The Did you know thread. Uselss, but Fascinating historical facts and stories)

Discussion in 'History' started by Excape Goat, Jan 2, 2006.

  1. Gorando

    Gorando Member

    Anderlecht
    Belgium
    Mar 12, 2008
    Belgium
    Club:
    Juventus FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Belgium
    I believe it's Belgium that wanted to invade the Netherlands right after the war to reclaim Dutch Limburg and Zeeuws Vlaanderen. But the Netherlands knew about the plans and wanted to take Belgium by surprise and like you said especially Britain was heavily against another war
     
  2. 96Squig

    96Squig Member

    Feb 4, 2004
    Hanover
    Club:
    Hannover 96
    Nat'l Team:
    Netherlands
    Incl the orange zones you'd have actually gotten Aix-la-Chapelles (Aachen/Aaken) and Cologne. The plan was to expell the majority of the German population in those areas, but allied command didn't want to handle even more refugees, which was the main reason for their veto.
     
  3. Excape Goat

    Excape Goat Member+

    Mar 18, 1999
    Club:
    Real Madrid
    Most people believed that the Union Soldiers wore blue while Confederate soldiers wore grey during the American Civil War. However, in the beginning of the War, the United States did not have standardized uniforms for its army. Each state supplied their own uniform on both sides. The color varied from state to state, and even regiment to regiment. Most Confederate officers wore their old blue Army uniform to the battle. Some soliders wore their own clothes.

    The footage below from the movie "God and Generals" depicted the Confederates as wearing different types of uniforms and colours, including blue, during the First Battle of Bull Run while the Union Army was in blue. In actuality, a large number of Union regiment was dressed in gray. The 13th-22nd Illinois Infantry Regiments even had both blue and gray uniforms during the First Battle of Bull Run.




    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucrVfUr4_ZA"]YouTube - Gods and Generals - First Battle of Bull Run (First Manassas[/ame]
     
  4. HerthaBerwyn

    HerthaBerwyn Member+

    May 24, 2003
    Chicago
    I have no idea how they managed to make a boring Stonewall Jackson movie but the sure enough did it. Reading Shelby Foote he comes off as a manic depressive narcoleptic.
     
  5. Excape Goat

    Excape Goat Member+

    Mar 18, 1999
    Club:
    Real Madrid
    I got into Charles Manson lately because of Polanski's recent arrest.

    -- Someone suggested to Manson that he could send the Manson girls to work in strip joints and earned up $3000 per week.

    "There was only one problem.... Charlie's girls simply did not have impressive busts. For some reason Manson seemed to attract mostly falt-chested girls," wrote Bugliosi in Helter Skelter.
     
  6. Excape Goat

    Excape Goat Member+

    Mar 18, 1999
    Club:
    Real Madrid
    The Guinness Book of World Records identifies King Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia as the politician who has served the world's greatest variety of political offices. These included two terms as King, two as sovereign prince, one as president, two as prime minister, and one as Cambodia's non-titled head of state, as well as numerous positions as leader of various governments-in-exile. He abdicated in 2004 and allowed his son to be the current king.
     
  7. Bluto11

    Bluto11 The sky is falling!

    May 16, 2003
    Chicago, IL
    Interesting! Didn't know that, but makes sense from all the reading I did on Cambodia before i went. :)
     
  8. Excape Goat

    Excape Goat Member+

    Mar 18, 1999
    Club:
    Real Madrid
    Well, he 's a monarch, a republican and a communist. Isn't that strange? :)
     
  9. Excape Goat

    Excape Goat Member+

    Mar 18, 1999
    Club:
    Real Madrid
    When Charles V arrived in Spain to claim his kingdom in 1517, the Flemish navigators miscalculated and landed in the wrong place. They went to the port of Villaviciosa 100 west oif intended landing spot. The inhabitants failed to spot the banners of the ships and mistook them as pirates. They all fled to the hills.
     
  10. bit_pattern

    bit_pattern New Member

    Oct 30, 2009
    Moscow and the subsequent line of Muscovite Tsars were founded by Vikings. This I did not know, Ivan the Terrible was a direct Viking descendant. I knew Vikings were in Russia but I had no idea they stayed and founded the modern state.

    Glad I found this thread, I've been dying to tell someone that since I saw it on a documentary last night :D
     
  11. Excape Goat

    Excape Goat Member+

    Mar 18, 1999
    Club:
    Real Madrid
    I did not know that.

    Anyway, the Russian Czars were "Germans". Peter II was the last male line of the Romanov. The succession went to the Romanov females which continued to use the Romanov name.

    Peter III's father was Charles Frederick of Holstein-Gottorp, but the Romanov daughters Then, Alexander I added a new law to the Romanov House Law that consorts of Russian dynasts had to be of equal birth. Otherwise their children forfeited all rights to the throne. So all Romanov princes must marry a member of a Royal house or they are out of the sucession. All Russian czars, except Alexander III, after Alexander I married a German princess. Alexander III's wife was Princess Dagmar of Denmark. She was the Christian IX of Denmark, who was born a German prince.

    Anyway, all European Royalities are Germans or part-Germans.
     
  12. bit_pattern

    bit_pattern New Member

    Oct 30, 2009
    Yeah, the Viking line died off with Ivan the Terrible (I think, maybe it was one of his sons). There's a great doco on youtube called Russia, land of the tsar or something like that. Well worth a watch.

