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Given the long history of the world, it’s natural that some stories, facts, and figures are better known than others. At the same time, certain parts of history end up swept under the rug, forgotten, and ignored when they really shouldn’t be.
A Netizen decided to ask the internet for examples of events and facts from history that don’t really get the attention they deserve. People responded with interesting tales, obscure factoids, and bits of the past that some would prefer to forget. So get comfortable as you scroll through, upvote your favorite examples, and be sure to comment your thoughts below.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
I’m American, in my early 60’s, but I hadn’t heard of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre until last year. I mean, we bombed black people in our own city! Just horrible. To people who want to whitewash American history, I ask you this - how is it that we are to form a more perfect union if we don’t admit, analyze and correct our mistakes?
Mel Colley 2 years ago
Unfortunately, only the winners get talked about in history evil or not.
Nitka Tsar 2 years ago (edited)
Not true at all. German history classes consist of nearly exclusively WWII, Nazi Germany, the Holocaust, what we did wrong, what we need to do to prevent it from ever happening again and therefor how we can be better as individuals and as a society. We are still actively learning from our mistakes and I think we are a better nation because of it. Edit: spelling
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Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 2 years ago
I didn't learn about it until about 20 years ago AFTER college. I'm old now too but we really should be teaching these things. The devastation of Black Wall Street was horrific. Hundreds of people, hundreds of AMERICAN CITIZENS died that day.
MandiMay 2 years ago
Wait until you learn about the REST of the massacres just like this. There are many more..
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Kevin the Manager 2 years ago
If I'm not mistaken, this particular historical atrocity is a part of what makes up CRT curriculum. It becomes very clear (altough still unforgiveable) as to why some people do not want this taught. When humans become aware of what other humans have done, they tend to want to hold them accountable. Since we cannot actually hold those humans accountable, we need to explore ways in which we can close the gap that those humanitarian crimes created. Just because I did not bomb the city of Tulsa, does not mean that I (as a white, CIS, privileged male), have not SOMEHOW benefited from the fallout. I am working on ways to narrow that gap with my personal, financial, and political choices. If everyone did, the collective face of our nation would look more like a perfect union.
Geoffrey Scott 2 years ago
I talked with a guy(Trump sticker in back window) after he asked me, a school custodian, if we teach "that CRT". I said " Have you ever heard of Tulsa race riots, or Greenwood Fla massacre?" He had not. I explained what happened, that those communities were doing what they were urged to do, which is grow their own community. "Shouldn't THAT be taught? So we never do it again?" "Yeah, I guess it should".
TwirlyGirly 2 years ago
Beginning in 2016, a large swath of American citizens gathered strength and began to push back even stronger against admitting our nation's mistakes, analyzing them, and correcting or apologizing for them; all in the name of Making America Great Again. Because apparently, all it takes for our country to BE great is to say we ARE great - with conviction. And that's a whole lot easier than actually DOING great things, isn't it? 😉
Forrest Hobbs 2 years ago (edited)
The USA is doing great things right now. Far from perfect, but: about half the military and other aid that's helped Ukraine keep fighting against invasion has come from the USA. Most of the other half has come from European nations - we have a strong personal interest in keeping Russia at bay, much more so than the USA. The USA is now, as it does from time to time, showing us that actually: well done for doing the right thing and thank you! Ukraine would not still be fighting without your support and I like to think that every informed European has gone from "Seriously, why are we still aligned with this lot?" to "Ah, yes, when the sh!t hits the fan and it really matters, we can still rely on them."
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sofacushionfort 2 years ago
I’m in my 60s too, and I’ve known about Tulsa since the 1970s. It seems it takes a comic book (albeit an intelligent one like The Watchmen) to get my fellow Americans to stretch the quest for amusement into national awareness.
Lori T Wisconsin 2 years ago
Republicans don't want CRT taught in schools. They say it makes the white bread kids feel bad! Wouldn't wanna make the kids of Karens feel any shame or guilt. Just ignore racism, deny science and say the election was stolen 🙄
Roland C. 2 years ago
Why would you want to make innocent kids feel shame or guilt for things they are not in any way responsible for? Learning about the past is one thing, but using history to pass on your liberal guilt to the next generation is evil. If you're a teacher, you should be fired.
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Luna (all pronouns) 2 years ago
I have lived in Oklahoma my entire life- and I only found out about this recently.
Dre Mosley 2 years ago
All because a bunch of white people couldn’t stand to see a bunch of black people off on their own thriving and gaining a semblance of wealth and prosperity. “Look! They’re doing better than we are. We can’t have that!”
RELATED:
#2
The Vatican directly profited off its prior knowledge of the Holocaust by purchasing life insurance companies which served European Jews. After the war, the few people who tried to claim the life insurance were denied unless they could provide full proof of the death. Unsurprisingly, the Nazis did not issue death certificates for the people they murdered so the Vatican kept almost all the money.
This is thoroughly documented in "Gods Bankers".
That and the Vatican was (and likely still is) a major player in money laundering.
Bouche and Audi and Shyla, Oh My! 2 years ago
But the money laundering was done with holy water.
Solidhog 2 years ago
It is mind blowing when you stop and think about the crimes committed and the suffering caused and then covered up in the name of religion.
Bart 2 years ago
When will we acknowledge that the Catholic institute is only there for the greedy, the power hungry and paedophiles. There is no way you can interpret Christianity and agree with the immense stolen wealth, institutionalised abuse and hiding evidence that is going on in the Catholic church
Stephanie Did It 2 years ago
Hitler was a baptized Catholic who was never excommunicated for his actions.
Raumpfleger 2 years ago
That surprises me, because the Nazis actually kept painstakingly exact records of their atrocities.
Charlotte 2 years ago
Yes, they listed names and documented a lot of personal details. They also kept track of how many dead. They didn't give out proof of death or death certificates though, especially not to Jews who would use said document to try and get life insurance payouts. Towards the end of the war, they destroyed a lot of evidence. The remaining Jews were either killed last minute or abandoned.
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Dórémifá Szólátidó 2 years ago
The catholic church is as far from Christian values and the teachings of the Bible as west is from the east. This is far from being the only one attrocity that the catholic church commited against humanity.
Andy Cran 2 years ago
calling oneself a Christian does not a Christian make
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LinkTheHylian 2 years ago
Shout out to the Pope who oversees a church full of money launderers and child rapists. None of you listened to Sinead when she was right all along.
Nitka Tsar 2 years ago
Is the book really that well documented? Is he stating facts that can be looked up? I haven‘t read it. To be honest, I‘ve never heard of it or the Author (Gerald Posner, investigative journalist) before. Don‘t get me wrong, I don‘t particularly like the catholic church, I just want to make sure this book is not just claims and hear says.
Powerful Katrinka 2 years ago
It's a well-researched book full of confirmable citations. The Catholic Church made noises about suing the author, and was advised to drop it because much of his evidence came directly from the church's archives.
Load More Replies... #3
The residential schools for Native Americans and all of the horrific atrocities. Literally no one with conscience likes talking about it.
Miss Frankfurter 2 years ago
🇨🇦It needs to be talked about. They need to be heard. We need to answer for it.
tameson 2 years ago
From what I can tell, Canada seems to be doing a decent job of publicly acknowledging these atrocities and making what restitution they can. The US is doing next to nothing. We are still struggling to protect Native lands.
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JLN 2 years ago
Growing up in Canada this used to be a pretty well hidden secret. It wasn't until I went to college in an area with a large indigenous population and I started listening to their stories that I learned of the horrors their people faced. It's sad, and heartbreaking. Even still today if a white person goes missing people lose their freaking minds but barely even blink at all the murdered and missing indigenous women and children (and men)
Andy Cran 2 years ago
we had magdelen homes in Ireland along with unwed mothers having babies taken away in Britain (1970's)....I was almost one of those taken babies,my parents married 11days before I was born (of course it wasn't spoken about because of our repressed British sensibilities, which still persist in the UK)
- 2 years ago (edited)
The Magdalen laundries in Ireland were basically legalized slavery and cash cows (until washing machines became widespread). Sinead O'Connor was in one and remembered the dispirited elderly women there. I knew about them before she ripped a picture of the pope on TV.
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Shadow 2 years ago (edited)
My class participated in a project. We and people from La FADOQ (La Fédération de l'Âge d'or du Québec) or séniors went to place in the woods. We created talking sticks and there was someone who talked a bit about his life in residential school and about the unfairness of being a native. His daughter dissapeared and they still dont know where she is.
UselessKnowledgeFont 2 years ago
The missing women are definitely more of an unknown thing in the USA. It's happening in both Canada and the US. I pray for all of them
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Scrappychick 2 years ago
I've read, listened too, and watched a lot of people recalling their experiences for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada and was regularly disgusted and brought to tears by their stories and the lasting legacy of them and the Indian Act
WalterWhiteSavannah 2 years ago
Residential schools were a thing I actually learned about back in school. Truly awful, but i didn't think it was really a secret either. What many people still don't know about is the 60s scoop (in which native children were taken from their family to be raised in white families "for their own good") or that residential schools were still operating into the 1980s. When we learned about them in school in the 90s it was taught as though it was ancient history. And the 60s scoop wasn't taught at all.
#4
One of the darker reasons the Western Slave trade gets talked about more than the Arab Slave Trade is due to the fact male African slaves were regularly castrated. They didn't breed slaves like the West did, as it was seen as a sign of opulence that you could just buy a new one. No descendants = No one around to speak of the atrocities. Horrifying.
Edit: Also just to add more horror to it, it started 700 years before the Atlantic Slave Trade and the practice still survived up until 1960. Now imagine how many victims and potential generations were wiped out over that length of time.
Ian Webling 2 years ago
A 2021 estimate claimed there were forty-six million slaves worldwide. Up five million from 2018 and more than at any time in history. While legal ownership of humans has been abolished in every country over the last two hundred years, ninety-four have no laws making it a criminal offence. In these countries, one cannot be prosecuted in a criminal court for enslaving someone. That number stood at ninety-five until 2010 when it became illegal to own a slave in the United Kingdom.
Mike Crow 2 years ago
The UK thing is wrong. The UK made slavery illegal in 1833. What passed in 2010 is the anti-slavery day which was aimed to remind everyone that the slave trade continues as you had stated.
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RW 2 years ago (edited)
The word your looking for is eunich. In fact the majority were arabic (up until the crusades when some whiteys got thrown in the mix courtesy of captured slavs and Europeans). Before that point it was mostly volunteers, as it gave them access to a life among royalty on the palacial grounds, and was far better than dying on the frontlines or in squalor from abject poverty. It was the key to a better life for most. And even in those extraordinarily rare scenarios that it did, it was not a unique procedure. It was to prevent any males from tainting the princesses purity....the hell happened to this site? It used to be about facts...
DB 2 years ago
Yes, but when you post facts here the downvote crew and self-appointed experts crawl out from under their rocks.
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Midoribird Aoi 2 years ago
They were castrated because they could then be used to guard a man's female family members without fear of cheating
TwirlyGirly 2 years ago
According to: https://newafricanmagazine.com/16616/ female African slaves in the Arab world were frequently turned into concubines living in harems, while African men and boys were castrated and turned into eunuchs who kept watch over the harems.
Nerf Hofnagle 2 years ago
Slavery has been around for thousands of years. Remember Egypt? The term 'slave' is derived from 'Slav' as in Eastern Europe
The Original Bruno 2 years ago
A good friend of mine is a Philippine woman who was held as a slave for several years. Eventually, her slavemaster became a diplomat and took her to Washington. She escaped in the suburbs.
BluEyedSeoulite 2 years ago
I know of some women who were tricked to come to Korea from the Philippines. They got jobs as 'entertainers' (they were told singers) but had their passports taken from them. They were lucky to get their passports back and escape, now illegal immigrants in Korea but at least they aren't the type of 'entertainers' their traffickers had hoped to obtain, if you get my drift
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Shelli Aderman 2 years ago
https://www.fairplanet.org/dossier/beyond-slavery/forgotten-slavery-the-arab-muslim-slave-trade/#:~:text=The%20Arab%20Muslim%20slave%20trade,in%20the%20most%20inhumane%20conditions.
#5
How the Slave Trade was driven by black africans enslaving and selling other black africans. People are just people, and in large groups people are often utterly horrible to each other.
Pete jamail 2 years ago
Other countries complicity doesn’t excuse what our nation did, which was by many metrics the worst in the world. We also continue to cause active harm to them up to the modern day.
Frank Ropen 2 years ago
But not in the case of slavery, the Arabic countries where much worse. It's on that list too
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Missy Corron 2 years ago
The fact that Africans were ALSO motivated by greed and hatred of other African tribespeople is in no way excusable in that a commercial enterprise existed that exploited this greed and hatred. Africans didn't invent the slave trade (though tribal rivalry and conquest had already existed) but they were able to participate to the detriment of their fellow man and their own souls. That there was a ready outlet just further outlines the ability of humans to exploit each other over periods of history! There is a booming slave trade TO THIS DAY only now it's children and women of all sorts of race, ethnicity and nationality.
