71 History Posts That Sent People Down Unexpected Rabbit Holes

Wonder how respected and celebrated the poor sods who coughed their lungs out because of the mustard gas felt

So you can't write a g*****e, but you can show a picture of one

My FIL landed on Omaha Beach in the first wave of men (29th Div. 116, G Company), fought in the hedgerows and helped liberate Saint-Lô, then fought until VE Day. He also landed in the Incheon Invasion and fought until the end of the Korean Conflict. Later, he served in Vietnam as a sniper. He was a heluva dude!

This picture says a lot about how even strong, seemingly unflappable humans can be moved to tears and sorrow.

They should have named it Eeyore! 😊

Also happened at the siege of Alesia when Julius Caesar was besieging Vercingetorix.

Analyn Lahr

Analyn Lahr

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"Drink copious amounts of alcohol and wait for the inevitable blast wave. "

Today's US could very conceivably have joined the Axis.

The Panzer V, aka Panther, was one of the smaller tanks ... only about 45 tons. Thats a hell of a crane load

One round hit her ammo magazine ... she broke her back and sank in three minutes

*Horses on the battlefield* "Finally, birds can have a turn!"

One of my favorite actors and a true hero in WWII.

FYI, this was a Soviet unit, since the text above doesn't locate them.

Accuracy wasn't that great back then.

Anyone else see a face behind her?

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America 1940. We're never going to get government approval to join the war unless Japan attacks Pearl Harbour.

A bird did this to my mum's windscreen once. A perfect imprint of every feather.

I'm so grateful for vaccines

So this is where the "tis but a scratch!" bit originated!

I've seen Ned Kelly's original armour! It's on display in Melbourne.

💯 I even made sure that there was a tea urn at my dad's wake.

"We'd have sent it back, honest!"

On some documentary I watched on TV, a Japanese woman, in charge of a Hiroshima memorial, had the cojones to accuse the USA of crimes against humanity for the bombing. Seems her school didn't teach her about China, Pearl Harbor, Comfort Women, D***h Marches, a*****e POW camps, and so on./s

True bravery. And before authenticity became commodified.

Is the kid in the back about to whack him? Is this story about to take a turn?

And so the Empire descended from an age of gold to an age of iron and rust.

"This is Bob. Can we keep him?"

His name is Doug Hegdahl.

Too bad it's Budweiser.

just ask Jimmy Carter.

"...And you, madam, are ugly. But in the morning, I shall be sober..." - one of Churchill's little white lies.

Kinda like when my cat drags me around on his walk. Except I don't have that cool Samurai gear.

Inspecting troops or auditioning for A Chorus Line?

W S Churchill deserves a lot of criticism. But for all his flaws, he did have personal courage - joined the British army as a young man, and as it turned out, actually took part in the last significant British cavalry charge. Compare and contrast to some of the current crop of world leaders... 🤔

Life Savings...

It's still there, still striking. The oldest commissioned warship I think.

And how many UFO reports were there that day?

Last I heard. Russia and Belarus had the highest percentage of alcohol related deaths in the world.

Without the French, Americans would still be speaking English.

Yeah, that's already happened.

Rommel wasn't daft. He had Luftlandehindernis ("air-landing obstacle"s) aka 'Rommel's asparagus' installed in places where the Allies were expected. Basically, wooden poles linked by wires, including barbed wire and tripwires set to explode mines or hand grenades. Link follows.

Stalhelms were adopted worldwide, including an excess sent to China. Poland seized hundreds and copied the design (after Germany lost, of course. They didn't steal it mid-war.)

After dismantlement, they can still be remantled. They haven't been destroyed. Also, they've been updated to greatly increase their use-by date.

Poland needs to admit that civilians participated in purges, murders, and other crimes against the Jewish population. They were not the total victims some claim they were.

It was called Operation Babylift. Unfortunately the first flight crashed and many lost their lives. 😥

Many of them ended up getting their heads shaved and run out of town when the Germans retreated

This is a fake. There's no photograph of the actual event - and by the pilot's account, he was flying straight and level at the time in any case. To cut a long story short and quoting Wikipedia he was 'arrested and later invalided out of the RAF on medical grounds, which avoided a court martial' - 'and the embarrassment to the government of Pollock publicising the reason for his stunt and perhaps receiving the support of the public'. He didn't actually plan on flying under Tower Bridge's walkways. From what I recall reading, it's just that he was flying along the route of the Thames and the bridge was there, and he basically just couldn't help himself... 😁

Similar to what the Soviets did with a seized B-29 ... made a carbon copy called the Tu-4

I think the fact that they only made a few of these horrific gas masks makes the point that actually, they were much more terrifying than the normal gas masks. Yes, 'over 1000' is only a few - the entire UK population at the time was supplied with gas masks.

Umm, seriously? I think everyone with half an ounce of sense objected to all the d3aths relating to the many decades of recent warmongering in Afghanistan (you could start in the 1970s with the Soviet invasion, and the causes of that invasion). Putting the blame on the Taliban is ignoring those who are to blame for the rise of the Taliban - they have at least as much guilt. The history is very complicated.

For all practical purposes, he was.

Warsaw? Try looking up Dresden. Berlin got off very lightly, all things considered. Well, the buildings did. The inhabitants? Well, Stalin took the view that since his troops had fought their way all across eastern Europe to get there, they were entitled to a bit of 'fun' at the expense of any local females... 🤢 Wars are nasty things, and some wars get nastier than others.