20th CENTURY

WWI FACTS

  1. 250,000 German-Americans were forced to register at post offices and had to carry registration cards. Over 2,000 were arrested and put in internment camps.
  2. The U.S. was the only belligerent that did not provide its soldiers with condoms. The Comstock Law forbid the shipping of birth control devices abroad.  Doughboys contracted over 400,000 cases of sexually transmitted diseases.
  3. When tanks were first invented, they were referred to as “male” or “female”. Male had just cannons, female were just machine guns.  Soon, tanks combined the weapons and did not need a designation.
  4. The youngest British soldier was Sidney Lewis. He was 12 when he lied about his age to enlist.
  5. On average, British soldiers spent only ten days each month in the trenches and only three of those was in a front-line trench.

https://www.warhistoryonline.com/history/forgotten-first-world-war-facts.html?fbclid=IwAR2LkCo345VHMehsqu9XMcJ8Lw3yNi2clht9c9jGn5lV-1CvDImdztrFnxQ

ANASTASIA

            One of the biggest mysteries of the 20th Century was what happened to Anastasia.  Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaeuna was born on June 18, 1901.  She was the youngest daughter of Czar Nicholas II of Russia.  Her birth was a disappointment to the Czar, who was hoping for a make heir.  He already had three daughters.  (He would eventually get a boy named Alexei).  As a child, Anastasia was described as charming, energetic, and naughty.  Some felt her pranks could be cruel.  Although royalty, the siblings were brought up in a spartan environment.  They slept on hard cots without pillows.  They took cold baths.  But this was paradise compared to what happened when the Russian Revolution broke out in 1917.  The family was put under house arrest by the new government and then were transferred to communist control when the Bolsheviks took over.  They were being held in the city of Yakaterinburg when White (anti-Bolshevik) forces threatened the city.  Their Red captors decided to eliminate them before the Whites could rescue them.  On July 17, they were told to gather their belongings for a move.  They were brought to the cellar along with some of their servants.  Suddenly, pistol-wielding Bolsheviks entered and opened fire.  The victims were all hit numerous times.  The bodies were put in an abandoned mine shaft, but its location as well as details of the killings were kept secret.  This secrecy lent itself to rumors that Anastasia survived.  Supposedly, a guard found her feigning death amongst the bodies.  He decided to save her.

            Over the years at least ten women claimed to be Anastasia. Many, if not all, were interested in inheriting the vast Romanov fortune, held in a Swiss bank.  The most famous claimant was Anna Anderson.  In the early 1920’s, she attempted suicide and ended up in a mental asylum.  A couple of years later, Anna was put forward as Anastasia.  Her supporters included Tolstoy, but most of the surviving relatives of Anastasia said she was an impostor.  From 1938-1970, she battled in West German courts for her inheritance.  In 1970, her claim was rejected.  She died in 1984 and was cremated, but a tissue sample was found and DNA testing in the 1990’s proved she was not related to the Romanovs.  Most likely she had been a Polish factory worker who suffered a head injury in 1920 which led to depression and her attempted suicide.  Later that decade, the skeleton of Anastasia was identified, proving she had not survived the execution.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Anastasia-Russian-grand-duchess

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

FORGOTTEN WAR:  The Moro Rebellion (1902-1913)

                After the U.S. took the Philippines in the Spanish-American War and defeated the Filipino Insurrection led by Emilio Aguinaldo, American forces expanded into the southern islands like Sulu and Mindanao to occupy and colonize.  The Moros, a Muslim people, rebelled against this partly for religious reasons, but mainly because their territory was being taken and their culture threatened.  They started an insurgency that made life difficult for the American forces.  The Moros conducted guerrilla warfare and the U.S. did not have an answer until Gen. John Pershing took command in 1909.  His counterinsurgency tactics included search and destroy, internment camps for natives, and harsh interrogation like waterboarding.  All tactics used against Aguinaldo’s forces.  Pershing’s army was not above shooting any civilians who got in the way or who were with the Moro warriors.  Most infamously, Pershing condoned the burying of Moro soldiers in graves with a pig thrown in.  This was supposed to scare the living because they avoided pork as part of their religious beliefs.  There is no evidence that captured Moro were shot with bullets dipped in pig’s blood.  Unlike Vietnam, the counterinsurgency worked and the rebellion was put down.

