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Battle of Karánsebes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kar%C3%A1nsebes An Austrian army lost a battle against itself all because of an argument over alcohol and language barriers.
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Jan 18, 2011 22:38
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Ace Oliveira posted:Hahahah, holy poo poo, this is like something out of a comedy. I mean, Austrian troops freaking out and shooting friendly Austrian soldiers because they thought they were Turkish soldiers, then the entire army reatreating from an non-existant enemy? An enemy that wasn't even there? Jesus H. Christ! I bet the Ottomans were freaked the gently caress out when they arrived on the scene two days later to find all the corpses.
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Jan 19, 2011 09:08
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It took the Spanish 170 years to subdue the Mayans. It only took 2 years to topple the entire Aztec empire. This was mostly because the Aztecs had a very centralized empire with one capital where all the important folks were while the Mayan empire had collapsed a few centuries earlier and was a loose collection of city states. Also the Mayans didn't have much gold which was mostly what the conquistadores were after so for most part very few of them were interested in attacking the Mayans.
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Jan 19, 2011 15:00
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Napoleon III was the first president and the last monarch of France. I'm not sure what they were expecting his name was Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte for fucks sake.
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Jan 22, 2011 23:35
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This might have been mentioned but I'm gonna go ahead anyway: Saint Patrick's Battalion  In 1846 war broke out between Mexico and the US. The purpose of the war was mostly to enlarge the US by conquering a large part of northern Mexico but the whole fiasco with Texas also played some part. The American forces were just as brutal as you might expect and eventually a group of immigrant soldiers, mostly from Ireland but also from other European countries and almost all catholics, became disillusioned with the war and disgusted at the treatment of the locals at the hand of the Americans. So they switched sides over to Mexico and fought against the American hordes. They fought in a few major battles and usually came out on top but at the battle of Cerro Gordo the tables turned. The battle had a unusually high causality rate for officers because the The San Patricios would focus almost solely on killing as many of them as possible both because of a general dislike of American officers and to settle old scores. The Mexican soldiers were mostly militia men with little or no experience or training this combined with a ammo shortage and heavy artillery fire caused most of the army to route when a general by the name of Robert E. Lee took advantage of a mountain trail to flank the Mexican army. Near the end of the battle some of the Mexicans attempted to surrender by waving a white flag but they were shot by the San Patricios who were firmly against surrendering. By the end of the battle 35 lay dead, 85 were captured and the remaining 85 had retreaded along with the other Mexican forces. This was also the battle where Santa Anna was forced to ride of without his artificial leg to escape the Americans. The captured San Patricios were put to trial for treason and most of them were hanged for treason, interestingly enough even though over 9000 soldiers deserted during the war the the San Patricios were the only ones who were hanged for it. Some of the soldiers had deserted before the official declaration of war and were "only" sentenced to 50 lashes, branding with the letter D for "Deserter" and forced to wear iron yokes around their necks for the remainder of the war. It is estimated that at it's peak the battalion had a few hundred soldiers from various disgruntled minority groups including a few escape slaves from the southern states of the US.
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Jan 25, 2011 22:48
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Kumo posted:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731  Also this has been brought up at least once before in this thread.
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Feb 2, 2011 22:56
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Don't click the link, read the spoiler below or do a GIS unless you have a stomach for wartime atrocities (and lovely metal bands).
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Killing the Irish has been the main pastime of the British government for centuries. Oliver Cromwell was probably the most efficient at it.
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Feb 10, 2011 21:58
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Forgive me if this has been mentioned. Kaiser Wilhelm, Czar Nicolai and King George, the monarchs of Germany, Russana and Britain during WWI, were cousins and grandsons of Queen Victoria. They knew each other as Nicky, Willie and Georgie and had met countless times at family gatherings and by most accounts all of them got along well. However these cousins ended up on different sides during the insane clusterfuck that was WWI. Wilhelm was very disappointed with his cousins and is reported to have said "To think that George and Nicky should have played me false! If my grandmother had been alive, she would never have allowed it." when Britain was entering the war. Wilhelm was very close to his grandmother and was one of the people present at her deathbed along with George's father Edward.  Here we see Wilhelm and George chatting  Here we see Wilhelm and Nicolai wearing the military uniforms of each others nation. Pretty much all of the royal families in Europe are connected. It's pretty much all one big somewhat incestuous and dysfunctional family. Alterian posted:Oh my God that graph is so interesting! What happened in Iceland in 1882? In the 19th century people decided that starving to death was bad and decided to avoid the cold, oppression and poverty by moving to sunny Canada where they would still live in poverty but be much less likely to starve. Most of their descentands live in the area called New Iceland in Manitoba. One of the towns is called Gimli named after Gimlé the place where survivors of Ragnarök would go. About quarter of the Icelandic population moved to America, mostly to Canada, during the late 19th century. Edit: Wow I checked the first 20 pages of the thread before deciding that their relation probably hadn't been mentioned was enough it probably hadn't been mentioned. It was mentioned on page 21.
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Feb 12, 2011 22:04
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It's a little known fact that the war bears in WWI had a truce on christmas where they took a break from the trench warfare to celibate together and then went right back to fighting the next day. No elephants were involved, Bearon Von Sternbearg the leader of the German bears hated elephants.
