The British approach to hand washing is often "bizarre" and "peculiar", say hygiene experts. So what is our problem? A lot comes down to perception and how we see ourselves, also to a lack of understanding about the simplest hygiene.

According to that article, it was a Hungarian who discovered the benefits of washing hands...in 1847. So nasty to imagine what people were doing until then.

Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis was way ahead of his time. Sadly he and hundreds of others (especially women and newborn infants) paid the price for ignorance.

It would not be until later on when work by Lister and Pasteur built upon Dr. Semmelweis's theories that germ theory began to take hold and become accepted by medical community and society at large.

[quote] “It was April 10, 1963, and submarine Thresher, SSN 593, had just come out of a nine-month refit from the Portsmouth Navy Yard. There is little doubt that commanding officer Lieutenant Commander John Wesley Harvey had no inkling of the tragedy that was to come ...”

My best friend in 1963 was the son of one of the Lt. Commanders who died that night, when the USS Thresher went down in the Atlantic, 200 miles a east of Boston, MA. Completely coincidentally, my first professional jobs was as an engineer at a submarine shipyard, where I was responsible for part of the air systems - the systems often alleged to be responsible for the boat’s sinking.

You’ll note that the Thresher’s number, “593”, is painted on its hull. Sometime in the late 70s, they stopped painting these numbers on sub hulls, so as to make them harder for the Soviets to identify using satellite photos.

When first European Crusaders arrived in Middle East the natives thought them to be a filthy, vermin infested ,foul smelling, and ignorant lot.

Islam by nature promotes cleanliness, always has; something Christianity didn't always follow.

While they may not have known about germ theory or whatever, followers of Islam knew enough to frequently wash their hands and bathe. The former especially after coming into contact with foul or unclean things such as dead bodies or after taking a dump. Islam also made the connection between foul smelling and or not clear water and disease

The ancient Greeks, Romans, and later the Islamic World under Ottoman rule had strict cleansing rituals and understood the health benefits of thermal baths. They built public baths in every city and the wealthy installed private baths in their homes. They also had intricate sewage systems to wash away their waste.

The medieval Western Europeans, however, grew wary of baths, believing that the waters harbored diseases and other illnesses, which is true when polluted, stagnant, and untreated. They limited their bathing to the winter and spring months, and avoided it in summer and fall. Also, the Roman Catholic Church, viewed public bathing as a prelude to sinning, so they discouraged it and eventually banned it outright. So because bathing became an immodest affair, the pious conducted their bathing rituals with utmost discretion and limiting it to special occasions. Also too, most of the people were poor, so bathing and proper hygiene were the least of their concerns.

R350, the English were complete pigs back then. They were barbarians, remember? When the English settled Jamestown in the early 1600s, many of them died from dysentery because they were picking their teeth with the same instrument that they used to pick their butts and noses. Plus they didn't understand that the water they shit in was the same water they were drinking out of. Please don't credit them with hygiene standards. Also, have you seen their teeth, even today?? Just because an entire culture likes the ritual of tea, and the aristocracy like things to be 'first rate', it doesn't mean the doilies are dusted, if you know what I mean.

I would certainly credit an Asian culture with anything resembling fastidiousness. The Samurai of Japan, for instance, were a military dictatorship, and ran the country like a hospital for 500 years.

They brought over Small Pox to the Americas, that's what really killed off 90% of the Native Americans. They had no immunity to the filthy disease ridden English. Native Americans were a lot cleaner, they bathed daily in streams and salt water ocean every morning before dawn and washed their hands before eating. Something the Europeans thought was strange.

R360

Exactly!

It was arrival of the "dark" Middle Ages when things began to reverse throughout Europe in terms of hygiene, sanitation, and many other things. Ancient Romans & Greeks (among a few others) had actually invented a way of centrally heating homes, public baths, etc...

R362

But if you believe the stories Europeans brought syphilis and perhaps also gonorrhea back to the old world from Americas, so there was some revenge.

Then there are various forms of travelers' diarrhea (such as Montezuma's revenge or Deli Belly) caused by organisms which locals are largely immune.

In ancient Egypt, the Nile and other fresh water sources were so polluted with human waste that the workers were paid, partially, in (weak) beer. The distillation process kills a lot of germs.

The same was true in the Roman world, and was still true until recently. Paris’s modern sewage system was only started in 1850. London’s in 1860.