https://historycollection.co/nation-war-9-forgotten-american-wars/7/

THE MAD MONK

                Grigory Rasputin was born in 1869 to a peasant family in Russia.  He grew up to be a drunken scoundrel, but got married, had three kids, and worked on a farm.  At age 23, he spent some months at a monastery and was born again.  He joined a heretical sect of the Eastern Orthodox church which was rumored to participate in orgies and flagellation.  He got a reputation as a faith healer and ended up in St. Petersburg, with his family.  His fame grew and the press labeled him the “Mad Monk”.  He came to the notice of the royal family.  Czar Nicholas and his wife Alexandra had an only son named Alexei who suffered from severe hemophilia.  Numerous doctors had failed to cure him, or even alleviate the condition.  Desperate, the Czarina called for Rasputin.  He blessed the child and he got better.  From then on, Rasputin became the only “doctor” dealing with the heir to the throne.  Alexai did do better, some historians attribute this to Rasputin kicking out the doctors who were clueless and doing more harm than good.  For instance, aspirin was prescribed without the knowledge that it thins the blood and thus is bad for hemophiliacs.  Rasputin gained power within the palace.  He gave political advice and had influence in appointment of ministers.  When WWI quickly went badly for Russia, he was a convenient scapegoat.  The clergy and nobility blamed him for the nation’s problems and the press sensationalized him.  After being stabbed by a former prostitute, he returned to his wastrel ways.  His drinking and womanizing were legendary.  To save the country, he needed to go.  Felix Yusupov, one of the richest men in Russia and the husband of a niece of the Czar, decided to be a hero.  He invited Rasputin to a party and loaded him up with cakes and wine laced with cyanide.  In spite of consuming mass quantities, Rasputin kept going strong until he fell asleep in the basement.  When Yusupov checked on him, he got up and started stumbling around.  Yusupov got a gun and shot him.  Later, when he and his friends came to check the corpse, they found Rasputin outside trying to get away.  A few more shots finished him off and his body was thrown in the local river.  When he was fished out, supposedly there was water in his lungs, indicating he was alive when he hit the water.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/murder-rasputin-100-years-later-180961572/

https://allthatsinteresting.com/rasputin-death

THE EVOLUTION OF AIRCRAFT

                Around 1,000 A.D., a Benedictine monk tried flying from a tower using wings.  He ended up with two broken legs.  Leonardo da Vinci imagined parachutes and helicopters.  In the late 18th Century, the Montgolfier brothers came up with the idea for hot air balloons after observing smoke wafting from chimneys.  In 1783, two fellow Frenchmen flew their balloon over Paris for five miles at 300-foot altitude.  In 1785, a Frenchman and an American took off from the cliffs of Dover in a car attached to a huge balloon.  Crossing the English Channel, they began to lose altitude so they jettisoned all unnecessary equipment and even their clothing.  They landed in a French forest in just their underwear.  In the 1890’s, Otto Lilienthal experimented with gliders, making over 2,000 flights.  The last one killed him.  In 1797, Frenchman Andre Garnerin made the first parachute jump, from a balloon at 3,000 feet.  In 1852, Henri Giffard flew the first dirigible over Paris.  In 1900, German Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin introduced the rigid dirigible.   As far as the airplane, the idea went back to Englishman Sir George Cayley, who proposed a fixed wing vehicle with a propulsion system. 

                –  Strange 186-9

FACTS ABOUT LAWRENCE OF ARABIA

  1. He was the illegitimate son of Sir Thomas Chapman. Chapman had an affair with the governess to his children and then left his wife for her.  They lived as man and wife under the name Lawrence.  They moved around a lot and all five sons were born in different parts of Great Britain.  T.E. was born in Wales. He did not learn about his unusual family situation until after his father died, when T.E. was 34.
  2. He was 5’5”. Peter O’Toole was 6’3”.
  3. He was a strict vegetarian and abstained for alcohol and tobacco. He toughened himself by depriving himself of food and water for extended periods.
  4. In 1909, as an archeology student at Oxford, he toured Syria and Palestine by himself, doing research on Crusader castles for his thesis. He walked 1,000 miles and was shot at and robbed and beaten badly.  He returned the next year after graduating as part of an archeological expedition sponsored by the British Museum.
  5. He had no military training. At the time he was chosen to hook up with the Arab tribes, he had been doing a desk job for two years as an intelligence officer in Cairo.
  6. He lost two younger brothers within months of each other on the Western Front in 1915.
  7. He was not famous until correspondent Lowell Thomas went on a lecture tour in 1919. Thomas showed photos via a slide show and screened a movie called “Lawrence of Arabia”.  Thomas made Lawrence and international celebrity.
  8. In the 1920’s he worked for Winston Churchill. They became lifelong friends. 
  9. He enlisted in the Royal Air Force under the assumed name John Ross. A few months later, the press outed him and he was discharged.  He then enlisted in the Tank Corps under the name Thomas Shaw.  (He later transferred back to the RAF.)  The name was an homage to his friend George Bernard Shaw.  He published a translation of “The Odyssey” as Shaw.  The only time he returned to using Lawrence was when he published “Seven Pillars”. 
  10. He owned seven different Brough Superior motorcycles. They were called “the Rolls Royce of motorcycles”.  On the fateful day, he was trying to avoid two boys on bikes, but he clipped one of theme and went out of control.  He suffered massive brain injuries, but did not die until six days later.  He was probably going around 100 MPH at the time of the accident.