Jig Jive 2 years ago
This one is weird for me. I know this as a fact, but the only people I’ve ever heard say it are racists and it’s part of their reasoning on why slavery was ok or in some cases the “best thing to ever happen to black people”. (Their words not mine other then replacing offensive words)
Christian Golden 2 years ago
Some facts can be historically true, but narrow in context. And over-relied upon by a particular "side." I agree with you.
Load More Replies... Solidhog 2 years ago
I have been making this point for a long while. Everybody is quick to blame the rest of the world but turn a blind eye to the fact it was actually a majority of the world taking part in slavery and in many cases those pointing the finger and screaming for compensation are just as guilty.
Forrest Hobbs 2 years ago
The transatlantic slave trade operating from the 17th to the 19th century was a uniquely evil form of slavery. It's never been that nasty before or since, not when you look at the details. No-one is screaming for compensation. That kind of language shows what kind of person you are.
Load More Replies... Christian Golden 2 years ago
Some (like me) would argue it was equally driven by buyers and distributors. But you do you.
TMoxraaaar 2 years ago
I taught interpreting at a community college. I was alarmed by the number of students who put all Deaf people up on a pedestal once the truth of atrocities against them are taught in Deaf Culture classes (look up Sept. 11, 1880). My go to is "Deaf people are people. This means some of them are a******s"
- 2 years ago (edited)
I looked up the date, found no info other than "The Liliad" being being published and a letter from Ernest Cosson. Then I added "deaf" to the Google search. I found Alexander Graham Bell's argument for banning sign language. I agree with both allowing sign language and that a******s can come from anywhere.
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maka paka 2 years ago
The slave trade was driving by everyone involved, trying to blame one set of people for it is ridiculous as they were all complicit. That is like trying to blame Hitler for the holocaust and letting everyone else off
Leo Domitrix 2 years ago
If profit could be made, then humans made it, and no regard for morality was had. That's what history shows us. And we're just chugging along the same as ever, to this day.
Trevor Hardy 2 years ago
There were European slaves long before African slaves. Still not acceptable
Forrest Hobbs 2 years ago
Homo sapiens evolved in Africa, and it took a long time before our species reached Europe, so I doubt that.
Load More Replies... #6
While known about here in Ireland, a lot of British people don't seem to be aware of the atrocities that were carried out under Oliver Cromwell. Church burning, kids and women being locked up in a burning church and just genocide of Irish people. It's insane that some British people will put him up on a pedestal, regardless of the amount of evilness he had.
Andy Cran 2 years ago
that's why we sent the puritans to the Americas....yes damn right they were persecuted and expelled, then they played the "woe are we" card.... sorry America
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Penny Fan 2 years ago
My dear old auntie always claimed we were descended from Cromwell. Thankfully after several years of research my brother has proved that we dont. Which is a great relief since the other side of my family is very much Irish...
Sandy Kavanaugh 2 years ago
Dear, your ancestors don't determine your conscience. If you're a good person, it doesn't matter from whom you are descended.
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Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 2 years ago
Meanwhile in the USA we have statues of men who owned people as slaves. Time to topple some monuments on both sides of the pond.
Scrappychick 2 years ago
Since 2020 and the Black Lives Matter protests statues or slaver traders have been being removed or replaced in the UK , its a slow process but its progressing
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Nila Griffin 2 years ago
Same with Columbus here in the US. He was AWFUL to indigenous peoples yet we still have a national holiday.
UselessKnowledgeFont 2 years ago
Yeah, dude wasn't even Italian. Why do I know that Italian Americans have a designated celebration month in addition to "Columbus Day", and most Italian Americans don't? Where's my Slavic day/month? As for Cromwell, I now feel compelled to check my Irish/Scottish/ British ancestors' immigration dates and other records...
Load More Replies... Andy Cran 2 years ago
I'm a Brit I know about it all too well, were not all knuckle dragging uneducated ignorant chavs lol? even those of us who live in social housing and on welfare benefits (we tend to get tarred with the same brush.... apologies for digressing, felt I needed a bit of a rant)
Sue User 2 years ago (edited)
All good. Been there. Have a cuppa and a hug from me.
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Melissa Powell 2 years ago
We do the same. Read about how many Americans are willing to vote for Trump again. He is disgraceful. Not presidential. A very terrible person
Chewie Baron 2 years ago
Cromwell and Sir John Major were MP for the same constituency, Huntingdon.
gilded panda 2 years ago (edited)
okay, arson is one thing. but a church? thats some high level cow cr@p
Sturgeon 2 years ago
Its the killing of the people not the destruction of the building that is the atrocity.
Load More Replies... #7
We treated German prisoners of war better than we treated interned Japanese Americans.
Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 2 years ago
Hard to pretend the USA is an enlightened democracy when you know about the real history.
keyboardtek 2 years ago
Those in USA today who want to stop teaching history are not concerned with having a Democracy, let alone an enlightened one.
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Lori T Wisconsin 2 years ago
Recommend the graphic novel "They Called Us Enemy,", George Takei's story of his childhood internment experiences.
Michael P (Perthaussieguy) 2 years ago
I'm surprised it's not on the Republican banned book list
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Andy Frobig 2 years ago
In many parts of the US, German POWs were treated better than Black Americans, too
Nitka Tsar 2 years ago
Gleich und gleich gesellt sich gern - basically means that similarities stick together
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Mary Hiers 2 years ago
Many German POWs were sent to my town in Tennessee and went to work on local farms. Many of them chose to stay here after the war was over because they liked it here, and I suppose they were treated well. On the one hand, I'm glad we treated them well, but on the other hand, the Japanese concentration camps were an absolute abomination and an affront to the entire concept of America.
Hiram's Friend 2 years ago
Many sent to the Phoenix area. There was one escape, but they had a map which showed a river. Turned out it was dry most of the year.
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Kealani Smith 2 years ago
and you'd be really horrified to hear about the WWII experience of Alaska Natives
MontanaMariner 2 years ago
I live by Fort Missoula, in Montana. It has alot of history with America and Minorities. The all black 25th Infantry tested the efficiency of bicycles in the military by riding them here. It also served as an internment camp for Japanese and Italian Americans. Ft. Missoula now is a free, open to the public, set of museums covering the history of the fort. Inside the internment camp barracks building is a list of all prisoners, etc. Most schools in the area make a trip to the Fort specifically for that. I don't remember the Salish word for Fort Missoula, but it roughly translates to "Place of the killers." Lots of dark history for an upper-class liberal town.
Mjskywalk 2 years ago
And the Japanese treated American POWs worse than interned Japanese Americans were treated.
- 2 years ago
True, but I would use that as two different conversations rather than a comparison. Comparing the two injustices could be misconstrued as meaning that the interment camps were justified as guilt-by-association or a form of revenge. I'd rather have compassion for others without "what-about-ism". It may be a learning curve, but I'm glad to have more empathy than when I was much younger.
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Aisling Raye 2 years ago
"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the Corporate States of America. And to the shareholders for which it stands. One nation, under greed. Invisible. With cronyism and corruption for all." Mark F. Thompson (?)
Khall Khall 2 years ago
Eh fear and racism. Easy to see why. Just look at the government encouraged racism right after 9/11. Seems to happen every time we have a non-white threat to our country. The whole society goes fear crazy. And we do stupid things and then history condemns us. Until the next time when it happens all over again.
#8
The Armenian genocide by the Ottoman Empire.
Miss Frankfurter 2 years ago (edited)
Never happened. Regardless of the vast amount of documentation. Are you 🤬kidding me?The photographic documentation. The personal accounts. The fact that that many human beings just “disappeared” from the face of the earth. WE KNOW THIS HORROR HAPPENED!
Freya the Wanderer 2 years ago
One photo from this evil time shows a Turk holding a piece of bread just out of reach of some starving Armenian children, and grinning maliciously. If there is a Hell, you know that creep went there.
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Jennifer Clayton 2 years ago
The US still has some of the same insurance companies existing today who sold Armenians life insurance en masse and then never paid out by citing Ottoman reports that there was no genocide.
Duh 2 years ago
Not to mention the invasion of Armenian lands by Azerbaijan, which started THIS WEEK. But Azerbaijan has delivered oil to the EU to replace fuel from Russia. They supply humanitarian aid to Ukraine. But they have invaded their neighbor, and no one is discussing it.
decaf 2 years ago
Not even one bullet fired in Armenia, during this thirty years old conflict. Azerbaijan is defending its UN recognized territory, which was invaded by Armenia at the start of all this mess.
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Teodora Markova 2 years ago
I hope justice rules one day and the Armenians get the respect they deserve The movie ,,The Cut" is the most brutal thing I had ever seen.
decaf 2 years ago
Yep, Azerbaijanis committed a huge crime by kicking Armenian Army out of their land. How dare them.
Load More Replies... Skywitness 2 years ago
It was an atrocity that was beyond comprehension until Stalin did something more outrageous in Ukraine with the Holomodor and then Hitler exceeded those nightmares.
Der Kommissar 2 years ago
The Turks had the Kurds do some of the killing. Mentioning the Armenian genocide is a crime in Turkey
Dr Robert Neville 2 years ago
Is this the same as the Greek genocide? Or are they different but occurring at the same time by the same people?
tameson 2 years ago
Different groups of people but at the same time by the Turks. Horrific events that Turkey still refuses to acknowledge.
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#9
Gandhi, Mother Theresa, and Coco Chanel were actually awful people yet them (or their brands) are still praised to this day.
Hamad§ 2 years ago
Coco Chanel was a nazi?! How come we aren't thought this is school when we learn about her
The Darkest Timeline 2 years ago
I’d like to know where CoCo Chanel is part of the curriculum
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Helmut Kok 2 years ago
Lets not forget that the SS uniforms was desinged and made by Hugo Boss
atandydot 2 years ago
Besides all the evil... the uniforms were very impressive. But you know, the evil part overshadowed the whole look
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Cassidy 2 years ago
I highly recommend listening to the Swindled podcast episode on Mother Theresa. She was a horrible, I mean horrible human being.
Angrykitten 2 years ago
Yes I'm surprised she wasn't higher on this list.
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holly smethurst 2 years ago
Ghandi slept naked next to little girls, mother Teresa made people suffer to be closer to god but insisted on high end healthcare for herself and coco was a nazi!
John Dilligaf 2 years ago
if a good thing is accomplished by a "awful person" does that diminish the good thing? Awful people can do good things and good people can do awful things.
BluEyedSeoulite 2 years ago
Sure but Mother Teresa wasn't a good person. She was just a nun
Load More Replies... #10
I feel like not a ton of people talk about Operation Paperclip, where nazi scientists were snuck into America with fake identities and employed by the US government. Every time I've brought it up, people havent known what it was. Additionally, the long history of medical experimentation and exploitation of BIPOC in America, and just how deep that s**t goes - ex: the torture of enslaved Black women being at the foundation of the field of gynecology.
David Phillips 2 years ago
"Once the rockets go up, who cares where they come down / That's not my department, says Wernher von Braun." [Tom Lehrer]
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El Dee 2 years ago
When scandals like this emerge they involve someone who has tried to blow the whistle and is eventually listened to and believed about 30 years after the fact - when those who ordered it and ran it are probably dead. It keeps happening. There are things ongoing now that someone is trying to publicise that someone with more power than them is sitting on and keeping quiet. Don't believe me? Wait 30 years..
Saint_Zipcodus 2 years ago (edited)
Happened in Germany as well. IOld Nazis went on to be politicians, teachers, police officials. Partly due to the fact that a large portion of the (male) population had died in the war and women a) obviously weren't viewed as capable enough and b) of course had an equally deep involvement in the Nazi regime (albeit in a different role). To fill the void in societal structure, former perpetrators were 'de-nazified' and put back into office. Edit: This circumstance is viewed as the main reason for the left-wing domestic terror that occurred in Germany in the seventies.
TMoxraaaar 2 years ago
How could anyone who has seen Captain America the first Avenger AND winter soldier NOT know that?
Mary Hiers 2 years ago
Operation Paperclip provided many early staff members for Arnold Air Force Base. A couple of them were still around when I worked there in the 1980s.
Lexekon 2 years ago
Humans are horrible, full stop. To be clear, blaming any one group is a meaningless exercise, as we are all, without exception, descendants of those who did horrible things. History is a grossly incomplete record of our species. We either forgive the people who were born since, or we need to accept that we are all guilty. Anything short of that is self serving deception.
Apatheist Account2 2 years ago
I thought that was to do with annoying everyone in Microsoft Word...
Michael Largey 2 years ago (edited)
Many wish that Clippy had been as hidden from the public view as those German scientists were.
Load More Replies... #11
That Noah’s Ark story predates Christianity by a thousand years, possible more. And that Dec 25th was a pagan holiday.
Tim Snyder 2 years ago
Of course Noah's ark predates Christianity. Christianity didn't begin until Christ came. Also, the fact that other civilizations have flood stories simply gives more reason to believe thatva great dlood did happen.
Shane Hussel 2 years ago
There is NO evidence for a global flood. Of course there were local ones around the world at various times. Its a fable.