Boston’s “modern” sewage system was only created in the 1990’s! Seriously! Before that, Boston’s sewage system regularly allowed human waste and industrial chemicals into the Charles River and Boston Harbor. I worked in the cleanup project in the 1990s. The river is clean, now, though there still is sewage overflow a few times per year. The new system was designed to consider that allowable. Plus, the cleanup project had trouble even finding all the private outlet pipes that allowed flow into the river. You can swim in the Charles now, but are told not to stir-up the underwater-soil, as that will contain toxic pollution for decades if not indefinitely.

R365 Most people don’t realize that the importance of Johnny Appleseed and his apple crusade was not about an apple a day to keep the doctor away, but the need for alcoholic cider.

The stories of germ theory and sewage pollution merge here.

In 1854, John Snow found a cluster of cholera cases around a public water well in London. It was dug within 3 feet of a septic system. Eventually 616 people died from it. It was a detective story, as he traced all the local cases to the well.

There was one case in particular that bugged him. It was a women who didn’t drink the well water and didn’t live nearby. IIRC, it happened that the women got some product made from well water that a relative bought and gave to her.

[quote] There was one significant anomaly—none of the workers in the nearby Broad Street brewery contracted cholera. As they were given a daily allowance of beer, they did not consume water from the nearby well. During the brewing process, the wort (or un-fermented beer) is boiled in part so that hops can be added...

He closed the well and new cases of cholera stopped.

It amazes me that the modern world has advanced so much in so short a time.

That's a very interesting and nearly unbelievable article you posted r367, thanks so much

R367, Dr. John Snow was also the world's first proper anesthesiologist, as well as epidemiologist. Other doctors had used inhaled chloroform, but dosing was erratic and people were killed. Snow was the first to analyze dosing, to adjust for age and body size, and to realize that the laws of thermodynamics as related to gas expansion applied to inhaled chloroform, and that temperature could affect how much chloroform the patient received. He was one hell of a scientist and doctor, and ought to be a popular science hero.

And R365, a new thing among do-gooding science-minded liberal activists is re-introducing oyster populations to polluted harbors. Oysters are filter-feeders and can filter an unbelievable amount of water, enough of them can clear up murky, toxic, disgusting waterways. I know oyster populations are being re-introduced into New York Harbor and San Francisco Bay, probably other places. Maybe someone might give it a go in Boston.

R365, that reminds me...

One of the ways that the ancient Roman armies were able to conquer the known world was through alcohol. In addition to its other supplies the army would travel with barrels of low-quality wine, and they would dilute whatever water they found with the bad wine, and the alcohol would kill enough of the germs that the regiments wouldn't be laid low by whatever gastrointestinal illnesses the ancient world had to offer. I shudder to think what foul water diluted with bad wine tasted like, but it probably tasted better than either the water by itself, or dying of thirst.

R369: I'm surprised to read that. Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital claims the first use of ether in 1846. From their website:

"William T.G. Morton made history on October 16, 1846 in Massachusetts General Hospital’s surgical amphitheater, now known as the Ether Dome, when he demonstrated the first public surgery using anesthetic (ether)."

Two months later, on Saturday, December 19, 1846, a London dentist, James Robinson, demonstrated the administration of the anesthetic gas ether for the first time in England. A couple of months earlier, William T. G. Morton had demonstrated ether anesthesia on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean in Boston. Snow was later famous for introducing the use of a different anesthetic, chloroform, during the 1853 delivery of Queen Victoria's eighth child, Prince Leopold. This was such a success that it was repeated for the delivery of Princess Beatrice three years later. Obstetrical anesthesia had the royal blessing, and medical and religious acceptance soon followed.

I know this because I was married in Boston's Public Garden next to the Ether Monument shown below when same-sex marriage first became legal in the United States in 2004. The thought of getting married next to a monument to drugs, inscribed on one side with the words "Never more pain" was irresistible.

I learnt that there was this thing called world war eye eye and American ships were sunk by the Chinese so we fired a nuclear bomb on them! I’m not kidding!

R371, Dr. John Snow of London wasn't the first doctor to use inhaled ether or chloroform, he was just the first to seriously analyze dosing and safe use of inhaled medications. Before him, inhaled anesthetics were a crapshoot, because of him, they became safe enough for general use. I read all this in a book about the origin of the science of epidemiology and the science of public health, there was a plague of Cholera in 19th century London, caused by an overflowing cesspit. Snow's invention of the science of anesthesiology was a side story.