https://www.history.com/news/10-things-you-may-not-know-about-lawrence-of-arabia

https://www.pbs.org/lawrenceofarabia/players/lawrence3.html

THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY

                The most famous train robbery in British history occurred on August 8, 1963.  It was the robbery of the Royal Mail train on its run from Glasgow to London.  The robbery had been planned for a long time and involved 16 men, most of them career criminals.  Their leader was Bruce Reynolds.  They were aided by inside information from a postal employee known to history as “The Ulsterman”.  It is still unclear who this individual was.  The gang tampered with signals by placing a glove over the green light and using a battery to illuminate the red light to get the train to stop in an isolated area.  It was 3 A.M.  Although the robbery was accomplished without the use of firearms, the train driver was badly beaten with a metal bar.  Sacks of money were removed and the gang drove to a farm to hide-out and divide the loot.  The take came to over 2 million pounds (equivalent to around 45 million pounds or $70 million today).  Most of the money was never recovered.  They famously passed the time at the farm playing Monopoly using real money.  The men were forced to disperse earlier than planned because the police manhunt was nearing the farm.  One member was given the job of torching the farm, but he chickened out and evidence was left that aided in the tracking down of most of the participants.  By 1964, most of them were in jail and most were sentenced to 30 years in prison.  Reynolds was an exception as he was able to get to Mexico.  He later moved to Canada and then France before returning to Great Britain where his continued criminal activities got him caught in 1968.  The most famous member was Ronnie Briggs.  Briggs was caught early, but broke out of prison after fifteen months.  He went to France and underwent plastic surgery to change his appearance.  He settled in Brazil which had no extradition treaty with England and he had a Brazilian son which gave him immunity. Briggs lived openly, flaunting his freedom. He eventually returned home due to poor health in 2001 at age 71 and voluntarily went back to prison. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Train_Robbery_(1963)

https://www.postalmuseum.org/blog/10-interesting-facts-about-the-great-train-robbery/

https://www.history.com/news/50-years-on-looking-back-at-the-great-train-robbery

THE TERRA NOVA EXPEDITION

                Robert Scott was a hero to the British people because of his valiant attempt to bring glory to the British Empire by being the first to reach the South Pole.  His body was found on Nov. 12, 1912.  He set off from New Zealand in 1910 to try to beat Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen to the pole.  Known as the Tierra Nova expedition, after the name of the ship, it was ill-fated from the beginning as the ship almost sank in a storm and was ice-bound for 20 days.  Scott should have taken the hint.  Scott had a plan.  He would challenge the accepted belief that the key to reaching the pole was using dog sleds.  He would use motorized tractor, Manchurian ponies, and dogs.  He and eleven men set off on Nov. 1, 1912, not knowing that Amundsen had left eleven days earlier from a base 69 miles closer to the pole.  And using just dogs.  Early on Scott’s tractors broke down and his horses proved poorly suited for the weather and the task.  Scott sent back seven men and the dogs before proceeding on foot with four on the last leg of the trek.  They pulled the sledges themselves.  On Jan. 17, 1912, they reached their destination, only to find the remains of Amundsen’s camp.  Amundsen had smoked a cigar and put up a Norwegian flag five weeks earlier.  Now the disappointed Scott faced an 862 return journey.  The quintet faced bitter cold, frostbite, and lack of food.  The relief force that was supposed to meet them half way did not come.  Two died before the final trio were brought to ground by a blizzard, just eleven miles from a supply cache.  Scott and the other two were found by a search party on this day.  With his body was his journals and letters which helped lionize him in Great Britain.  It took years for historians to point out that Scott was a brave fool.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Falcon_Scott#Terra_Nova_expedition,_1910%E2%80%931912

THE BATTLE OF THE COMMERCE RAIDER AND THE ARMED MERCHANT CRUISER

                When the Great War began, Germany decided to compete with Great Britain on the seas.  Besides u-boats, they outfitted ships as commerce raiders.  A commerce raider is a merchant ship or passenger liner that has weapons added, but is disguised as a nonbelligerent so it can sneak up on enemy shipping.  Early in the war, the Germans converted the ocean liner Cap Trafalgar into an armed cruiser.  They added two 4.1 inch cannons and six 1-pounder rapid firing pom-pom guns.  As a disguise, the ship was painted to look like a British liner and flew a British flag.  It’s first foray was unsuccessful and on Sept. 13, 1914 it pulled in to a secret supply port at Trinidad Island off Brazil.  One day later, it was spotted by the Carmania.  The Carmania had been a Cunard liner sailing from Liverpool to New York and back for many years.  H.G. Wells made his first trip to America on board.  At the start of the war it was converted into a an armed anti-commerce raider.  The Cap Trafalgar was big, but it was bigger.  It had eight 4.7 inch cannons, giving it significantly more firepower.  Its mission was to search for commerce raiders and it was specifically hunting the Cap Trafalgar.  Possibly because the German ship was masquerading as the Campania!  (Contrary to some reports, the Carmania was not disguised as the Cap Trafalgar.)  When the Cap Trafalgar spotted the Carmania on the horizon, it weighed anchor and fled.  The chase was on.  The Carmania opened fire first, but it was too far away.  The gap gradually closed and the captain of the Cap Trafalgar decided to accept combat at close range to make up for the long-range advantage the Brits had.  The two blasted at each other for about an hour.  The action was intense and at one point the two crews were firing machine guns at each other.  The Carmania concentrated on hulling the Cap Trafalgar at the water line and the German ship began to sink. Not before it hit the British ship more than 70 times, wrecking the bridge and starting fires.  The German crew boarded lifeboats before the ship sank, taking its captain with it.  The Carmania barely survived the encounter.

