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Insane Things You've Learned About Your Country's History That Blew Your Mind

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L

Lionheart1827

Member
Jea Song said:
I'm American, and I think that's sorta bad ass. lol Oh those brits.
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Yeah I just checked the entry on the wiki and it doesn't state this anymore unfortunately(I have a text file copy from a few months ago that still states it). The statue is in trafalgar square.
 
Z

Zenith

Banned
Operation Gladio - created by the CIA, they funded right-wing terrorists to commit bombings in western Europe against left-wing governments. They even committed atrocities disguised as left-wing extremists in order to rile up the public - "false flag" operations.

Toby said:
Guy from work yesterday told me that Japan was trying to surrender to the U.S. before we dropped the bomb. Only thing I could find on wiki was that they were trying to start negotiations through Russia. Can anyone else elaborate?
Click to expand...

they were in negotiations. the main sticking point was the US wanted them to give up the position of emperor, which they refused. The condition was later dropped after the first nuke.
 
K

Kad5

Member
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'%C3%A9tat

America is responsible for replacing Iran's democratic government with a dictatorship by the Shah. Obviously this lead to the Iranian Revolution and now Iran has an even worse theocratic government.

Ironically when the CIA analyzed the events before the revolution they said that Iran wasn't even in a pre-revolutionary phase so they either allowed the revolution to happen or the CIA just made a huge ass mistake.

Some people think the CIA just allowed it to happen because the Shah was starting to be more independent from the US.
 
S

siddx

Magnificent Eager Mighty Brilliantly Erect Registereduser
Hitokage said:
Hawaii is up there too. It was basically stolen by businessmen.
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Yeah the history of Hawaii's introduction into the US is fascinating. I learned about it about a year ago, with businessmen essentially strong arming the Queen into handing over control of the islands to them.
 
P

Phantast2k

Member
I heard about the first German genocide a few years ago. There was no mention of it in my school books.

The Herero and Namaqua Genocide is considered the first genocide of the 20th century. It occurred from 1904 until 1907 in German South-West Africa (modern day Namibia), during the scramble for Africa.

On January 12, 1904, the Herero people, who, led by Samuel Maharero had a treaty placing them under the protection of German South-West Africa, launched attacks on German police and farms killing over a hundred people in German South-West Africa starting the Herero-German War. In August, German general Lothar von Trotha defeated the Herero in the Battle of Waterberg and pursued them into the desert of Omaheke, where most of them died of thirst. In October, the Nama people also rebelled against the Germans resulting finally in many dying from disease in concentration camps.

In total, between 24,000 up to 100,000 Herero perished along with 10,000 Nama. The alleged genocide was characterized by widespread death by starvation and thirst by preventing the fled Herero from returning from the Namib Desert. Some sources also claim the German colonial army to have systematically poisoned desert wells.
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S

siddx

Magnificent Eager Mighty Brilliantly Erect Registereduser
Phantast2k said:
I heard about the first German genocide a few years ago. There was no mention of it in my school books.
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Well to be fair to Germans, Many European nations behaved like horrible soulless pieces of shit while in Africa well into the 20th century. You certainly aren't the only ones who committed genocide there.
 
A

Aylinato

Member
four things for me


1.) I thought conservative also involved not wanting to destroy the forests(lol, I was very wrong)

2.) I thought libertarians were for helping the poor(like through SS, welfare, and etc.)

3.) How many groups go through the same minority persecution, while persecuting african-americans in order to become part of the "white" majority

4.) Biggest one is Reagan flooding the streets with cocaine/etc. Apparently Detroit had a huge downturn because of that =(
 
I

iamblades

Member
Extollere said:
He said of ancestry, not an immigration group per-se. However British people and much of Western Europe (and those who immigrated to the Americas) are of Germanic or Anglo-Saxon decent, if I'm not mistaken.
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Well depending on how you classify it, basically everyone north of Spain and Italy and west of Poland and Finland could be classified as at least part Germanic, with the possible exception of the Celts.

If you are just going on language/culture, pretty much everyone in that area aside from the french and the celts again.

