Man, all of the lines I have to wait in have really put me on a roll with making topics...
I'm a huge fan of history and I love to discuss amusing or questionable things that happened in the past, as well as dispelling myths and so on. I know a lot of weird or funny historical consequences, but this one I just heard in my Euro History class takes me cake:
A french noble revolutionary by the name of Marquis de Condorcet. He had some pretty radical views and was even one of the few revolutionaries who believed women should even have rights. However, he was a nobleman and during the Reign of Terror he got caught in some trouble with the Third Estate revolutionaries and fled to the boonies of France to escape. He probably would have gotten away from his death too... if he didn't ask for an omelette at the Inn he was staying at. Being a nobleman and being able to pay cooks, he knew very little about cooking himself, and when the innkeeper asked how many eggs he wanted in his omelette he replied, "A dozen". At that exact moment the Third Estate innkeeper realized he was a noble and he was captured and killed. Too bad, he was a great thinker. All for not knowing a damn thing about cooking.
Maybe it's a common story in europe, but living in America and taking a ton of history courses, I didn't hear about it until an hour ago, and we have units on the French Revolution.
So, do you guys know any crazy history stories? Even if it's just weird local history.
I really love WWII based stuff. Especially some of the stuff us Brits got up to during.
Such as Operation Mincemeat: It helped to convince the German high command that the Allies planned to invade Greece and Sardinia in 1943 instead of Sicily, the actual objective. This was accomplished by persuading the Germans that they had, by accident, intercepted "top secret" documents giving details of Allied war plans. The documents were attached to a corpse deliberately left to wash up on a beach in Punta Umbría in Spain.
How did they do it? and his team determined what kind of body they needed: a man who appeared to have died at sea by hypothermia and drowning, and then floated ashore after several days. However, finding a usable body seemed almost impossible, as indiscreet inquiries would cause talk, and it was impossible to tell a dead man's next of kin what the body was wanted for. The top brass also reassured the team that the state of the corpse would not be that important because "Spaniards, as Roman Catholics, were averse to post-mortems and did not hold them unless the cause of death was of great importance." Under quiet pressure, Bentley Purchase, coroner of St. Pancras District in London, obtained the body of a 34-year-old Welsh man named Glyndwr Michael, on the condition that the man's real identity would never be revealed. The man had died after taking in rat poison which contained phosphorus. After being ingested, the phosphide reacts with hydrochloric acid in the human stomach, generating phosphine, a highly toxic gas. Coroner Purchase explained, "This dose was not sufficient to kill him outright, and its only effect was so to impair the functioning of the liver that he died a little time afterwards," leaving few clues to the cause of death. Montagu later claimed that Michael had died from pneumonia, and that his family had been contacted and permission obtained, but none of this was true. The man's parents were already dead and no known relatives were found.
So they dressed this dude up as a Royal Marine with a full military history, a girlfriend and The rank of acting major made him senior enough to be entrusted with sensitive documents, but not so prominent that anyone would expect to know him. The name "Martin" was chosen because there were several Martins of about that rank in the Royal Marines. They also gave him two love letters, a bill for an engagement ring and good quality underwear, at the time extremely difficult to obtain due to rationing. He also had a pompous letter from his father, a letter from the family solicitor, and a letter from Ernest Whitley Jones, joint general manager of Lloyds Bank, demanding payment of an overdraft of £79 19s 2d (£79.97). There were a book of stamps, a silver cross and a St. Christopher's medallion, a pencil stub, keys, a used twopenny bus ticket, ticket stubs from a London theatre, a bill for four nights' lodging at the Naval and Military Club, and a receipt from Gieves for a new shirt (this last was an error: it was for cash, and officers never paid cash at Gieves; but the Germans did not catch it). All these documents were on authentic stationery or billheads. The dates of the ticket stubs and lodging bill indicated that Major Martin had left London on 24 April. If his body washed ashore on 30 April, presumably after several days at sea, then he must have flown from Britain and crashed at sea.
And the Jerries bought it!
The success of Operation Mincemeat caused the Germans to disregard later genuine document finds. Two days after the D-Day landings, the Germans discovered an abandoned landing craft washed up on the Vire estuary in Normandy, containing top secret documents detailing future military targets in the region. Hitler, believing this was a deception similar to Operation Mincemeat, ignored the documents, having already been convinced by numerous deceptions that the main invasion was still to come through the Pas de Calais. (We came through Normandy instead)
its YOU. the one reading this post RIGHT NOW.