https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/desperate-fight-death-rms-carmania-vs-sms-cap-trafalgar-1914.html

https://www.wearethemighty.com/mighty-history/that-time-two-luxurious-ocean-liners-fought-an-intense-old-time-naval-battle/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS_Cap_Trafalgar#World_War_I_battle_with_Carmania

BELL OF ARABIA

            Gertrude Bell was not a typical Victorian woman.  She was born in England on July 14, 1868 to a wealthy family that indulged her desires to travel and break the norms for female behavior.  She was the first woman to achieve First Class Honours in Modern History at Oxford University.  She was an acclaimed mountain climber and ascended several peaks in the Swiss Alps.  One of them was named after her – Gertrudspitze.  She once spent fifty hours hanging from a rope on a mountainside during a blizzard.  In 1892, she visited Iran and fell in love with the Middle East.  She travelled extensively through the region over the years.  In 1913, she made a 1,800 mile journey through Syria, the Arabian Peninsula, and Persia.  She learned Arabic languages and made friends with the natives.  She intrigued Arab chieftains, who had never met an unveiled woman who would smoke cigarettes and drink coffee with them.  They called her “El Khatun”, the Lady.  Some of her treks were archeology-related and that’s how she met T.E. Lawrence.  She wrote several books, some of them travel guides.  During WWI, she worked with British intelligence.  She was assigned to the Arab Bureau where she worked with Lawrence.  Her knowledge of the region and her contacts with Arab leaders proved invaluable.  In 1921, she helped colonial secretary Winston Churchill at the 1921 Cairo Conference which established the boundaries of the new nation of Iraq.  Unfortunately, she pushed for the uniting of the Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds into one nation.  Even more unfortunately, she urged that the minority Sunnis be put in charge.  She was a supporter of King Faysal I being proclaimed ruler.  She then served as a trusted adviser and his director of antiquities.  She established the Iraq Museum to preserve relics.  She died in 1926 of an overdose of sleeping pills.  She was in poor health and depressed over her loneliness, but she did tell her maid to awaken her, so it is unclear if it was a suicide.

https://www.biography.com/news/gertrude-bell-biography-facts

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Gertrude-Bell

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

The Greatest War Stories Never Told pp.  142-143

“IVAN THE TERRIBLE” OF WWII 

During the terrible Battle of Stalingrad, one of the few things that kept up the morale of Soviet soldiers was the daily ration of vodka.  Senior Lt. Ivan Bezditko was known as “Ivan the Terrible” to his men.  He commanded a mortar battalion.  Bezditko loved his vodka and managed to horde a large quantity by reporting his wounded and killed as present and accounted for.  A supply officer noticed something suspicious about the numbers, considering that Bezditko’s unit had been in the thick of the fighting.  The supply officer called in Ivan and exposed his corruption.  He threatened to contact headquarters and vowed to cut off his vodka ration.  Bezditko responded by threatening the officer.  Sure enough, Bezditko ordered his mortars to fire on the officer’s warehouse.  The building was destroyed and the major came staggering out of the ruins.  He immediately called headquarters, but was told to lay off Bezditko and resume the ration.  It seems Bezditko had just been awarded the Order of the Red Star by Stalin for having such low casualties!

                –  Enemy at the Gates pp. 167-169

THE BALLERINA OF BERGEN-BELSEN

                Some wonder why the Jews did not fight back when they were sent to concentration camps.  One woman did.  Franceska Mann grew up in Poland. She was Jewish.  She went to dance school to become a ballerina.  She got a job dancing in a night club in Warsaw.  In 1943, she was forced into the Warsaw Ghetto, but she managed to get a foreign passport that allowed her to stay in the Hotel Polski.  The Nazis allowed Jews who had foreign passports to live there until they left the country, but it may have been a trap.  In August, 1943, the Nazis rounded up 600 Jewish residents in the Hotel Polski Affair.  Mann was sent to Bergen-Belsen and then to Auschwitz.  By then, she knew what was going on in the concentration camps.  When she was sent to the changing room for the gas chamber, she decided to fight back.  In one version of the story, she threw a shoe at a guard, hitting him in the face.  She grabbed his pistol and shot him twice, killing him.  She hit another guard in the leg.  By this time, other guards rushed to the scene and opened fire with machine guns.  The women, including Mann, were either killed in the fusillade or survived to be put in the gas chamber.  Although unsuccessful, the revolt inspired other inmates.

