Agreed. Hence my use of the term "one of the..." (In fact the lack of total world reaction to the Armenian genocides was one of the factors that led Hitler to believe he could have gotten away with it. If it weren't for those meddling kids. Well, that and several hundred thousand US and Soviet soldiers overruninng the camps)
Cristovão Colombo was Portuguese born in Cuba (portuguese village)... in portuguese --» http://amigosdacuba.no.sapo.pt/paginas/p14-cristovaocolombo.htm
Actually he did because in a previous voyage he had visited the Maluku Islands going east. By going west to the Philippines, where he died, he had been all around the world.
Seeing the piece on John and Abagail Adams on PBS last night reminded me of this entirely useless but impossible fact: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson - contemporaries, collaborators, friends, political enemies - both died July 4, 1826, exactly 50 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence (which, obviously, would never had been signed had it not been for those two men).
I thought everyone knew that Jesus Christ was Jewish. The name "Christian" wasn't even used in the Bible until in Acts, years after Jesus' death and resurrection. "Christ" wasn't Jesus' last name (He did not have a last name as recorded in the Bible), but was rather a title, the Greek word for "Messiah," or savior. That's why Jesus' followers are called "Christians," followers of the Messiah, and why Jewish people who accept Christ are sometimes referred to as "Messianic Jews." Jesus also wasn't white, or western European, or American, or even from the West, but a lot of folks seemingly don't know that..
I'm trying to think and I don't think I've ever seen a representation of him as he probably was, fairly dark with slightly nappy black hair.
Most cultures tend to portray him as looking like what they are familiar with. This seems fair to me- I did hear the story the Christians in India represent him as having blue skin - similar representation to Krishna- but I have never been able to confirm that.
I believed Richard the Lionheart could not speak a word of English. In movies, he was often played the most English of English actors. And Robin Hood is supposingly copied from a French book called "Fouke le Fitz Waryn". Many charactors and episodes from the French book are similiar with Robin Hood.
For the first 14 years of Islam, the early Muslims prayed towards Jerusalem. Only after the move to Medina and strife with Jewish tribes near there did Mohammed have the faithful turn around towards Mecca.
Many backcountry farmers is the 18th and 19th century made whiskey because it was the easiest way to transport their corn crop to market. Because the other relatively easy way to transport corn -- hogs -- was so difficult to drive en mass, many farmers sewed their eyes shut.
The founder of the Tang dynasty, perhaps the greatest dynasty in the history of China and the Chinese still called themselves the tang people(Chinatown meants tang people street in Chinese), was actually Turkish/Huns warriors. His ancestors were Turkish tribal leaders who served in the Chinese army. Then, they received Chinese citizenship and the former Chinese emperor awarded them by giving them Chinese surname "Li". Scholars still debated on the issue since translation of the anicent Chinese sources varied. The "Li" family belonged to a class of nobility that meant Turkish tribe in modern Chinese, but some said the word Turks were different from modern day. It was only a noble class within the Chinese society. Others agrued that that noble class was all descendants of non-Chinese warriors who fought under the Chinese banner and gained noblity status. The first German soldier killed in WW II was killed by Japanese in China. The first American soldier killed in WW II was killed by the Russians in Finland. Hitler's private train was named "Amerika."
a blockade by the british navy? and the british navy lost? i was led to believe that the british navy was the only armed force in the world to have never lost a conflict. i think i heard that on one of their recruitment ads on the t.v. (if the above is true then i obviously picked that up wrong) there are many theories about where the Robin Hood legend came from. one is that he was based on the Scottish hero William Wallace. for more on this check out a book called "The Emperor's New Kilt: Two Secret Histories of Scotland" this book also claims that the kilt was invented by an englishman, that the Scottish city of Dundee had electric lighting 70 years before the light bulb was 'invented', and that Highland coos are not actually native to Scotland but are the result of continental breeding practices ("but who cares?, you still don't get hairy orange cows any where else in the world!")
The Gateway of India, in Bombay, was completed in 1924.The initial plinth had the date in Roman numerals inscribed as MCMXXIIII, which was later corrected to MCMXIV. The boy who pointed out the mistake, Keshav Ghorpade, later became one of the most notorious gangsters of Bombay, and was killed in a police encounter just off the embankment near the Gateway. Talk of coincidences.
Beethoven insisted on having cups of coffee made with precisely 60 beans. Can I also recommend this for those who like this thread: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0002W10JQ/qid=1139922974/sr=8-3/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i3_xgl/202-5708102-4243063
Pancho Villa's dying words were: "tell them I said something" ...not sure if thats an urban myth but it sounds cool. also, George Washington's dying act was to take his own pulse as he died, trying to learn something new right to the end.
By conflict, do you mean "battle"? Just in the last 100 years, they've lost the Battle of Coronel, the Battle of the Denmark Strait, and Jutland was far from being a British victory on the seas...
Not to mention the HMS Hood. And I believe the Isaac Hull and John Paul Jones had some luck in ship-on-ship encounters.