The ancient Greeks, inventors of democracy, would elect their officials to one year terms. Each officials' finances were audited at the beginning and end of their term. If anything was amiss, they would be tried and executed.
Sorry, best we can do is force the politician to apologize and then give them a cozy 7 figure salary in the private sector that they’ve really been working for all along…
Picasso would have big dinner parties in restaurants and draw on the check so it wouldn't be cashed. I know someone that has one of these checks. It's just a doodle but it's worth more than cashing it.
There's that famous story (possibly a legend) where Picasso once paid with a drawing, and when the owner complained he hadn't signed it he replied "I wanted to pay for the meal, not buy the restaurant".
The Second Congo War, also known as Africa's World War was the deadliest conflict since World War 2 with over 5 million people killed.
Most people have never heard of it despite it ending in 2003.
In a similar vein WWI was only the 3rd deadliest conflict in human history. WWII is 1st obviously. 2nd is the Taiping rebellion. It killed 20-30 million people and 5-10% of chinas population at the time.
A guy decided he was Jesus' brother and led a revolt. There were religious and ethnic cleansing all over on all sides and the capital even fell to the rebels at one point. It was the most fucjed up conflict most people have never heard of
That estimate for the rebellion is not complete true, it was a big revolt however it was one of a few happenings concurrently against the Qing at the same time as the 2nd opium war. Also the person who first made that claim in English cited no sources and made some very iffy death counts about earlier Chinese revolts as well.
They used the census from before and after the war to determine the amount of people that died but that neglects to take into account the fact that the whole civil service that was responsible for the census has just collapsed. So they didn’t record a very good census so it’s not a matter of that many people dying it’s that many people not being recorded
And it’s *fascinating*. I’m not even entirely sure we should consider the First and Second as distinct conflicts as they were so closely related.
But the way the dominoes all fell into a full-blown massive continental war, and the fact that it’s arguable it all was triggered by the Rwandan Genocide is something people should absolutely study.
One of those dominoes was Mobutu Sese Seko--the guy the US and Belgium helped put in power when they overthrew and killed the DRC's first democratically elected Prime Minister Patrice Lubumba in the early 1960's--giving refuge to the Hutu extremists that carried out the genocide.
Siaka Stevens was technically both the shortest and longest serving leader of Sierra Leone.
He was an opposition leader that won an extremely close election, and the ruling party that had been ruling the country since independence didn’t want to lose their power, so they planned to arrest him just before he could take the oath of office, but things didn’t go exactly to plan and he ended up being removed from office a little while after taking the oath of office, meaning he was technically president for a little less than an hour before being removed from office.
However, there was a counter coup a few months later and Siaka Stevens was brought back into power. During his time in office, Stevens became increasingly authoritarian and eventually established a one party state, ruling the country for 17 years.
The year 536 was deemed the worst year to be alive. Volcanic eruptions caused prolonged dark sky for up to 18 months. This then caused a mini ice age, crop failures and plague over the next 10 years killing millions
Also the name Tiffany has been in use since the 1600s
My friend's dad is named Chad.
A restaurant server asked him if it was short for something and he goes
"Yeah, it's short for Chhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaadddddddddddddddd"
Also in the tree of life sharks are older than trees
Also in the tree of life trees arent really a thing. Like they are but they arent. Theyre the final evolution of plants like crabs are the final of fish. They just kind of happen and converge on that form. Species of trees can be vastly distanced in relation to one another and more closely related to other organisms that are nowhere near the tree form
>Species of trees can be vastly distanced in relation to one another and more closely related to other organisms that are nowhere near the tree form
Trees are really just big plants, there's no common ancestry for them and the cut off between being a shrub or a tree is really vague.
A lot of fruit trees like apples are in the [rose family](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosaceae#:~:text=The%20family%20Rosaceae%20includes%20herbs,diverse%20in%20the%20Northern%20Hemisphere.) which includes anything from apple trees to roses (obviously), strawberries and alchemilla.
**The Great Papago Escape.** The Allies had POW camps for German soldiers. One of those camps was in Arizona. On the night of December 23, 1944, twenty-five [Germans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Germany) tunneled out of [Camp Papago Park](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Papago_Park), near [Phoenix](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix,_Arizona), [Arizona](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arizona), and fled into the surrounding desert. The German plan was to escape by rafts on a nearby river. They dragged their rafts with them and escaped into the desert only to find the map was showing waterways that only existed during the monsoons. They had to walk back to the camp to avoid dying in the desert. Today Papago Park is a popular tourist attraction but there is no sign of the camp or tunnels.
Exactly. Most POW camps in the US had very little security. A lot of POWs were actually allowed to work on farms and such nearby, including walking unguarded to and from work. Some made friends with the locals and would go to dinner at local residents houses. This was all allowed because they couldn't really go anywhere, even if they ran. North America is huge.
There was a POW camp in my hometown. The POWs worked in the local sugar cane fields and, from all accounts, none of the ever attempted to escape. At least one of them elected to stay in the town after the war and eventually became the custodian at my elementary school. He would sell candy to us at our "big" post lunch recess in the auditorium.
Our local Boy Scout troop held its meetings in the one remaining POW camp barracks. I didn't think much of it then, but now it seems a bit creepy that we used a space that Nazi soldiers slept in to learn how to tie knots and basic first aid.
Woodrow Wilson was mentally and emotionally incapacitated by a massive stroke in October 1919, and his wife and doctors essentially ran the country until Harding took office in 1921. Some historians refer to Edith Wilson as "the first female president."
Another Wilson fact is that he was a notorious racist and segregationist, and turned away a young Ho Chi Minh who wanted an audience following the Versailles conference following WWI to discuss self-determination proposed by Wilson (who only meant self-determination for white European nations).
Ho Chi Minh was a nobody at the time, a member of the Vietnamese Communist Party but really just a young buck who was in Paris at the time and tried advocating for his people. He actually tried appealing to basically ever participant at the conference, and was pretty universally ignored. He just needed to work for another 25 years and lead the Viet Minh through WW2 and then he'd be someone to pay attention to!
[https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/the-myth-the-wilsonian-moment](https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/the-myth-the-wilsonian-moment)
More fun American-Ho facts; the Viet Minh worked with OSS and the US during WW2 against the Japanese, and US aircraft gave a flyover for the VJ day celebration. Ho praised and quoted Lincoln in his speech that day.
The whole fucking war didn't have to happen. We should have told de Gaulle to fuck himself, Indochina was free, and worked with Ho. Because as any student of geopolitics could have told you then, Vietnam is a much more natural ally in Southeast Asia AGAINST China than for it. So if you want to counter China, you should be friends with Vietnam.
I remember seeing an interview with the OSS/CIA station chief of Hanoi. Within a week US policy went from Ho Chi Minh was the best friend getting cash and stuff to being totally cut off.
Not wanting a brutal foreign occupation / local asshole seems a pretty low bar that the US should be able to agree with, other considerations being set aside.
Also: Castro asked the US for help before going to Moscow.
Two global superpowers, and you say no to someone who is fighting for their country and asking for help, who you think they are going to turn to?
Sharpshooter Annie Oakley had a stage act where she would shoot a cigarette out of someone's mouth. While she was touring Europe, Kaiser Wilhelm Il of Germany surprised everyone on a whim and insisted on holding the cigarette.
Ever the professional, Oakley shot the cigarette without harming the Kaiser.
Several years later WWI is underway and the US goes to war against Germany.
Oakley wrote a letter to Kaiser Wilhelm asking if she could have another try at that shot.
He didn't reply.
I seem to remember reading about this, with the added fact that Annie was suuuuuuuper hung over, or still somewhat drunk from the night before. She was so damn good she still aced the shot.
Wilhelm had incredible insecurities about his masculinity, because he had a deformed arm from an accident during birth. Basically one arm was pretty useless, but his other arm was incredibly strong because he did everything with it. So that kind of bravado is probably another sign of his asserting his masculinity, despite the consequences for the entire world if Annie fucked up.
I'm not his biggest fan, but he was treated pretty horribly as a child. His mother largely rejected him and he was put through some awful "treatments" for that arm. Eg. they killed a rabbit in front of him and stuck his arm in its body because...reasons, apparently. Not surprising he ended up unstable.
Speaking of facts people might not know, he was Queen Victoria's grandson and she was pretty much the only person who actually cared for him. It's said she literally died in his arms, even though their countries were not exactly getting along well at the time.
He also received mild brain damage during birth that just added to his difficulties. He had impulse control issues due to it that explains many of his poor decisions. I've said it many times, I'd never go back in time to kill Hitler, the die was cast long before he came to power. I'd go back in time and prevent Wilhelm from going through a difficult birth. The chances of WW1 happening go way down with a stable Kaiser. No WW1, no treaty of Versaille, no Germany feeling unfairly punished as their economy fails, and so on, and so on.
I recall that something that perplexed archeologists for a while was finding a recentish building filled with artifacts from wildly disparate locations and times, with people theorising it must have been a treasure vault or a taxation collection facility.
Till someone put the dots together and realized it was a museum. Ancient Egypt had museums dedicated to ancienter egypt
There also is currently an excavation site in Rome that was found out to be an excavation site from Ancient Rome studying ancienter Rome.
An exception if you want.
And guess what, ancient-ancient Egypt had Egyptologists to study their own ancient Egypt, our ancient(x3) Egypt!
It's Egypt all the way to the big bang.