But if you are talking about demographics for the US census, then 'german' pretty much means the same thing as the modern definition. If you are germanic, but not dutch or norse or anglo-saxon, then you are pretty much the modern definition of german, as germany swallowed up most all of the smaller germanic tribes.. Might have include some immigrants from what is now alsace or switzerland or austria or the czech republic or poland, but they would have been mostly recognizable as german.
 
L

Learn2read

Member
I find it funny that the Alamo can still be celebrated as one of the major causes the Texans were fighting for was the right to own slaves, which was outlawed in Mexico.

REMEMBER THE ALAMO
 
J

JzeroT1437

Member
siddx said:
Well to be fair to Germans, Many European nations behaved like horrible soulless pieces of shit while in Africa well into the 20th century. You certainly aren't the only ones who committed genocide there.
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Rhodes of "Rhodes Scholar" and "Rhodesia" fame comes to mind. Guy was an evil diamond-hoarding sack of shit who started building railroads in a crazed frenzy towards the end of his time in-country to retain a death grip on his areas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_Rhodes
 
R

rpmurphy

Member
siddx said:
Well to be fair to Germans, Many European nations behaved like horrible soulless pieces of shit while in Africa well into the 20th century. You certainly aren't the only ones who committed genocide there.
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If you're trying to get people less depressed, it's having the opposite effect. :/
 
J

jamesinclair

Banned
Jea Song said:
During the Mexican- American war, I always believed the Mexicans were the hostile ones, oppressing Americans in Texas.

Turns out Mexico had actually allowed American's to live in Texas as long as they follow Mexican laws. Americans didn't like this, and thought they should take Texas for themselves. America was the aggressors and had an agenda to take over Mexican territory all along.
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And thats why the name in spanish is:

"Intervención estadounidense en México"

" US intervention in Mexico"


And until this weekend, Id never heard of this event:

"A total of 909 Temple members died in Jonestown, all but two from apparent cyanide poisoning.
it is the largest such event in modern history and resulted in the largest single loss of American civilian life in a non-natural disaster until the events of September 11, 2001"

Time_CultOfDeath_Cover.jpg

Jonestown-Newsweek1978_CutOfDeath_2.jpg
 
U

Undubbed

Member
I was a bit surprised to find out that some of the founding fathers of the USA said some anti-religious(or at least anti-dogma) things to say in their time and weren't orthodox Christians, but Deists and whatever not so mainstream Christian beliefs they had. Now whether these sentiments were well known at the time would be another matter, I guess.
 
K

KingGondo

Banned
jamesinclair said:
And until this weekend, Id never heard of this event:

"A total of 909 Temple members died in Jonestown, all but two from apparent cyanide poisoning.
it is the largest such event in modern history and resulted in the largest single loss of American civilian life in a non-natural disaster until the events of September 11, 2001"
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Really? Wow, that's a pretty big event to have not heard of. Pretty mindblowing what people are capable of under the right circumstances.

It's also where the phrase "drink the Kool-Aid" came from.
 
L

Learn2read

Member
jamesinclair said:
And thats why the name in spanish is:

"Intervención estadounidense en México"

" US intervention in Mexico"


And until this weekend, Id never heard of this event:

"A total of 909 Temple members died in Jonestown, all but two from apparent cyanide poisoning.
it is the largest such event in modern history and resulted in the largest single loss of American civilian life in a non-natural disaster until the events of September 11, 2001"

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5a/Time_CultOfDeath_Cover.jpg[IMG]
[IMG]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4a/Jonestown-Newsweek1978_CutOfDeath_2.jpg[IMG][/QUOTE]
I'm sure you can find plenty of docs on youtube about the whole thing - including Jim Jones rants.

I always found the one of the crazier parts was that a US Congressman went down to investigate after being lobbied by alot of constiuents who had family in the compound. After getting turned away an about to board his plan, a group from the cult came and gunned him and his entourage down.
Click to expand...
 