    EDIT: Here's the start of episode 1, it's three hour long episodes, but worth the time imo

    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9r_WXKto268&feature=related"]YouTube- Russia - Land Of The Tsars 1[/ame]
     
  13. Excape Goat

    Excape Goat Member+

    Mar 18, 1999
    Club:
    Real Madrid
    The Austrians lost the Battle of Karánsebes in 1788 to the Turks through "friendly fire".

    The Austrians sent a contingent of hussar scouts to search for the Ottomann Army. There was no sign of the Ottoman army, but they ran into a group of Gypsies. The soldiers decided to buy alcohol from them. When another group of Austrian infantry arrived, they also demanded alcohol from the hussars. A heated argument ensued, and one soldier fired a shot. Somebody shouted "The Turks! The Turks!" to scare the hussars. And the hussars instantly fled the scene.

    The Austrian infantry was made up of different ethnic groups. They did not understand each other. Most of them also fled. The situation was made worse when officers, in an attempt to restore order, shouted "Halt! Halt!" which was misheard by soldiers with no knowledge of German as "Allah! Allah!".

    Meanwhile, the hussars ran straight back to the camp causing panic in the camp. A corps commander thought that it was a cavalry charge by the Ottoman army, and ordered artillery fire. The nentire camp awoke to the sound of battle and started to shoot each other thinking the camp was overran by the Turks.

    Two days later, the Ottoman army arrived. They discovered 10,000 dead and wounded soldiers.
     
  14. NickyViola

    NickyViola Member+

    May 10, 2004
    Boston
    Club:
    ACF Fiorentina
    That's fecking insane.
     
  15. Excape Goat

    Excape Goat Member+

    Mar 18, 1999
    Club:
    Real Madrid
    Etta Place, the companion of the American outlaws Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, was the first woman to own property in Argentina.
     
  16. Alex_K

    Alex_K Member+

    Mar 23, 2002
    Braunschweig, Germany
    Club:
    Eintracht Braunschweig
    Nat'l Team:
    Bhutan
    Someone really needs to put facts in quotation marks in the thread title :D.
     
  17. spejic

    spejic Cautionary example

    Mar 1, 1999
    San Rafael, CA
    Club:
    San Jose Earthquakes
    What facts do you have a problem with?
     
  18. Alex_K

    Alex_K Member+

    Mar 23, 2002
    Braunschweig, Germany
    Club:
    Eintracht Braunschweig
    Nat'l Team:
    Bhutan
    I'm not going through the whole thread, I just vaguely recall clicking on this thread from time to time and thinking "that doesn't sound right" :D - but from the last page:

    - I'm pretty skeptical if such a thing as "Battle of Karánsebes" actually existed. The best source you can find online for this is a wikipedia article with a "the factuality of this article is disputed" tag, which references two recent non-scholary books (and according to reviews one of those doesn't have a single citation in the entire book). I can't find an indenpendent German language source (not even a mention in the German wikipedia). Considering that 10.000 dead and wounded would be huge for the 18th century (that's almost Waterloo/Battle of Leipzig territory) AND the German emperor supposedly was caught in a riot there that's somewhat curious. I'm not interested in military history at all, so I can't speak with authority here... but that sounds über-fishy.

    - Vikings founded the modern Russian state: the Scandinavians settling in Eastern Europe, especially the ruling class, was completely slavicized long before the foundation of Moscow, and centuries before Ivan the Terrible. While it's always a good thing to point out that there is no thing such as a "pure" people, claiming that "Vikings" founded the modern Russian state is the other extreme (and equally based on outdated ideas of 19th century historiography).
     
  19. riverplate

    riverplate Member+

    Jan 1, 2003
    Corona, Queens
    Club:
    CA River Plate
    Survivor of 2 Atomic Bombs Dies at 93 - N.Y. Times

     
  20. Q*bert Jones III

    Q*bert Jones III The People's Poet

    Feb 12, 2005
    Woodstock, NY
    Club:
    DC United
    Is Yamaguchi the luckiest guy ever? Or the unluckiest guy ever?
     
  21. art

    art Member

    Jul 2, 2000
    Portland OR
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    well he did live to be 93, so...
     
  22. SoDamnSmooth

    SoDamnSmooth Red Card

    Oct 17, 2007
    NJ
    Club:
    Bayer 04 Leverkusen
    Nat'l Team:
    Mexico
    Who was the first Irish Governor of NY? Al Smith.. he ran for President in 1928 and lost to Hoover, mainly because of an aggressive campaign against Smith for him being a Catholic.
     
  23. Excape Goat

    Excape Goat Member+

    Mar 18, 1999
    Club:
    Real Madrid
    Robert Capa was born Endre Friedmann, a Hungarian Jew. He adopted the name "Robert Capa" because it was an American-sounding name and a successful American photopgrapher in Paris could receive more commission than a poor emigre from Eastern Europe.
     
  24. AFCA

    AFCA Member

    Jul 16, 2002
    X X X rated
    Club:
    AFC Ajax
    Nat'l Team:
    Iran
    I have to admit, for a poor Hungarian whose sole knowledge of America came from a Disney comic he read in his childhood, it beats the hell out of Robert Mouse!
     
  25. FCGrunn

    FCGrunn Member

    Oct 30, 2007
    Groningen
    Club:
    FC Groningen
    Nat'l Team:
    --other--

    Altough this is obviously no movie thread, with regard to Ivan the Terrible you might like Eisenstein's Ivan Grozny movies. I don't know Russia, but they somehow seem very Russian to me...
     

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