Wait, what? That really happened?

[Reynard Wrecce]

Christmas Carols evidently started because of Jack the Ripper, or the idea of him that kept everyone in their houses, only coaxed out by christmas singers looking for a lost little girl by the name of Carol around the holiday season. She was never found.

I was under the impression that Christmas songs had been around since Christianity - celebrating second-biggest festival in song. The actual wandering-around-singing thing is related to wassailing, and the word 'carol' comes from the old French word meaning a dance.
Why yes, I did use to be a choir-boy, whyever do you ask?

 

[SilverIntoSteel]

I'm really not sure how widely known this may be, but during my University course, the one fact that gave me the absolute most delight was a nice little factoid about Stalin. Whenever he gave a speech or what have you, after the speech people would clap endlessly, sometimes for hours. Everyone was so afraid to be the first to stop clapping (Stalin was a very paranoid man) that they just wouldn't stop. In the end Stalin would have to tell them all to stop clapping himself, otherwise they wouldn't.

 

[Flamezdudes]

According to an article on cracked, during a World War (not sure which one) the Nazis bombed the French front lines with Chlorine gas. The gas gave off a green haze in the atmosphere and it killed many people making a large dint in the front lines.

The approaching reinforcements saw this and their medical officer told the troops to rip off their pants and piss on them. They then draped their pants around their noses thus effectively canceling out any harm the chlorine gas could have caused when they marched in. The medical officer was probably the most loved and most hated man at the same time.

Not sure which one? The Nazis were only in WW2, so its that World War. Duh.

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

Did you know that a dog was once sentenced to death by stoning because the judge feared it was the re-incarnation of a dead lawyer? How far back in the dim mists of time, when superstition and fear of witchcraft held sway, do you think this bizarre event took place? 100 years? 200 years? Wrong. Saturday.
[link]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-13819764[/link]

Listen, I can't find this in Hebrew in ynet.
That thing looks ridiculous, I searched 'dog' in the articles section and got nothing from Saturday concerning this.
Are you sure this is real?

Pretty sure. Here's what ynet ran on the story:
[link]http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4082843,00.html[/link]

 

[Moromillas]

I would post something, should there be no Christians on this forum who value it, and wish it to stay that way. So I'm not going to do that, because there probably might be.

 

[TheIronRuler]

The seven deadly sins were originally 8, and were differently constructed than the modern day 7 deadly sins.
They were written down by a monk in approx. 375 CE.

 

[twistedmic]

The Pilgrims were supposed to land in Jamestown, but along the way they hijacked the ship (the Mayflower) and took it north and formed the Massachusetts colony (which was not a legitimate, authorized colony).
Also, according to the show 'America: The Story of Us', the first Thanksgiving feast was to celebrate the successful attack and slaughter of a rival Native American tribe by both the Pilgrims and the tribe that helped them survive.

 

[Player 2]

Operation Mincemeat [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mincemeat]- a WW2 operation of deception.
The short version; British troops took a dead bum, dressed him in officer uniform and dumped his corpse outside of spain with a briefcase carrying plans to invade Greece and Sardinia instead of the more likely target Sicily. When Hitler moved all his troops to Greece, The Allies waltzed into Sicily unhindered. The British picked up a habit of fooling the Germans with stupid shit like this, and prior to D-day they convinced the Germans they were going to invade Calais, by creating a fuckton of inflatable tanks and leaving them in plain sight around Dover.

From the Cold War, an oddly Fallout-esque weapon- the Davy Crockett [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_%28nuclear_device%29]. It was a recoilless rifle with a small nuclear warhead stuck on the end, intended to allow infantry to nuke oncoming enemy troops

Spoiler

 

[AnAngryMoose]

During the 1916 Rising in Ireland (when the Irish rebelled against the British) a group of rebels hijacked a tram but still paid for the tickets. Also, during a battle between the rebels and the British in a park (St. Stephen's Green) there had to be a ceasefire so that the ducks could be fed.

EDIT: Just remembered one about Stalin. Apparently, Stalin kept a parrot in his office in the Kremlin. Anyway, after it began to copy what Stalin said he had it killed. I can't remember the details unfortunately.

 

[freaper]

According to an article on cracked, during a World War (not sure which one) the Nazis bombed the French front lines with Chlorine gas. The gas gave off a green haze in the atmosphere and it killed many people making a large dint in the front lines.