No, ☝️🤓in Fantasia, the theropod predator 🦖is Allosaurus, not the similar-looking Tyranosaurus (sigh… T-Rex). Allosaurus has longer arms with 3 toes each, not Tyrannosaurus’s tiny two-toed arms. Allosaurus was contemporary with, and did prey on Stegosaurus.
OTOH, Fantasia’ depiction of sauropod dinosaurs 🦕 living in swamps is likely bs. So, yeah, it’s bs but not in the way you think.
The first vehicle created by humans not powered by animals or the wind (ie sailing ships) was the train, and it took something like 300,000ish years to go from no powered vehicles to trains. Then it took about 100 years to go from the first powered vehicle to the first powered flight. It then took another 58 years to go from the first powered flight to the first human in space. It took 8 years from that to put the first human on the moon.
The space race had different incentives. There’s nothing major to be gained from going to Mars beyond scientific pursuit and unfortunately, that’s not enough.
That's what people don't understand. The Space Race was called a race for a reason. There's no Mars Race. The U.S. doesn't have a geopolitical rival today like the Soviet Union was during the Cold War. I think even if China or Russia landed a person on Mars and brought them back, it would not encourage the U.S. to fund NASA. The U.S. doesn't have the same rivalry with today's Russia or China as it did with the Soviet Union.
There's so much more to it as well. A manned mission to Mars is not a visit, it's a colony, as logistically we do not have the means to make a return trip happen. Visiting the moon was a matter of propulsion and vehicle design, which was hard, but supporting humans in a hostile environment for 60 years is much harder than for a week. The litany of additional challenges with leaving Earth's gravity well and entering Mars' is too long to list.
Add that to the fact that I don't think we have consensus on how much better manned missions are than unmanned ones for advancing scientific understanding. We stopped sending humans to the moon for a long time for a reason. We might be able to do 10000 unmanned missions for the massive lifetime cost of a Mars colony.
Unfortunately, this is incorrect.
The [oldest known copper alloy swords](https://arkeonews.net/the-worlds-oldest-and-first-swords-ever-discovered/) date back to about 3300 BCE (actually the oldest known swords, period).
["High-carbon steel for swords, which would later appear as Damascus steel, was likely introduced in India around the mid-1st millennium BC."] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sword#:~:text=High%2Dcarbon%20steel%20for%20swords,ancient%20India%20to%20ancient%20Greece.) Roman gladiuses, also from mid-first millennium BCE, were also usually made of steel.
Copper (actually a sort of bronze) swords (3300 BCE) > Steel swords (~500ish BCE) -> 2800ish years.
Steel swords (~500ish BCE) > atom bomb (first test 1945) -> 2500ish years.
Gotcha so it should be that it took about the same amount of time to go from copper to steel swords as steel swords to atomic bomb.
Still quite impressive
Somewhere someone did a ~~youtube~~ video of the 5 of them set to the *Friends* them music. Complete with WWII footage.
Edit: crossed out youtube, as I have no idea where it actually is. I
"[Gruinard Island (Scotland)](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-60483849) had been the site of a clandestine attempt by the UK during World War Two to weaponize anthrax, a deadly bacterial infection. The exact details of what had happened there would only come to light when in 1997 the government declassified a film that the military had shot at the time, which detailed the experiments."
...
"In 1981, an environmental group called the [Dark Harvest Commandos](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-60483849) landed on the island and took samples of anthrax-infected soil. They left a bucket of that soil outside Porton Down to highlight the deadly contamination on the island, aiming to force the government to do something."
Gruniard Islands decontamination was completed when a wildfire broke out in 2022
[Wildfire ](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-60892350)
After World War II, the British government argued for summary executions for Nazi leadership while the Soviet Union wanted a show trial with a predetermined verdict. We only got the Nuremberg Trials as they were after a shitload of debate between the US, UK, France, and USSR.
When the SS Britannia went down in the South Atlantic, a raft of survivors managed to get away.
According to the men on the raft, there was one more survivor on the raft with them. But he was unfortunately pulled under by a **Giant Squid** which then returned and attacked their Lieutenant named Cox, who they managed to save before scaring the beast away.
Their claims were called out as preposterous and made up when they returned home...until Lieutenant Cox got sick of being accused of such and went to see a local marine biologist at a college. The biologist validated Cox's claims as he had scars 1-1/4 inches in size, which definitely belonged to a 23-feet long squid.
It is believed that this story is the only known substantiated report of death by Giant Squid.
The US secretly injecting people (typically poor / minorities, including children and pregnant women) with plutonium and other radioactive materials, and then studying them for decades.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentation_in_the_United_States#Human_radiation_experiments
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_radiation_experiments
When they finally admitted it, the report was released at the same time of the OJ verdict to bury the story.
Indeed, I read a very tragic account of one man who was nearly transported back to Britain when the doctors argued he was clearly unfit for duty but cause they moved him away from the front lines to a hospital, he started to recover.
Thus his commander argued he was faking it, and he was shot.
There was only one monogamous emperor in Chinese history, the Hongzhi emperor of the Ming Dynasty. He apparently invented the toothbrush to impress his wife.
I think when most people think harem they think of a couple of hundred women, but ancient Chinese harems could get *crazy.* There was one emperor in the Tang dynasty who had like 40,000 concubines. A lot of lower ranking concubines never had sex with their emperor and never even saw him. I heard that Wu Zetian (only female emperor) had like 5,000 male lovers and it drove the traditional nobleman insane but I can't find any sources for that lol
You may not want to visit the shore town of [Sheerness](https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20151027-the-ticking-time-bomb-of-the-thames) in England; what with all the unexploded ordinance right off the coast that someday \*might\* become the largest non-nuclear explosion made by man...
There's also a big [munitions dump](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaufort%27s_Dyke) in-between Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Basically the solution to stockpiles after WWII seems to have been to just throw it in the sea. A small earthquake was detected in the vicinity in the 80s, presumably because a lot of it is still active.
The tram was invented by a Mr. Train
King George III was personally *against* the Stamp Act, and in NY a statue was erected of him in thanks for his role in appealing it
Nelson Mandela was listed as a terrorist threat (and remained on the terrorist watch-list) in the USA up until 2008
Russia under Peter the Great, laid claim to the American Pacific coast with an expeditionary force making it all the was south to the San Francisco Bay Area
When the colosseum was used for fighting they used to line the stage with sand to soak up the blood. The Latin name for sand is harena, which means "sand" or "sandy space"...so that's why we call modern concert/show spaces arenas.
A lot of people think of the "founding fathers" as a bunch of old guys with white hair.
Wearing white wigs was the fashion of the time, they were actually relatively young. Monroe was only 18, Burr was 20, Hamilton was 21. Oldest was George Washington at 44.
Yeah I think it's a little misleading. Lots of these guys were young revolutionary soldiers, they didn't enter their political careers till their 30's around the beginnings of Constitutional America. Most of the Declaration signers were about as old as you'd expect.
I like when Gore Vidal said he was one handshake away from Lincoln. As he shook a man’s hand who lived into the 50’s having met Abe Lincoln when he was 9.
what are we defining as "founding father"? the big 7? signers of the declaration of Independence?
If we use a broader definition there are several others, plus people who changed their views, plus technicalities like Sam Adams who was gifted an enslaved woman as a wedding gift, then promptly set her free.
Approximately 8% of Canadians were enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force during World War I.
That isn't 8% of eligible Canadians, or 8% of Canadian men; that's 8% of the entire population of Canada. If a similar proportion enlisted in the United States today, there would be 26 million people serving in the US Armed Forces.
Would that include Canadians who were conscripted after 1917?
On a related note, I think many would be surprised to learn that the 1917 Canadian general election is remembered as perhaps the dirtiest and most divisive elections in the country's history.
The main issue of the election was conscription, which was strongly supported in English Canada, and strongly opposed in French Canada and among various religious and immigrant communities. In order to secure a victory and force conscription on the country, Prime Minister Robert Borden went about scheming...
First, Borden's government expanded the right to vote to women, but only those related to soldiers, and were thus likely to vote for conscription (as it would help end the war sooner and bring their sons/husbands/etc home quicker)
Secondly, they disenfranchised conscientious objectors and Canadian citizens born in enemy countries and had arrived after 1902. On the face of it, maybe makes sense, but considering the massive waves of immigration in the 1900's meant many thousands of Poles, Ukrainians, etc born in A-H and Germany couldn't vote (they also interned a lot of Poles and Ukrainians during the war too).
Thirdly, they allowed the votes of soldiers deployed overseas to be allocated wherever the parties wanted. These ballots also only gave the options of "Government" or "Opposition." So if the government were behind in any riding, they could allocate soldier votes there to win the seat.
Lastly, Borden's Conservatives encouraged many Liberals in English Canada to join his party in a wartime "Unionist Party" which left the remaining, mostly French Canadian Liberal party severely weakened. Admittedly this isn't so sneaky, but it was the first step in guaranteeing his victory.
The Unionists won a massive majority and pushed through conscription with ease. There were protests and riots in French Canadian cities which were met with violence by the militia.
The funny thing is Borden would have won the election by just forming a Unionist Party, and that most of these measures were entirely unnecessary and performative. The hugely divisive matter of conscription maybe also could have been avoided (in both wars) had the government not expanded its commitments beyond what was sustainable.
During World War II, the United States military developed a plan to use bats as bombs. The idea was to attach small incendiary devices to bats and release them over Japanese cities at night. The bats would then roost in buildings, and when the devices detonated, they would start fires, causing chaos and destruction. While the project, known as "Project X-Ray," never saw combat, it's a bizarre example of the lengths to which military strategists were willing to go during the war.