As for anesthetics, for those of you who don't know, before the middle of the 19th century, they'd do surgery without any anesthetics at all. If they needed to take out your appendix to save your life, the surgeon would strap you down so you couldn't move, and slice open your abdomen while you were fully conscious. Physicians and surgeons were trained to operate as quickly as possible, because they were working on conscious patients who were screaming and writing in agony, which created a huge demand for fresh human corpses, because that's how they practiced operating quickly.

In the discussions above regarding the US firebombing Japan prior to dropping the atomic bombs, I’m reminded of how much I learned about WWII in watching The Fog Of War, the documentary featuring Robert McNamara. The destruction and death by firebombing was, shamefully, a shock to me. I should have been taught about this in school. I’m sure that I wasn’t.

It’s not something I learned “recently” I guess, since it was 2003, so shining a light off topic.

Good God, he needs to be imprisoned. This drug promotion is such BS. It’s obviously corrupt. “You know it, I know it, everybody knows it.”

The Press should ask him if he has a financial stake in it, then follow up by asking him to swear under the penalty of perjury.

^sorry, wrong thread.

[quote] such as Montezuma's revenge or Deli Belly

It’s Delhi Belly

Oy! It’s Delhi Belly!

R347 The flu was during the war.

[quote]But if you believe the stories Europeans brought syphilis and perhaps also gonorrhea back to the old world from Americas, so there was some revenge.

Hardy, did 90% of the English population die from that and get taken over by Native Americans? Do they speak Cherokee there now? Stop justifying what the English did the the Native Americans. It was an intentional form of gem warfare. The Natives had no idea what was being done to them. No one forced Europeans to have sex with them. That's their own slutty fault, but not a native intention.

Sir Jeffrey Amherst wrote a letter “Could it not be contrived to Send the Small Pox among those Disaffected Tribes of Indians? We must, on this occasion, Use Every Stratagem in our power to Reduce them.”

Oh, Boo-Hoo "Snowflake Who Bitches On Gay Site", it's not like we have paid reparations for ours sins during our numerous trips to casinos and cigarette stores over the decades.

One DL queen started a thread to complain about her $60K donation from last year.

Since we're focusing on World War 2 -- just saw this today.

I was aware that the majority of German Jews survived the Shoah since they had six years of warning to get TF out of Germany before World War II started and the Nazis did their best to make them feel unwelcome (to put it mildly.)

I did not realize how many prominent German Jews wound up in the US after fleeing the Nazis.

See list at link

Just read on another thread that Faye Dunaway assassinated JFK!

The Rothschild family is fascinating. I wish they’d make a movie, or a quality miniseries about them. They are or were arguably the wealthiest non-ruling family in the world. They started in Frankfurt, and then other family members eventually established business branches in Vienna, Austria; London, Paris, and Naples.

One of their big money making stories was during the Napoleonic wars. IIRC, the London branch sold British assets right after Waterloo. The other investors saw them selling, assumed the family had somehow learned that the British and allies lost to the French, and also started selling British assets wildly. Then the Rothschilds, somehow, quietly reversed course and bought British assets and sold French assets. Of course, the French had lost. By the time the word of the battle really reached London, the Rothschilds had made a fortune, or another fortune, I should say.

The Olympics used to give away gold medals for arts. From 1912 to 1948, the Olympic Games held competitions in fine arts such as literature, architecture, sculpture, painting, and music.

R384 yes they are a fascinating family that gets shit on for their (questionable) success in a twisted, “hate the player, not the game” mentality.

I’m surprised Nikki Hilton snagged a Rothschild. Girl cultivated her image to allow her to party like her sister, get a BS degree, then marry into a more powerful family.

I love the Rothschild heir worth about 2-3 billion that built a boat out of recycled materials. Just so many stories that can be told about that family.

R386 her husband is cute,too. Some people have all the luck.

Ketchup was sold in the 1830s as a medical cure for indigestion.

The Edmund Fitzgerald was a real ship and the song about it’s sinking is pretty accurate.

Small pox was only eradicated in 1980. It’s the only human-infecting disease we’ve been able to eradicate, completely. This is partly because it cannot be passed to animals, such as birds. It can only survive in a human host, making it subject to control.

They are working at erratically other diseases, too, including polio and some worm in Africa. Polio only exists now in some parts of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Africa. .