UR HISTORY PAL!!! //shoots u with a sawn off shotgun at point blank range//
Quote from: Milsap on February 13, 2015, 15:15
Such as Operation Mincemeat: It helped to convince the German high command that the Allies planned to invade Greece and Sardinia in 1943 instead of Sicily, the actual objective.
no, operation mincemeat was to send all our gay bletchley park nerds over to germany to honeypot trap them into giving up their secrets for a quick bout of wargames underneath the sheets
i still gotta read me Agent Zigzag and Most Secret War because the british espionage stuff is fascinating and i cant believe its taken till now for america to catch up only they had to publicly blab about their spy agency to everyone instead of bein an ominous silent building like ours
I'm past it all tbh
This is pretty well timed. Today is actually the anniversary of the Ocean Ranger disaster, which was only 33 years ago, but still history, I guess. It's sort of a downer, probably not what you were intending this topic for, so, sorry about that, I'll post some more fun history stories later, but right now it just feels inappropriate.
The Ocean Ranger was an offshore oil rig (which makes me question the name). It was hit by a rouge wave and listed forward, eventually causing it to sink. Despite evidence that at least one lifeboat successfully launched, its entire crew of 84 died, those who managed to evacuate either succumed to hypthermia and/or drowned, those who didn't either drowned or were fatally hit by things flying around as the rig capsized. Only 22 bodies were recovered, so there is no way to tell.
I won't go into more detail than that. Also, there's a song. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrpLfRpEUNc)
that's well spooky aye
QuoteThe Ocean Ranger was an offshore oil rig (which makes me question the name). It was hit by a rouge wave and listed forward, eventually causing it to sink. Despite evidence that at least one lifeboat successfully launched, its entire crew of 84 died, those who managed to evacuate either succumed to hypthermia and/or drowned, those who didn't either drowned or were fatally hit by things flying around as the rig capsized. Only 22 bodies were recovered, so there is no way to tell.
Sounds like creepypasta to me haha
I am into ancient civilizations. I love the story of the pyramids and how mysterious their origin is. There is no way Egyptians could have laid those stones up there by stacking them and they would have to build a ramp miles away to use a ramp system. So how were they built and how did the Egyptians know to built the pyramids of Giza under the three closest stars in the solar system. Interesting stuff that is. Makes ya think long and hard.
I've always liked this one, from America's civil war:
I don't remember who it was he was fooling, but Robert E. Lee once fooled an enemy troop into retreating.
It was a fairly hilly area, and he had his troops march to the top of one hill, and then once they had marched out of sight of the enemy he had them circle back around to the beginning and go over again, and the enemy thought he had way more soldiers than he really did and retreated.
Quote from: Kitt on February 24, 2015, 02:48
I am into ancient civilizations. I love the story of the pyramids and how mysterious their origin is. There is no way Egyptians could have laid those stones up there by stacking them and they would have to build a ramp miles away to use a ramp system. So how were they built and how did the Egyptians know to built the pyramids of Giza under the three closest stars in the solar system. Interesting stuff that is. Makes ya think long and hard.
Watch AVP and you'll know how they did it. :tongue2:
what does AVP mean? Alien vs Predator contains no such knowledge last time I checked.
Quote from: Kitt on February 25, 2015, 22:54
what does AVP mean? Alien vs Predator contains no such knowledge last time I checked.
Oh, that was a joke. The movie suggests that yautja (any who know what this means without having to google, pat yourself on the back) taught humans how to build.
am i the only one who's a bit bothered by the Aliens Built The Pyramids rhetoric cos its ever so slightly dogwhistle racism
Quote from: LOOK AROUND YOG. on February 26, 2015, 06:04
am i the only one who's a bit bothered by the Aliens Built The Pyramids rhetoric cos its ever so slightly dogwhistle racism
Someone brought this up (although jokingly) to my Ancient History professor and he said the theory was BS. He told the class, "If there was no internet and the most accessible way for you to entertain yourself was to stare at the stars all night and think, you'd probably end up figuring out some profound things."
He explained the pyramids with the same theory. Pharaoh money, obsession with the stars, and nothing else to do.
Quote from: Kitt on February 24, 2015, 02:48
they would have to build a ramp miles away to use a ramp system.
It's assumed that they did use ramps, but instead of simple ramps, they built ramps that circled around the structure and were destroyed when the pyramid construction was finished.
You have a point there, Kypna. However, the elevation still is a problem. If the ramps circled the area, 1. Where are they now? and 2. What would the ramps be made of to support the 1000+ pounds of stone?
Same way we could ask how the hell the Romans built all those aquaducts. They probably used something similar to bamboo for scaffolding.
Quote from: Kitt on February 27, 2015, 14:32
You have a point there, Kypna. However, the elevation still is a problem. If the ramps circled the area, 1. Where are they now? and 2. What would the ramps be made of to support the 1000+ pounds of stone?
It's assumed that they were made of mudbrick, which was the weak structure a lot of homes were built off of. Stacked up, there would be a lot of strength, but I'd think adding water would easily weaken the structure and that's how they got rid of it.