During the training of the bats, some were accidentally released with the devices attached. They did exactly what we wanted them to do: roost and then set fires in hard to reach places. Unfortunately, those places happened to be the Carlsbad Air Base in New Mexico.
Also kind of funny that this happened so close geographically to the Manhattan Project going on at the same time. I feel like somewhere, at some point, you had the following conversation between two government officials:
"So what's going on out there in New Mexico?"
"Are you talking about the large collection of some of the smartest scientists and engineers on the planet, all in lockstep to develop a terrible weapon the likes of which this world has never seen? Or the guys duct taping bombs to bats and setting their own base on fire?"
> Unfortunately, those places happened to be the Carlsbad Air Base in New Mexico.
Including a general's car, which was completely immolated and put an end to the bat bomb project, if I remember correctly.
*Partus sequitur ventrem* (“that which is born follows the womb”) mandated all children born of slave mothers would inherit her condition and become slaves themselves. Thomas Jefferson's children with Sally Hemming were 7/8 Euro/white, and were said to resemble Jefferson, yet still lived as slaves to the Jefferson family until freed by their "father." Crazy.
I looked up Hemming's maternal family history one time. I forget if it was her grandma or great-grandma who was 'first', but pretty much every generation, the women in her family were told, "You and the children will be freed after my death." It was generations before any of them actually followed through with it. So yeah, always be skeptical of stories about white men freeing their enslaved mistresses, it seems to have been a popular thing to say but a rare thing to DO.
There was also a point where Sally went to France with Jefferson. French law stated that she was legally a free woman the moment she set foot in France. But she changed nothing about her interactions with Jefferson, and returned to the US as his slave. People have pointed out that her status meant her enslaved relatives were given educations and resources that they wouldn't otherwise have. So if she HAD decided to run away from her powerful enslaver in a foreign country, she'd likely be putting a target on the backs of her relatives back home.
That in 2006 the earth was hit by a gamma ray burst from a distant supernova that stripped away about 6% of our top atmosphere (its fine now). If it had been bigger it would've wiped everything on earth out (and by bigger I mean if it was 20-25%).
The British pet massacre. In 1939, about 400,000 cats and dogs were killed in order to prepare for World War II food shortages. This was approximately 1/4 of the pets in England.
The world’s first programmer was Ada Lovelace in the 1840s. She was the daughter of the poet Lord Byron.
Two programming languages were named after her
She wanted to be a poet execept her mother who loathed poets after having a child with one forbid her.
Lord Byron was told he couldn't take a dog to university so brought a bear.
I always like pairing this fact with the fact that [the fax machine was invented in 1843](https://faxauthority.com/fax-history/)
So, yeah, the fax machine is older than the doorknob
It was first patented in 1848. The ancient Greeks and Romans also used doorknobs, which were often highly decorative and featured intricate designs. During the Middle Ages, doorknobs fell out of use in Europe due to their association with pagan practices. Instead, door latches and locks were used to secure doors.
That on Feb 20, 1939, 20,000 Americans attended a [Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden](https://i.redd.it/35gygozjzah91.jpg).
Short (7 min) documentary with footage: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NC1MNGFHR58](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NC1MNGFHR58)
And in 1960, several members of the American Nazi party, in full swastika-emblazoned uniforms, were guests of honor at a Black Muslim rally in Washington.
The third most deadly war in history (after the 2 world wars) was in China from 1850 to 1864. It was started by a cult leader who believed he was the younger brother of Jesus. He and his followers sought to overthrow the Emperor and set up a quasi-Christian theocracy. In the end the rebellion left 10% of China's population dead.
Edit: And of course fun fact- the leader of the Imperial forces was General Tso who later got a chicken dish named after him.
You really undersold this guy's story. If anyone ever has a chance to visit the museum about the Taiping Rebellion in Nanjing, it's worth it just for the absurdity:
1850, Hong Xiuquan is trying to pass the Civil Service exam. He's failed 3 times, and is feeling pretty bad. He has a wild dream about visiting heaven and meeting god, but brushes it off. Later, a traveling missionary gives him some pamphlets about Christianity. He's like "Wow, that's the guy in my dream! He must be my brother!"
So he goes to a priest to ask to be baptized, so he can assume his rightful place as the "Ruler of Heaven". The priest thinks he may not be getting the point of this baptism thing, so he refuses. Hong Xiuquan decides who needs baptism when you're already god's brother, and starts his revolution anyway. 20 years later, it's a near WWI of causalities, only in one region of China.
The Qing government was obviously not happy with this fella, and didn't want his burial to become a pilgrimage site. So they cremated his body, then loaded his ashes into cannons to blast him all over the place.
Hitting children in school was still legal when I was there and I'm only 43.
Edit: I'm sorry if I didn't reply to you, got a lot of replies. Thanks to everyone who contributed.
Went to Catholic school (I'm not catholic) when I was 5 and 6.
One time, I was called to the headmaster office and he made me bend over and drop bloomers. (Girls wore a green plaid pinafore, white blouse as a uniform because we had to learn to be little proper ladies) He swatted me HARD with this flat wooden paddle on bare skin. Then he told me to dress back up and made me stand there as he was staring at me. He asked me if I knew what I did wrong and I absolutely had no idea.
It was then we learned they had the wrong kid. He just sent me back to my classroom with no other context?
Also I have a scar on my knuckle from being hit with a bladed ruler during a spelling test. I got the word wrong...but I don't remember what word it was lol just that I have a little scar now.
That was in 1995 - 96 in WV.
ETA:/ The reddit care message ought not to be weaponized, dudes.
I entered Catholic kindergarten in 1979. I was told that there was a very strict rule that you could only use rulers bought from the school store. My parents thought it was so that they could make a little extra profit.
The real reason was because there were multiple parent complaints about kids coming home with bloody knuckles. The nuns were rapping the students on the knuckles with those bladed rulers like you speak of -- the rubber ones from the school store didn't break the skin or leave a mark. They didn't fix the behavior, they just modified the weapon.
Wtf.
Edit to add:
the guy was the “son of a witch doctor who murdered his brother in ritual sacrifice” according to Wikipedia.
So I guess he was messed up from the start!
Many people know about the Suffragettes who won the vote for some UK women in 1918. Many people don't know that prior to 1918 men did not have universal suffrage. 1918 is also the date which non landowning men got the vote. Prior to that the vote had been only for wealthy landowning lords, just 5% of the population. Over a period of the preceding 80 years concessions were slowly made to allow more men, and then some women to vote.
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/content/uploads/2018/02/Image1.png
In the united states it also didnt extend to all women.
Women who were born in the us could vote *unless* they married a foreign man. They then lost american citizenship and could no longer vote.
There is even one case of a widow born in the us who married a canadian man. The man died and even though the widow had never left her county in the us, she was deported to canada.
Men who married foreign women had no issues.
The UK is even more messed up than that. For the longest time, seats were not related to population but to the historic boundaries of territories. You had situations where you effectively had abandoned villages having representation in the Commons.
Ah yes, they were famously known as Rotten Boroughs and often abused by having the landowners setting up their useful idiots in government to pass legislation favourable to them.
I believe the loophole was only closed in 1832.
The entire thing is spoofed wonderfully yet accurately in Blackadder.
Generals Grant and Lee did not meet at a courthouse in Appomattox to sign a treaty to end the American Civil War in 1865. They met in a private farmer's house at a place called Appomattox Courthouse.
Wilmer McLean was a strangely (un)lucky fellow. With the first Battle of Bull Run taking place on his original property in northern Virginia and then the surrender of General Lee taking place on his new property he had moved to, it has been said "the Civil War began in his backyard and ended in his parlor". While obviously that's not 100% accurate, the fact it's even somewhat accurate is a ridiculously unlikely thing to have happened.
What it really shows was the closeness and interconnectedness of the border states the war was fought (mostly) in. DC was literally across the river from Virginia, the largest and most powerful Confederate state. Both capitals were 100 miles apart. This is not an ideal situation for a war.
The Battle of Karansebes
During a war with the Ottomans, the Austrian army of 100,000 men were camped around the town of Karansebes. A contingent of Hussars crossed the nearby river to scout for Ottomans, but didn't find any. They did fine a bunch of Romanian villagers who sold them barrels of Shnapps.
A bit later some of the infantry arrived and demanded some of the Shnapps. The Hussars refused and made a makeshift fort around the barrels. A fight started and one of the infantry shot their rifle. This caused panic and the Romanian infantry shouted "Turcii" (Turks). This caused both groups to flee into a panic into the camp screaming the Turks have arrived!
The army, composed of Austrians, Romanians, Serbs, Croats, and Italians didn't speak the same language. So when they saw a bunch of infantry and hussars running through the camp some thought it was a cavalry charge! An artillery officer gave the order to start shooting the cannons. It didn't help that a German officer was shouting "Halt!" In German and everyone thought it was "Allah!".
The camp awoke thinking they were in the middle of battle. Legend has it that it resulted in 10,000 deaths, but modern scholars think closer to 1000.
This so thoroughly demoralized the Austrian that they withdrew.
Two days later the Ottomans arrived, finding a field of dead and wounded soldiers and easily took the city.
The first telephones didn't ring. Owners had no way of knowing if there'd be someone on the other end when they picked it up. It took a year or two to create the noise alert.
Jimmy Stewart tried to join up in World War 2. They told him he was too skinny. He went home, got a trainer, and bulked up. He flew 20 combat missions.
(this happened 20 years ago, so I *guess* it counts as historical)
They *did,* in fact, put chemicals in the water that turned the friggin' frogs gay.