https://www.ranker.com/list/life-of-franceska-mann/melissa-sartore?utm_source=sendgrid_newsletter&utm_medium=weirdhistory&utm_campaign=active

MADAME CURIE’S ADVICE

A newspaper reporter showed up at Madame Curie’s home and wanted an interview.  Her housekeeper answered the door and told him her mistress was out.  The reporter asked her to tell him something confidential about Curie.  Housekeeper:  “Madame Curie has only one thing to say to reporters.  Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.”  Little, Brown  p. 151

MISS UNSINKABLE

Thanks to Sarah E. Hoov for making me aware of the story of this remarkable woman.

                Violet Jessop survived tuberculosis as a child, even though the doctor predicted she would die.  It was the first clue that Violet was indestructible.  She was the daughter of Irish immigrants who was born in Argentina.  When her father died, the family moved back to England.  She followed in her mother’s footsteps to become a stewardess on an ocean liner.  She worked 17 hours a day for low wages, but she loved it.  Her first ship was the Olympic, the largest cruise ship in the world at the time.  In 1911, it collided with the HMS Hawke.  Although no one died, it was a portent of things to come for Violet.  She later transferred to the Olympic’s sister ship the Titanic for its maiden voyage.  She was 25 years-old when it hit the ice berg.  Violet was put in a life boat and was handed a baby to take care of.  When they were rescued by the Carpathia, a woman suddenly grabbed the baby from her and ran off without a thank you.  Apparently, the woman had placed the baby on the deck of the Titanic in order to go get something.  During WWI, Violet became a Red Cross nurse on the Britannic, another sister ship.  In 1916, it hit a mine and sank.  She had to jump out of the life boat to escape being sucked under.  She ended up going under the keel of the sinking ship, suffering a fractured skull that caused headaches for years.  But she survived to pick up the nickname “Miss Unsinkable”. 

https://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/titanic-survivor/violet-constance-jessop.html

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

THE CONQUEST OF MT. EVEREST

                At 11:30 A.M. on May 29, 1953 the tallest spot on Earth was conquered by a New Zealander and his Tibetan guide.  Mount Everest had been the goal of mountain climbers for many years.  The Tibetans called it Chomo-Lungma (“Mother Goddess of the Land”).  The rest of the world called it Mount Everest in honor of Sir George Everest, a 19th Century British surveyor of South Asia.  The first attempt was in 1921.  George Mallory, when asked why he attempted to climb the mountain, famously said “Because it’s there.”  Mallory disappeared in 1924 on the mountain.  (His well-preserved body was found in 1999 with evidence of numerous broken bones from a fall.)  In 1952, a Swiss expedition had come close, so this motivated Great Britain to launch its ninth expedition.  It was led by Colonel John Hunt and included some of the best climbers in the world.  These included Edmund Hillary.  Hillary, a beekeeper in his off time, was the first person to reach both the North and South Poles.  The expedition consisted of 362 porters, 20 guides and the climbers.  Hillary was paired with a Sherpa guide named Tenzing Norgay.  Using insulated clothing, portable radios, and oxygen, they reached the summit.  They stayed for fifteen minutes.  Hillary took a picture of Norgay, but no picture was taken of him.  He left a cross and Norgay left some chocolates as an offering.  When they returned to the base camp, Hillary proclaimed:  “We knocked the bastard off.” 

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/hillary-and-tenzing-reach-everest-summit

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

UNSINKABLE SAM

            Cats do not really have nine lives, but there once was a cat that had four.  Oscar was a black and white feline who patriotically went to war for Germany in WWI.  She was on board the mighty battleship Bismarck when it was sunk by the Royal Navy on May 18, 1941.  Although only 118 of the 2,200 crew members survived, a cat was found floating on a board.  The cat was picked up by the destroyer HMS Cossack and named Oscar.  She traitorously switched sides and went on convoy duty with her new British friends.  After several months escorting merchant ships in the Mediterranean and North Atlantic, the Cossack was torpedoed by a u-boat with the loss of 139 men.  The next day, while under tow, the ship sank, but Oscar was picked up off a piece of plank.  She was renamed Unsinkable Sam and adopted by the aircraft carrier Ark Royal.  In November, 1941 the ship was torpedoed and sank, but once again the plucky cat was found clinging to debris.  At this point, it was decided the cat had had enough (and quite possibly was the opposite of a good luck charm).  He was promoted to landlubber at Gibraltar.  After the war, Unsinkable Sam was retired to the “Home for Soldiers” in Great Britain, where he passed away in 1955.