One last question. Who would be the one to push the stones up the ramp? There were no slaves as often dictated in movies and stuff during the construction of the pyramids.
All historical evidence (minus one book written after the fact) states that they actually hired people to build the structures a lot like what happened with post-depression work. They'd set up paid laborers in labor camps by the pyramids to work. The laborers got salary and even benefits.
Also, for the question of how the stone was moved (since if you're ever tried to drag something through the sand you understand it sucks), some paintings have been found in the past few years that show people pouring water on the sand which makes the rocks slide on the top layer of wet sand better. They seriously had that building stuff insanely figured out. Best part? The average pyramid supposedly only took about 22 years to build.
We like to think of ancient man as being a bit primitive but most successful early civilizations managed to devise some pretty crazy stuff. Now, a lot of this stuff is just historians using their thinkers and coming to accepted conclusions, besides the workers and the throwing water on the sand, the building of the pyramids is just widely accepted conjecture. They all make a whole load of sense though.
Weird, because my World History professor said that Egypt was completely isolated during the time of the pyramids and they weren't very populated during that time.
^Egypt already had an extensive trade network by that point, and had done for a /very/ long time. It had been unified for about 600 years by this point. The people who built the pyramids were not slaves, although some of them may have been captured from wars etc. They were commissioned to do so, and they are not the first pyramids either. Case in point, the Red, Step, and Bent pyramids. Before then they had burial chambers, but it was very much a solar thing. They were initially aligned North to South, but with the emphasis of the solar cults this changed from East to West.
The stone was moved by a combination of pulleys and cranes (because they did actually have cranes, if not in the sense we see them) past a certain point. They have found diagonal shafts in the pyramids with no known function and it has been assumed that these were where a pulley system was installed to build them from the inside out. Mudbrick ramps would have had to be at a ridiculous length to effectively get stones up to those heights, and the cost/effort to do that would have been insane.
One of my favourite things about Ancient Egypt is that people even back then would write "x was here [insert date]" on things... They've also drawn rather lewd sketches in a tomb depicting what is supposedly Hashepsut, reflecting on the politics of the time. Because construction workers. In Karnak there's a little inscription/hymn from a massive storm too.
(I have both a degree and a postgrad degree in Egyptology, literally all I get asked when people find this out is how were the pyramids built...)
Anything involving Vlad the Impaler is just crazy. I think it's quite easy to take some of the bloodthirsty historical figures for granted, but when you really try and picture in your mind some of the things Vlad did it really defies belief.
One of my favorite periods of history has to be anything involving the palace of Versailles and Louis XIV, it's more of a 'bigger picture' thing but I find that all the glory, opulence, decadence and scandal to be amazing, I like the way that from Louis XIV to Louis XV Versailles and the royal variety performance that revolved around it went from being the talk of France to the palace ground being desolate, and nobody being around when Louis XV was declared dead. I find that there's just such a weird tragic sadness about the fact that the place was so lively and then just became something that nobody really cared about.
Quote from: That Girl in the 'Roo Suit on March 09, 2015, 18:05
(I have both a degree and a postgrad degree in Egyptology, literally all I get asked when people find this out is how were the pyramids built...)
I really enjoyed reading that -- I guess that theories have become a bit more comprehensive since my history teacher made his lesson plan :p
QuoteThey've also drawn rather lewd sketches in a tomb depicting what is supposedly Hashepsut, reflecting on the politics of the time.
Like some sort of Egyptian Banksy?
That makes sense, Roo. I learned something new. :) i love learning.
Anyways, I love stories I always took as fiction that turned out to be real. Like the second 300 movie, the Ghost of Sparta. All those events happened. The Persian King Xerses, King Leonidas founding the Greek Legion, the battle of Thessopolis (forgive my spelling) which was a turning point in the second Persian War, Leonidas killing the first Persian general in the Battle of Marothon. All of it is true. Of course, like most movies, there are one or two minor falses, like no records say Leonidas and a Persian female soldier fell in love. There were no females in Xerxes's huge army of slaves and volunteers from all around his empire.
Quote from: Milsap on March 10, 2015, 10:15
Like some sort of Egyptian Banksy?
Kind of, but a little more... sexual
I've taken an interest in the Falklands Conflict recently (mostly due to Top Gear going to Argentina) and it strikes me as to how much of a sore issue that still is in the country- Many people (particularly in Tierra Del Fuego) still reckon the islands are Argentine, not British.
The Belgrano (Argentina's most prized ship) sailed out of Ushaia before we sank her, which might add to the bitterness as we killed one of their generals in the process. But for us to get the bombers, the harriers and the marines there in the time we did to take the islands back... It's typical Britain.