Comrade Koba posted:

"The Tiger panzer was and is the best tank in all of history, AND FURTHERMORE"

Rutibex posted:

We like to project horrible periods in history onto "great men" because it absolves us of having to take responsibility. Hitler is dead, but Germany still exists. We can't blame the German people in general, and still get along. Hell, IG Farben (the corporation responsible for a lot of the logistics of the holocaust) still operates to this day. If you buy some Bayer Aspirin you are buying drugs from the same company that mass produced Zyklon-B.

Ichabod Sexbeast posted:

Nobody knows where Ghengis Khan is buried either, great pains were taken to hide his tomb.

Also Australia lost their prime minister in the 60s, but that was more of an accidental thing.

chitoryu12 posted:

Unless you're Alan Turing, in which case you commit suicide because the punishment for homosexuality in the 1950s was chemical castration. Didn't matter if you were a genius or a war hero, you'd get hosed up if you got caught doing anything gay.

FELD1 posted:

I'm primarily curious as to the exact purpose and function of the Giza Mass Autism Array. Can any history buffs chime in on this one

ToxicSlurpee posted:

It is. The recent historical event that that happened in was the Lateran Treaty in 1929. Well, that's what made it official anyway. Italy with the borders we know and love today was the result of a reunification effort in the 19th century. That formed the Kingdom of Italy that also got up to some colonial antics in Africa. Then fascism and Mussolini happened and, you know, WWII. Anyway seeing as the Kingdom of Italy controlled the entirety of Rome the question of "what the gently caress do we do with the Church?" was a very important question that never got properly answered for multiple decades. Generally speaking the Papacy just kind of did its thing and was left alone even though they were technically controlled by Italy as they weren't a separate entity. The treaty basically gave a final, definitive answer to the question by declaring it a sovereign nation separate from Italy. Of course such a tiny state existing entirely within the borders of a city in a larger nation is never wholly separate but it answered the question of "who controls the Pope?" with finality and that was what everybody ultimately wanted an answer to.

It's also worth noting that Vatican City isn't actually the sovereign entity. That's actually The Holy See which runs Vatican City but if you say "Vatican City" most people know what you're talking about.

ToxicSlurpee posted:

Apparently it isn't even limited to Jesus. If memory serves there's enough finger bones of John the Baptist floating around to populate the hands of multiple people. There were periods in medieval Europe where all the cool and good churches had relics in the form of body parts of important people centuries gone. Since forensic science hadn't been invented yet there were people just grabbing any old finger bone from the graveyard and saying "yup, totes from John the Baptist!" or scam artists selling fake relics to churches that didn't have any.

This is part of why some folks get pissy about things like carbon dating relics. If it turns out that that your favorite relic is multiple centuries too young to relate to the person it was supposed to be part of or belong to then it's a blatant fake. Kind of sucks to find out that that thing you've been revering for 800 years was a fraud.

Slime posted:

The same way a bunch of genetic diseases haven't evolved out of the species. Common mutations, recessive genes, the disease being down to a combination of issues that would only rarely happen etc etc.

Inescapable Duck posted:

Everything I hear about Nazi weapons seems to indicate they were made specifically to give boners to slavering war-nerds with no sense of practicality, tactics or logistics, which to be fair is probably entirely accurate.

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

The funny thing about this being that one of the culminations of the war was the deployment of a wonder weapon.

Tunicate posted:

Jerrycans were a good example of that.

PMush Perfect posted:

Nazis invented the jerrycan?

chitoryu12 posted:

The StG 44 was the "basis for the AK" really only in the sense that Kalashnikov was kind of inspired by the idea of an assault rifle firing an intermediate cartridge. Similar designs like the Fedorov Avtomat had existed prior, but the StG 44 was the first to be produced in large numbers and see successful combat use on a large scale of any kind, and it got the Soviets to put serious effort toward making their own after having previously shelved the idea. Their operating systems have little in common and the AK actually stole more from American designs (like the safety of the Remington Model 8 semi-auto hunting rifle). Their similarity in appearance was mostly because the design layout was the most sensible one for that kind of rifle.

Fun fact: the SKS actually saw testing during the Battle of Berlin.

ToxicSlurpee posted:

In a lot of ways the Nazis beat themselves by just, you know, being Nazis. Their attitude was that they'd basically win by default because they were just plain superior people. They'd continue their plan of exterminating their lessers and then just ride how awesome and amazing they were to victory. German engineers were the best because they were German! Nothing else needed to be said; given that he was Lead German Hitler just kind of defaulted to "my opinion is absolutely always right and don't question it." You didn't want to get on his bad side. Meanwhile the pretty rigid hierarchy limited the actual pool of talent they had. That was also part of what led to their love of hand made, over-engineered tanks. Skilled German craftsmen would obviously make the best things because they were German. Don't question it! The brutal repression of ideas Der Furher didn't like because fascism also didn't help.

Compare that to America who did stuff like how the Jeep came to be; instead of picking a favorite due to breeding they just contacted basically every vehicle manufacturer, gave them specs and a timeframe, and said "this is what we want. Big bag of cash to whoever gets the first prototype to us." It was like "we want this, somebody make it happen, we don't give a poo poo who."

Edgar Allen Ho posted:

Afaik this was pretty common. For example famed illiterate Charlemagne has a badass signature, because he had a stencil.

ToxicSlurpee posted:

I heard that motherfucker had like 30 god damned dicks.

