PYF Historical Fun Fact: (USER LOSETH POSTYNG PRIVILYGES FOR FOUR AND TWENTY HOURS)

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XMNN: Apr 26, 2008; I am incredibly stupid

An 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue has something similar.

http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/5402/pg5402.html

SOOTERKIN. A joke upon the Dutch women, supposing that, by their constant use of stoves, which they place under their petticoats, they breed a kind of small animal in their bodies, called a sooterkin, of the size of a mouse, which when mature slips out.

e: I mean I'm not saying it's not a women are gross thing*, but it's not a new one.

*Particularly because it's got this famous definition in it

C**T. The chonnos of the Greek, and the cunnus of the Latin dictionaries; a nasty name for a nasty thing: un con Miege.

XMNN has a new favorite as of 02:21 on Nov 6, 2015

# ¿ Nov 6, 2015 02:11

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# ¿ May 6, 2024 10:03

XMNN: Apr 26, 2008; I am incredibly stupid

There's only one way to resolve this.

# ¿ Nov 6, 2015 02:29

XMNN: Apr 26, 2008; I am incredibly stupid

They weren't live, they were bits of dead rabbit (and most of a cat).

# ¿ Nov 6, 2015 16:37

XMNN: Apr 26, 2008; I am incredibly stupid

trickybiscuits posted:

The Oxford English Dictionary. I'll check it when I go to the library this weekend.

I was going to say extensive scientific experimentation, but I suppose that might also work.

doodlebugs posted:

Yang Kyoungjong was a Korean soldier who fought for the Japanese Army, the Soviet Army and the German Wehrmacht.

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

It's sort of like the (probably apocryphal) Roman legion that was part of an army defeated by the Parthians near the modern day Turkish/Syrian border. They sent the prisoners to the other side of Iran to guard the frontier against the steppe people, who a few years later captured them, marched them all the way to northern China and forced them to fight against the Han. They lost again and were captured by the Chinese, settling down and founding a city, whose inhabitants still have Roman-ish features to this day. :tinfoil:

# ¿ Nov 7, 2015 16:37

XMNN: Apr 26, 2008; I am incredibly stupid

Red Bones posted:

In the 1690s Scotland attempted to get in on the colonialism business by trying to make a land route across Panama. This involved a huge chunk of Scotland's national wealth, because very few international backers were keen on the project, so the Scottish public contributed a lot of the funds in small donations. The plan was a complete failure, bankrupted large chunks of Scotland (it took away roughly 25% of Scotland's net wealth iirc) and was a significant factor in the country forming a union with England a few years later.

This plan was monumentally flawed from the outset because they chose a really, really lovely place to set up. Even today the area is pretty much unpopulated and undeveloped.

The Pan-American highway from the northern coast of Alaska to Tierra del Fuego isn't actually a continuous piece of road, it has a 60 mile section missing because there are still no land connections through the Darien Gap.

# ¿ Nov 11, 2015 17:38

XMNN: Apr 26, 2008; I am incredibly stupid

I read a really cool wikipedia article about a WW2 battle with Americans, Germans, Austrians, Frenchmen and others fighting against loyalist Nazis in the last days of the war in Europe. I'm just amazed no one has made it into a film, it almost sounds made up.

Schloss Itter

It's May 1945 and the poo poo is really hitting the fan in what's left of the Reich. Itter Castle is a medieval fortress in Austria which is being used as a prison camp by the SS, holding high value French prisoners, including sports stars and former prime ministers, as well as some prisoners sent from nearby Dachau to perform menial tasks.

On the 2nd of May the last commander of Dachau. Eduard Weiter, who has fled to the castle to escape American troops advancing from the Rhine, dies in mysterious circumstances, possibly murdered by the castle's SS guards for abandoning his post. The next day an imprisoned Yugoslavian resistance fighter, Zvonimir Čučković (lol), walks out the front gate on an errand for the castle's commander and doesn't come back. Instead he keeps walking through the forest until he meets up with some American soldiers who he asks to help liberate the castle. They agree and the following morning, the 4th of May, they send a large force to attempt a rescue. It encounters heavy German artillery fire and stops before being instructed to turn back because it is entering the zone covered by the neighbouring division, although a few jeeps continue on to the castle.

American tankers arriving in Innsbruck, the nearest city, on the 3rd of May

In the afternoon the castle's commander deserts, shortly followed by the SS guards. The prisoners, not realising that Čučković has gone looking for assistance, send a Czech cook named Andreas Krobot to the nearest town to ask for help. The town has recently been occupied by the Wehrmacht who have since abandoned it, and a wandering SS unit has now taken over. Krobot manages to meet up with Major Josef Gangl of the Wehrmacht, who realising which way the wind is blowing has thrown his lot in with the local Austrian resistance along with some of his men. Gangl then manages to contact Captain Jack Lee, an American tank commander in another nearby town, who immediately volunteers to help rescue the prisoners, performing a quick reconnaissance in Gangl's car before taking a handful of tanks and men, including 10 Germans, towards the castle.