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Ace 2 years ago
Someone seems to have forgotten that most of the religious writings making up the bible's Old Testament were written hundreds of years before Christianity, the Noah legend being part of the five books also common to Judaism and Islam that were written in or before the 6th century BCE, based on earlier oral and written stories.
JacqSTL 2 years ago
In both the Bible and The Epic of Gilgamesh, there are many common themes including a great flood to wipe out humanity, saving the animals from death by the flood and blessing The Epic of Gilgamesh predates the Bible and originated in Mesopotamia
Kira Okah 2 years ago
The Mesopotamian flood story pre-dates the creation of The Epic of Gilgamesh. Mentions of Ziusudra - the Sumerian King who built the Preserver of Life under guidance of Enki to protect against Enlil's rage - are found in Sumerian poems written before the Epic was put together.
Load More Replies... Kira Okah 2 years ago
Pretty much every culture on the planet has an ancient flood story. Deceber 25th was primarily the festival day for Invictus, yes, a lot of religions in Rome had celebrations pushed to the same sort of time in December to drum up parties and trade, Roman Christians were no different here.
Fish Fingers 2 years ago
Don't forget that pretty much every culture on the planet also has a traditional vampire mythology. Not sure where I was going with this as I've had a drink, but it is true 🤷♂️
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UpupaEpops 2 years ago
I'm pretty secular and generally have a hard time digesting American books on religion as they are highly sentimental in tone compared to British books. However, I highly recommend Zondervan's Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible. As English isn't my first language, I bought the NIV edition and it's an absolutely amazing read. Basically explains all of the stories in the Bible, puts them into a historical context and compares and contrasts the stories with other texts from the era. For example, the Song of Solomon has a lot of similarities with devotionals written to Ishtar.
Sundreamer 2 years ago
Thanks for this! I love documentaries and such where stories of the Bible are put in their historical context. My mother was an English professor in America and she was of the mindset that the Bible was a beautifully written book of stories. Written by man. About men. (Mankind) But she didn't really share more of that with me and my siblings. It wasn't until I was an adult and found a new church with a preacher who was a teacher of the Old Testament at Mount Olive College who rekindled that interest when he talked about the parting of the Red Sea and how it was likely mistranslated from "the sea of reeds" which would be marshy and easier to cross. Blew my mind!
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MR 2 years ago
Christianity is and always has been built on lies. It was always about subjugation and control. They took the religious beliefs and stories of other and then culturally appropriated them into their own, destroying the original whenever possible in the process. And when not, they just made sure their followers believed only their version to be the original/real one.
Xip Dizc 2 years ago
Of course the story of Noah predates Christianity. Christians were not called Christian s till after Jesus death and resurrection. The Bible clearly lays out a timeline saying as much; no mystery here. Correct, Christmas is not when Jesus was born, it's when we celebrate his birth. When people of your faith are being slaughtered by the Roman Empire what better time to celebrate then when there was already the celebration of Saturnalia going on.
#12
EVERY SINGLE royal family in Europe practiced incest at some point. There was so much interconnection between noble families that at a certain point every nobleman in Europe was closely related to all others. Kings and Queens were basically marrying their cousins since the gene pool was so small. No wonder in the end most nobles were deformed, mentally ill/challenged hemophiliacs. They were inbred all the way.
the sixthgirl 2 years ago
Lordy, I watched a documentary about the Hapsburgs--worst inbreeding since ancient Egypt!
CanadianaKa 2 years ago
And yet people still think Cleopatra only succeeded in seducing Caesar and Mark Anthony because she was "beautiful." She was the product of 11 generations of inbreeding. One look at her coins and it's evident.
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KnightOwl 2 years ago
Most European royal families are still very closely related, mainly through Queen Victoria. Queen victoria married her first cousin Albert, their kids married distant relatives from other European royal families. Even Queen Elizabeth and Prince phillip were distant cousins (I think they were 3rd cousins) The most inbred royal family were the Habsburgs, they suffered a lot of horrible health issues and deformities because of it.
Freya the Wanderer 2 years ago
King Charles II of Spain was the last Habsburg to sit on the Spanish throne, and he had a laundry list of problems. He may also have been infertile. As the descendent of many generations of inbreeding, and the product of an uncle-niece marriage, he was more inbred than if his parents had been siblings.
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Fun Fan 2 years ago
But this is well-known in Europe! We even lerarnt about in primary school.
Easily Excitable Panda 2 years ago
Kate Middleton and Meghan Markle are the first people without royal lineage of some kind to marry into the British Royal Family in several hundred years.
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Kira Okah 2 years ago
The War of the Roses was a squabble between two branches of the descendants of Edward III. Henry VII married Elizabeth of York, the descendant of Edmund, Duke of York, upon his victory. Thing is, Edmund was the brother of Henry's ancestor, John of Gaunt. Nice circle going on there.
norabest321 2 years ago
While this whole concept is icky, incest just has such a more horrifying ring to it ex: childhood sexual abuse/assault by a family member. I think inbreeding is a better choice of words since a lot of these people actually chose each other but didn't grow up in the same households.
Load More Replies... Michael Largey 2 years ago
It was thought that intermarriages among different countries' royals would prevent wars. We saw how well that worked in1914.
#13
American support in politically destabilising countries across Latin America.
Sand Ers 2 years ago
Not just Latin America. Anywhere that the establishment of democratic governments threatened to interfere with the theft of natural resources from underdeveloped countries. Anybody who objects to the islamic dictatorship in Iran needs to know that it is the direct result of the US overthrowing a democratically elected government, and installing a repressive puppet monarchy.
Geoffrey Scott 2 years ago
Yup! all about the Benjamins. We are no better or worse than any other....'murica
Load More Replies... Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 2 years ago
The USA committed atrocities in the name of the United Fruit Company. We call them Banana Republics for a reason. That reason is we wanted bananas, so we overthrew legitimate governments and installed ones that would give us bananas.
TheAmericanAmerican 2 years ago
We just "celebrated" the 50th anniversary of the FIRST 9/11... the 1973 CIA/Nixon/Kissinger backed coup of the DEMOCRATICALLY elected Chilean government, which was then followed by the US backed fascist Pinochet dictatorship! Never forget!
El Dee 2 years ago
This has been more obvious to non Americans as the press in the US will report the 'party line' rather than the facts. But I was told that ONE of the signs of a CIA coup is that they always give it a symbol. The Orange Revolution, The Singing Revolution, The (attempted) Umbrella Revolution. Not so much for countries where the publicity won't get back to US ears of course. US News is less interested in what happens in Africa, for example..
Mia Hamsa 2 years ago
The Greek junta of 1967 was a known "secret" that it was the work of the CIA and Nixon. Now there is paper--trail as well that proves that the then USA government and CIA actually funded the rise of the far right military players. A lot of people lost their lives, imprisoned, tortured and lost their livelihood due to their political beliefs. Horrid.
TotallyNOTaFox 2 years ago (edited)
The CIA pretty much effed up Africa in the 70's by destabilizing democratic governments in fear that they could become communists
stella rossa 2 years ago
Not only Latin America. Also in Europe. Greece p.e. The Fascist Dittature of the colonels In 1967.
Leo Domitrix 2 years ago
Soviet/ Russian and Chinese support in various places, too. Superpowerse love to f*ck around like the world's a chessboard. Two hundred years ago, it was England and France. It just goes on and on.... Basically, if a superpower shows up, ti's not for a good cause, is my take on history. (Rome, Greece, Egypt, pick any of them...)
#14
The US eugenics and forced sterilization program that happened until the 70s. It is also trying to make a comeback if the neo-conservative fascists in the US get power again.
Undercover 2 years ago
We don't speak about the torture that presumed or real mentaly ill people underwent in the past. Rosemary Kennedy for example was subjected to a lobotomy (as countless other people) because her father deemed her behaviour as shameful for his family. Nobody wants to talk about psychology's gruesome past. Especially nobody in the medical field.
Sue User 2 years ago
This was a terrible thing to happen. However, the pendulum has swung so far the other way, that in Western USA, the bar is set so high for involuntary commitment, the mentally ill cannot get the help that is needed.
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afia kooma 2 years ago
Norway sterilized and lobotomised up until the 1980. How we have a good reputation internationally is beyond me.
Undercover 2 years ago
As far as I know Sweden was an example of forced sterilizations. The US tried to keep up with the swedish numbers.
Load More Replies... Mike Ray 2 years ago
Eugenics is still alive and well thanks to Planned Parenthood... Black women have been experiencing induced abortions at a rate nearly 4 times that of White women for at least 3 decades, and likely much longer.
MCathenaE 2 years ago
https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/08/14/432080520/fact-check-was-planned-parenthood-started-to-control-the-black-population
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Philip Guthrie 2 years ago
Eugenics isn't a rightwing thing--it's a leftwing thing. Look up Margaret Sanger, who was still being honored as the highest award Planned Parenthood gave out until a few years ago. Slavery? Democrats. Segregation? Democrats. Great Society destruction of the black family? Democrats. Race-based admissions? Democrats. Why is it that people who decry government power and misdeeds always vote for the party that promises more power and money going to government. Maybe it's because you're all full of sh*t.
UselessKnowledgeFont 2 years ago
If you are referring to affirmative action, the recent court ruling is a disgrace. Using people who weren't able to get in to top schools on test scores and grades alone to reverse something that post-internment camp Asian-Americans fought hard for is tragic. Also, you do know that the Democrats and Republicans switched "sides"/beliefs in the middle of the last century (1900s), right?
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Margo Gustafson McNeil 2 years ago
Child abusers should be FORCIBLY sterilized without anesthesia
Celtic Pirate Queen 2 years ago
And yet - after 3 children my daughter was denied getting her tubes tied because she was under 30. F*ck you American health care.
#15
Native American tribes like the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole Nations owned black slaves and were some of the last slave owners in North America. As they were sovereign nations, the emancipation proclamation didn't affect them, and new treaties needed to be made to stop the enslavement.
Miss Frankfurter 2 years ago
When Chief Norma Mankiller was asked about this, the answer was anything but satisfactory.
RW 2 years ago (edited)
Now I've gotta look into this... thanks for some reading suggestions, so to speak!
Load More Replies... The Darkest Timeline 2 years ago (edited)
Prior to the American Civil War, in states that would eventually secede and slavery was still legal, 20% of households owned slaves. Among native peoples, less than 3% owned slaves of any kind. Still wrong in all cases but white slave ownership was far more widespread. Also, the native populations didn’t wage a war against the legitimate government of the US in order to preserve slavery and white supremacy. Context is important.
Michael Largey 2 years ago
The Native Americans also did not have senators and representatives in Congress pushing the slavery agenda.
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Jared Robinson 2 years ago
Duh, native americans were enslaving each other long before the white man showed up.
Mark Mendenhall 2 years ago
Your photo is of modern African Cocoa laborers. They are not slaves,
Michael Largey 2 years ago
There were large areas of the US where the Emancipation Proclamation did not apply. Slavery remained legal in the border states of Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware. It also remained legal in Confederate territory controlled by the Union, chiefly Tennessee and New Orleans.
#16
The Aztecs were utterly horrific people who did stuff like flay people alive and wear their skins as a form of worship in their religion. When Cortez invaded the reason he was so successful was because the local tribes wanted the Aztec gone THAT BADLY!
Libstak 2 years ago
They raided entire villages and sacrificed them by splitting open their sternum and ripping out their beating hearts, in the hundreds at a time, sometimes every day for weeks depending on the festival or worship they were honouring.
Hugh Cookson 2 years ago
You need to be a little more nuanced - there were religious reasons for instance amongst others.
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WindySwede 2 years ago
Or how their religious leaders handled human lives?
Load More Replies... RW 2 years ago
Eh certainly part of it. More so the fact previous expeditions had brought diseases that took a population of (high end estimate) 20 million people and dwindled it down to a few hundred thousand. But just as much due to the unbelievably lucky (maybe not so much for the Aztecs) coincidence of their landing in time to line up with the foretold arrival of the Aztec gods (fair skinned) that essentially gave them an all access pass to capture the emperor in his own palace as one time guests before killing him and all of his advisors in the upper echelons, wreaking havoc and disorder
RW 2 years ago (edited)
Favorite fact of it all are his dogs. They were war mastiffs, and listed as weapons on the ships inventory. Some reeeeal dark reading if it interests you
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Paul Pienkowski 2 years ago
They were also a brilliant people who built things far ahead of their time. So they ripped a few hearts out. Elon Musk does it every day.
Karl 2 years ago
A bit like saying “Hitler was a bit of a wrong ‘un but he built the motorways, enacted the first animal protection laws and espoused vegetarianism”
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._. 2 years ago (edited)
This is pretty terrible, but the Europeans weren't great either (but maybe better). Europe used to have public execution, and how is that better than ritual sacrifice? (Sourse: my APUSH teacher)
SJM 2 years ago
Not just public execution. Europe had public torture - they disembowel and pulled limbs of people before they where executed. Having body parts shipped all over the kingdom and put on display, was also fairly common.