The approaching reinforcements saw this and their medical officer told the troops to rip off their pants and piss on them. They then draped their pants around their noses thus effectively canceling out any harm the chlorine gas could have caused when they marched in. The medical officer was probably the most loved and most hated man at the same time.

There were no Nazis in WW1 mate.

OT: I have little to add. What we experience as weird now was most likely normal back then. Like Hartley said:"The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there"

 

[TheIronRuler]

Operation Mincemeat [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mincemeat]- a WW2 operation of deception.
The short version; British troops took a dead bum, dressed him in officer uniform and dumped his corpse outside of spain with a briefcase carrying plans to invade Greece and Sardinia instead of the more likely target Sicily. When Hitler moved all his troops to Greece, The Allies waltzed into Sicily unhindered. The British picked up a habit of fooling the Germans with stupid shit like this, and prior to D-day they convinced the Germans they were going to invade Calais, by creating a fuckton of inflatable tanks and leaving them in plain sight around Dover.

From the Cold War, an oddly Fallout-esque weapon- the Davy Crockett [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_%28nuclear_device%29]. It was a recoilless rifle with a small nuclear warhead stuck on the end, intended to allow infantry to nuke oncoming enemy troops

Spoiler

I knew about that, all hail the history channel.
in the D-Day invasion the Germans were waiting at another coast, so it took them nearly all day to get their armored divisions into the battle, but by then the armies pushed forward into the mainland and out of the coast.

 

[TheIronRuler]

Despite having a tiny fraction (about a tenth I think) of the manpower, and none of the helicopters or armour support, Finland beat the Russian attack on them in WW2 massively. It's known as the winter war and I think it was about 10-1 casualities wise. Go Finns!

Also a monkey was hanged at Hartlepool because they thought it was a french spy.

You forgot to mention to most awesome part of the Finnish defense.

One lone sniper that killed off 2 battalions of troops, 1 TANK battalion, and survived an area of effect carpet bombing AIMED SOLELY AT HIM. And after being in a coma, survived the war.

Look up: Simo Hayha

I know of him too.
He killed hundreds of enemy soldiers with a bolt-action (mosin-nagant) rifle with iron sights.

 

[Doc Theta Sigma]

It took three hundred years to give the giant tortoise a latin (scientific) name because no specimens ever made it back to London. They were all eaten on the voyage back because they were apparently so delicious. True fact.

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

In order to throw the Nazis off where the D-day landings were, a phantom army called the 1st U.S Army group was invented and set up near Dover. This included mobile emitters that drove around the countryside creating false radio chatter and inflatable tanks to fool arial reconnaissance.

Spoiler

Odd how most of these examples are war-time ones.

 

[Player 2]

Operation Mincemeat [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mincemeat]- a WW2 operation of deception.
The short version; British troops took a dead bum, dressed him in officer uniform and dumped his corpse outside of spain with a briefcase carrying plans to invade Greece and Sardinia instead of the more likely target Sicily. When Hitler moved all his troops to Greece, The Allies waltzed into Sicily unhindered. The British picked up a habit of fooling the Germans with stupid shit like this, and prior to D-day they convinced the Germans they were going to invade Calais, by creating a fuckton of inflatable tanks and leaving them in plain sight around Dover.

From the Cold War, an oddly Fallout-esque weapon- the Davy Crockett [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_%28nuclear_device%29]. It was a recoilless rifle with a small nuclear warhead stuck on the end, intended to allow infantry to nuke oncoming enemy troops

Spoiler

I knew about that, all hail the history channel.
in the D-Day invasion the Germans were waiting at another coast, so it took them nearly all day to get their armored divisions into the battle, but by then the armies pushed forward into the mainland and out of the coast.

Ah, but did you know about the Emu war [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emu_War]? In which Australia declared war on the Emus that were ruining its farms, resulting in the only existing planned incident of organised military forces vs birds.

 

[intheweeds]

Did anything happen that wasn't due to a war? I wish i had something to contribute.

Ummm...
In Toronto we have this idiot furniture salesman with a very stupid catchphrase and a monkey in all his commercials - Mel Lastman. Well we liked his furniture so we um... well, we sort off...umm.. *shuffles feet embarrased*... elected him Mayor.
Here he is, campaigning in his stupid store:
http://media.thestar.topscms.com/images/24/d3/5dd5a35e436896ce554f594281be.jpeg
That's our Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty in the background. The whole thing worked out about as well as you would imagine. Assuming you imagined it would go very poorly.