Captain Jack Lee (right), approximately two months before the battle for Castle Itter

Most of the tanks are forced to turn back because the tiny alpine bridges weren't really designed to handle half a dozen of them crossing but eventually Lee's tank and the infantry make it to the castle, defeating another roving band of SS on the way. They organise the defence of the castle, the prisoners volunteering to assist, and fight off probing attacks from the SS throughout the night. In the morning more than a 100 SS soldiers begin an assault to try and retake the castle, managing to knock out the tank with an 88 and very nearly defeating the much smaller international force.

Before the assault there is limited telephone contact with the resistance and the American divisional HQ is aware that the defenders are in trouble but don't know the exact strength or positions of the attackers. So, doing what any sane person would do, French tennis star Jean Borotra leaps the castle walls and runs all the way to town through the woods filled with SS to find them and update them on the situation. A relief force is dispatched to the castle, which he joins, and the SS are defeated with most of them taken prisoner.

Gangl was killed during the battle whilst trying to protect former prime minister Renaud but has a street named after him in the nearby town. Captain Lee received the Distinguished Service Cross for his actions defending the castle.

Here's another more in depth article.

I, love commas.

XMNN has a new favorite as of 02:46 on Dec 10, 2015

# ¿ Dec 10, 2015 02:13

XMNN: Apr 26, 2008; I am incredibly stupid

Here's an army newspaper article on it:

12th Armored Division Hellcat News posted:

12th Men Free French Big-Wigs
By Cpl. John G. Mayer
Co. B, 23rd Tank Bn.

American troops, soldiers of the Wehrmacht, and a handful of French personages slated for death by the SS, fought side by side in an alpine castle on the last day of the war in Bavaria.

Among the 14 French notables rescued by tankers of the 12th Armored Division were former Premier Edouard Daladier, aging General Maxim Weygand who commanded the French armies when the Germans broke through into France, tennis star Jean Borotra and his wife, and a sister of the present chief executive of France, General Charles de Gaulle.

Also in the strangely mixed pro-and-anti-Nazi group were former premier Paul Reynaud; General Maurice Gamelin, former commanding general of all the French armies; Mrs. Weygand; Colonel DeLaRoque, former French fascist leader; M. Caillaux, former member of the government; Leon Jouhaux, French labor union leader; and Michel Clemencau, son of the World War I statesman.

Top heroes of the scenario-scrap were Lieutenant John C. Leo, Jr., commanding officer of Company B of the 23rd Tank Battalion, and his gunner, Corporal Edward J. Szymcyk.

Across the Border

Their saga began the afternoon of May 4 shortly after their platoon took Kufstein, just across the Austrian border, after knifing through a well-defended roadblock. Into the town came a German major, under a flag of truce, who said that he was in position to surrender a large force of enemy troops and 14 notables once connected with the pre-Petain governments of France.

All, he said, were at a castle in Litter, eight kilometers away. Lee and Szymcyk immediately left with the major but when they arrived, the German colonel in command refused to surrender.

Back in Kufstein, Lee picked up his reinforcements -- two tanks from his own outfit and five more from the 36th Infantry Division's 142nd Battalion. With Lee and Szymcyk went Lieutenant Harry Basse, Santa Ana, Cal., maintenance officer and the tanks' crews. At the town of Worgl the force paused. Lee, leaving the others behind, took his own medium tank with five volunteers, said goodbye to his rear-guard, and rumbled on to the castle, the faithful major trailing in his car.

Then began the classic defense of the ancient "schloss", which had not known battle since the days of crossbow and boiling oil. The defenders numbered 41 -- there were 20 soldiers of the Wehrmacht (German regular army), 14 French men and women, and seven Americans.

At 4 o'clock on the morning of May 5, a small force of SS men launched an attack up the slope toward the castle. American rifles and German light machine guns teamed up to beat them back.

Tennis Star Helps

"Jean Borotra was the spark of the defense," Leo recalls. "He volunteered to jump over the castle wall and make his way to Worgl to summon help. It meant a run across forty yards of open field before he could reach cover. I refused."

But half an hour later things started looking tougher, so Lee permitted Borotra, whose name ranks among the immortals of tennis history, to make what was a brave but futile dash. Soon after he left tanks of the 36th were sighted far away.

Guessing that they hadn't received Borotra's message and regarded the castle as simply another German stronghold to be blasted out of the way, Lee and Weygand quickly teamed up on an American 30-calibre machine gun and opened fire sending long bursts crackling into the woods well ahead of the approaching tanks.