P

Phantast2k

Member
siddx said:
Well to be fair to Germans, Many European nations behaved like horrible soulless pieces of shit while in Africa well into the 20th century. You certainly aren't the only ones who committed genocide there.
Click to expand...
Yeah right, I wanted to write something along those lines, but then felt like it would diminish the tragedy. But you're absolutely right.
However the reason for that might have been the circumstances of the German colonialism: it only began at the end of the 19th century and ended after WWI. There's only so much evil you can do in such a short time..
 
J

jamesinclair

Banned
KingGondo said:
Really? Wow, that's a pretty big event to have not heard of. Pretty mindblowing what people are capable of under the right circumstances.

It's also where the phrase "drink the Kool-Aid" came from.
Click to expand...

It wasnt in any history books I read, and it doesnt exactly come up in conversation.

The only reason I read it is because I went on a wikipedia adventure this weekend.

Barbara Boxer > Dianne Feinstein > Harvey Milk incidents > Peoples Temple > Jonestown


Are you sure thats where the kool-aid comment comes from? Because that's disturbing.
 
F

Forkball

Member
The color coded war plans from America, specifically War Plan Red, which was basically an outline of how to invade the British empire in the early 1900s. It's like playing Civilization, BUT FOR REAL.
 
S

siddx

Magnificent Eager Mighty Brilliantly Erect Registereduser
Speaking of wars, for whatever reason, I never learned about the Russian - Japanese war in 1904/05 until I was out of college and reading history on my own. And I never would have expected that the Japanese won. However after deciding to learn more about the history of countries I lived in (including of course Japan) it made much more sense and added a lot of interesting details and background to the war.
 
K

KingGondo

Banned
jamesinclair said:
Are you sure thats where the kool-aid comment comes from? Because that's disturbing.
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"Drinking the Kool-Aid refers to the Jonestown Massacre; the phrase suggests that one has mindlessly adopted the dogma of a group or leader without fully understanding the ramifications or implications.[citation needed] The poison at Jonestown, however, was prepared not with Kool-Aid but a similar product, Flavor Aid.[9]
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I didn't know that it wasn't Kool-Aid brand mix either, but the phrase makes sense nonetheless.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kool-Aid
 
Y

Yen

Member
Is there a wiki page on Reagan putting mire drugs on the street? I'd like to read more on the matter.
 
O

OpinionatedCyborg

Member
Forkball said:
The color coded war plans from America, specifically War Plan Red, which was basically an outline of how to invade the British empire in the early 1900s. It's like playing Civilization, BUT FOR REAL.
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And apparently 10 years before War Plan Red, Canada drafted Defence Scheme No.1, a plan to attack America before it attacked Canada in the hopes of catching America off guard to destroy infrastructure and provide time for allies to arrive.
 
S

speculawyer

Member
Hitokage said:
Yeah, they were fighting for their independence and we put them down.
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And that is something that has happened over and over and over again.

Now it is true that many of the independence fights of many such countries were lead by corrupt people or people that became corrupt once they obtained power. But you have to let countries make their own mistakes.
 
Y

YoungHav

Banned
I always knew of Haiti's role in the Louisiana Purchase, but didn't know the size of the land involved. Ironic that some folks crying about aid to Haiti during the earthquake live on land that we wouldn't have acquired but-for Haiti fucking Napolean's plans up.
 
T

Tarazet

Member
Speaking of cults, one of the smallest incorporated cities in the world - there is only one person left, and he has the only PO Box - is Holy City, California, just 20 miles from San Jose in the Santa Cruz Mountains. It has a pretty colorful history.

http://www.coastnews.com/history/holy_city.htm

Riker was a handsome, blue-blooded California native, born in 1873 and described in contemporary accounts as "a favorite of the ladies.'' His first job, which involved reading palms, earned him the nickname "The Professor." Later, he toured the country as a mind-reading act, a lucrative career that ended abruptly when bigamy charges were filed against him in San Francisco. Leaving both his wives behind, Riker fled to Canada.
It was there that he developed "The Perfect Christian Divine Way," a credo that involved total celibacy, abstinence from alcohol, hard-core white supremacy and communal living. From what few records still remain, it seems that "being born again" was also somehow integral to the project. Armed with this new doctrine and a plan, Riker returned to San Francisco and started a commune. The city on the bay would later grow accustomed to such enterprises, but at that time, more than a few eyebrows must have been raised.