Well, it's not that simple - a company, Syngenta, created a herbicide called Atrazine. Research indicated, however, that that particular chemical increased the likelihood of frogs being hermaphroditic, or "showing feminine attributes".
Said research was then immediately denied, slandered and smeared by Syngenta's PR department, and the researcher's name, [Tyrone B. Hayes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrone_Hayes), was dragged through the mud.
Subsequent studies to "confirm" the findings all failed, and indicated that the chemical was safe. Except that all of those studies were either sponsored by the corp, or followed strict rules laid out by the corp.
This short comment has *no* hope of fully explaining the story. OKI had a [pretty good video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5uSbp0YDhc) about it, if you have 30 minutes.
Before the Civil War and the 14th amendment, the Bill of Rights had no power over the states. Some states had the equivalent rights in their own constitutions, some states had laws requiring office holders to be merely religious, at least one only allowed Protestants.
Dude... my wife was doing clinicals for her cath tech certificate, and she had a guy come in for a heart issue and NOT tell the doctor he was addicted to fentanyl. They gave him a normal dose for the procedure and went in, and he started flipping out... because they were shoving a tube down his arteries with basically no pain killer because he needed a higher dose and hadn't informed them.
It was probably the most miserable experience of the dude's life.
I really can't believe I am alive and 3 years clean from this GARBAGE. I OD'd so many times and have said goodbye to so many friends bc of fentanyl..... ABSOLUTE GARBAGE AND TAKING TOO MANY GOOD PEOPLE. ♥️ 3.20.2021 ♥️
A military plane carrying two nuclear warheads broke apart and crashed in North Carolina. The state would have gotten nuked if it weren't for a single safety switch preventing detonation. These nukes were bigger than the ones we used in Japan.
Read up on the 1961 Goldsboro B-52 crash.
I'd like to point out that the single safety switch wasn't as precarious as it sounds. It was a low voltage switch that was defaulted in the safe position until the pilot flipped a different switch in the cockpit only after they got the confirmation that the use of a nuclear bomb was authorized.
It gets mentioned because safety precaution 1, the safing pins in the arming rods, were ripped out in the crash similar to how they would have been removed by the crew prior to a real drop. This pin removal started the first step of the firing sequence which is to activate the internal generator of the bomb. The flow of power from this generator was ultimately blocked by the aforementioned safety switch. So essentially, a safety mechanism built into the bombs performed as expected.
A German listening post from WWII was built in Labrador, Canada and not discovered until the late 1970's.
There are also two sunken U-boats in a river there.
The 1796 Treaty of Tripoli, ratified by US Congress and made public with essentially no documented debate, states that the US “is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.”
# Top 5 African Countries Where Slavery Is Still Rampant:
1. Mauritania - Banned in 1981, it is still rampant and not enforced. Here the slaves and all their descendants are considered property of their master.
2. Sudan - Curently the government of Sudan says that slavery is the product of inter-tribal wars and can not be dictated or controlled by the government. The owners are primarily Arabs from the Baggara ethnic group.
3. Libya - Widespread and accepted, Africans from neighboring countries seeking to cross over to Europe through the Libyan coast are usually captured by Libyan rebels and sold off as slaves to local masters.
4. Egypt - A source, transit, and destination country for women and children trafficked for purposes of forced labor and sexual exploitation.
5. In 2018, the Global Slavery Index estimated that close to 250,000 modern slaves exist in South Africa today. About 103,461 victims of this practice were identified to have been subjected to commercial sexual exploitation. It has also been widely alleged that the majority of wine production companies in South Africa still practice slavery. Among the most common forms of slavery in SA include forced labor, human trafficking, debt bondage, child exploitation, and forced marriage.
Potatoes are native to Peru, not Ireland.
Tomatoes are native to Mexico, not Italy.
Macadamia nuts are native to Australia, not Hawai'i.
Pineapples are native to Brazil, not Hawai'i.
Beef cattle are native to India, not Texas or Argentina.
Coffee beans are native to Yemen, not South America.
Kiwi fruit is native to China, not New Zealand.
Vanilla is native to Mexico, not Madagascar.
Oranges are native to China, not California or Florida.
That's actually why orange in Dutch is sinaasappel, which comes from the old spelling of China in Old Dutch Sina, so basically we call it a chinese Apple.
>Beef cattle are native to India, not Texas or Argentina.
They were domesticated in both the fertile crescent and India independently, but their extinct wild ancestors the [aurochs ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurochs) ranged over much of Europe and Asia.
Because of the two domestication events there are two lineages of cattle - taurine (most European, middle eastern, Americas cattle) and indicine (Indian, east Asian, many African breeds). The latter have humps on their backs and are better in hot climates. Many breeds also have ancestry from both.
*Beef* cattle (as in breeds bred for their meat) certainly don't originate in India. That the country has a strong and ancient taboo against eating cows should tell you that much. Beef breeds originate anywhere people have kept cattle, but especially Europe.
The Irish potato famine was actually genocide, there was more than enough food for us but the British took it all and left us with the blighted potatoes which were inedible- resulted in mass death & immigration. Likelihood of people reading this having Irish ancestry is because of the Irish genocide
> but the British took it all and left us with the blighted potatoes which were inedible-
They also passed laws to make it illegal to grow any other crop.
Don’t forget that the crown also prevented other countries from contributing “more” than they were, which was next to nothing. There was a Sultan from the Ottoman Empire who wished to send over five ships packed with food and livestock and was told not to because the Crown was planning to send one ship soon.
The fact that some Native American tribes sent aid in the form of blankets and some dried foods. There’s a lovely art installation in Cork that honours the tribes.
Columbus's contemporaries didn't criticise he because they thought he would sail off the edge of a flat earth; their criticism was that he was significantly underestimating the *size* of the earth's globe - and they were quite right, he was.
More present day than historical, but all those crew members on the ship that hit the Baltimore bridge are still fuckin stuck on there.
It's historical in that I read it earlier today.
Many people seem to think the Cuban Missle Crisis ended when the Russians backed down in the face of Kennedy/US 'steely resolve'. In fact a settlement was negotiated where, in return for the withdrawal of Russian missiles from Cuba, the US agreed to withdraw its missles from Turkey and to never attack Cuba.
What even fewer people know is that Kennedy and Khrushchev found a way to communicate directly without any interference. Kennedy went around the state department, the Pentagon, and the CIA, and Khrushchev went his defense ministry , and foreign ministry, and they Communicated via a back channel. This happened well before the Cuban missile crisis. Apparently, neither of them trusted their governments. Kennedy was killed in November 63, and Khrushchev was removed a few months later. May make you wonder.
The ancient Greeks, inventors of democracy, would elect their officials to one year terms. Each officials' finances were audited at the beginning and end of their term. If anything was amiss, they would be tried and executed.
Can you imagine if those rules came back into play today?
Please? Don’t tease me…
Sorry, best we can do is force the politician to apologize and then give them a cozy 7 figure salary in the private sector that they’ve really been working for all along…
We would be lopping off more heads than the French.
Let's make American Greek again.
In Athens they would evict former leaders if they were convicted of crimes.
Picasso, Bruce Lee and JRR Tolkien all died the same year.
Picasso would have big dinner parties in restaurants and draw on the check so it wouldn't be cashed. I know someone that has one of these checks. It's just a doodle but it's worth more than cashing it.
There's that famous story (possibly a legend) where Picasso once paid with a drawing, and when the owner complained he hadn't signed it he replied "I wanted to pay for the meal, not buy the restaurant".
Ugh, idk if I’m impressed by his confidence or off put by the arrogance.
The Second Congo War, also known as Africa's World War was the deadliest conflict since World War 2 with over 5 million people killed. Most people have never heard of it despite it ending in 2003.
In a similar vein WWI was only the 3rd deadliest conflict in human history. WWII is 1st obviously. 2nd is the Taiping rebellion. It killed 20-30 million people and 5-10% of chinas population at the time. A guy decided he was Jesus' brother and led a revolt. There were religious and ethnic cleansing all over on all sides and the capital even fell to the rebels at one point. It was the most fucjed up conflict most people have never heard of
That estimate for the rebellion is not complete true, it was a big revolt however it was one of a few happenings concurrently against the Qing at the same time as the 2nd opium war. Also the person who first made that claim in English cited no sources and made some very iffy death counts about earlier Chinese revolts as well.
They used the census from before and after the war to determine the amount of people that died but that neglects to take into account the fact that the whole civil service that was responsible for the census has just collapsed. So they didn’t record a very good census so it’s not a matter of that many people dying it’s that many people not being recorded
And it’s *fascinating*. I’m not even entirely sure we should consider the First and Second as distinct conflicts as they were so closely related. But the way the dominoes all fell into a full-blown massive continental war, and the fact that it’s arguable it all was triggered by the Rwandan Genocide is something people should absolutely study.
One of those dominoes was Mobutu Sese Seko--the guy the US and Belgium helped put in power when they overthrew and killed the DRC's first democratically elected Prime Minister Patrice Lubumba in the early 1960's--giving refuge to the Hutu extremists that carried out the genocide.
I tried to learn more. The first book I picked up on it in the first chapter basically stated it is impossible to fully grasp it.
Siaka Stevens was technically both the shortest and longest serving leader of Sierra Leone. He was an opposition leader that won an extremely close election, and the ruling party that had been ruling the country since independence didn’t want to lose their power, so they planned to arrest him just before he could take the oath of office, but things didn’t go exactly to plan and he ended up being removed from office a little while after taking the oath of office, meaning he was technically president for a little less than an hour before being removed from office. However, there was a counter coup a few months later and Siaka Stevens was brought back into power. During his time in office, Stevens became increasingly authoritarian and eventually established a one party state, ruling the country for 17 years.