https://www.zmescience.com/other/feature-post/unsinkable-sam-cat-wwii/

https://allthatsinteresting.com/unsinkable-sam

MAD JACK CHURCHILL

                John Churchill was born on Sept. 16, 1906.  He graduated from Sandhurst military academy and served in Burma.  In 1936, he left the army and became a newspaper editor.  He also modeled.  He became a world class archer and competed in the 1939 World Archery Championship.  His archery skills got him a role as an extra in the movie “The Thief of Baghdad”.  He rejoined the army after the invasion of Poland.   He entered legend during the retreat to Dunkirk when he supposedly shot a German with his longbow.  Unfortunately for great anecdotes, he later admitted his bow had been broken earlier.  He went on to fight in Norway, carrying his longbow, broadsword, and bagpipes.  He was a talented bagpiper.  He landed at Salerno in 1943 carrying his accoutrements.  In Italy, he and another soldier captured an outpost with 42 prisoners.  He was awarded the Distinguished Service Order.  He was sent to lead commandoes in Yugoslavia.  It was there he got surrounded.  He played “Will Ye No Come Back Again?” on his bagpipe to summon help.  He was wounded by grenade fragments and captured.  The Germans thought he was Winston Churchill’s nephew so they put him in Special Camp A in a concentration camp.  He was there with other prominent POWs, including survivors from the Great Escape.  He quickly hooked up with several.  One of them was Johnnie Dodge who had been in charge of the choir practices that covered up the digging in Stalag Luft III.  Mad Jack and four others escaped through a tunnel, but all were recaptured.  He was imprisoned for the rest of the war.  After the war, he appeared in the movie “Ivanhoe” as an archer.  He became a famous surfer.  

https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/jack-churchill-carry-a-sword.html

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

WILFRED OWEN

                One of the greatest poets of the Great War was born on March 18, 1893.  He came from a middle class family.  In grade school he became interested in poetry.  He was influenced by the Bible and Romantic poets like Wordsworth and Keats.  When the war broke out he was teaching English to French children.  In 1915, he enlisted in the British army.  He wanted to do his duty and to experience war so he could write about it.  In 1917, he was knocked unconscious by a shell and spent several days next to the body of a fellow officer.  He ended up in the most famous rehabilitation hospital –  Craiglockhart War Hospital in England.  There he met fellow poet Siefried Sassoon.  Sassoon, an already famous poet, helped Owen refine his poetry.  He wrote about the horrors of trench warfare.  He was declared well and returned to light duty.  He could have avoided return to the front, but he wanted to continue to be a voice for the soldiers.  Sassoon opposed this decision.  He was awarded the Military Cross for leading an assault.  On November 4, 1918 (one week before the Armistice), he was killed by a machine gun while leading an attack across a canal.  His poems were published posthumously.  The most famous is “Anthem for Doomed Youth”.

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, –
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing down of blinds.

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

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/poet-wilfred-owen-killed-in-action

BLOODY SUNDAY

                “Bloody Sunday” is an event in the Irish War of Independence.  It occurred on November 21, 1920.  It consisted of three separate incidents.  In the morning, Irish Republican Army gunmen were sent by Michael Collins to assassinate members of the Cairo Gang.  The gang consisted of British undercover agents (mostly British soldiers) in Dublin.  Several residences were raided and 15 were killed or wounded.  The British authorities panicked and planned payback.  The decision was made to send a force to a soccer match at Croke Park and frisk the crowd.  Unfortunately, when the force of Black and Tans, Auxiliaries, and British soldiers arrived at the stadium, the ill-disciplined police opened fire without any warning.  The fusillade caused the crowd to stampede for the exits.  It was 90 seconds of mayhem.  14 civilians were killed.  One was a soccer player.  Another was a bride-to-be.  Three boys were killed.  The claim that someone in the crowd opened fire first was quickly proven false.  The third incident was that night when two IRA officers were tortured and killed in British custody. “Bloody Sunday” became a rallying cry for the IRA and made British occupation of Northern Ireland even more unpopular.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Sunday_(1920)\

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54908852

https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2020/1118/1178915-bloody-sunday-1920-croke-park-myths/

PICASSO AUTOGRAPHS A BOY

Pablo was sitting on a beach when a small boy approached him with a piece of paper.  He told the famous painter that his  parents would like an autograph.  Picasso tore up the paper and asked the boy to turn around.  He drew some designs on the boy’s back and then signed his autograph.  Later, when he told the story, he asked:  “Do you think those parents ever washed that boy?”

