Sulla-Marius 88 posted:

What happened to that "List of controversies" that most big entities have on wikipedia? Do they no longer do that?

Sulla-Marius 88 posted:

They knew the stocks as a whole were contaminated, the question was how much of it? Once it got banned in the states they flogged the old stuff in Asia to offset losses.

WickedHate posted:

The problem with a knowledge database anyone can edit is that anyone can edit them, including the subjects of the articles.

hackbunny posted:

Almost nothing happened to Italy, though. We switched sides halfway, in both world wars, and we never had to pay for it. People don't even joke about it like they do about the French surrendering to Nazi Germany. We even got away with exiling our king and writing a new constitution that starts with "Italy is a republic founded on labor" and drawing a new coat of arms with a gearwheel (no ears of corn though! and the star was already there, we swear), and a powerful Soviet-friendly Communist party. We weren't even invaded once! although there were detailed plans for it, had the President dared appoint a Communist PM

Catch-22 posted:

“You put so much stock in winning wars,” the grubby iniquitous old man scoffed. “The real trick lies in losing wars, in knowing which wars can be lost. Italy has been losing wars for centuries, and just see how splendidly we’ve done nonetheless. France wins wars and is in a continual state of crises. Germany loses and prospers. Look at our own recent history. Italy won a war in Ethiopia and promptly stumbled into serious trouble. Victory gave us such insane delusions of grandeur that we helped start a world war we hadn’t a chance of wining. But now that we are losing again, everything has taken a turn for the better, and we certainly will come up on top again if we succeed in being defeated.”

Shady Amish Terror posted:

Everything I've heard suggests that Hitler was a charismatic leader, but stress and terrible administration decisions pretty much sapped any strategic competence he might have had by the end of the war. It's terrible that he was able to assume power at all, but it's also impossible to say what would have happened with different leadership. That entire event is just too large and too complicated to make sweeping predictions about, although I'd like to think that lessons we can learn are that 1) austerity measures breed resentment and aren't very effective at rebuilding a power into a friendly trading partner and 2) allowing fascist authoritarians to come to power generally doesn't work out very well for anyone involved.

PYF Hitler fact: It's pretty well-known nowadays, but Hitler was also an artist, and if he hadn't come from a hosed-up background and rose to be a hosed-up historical figure, we'd probably only know him in art history footnotes about his completely unexciting landscapes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paintings_by_Adolf_Hitler

You can see even in just the two or three examples present that Hitler was an extremely competent artist (and cited realistic detail as his fascination in art), but surprisingly unimaginative. According to the article, he was outright told to pursue architecture, since he painted structures in exacting technical detail but paid little mind to anything else.

Given how often PYF Historical Fun Fact ends up orbiting the world wars, has anyone seriously considered just making a separate thread for them, or would that be diluting things too much?

Rutibex posted:

If you buy some Bayer Aspirin you are buying drugs from the same company that mass produced Zyklon-B.

Alhazred posted:

The last person to be killed in WWI was Henry Gunther. He was killed at 10:59 a.m., one minute before the armistice was to take effect at 11 a.m.

Wikipedia posted:

Gunther's squad approached a roadblock of two German machine guns in the village of Chaumont-devant-Damvillers near Meuse, in Lorraine. Gunther got up, against the orders of his close friend and now sergeant, Ernest Powell, and charged with his bayonet. The German soldiers, already aware of the Armistice that would take effect in one minute, tried to wave Gunther off. He kept going and fired "a shot or two". When he got too close to the machine guns, he was shot in a short burst of automatic fire and killed instantly. The writer James M. Cain, then a reporter for the local daily newspaper, The Sun, interviewed Gunther's comrades afterward and wrote that "Gunther brooded a great deal over his recent reduction in rank, and became obsessed with a determination to make good before his officers and fellow soldiers."

System Metternich posted:

He was a bit of a dumbass too, his death was entirely avoidable. After writing a letter home about how miserable conditions at the front war was intercepted by the censor, after which Gunther was demoted from sergeant to private. He took his demotion hard:

WickedHate posted:

Well, as much as he was an awful human being for wanting to murder people for glory and a stupid one for going about the attempted murder so badly, it's also a bit hosed he got censored and demoted for writing to his family that war sucked.

System Metternich posted:

He was a bit of a dumbass too, his death was entirely avoidable. After writing a letter home about how miserable conditions at the front war was intercepted by the censor, after which Gunther was demoted from sergeant to private. He took his demotion hard:


He was one of 11,000 casualties on the last day of the war, which was way more than on your average day. The German negotiators asked the French for an immediate ceasefire even before signing the armistice at 5am, but good ol' Maréchal Foch really wanted to end the war at exactly 11 o'clock on 11/11, so thousands of people died so that he could have his wish.