People In Pakistan are afraid of the medical people there with their injections. They think the vaccine will make them infertile. The US used medical aid people when planning the raid on Osama bin Ladin, so their fear is not unreasonable.

Bloody Mary cocktails were originally called Buckets of Blood, then Red Snapper, and then finally Bloody Mary.

r386 when I went searching for his picture I found out that this is her second marriage...and I spelled her name wrong. You are right, this bitch keeps on winning.

Have you ever noticed that Elm Street has no Elm trees on it? Dutch Elm Disease swept through the American northeast in the 1970s, killing most of the Elms. The movie [italic] “The Virgin Suicides” [/italic] is set in that period, and the Elms and virgins depicted in the film symbolically reflect each other.

More recently, there has been a chestnut blight that sickens American Chestnut trees, so that they do not produce chestnuts. Eventually, we might lose that species, since the chestnut is how they naturally reproduce. If you buy chestnuts at the market, they are probably Chinese Chestnuts and are reputed to be an ersatz substitute.

Also recently, there is some blight affecting some evergreen trees. It’s caused by some fungus and may be related to climate change. It’s killing whole forests in North America.

Last Summer, a fungus that has been circulating in Asia for 20 years and killing the cavendish banana, arrived in the Americas. Bananas are the 4th most important food crop, and most bananas sold are the cavendish banana.

this thread rocks 🎸

R379, WWI was from 1914-1918, and the Spanish flu kicked into high gear at the very end of 1918 when the war was ending, and lasted two years thereafter. The overlap was minimal.

The irony I'm pointing out is - the War may have killed many soldiers, but many soldiers died after the War was over, waiting to be picked up to go back home, including my great uncle. So no, it wasn't simply 'during the war'.

"I wish they’d make a movie, or a quality miniseries about them."

There was a Rothschild movie eons ago, with a miscast Loretta Young

Dr. Crawford Long was using ether as a surgical anaesthetic in 1842.

Here's one I know about Rhode Island history. A man by the name of Thomas Wilson Dorr who is commemorated by Dorrance St. in Providence, RI - he was the one who got us the right to elect our senators and reps. Of course I no longer live there.

There's a place called "Earth City" in Missouri.

Dutch elm disease killed all the elms in my town in the 1930s.

We need to stop monoculture of planting one tree everywhere. Trees should vary. Oak, maple, pear, apple, sassafras, juniper - there should be a law that two of the same trees shouldn’t be planted within 500 ft of each other.

Now pine beetles are killing trees.

r398 means in RI not nation wide, if anyone was confused. RI was something else back then.

There was a great cedar tree in my neighbor’s yard blocking the view from my bedroom window and my neighbors bedroom window, directly across from each other. Every summer I would notice this orange goop on the tree. It turns out it is Apple rust. (Not correcting my iPad’s capitalization). A rust that infects Apple trees grows on cedar trees and a rust that grows on apple trees infects cedar trees. There are lots of Apple orchards around here because they sell apples during pumpkin picking season. They keep the Apple trees tiny, probably to make it easier to spray them and pick the apples.

Anyway, the new owners cut that lovely tree down (full of great berry-eating birds every year) and put down a gravel pit topped with ugly chunky wood table & chairs. .

I lived in a neighborhood lined by a "cathedral" of Dutch elm trees. They all died and were eliminated, and then we got ash trees. And guess what, in the last five years those have all died from some blight.

The largest recorded earthquake in mainland U.S. history happened in 1812 with it's epicenter near New Mardrid, Missouri. It was so powerful it rerouted the Mississippi river and caused it to briefly flow backwards.

As per the link, even 200 years later it is still the most interesting thing to ever happen in New Madrid, MO.

Joe Biden will be the second Catholic President.

Mindy Cohn lives a carefree lifestyle

r405 and the hot son died. But the other son isn't opposed to parTy and use a fresh dildo on himself when at strip clubs or fuck his lonely sister in law. You'll be hearing a lot more about this from your the RNC.

The Emerald Ash Borer, not some blight.

This.

You can order a McRib with double rib

As I recall when I studied the Hepatitis B virus. In the 1980s, perhaps still, half of all gay men catch it. People who catch it:

- may get entirely over it. No short term or long term symptoms and not contagious.

- may be chronically ill, chronically contagious, or die from it.

- could not get reinfected in the short-term (years).

Or any combo of the above. It’s a hodgepodge. Maybe this Coronavirus will be like that? This is why I have encouraged all my friends to get the vaccine for Hep B.