Load More Replies... Libstak 2 years ago
Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent in this instance, but semantics...
Load More Replies... gilded panda 2 years ago
huh, i just saw my ity for the aztecs jump out the window and light itself on fire.
Dr Robert Neville 2 years ago
I thought it was because they had a centralised government, Cortez walked in, killed the seat of power and everything collapsed. The Maya had a decentralised system so they had to take them out one stronghold at a time.
Michael Largey 2 years ago
When people claim their religious freedom is being repressed, I ask them if the Spaniards stopping the Aztecs from performing their human sacrifice rites was repressing religion.
Shane Hussel 2 years ago
I have to think some of this was made up by the people who slaughtered them.
#17
Churchill and India are often not seen together in the best of lights and thats putting it lightly. But when the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre happened, Churchill was the one of the only politicians who stood in defense of the victims. General Reginald Dyer had ordered his men to fire on an unarmed protest which killed 400 Indians and injured 1000 more. There was a debate in The House of Commons as to what to do with Dyer, as British army personnel were often afforded protections from actions like this and he very nearly got off with it. Until Churchill, who was Minster of War at the time, stood to give a speech that condemned Dyer. Stating he should have his employment and benefits of it stripped from him and he heavily implied if it was within his power to do so, his punishment would be more severe. Basically implying he would have been happy to see Dyer hanged. The Conservative Party was outraged at Churchill for breaking ranks and many of their number said he was a traitor and implied Churchill should be charged with treason. A penalty which carried the sentence of death. Churchill's speech did work however and while Dyer unfortunately couldn't be charged more severly due to Army regulations blocking such actions. He was stripped of his employment and benefits that came with it. This was one of the first times an event like this had ended up with a higher up receiving accountability in The British Empire.
El Dee 2 years ago
Unusual that Churchill made this speech. He had actively encouraged shooting striking Welsh miners prior to this. The British Govt had a history of this at home and abroad, sending tanks into George Square in Glasgow and killing peaceful protestors and the Croke Road massacre. See also Bloody Sunday and how, despite an admission of guilt over shooting an unarmed protestor in the back who was running away and THEN standing over him and finishing the job, the soldier in question was allowed to walk free with no further trial being allowed. That happened within the last two years. Nothing changes..
XenoMurph 2 years ago
The original Bloody Sunday at a gaelic football match in Dublin, 1920: Eye-witness accounts suggest that five minutes after the throw-in an aeroplane flew over Croke Park. It circled the ground twice and shot a red flare - a signal to a mixed force of Royal Irish Constabulary (R.I.C.), Auxiliary Police and Military who then stormed into Croke Park and opened fire on the crowd. Amongst the spectators, there was a rush to all four exits, but the army stopped people from leaving the ground and this created a series of crushes around the stadium. Along the Cusack Stand side, hundreds of people braved the twenty-foot drop and jumped into the adjacent Belvedere Sports Grounds. The shooting lasted for less than two minutes. That afternoon in Croke Park, 14 people including one player (Michael Hogan from Tipperary), lost their lives. It is estimated that 60 – 100 people were injured.
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Pipe Kasuko 2 years ago
More likely a political gambit of some sort; This Churchill was solely and directly responsible for slow torturous death of between 4.5 - 6 million Indians during war time, by stealing ALL their food and sending it to the front lines, thus causing the Indian to starve to death including women and children - Death from starvation is not instant - it takes days and weeks sometimes. After the war and in subsequent years, his reply was that he did them a favor!
Solidhog 2 years ago
One of the bad things he did after WWII was knowingly hand over Cossacks prisoners of war to the Russians knowing that many would be executed.
Julia Mckinney 2 years ago
As always, the actual history is a LOT more nuanced.
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Almarako94 2 years ago
Was in the army for a short time, once our 'colonel' talked to us about how we are allowed to disobey commands if they're against the law. I stood up looked him dead in the face and said "if anyone ever commands me to shoot at unarmed people, i'll turn around and aim for the head of that piece of s**t" most were shocked some were confused to applaud or not, but for me it was the last day in the army.
Sturgeon 2 years ago
Unclear why it was the last day in the army. It seems like your colonel was directly;y telling you you do not have to do illegal things. Seems good not bad
Load More Replies... Skywitness 2 years ago
There was also a huge famine in India in 1943 that killed 3 million on Churchill's watch. Since they were a colonial state, I'm not sure he lost any sleep over those losses.
Wyn Williams 2 years ago
He made it for political gain nothing do with his morals, he wanted to use poison gas on the indians
Julia Mckinney 2 years ago
He was an advocate of using tear gas instead of an explosive shell as a means to end a conflict. He used the term poisoned gas but was talking about it causing watering eyes, not serious injury or death.
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Joe Kerr 2 years ago
weird given that he withheld food from India due to their refusal to support the british military during WW2- up to 3 million died of starvation from it!!! he was willing to use such tactics when it suited him... gotta wonder why he was down on dwyer like that- whats the back story?
Lou Cam 2 years ago
Yeah Churchill would rather starve them all (like the Bengali famine) than waste bullets. Likely just had a professional grudge about the Dyer rather any actual compassion. One of the worst absolute bastards in history.
Colin Matthews 2 years ago
Agreed. Ask the Irish what they think of Churchill.
Load More Replies... Chewie Baron 2 years ago
Considering he was a racist homophobic anti-Semite, this is very surprising.
#18
That historians are just as catty and petty as any other profession.. I'd have to dig to find it, but one of my Masters college classes was about the historian perspective over the eras and how they write history or whatever: and the text book really made historical fact become visible as this "thing" that people really have argued about for all time... fact is broken down to perspective... and personal philosophy plays more a part in history writing than you'd like to think.
Ian Webling 2 years ago
As an archaeologist, one of the first things I learned about the past is how much it changes over time according to changes in social beliefs.
WindySwede 2 years ago
First (but sad how not recognised) thing that came to my mind was "they where really good friends".
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Snorkeldorf 2 years ago (edited)
When I was in junior high, we had a history teacher who would have been dubbed a "hippie." He was the only teacher that had ever presented this idea to his students in my time. I had never considered that what I was learning in my history book was someone's opinion and perspective, not necessarily a factual recap of the real events. Decades later, I still remember this when reading articles, watching the news and perusing social media. If you really want accurate information, you have to do your best to assemble the provable facts, much like serving on a jury.
Sue User 2 years ago
My history book in college had sections titked " where historians disagee". My proffesor also said that in the 50s he was " liberal" in the 60s he was " conservative" and in the 80s he was liberal again.
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Bree Piper 2 years ago
I’m a huge history podcast fan. One of my favorite hosts, David Crowther (History of England), stops the narrative at each new king and walks thru the historiography, telling how the views and opinions on this or that major figure changed thru time. He hasn’t reached Cromwell yet, but I’m sure that will be a very long episode. I greatly appreciate the nuance.
Max Fox 2 years ago
My kid's high school history teacher has an amazing first class. He organizes a fake altercation with a student (arranged ahead of time without the knowledge of the rest of the class), making sure that it's not something that happens when all students are paying attention. He then asks all the students to write what they saw, and hand it in. He picks up that pile of paper, and starts tossing papers away, saying "these people were illiterate, these records were lost in a fire" etc, until there are two left, which generally are very different accounts. He then he says "this is what the PRIMARY sources of History look like"
UselessKnowledgeFont 2 years ago
Consider everything about Pompeii and Herculaneum that was kept secret for a century because of the thinking that the public would be offended by the imagery and purpose of both locations
Jane Hower 2 years ago
So like a current US High School history book that has ONE paragraph on Abraham Lincoln and 3 pages on Pres. Clinton!!! OMG
Al Joy 2 years ago
Look at St. James "male chauvinistic" Bible. Completely rewritten to keep females as subservient.
BluEyedSeoulite 2 years ago
Is it very different from the regular bible? Because the current versions of the Bible are pretty bad
Load More Replies... #19
That there were human zoos created by the Europeans and the last one was closed in like the 80s or 90s.
LinkTheHylian 2 years ago
Human zoos still exist, except now they're on TV and people worship these nobodies as if they're gods.
Load More Replies... Jeff Fishy 2 years ago
In France the last one opened in 1993 and was (fortunately) closed in 1994. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamboula%27s_Village
The Original Bruno 2 years ago
Not wrong. Florida was where people who exploited as "freaks" established their colony. Another one was in suburban D.C., which sounds like a political joke but it's not.
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Thiago Gonsalves 2 years ago (edited)
Oddly it was Hitler who first banned them. The last was in Belgium in 1958. Source BBC
Persephone 2 years ago
I had a high-school friend in 2002, that came to the zoo with my family; she asked where the pygmies were. We did not remain friends even after telling her that you cannot keep people in zoos... I can't make that s**t up; she was literally talking about aboriginal people, and wondering where their enclosure was. 🤢 it blew my mind over 20 years ago that someone would think that as a teenager!!!
Sven Grammersdorf 2 years ago
Probably just an ignorant person who learned stupid things from their parents
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Wheelchair athlete 2 years ago
For abled white people of ethnic majorities to gawk at and demean disabled people, people of color, and people of tribal and ethnic minorities
#20
I'm a big fan of Franklin Roosevelt and a big World War Two history buff. I think the American accomplishments in logistics and manufacturing were the eighth wonder of the world in the 1940s, and I'm proud of what my country did in the war. ...and then someone brings up the Japanese-American internment camps and I'm like, "Oh, yeah...there was also that."
SkyBlueandBlack 2 years ago
Because history, and the people, are complicated. People keep wanting the world to be easy to describe, and that is not and never will be how it works.
v 2 years ago
Pretty much all people don't want a world that's easy to describe. They want their version of the world to be easily described. America wants to project itself as the ever shining glorious beacon to be emulated but it can't even bring itself to an internal reckoning and conversation on its very short history.
Load More Replies... hwatinternation 2 years ago
Nothing wrong with wanting to be proud of certain things your country has done but, as mentioned, we can't ignore the horrible things they did either.
Donkeywheel 2 years ago
And then someone brings up the use of not one but two atomic bombs dropped intentionally on mainly civilians. Big fan mister buff
tameson 2 years ago
And the fire bombing of Dresden. And the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. None of them were military targets. Their goals were to demoralize the citizens of Germany and Japan. And to try out our new toys. Germany was already demoralized by the time we firebombed Dresden. And while you can make the argument that the using the atomic bomb in Japan shortened the war and saved lives, you can't explain away the fact that Hiroshima wasn't a military target. And there is NO argument for the bombing of Nagasaki.
Sandy Kavanaugh 2 years ago
I'd read that both cities were alternate targets if the primary targets weren't clearly in view. No way does it exonerate the killings.
Load More Replies... Michael Largey 2 years ago
Unfortunately, our skill at logistics made creating those camps possible, too.
#21
When the allies liberated Nazi concentration camps, the homosexuals that were 'liberated' were sent right back to the same camps as it was logistically easier than transporting them to an allied prison. This was because homosexuality was still illegal.
Colin Matthews 2 years ago (edited)
That’s a significant oversimplification. Basically the ex prisoners were so unwell and the infrastructure so damaged that some, not all, prisoners were treated at camp facilities. They were not reincarceratedfor being gay
Passerby 2 years ago
I believe you might have meant reincarcerated, but being reincarnated for being gay is just too funny. I know I shouldn't laugh, but I can't help myself.
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gilded panda 2 years ago
they probably got gas-chambered, then incinerated like everyone else at kill camps
Libstak 2 years ago
How would they know? Wouldn't they just deny it until they were in a safe space?
Micah<3 2 years ago
Queer people were given tattoos specifying they were in the camps for being queer, if I remember correctly.
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Michael Largey 2 years ago
It's legal in all fifty states to marry someone of your gender.
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#22
Ustashe had torture camp for children operated by the Catholic Church.
maka paka 2 years ago
No it doesn't the same way, Islam doesn't teach terrorism etc etc etc. Religion like anything is often used by those in power positions as the excuse to justify horrendous behaviour. Jesus taught love and acceptance and even if you don't believe you can look at the teachings and say that is not a bad way to live or to be.
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Yeet_girl360 2 years ago (edited)
As a Christian I feel so bad that other "religious" people would do something like that. I pray for every victim that had to through something even close to that, and while I know there are still similar things like this happening today I hope one day I will be able to help them. Imagining how that must have felt only makes my stomach turn in angry and disgust. No innocent human being should be treated like that just like how no "human being" should treat another living thing like that. 🙏
MichelleDonut 2 years ago
More context would be helpful. Who, what, where, when was this "Ustashe?"
David A Paterson 2 years ago
I'd believe anything of the Ustashe. A far right organisation in Yugoslavia akin to the Nazis but fighting against them. They became infamous in Australia when it was realised that the Australian Intelligence Organisation was working with the Ustashe against the Communists when it should have been working against the Ustashe, this precipitated the Lionel Murphy incident.
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Petra Schaap 2 years ago (edited)
TIL about miroslav filipovic. I wish i had not, but here i am. he was one of the torturers of Children in the camps during the war. The idea that people are able of doing this makes me extremely anxious. Edit. He was catholic and at the end of the war he apparently never even was excommunicated by the church.