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Feb 13, 2011 04:38
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Davish Krail posted:St. Guinefort, the dog saint! St.Cristopher.  Well dogheaded man but still.
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Feb 15, 2011 12:11
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 The Philippines were a colony of the United States from 1902 to 1946. During the presidency of William McKinley the The Spanish-American War raged. The main purpose of the war was to invade as many Spanish colonies as possible and "liberate" them by making them American colonies. One of those colonies was the Philippines. A lot of Filipino nationalists aided the Americans hoping that this could lead to independance but their hopes were shattered when the Americans seized control of the country and declared that the country wasn't ready for independence yet. The president called this "Benelovant Assimilation" which is totally not the same thing as Imperialism because the noble American heroes only wanted to help the savage locals who obviously weren't fit to rule themselves. This caused a lot of uproar and the same men who had helped the Americans drive out the Spanish turned against them. What followed was a brutal campaign of suppression that left several hundred thousand Filipinos dead and large portions of the country in ruins. The war ended in 1902 but some insurgent elements remained until 1923. In response to the colonization the Anti-Imperialist League was founded.The League attempted to use the media to sway public opinion against the war but most people saw them as old men out of touch with the modern world or anti-American traitors and their efforts barely affected the publics opinion of the occupation. Mark Twain was a very active member of the group the flag at the start of this post is based on his satirical suggestion for the new flag of the Philippines. In 1916 the US granted the Philippines autonomy and self-government in 1934 but the nation had to suffer through a reign of terror by a Japanese puppet government during WWII before receiving their independence in 1946. Examples of American benevolentness: -The Americans set up concentration camps where locals could be isolated and kept from joining the rebels. It's hard to -The waterboarding interrogation technique was used extensively. - Jacob H. Smith ordered everyone over the age of 10 on Samar to be executed because anyone over that age could hold a weapon and was therefore a threat. The order was not carried out but mass executions of POWs and suspected rebels did take place. The order caused a bit of a scandal in the press and Jacob was court martialed and had to retire but recieved no further punishment. - Several villages were burned to the ground and the villagers sent to camp or simply shot. I'm too lazy to check if this has been posted before so here are contemporary political cartoons to make up for it if I'm repeating:  Click here for the full 1536x1003 image.   
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Feb 15, 2011 23:42
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 Halldór Kiljan Laxness. world renowned novelist and the only Icelander ever to receive a Nobel prize for literature, almost got thrown in jail for updating the spelling of the Icelandic Sagas to make them more readable to the Icelandic public. In Halldór's publisher Ragnar Jónsson announced that his company intended to publish a modernized version of the sagas. The minister of justice Jónas Jónsson became furious and wrote articles claiming that "The Communists" intended to degrade and ruin Icelands culture by sullying the sagas with modern spelling. Jónas got a law passed that made publishing of the sagas in anything else then the old spelling a crime. Halldór and his posse decided that Jónas could go gently caress himself and published Hrafnkels Saga anyway. They were soon arrested and eventually sentenced to jail by the court but luckily for them the supreme court overturned the ruling and declared that the new law was unconstitutional. Although the Icelandic language hasn't changed as much as the other Scandinavian languages since the viking it is still pretty hard for the average person to read something written in medieval times due to all the differences in spelling and wording. The industrual revolution didn't really reach Iceland in any extent until around 1904 and industrialization didn't catch on until the 30's so in 1941 most adults had been born in some rural hovel that was only a few steps above being a mud hut and many had received only a few months of schooling. It is also possible that part of the reason Jónas reacted so badly to the spelling update was that Halldórs 1935 masterpiece Independent People was taken by many as a dirrect attack on the culture of Icelandic farmers and Jónas was the head of the Progressive Party which was a agrarian farmers party. The protagonist of the novel was a farmer struggling to survive in a harsh and barren landscape but he was also a bit of a douchebag. For some reason many people took this as an insult to all farmers. Halldór was also controversial for writing Alţýđubók where he insulted Icelanders by encouraging them to brush their teeth and bathe more then once every few months.  The sagas themselves are also pretty cool and I might write something about them and the era in which they were written if I'm not too lazy.
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Apr 14, 2011 22:20
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SeanBeansShako posted:Did anyone in that era try and call those people out over the whole Imperialist treatment South America and the Pacific domains during those isolationist talks and rallies? Over a decade before the war a president was even assassinated for his capitalist domestic policy and his imperialist foreign policy. Leon Czolosz, Americas greatest anti-imperialist activist.
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May 17, 2011 20:09
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Drunkboxer posted:I'm always surprised how many Presidents we've had shot. Do they think the government is going to collapse or something? I mean I guess the assassins are mostly bug eyed crazy people so it's not like their thinking straight but still. In a sick way, Lincolns made the most sense, at least there was a civil war going on just prior to it. With Czolgosz it was a propaganda of the deed thing. That is to say the act itself is an act of propaganda meant to inspire potential revolutionaries and show the elite that since even the president is a possible target none of them is safe. Czolgosz was widely distrusted and believed to be an agent provocateur by the anarchist movement because he was a stranger who would show up at meetings and rallies and try to find out who would be available for acts of violence. There was even a warning issued warning all comrades that if a well dressed young man would show up and ask question he was probably a police spy.
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May 17, 2011 20:40
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