The first two soldiers killed in World War I died one day before the war even began officially: at the Skirmish at Joncherey, a German patrol illegally entered France and started some poo poo with a group of French sentries, which cost both their commander Albert Mayer and Jules-André Peugeot, a teacher who had been doing his compulsory military service, their lives. Mayer died first, having been shot in the stomach and the head; Peugeot was hit in the shoulder and made is way back to his post, where he died some 37 minutes later.

System Metternich posted:

He was one of 11,000 casualties on the last day of the war, which was way more than on your average day. The German negotiators asked the French for an immediate ceasefire even before signing the armistice at 5am, but good ol' Maréchal Foch really wanted to end the war at exactly 11 o'clock on 11/11, so thousands of people died so that he could have his wish.

The Sausages posted:

Thread title is Historical Fun Facts, not this depressing BS

jk thanks for putting this out. IIRC a lot of artillery were loosing off their shells as rapidly as possibly once word got out about the armistice to reduce the ammo load they'd have to move when packing up and going home, this may have contributed to the higher than average casualty count on 11/11

The Sausages posted:

Sulla-Marius 88 posted:

I live in Berlin and the Bayer building here is like 500 metres from my house. They also kept it up, a few decades ago they were consciously giving HIV to haemophiliacs:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contaminated_haemophilia_blood_products
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/bayer-sold-hiv-risky-meds/

Not because they wanted to, necessarily, it was just that there was a bunch of money at stake. Presumably they also didn't want to murder a shitload of jews, gypsies, homosexuals, physically/mentally disabled people, etc.. there was just a bunch of money in it.

A subsidiary of theirs HC Starck was also heavily criticised for financing the war in the Congo by buying dirty tantalum. A Bayer pesticide is also implicated in bee die-offs, I think. What happened to that "List of controversies" that most big entities have on wikipedia? Do they no longer do that?

quote:

According to the files, the Ministry of Health had recommended, in 1983, that the import of untreated blood and blood products be banned, and that emergency imports of heat-treated products be allowed. A week later, however, this recommendation was withdrawn because it would "deal a blow" to Japan's marketers of untreated blood products

quote:

In 1983 Japan imported 3.14 million litres of blood plasma from the US to produce its own blood products, as well as 46 million units of prepared blood products. These imported blood products were said to pose no risk of HIV infection, and were used in Japan until 1986. Heat-treated products had been on sale since 1985, but there was neither a recall of remaining products nor a warning about the risks of using untreated products. As a result, untreated blood preparations stored at hospitals and in patients' home refrigerators were used up; there have been cases reported in which individuals were diagnosed with haemophilia for the first time between 1985 and 1986, began treatment, and were subsequently infected with HIV, even though it was known that HIV could be transmitted in untreated blood preparations, and treated products had become available and were in use at that time.

El Estrago Bonito posted:

My favorite part of Italian Fascism is that the Italian Fascist Manifesto of Combat would be considered an insanely liberal screed in modern America. I can totally see how people signed on to their platform when that was what they presented because honestly lots of it sounds pretty great. I mean, they then did the classic dictator moves of "have a really nice and cool constitution, but suspend it indefinitely" and "not actually use our founding document but instead build a cult of personality" but at least initially it makes some sense.

ToxicSlurpee posted:

The most interesting thing about Fascist Italy during the WWII era was that Mussolini was so unbelievably incompetent he was basically a living cartoon character.

Fun fat about Mussolini: despite doing the whole "I am a perfect person who is never sick, tired, or injured in any way so I get to be in charge" thing that is so popular among dictators he also had stomach issues. This resulted in him, at one point, living entirely on milk and crackers for about a year.

It...went about as well as you'd expect.

bean_shadow posted:

Hitler had problems with flatulence.

bean_shadow posted:

Hitler had problems with flatulence. Stalin was extremely short and pockmarked. I think Truman called Stalin "a little squirt" or something.

Chichevache posted:

Stalin also had a gimpy left arm.

Chichevache posted:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_during_the_occupation_of_Germany
Losing the war also made Germany a lot less German.

TapTheForwardAssist posted:

Though you have to balance that out with the hundreds of thousands of Germans living in territories that Germany was giving up, Konigsberg, Danzig, Sudetenland, etc. There was mass-movement of ethnic Germans back to the smaller borders of Germany, whether self-deporting to avoid the Red Army, or driven out by vengeful locals.