The Original Bruno 2 years ago (edited)
The Ustashe was not the Catholic Church, but it is shameful that so many who claimed to be Catholic, including priests, participated in it. And they were more than coincidentally Catholic: Although the Ustashe included many Muslims, they did try to forcibly convert many Serbian Orthodox Christians to Catholicism. This evil by Croatian Catholics (and the tendency of Slovenes to side with Hitler over Stalin) was used as Communist propaganda to justify the slaughter of my grandfather's people in Yugoslavia after World War Two.
marianne eliza 2 years ago
Another scandal of these crimes against children is that those priests or pastors or whatevers are demonstrating that they don't really believe their religion or what they preach. If they did, they would be terrified of what will happen to them in the afterlife. You know, God's Wrath.
Der Kommissar 2 years ago
The photo looks exactly like one of the rooms in the Tuol Sleng Genocide museum in Phnom Penh
Auntriarch 2 years ago
It could be. Bored Panda is not famous for getting photos or titles right
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Milutin Pavlovic 2 years ago
actually the ustashes were fighting with them, operating one of the worst camps like Jasenovac, and assisting them in concentration camps. Some might say that they were worse than the Nazis.
Rebecca Ferguson 2 years ago
The Catholic Church is a cult just as other so called religions operated by human beings who distort teachings of love and tolerance into fear and hate for their organisations own gains. Every "church" on the planet seems to have committed some atrocities for their own reasons.
#23
The Dutch once cannibalized their Prime Minister.
The Original Bruno 2 years ago
I thought my date was weirded out just because she thought I was a cheapskate when I asked her if she would "go Dutch" for dinner.
Verena 2 years ago
Brothers de Witt, an example how false facts can ruin a live (here two) within weeks
Load More Replies... The Original Bruno 2 years ago
OMG! I'm so glad we didn't go when they told us they were having their PM for dinner!
TMoxraaaar 2 years ago
You all are some of the most progressive people on Earth now. Something went right.
#24
Unit 731. At least I don't like talking about it since it's so vile and evil
my_son_is_a_box:
Not just that it existed, but that most everyone involved walked free, and the whole thing was kept secret by the US government until the 1980s.
catonsteroids:
Definitely not for the faint of heart if you want to know what went on. It’s pure evil, animalistic, barbaric, and absolutely sick, all in the name of “research”.
Alex Davis 2 years ago
The Wikipedia article is a harrowing read. I'd heard of unit 731 but had no idea just how horrific and harrowing (which aren't even bad enough words to describe what I just read) it really was. Also had no idea that the USA granted immunity to the staff in exchange for their data and research! The fact this happened in the 1940's, not even a 100 years ago somehow makes it even worse.
gilded panda 2 years ago
heres an exerpt from wikipedia on this: Unit 731 was responsible for some of the most notorious war crimes committed by the Japanese armed forces. It routinely conducted tests on people who were dehumanized and internally referred to as "logs." Experiments included disease injections, controlled dehydration, biological weapons testing, hypobaric pressure chamber testing, vivisection, organ procurement, amputation, and standard weapons testing. Victims included not only kidnapped men, women (including pregnant women) and children but also babies born from the systemic rape perpetrated by the staff inside the compound. The victims also came from different nationalities, with the majority being Chinese and a significant minority being Russian. Additionally, Unit 731 produced biological weapons that were used in areas of China not occupied by Japanese forces, which included Chinese cities and towns, water sources, and fields. Estimates of those killed by Unit 731 and its related programs r
Fish Fingers 2 years ago
MIL knew someone who had survived it. They had removed his lung without anaesthetic.
John Topper 2 years ago
And let's also not forget that it was the United States who decided to let those involved walk away Scott free I'm exchange for their research data. When you say something like "the greatest atrocities of WW2" that is a big statement. 731 was the farthest from human and they all just walked away.
Almarako94 2 years ago
Unit 731 = Japanese Bioweapon tests My son is a box ... the episode of the simpsons? And to the last one you only find medical articels....
#25
Canada had prison camps for German soldiers back in the WWII. They were treated so nicely and with so much trust that many of the POW were given jobs outside of the prison, and they always returned voluntary, even if it took more than one day. Some were even trusted weapons for hunting, in front of the guards. The worst punishment they could receive? When the war ended, they were obligated to return home. Imagine having such "nice life" for so long and then having to return to a home destroyed. Many years later, these former members of the German army decided to return to Canada as tourists or even buying land and starting families and businesses.
Gustav Gallifrey 2 years ago
Allied and Axis soldiers were interned in neutral Ireland during WW2, if they crash-landed, parachuted, washed up on the shore, or wandered into Ireland. They were all treated well, and friendships between Allied and Axis sprang up, with men from both sides joining in permitted expeditions to local pubs. At the war's end, more than a few from both sides decided to stay on in Ireland.
Theo Blackwood 2 years ago
I’m Irish and studied history for six years in secondary school and this is the first I’ve heard of it. Thank you for the information.
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Teachzebra 2 years ago
This was fairly common in many POW camps in the United States as well. Simply put where the heck were the German prisoners going to go if they escaped? It wasn’t like they were going to swim back to Europe. Plus at this point it was pretty obvious that Germany was going to lose the war, so for the average soldier being in a benevolent POW camp was preferable to the inevitable horrific death they were going to suffer back home. Many chose to just stay in Canada or the US after the war since there was no home to go back to.
Bec 2 years ago
My grandparents related a story about the POWs being brought in to pick apples in the Midwest. They weren't free to roam but one of them wanted to see the apple press and my grandfather was allowed to take him to see it. These were young men who were drafted just like our guys, they probably had more in common than differences. They were scared because next they were being taken south to pick crops. My grandparents reconnected with the POW years later and visited him in Germany
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Kathryn Baylis 2 years ago
Same happened in the US. The German POWs found out they were lied to about America and Americans—-and tbh, Americans were lied to about Germans as well. They realized there were a lot of truly good people here, just like there were a lot of truly good people in Germany (those who didn’t embrace Nazism, that is, though they had to keep a very low profile just to survive). The same thing happened to the Americans who interacted with the German POWs. Of course, there were a portion of them who were 100% indoctrinated in Nazi beliefs, but they turned out to be a minority. A lot of the German POWs ended up becoming American citizens after the war. Same thing happened in Canada and the UK, who also had German POW camps in their countries.
Holly Stevens 2 years ago
Yes I work with seniors and it was coming for German pows to come to Canada and work as farm hands, since so many men are at war. My residents have told me they were literally just kids and nice people. A lot came back and settled
Norah Reilly 2 years ago
Courtesy, respect, kindness, decency - what a world we would have if we would just practice these qualities. Maybe we could ask Canada to show us how to behave.
Spongebob 2 years ago
Do remember the Wehrmacht (The German Army) were NOT Nazis and did not deserve punishment for simply fighting a war. In fact, towards the end of WW2, there were reports of the Wehrmacht turning in the SA in some cases. So this fact isn’t very disturbing at all, but almost wholesome that the prisoners weren’t punished for the actions of their fascist government.
David A Paterson 2 years ago (edited)
The shocker is that many of the Germans at the end of World War II were sent to East Germany, under Russian rule, despite having lived in North America before the war. Several escapees from such prisoner of war camps decided to escape because they had no wish to live under Russian rule. From the story "the last German in America".
Ian Webling 2 years ago
Only one German POW successfully escaped from Canada - Franz [von] Werra. (He added the "von" himself as did Ribbentrop.)
#26
I tried really hard to think of something a lot of people might not know about, and I came up with the MOVE bombing. I live in Philadelphia; I moved here in 2007. And it wasn’t until a few years after that when I moved to west Philly that I’d ever heard of the MOVE bombing. I consider it something people don’t like to talk about, which is why many people have likely never heard of it. From Wikipedia “Philadelphia police dropped two explosive devices from a helicopter onto the roof of a house occupied by MOVE. The Philadelphia Fire Department allowed the resulting fire to burn out of control, destroying 61 previously evacuated neighboring homes over two city blocks and leaving 250 people homeless.[3] Six adults and five children were killed in the attack,[4] with one adult and one child surviving. “
Todd R 2 years ago
And it was a black mayor who authorized the attack on the Move compound. Then they let the fire burn out an entire city neighborhood that was rebuilt at taxpayer expense and the builder did a terrible job.
PlatinumThe8-BitCat 2 years ago
Okay, I always mess this up, Philadelphia’s the city right? And Pennsylvania’s the state? Right?
Mary Kelly 2 years ago
i remember it being talked about on the news when i was a kid, but i was waaaaaay to young to comprehend what happened or that it was part of a larger pattern of black oppression in the u.s....and, i have lived and traveled in the deep south and in chicago and dc, and i philly -- the city of brotherly love -- is still the most in your face with face problems city i have ever been to
Melissa Powell 2 years ago
The oppression continues. Just for info. I am a white old lady. I have reached the thoughtful…I am not saying this correctly. Why do we introduce hate into everything.
Load More Replies... afia kooma 2 years ago (edited)
Why did they do this? Edited: I saw someone write who MOVE was. No need to say more 😪
Bookworm 2 years ago
I've lived in the Philly suburbs my whole life. I'd never heard of this until I was maybe 18, when my dad mentioned that his office was watching a documentary about it during their lunch breaks. Because someone realized that the new employees they were hiring, mostly about 4 or 5 years older than I was, didn't know anything about it, either.
Mary Hiers 2 years ago
I remember when it happened. I was a young adult living far away from Philly, but I honestly couldn't wrap my mind around it at the time. How could a government do this? It took a long time for me to accept that yes, governments do horrible things all the time, usually not as openly as the MOVE bombing, however.
Adam S 2 years ago
Wait, the police bombed a building??? Isn’t their job to stop stuff like that?!
neytjie 2 years ago
Oh you innocent soul. Their job? Most of them don't know what their job is. Protect and serve, who they deem worthy
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#27
Patrick B Kennedy - son of John F Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy. Born while JFK was in office and 5 weeks prematurely. He lived only 2 days and is probably one of the biggest reason modern neonatalogy really took off in the United States. Read up on him if you have a chance. It’s good to remember that everyone matters no matter the age.
David A Paterson 2 years ago
On the topic of premature babies. It's only a week since I learnt that some 12,000 babies were blinded, most of them in the USA, by the excessive amounts of oxygen pumped into neonatal care units for premature babies.
Cerridwn d'Wyse 2 years ago
That was really not negligence. That was that they thought it would help and maybe not have to put the babies on ventilators and they were right and wrong it helped their lungs maybe but killed their eyes
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Lisa Taylor 2 years ago
I had no idea that they'd had such a tragedy. As a parent of a 9 week prem baby, now a healthy & successful adult, I fully appreciate the knowledge & shills of the medics.
cryssH 2 years ago (edited)
Nurses who worked back then feel very badly about it (my mom was an RN and had guilt feelings about it). Later, they learned to put cotton balls on the babies eyes and tape them shut. I told my mom that given dying or being accidentally blinded most of those babies were happy they lived (I dated a guy who was a premie and lost his vision that way and that was his attitude).
Nicole Weymann 2 years ago
"It's good to remember...": sure, everyone matters - some just matter more. After all it DID take the son of the US president to die prematurely for research to really take off.
gilded panda 2 years ago
fun fact, patrick was born on the same day PT-109 (a torpedo boat jfk worked on, and two of his crew were killed on) was destroyed.
#28
The Americans don't like when I bring up that the Canadians (I guess they were technically still "British" at this point..) burned down the White House during the War of 1812.
Christian Golden 2 years ago
How do they react that it was in retaliation for the Americans' burning and looting of the Canadian capital of York sixteen months earlier?
hwatinternation 2 years ago
Some Americans get strangely sensitive over things like that.
Load More Replies... RedMarbles 2 years ago
I've never heard anyone get mad or sensitive about anything that happened in the War of 1812.
C.S. E. 2 years ago
Except, perhaps, get excited when talking about how cool Dolly Madison was
Load More Replies... Miss Frankfurter 2 years ago
🇨🇦Some of the rafters from then are still up in the roof of the White House and bear the scorch marks. Stay on your side of the border! I guess they got the message.
Michael Largey 2 years ago
There were no Canadian troops serving in the British force that captured Washington. They were all British regulars. Canadians who served in the War of 1812 belonged to militia units, and those militia units never left Canadian soil. They did see extensive service turning back the US invasion of Canada during that war.
Johnnynatfan 2 years ago
I have never met an American who gets all offended when someone says that Canadians burned down the white house. They were not Canadians then as the post states so what's the point?
JammaCoast2Coast 2 years ago
I've never met a fellow American who was alive during that time and would (still) be mad about that.
TMoxraaaar 2 years ago
...and Dolly Madison (1st Lady) risked her life to take portraits out when she escaped. She is the reason there is still a portrait of anyone before James Madison today.
#29
Modern postural yoga-- the type and style predominantly practiced in Western countries-- is about 100 years old. It was invented in India by Indians and is derived mostly from British calisthenics and Swedish gymnastics. It was specifically marketed to affluent Westerners by Indians as a superior form of spiritual and physical exercise. It's working as designed for its target market.