–  Little, Brown p. 451

FACTS ABOUT MALCOLM X

  1. His parents were followers of Marcus Garvey and active members of his organization. This caught the attention of local racists.  The KKK drove the Little’s out of Milwaukee when Malcolm was one.  At age four, their home was burned by racists.  His father was killed in a streetcar accident.  His mother was sure it was the work of the Black Legion (Lansing, Michigan’s equivalent of the Klan).
  2. At age 13, his mother was institutionalized due to a nervous breakdown. Malcolm lived in a series of foster homes, boarding houses, and state-run institutions until he put a tack on a teacher’s chair and was put in a detention home.
  3. He dropped out of high school after he told a teacher that he wanted to become a lawyer and the teacher responded: “That is no realistic goal for a n*****”.
  4. A life of petty crime resulted in his imprisonment for seven years. During his stint, he converted to Islam and joined the Nation of Islam.  He changed his name to Malcolm X.  The X represented his family’s real name that was lost when they were enslaved in America.
  5. The FBI had a file on him and had him under surveillance for the rest of his life after he wrote a letter to Pres. Truman protesting the Korean War and proclaiming that he was a communist.
  6. He befriended Cassius Clay after he became heavyweight boxing champ. At first, Clay converted and changed his name to Cassius X, but later he settled on Muhammad Ali.
  7. In 1964, he broke away from Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam and formed the Muslim Mosque, Inc. and the Organization of African-American Unity.
  8. Malcolm was opposed to integration because he considered whites to be evil. His attitude changed after he made a hajj to Mecca in 1964 and saw people of all colors worshipping together.

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/546087/facts-about-malcolm-x?fbclid=IwAR13TG5iJmdxf9syk84G-tpsMG8VtVnlG26DhP7QU8ozzZiSHYI-S1ElZEs

FACTS ABOUT KING TUT

  1. When his mummy was tested, the DNA showed he had malaria and it might have caused his death. This is the oldest evidence of malaria ever found.
  2. The tomb includes a dagger that the Egyptians considered of “extraterrestrial origin”. It turns out it was made from a meteorite.
  3. The innermost coffin was made of 110 kilos of solid gold, worth an estimated $5 million. There were three coffins that fit into each other like Russian dolls.  The outermost coffin proved to be too long for the sarcophagus so the workers trimmed the toes to get the lid to close.
  4. The Death Mask has a spell from the Egyptian Book of the Dead carved in it. The spell gives directions to the afterlife and provides protection.  It is unclear if it worked.

5,  He was not buried in a pyramid, that was only done in the Old Kingdom.  He lived in the New Kingdom, thousands of years later.  He was buried in the Valley of the Kings.  The Egyptians forgot where the tomb was, so another tomb was excavated on top of it.  King Tut’s tomb was robbed, the outer room with the robbers apparently disturbed in the act.  Then later the other tomb was robbed and debris covered the entrance to King Tut’s tomb, thus hiding it from future looters.  Since his was a rather austere tomb by Egyptian standards, we can only imagine the riches in a powerful pharaoh’s tomb.  The inner part of the tomb remained sealed for 3,341 years.

  1. King Tut reigned from age 9-18.
  2. His parents were probably brother and sister. The Egyptians royal families did not believe in diluting the blood line with non-royalty.  This resulted in a clubbed foot, an overbite, a potbelly, and the need of a cane.  130 walking sticks were found in the tomb.  And orthopedic sandals with his enemies painted on the soles so he would trod on his foes.  Apparently, the royals never put two and two together.  Plus, after he married his half-sister, they had two still-born babies (which were mummified and buried in his tomb).
  3. His father had been a religious radical who tried to convert the Egyptians to worshipping one god – Aton. Tut’s original name was Tutankhaton (“living image of the Aton”).  He changed it after this father’s death to Tutankhamun.  Amun was the top among all the gods.
  4. In 2014, the Death Mask’s beard fell off when cleaning. The workers glued it back on, like anyone would.  It was not proper procedure and they were prosecuted and forced to pay heavy fines.
  5. An ostrich fan had inscriptions telling us that Tut was a big fan of ostrich hunting. It was dangerous because he did it in a chariot.  Some believe it was a hunting accident that killed him, or at least left him a cripple.
  6. It was important to mummify the heart separately. The Egyptians felt the heart was the center of intelligence, not the brain.  The brains would be thrown away.  The thing is, Tut’s heart was not found.  This may mean he died far from home and his heart didn’t make the trip home well.
  7. On April 16, 1939 two trumpets found in the tomb were played over the radio with an estimated 150 million listeners.

https://www.ranker.com/list/whoa-king-tut-facts/mallory-weiler?fbclid=IwAR0o3QFCDEObewOK3IXvWQjJao53L37PgzlePS_GqYXKe7b0C1OYHiE3vRU

https://www.historyextra.com/period/ancient-egypt/8-things-you-probably-didnt-know-about-tutankhamun/

