71 History Posts That Sent People Down Unexpected Rabbit Holes

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear."

Yes, And I wish they would come back. Too much hate and spite in today's world.

Simply epic! And the odds have to be ridiculous...all survivors from the war AND still alive considering their likely ages AND the same plane??

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!

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.

My husband is a legionaire veteran ❤️

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Beady El

Beady El

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They went that-a-way.

This was not a Zero, it was a Mitsubishi Ki51 Sonia light bomber. The plane failed to penetrate the ship's armoured belt, causing minor damage to the ship, but leaving the distinct outline of the plane' wings and landing gear. July 26th 1945, near the Dutch East Indies, during the final weeks of WWII.

I'm so grateful for vaccines

Multa Nocte (she/her/86 47)

Multa Nocte (she/her/86 47)

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Ceci c'est ne pas une pipe!

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

His name is Doug Hegdahl.

Accuracy wasn't that great back then.

just ask Jimmy Carter.

"This is Bob. Can we keep him?"

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

True bravery. And before authenticity became commodified.

I agree, given how many people in Leningrad were desperately starving during the seige, I'm amazed that ANY animals survived, let alone such a large one. Where were they getting *food* for it?

My husband was there on the front line.

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

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

Vaqueros

Inspecting troops or auditioning for A Chorus Line?

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

His career was a matter of life and d***h.

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

Dunno why he’s downvoted. It’s a little sarcastic, but there is an entire world of truth to what he’s saying. Congress wasn’t about to act without the support of their constituents. This may seem absurd in the modern age, but during the world wars, they kinda did their jobs representing their districts. In reality, it was more opportunistic on the part of the executive rather than the legislative simply reacting to the bombing.

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

You don't have to play the game if you're the bank

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

Life Savings...

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.

If you want to talk about dumb, the US tried to ban all alcoholic drinks.

Chich the witch

Chich the witch

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"Dear John..."

USA can be surprisingly petty in their winning. Shermans March to the sea.

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... 🤔

Chich the witch

Chich the witch

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I have the whistle my great uncle had there.

Chich the witch

Chich the witch

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missed by 82ish million Km

Too bad it's Budweiser.

"I know Zelenskyy well. I know Putin well. I would get that ended in a period of 24 hours." Some random f#ckwit.

Oppenheimer: "Mr. President, I have good news and bad news." Truman: ""What's the good news?" Oppenheimer: "We have completed our work on the atomic b**b." Truman: "Then what's the bad news?" Oppenheimer: "It works."

In the *broadest* sense of the word, conflict may be necessary for technology to evolve; but "conflict" could refer to any problem that needs a solution. *Armed* conflict certainly is not necessary for technology to develop... but it does tend to speed it up, because of the higher stakes and increased urgency.

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

And how many UFO reports were there that day?

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.)

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.

They tried to get him to surrender several times, but he believed it was propaganda the war had eneded. He was k*****g Filapinos the whole time is was manning his post. They finally tracked down his old commanding officer to tell him to stand down. That is the man in the suit on the right.

Without the French, Americans would still be speaking English.

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

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.

For all practical purposes, he was.

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... 😁

Gawd some people are dumb. Those were mostly covered by the high tides and were to prevent landing craft.

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

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

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.