The first thing Riker did was make his followers give him their money, freeing them from worldly concerns to pursue their spirituality. By 1918, he was able to buy the land on which to establish his new Jerusalem and to house about 30 devotees, most of them elderly.

Riker apparently considered himself exempt from the celibacy rule, soon taking a bride by the name of Lillian. Incensed by this action, a certain Frieda Schwartz, one of Riker's earliest disciples, sued him in an attempt to recover the funds she had relinquished upon entering the Perfect Christian Divine Way. She lost, and the publicity the case received only succeeded in drawing more tourists to the area.
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P

Pikmindictator

Member
There are many things but some that spring to my mind on this late hour:

- the Dutch monarchy being quite a bit more powerful than I used to believe.
- prince Bernhard being quite the criminal/crook/traitor/fascist instead of the lovable rascal he is often made out to be in (some) of the dutch media
- Not long after being liberated from the germans the Dutch started wrecking havoc in the Dutch East Indies to make sure that our colony wouldn't declare its independence.
- By fleeing to London right before the German invasion the Dutch government essentially cancelled itself. The then Dutch constitution did not allow the Netherlands being run from a foreign country. This gave Hitler a perfect opportunity to install a German civilian government instead of a military government which where installed in countries where the government didn't flee. The consequence of this? An extremely large percentage of Dutch jews where killed. In contrast to the countries with a military government. more here (in Dutch) http://gerard45.bloggertje.nl/note/14065/de-ongrondwettige-vlucht-van-kroon-en.html
 
Z

Zenith

Banned
Winston Churchill wanted to use chemical weapons on "uncivilised villages" in Iraq when he was Secretary of the Colonies. Fortunately they couldn't mount the gas bombs on the planes.
 
Shrennin

Shrennin

Didn't get the memo regarding the 14th Amendment
That Canada was allowed free admission into the Union under the Articles of Confederation.
 
G

genjiZERO

Member
iamblades said:
Well depending on how you classify it, basically everyone north of Spain and Italy and west of Poland and Finland could be classified as at least part Germanic, with the possible exception of the Celts.

If you are just going on language/culture, pretty much everyone in that area aside from the french and the celts again.

But if you are talking about demographics for the US census, then 'german' pretty much means the same thing as the modern definition. If you are germanic, but not dutch or norse or anglo-saxon, then you are pretty much the modern definition of german, as germany swallowed up most all of the smaller germanic tribes.. Might have include some immigrants from what is now alsace or switzerland or austria or the czech republic or poland, but they would have been mostly recognizable as german.
Click to expand...

Even "Celts" are pretty Germanified. Dublin's a Scandinavian word after-all.

In reference to Austrians and the Dutch, my understanding is that they are German, just not under the tutelage of Germany proper.
 
T

The Technomancer

card-carrying scientician
Shrinnan said:
That Canada was allowed free admission into the Union under the Articles of Confederation.
Click to expand...
What, kind of a "hey Canada, we've got something good going down here, you want in? Offers open if you want to" type deal?
 
Shrennin

Shrennin

Didn't get the memo regarding the 14th Amendment
The_Technomancer said:
What, kind of a "hey Canada, we've got something good going down here, you want in? Offers open if you want to" type deal?
Click to expand...

I've actually got the Articles in front of me so I'll just quote it:

Articles of Confederation said:
XI: Canada acceding to this confederation, and adjoining in the measures of the United States, shall be admitted into, and entitled to all the advantages of this Union; but no other colony shall be admitted into the same, unless such admission be agreed to by nine States.
Click to expand...

It sounds like it was indeed a "if you want to, we'll let you" type deal. I'm studying Constitutional history right now so the Articles are actually very important in this regard but I don't know too much about this besides what is said in the Articles themselves.
 