CanadianDimes 2 years ago
I do Ashtanga yoga which was invented I think in the 1960s. I’m under no illusions I’m doing some ancient practice and I do it because it’s both physically demanding and makes me more flexible. It’s good exercise and that’s what I want.
Pascal’s Swagger 2 years ago
Same, I don’t subscribe to any spiritual practice really but at age 33 I had spinal surgery and regular yoga practice is the only thing that keeps me pain free.
Load More Replies... Amelia Jade 2 years ago
I've never met anyone who does yoga who thinks it is some ancient, spiritual practice. It's an effective, and relaxing way to stay limber. It can be modified to each practitioner, making it a good practice for people with illness, or mobility issues, but still challenging for those who want something more demanding. I started practicing 25 years ago. It's been off and on. The only time I've met anyone talking about yoga in the form of spirituality or being some ancient practice was when an acquaintance was convinced it was an ancient form of devil worship. To most of us it's just an alternative or supplement to other forms of exercise.
Pittsburgh rare 2 years ago
One of the reasons l was put off by yoga at first was precisely that the practicioners l had met were all sort of apostles of the "spiritual" benefits and connection with a ", superior being" who had bought HEAVILY into the myth of an ancient discipline. We have a specific word for that kind of new age dimwits in Spanish. But after l found a class striped of all that, l was hooked. It's hard and a great exercise for anyone aging who hasn't worked a lot on flexibility before (☝️😆)
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Lyone Fein 2 years ago (edited)
This is untrue. Yoga involving arduous poses and positions is at least 2000 years old. There are descriptions of the practice in Sanskrit in some texts of the Upanishads, the Mahabharata, and separate yoga manuals that are only about 1000 to 700 years old.
Jeffery Roy 2 years ago
Hatha yoga has its origins in the 11th century. Two people born in India, Kuvalayananda and Krishnamacharya, dropped the two primary religious models (Bindu and Kundalini) in 1924 to focus on the physical health aspects. Any practice which exists for over 1,000 years is going to adapt and change over time. My hatha yoga experience as a form of exercise also required meditation and what is now termed "mindfulness." As far as I can tell, Christianity has gone from association with organized churches to a business model, best demonstrated by Joel Osteen and his standalone Lakewood Church, which now fills the place where I used to watch the Houston Rockets play. The "health and wealth" gospel is big business on a small scale. Change in all things is inevitable, but my yoga teacher struggled to survive in his single storefront business. He closed up shop in 1998.
Norm Gilmore 2 years ago (edited)
That pose is making my eyes water... (My right shoulder/arm has very limited rotation)😲
keyboardtek 2 years ago
And many Christians ban yoga from their communities because they think it promotes a different religion. Really, Hatha Yoga is just stretches. Many copied from animals stretching.
#30
European-Chinese relations in the 19th century.
The opium wars, the partition of parts of china to different European countries, the boxer rebellion, the taiping rebellion, most of the 19th century was china being utterly humiliated by Europe and fragmented which led to utter chaos in the early 20th century.
Maester_Bates:
In China they call it the century of humiliation.
El Dee 2 years ago
Imagine using class A drugs to make money and control a population. Britain did it then and the US did it in the 80s..
Becky Samuel 2 years ago
The US has used the "war on drugs" to systematically control people and undermine other countries for decades. It's still going on.
Load More Replies... Donkeywheel 2 years ago
What is even more astonishing is the fact that the western world completely forgot all of this (few people know this part of history) but not the Chinese. They are taught from a young age that the country will have its revenge one way or another. China was/is just waiting to be strong enough. They humiliated the british with Hongkong and that’s just the beginning.. 😕
David A Paterson 2 years ago
Some westerners remember. Even as an Australian with zero interest in history I have heard of the opium wars and Britain's role in it.
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Red PANda (she/they) 2 years ago
I can confirm that last year we learned about the Opium Wars in my history class :P
#31
A lot of countries who in the modern day like to wag their finger at how other countries are doing and style themselves as "the best" by various social metrics achieved their current state through war, exploitation and destruction of the environment.
El Dee 2 years ago
Older generations would say, 'if it wasn't for us you'd all be speaking German' But they forgot that we already don't speak our native language because we were already conquered and colonised by an English speaking nation who banned our language, culture and way of dressing..
afia kooma 2 years ago
Or finding Oil, and NOT falling for Americas scam "help", so we actually kept our own money, ulike many african and asian contries.
Larry XK 2 years ago
Yea because the Brits, French, Germans and Spaniards didn't do the exact same thing
Load More Replies... David A Paterson 2 years ago
This is even true of Dubai and the United Arab Emirates. The country began as pirates bringing in wealth. Then moved on to gold smuggling, illegally smuggling gold out of India for buyers from all over Europe. Then oil was discovered and the country prospered legally. The UAE is still a hot spot for buying cheap gold.
#32
The slavery practice of coverture. And the slave trade of the Ottoman Empire that continued into the 20th century. That was predominantly done to women and children so........pfft unimportant apparently to the topic of slavery.
UpupaEpops 2 years ago
And that quite a significant portion of Ottoman slaves were white. Read up on Florence Baker for example.
David A Paterson 2 years ago (edited)
A little known fact that I discovered a couple of years ago is that both coasts of the UAE were completely depopulated between 300 BC and 640 AD despite being inhabited earlier. I strongly suspect that all the inhabitants had been taken as slaves for empires further north. The Parthian and Roman empires, including Turkey.
Sean Sean 2 years ago
There are also records of entire towns on the South Coast of Ireland being wiped out by Barbary Slave Traders.
Load More Replies... Mary Kelly 2 years ago
yes, and that is why kidnapping women was called "white slavery"...now we call it human trafficking
Doug the Special one 2 years ago
The Vikings and the barbary corsairs used to take British and Irish people as slaves.
The Original Bruno 2 years ago (edited)
Slavery is rampant in the DC suburbs, where Arab diplomats come to influence America. The mosque where that North Korean punk was radicalized to shoot up Virginia Tech is absolutely packed with slave-masters. The local politicians cover up for their evil. (Wait, you didn't know the Virginia Tech killer was radicalized by a mosque? Yeah, the media covered that up pretty well. Even tried to claim, "Call me Ismael" was a reference to Moby D**k, despite the fact that character was named "Ishmael." Muslims believe that Abraham's half-brother Ismael was founder of the Arab people. It's SORT of a play on Melville, but the "misspelling" is deliberate.)
BluEyedSeoulite 2 years ago
The Korean kid was from SOUTH Korea and his family moved to America because of social pressures that he had mental issues in South Korea. His teachers in America brought it up many times too and they were brushed off/ignored as well. If you can't even get that basic info right, I have a hard time believing anything else you are selling here. I paid pretty close attention to the story since I was also in college at the same time and studying Korean, it was a hot topic for a while since my professors were getting calls from media outlets. Media was trying to pin 'violent Korean movies' as the reason the dude went off
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#33
Brutality in Australian Aboriginal society pre colonisation It was not some dreaming utopia, but the abuse of women, assault, murder, tribal rivalries, are all ignored and any discussion will see you labelled a racist. For example - Paleopathologist Stephen Webb in 1995 published his analysis of 4500 individuals’ bones from mainland Australia going back 50,000 years. (Priceless bone collections at the time were being officially handed over to Aboriginal communities for re-burial, which stopped follow-up studies).[15"> Webb found highly disproportionate rates of injuries and fractures to women’s skulls, with the injuries suggesting deliberate attack and often attacks from behind, perhaps in domestic squabbles. In the tropics, for example, female head-injury frequency was about 20-33%, versus 6.5-26% for males. The most extreme results were on the south coast, from Swanport and Adelaide, with female cranial trauma rates as high as 40-44% -- two to four times the rate of male cranial trauma. In desert and south coast areas, 5-6% of female skulls had three separate head injuries, and 11-12% had two injuries. Web could not rule out women-on-women attacks but thought them less probable.
El Dee 2 years ago
I feel like this is going to be the story of most peoples history. Not sure why this is either surprising in any society or racist to talk about - unless you forget to mention that all societies have been like this in their development..
Becky Samuel 2 years ago
Exactly. It's estimated that in pre-contact undeveloped societies (hunter-gatherer) around 50% of adult deaths are/were at the hands of another human being. The only other mammal that comes close to this is the African meerkat.
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KombatBunni 2 years ago (edited)
Let’s not forget the Stolen Generations either, a shameful act by the Australian Government that still has repercussions to this day
Andy Frobig 2 years ago
In other words, Australian natives were people doing what people do. Atrocities are what set us apart from the "lesser" animals
Becky Samuel 2 years ago (edited)
About 50% of meerkats die from being killed by other meerkats. Chimpanzees have been observed stealing and eating infants from other members of their own social group. Animals don't live in some imaginary Eden where they're nice to each other all the time. They do whatever it takes to ensure that their genetic line is more successful than their competitiors. If this means cooperation, then they will cooperate, if it means killing, infanticide and cannibalism then that is what they will do.
Load More Replies... David A Paterson 2 years ago
Thank you for saying that. Domestic violence among Australian Aborigines was very much worse than among the colonists. In addition, men owned women and were able to buy, sell and rent out women. I can quote you at least a dozen examples of black on black violence among aboriginal Australians. One man, for instance, killed his brother in law. His wife didn't like this much so he killed her too. Another aboriginal criminal was known as a wife abuser, he worked each of his wives to death. I'm going to get voted down for this, but there was very little altruism in Aboriginal society, and strangers were speared on sight. There is a recorded instance where a woman in NSW was forced by aboriginal law to eat her own baby. I lost track of how many times the famous aboriginal Bennelong was speared, at least 5 or 6 times.
Mav Mav 2 years ago
Wow, you should work for the Bureau of Statistics, bro. You know at least 12 examples of something...huge sample size...clearly indicative of a trend...case closed. Brilliant, intelligent work, mate :)
Load More Replies... Cassie 2 years ago
"Any discussion will see you labelled a racist" - The argument that violence existed in and between indigenous tribes of any country tends to be used as an argument for white saviorism and the perceived benefits of colonialism. White colonizers didn't save anybody, they just engaged in similar atrocities on a larger scale.
Mandy Delaforce (PC Girl) 2 years ago
Take a trip up north in Australia .. No one talks about it.
Mav Mav 2 years ago
Blatant white-washing of Australian Aboriginal experiences of violence from white settlers over the past 235 years.
Claire Bailey 2 years ago (edited)
No, it was not white washing anything in the last 235 years. It did not mention itat all. Why have a go at the op for something they didn't even mention? Yes, I am waiting for a down vote here.
Load More Replies... #34
There's almost no archaeological evidence for the Jewish exodus out of Egypt or their slavery therein. Likewise, there's very little contemporary evidence for the existence of a historical Jesus. Two of the most defining cultural narratives have scant historical corroboration.
Ian Webling 2 years ago
Correction: there is NO evidence for the Exodus. One thing I find amazing that it took forty years to reach the promised land. The total distance was 240 km. A person, walking at 3 km/h for 12 hours per day could walk it that fours days. Waking at a more realistic speed for a heavily burdened person in a desert of 2 km/h for 10 hours per day would take 12 days. I calculated that a snail could make the journey in 19 years.
Libstak 2 years ago
Well they did party hard and dance with a golden calf while Moses chiselled a bunch of commandments on top of a hill for who knows how long. Don't know about you, but my sense of direction takes a real nose dive when I drink too much.
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Kira Okah 2 years ago
There is no evidence for the Exodus. There is however a number of Roman sources concerning the Rabbi Yeshua of Nazareth, and a majority of historians of several and no faith say there is enough non-biblical evidence that he actually existed.
David A Paterson 2 years ago
I've heard this. What is this Roman source? Is it on the web somewhere? Don't say Josephus because it's blatantly obvious that the mention of Jesus there was a later addition.
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Jared Robinson 2 years ago
I'd be careful with this one. Historians are saying all the time how stories from ancient literature about whole cities and events happening were just myths, and they usually say this as an archaeologist is uncovering evidence of the "myth" they were just lambasting.
BluEyedSeoulite 2 years ago
It's almost like science, even soft sciences, require some sort of evidence...
Load More Replies... Xray0976 2 years ago
And if he was an actual person....Jesus was NOT a white man! Tired of these idiots in my country portraying him as such and using that to defend their religion, then talk about people of color the way they do. If they actually realized that he wasn't what they portray....
Kevin J. Henning 2 years ago
It amazes me that every time religion is mentioned in BP everyone shits themselves. I have the uneasy feeling that given the right circumstances anyone would be capable of doing the things religious people are accused of. Atheism does not guarantee anything when humans are involved.
Norman Dsouza 2 years ago
Agreed, religion is like magic. You can't apply logic to magic.
Load More Replies... The Original Bruno 2 years ago
Keep in mind that for 1400 years, it's been illegal to look for archaeological evidence in Egypt.
keyboardtek 2 years ago
Most of Christianity was acquired from earlier pagan practices. If you are a Christian, don't read this.