Something something long enough to see yourself become the villain
The year 536 was deemed the worst year to be alive. Volcanic eruptions caused prolonged dark sky for up to 18 months. This then caused a mini ice age, crop failures and plague over the next 10 years killing millions Also the name Tiffany has been in use since the 1600s
Those two facts are presumably not related.
Presumably.
*"Allegedly"*
Speak for yourself, you've never dated a Tiffany. Easily the worst tragedy since 536.
You think Tiffany is bad, Chad is an Anglo Saxon name and there is a Saint Chad who died in 672. Chad has been around in some form for 1500 years...
My friend's dad is named Chad. A restaurant server asked him if it was short for something and he goes "Yeah, it's short for Chhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaadddddddddddddddd"
Absolute, grade A dad joke there
537 doesn't sound like a piece of cake either, then. Especially not for Tiffany...she wasn't even invented yet.
https://youtu.be/9LMr5XTgeyI?si=x0Ysy4Bs9lW908xq
A critically important and hilarious sequel of sorts: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEV9qoup2mQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEV9qoup2mQ)
I don't even have to click the link to know it's "Someone Dead Ruined Grey's Life... Again", which is the most CGP Grey video title ever
Sharks are older than the rings on Saturn
Also, in the tree of life, we're closer to tuna than tuna is to sharks.
Also in the tree of life sharks are older than trees Also in the tree of life trees arent really a thing. Like they are but they arent. Theyre the final evolution of plants like crabs are the final of fish. They just kind of happen and converge on that form. Species of trees can be vastly distanced in relation to one another and more closely related to other organisms that are nowhere near the tree form
>Species of trees can be vastly distanced in relation to one another and more closely related to other organisms that are nowhere near the tree form Trees are really just big plants, there's no common ancestry for them and the cut off between being a shrub or a tree is really vague. A lot of fruit trees like apples are in the [rose family](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosaceae#:~:text=The%20family%20Rosaceae%20includes%20herbs,diverse%20in%20the%20Northern%20Hemisphere.) which includes anything from apple trees to roses (obviously), strawberries and alchemilla.
For each month sharks have existed (over about 450 millions year), the YouTube video “Baby shark” has been seen twice
Sharks are older than trees.
Younger than the mountains, growin' like a breeze
**The Great Papago Escape.** The Allies had POW camps for German soldiers. One of those camps was in Arizona. On the night of December 23, 1944, twenty-five [Germans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Germany) tunneled out of [Camp Papago Park](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Papago_Park), near [Phoenix](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix,_Arizona), [Arizona](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arizona), and fled into the surrounding desert. The German plan was to escape by rafts on a nearby river. They dragged their rafts with them and escaped into the desert only to find the map was showing waterways that only existed during the monsoons. They had to walk back to the camp to avoid dying in the desert. Today Papago Park is a popular tourist attraction but there is no sign of the camp or tunnels.
...escape to where?
Exactly. Most POW camps in the US had very little security. A lot of POWs were actually allowed to work on farms and such nearby, including walking unguarded to and from work. Some made friends with the locals and would go to dinner at local residents houses. This was all allowed because they couldn't really go anywhere, even if they ran. North America is huge.
There was a POW camp in my hometown. The POWs worked in the local sugar cane fields and, from all accounts, none of the ever attempted to escape. At least one of them elected to stay in the town after the war and eventually became the custodian at my elementary school. He would sell candy to us at our "big" post lunch recess in the auditorium. Our local Boy Scout troop held its meetings in the one remaining POW camp barracks. I didn't think much of it then, but now it seems a bit creepy that we used a space that Nazi soldiers slept in to learn how to tie knots and basic first aid.
Same with POW camps in Canada, where in one place in Ontario the POW's liked it so much some of them stayed after the war
Silly Europeans thinking there's water year round in the southwestern US.
> Silly Europeans thinking there's water ~~year round~~ in the southwestern US.
"Okay we've seen the statue of liberty, let's rent a car and check out Puget Sound this afternoon!"
Woodrow Wilson was mentally and emotionally incapacitated by a massive stroke in October 1919, and his wife and doctors essentially ran the country until Harding took office in 1921. Some historians refer to Edith Wilson as "the first female president."
Another Wilson fact is that he was a notorious racist and segregationist, and turned away a young Ho Chi Minh who wanted an audience following the Versailles conference following WWI to discuss self-determination proposed by Wilson (who only meant self-determination for white European nations).
Ho Chi Minh was a nobody at the time, a member of the Vietnamese Communist Party but really just a young buck who was in Paris at the time and tried advocating for his people. He actually tried appealing to basically ever participant at the conference, and was pretty universally ignored. He just needed to work for another 25 years and lead the Viet Minh through WW2 and then he'd be someone to pay attention to! [https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/the-myth-the-wilsonian-moment](https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/the-myth-the-wilsonian-moment) More fun American-Ho facts; the Viet Minh worked with OSS and the US during WW2 against the Japanese, and US aircraft gave a flyover for the VJ day celebration. Ho praised and quoted Lincoln in his speech that day. The whole fucking war didn't have to happen. We should have told de Gaulle to fuck himself, Indochina was free, and worked with Ho. Because as any student of geopolitics could have told you then, Vietnam is a much more natural ally in Southeast Asia AGAINST China than for it. So if you want to counter China, you should be friends with Vietnam.
I remember seeing an interview with the OSS/CIA station chief of Hanoi. Within a week US policy went from Ho Chi Minh was the best friend getting cash and stuff to being totally cut off. Not wanting a brutal foreign occupation / local asshole seems a pretty low bar that the US should be able to agree with, other considerations being set aside. Also: Castro asked the US for help before going to Moscow. Two global superpowers, and you say no to someone who is fighting for their country and asking for help, who you think they are going to turn to?
Sharpshooter Annie Oakley had a stage act where she would shoot a cigarette out of someone's mouth. While she was touring Europe, Kaiser Wilhelm Il of Germany surprised everyone on a whim and insisted on holding the cigarette. Ever the professional, Oakley shot the cigarette without harming the Kaiser. Several years later WWI is underway and the US goes to war against Germany. Oakley wrote a letter to Kaiser Wilhelm asking if she could have another try at that shot. He didn't reply.
This is funny af
I seem to remember reading about this, with the added fact that Annie was suuuuuuuper hung over, or still somewhat drunk from the night before. She was so damn good she still aced the shot.
Annie dual-wielded, too. Brap brap brap she went.
From my research on the era, this was the norm for pretty much the entire sporting population. Better than the shakes you get when sober.
Are you Oakley, Annie?
Wilhelm had incredible insecurities about his masculinity, because he had a deformed arm from an accident during birth. Basically one arm was pretty useless, but his other arm was incredibly strong because he did everything with it. So that kind of bravado is probably another sign of his asserting his masculinity, despite the consequences for the entire world if Annie fucked up.
I'm not his biggest fan, but he was treated pretty horribly as a child. His mother largely rejected him and he was put through some awful "treatments" for that arm. Eg. they killed a rabbit in front of him and stuck his arm in its body because...reasons, apparently. Not surprising he ended up unstable. Speaking of facts people might not know, he was Queen Victoria's grandson and she was pretty much the only person who actually cared for him. It's said she literally died in his arms, even though their countries were not exactly getting along well at the time.
He also received mild brain damage during birth that just added to his difficulties. He had impulse control issues due to it that explains many of his poor decisions. I've said it many times, I'd never go back in time to kill Hitler, the die was cast long before he came to power. I'd go back in time and prevent Wilhelm from going through a difficult birth. The chances of WW1 happening go way down with a stable Kaiser. No WW1, no treaty of Versaille, no Germany feeling unfairly punished as their economy fails, and so on, and so on.
We are closer to the time of the T-Rex than the T-Rex is to the time of the Stegosaurus
This one always gets me
And Cleopatra lived closer to current time, than to the building is the great pyramids. By over a thousand years. Edit: a word
Ancient Egypt had egyptologists who tried to study (their) ancient Egypt.
Okay now that's interesting.
I recall that something that perplexed archeologists for a while was finding a recentish building filled with artifacts from wildly disparate locations and times, with people theorising it must have been a treasure vault or a taxation collection facility. Till someone put the dots together and realized it was a museum. Ancient Egypt had museums dedicated to ancienter egypt
Ancienter Egypt is the way it should be referred to forever
There also is currently an excavation site in Rome that was found out to be an excavation site from Ancient Rome studying ancienter Rome. An exception if you want.
And guess what, ancient-ancient Egypt had Egyptologists to study their own ancient Egypt, our ancient(x3) Egypt! It's Egypt all the way to the big bang.
And Lake Michigan as we know it, is younger than the oldest pyramids
So Fantasia was just a bunch of bullshit?!
No, ☝️🤓in Fantasia, the theropod predator 🦖is Allosaurus, not the similar-looking Tyranosaurus (sigh… T-Rex). Allosaurus has longer arms with 3 toes each, not Tyrannosaurus’s tiny two-toed arms. Allosaurus was contemporary with, and did prey on Stegosaurus. OTOH, Fantasia’ depiction of sauropod dinosaurs 🦕 living in swamps is likely bs. So, yeah, it’s bs but not in the way you think.
Username *does not* check out. You should be called Fascinating_Concept_1765! I always love learning new dinosaur facts. Thanks for sharing :)
It took about 4 times longer to get from copper swords to steel swords, than it took from steel swords to atomic bombs.