"It worked," Lee said. "Later I found that the tankers had their heavy guns trained on the castle ready to fire when they recognized the sound of the American 'thirty' and decided it was a signal rather than a threat."

So the possibility of being killed by their own rescuers was averted for Lee and his men, who included, in addition to those already named, Technical Sergeant William E. Elliott, Corporal Edward J. Seiner, and Pfc. Herbert G. McHaley, Linton RFD 1, Ind.

Sgt. Glenn E. Shermann of Cameron, Mo., served as radioman and gunner on Elliot's tank. Pvt Joseph Wall, Selma, N.C., was left to guard the bridge alone all night, armed only with a carbine, and took a number of prisoners.

The SS, however, had no compunctions about blasting away at the castle. Their 88 shells crashed through thick walls into several rooms, wounding a German.

Last Fight on Front

At 3 o'clock on the afternoon of the 5th, the cautiously-advancing tanks of the relief force, led by Elliott and Sherman, after 16 hours pounded through the opposition and arrived at the castle like mechanized cowboys in a new-style Western movie. Lee's saga was ended. His tank, "Besotten Jenny," as she was fondly dubbed by the Negro troops, was kaput. All the infantry peeps were filled with notables. So Lee and his heroes climbed onto a truck loaded with German prisoners and rode ingloriously back to their outfit. They arrived just in time to hear the radio broadcast that all German troops in the south had agreed to stop shooting that day at noon. Theirs had been the last fighting on the whole southern front.

But there's a postscript: a few days later Lee's promotion to Captain was announced and his men have all been cited for decorations.

# ¿ Dec 10, 2015 11:24

XMNN: Apr 26, 2008; I am incredibly stupid

Is that why they don't eat vegetables?

# ¿ Dec 24, 2015 13:26

XMNN: Apr 26, 2008; I am incredibly stupid

Somewhere in the Nile valley around 5000 years ago, someone realised that they could use the pictograms they were already using to represent words to represent sounds instead, so they could spell out new words phonetically. A few thousand years later the Proto-Sinaitic script was developed from that, which the Phoenicians then adopted and modified into their own alphabet. Then the Greeks copied the Phoenicians' alphabet, then the Etruscans copied theirs and then the Romans copied theirs and now a few thousand years after that you're reading these words in a form ultimately derived from some random bureaucrat's one weird trick for making doing your taxes easier.

e: Also, Proto-Sinaitic is the ancestor of the Hebrew and Arabic alphabets and some monks in Bulgaria in the 800s decided it would be easier to convert the Slavic pagans to Christianity if they could read the Bible so they developed Cyrillic from the Greek alphabet.

XMNN has a new favorite as of 01:08 on Jan 16, 2016

# ¿ Jan 16, 2016 01:01

XMNN: Apr 26, 2008; I am incredibly stupid

That's awesome.

There's an ancient Greek lion statue in Venice with Norse graffiti on it. It ended up there after the Venetians convinced the 4th Crusade to take a little detour to sack Constantinople before totally going on to the Holy Land or whatever you guys, we swear.

# ¿ Jan 16, 2016 13:37

XMNN: Apr 26, 2008; I am incredibly stupid

Yep, I regularly do "conservation" work which is actively preventing nature from reclaiming a man-made habitat (heathland).

otoh it's a p cool little habitat so nature can get hosed on this one

# ¿ Jan 22, 2016 22:32

XMNN: Apr 26, 2008; I am incredibly stupid

Solice Kirsk posted:

But if the dog is able to pet itself then what will it need humans for?! They obviously didn't think this one through.

That's what the bubble canopy is for.

# ¿ Feb 12, 2016 15:37

XMNN: Apr 26, 2008; I am incredibly stupid

jyrka posted:

Here's a fact: Ivan the Terrible is a mistranslation, a more accurate name would be Ivan the Magnificent or Ivan the Great.

tbf that's what terrible means

pedant wasteland...

# ¿ Mar 22, 2016 21:25

XMNN: Apr 26, 2008; I am incredibly stupid

the fact alexander the great got all the way to pakistan is still p impressive to me

and there were greek buddhists in the area well into the first millenium ad

XMNN has a new favorite as of 22:57 on Sep 28, 2016

# ¿ Sep 28, 2016 22:39

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# ¿ May 6, 2024 10:03

XMNN: Apr 26, 2008; I am incredibly stupid

they built a lot of poo poo in ww2 including about 50,000 shermans

most of them ended up in second rate armies and third world dictatorships like the rest of the left over arms*

some of them got turned into heavy duty forestry machinery

* although I don't think any insurgencies got their hands on them, unlike eg all the k98s and mp40s that ended up with the viet cong

# ¿ Oct 7, 2016 18:44

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