TMoxraaaar 2 years ago
Don't get me started. The Bible offends me so much more as an interpreter than an atheist
P Bocanegra 2 years ago
Of course it offends you 🤣 you've never read scripture so how could you find comfort in the unknown!
Load More Replies... #35
The Philippines were colony of Spain for hundreds of year and when Filipinos were about to win thier independence on their own, Spain sold the Philippines to US then US acted like saviors. Spaniards were pretty racist to Filipinos that they dont bother teaching them spanish for 300 years of occupation. US troops setup education camps and thats why Filipinos speak english as a second or third language instead of spanish.
Gustav Gallifrey 2 years ago
On the other hand, there's a saying about the Philippines history under Spain and America: 'five hundred years in a convent, fifty years in a whorehouse'.
Saint_Zipcodus 2 years ago
When I visited the Philippines the year before the pandemic, I was amazed how incredibly well even small children in remote villages spoke English! And the people were one of the sincerely nicest I ever met.
Khall Khall 2 years ago (edited)
Uh. Every Filipino I've ever met speaks at least some Spanish? Culturally they seem to use Spanish for like counting and some other things, Tagalog or another local language for social stuff, and English for certain concepts. Any time I've listened to two Filipinos talk to each other for an hour you end up hearing at least 3 languages if not more?
BluEyedSeoulite 2 years ago
This. Whenever I've heard Filipinos speaking, there is at least 3 languages but usually 4 or more. Tagalog, English, Spanish, and usually a local languages
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PeepPeep the duck 2 years ago
One thing I noticed being raised by them etc was the over the top love for America, the Coca Cola obsession 😆 and it was funny to me as a kid, but even my dads wife (who is form a very rural island) is convinced the Americans saved them all and are praised so much. Even when I went back home after 20 yrs oh being away, first thing Karen (dads wife) brings up is trump and what going on in America.
David A Paterson 2 years ago
Many people in the Philippines have Spanish heritage. Am I right in thinking that they still have a major role in Government and business?
Pittsburgh rare 2 years ago
There's no Spanish influence whatsoever in government but bilateral business are routinely carried on.
Load More Replies... Joe Kerr 2 years ago
no there were many spanish speaking filipinos.. most of the filipino bureaucracy in fact was fluent and had to be retained by the Americans in order to use deeds and birth certificates etc .. but they were the upper class.. most filipinos received no education before Americans came
Chewie Baron 2 years ago
The British occupied the Philippines briefly for a while. Early 19th Century.
#36
On paper black American men got the vote before white women. In practice, white women got the vote before black men.
gilded panda 2 years ago
it goes like this back then, rights wise; white man, white women, black man, black women. statisticly, black women have had it the hardest, since they need black rights AND womens rights to do anything
#37
That US spy agencies hired Nazis to work as spies during the Cold War.
I learned about this reading a biography of Virginia Hall. It meant that she, as an employee of the CIA, was now working side-by-side with the same men who had tried to disrupt her operations and kill her during WWII. Ms Hall certainly wasn’t the only one put into this extremely dubious and awkward position.
BrookeBT 2 years ago
And how many Nazis the US and Russia recruited for their space programs among other things
Rostit. . 2 years ago
there is nuance to this. For a scientist to work in germany during that period, they had to be a member of the nazi party. That doesnt always mean they supported the ideology. Im sure many did but I know for a fact many did not. The optics we see it through today is drastically different.
Load More Replies... Andy Frobig 2 years ago
Otto Skorzeny, the German commando who led the mission to free Mussolini, later trained the Israelis and Egyptians to spy on each other. For spies, the work often means more than for whom or for what principles it's done
El Dee 2 years ago
The US was more comfortable working with Nazis than it was working with anyone who was even slightly left wing. Most of their operations in Europe used terror organisations to help kill people who were 'dangerous' to right wing views and to discredit the left wing. Please never think this behaviour was 'in the past' and 'couldn't happen now'
Gustav Gallifrey 2 years ago
At the end of the war, Reinhard Gehlen already had an effective network of agents in place. Reprehensible as it was, it was pragmatic of the Allies to leave it in place and employ it, withthe Americans particularly keen on the idea.
#38
The British made the first large-scale concentration camps (for the second Boer war), and although they didn't deliberately try to kill the occupants they also didn't do much to alleviate the awful conditions - particularly in the camps holding coloured people, where 1 in 6 died.
The vast majority of inmates were women and children - those with male relatives still fighting were given smaller rations as an incentive for their relatives to surrender.
Ian Webling 2 years ago
This is a divisive topic in White South Africa. While it is true that the British set up concentrations and they were initially diabolical, the atrocities were the result of mismanagement compounded by corruption. After Emily Hobhouse became involved, conditions improved. By later stages of the war, the death rate in the camps was lower than that in Belfast - not in war zone. After the war, Louis Botha, a Boer leader who became Prime Minister, said, "Thank God for the concentration camps." While I am not condoning the creation of the camps - that was done in response to the "scorched earth" policy of the British, an equally odious policy - they were not an attempt - as is often claimed - to exterminate the population.
neytjie 2 years ago
Their own people turned against them for what happened. A change was only made after the rest of the countries forced it upon them. 48000 people dies, estimated at about 28000 blacks and 20000 whites. About 80% were children. At the time blacks were put into these camps for giving supplies to the white. Don't glamorize what they did.
Load More Replies... Chewie Baron 2 years ago
This is wrong. The first large scale concentration camps were by the Spanish in the Spanish-American war.
#39
The allies also committed genocide (bengal) and had concentration camps (Kenya).
sofacushionfort 2 years ago (edited)
History buffs may cite the British camps for Boer civilians, with 30K deaths (a large portion were native farm laborers) as the first concentration camps, or the Spanish camps in Cuba at the same time. But earlier in the 19th C., the US set up camps as they rounded up the Cherokee and other SE tribes in preparation for the Trail of Tears. Deaths in these camps exceeded those on the march itself.
TMoxraaaar 2 years ago
We had concentration camps in the Pacific North West too. "Internment" is white washing.
Forrest Hobbs 2 years ago
British atrocities in Kenya were far worse than simply rounding people up and putting them in camps. Look up the details if you have a strong stomach. And still, the British government won't compensate the survivors - despicable.
Kira Okah 2 years ago
The first camp designated under the term "Concentration Camp" was Spanish camps in Cuba in the 1860s or the American Civil War prison camps of the same era. You could call Trail of Tears camps that name too, which would also be be American, but it's not a usage universally agreed on. I'd say they count, 1838.
Load More Replies... #40
There has not been any point in American history where all men have had the enforced right to vote. At the time of the Revolution, the right to vote (and it was an enforced right) was solely afforded to white, male property owners - about 6% of the population of the Colonies, ~150,000 men. During Reconstruction, the right to vote was given to all men but, obviously, it wasn’t enforced for black men. It’s also worth noting that, in many states, a widow could vote in the name of her dead husband if he’d been eligible. Fast forward to 1920 and women get it, but it isn’t enforced for black women. In 1963, the Voting Rights Act passed, since which all women have enjoyed the enforced right to vote. However, before and after this, some states require men to be registered with Selective Service (the draft) in order to vote, making it a privilege for these men as opposed to a right.
Sky Render 2 years ago
And thanks to gerrymandering, votes count for basically nothing in quite a few US states. If you value your faith in democracy, don't read up on what North Carolina just put into law in regards to this ongoing problem of anti-democracy...
Thom Serveaux 2 years ago
I still have faith in democracy. And I hope the US becomes one someday.
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RabidChild 2 years ago
Also don't forget that in some states a person convicted of a felony is ineligible to vote even after completing their sentence.
Miss Frankfurter 2 years ago
In Canada you are legally allowed to vote at age 18. The first time you go to vote, you register at the pole by providing your ID proof of age, that you are a Canadian citizen and of course you live in your assigned pole area. That’s it. You are now able to vote. Your name is never removed from the roles until the day you die. You cannot be denied your right to vote. Ever. We don’t have hoops to jump through. The government fulfills its responsibility to insure there are no obstacles to you being able to vote. No gerrymandering. I’m very proud of my country’s efforts to make sure everyone who wants to can participate in voting.
Carla Phillips 2 years ago
And the electoral college makes it possible to lose even if winning the popular vote
Jeremy James 2 years ago
It gets worse. If no candidate reaches the 270 electoral vote threshold, which could well happen, we go to a contingent election. In that case, each State delegation in the House votes en bloc to cast 1 vote. That means that a populous State like California, which has 40M citizens and 52 seats in the House, will have the same weight as a State like Wyoming, which has only 0.5M citizens and 1 seat.
Load More Replies... Jeremy James 2 years ago
Felons can't vote in the US, but it seems they can still run for President. In many States, like Florida, an ex-felon does not get their voting rights restored, even after completing their sentence and parole. This is true even for non-violent drug offenses, like cannabis possession.
Load More Replies... Sven Grammersdorf 2 years ago (edited)
Men also must register for Selective Service in order to be eligible for federal student aid. It didn't personally bother me a bit though, because there's no way there's ever going to be a draft anytime soon, and even if there were, I'd serve my country if they really needed me. I'm 40 years old though, so if they're drafting men my age, wer're probably losing that war.
scandalous 2 years ago
You do understand at that time it was anit-equivalent to saying yea you live in china so vote for America president! Dipshit duh. Landowners who were glued here made absolute sense to vote
marianne eliza 2 years ago
Everyone should have to pass a middle school level exam on the constitution, government, US history, and civics to be able to vote.
Sven Grammersdorf 2 years ago
You are 100% wrong. Nobody should be denied the right to vote.
Load More Replies... #41
One of the last known anti-Jewish pogroms in Poland took place in the summer of 1946.
El Dee 2 years ago
One of the things that the publicising of the Holocaust (because remember this was not generally known by the allies and definitely not by their populations) is that it GREATLY reduced hatred and actions like this against Jewish people. (NB 'reduced') But sadly the lesson learned by society was not that hate was wrong but merely that targeting hate to Jewish people was unacceptable. Nowadays all of the institutions that hated or were at least suspicious of Jewish people have turned this towards Muslims - with no outcry from society..
FaceTime Audio 2 years ago
It didn’t get better. It got quieter. It got presumed to be gone. Bomb threats in synagogues, shooters in kosher markets, the need for sniffer dogs and x-rays for High Holy Days (g’mar tov v’shanah tovah) and 24/7 security for the rest of the year, my father beaten up as a child for wearing a Jewish symbol on his neck, the older boy who told me to have a “Happy Holocaust” when I was in 6th grade, the high schoolers saying Jews are greedy, JK Rowling’s antisemitic goblins, David Icke, Marjorie Greene, and Ilhan Omar, UPenn hosting rabid antisemites on Yom Kippur, we are harassed on college campuses, the slurs hurled at us online, Roger Waters, Mel Gibson, the terrorist attacks in Israel and at the Munich olympics, “you don’t look Jewish!” Like it’s some sort of compliment, prosthetic noses in the movies, Golda played by a goy, stereotypes galore. Nothing truly changes, only the outside world going secret in their hatred while others are complicit.
Load More Replies... David A Paterson 2 years ago
That early? I thought there were Soviet sanctioned anti-Jewish pogroms much more recently than that. But perhaps that didn't include Poland.
#42
Augustus lost *two whole legions* at Teutoberg. That’s about 20,000 troops, and that’s terrible
Christian Golden 2 years ago
3 legions: 17th, 18th and 19th. Plus auxiliaries and cavalry sqns. Estimates range between 15000 and 27000 dead, Thanks, Arminius!
Major Harris 2 years ago
when marcus crassus was defeated at the battle of carrhae in 53 b.c. by the parthinians. 10,000 roman soldiers were taken prisoner. these soldiers were then transferred to the farthest eastern part of the parthinian empire. 17 years later on the farthest western part of china, a battle was fought. the chinese recorded that there were soldiers who were armed and armoured in a very different style they had never seen before. the current people of the lanzhou region of china have some european features.
TotallyNOTaFox 2 years ago (edited)
If I don't mistake it for another battle he lost 3 legions due to being attacked with Guerilla tactics
Forrest Hobbs 2 years ago
It's only terrible if you think the Romans should have ruled all of Europe. I reckon the victorious Germanic tribes thought the outcome was fantastic. There are plenty of examples of the Romans conducting genocidal slaughter on a similar scale, wiping out entire tribes: men women and children. Why worry about the ones who would have slaughtered them getting killed before they had the chance?
#43
Inca empire lasted less than a century, starting in 1434 (around the same time modern printing started), they were conquerors that eliminate other natives for territory, some of this cultures were pretty much erase from history, others did survive and some of their deities and people were adopted by the Incas. They also had a "tax system", when most of the crops went to the Inca ("The leader" that was seem as the son of the Sun, a demigod basically) and his family, the leftovers were for the population (contrary to the Aztecas, when it was the other way around). When Spanish conquerors arrive (less than 200 men), they received the help from this other natives against the Incas, as warriors or translators. Heck, before independence in 1821, many Peruvians were against it, they were forced to become independent from Spain with the combination of argentines, chileans, venezuelans and more.