Laserjet 4P posted:

He sleeps outside since the rains have ceased, and his skin is thick to bullets.

Proteus Jones posted:

More likely as time goes on. TNT based explosives get more dangerous as they age since they sweat out nitro glycerin.

Krankenstyle posted:

lol wtf did they just smash the horse's balls with a hammer back then?

chitoryu12 posted:

Kind of amazed at the lack of alcohol.

Edgar Allen Ho posted:

He was a scot and Glasgow native, screaming in scots/english/whatever

Krankenstyle posted:

There's a lot to be said for how much your expectations prime your understanding of language. If you expect one thing and hear another, it becomes utter nonsense. Even your own mother tongue — say you've been abroad and spoken another language exclusively for months and then come home.

In my experience it takes a bit to get your brain on the same page as the world around you, but then it's relatively smooth sailing.

chitoryu12 posted:

I think Ville Valo from HIM speaks with a sort of generic English accent.

Alhazred posted:

The first flush toilets that were installed on Continental Europe were installed in Oslo (then Kristiania ), Norway in 1859. The lucky owner was a bankier named Nicolai August Andresen. In 1904 only 32 out of 7 257 houses in Oslo had flust toilets and in 2002 twenty communal apartments still had outhouses. Today there's still one nightman in Oslo who empties outhouses, primarily in the rural areas.

Trabant posted:

You sank my battleship destroyed generations of my people!

dee eight posted:

I learned at a young age that I could buy a box of that at the local grocery store for 10 cents. A 50/50 mix of that and cane sugar burns bright, hot, and slow. The burning mix produces copious billows of white smoke, and when contained, explodes reasonably violently.

[/preteenhyjinks]

Government Handjob posted:

Don't Norwegian officers still wear these on occasion? I swear I remember seeing it on the stiff necked dorks that were on barracks or mess hall duty.

OutOfPrint posted:

If Don Carlos wasn't a straight up serial killer, he sure could have been. Mutilating animals, budding pyromania, head injury, clear disregard of human life and incalculable rage are a hell of a combination.

Alhazred posted:

The introduction of pistols actually lowered the death rate. Their low accuracy meant that the duelists could fire at each other, survive and leave with their honor intact.

System Metternich posted:

Yeah, duels weren't really done out of a desire for revenge or anything, but were instead a ritual to publicly restore your honour. Killing your opponent didn't really come into play in most cases.

Duel fun facts!
- Representatives of German student fraternities met with the German president in 1953 to personally assure him that they wouldn't use duels as a way to settle affairs of honour anymore. However, the so-called "Bestimmungsmensur" (which is basically a highly ritualistic approximation of a duel and is seen as a way to build character and display your masculinity) is still alive and well in some of those fraternities
- Until 1983, the Catholic Church forbade all duels under threat of excommunication, going so far as to even excommunicat onlookers and all those knowing about the duel and not trying to stop it. The 1983 Canon Law Codex doesn't include this anymore, as duels have largely fallen out of use. In German-speaking Europe, it's still the rule that Catholic student fraternities stricly reject any form of duelling or Mensur
- The Nazis initially loosened the duel ban in Germany, but after a duel between two high-ranking nazis ended with one them dying in 1937, Hitler banned all forms of duelling again
- The 1908 summer olympics had pistol duelling as an associate event
- The last known duel in France happend in 1967 between two rivalling members of parliament

Krankenstyle posted:

that actually makes perfect sense (tho the unicorns were supposed to be in America, but it's not like anyone could check)

Krankenstyle posted:

looking for a series A for my new app. elevator pitch: its like uber, but one of your cousins show up and you have sex. i call it les cousins dangereux (open for discussion on that)

Red Bones posted:

I was at a bar with an Icelandic friend and we used it to look up how distantly he was related to Bjork. It would work with other famous icelandic people too but we couldn't think of any.

Krankenstyle posted:

inherited surnames are a feudalist-mercantilist invention.

it used to be that people had one given name, and if necessary, one or more bynames depending on context. say in your home village, you'd be william johnson, but over in the next village youre william woods cause it's closer to the woods. or perhaps you were just william or will your entire life without needing another name.

nobles and burgers and other rich assholes needed to be able to vouch for their holdings and what not, and one of the ways to do that was by introducing inherited surnames. now a person could be known to be the great grandson of whomever without assembling the Žing and reciting generations of ancestors. it was generally enough to say that he was known by general agreement to be of that family. naturally it could be disputed if necessary.

the common folk never had a problem until taxes started being a regular thing. but now they needed to be looked into, their movements controlled more closely, what not. so we had surnames forced down upon us, usually just a petrified version of some random byname, often a patronym.

now a whole bunch of people are stuck with this half-assed bullshit like being named Johnson but not being a son of John, and people named Smith who are not smiths, just because capital wanted to make rentseeking easier (make no mistake, 90+% of taxes in recent history have been levied by private individuals, only for a fraction to then be paid on to the soverign, not that they deserved it more).

Kanine posted:

Pookah posted:

Ok, I did not know her childhood was that abusive, holy poo poo.

also

Krankenstyle posted:

I went through the conscription rolls for my hometown, and in 1802 the average height of adult males was 62.45 zealandic inches; this is slightly longer than imperial inches at 1/24th of zealandic alen = 62.81cm, which is 2.62 cm, whereas 1 imperial inch is 2.54 cm.

So: Adult males in my hometown were on average 1.63 m or ~5'4.5" in 1802

You can really tell when you walk through doorways in old houses