System Metternich posted:

Make that 12-14 million, the scale of the expulsion (which in many cases was carefully organised and executed by Czechoslovak/Polish/whatever authorities and not just driven by a spontaneous desire for vengeance, see the “Benes decrees“ for instance, which had been drafted as early as the years 1940-45 by Czechoslovakia's government-in-exile) really was massive. It wasn't just Germans, too; other ethnic groups who were forced to leave their homes after WW2 were e.g. Hungarians from Czechoslovakia, Italians from Istria or Poles from today's Ukraine and Belarus. I once was at a lecture given in my hometown about local reception and assimilation of the refugees (mostly Sudeten Germans) after the war. At one point, the lecturer asked for everybody who was a refugee themselves or is descended from one to raise their hand. Out of an audience of maybe 200 people I'd say that a good half did so, if not more (me included, my grandpa was from northern Bohemia). At such a lecture the audience is self-selecting to a certain degree, of course, but nevertheless I wouldn't be surprised if at least a third or so of Germany's population nowadays is descended from refugees

Red Bones posted:

Unrelated historical fun fact: if you got in a time machine and went to an ancient Greek city-state and gave some guy the finger, he'd know exactly what you were trying to say. Obscene hand gestures truly are an unbroken string of belligerence, reaching back across the millennia.

Rutibex posted:

My Roman history professor insists than thumbs down in the Roman arena didn't necessarily mean death, and it could just as easily been thumbs up. I think he is nuts, of course it's thumbs down why would it be thumbs up.

Sulla-Marius 88 posted:

It doesn't necessarily have to be thumbs down or up, it could be a thumb pointed towards the neck (execute him) or thumb pointed away from the neck (spare him).

I also don't know how common this event actually was, gladiators were expensive as hell. So were slaves in general, in fact - and gladiators weren't even necessarily slaves.

Rutibex posted:

My Roman history professor insists than thumbs down in the Roman arena didn't necessarily mean death, and it could just as easily been thumbs up. I think he is nuts, of course it's thumbs down why would it be thumbs up.

Rutibex posted:

I always assumed that gladiator fight were more like pro wrestling than UFC with death rules.

CoolCab posted:

Death matches happened: we have evidence of them in the form of advertising, but that same advertising proves it was an exceptional event. Romans had the same fascination with fights "to the death" and less laws against it then we do, but a gladiator was very expensive: if they were a slave they were virtually guaranteed to be an physically suitable slave, they required training, an excellent diet and medical care that was unmatched until the 1800s. A fight to the death had to recoup that cost somehow, so they were the rare and top billed spectacles that got butts in seats.

Gladiators sometimes died anyway but it was absolutely the exception instead of the rule.

Seneca to Lucilius, Letter 7 posted:

By chance I attended a mid-day exhibition, expecting some fun, wit, and relaxation, – an exhibition at which men's eyes have respite from the slaughter of their fellow-men. But it was quite the reverse. The previous combats were the essence of compassion [i.e. those of "professional" gladiators, whereas the condemned commonly fought during the luncheon intervals]; but now all the trifling is put aside and it is pure murder. The men have no defensive armour. They are exposed to blows at all points, and no one ever strikes in vain. Many persons prefer this programme to the usual pairs and to the bouts "by request." Of course they do; there is no helmet or shield to deflect the weapon. What is the need of defensive armour, or of skill? All these mean delaying death. In the morning they throw men to the lions and the bears; at noon, they throw them to the spectators. The spectators demand that the slayer shall face the man who is to slay him in his turn; and they always reserve the latest conqueror for another butchering. The outcome of every fight is death, and the means are fire and sword. This sort of thing goes on while the arena is empty. You may retort: "But he was a highway robber; he killed a man!" And what of it? Granted that, as a murderer, he deserved this punishment, what crime have you committed, poor fellow, that you should deserve to sit and see this show? In the morning they cried "Kill him! Lash him! Burn him! Why does he meet the sword in so cowardly a way? Why does he strike so feebly? Why doesn't he die game? Whip him to meet his wounds! Let them receive blow for blow, with chests bare and exposed to the stroke!" And when the games stop for the intermission, they announce: "A little throatcutting in the meantime, so that there may still be something going on!"

Wikipedia posted:

The average gladiator lifespan was short; few survived more than 10 matches or lived past the age of 30. One (Felix) is known to have lived to 45 and one retired gladiator lived to 90. George Ville calculated an average age at death at 27 for gladiators (based on headstone evidence), with mortality "among all who entered the arena" around the 1st century AD at 19/100. A rise in the risk of death for losers, from 1/5 to 1/4 between the early and later Imperial periods, seems to suggest missio was granted less often. Marcus Junkelmann disputes Ville's calculation for average age at death; the majority would have received no headstone, and would have died early in their careers, at 18–25 years of age. Historians Keith Hopkins and Mary Beard tentatively estimate a total of 400 arenas throughout the Roman Empire at its greatest extent, with a combined total of 8,000 deaths per annum from all causes, including execution, combat and accident.

Rutibex posted:

My Roman history professor insists than thumbs down in the Roman arena didn't necessarily mean death, and it could just as easily been thumbs up. I think he is nuts, of course it's thumbs down why would it be thumbs up.

Platystemon posted:

So the y‐axis increases in the upward direction because that’s where the Abrahamic god lives?