#44
Switzerland operated a concentration camp for allied POWS during WW2 and treated them massively contradictory to the terms of the Geneva conventions.
Ace 2 years ago
Giving it that name is deliberately provocative. As a neutral country Switzerland was not really allowed, and was geographically unable, to return escaped POWs, so housed them in internment camps, as did the Irish mentioned elsewhere in this list and other neutral countries. The Geneva conventions apply to parties in a war, so are irrelevant in this context.
Scotira 2 years ago (edited)
Well, Eugen Bircher (Nationalrat at the time) very much called it a concentration camp and was disappointed it was "no real" concentration camp. Even though we were "neutral" in some parts we didn't do all so well in WW2. (https://www.zentralplus.ch/gesellschaft/wauwilermoos-hungern-im-schweizer-konzentrationslager-753573/) "Das Boot ist voll" try as we might there is no denying the fact, that we had some hardcore Nazi sympathizer in our government and in official positions, Eugen Bircher only being one of them. (https://www.swissinfo.ch/ger/politik/fluechtlingspolitik-im-zweiten-weltkrieg_75-jahre-nach--das-boot-ist-voll-/43549998) Edit: We should not forget (or ignore) those mistakes, so we can learn and not repeat them.
Load More Replies...
Saint_Zipcodus 2 years ago
And still to this day flourish on the entire world's criminals due to their 'neutrality' and banking system.
Michael Largey 2 years ago
Like Ireland, they were not at war with anyone.
Load More Replies... #45
One of the 1st - if not the 1st - cases of slavery in the US was a black man, Anthony Johnson, petitioning the court to keep his indentured servant for life.
Pete jamail 2 years ago
“Finally! A single unsourced anecdote about a black guy owning a black guy. We’re off the hook everybody, Racism is both sides now!!! - 3/4 American Congress
Surenu 2 years ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Johnson_(colonist)#Casor_lawsuit As this article says, it wasn't the first case by far.
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Stardrop 2 years ago
This isn't the full story, nor does it COMPARE to the literal thousands of atrocities committed by slave owners in the peak of slavery in America.
iseefractals 2 years ago (edited)
Really? It isn't? Wow....i don't know if anyone has ever mentioned that, the people must be told! Please enlighten us with your secret wisdom. FFS...no one said it was the whole story, but guess what? It's PART OF THE STORY, one that many don't know. Which is the point of this thread, right? Like the fact that of the13 million people taken out of Africans during the entire 400 year Atlantis slave trade, 2.9% ended up in the U.S/colonies. But that doesn't fit the narrative being perpetuated today, so of course someone has to chime in to claim "Dur BUT 'Merica was the worst!" How exactly can anyone make that claim when they're not only ignorant of the details of the Atlantic slave trade, but the larger history of slavery throughout the history of humanity as a whole? Oh, that's right. Because the outrage machine keeps peppering social media with that very claim, and vilifying anyone that says anything that doesn't fit that narrative.
Load More Replies... Michael Largey 2 years ago
But did the court grant his petition? Surely you know the answer. I wonder why you chose not to include it?
Norman Beattie 2 years ago (edited)
So much of this is never taught in our schools, pretty sad and that may be the reason........ oh never mind, nobody really cares, and that's not just sad, it's pathetic !
Michael Largey 2 years ago (edited)
It is not taught, even if factual, because it was completely unrepresentative of the situation at the time.
Load More Replies... Explore more of these tags
What do you think ?
Sky Render 2 years ago (edited)
Starting in the 1940s, the since-debunked theories of John Money have been used as a means of justifying abuse of intersex children. Intersex infants born with ambiguous genitals are regularly mutilated daily in nearly every country on the planet (to date less than a dozen nations have banned unnecessary infant genital surgery, and the US is not on that list!). More broadly, it is considered socially acceptable and expected for parents of intersex children to: hide the truth about their birth, conceal medical records, put them on hormone replacement therapy without consent or even knowledge, and deny any inquiry about their differences from other children. Intersex erasure is codified into nearly every civilization on this planet. And it's been going on for long enough that general awareness of intersex being real is now gone.
Temporary Dork 2 years ago
In the Netherlands, thanks to a well-known tv personality, intersex is now a familiar concept, but in Europe "sex-normalizing" surgeries on babies are only prohibited in Albania, Germany, Malta, Portugal and Greece.
Load More Replies...
Will Cable 2 years ago
The sad thing is that schools (not all) are not teaching these things because it may upset children. If we don't teach the past the future is likely to have the same things happening again.
Apatheist Account2 2 years ago
"Those who do not learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them".
Load More Replies...
steven 2 years ago
Holodomor - the Ukraine famine that was caused (or at least exacerbated by russia), killed millions in an attempt to stifle the push for independence. Looks like they have continued where stalin left off.
TotallyNOTaFox 2 years ago (edited)
The crimes against humanity commited by the USSR in general often get overlooked - The regime under Stalin killed 20 million people for political reasons, deported asian and jewish minorities in the country and started wars all around them. The oppression of other countries till 1990 also doesn't really make it into history class
Load More Replies... David A Paterson 2 years ago
I can't confirm or deny most of these. They're shocking and difficult to believe. Those few I do have direct knowledge of are true.
Bec 2 years ago
I think a lot of people do know now, but less than 10 years ago I was in a leadership training with all college educated peers and we were listing examples of good and bad leaders and one category was immoral leaders. The obvious example might be Hitler but I said Columbus. The facilitator treated me like an idiot and said that was a bad example because he was just a product of his times. We just moved on but for your information not only was Columbus incompetent in not knowing how large the planet is and that he didn't actually get to India (he seemed to know later but because of him Native Americans are still referred to by many as indians), he and his crew committed terrible atrocities like forced labor of the natives who they punished when they didn't bring them enough good by chopping off their hands and making them wear it around their neck and still forcing them to work. In Columbus's own diary he writes of basically using prepubescent girls as currency among his men.
Bec 2 years ago
Much of what we learned in school decades ago was because a guy wanted a positive role model for Catholicism. A point of pride to have an affinity group, Knights of Columbus, and a holiday!
Load More Replies... The Darkest Timeline 2 years ago
I feel like a lot of these “gee whiz” posts are an attempt to smear schools and prove that they’re “holding out” on teaching “real” history. First off, it isn’t the schools that decide what should be taught; it’s school boards and departments of education. The state board of education in Texas basically sets the standards for the country; due to its sheer population, they wield enormous influence over what does and does not end up in books and on tests. Needless to say, the Texas board of education is very right-wing and restricts information that would upset conservative reactionaries. Second, there really is only so much that can be covered in a class. In American high schools, it’s basically a survey class so doing a deep dive on anything just isn’t going to happen. That doesn’t mean anyone is covering anything up or trying to whitewash history. And these days, if you really want to know more about something, the internet is right there.
Dan Flo 2 years ago
"From 1934 to 1974, 62,000 Swedes were sterilized as part of a national program grounded in the science of racial biology and carried out by officials who believed they were helping to build a progressive, enlightened welfare state." https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1997/08/29/sweden-sterilized-thousands-of-useless-citizens-for-decades/3b9abaac-c2a6-4be9-9b77-a147f5dc841b/ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Institute_for_Racial_Biology
gerard julien 2 years ago
EUGENICS : USA, SWEDEN, JAPAN, GERMANY and PERU ! " Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter human gene pools by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior or promoting those judged to be superior."
Load More Replies...
T.O.S.o.R. 2 years ago
Margaret Sanger started planned parenthood as a way to eradicate black people in the United States.
Leo Domitrix 2 years ago
Actually, she was more horrified by the slum dwellers of NYC, who were generally not from northern/western Europe. She wanted Italians and Poles to stop breeding. It expanded from there. Lovely woman/s/
Load More Replies... Sky Render 2 years ago
The bigger issue is that humans have free will without the accompanying sense of responsibility that should come with that. Doing absolutely terrible things does not cause immediate distress in humans, and indeed, it is possible to learn to enjoy doing terrible things. We are not evil, we lack any sort of built-in "moral compass" or even "ethical compass" and can easily install one that runs contrary to how morality and ethics should work.
Load More Replies... Sky Render 2 years ago (edited)
Starting in the 1940s, the since-debunked theories of John Money have been used as a means of justifying abuse of intersex children. Intersex infants born with ambiguous genitals are regularly mutilated daily in nearly every country on the planet (to date less than a dozen nations have banned unnecessary infant genital surgery, and the US is not on that list!). More broadly, it is considered socially acceptable and expected for parents of intersex children to: hide the truth about their birth, conceal medical records, put them on hormone replacement therapy without consent or even knowledge, and deny any inquiry about their differences from other children. Intersex erasure is codified into nearly every civilization on this planet. And it's been going on for long enough that general awareness of intersex being real is now gone.
Temporary Dork 2 years ago
In the Netherlands, thanks to a well-known tv personality, intersex is now a familiar concept, but in Europe "sex-normalizing" surgeries on babies are only prohibited in Albania, Germany, Malta, Portugal and Greece.
Load More Replies... Will Cable 2 years ago
The sad thing is that schools (not all) are not teaching these things because it may upset children. If we don't teach the past the future is likely to have the same things happening again.
Apatheist Account2 2 years ago
"Those who do not learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them".
Load More Replies... steven 2 years ago
Holodomor - the Ukraine famine that was caused (or at least exacerbated by russia), killed millions in an attempt to stifle the push for independence. Looks like they have continued where stalin left off.
TotallyNOTaFox 2 years ago (edited)
The crimes against humanity commited by the USSR in general often get overlooked - The regime under Stalin killed 20 million people for political reasons, deported asian and jewish minorities in the country and started wars all around them. The oppression of other countries till 1990 also doesn't really make it into history class
Load More Replies... David A Paterson 2 years ago
I can't confirm or deny most of these. They're shocking and difficult to believe. Those few I do have direct knowledge of are true.
Bec 2 years ago
I think a lot of people do know now, but less than 10 years ago I was in a leadership training with all college educated peers and we were listing examples of good and bad leaders and one category was immoral leaders. The obvious example might be Hitler but I said Columbus. The facilitator treated me like an idiot and said that was a bad example because he was just a product of his times. We just moved on but for your information not only was Columbus incompetent in not knowing how large the planet is and that he didn't actually get to India (he seemed to know later but because of him Native Americans are still referred to by many as indians), he and his crew committed terrible atrocities like forced labor of the natives who they punished when they didn't bring them enough good by chopping off their hands and making them wear it around their neck and still forcing them to work. In Columbus's own diary he writes of basically using prepubescent girls as currency among his men.
Bec 2 years ago
Much of what we learned in school decades ago was because a guy wanted a positive role model for Catholicism. A point of pride to have an affinity group, Knights of Columbus, and a holiday!
Load More Replies... The Darkest Timeline 2 years ago
I feel like a lot of these “gee whiz” posts are an attempt to smear schools and prove that they’re “holding out” on teaching “real” history. First off, it isn’t the schools that decide what should be taught; it’s school boards and departments of education. The state board of education in Texas basically sets the standards for the country; due to its sheer population, they wield enormous influence over what does and does not end up in books and on tests. Needless to say, the Texas board of education is very right-wing and restricts information that would upset conservative reactionaries. Second, there really is only so much that can be covered in a class. In American high schools, it’s basically a survey class so doing a deep dive on anything just isn’t going to happen. That doesn’t mean anyone is covering anything up or trying to whitewash history. And these days, if you really want to know more about something, the internet is right there.
Dan Flo 2 years ago
"From 1934 to 1974, 62,000 Swedes were sterilized as part of a national program grounded in the science of racial biology and carried out by officials who believed they were helping to build a progressive, enlightened welfare state." https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1997/08/29/sweden-sterilized-thousands-of-useless-citizens-for-decades/3b9abaac-c2a6-4be9-9b77-a147f5dc841b/ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Institute_for_Racial_Biology
gerard julien 2 years ago
EUGENICS : USA, SWEDEN, JAPAN, GERMANY and PERU ! " Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter human gene pools by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior or promoting those judged to be superior."
Load More Replies... T.O.S.o.R. 2 years ago
Margaret Sanger started planned parenthood as a way to eradicate black people in the United States.
Leo Domitrix 2 years ago
Actually, she was more horrified by the slum dwellers of NYC, who were generally not from northern/western Europe. She wanted Italians and Poles to stop breeding. It expanded from there. Lovely woman/s/
Load More Replies... Sky Render 2 years ago
The bigger issue is that humans have free will without the accompanying sense of responsibility that should come with that. Doing absolutely terrible things does not cause immediate distress in humans, and indeed, it is possible to learn to enjoy doing terrible things. We are not evil, we lack any sort of built-in "moral compass" or even "ethical compass" and can easily install one that runs contrary to how morality and ethics should work.
Load More Replies... You May Like 203 History Trivia Questions To Remind You Of High School 102 Historical Facts That Might Change Your Perspective On Things 49 Fascinating Photos Revealing What The World’s Capitals Looked Like Way Before Modern Times
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