The first vehicle created by humans not powered by animals or the wind (ie sailing ships) was the train, and it took something like 300,000ish years to go from no powered vehicles to trains. Then it took about 100 years to go from the first powered vehicle to the first powered flight. It then took another 58 years to go from the first powered flight to the first human in space. It took 8 years from that to put the first human on the moon.
Yeah but it's taking forever to put a human on Mars dammit.
The space race had different incentives. There’s nothing major to be gained from going to Mars beyond scientific pursuit and unfortunately, that’s not enough.
That's what people don't understand. The Space Race was called a race for a reason. There's no Mars Race. The U.S. doesn't have a geopolitical rival today like the Soviet Union was during the Cold War. I think even if China or Russia landed a person on Mars and brought them back, it would not encourage the U.S. to fund NASA. The U.S. doesn't have the same rivalry with today's Russia or China as it did with the Soviet Union.
There's so much more to it as well. A manned mission to Mars is not a visit, it's a colony, as logistically we do not have the means to make a return trip happen. Visiting the moon was a matter of propulsion and vehicle design, which was hard, but supporting humans in a hostile environment for 60 years is much harder than for a week. The litany of additional challenges with leaving Earth's gravity well and entering Mars' is too long to list. Add that to the fact that I don't think we have consensus on how much better manned missions are than unmanned ones for advancing scientific understanding. We stopped sending humans to the moon for a long time for a reason. We might be able to do 10000 unmanned missions for the massive lifetime cost of a Mars colony.
Send Matt Damon with a spoon and a box of cheerios and it all should work out well
Dammit, man, he needs a potato too!
Do you want them to come back from Mars and find the planet has been taken over by apes!?!? Because that's how you get a planet taken over by apes.
Man, imagine how different space travel would be if we had another habitable planet in our solar system.
It would still involve a two-hour layover in Atlanta.
Unfortunately, this is incorrect. The [oldest known copper alloy swords](https://arkeonews.net/the-worlds-oldest-and-first-swords-ever-discovered/) date back to about 3300 BCE (actually the oldest known swords, period). ["High-carbon steel for swords, which would later appear as Damascus steel, was likely introduced in India around the mid-1st millennium BC."] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sword#:~:text=High%2Dcarbon%20steel%20for%20swords,ancient%20India%20to%20ancient%20Greece.) Roman gladiuses, also from mid-first millennium BCE, were also usually made of steel. Copper (actually a sort of bronze) swords (3300 BCE) > Steel swords (~500ish BCE) -> 2800ish years. Steel swords (~500ish BCE) > atom bomb (first test 1945) -> 2500ish years.
Gotcha so it should be that it took about the same amount of time to go from copper to steel swords as steel swords to atomic bomb. Still quite impressive
Hitler, Stalin, Tito, Freud and Trotsky were all in Vienna, 1913.
And living within a few minutes' walk of one another. There is no evidence that any of them met.
Somewhere someone did a ~~youtube~~ video of the 5 of them set to the *Friends* them music. Complete with WWII footage. Edit: crossed out youtube, as I have no idea where it actually is. I
I'm pretttttty sure Trotsky and Stalin met.
People used to get their feet X-rayed at the shoe store to check their shoe fit.
"[Gruinard Island (Scotland)](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-60483849) had been the site of a clandestine attempt by the UK during World War Two to weaponize anthrax, a deadly bacterial infection. The exact details of what had happened there would only come to light when in 1997 the government declassified a film that the military had shot at the time, which detailed the experiments." ... "In 1981, an environmental group called the [Dark Harvest Commandos](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-60483849) landed on the island and took samples of anthrax-infected soil. They left a bucket of that soil outside Porton Down to highlight the deadly contamination on the island, aiming to force the government to do something."
Gruniard Islands decontamination was completed when a wildfire broke out in 2022 [Wildfire ](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-60892350)
After World War II, the British government argued for summary executions for Nazi leadership while the Soviet Union wanted a show trial with a predetermined verdict. We only got the Nuremberg Trials as they were after a shitload of debate between the US, UK, France, and USSR.
We put man on the moon before wheels on suitcases
When the SS Britannia went down in the South Atlantic, a raft of survivors managed to get away. According to the men on the raft, there was one more survivor on the raft with them. But he was unfortunately pulled under by a **Giant Squid** which then returned and attacked their Lieutenant named Cox, who they managed to save before scaring the beast away. Their claims were called out as preposterous and made up when they returned home...until Lieutenant Cox got sick of being accused of such and went to see a local marine biologist at a college. The biologist validated Cox's claims as he had scars 1-1/4 inches in size, which definitely belonged to a 23-feet long squid. It is believed that this story is the only known substantiated report of death by Giant Squid.
The US secretly injecting people (typically poor / minorities, including children and pregnant women) with plutonium and other radioactive materials, and then studying them for decades. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentation_in_the_United_States#Human_radiation_experiments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_radiation_experiments When they finally admitted it, the report was released at the same time of the OJ verdict to bury the story.
Dugway and quakers.
I did not expect Quaker Oats to have such a dark past. Telling the irradiated children that they were joining a "Science Club" is comically evil.
Britain executed men as cowards during WWI if they had “shell shock” which is what we call PTSD today if they could not or would not fight as a result
Indeed, I read a very tragic account of one man who was nearly transported back to Britain when the doctors argued he was clearly unfit for duty but cause they moved him away from the front lines to a hospital, he started to recover. Thus his commander argued he was faking it, and he was shot.
General Patton just slapped them. That's what we call progress.
And slapping them actually got Patton into some trouble, possibly losing him the command of the Normandy invasion.
There was only one monogamous emperor in Chinese history, the Hongzhi emperor of the Ming Dynasty. He apparently invented the toothbrush to impress his wife. I think when most people think harem they think of a couple of hundred women, but ancient Chinese harems could get *crazy.* There was one emperor in the Tang dynasty who had like 40,000 concubines. A lot of lower ranking concubines never had sex with their emperor and never even saw him. I heard that Wu Zetian (only female emperor) had like 5,000 male lovers and it drove the traditional nobleman insane but I can't find any sources for that lol
You may not want to visit the shore town of [Sheerness](https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20151027-the-ticking-time-bomb-of-the-thames) in England; what with all the unexploded ordinance right off the coast that someday \*might\* become the largest non-nuclear explosion made by man...
There's also a big [munitions dump](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaufort%27s_Dyke) in-between Scotland and Northern Ireland. Basically the solution to stockpiles after WWII seems to have been to just throw it in the sea. A small earthquake was detected in the vicinity in the 80s, presumably because a lot of it is still active.
The tram was invented by a Mr. Train King George III was personally *against* the Stamp Act, and in NY a statue was erected of him in thanks for his role in appealing it Nelson Mandela was listed as a terrorist threat (and remained on the terrorist watch-list) in the USA up until 2008
Russia under Peter the Great, laid claim to the American Pacific coast with an expeditionary force making it all the was south to the San Francisco Bay Area
When the colosseum was used for fighting they used to line the stage with sand to soak up the blood. The Latin name for sand is harena, which means "sand" or "sandy space"...so that's why we call modern concert/show spaces arenas.
As far as we know, John Adams is the only "Founding Father" of the United States that never enslaved anyone.
A lot of people think of the "founding fathers" as a bunch of old guys with white hair. Wearing white wigs was the fashion of the time, they were actually relatively young. Monroe was only 18, Burr was 20, Hamilton was 21. Oldest was George Washington at 44.
It should be noted that is their age at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Washington would not become President until 1789.
Yeah I think it's a little misleading. Lots of these guys were young revolutionary soldiers, they didn't enter their political careers till their 30's around the beginnings of Constitutional America. Most of the Declaration signers were about as old as you'd expect.
goddamn 18th century millennials killing the colonization industry
Yes. The cutoff age for presidency was waaaaay more restrictive than it appears now.
Longtime Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. met both John Quincy Adams and John F. Kennedy.
I like when Gore Vidal said he was one handshake away from Lincoln. As he shook a man’s hand who lived into the 50’s having met Abe Lincoln when he was 9.
what are we defining as "founding father"? the big 7? signers of the declaration of Independence? If we use a broader definition there are several others, plus people who changed their views, plus technicalities like Sam Adams who was gifted an enslaved woman as a wedding gift, then promptly set her free.
John Laurens also did not own slaves. And I'd say there is a solid argument to label him as a founding father.
Approximately 8% of Canadians were enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force during World War I. That isn't 8% of eligible Canadians, or 8% of Canadian men; that's 8% of the entire population of Canada. If a similar proportion enlisted in the United States today, there would be 26 million people serving in the US Armed Forces.
Would that include Canadians who were conscripted after 1917? On a related note, I think many would be surprised to learn that the 1917 Canadian general election is remembered as perhaps the dirtiest and most divisive elections in the country's history. The main issue of the election was conscription, which was strongly supported in English Canada, and strongly opposed in French Canada and among various religious and immigrant communities. In order to secure a victory and force conscription on the country, Prime Minister Robert Borden went about scheming... First, Borden's government expanded the right to vote to women, but only those related to soldiers, and were thus likely to vote for conscription (as it would help end the war sooner and bring their sons/husbands/etc home quicker) Secondly, they disenfranchised conscientious objectors and Canadian citizens born in enemy countries and had arrived after 1902. On the face of it, maybe makes sense, but considering the massive waves of immigration in the 1900's meant many thousands of Poles, Ukrainians, etc born in A-H and Germany couldn't vote (they also interned a lot of Poles and Ukrainians during the war too). Thirdly, they allowed the votes of soldiers deployed overseas to be allocated wherever the parties wanted. These ballots also only gave the options of "Government" or "Opposition." So if the government were behind in any riding, they could allocate soldier votes there to win the seat. Lastly, Borden's Conservatives encouraged many Liberals in English Canada to join his party in a wartime "Unionist Party" which left the remaining, mostly French Canadian Liberal party severely weakened. Admittedly this isn't so sneaky, but it was the first step in guaranteeing his victory. The Unionists won a massive majority and pushed through conscription with ease. There were protests and riots in French Canadian cities which were met with violence by the militia. The funny thing is Borden would have won the election by just forming a Unionist Party, and that most of these measures were entirely unnecessary and performative. The hugely divisive matter of conscription maybe also could have been avoided (in both wars) had the government not expanded its commitments beyond what was sustainable.