THE COURRIERES MINE DISASTER

            The worst mining disaster in European history occurred on March, 10, 1906.  1,099 coal miners at a mine in northern France were killed when coal dust exploded.  On March 9, a fire broke out in one of the shafts 270 meters below the surface. The cause is still unknown, but two theories are that there was an accident in the handling of explosives or that a miner’s flame on his helmet set off methane gases starting a fire in one of the shafts..  The solution to the fire was to seal off the area to starve the fire.  Unfortunately, gases seeped through the walls.  The massive explosion occurred at 6:30 A.M. on a Saturday morning.  The maze of tunnels were all connected so the fire surged through the whole mine.  And out the entrances of the tunnels.  Some people on the surface were killed.  Four nearby villages were affected because their miners would enter the maze of shafts from their village.  Most of the victims were trapped underground and rescue efforts were hampered by lack of trained rescuers in the area.  40 men who attempted to reach some of the trapped miners were killed when the mine collapsed on them.  Experts did not arrive from Paris and Germany until March 12.  By then 2/3 of the miners caught in the mine had died.  By April 1, only 194 bodies had been recovered.  500 miners made it out of the mine, but many were badly burned or suffered from gas inhalation.  Amazingly, 13 miners were rescued on March 30.  They became famous as “les rescapes”.  They had survived by eating the bark off beams and a dead horse.  They drank water dripping from the walls.  The last survivor was rescued on April 4.   

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courri%C3%A8res_mine_disaster

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/mine-explosion-kills-1060-in-france

https://www.britannica.com/event/Courrieres-mining-disaster

THE CHERNOBYL DISASTER

            The worst nuclear power disaster in history started on April 26, 1986.  It occurred at a nuclear power plant in what is today Ukraine (but was Russia back then).  It is located 60 miles north of Kyiv.  The accident was a 7 on a scale of 1-7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale.  The Fukushima disaster was also a 7.  The accident is complex, but it basically started with a safety test of a steam turbine.  Due to ignorance, complacency, and design flaws, a core meltdown led to at least two explosions.  Two engineers were killed.  There was a raging reactor core fire and enormous amounts of radiation was released.  The plant did not have a containment structure required of all American nuclear reactors.   More radiation was released than in the Hiroshima bombing.  The staff and firefighters battled the fire for ten days.  They were exposed to extremely high rates of radiation.  At least 28 died soon after and many more in the next ten years.  Thousands died of cancer in the years after.  Russia created the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone of 1,000 square miles (later expanded to 1,600 miles).  The area is still uninhabitable.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Chernobyl-disaster

https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2011/03/the-chernobyl-disaster-25-years-ago/100033/

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

THE GREAT EMU WAR

                One of the most unusual wars in history occurred in Australia in 1932.  And the bad guys won.  If you can call birds bad guys, that is.  When Australian soldiers returned from the Great War, they were rewarded with farm land.  Surprise, the government screwed them.  The free land was marginal farm land in western Australia.  The promised subsidies never occurred.  The veterans struggled to make ends meet and that was before the Great Depression hit.  When it did, wheat prices plunged.  But all Australian farmers were hurt by that.  What was unique for these western Aussies was they had to also deal with an invasion.  The invaders were 20,000 emus.  The large flightless bird had been a protected species until 1922.  After that, they were considered “vermin”.  The ostrich-cousins found the area good habitat.  Not only did they enjoy the wheat, they destroyed fences which allowed rabbits to join in the feast.  The farmers petitioned the government for help in killing them.  The Ministry of Defence saw the opportunity to show the farmers the government cared, for a change.

                If the farmers would pay for the ammunition, the military would ride to the rescue.  A Maj. Meredith was sent in command of an army consisting of two soldiers and two Lewis machine guns.  They brought 10,000 rounds of ammo.  The hunters looked forward to the slaughter.  The Army envisioned thousands of emu feathers for making hats for light horsemen.  The war began on November 2, 1932.  The emu-slaughterers at first could not locate their prey, so farmers herded the emu into the kill zone.  The birds proved hard to hit and they would break up into smaller groups and run away.  Round two was an ambush, but this time one of the machine guns jammed early and only a few crop-eaters were killed.  Putting a machine gun in a truck was ineffective because the emus were faster and the bumpy ride made the machine gun inaccurate. By this time the press got hold of the story.  The farcical performance by the soldiers was ascribed to emu leadership.  Each herd had a large black emu that would stand watch over his “mob” (plural for emus) and then warn his followers to run when the machine gunners would appear.  Over six days, 2,500 bullets had been fired to kill 200-500 birds.  On November 8, Maj. Meredith cried uncle and left.  He excused his failure to the emus being akin to the Zulus! 

                Not giving up, the Army renewed the offensive on Nov. 13.  In the next three weeks, the killings improved with eventually 100 emus per week being destroyed.  A total of 986 kills were claimed from about 10,000 bullets.  That was about 10 bullets per dead bird.  That might sound like a lost of wastage, but it was a better percent than in Vietnam, for instance.  The Army gave up for good and refused subsequent requests when the emu problem would rear its ugly head again.  Instead, the government offered a bounty for every emu head.  In 1934, 57,000 bounties were paid.  But the real solution was better fencing.  Finally, the farmers had the last laugh.

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

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-great-emu-war-australia

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/running-ponies/the-great-emu-war-in-which-some-large-flightless-birds-unwittingly-foiled-the-australian-army/