B

BocoDragon

or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
YoungHav said:
I always knew of Haiti's role in the Louisiana Purchase, but didn't know the size of the land involved. Ironic that some folks crying about aid to Haiti during the earthquake live on land that we wouldn't have acquired but-for Haiti fucking Napolean's plans up.
Click to expand...
I think it's pretty crazy that a tiny chunk of my home province Alberta was once owned by Napoleon. :p
 
O

Operations

Member
TL4E said:
LBJ gave a bust of himself to the pope.
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Wow :lol

My contribution: Antonio López de Santa Anna, president of Mexico, signed an economic plan that included taxes on windows, doors, and pets (which he devised during his 9th non-consecutive term).
 
A

Anasui Kishibe

Banned
"Mad" Jack Churchill fought in the second war with a bow and a motherfucking claymore

churchill.jpg



also known for the phrase "If it wasn't for those damn Yanks, we could have kept the war going another 10 years!"
 
B

BocoDragon

or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
My current province of British Columbia was invited to join Canada pretty much to cockblock the US from bridging the gap between Alaska and Washington. :p
 
Goldrusher

Goldrusher

Member
Lionheart1827 said:
I don't know how true it is but I read about george washington on wikipedia and that supposedly a statue of him was built in britain somewhere and that american soil was imported to place under the statue. The myth being that george washington vowed never to step on british soil. If its true I thought that was pretty cool.
Click to expand...
GeorgeWashington.jpg


George Washington was originally working for the British military, but ended up fighting against them when the people in the USA rebelled when they wanted to stop paying high taxes to the British. He went on to become the first ever President of the USA.

The bronze statue is a replica of Jean Antoine Houdon's marble statue in Richmond, Virginia, and was given to the Nation in 1921 by the 'Commonwealth of Virginia'.

Washington apparently said, "I will never set foot in London again!" so dirt was brought from Virginia and that's what he's standing on.

Statue inscription: "Presented to the people of Great Britain and Ireland by the Commonwealth of Virginia 1924".

Did you know the only surviving former home of Benjamin Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, is just around the corner? See Benjamin Franklin House London.
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http://golondon.about.com/od/londonpictures/ig/Less-seen-Sights/George-Washington-Statue.htm
 
W

White Man

Member
FTWer said:
Another fun fact, the Joint Chiefs of Staffs secretly made a cartoon to convince Reagan to give them more funds, since he fell asleep when they presented him with charts & facts.
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My favorite Ronnie anecdote (being that I am a J.G. Ballard fanboy):



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_I_Want_to_Fuck_Ronald_Reagan

At the 1980 Republican Convention in Detroit a copy of Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan, furnished with the seal of the Republican Party, was distributed by ex-Situationists to the RNC delegates. According to Ballard, it was accepted for what it resembled: a psychological position paper on the candidate's subliminal appeal, commissioned by a think-tank.
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"Slow-motion film of Reagan's speeches produced a marked erotic effect in an audience of spastic children"

"Faces were seen as either circumcised (JFK, Khrushchev) or uncircumcised (LBJ, Adenauer). In assembly-kit tests Reagan’s face was uniformly perceived as a penile erection. Patients were encouraged to devise the optimum sex-death of Ronald Reagan."
 
Shrennin

Shrennin

Didn't get the memo regarding the 14th Amendment
Washington's family crest was where the stars, stripes, and eagle were derived from. Look up an image of the grave of Sir Godfrey Washington if you want to see it.
 
R

RyanDG

Member
http://www.naturalnews.com/019189.html

The US medical experimentation industry is rather frightening even in our own recent history. This link documents quite a few examples of medical malfeasance when it comes to human experimentation in the US, often funded by US tax payers dollars and perpetuated by government researchers/grants.

Here's a highlight of what you'll be able to find in this list:

(1845 - 1849) J. Marion Sims, later hailed as the "father of gynecology," performs medical experiments on enslaved African women without anesthesia. These women would usually die of infection soon after surgery. Based on his belief that the movement of newborns' skull bones during protracted births causes trismus, he also uses a shoemaker's awl, a pointed tool shoemakers use to make holes in leather, to practice moving the skull bones of babies born to enslaved mothers (Brinker).
Click to expand...

...And this is one of the first examples on the list that goes on through this decade...
Click to expand...
 
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