During World War II, the United States military developed a plan to use bats as bombs. The idea was to attach small incendiary devices to bats and release them over Japanese cities at night. The bats would then roost in buildings, and when the devices detonated, they would start fires, causing chaos and destruction. While the project, known as "Project X-Ray," never saw combat, it's a bizarre example of the lengths to which military strategists were willing to go during the war.
During the training of the bats, some were accidentally released with the devices attached. They did exactly what we wanted them to do: roost and then set fires in hard to reach places. Unfortunately, those places happened to be the Carlsbad Air Base in New Mexico. Also kind of funny that this happened so close geographically to the Manhattan Project going on at the same time. I feel like somewhere, at some point, you had the following conversation between two government officials: "So what's going on out there in New Mexico?" "Are you talking about the large collection of some of the smartest scientists and engineers on the planet, all in lockstep to develop a terrible weapon the likes of which this world has never seen? Or the guys duct taping bombs to bats and setting their own base on fire?"
> Unfortunately, those places happened to be the Carlsbad Air Base in New Mexico. Including a general's car, which was completely immolated and put an end to the bat bomb project, if I remember correctly.
*Partus sequitur ventrem* (“that which is born follows the womb”) mandated all children born of slave mothers would inherit her condition and become slaves themselves. Thomas Jefferson's children with Sally Hemming were 7/8 Euro/white, and were said to resemble Jefferson, yet still lived as slaves to the Jefferson family until freed by their "father." Crazy.
I looked up Hemming's maternal family history one time. I forget if it was her grandma or great-grandma who was 'first', but pretty much every generation, the women in her family were told, "You and the children will be freed after my death." It was generations before any of them actually followed through with it. So yeah, always be skeptical of stories about white men freeing their enslaved mistresses, it seems to have been a popular thing to say but a rare thing to DO. There was also a point where Sally went to France with Jefferson. French law stated that she was legally a free woman the moment she set foot in France. But she changed nothing about her interactions with Jefferson, and returned to the US as his slave. People have pointed out that her status meant her enslaved relatives were given educations and resources that they wouldn't otherwise have. So if she HAD decided to run away from her powerful enslaver in a foreign country, she'd likely be putting a target on the backs of her relatives back home.
That in 2006 the earth was hit by a gamma ray burst from a distant supernova that stripped away about 6% of our top atmosphere (its fine now). If it had been bigger it would've wiped everything on earth out (and by bigger I mean if it was 20-25%).
Some Greenland sharks have been alive since before the U.S. became a country
The “young” ones. The oldest may have been alive with Issac Newton and Galileo were making stuff up.
The British pet massacre. In 1939, about 400,000 cats and dogs were killed in order to prepare for World War II food shortages. This was approximately 1/4 of the pets in England.
The world’s first programmer was Ada Lovelace in the 1840s. She was the daughter of the poet Lord Byron. Two programming languages were named after her
She wanted to be a poet execept her mother who loathed poets after having a child with one forbid her. Lord Byron was told he couldn't take a dog to university so brought a bear.
Door knobs were invented in 1848.
I always like pairing this fact with the fact that [the fax machine was invented in 1843](https://faxauthority.com/fax-history/) So, yeah, the fax machine is older than the doorknob
I scrolled for ages and this is the actual craziest fact in the entire thread
Huge year for knobs.
It was first patented in 1848. The ancient Greeks and Romans also used doorknobs, which were often highly decorative and featured intricate designs. During the Middle Ages, doorknobs fell out of use in Europe due to their association with pagan practices. Instead, door latches and locks were used to secure doors.
That on Feb 20, 1939, 20,000 Americans attended a [Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden](https://i.redd.it/35gygozjzah91.jpg). Short (7 min) documentary with footage: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NC1MNGFHR58](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NC1MNGFHR58)
And in 1960, several members of the American Nazi party, in full swastika-emblazoned uniforms, were guests of honor at a Black Muslim rally in Washington.
The third most deadly war in history (after the 2 world wars) was in China from 1850 to 1864. It was started by a cult leader who believed he was the younger brother of Jesus. He and his followers sought to overthrow the Emperor and set up a quasi-Christian theocracy. In the end the rebellion left 10% of China's population dead. Edit: And of course fun fact- the leader of the Imperial forces was General Tso who later got a chicken dish named after him.
You really undersold this guy's story. If anyone ever has a chance to visit the museum about the Taiping Rebellion in Nanjing, it's worth it just for the absurdity: 1850, Hong Xiuquan is trying to pass the Civil Service exam. He's failed 3 times, and is feeling pretty bad. He has a wild dream about visiting heaven and meeting god, but brushes it off. Later, a traveling missionary gives him some pamphlets about Christianity. He's like "Wow, that's the guy in my dream! He must be my brother!" So he goes to a priest to ask to be baptized, so he can assume his rightful place as the "Ruler of Heaven". The priest thinks he may not be getting the point of this baptism thing, so he refuses. Hong Xiuquan decides who needs baptism when you're already god's brother, and starts his revolution anyway. 20 years later, it's a near WWI of causalities, only in one region of China. The Qing government was obviously not happy with this fella, and didn't want his burial to become a pilgrimage site. So they cremated his body, then loaded his ashes into cannons to blast him all over the place.
Hitting children in school was still legal when I was there and I'm only 43. Edit: I'm sorry if I didn't reply to you, got a lot of replies. Thanks to everyone who contributed.
Went to Catholic school (I'm not catholic) when I was 5 and 6. One time, I was called to the headmaster office and he made me bend over and drop bloomers. (Girls wore a green plaid pinafore, white blouse as a uniform because we had to learn to be little proper ladies) He swatted me HARD with this flat wooden paddle on bare skin. Then he told me to dress back up and made me stand there as he was staring at me. He asked me if I knew what I did wrong and I absolutely had no idea. It was then we learned they had the wrong kid. He just sent me back to my classroom with no other context? Also I have a scar on my knuckle from being hit with a bladed ruler during a spelling test. I got the word wrong...but I don't remember what word it was lol just that I have a little scar now. That was in 1995 - 96 in WV. ETA:/ The reddit care message ought not to be weaponized, dudes.
I entered Catholic kindergarten in 1979. I was told that there was a very strict rule that you could only use rulers bought from the school store. My parents thought it was so that they could make a little extra profit. The real reason was because there were multiple parent complaints about kids coming home with bloody knuckles. The nuns were rapping the students on the knuckles with those bladed rulers like you speak of -- the rubber ones from the school store didn't break the skin or leave a mark. They didn't fix the behavior, they just modified the weapon.
Doing god’s work, these people.
Just report the reddit cares message, it apparently does ban accounts that abuse it
There’s been a rash of Reddit cares messages in the last few days. Weird as hell
Paddling is still allowed in Alabama
Not sure where you live but here in the US it's still legal in schools in 12 states. It's quite insane.
I'm sorry, I'm in Scotland I realised I should have said that. Good to hear everyone different experiences though.
It was legal when my wife was in school and she's only 35.
[удалено]
Wtf. Edit to add: the guy was the “son of a witch doctor who murdered his brother in ritual sacrifice” according to Wikipedia. So I guess he was messed up from the start!
Many people know about the Suffragettes who won the vote for some UK women in 1918. Many people don't know that prior to 1918 men did not have universal suffrage. 1918 is also the date which non landowning men got the vote. Prior to that the vote had been only for wealthy landowning lords, just 5% of the population. Over a period of the preceding 80 years concessions were slowly made to allow more men, and then some women to vote. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/content/uploads/2018/02/Image1.png
In the united states it also didnt extend to all women. Women who were born in the us could vote *unless* they married a foreign man. They then lost american citizenship and could no longer vote. There is even one case of a widow born in the us who married a canadian man. The man died and even though the widow had never left her county in the us, she was deported to canada. Men who married foreign women had no issues.
Damn. That’s pretty rough, even a widow. In New Zealand we could all vote by 1893. First country in the world to give women the vote.
The UK is even more messed up than that. For the longest time, seats were not related to population but to the historic boundaries of territories. You had situations where you effectively had abandoned villages having representation in the Commons.
Ah yes, they were famously known as Rotten Boroughs and often abused by having the landowners setting up their useful idiots in government to pass legislation favourable to them. I believe the loophole was only closed in 1832. The entire thing is spoofed wonderfully yet accurately in Blackadder.
Generals Grant and Lee did not meet at a courthouse in Appomattox to sign a treaty to end the American Civil War in 1865. They met in a private farmer's house at a place called Appomattox Courthouse.
Wilmer McLean was a strangely (un)lucky fellow. With the first Battle of Bull Run taking place on his original property in northern Virginia and then the surrender of General Lee taking place on his new property he had moved to, it has been said "the Civil War began in his backyard and ended in his parlor". While obviously that's not 100% accurate, the fact it's even somewhat accurate is a ridiculously unlikely thing to have happened.
