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History Tidbits!

  • 15-05-2003 7:44pm
    #1
    Closed Accounts Posts: 958 ✭✭✭


    Yes its a word.

    Heres a chance to post all those tiny pieces of History information you've accumulated over the years, but never quite found an excuse to blabber out. The vaguer the better!

    Tidbitastic!

    In the late 30's, a man named Abe Pickens of Cleveland, Ohio, attempted to promote world peace by placing personal calls to various country leaders. He managed to contact Mussolini, Hirohito, Franco and Hitler (Hitler, who didn't understand English, transferred him to an aide). He spent $10,000 to "give peace a chance.

    When Napoleon wore black silk handkerchiefs around his neck during a battle, he always won. At Waterloo, he wore a white cravat and lost the battle and his kingdom.

    Chrysler built B-29's that bombed Japan, Mitsubishi built Zeros that tried to shoot them down. Both companies now build cars in a joint plant called Diamond Star.

    Despite his great scientific and artistic achievement, Leonardo Da Vinci was most proud of his ability to bend iron with his bare hands.

    WWI flying ace Jean Navarre attacked a zeppelin armed with only a kitchen knife. (Now THAT I'd like to see)

    Czar Paul 1 banished soldiers to Siberia for marching out of step.

    John Wilkes Boothe was able to access Lincoln's booth because Lincoln's bodyguard had left his post to go for a drink at a pub down the street.

    In 1555, Ivan the Terrible ordered the construction of St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow. He was so thrilled with the work done by the two architects that he had them blinded so they could never be able to build anything else more beautiful. (....what a delightful fellow)

    "John has a long mustache" was the coded-signal used by the French Resistance in WWII to mobilize their forces once the Allies had landed on the Normandy beaches.

    Before winning the election in 1860, Abraham Lincoln lost eight elections for various offices.

    In a tradition dating to the beginning of the Westminster system of government, the bench in the middle of a Westminster parliament is two and a half sword lengths long. This was so the government and opposition couldn't have a go at each other if it all got a bit heated.

    While Theodore Roosevelt was campaigning in Milwaukee in 1912, a would-be assassin fired a bullet into the right side of his chest. Much of the force of the slug was absorbed by the President's eyeglasses case and by the 50 page speech he was carrying double-folded in his breast pocket. Nevertheless, the bullet lodged itself just short of his lung, and, dripping in blood, Roosevelt pulled himself up to the podium. He asked the crowd to please "...be very quiet and excuse me from making a long speech. I'll do the best I can, but there's a bullet in my body... I have a message to deliver, and I will deliver it as long as there is life in my body." He spoke for 90 minutes, but was unable to refer to his text due to the gaping hole which the bullet had torn through it.

    There were 57 countries involved in World War II.

    After the great fire of Rome in A.D. 64, the emperor Nero ostensibly decided to lay the blame on Christians residing in the city of Rome. These he gathered together, crucified, covered in pitch (tar), and burnt alive. He walked around his gardens admiring the view.

    During the Crimean War, the British Army lost ten times more troops to dysentery than to battle wounds

    During World War II the original copies of the U. S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence was taken from the Library of Congress and kept at Fort Knox, Kentucky.

    On June 13th 1944, a single Tiger tank headed by Captain Michael Wittman stopped the advance of the entire British 7th armored division (the famous 'desert rats') in the town of Villers Bocage, Normandy. This has been the deadliest single action in the entire war and stopped the British offensive, planned by Montgomery, to break through German lines. Wittman died later in August fighting against 12 Canadian Sherman tanks.

    The Roman emperor Commodos collected all the dwarfs, cripples, and freaks he could find in the city of Rome and had them brought to the Coliseum, where they were ordered to fight each other to the death with meat cleavers.

    When Elizabeth I of Russia died in 1762, 15,000 dresses were found in her closets. She used to change what she was wearing two and even three times an evening.

    In 1801, 20 percent of the people in the U.S. were slaves

    During the First World War, the French army was reluctant to design a light machine gun, since by issuing them to troops, it would decrease the number of soldiers that could be used in bayonet charges.

    When the U.S. entered World War I, they had a highly effective light machine gun, the Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR). It was never issued to troops, since Army Leaders were afraid that the Germans would capture them and thus be able to design their own. Instead of giving their soldiers BARs, they were issued modified French Chauchat machine guns, which were heavy, unwieldy, jammed easily, and had half the firepower of BARs.


Comments

  • Closed Accounts Posts: 17 Gorgeous George


    The 19th May is St Dunstan's Day. He was Archbishop of Canterbury in the 10th Century and also a blacksmith. One day the devil called into his forge requesting a new shoe on his cloven hoof. Dunstan nailed Beelzebub to the wall and did the job after which he only agreed to release him if Satan promised to stay away from any home with a horse shoe nailed above the door which is why horseshoes are supposed to bring good luck. Fact.:D


  • Registered Users Posts: 14,330 ✭✭✭✭Amz


    First pint of Guinness was mad in Leixlip Co. Kildare so neh neh neh neh neh!

    The Wonderful Barn in Leixlip is the only one of it's kind in the World.

    wonderful-barn.jpg

    The Wonderful Barn, Leixlip, Co. Kildare

    To mark the eastern vista of Castletown a conical shaped building - The Wonderful Barn - went up in 1743 with the stairs ascending upwards around the exterior of the building. The Wonderful Barn was built by Mrs. William Connolybuilt in Leixlip to give work to the poor during hard times, and located beside the Leixlip By-Pass.

    The Barn stands 73 feet high. The exterior winding staircase has 94 steps and goes right up to the top. The building has 5 floors all with a hole in the centre. It is flanked by 2 smaller barns.

    A granary, short tower and dovecote have all been put forward as reasons for building the unique structure. In Georgian times it was a custom to use doves as a delicacy when other animal sources of food were not in season. The height of structure would also lend itself to sport shooting, while a central hole through each of the floors would suggest a place to store grain, which were lowered and raised through the holes in the floors


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