Frank Reynolds (newsreader) died from it the same summer that Ten Kennedy caught it and recovered, IIRC. Harry K. Smith, another, newsreader, also died from it.

When this current crises is over, please get the Hep A & B vaccination!

New Madrid is one of the creepiest towns ever.

Methuen in Massachusetts is the only town or city in the United States with that name.

Not sure where I stumbled across this, but there were once Guillotine Parties. People whose close relatives had been guillotined or who had themselves come really close to getting guillotined starting having these little parties after the Reign of Terror was finally ended. Women would wear little red ribbons around their neck, showing just where the guillotine would have gotten them. Macabre, but fascinating, saying we survived, let's live. I'm suddenly fascinated by these. I don't think I've ever seen this in any movie or anything, but maybe somebody has done these. Most French Revolution movies end with the terror or the death of Marie Antoinette or something, but I'm sort of fascinated by these survivors coming together in relief after coming so close to death.

Actually I should add per that article, some historians doubt they happened, but many historians accept them as fact.

NY Mayor Fiorella LaGuardia’s sister was in a concentration camp. Her husband died in the camp (which she discovered from reading a newspaper a year after her release).

She then spent 2 years in Europe as a displaced person after the war, though her brother was a US politician & director of the UN Relief & Rehabilitation Association, which was devoted to helping people after the war.

She finally got back to the US in 1947 and was reunited with her brother Fiorella , who died 4 months later. Since LaGuardia had made no provisions for her, she lived in greatly reduced circumstances in a public housing project in queens until her death in the 1962.

NB - her daughter & grandson were also interned in the same concentration camp but she didn’t kniw because they were held in a different barrack in another part of the camp. All 3 survived, but her husband & her daughter’s husband did not

NB - her daughter & grandson were also interned in the same concentration camp but she didn’t kniw because they were held in a different barrack in another part of the camp. All 3 survived, but her husband & her daughter’s husband did not

Scumbag was slang for a condom. Calling someone a scumbag was basically calling them a used rubber.

Rosebud was NOT a sled.

And I'm just the dame to prove it

Everyone knows that newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst left his wife and lived with actress Marion Davies for years, and Mrs. Hearst would neither file for divorce nor do anything that would give him grounds to divorce her and marry his real love.

What most people don't know is that Millicent Hearst wasn't the well-born society lady of "Citizen Kane", she had been a vaudeville performer and showgirl, just like Davies. She was considered to be a vulgar little climber when she and Hearst were still together.

Women in Switzerland couldn't vote in federal elections until the 70s. It's a more conservative country than some Americans would think.

Americans don’t think of Switzerland at all, I don’t think. Lol.

"There's a place called "Earth City" in Missouri."

Even though it has it's own zip code, 63045, Earth City is simply a large industrial park in an unincorporated area of St. Louis County, MO.

More please. I love this thread.

Boston’s South End of row houses were built about 1880 on recovered wetland, with fill taken from one of the cities hills, now leveled. These houses were built on pilings. You’d never know this from inspecting the building.

The pilings were driven into the mud to just below the water table, and then foundation stones were put on top. As long as the pilings stay under water, they don’t rot. There are problems if the water table sinks below the top of the pilings, because that causes them to rot. They are very expensive to replace if this happens.

30 examples of ancient Roman graffiti at the link.

“Weep, you girls. My penis has given you up. Now it penetrates men’s behinds. Goodbye, wondrous femininity!”

Here’s a normal, sad one.

“Cruel Lalagus, why do you not love me?”

Ph0, because on running a man overthrown, because knows now.

Humans didn't have flu viruses before animal agriculture.

R427 A house built on wooden pilings driven into wet earth was pretty old technology by 1880. The Ca' da Mosto (and lots of other buildings) in Venice were built using that exact method in the 13th Century, 600+ years earlier.

Hiker was afraid that his occupation of Austria might be disagreeable to Austrians partisan fighters, and others. So instead of leading the parade of occupation forces crossing the border with storm troops, he lead with a band.

Hitler was a vegetarian. He also had An abnormal flatulence problem.

[quote] “Gott mit uns“

[italic] “God is With Us” [/italic]

During the Second World War, Wehrmacht soldiers (General Military, not Nazi) wore this slogan on their belt buckles, as opposed to members of the Waffen SS, who wore the motto Meine Ehre heißt Treue ('My honour is loyalty'). After the war the motto was also used by the Bundeswehr and German police. It was replaced with "Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit" ("Unity and Justice and Freedom") in 1962 (police within the 1970s), the first line of the third stanza of the German national anthem.