EDIT: This counts as historical since this was quite a few years ago now... we got rid of him eventually.

 

[Extraintrovert]

Absolutely anything on the website Badass of the Week ([link]http://www.badassoftheweek.com/[/link]), while it's authentictiy is quite obviously dubious, the writer does take the effort to do plenty of research, and in any case is worthy of all the "holy shit"s the planet has to offer. Some of the things humans have done are beyond comprehension. My absolute favourite, however, are Audie Murphy and Simo Hayha.

Audie Murphy is probably best known for the film To Hell and Back, in which he plays himself, depicting his career during World War II. What is not as well known is that he specifically requested that his feats be toned down in the film, otherwise he would risk being called a liar. Yes, what he actually did was too badass to be shown in a Hollywood film. One only needs to look at the amount of decorations he received to understand that.

As for Simo Hayha, he was one of the many people called to arms when the Soviet Union attempted to invade Finland, the same Winter War mentioned in this thread. In it, Hayha become quite probably the deadliest person in history, killing more than seven hundred people in a war that lasted about a hundred days, most of the them using an old hunting rifle with iron sights. The Russians were terrified of him and did everything they could to stop him. They sent soldiers after him; Hayha killed them. They sent a specialist team of anti-sniper snipers after him; Hayha killed them. They sent fucking artillery strikes against where they thought he was; Hayha escaped, then killed the artillery strike. Then he was shot in the face with an explosive round, which not only didn't kill him, he was fit and ready in a few weeks. Unfortunately, by then the war was over (I like to think the Russians surrendered because they heard Hayha was back).

EDIT: Ninja'd on Hayha. Which is good, because more people need to know who he is.

 

[Slash Dementia]

Vlad Dracula was going to be raped by a sultan, who liked to rape boys and who also raped his brother. During the struggle, Vlad either killed or hurt the sultan and got away. At some later point, he went returned home (I think), and found his brother and father murdered.

I heard this in some documentary, but my mind is a little iffy right now, so I'm not sure of my details, besides that they were that or really close to it.

Also, his wive committed suicide by jumping off of his castle to avoid being caught by Turks.

He led a really horrible life, and maybe that made him to be so violent. I actually felt bad for Vlad while watching the video.

 

[TheIronRuler]

Vlad Dracula was going to be raped by a sultan, who liked to rape boys and who also raped his brother. During the struggle, Vlad either killed or hurt the sultan and got away. At some later point, he went returned home (I think), and found his brother and father murdered.

I heard this in some documentary, but my mind is a little iffy right now, so I'm not sure of my details, besides that they were that or really close to it.

Also, his wive committed suicide by jumping off of his castle to avoid being caught by Turks.

He led a really horrible life, and maybe that made him to be so violent. I actually felt bad for Vlad while watching the video.

Really?
People being executed by making them sit on a huge spike and letting the spike go through their bodies and exit via their mouth didn't register as a memory, but his wife's suicide did?

 

[Player 2]

Did anything happen that wasn't due to a war? I wish i had something to contribute.

Ummm...
In Toronto we have this idiot furniture salesman with a very stupid catchphrase and a monkey in all his commercials - Mel Lastman. Well we liked his furniture so we um... well, we sort off...umm.. *shuffles feet embarrased*... elected him Mayor.
Here he is, campaigning in his stupid store:
http://media.thestar.topscms.com/images/24/d3/5dd5a35e436896ce554f594281be.jpeg
That's our Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty in the background. The whole thing worked out about as well as you would imagine. Assuming you imagined it would go very poorly.

EDIT: This caounts as hisyorical since this was quite a few years ago now... we got rid of him eventually.

There's a story earlier on in the thread about why Hartlepool get called the monkey hangers, you should probably read that before reading the next bit if you haven't already.

In 2002, Stuart Drummond campaigned for the office of Mayor of Hartlepool in the costume of Angus the Monkey and narrowly won; he used the election slogan "free bananas for schoolchildren", a promise he was unable to keep. He has since been re-elected twice. At least your guy wasn't dressed as a monkey.