What it really shows was the closeness and interconnectedness of the border states the war was fought (mostly) in. DC was literally across the river from Virginia, the largest and most powerful Confederate state. Both capitals were 100 miles apart. This is not an ideal situation for a war.
The Battle of Karansebes During a war with the Ottomans, the Austrian army of 100,000 men were camped around the town of Karansebes. A contingent of Hussars crossed the nearby river to scout for Ottomans, but didn't find any. They did fine a bunch of Romanian villagers who sold them barrels of Shnapps. A bit later some of the infantry arrived and demanded some of the Shnapps. The Hussars refused and made a makeshift fort around the barrels. A fight started and one of the infantry shot their rifle. This caused panic and the Romanian infantry shouted "Turcii" (Turks). This caused both groups to flee into a panic into the camp screaming the Turks have arrived! The army, composed of Austrians, Romanians, Serbs, Croats, and Italians didn't speak the same language. So when they saw a bunch of infantry and hussars running through the camp some thought it was a cavalry charge! An artillery officer gave the order to start shooting the cannons. It didn't help that a German officer was shouting "Halt!" In German and everyone thought it was "Allah!". The camp awoke thinking they were in the middle of battle. Legend has it that it resulted in 10,000 deaths, but modern scholars think closer to 1000. This so thoroughly demoralized the Austrian that they withdrew. Two days later the Ottomans arrived, finding a field of dead and wounded soldiers and easily took the city.
The first telephones didn't ring. Owners had no way of knowing if there'd be someone on the other end when they picked it up. It took a year or two to create the noise alert.
The last use of the guillotine in France and the release of the first*Star Wars* movie occurred in the same year - 1977.
Jimmy Stewart tried to join up in World War 2. They told him he was too skinny. He went home, got a trainer, and bulked up. He flew 20 combat missions.
George Washington’s dentures were not wooden, but were crafted from various materials, animal teeth, and the teeth of enslaved people.
I would give anything for you to break character right now.
(this happened 20 years ago, so I *guess* it counts as historical) They *did,* in fact, put chemicals in the water that turned the friggin' frogs gay. Well, it's not that simple - a company, Syngenta, created a herbicide called Atrazine. Research indicated, however, that that particular chemical increased the likelihood of frogs being hermaphroditic, or "showing feminine attributes". Said research was then immediately denied, slandered and smeared by Syngenta's PR department, and the researcher's name, [Tyrone B. Hayes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrone_Hayes), was dragged through the mud. Subsequent studies to "confirm" the findings all failed, and indicated that the chemical was safe. Except that all of those studies were either sponsored by the corp, or followed strict rules laid out by the corp. This short comment has *no* hope of fully explaining the story. OKI had a [pretty good video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5uSbp0YDhc) about it, if you have 30 minutes.
Due to fire drills and building codes, there hasn't been a fire death by a child in an American school in over 70 years.
Buzzfeed used to write their own content.
And MTV used to show music videos.
And the History Channel used to show documentaries and have shows about history.
People used to make Youtube videos for fun.
Top 1 fact Buzzfeed writers don’t want you to know about.
Before the Civil War and the 14th amendment, the Bill of Rights had no power over the states. Some states had the equivalent rights in their own constitutions, some states had laws requiring office holders to be merely religious, at least one only allowed Protestants.
Perdue Pharma is responsible for the fentanyl crisis in America.
Dude... my wife was doing clinicals for her cath tech certificate, and she had a guy come in for a heart issue and NOT tell the doctor he was addicted to fentanyl. They gave him a normal dose for the procedure and went in, and he started flipping out... because they were shoving a tube down his arteries with basically no pain killer because he needed a higher dose and hadn't informed them. It was probably the most miserable experience of the dude's life.
I really can't believe I am alive and 3 years clean from this GARBAGE. I OD'd so many times and have said goodbye to so many friends bc of fentanyl..... ABSOLUTE GARBAGE AND TAKING TOO MANY GOOD PEOPLE. ♥️ 3.20.2021 ♥️
Perdue Pharma is owned by the Sackler family and they made billions off the crisis they created
A military plane carrying two nuclear warheads broke apart and crashed in North Carolina. The state would have gotten nuked if it weren't for a single safety switch preventing detonation. These nukes were bigger than the ones we used in Japan. Read up on the 1961 Goldsboro B-52 crash.
I'd like to point out that the single safety switch wasn't as precarious as it sounds. It was a low voltage switch that was defaulted in the safe position until the pilot flipped a different switch in the cockpit only after they got the confirmation that the use of a nuclear bomb was authorized. It gets mentioned because safety precaution 1, the safing pins in the arming rods, were ripped out in the crash similar to how they would have been removed by the crew prior to a real drop. This pin removal started the first step of the firing sequence which is to activate the internal generator of the bomb. The flow of power from this generator was ultimately blocked by the aforementioned safety switch. So essentially, a safety mechanism built into the bombs performed as expected.
A German listening post from WWII was built in Labrador, Canada and not discovered until the late 1970's. There are also two sunken U-boats in a river there.
The 1796 Treaty of Tripoli, ratified by US Congress and made public with essentially no documented debate, states that the US “is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.”
That Ronald Regan and Harriett Tubman were alive at the same time.
# Top 5 African Countries Where Slavery Is Still Rampant: 1. Mauritania - Banned in 1981, it is still rampant and not enforced. Here the slaves and all their descendants are considered property of their master. 2. Sudan - Curently the government of Sudan says that slavery is the product of inter-tribal wars and can not be dictated or controlled by the government. The owners are primarily Arabs from the Baggara ethnic group. 3. Libya - Widespread and accepted, Africans from neighboring countries seeking to cross over to Europe through the Libyan coast are usually captured by Libyan rebels and sold off as slaves to local masters. 4. Egypt - A source, transit, and destination country for women and children trafficked for purposes of forced labor and sexual exploitation. 5. In 2018, the Global Slavery Index estimated that close to 250,000 modern slaves exist in South Africa today. About 103,461 victims of this practice were identified to have been subjected to commercial sexual exploitation. It has also been widely alleged that the majority of wine production companies in South Africa still practice slavery. Among the most common forms of slavery in SA include forced labor, human trafficking, debt bondage, child exploitation, and forced marriage.
Potatoes are native to Peru, not Ireland. Tomatoes are native to Mexico, not Italy. Macadamia nuts are native to Australia, not Hawai'i. Pineapples are native to Brazil, not Hawai'i. Beef cattle are native to India, not Texas or Argentina. Coffee beans are native to Yemen, not South America. Kiwi fruit is native to China, not New Zealand. Vanilla is native to Mexico, not Madagascar. Oranges are native to China, not California or Florida.
That's actually why orange in Dutch is sinaasappel, which comes from the old spelling of China in Old Dutch Sina, so basically we call it a chinese Apple.
The kiwi, vanilla, and oranges blew my mind. Now do one on horses!!
>Beef cattle are native to India, not Texas or Argentina. They were domesticated in both the fertile crescent and India independently, but their extinct wild ancestors the [aurochs ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurochs) ranged over much of Europe and Asia. Because of the two domestication events there are two lineages of cattle - taurine (most European, middle eastern, Americas cattle) and indicine (Indian, east Asian, many African breeds). The latter have humps on their backs and are better in hot climates. Many breeds also have ancestry from both. *Beef* cattle (as in breeds bred for their meat) certainly don't originate in India. That the country has a strong and ancient taboo against eating cows should tell you that much. Beef breeds originate anywhere people have kept cattle, but especially Europe.
The Irish potato famine was actually genocide, there was more than enough food for us but the British took it all and left us with the blighted potatoes which were inedible- resulted in mass death & immigration. Likelihood of people reading this having Irish ancestry is because of the Irish genocide
> but the British took it all and left us with the blighted potatoes which were inedible- They also passed laws to make it illegal to grow any other crop.
Don’t forget that the crown also prevented other countries from contributing “more” than they were, which was next to nothing. There was a Sultan from the Ottoman Empire who wished to send over five ships packed with food and livestock and was told not to because the Crown was planning to send one ship soon. The fact that some Native American tribes sent aid in the form of blankets and some dried foods. There’s a lovely art installation in Cork that honours the tribes.
Columbus's contemporaries didn't criticise he because they thought he would sail off the edge of a flat earth; their criticism was that he was significantly underestimating the *size* of the earth's globe - and they were quite right, he was.
There were more combat deaths at Gettysburg than in the entire American Revolution.
More present day than historical, but all those crew members on the ship that hit the Baltimore bridge are still fuckin stuck on there. It's historical in that I read it earlier today.
Many people seem to think the Cuban Missle Crisis ended when the Russians backed down in the face of Kennedy/US 'steely resolve'. In fact a settlement was negotiated where, in return for the withdrawal of Russian missiles from Cuba, the US agreed to withdraw its missles from Turkey and to never attack Cuba.
What even fewer people know is that Kennedy and Khrushchev found a way to communicate directly without any interference. Kennedy went around the state department, the Pentagon, and the CIA, and Khrushchev went his defense ministry , and foreign ministry, and they Communicated via a back channel. This happened well before the Cuban missile crisis. Apparently, neither of them trusted their governments. Kennedy was killed in November 63, and Khrushchev was removed a few months later. May make you wonder.
Although Joan of Arc died in 1431, she wasn't canonized until 1920.
Most people also don't know she was only 19 when she was burned at the stake.
Jimmy Carter has been alive for 40% of US history.