I don’t recall where I heard this, but someone once said, “I’m not so concerned if God is on our side; as I am that we are on His side”.

[quote] Churchill said the war was won with British intelligence; American steel; and Russian blood.

This has always been recognized.during the Cold War, it may have been. downplayed P, rather than lionize an adversary.

[quote] R70: I have read, and believe, that the USSR would have surrendered early in the war, as they eventually did in WWI, were it not for American “Lend-Lease“, in which the US sent military equipment to the allies on a future promise for later payment. Massive amounts of equipment was sent to Europe, by the US in particular.

As for dropping the A-bomb on Japan, one really must put oneself in the position of a country at war with a fascist power that was working its POWs to death on a perpetual bases. Also, Japan was unmoved by firebombing its major cities where more died, and more was damaged, than occurred as a result of the A-bomb.

It was US policy to change Japan from a militaristic power, to a peaceful democracy. That meant unconditional surrender, and that meant that they had to be utterly, totally defeated. It could not be a half-assed defeat, or they’d be at it again in 20 years. The Japanese government would never have accepted that.

Japanese defense of some of the islands that the US took in anticipation of a home island invasion was brutal. More like it could be expected in a home island invasion. “Surrender“ was considered cowardly by the Japanese, and that meant everything in their culture. The US expected up to 800,000 US dead in a home island invasion, and 5-20 million Japanese dead. That 800,000 dead Americans is just about double the number that actually did die in the entire war.

The US did warn the targeted Japanese cities about what was coming their way, to no effect. The Japanese Government thought that the US concession to allow the Emperor to remain, showed weakness. Just like they thought the US warnings about the A-Bomb to be a sign of weakness. Every attempt at mercy by the Americans made that Japanese government believe that they US was ready to quit the war, so they fought on.

Now imagine if the US had the bomb, and didn’t use it? Exactly who would be responsible for telling the wives and parents of the American dead, that the US had a super-bomb with war-ending potential, but we didn’t use it, because it was too mean?

R435, thank you for all of that. It is so easy for people to say IN RETROSPECT they find the dropping of the atomic bomb barbaric. But what do people think Japan was doing out in the rest of Asia? I think living in a post Cold War era in the peace and comfort of the west has shielded most of us from the horrors of war and what kind of decisions are necessary. The Japanese sure as hell weren't baking cookies and spreading peace there. They were bombing, raping, killing, pillaging, etc. often just for the hell of it. Just ask all those comfort women that Japan still pretends don't exist. The Japanese controlled a larger amount of territory than the Nazis did. They also treated POWs FAR worse than The Nazis did. While volunteering, I met a woman in a retirement home whose husband had both of his legs cut off by the Japanese. She still referred to the Japanese as "The Japs". Yes, the atomic bomb was horrific but it was a lesser evil compared to what Japan was doing to the civilians in other Asian countries. Also, Japan was also planning on using chemical warfare on parts of the west coast of America. Just think of how horrific that would be.

And regarding the USSR entering the war against Japan - the Potsdam conference near Berlin after the German defeat included a promise for the Russians to enter the war against Japan within a certain date range. It might not have been publicized because the Japanese kept trying to ask the Russians to mediate a (conditional) peace with the US.

The Russians did move men and equipment to the East, but they did not invade Japanese-occupied lands until [italic] after [/italic] The US dropped its first A-Bomb. It was at the very end of the promised date range for invasion that the Soviets had agreed to. They knew that the war was about to end, within days, even, and if they wanted to grab a bunch of land, they had to act immediately, which they did.

If anyone credits the Russian invasion of Japanese-occupied lands as the “real reason” that Japan surrendered when they did, then one must credit the US A-Bomb for forcing Russian‘s hand and prompting their entry into the war, for fear of missing the spoils.

Incidentally, the reason Germany and Italy declared war against the US in the days after Pearl Harbor, was because the US was delivering so much military equipment to the UK, Russia, and other anti-fascist entities, that they were already effectively at war. The declaration allowed them to sink US military supply ships without accusation of targeting neutral shipping. And of course the hope that the US focus would be on Japan, first.

Fiddle-dee-dee! War, war, war; this war talk's spoiling all the fun at every party this spring. I get so bored I could scream.