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GAF, Post Some Interesting/WTF Historical Facts

Mondai

Member
- A black tobacco farmer named Anthony Johnson was among the first to have his lifetime ownership of a servant legally sanctioned by a court.

- In 1926, Arctic explorer Peter Freuchen was trapped under an avalanche while on an expedition. He escaped from death by fashioning a shiv out of his own feces and amputating his foot.

- The first fax was sent while people were still traveling the Oregon Trail.

- Before Abraham Lincoln became a politician, he was a champion wrestler. With more than 300 bouts under his belt, Lincoln only lost one match in his career and was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall Of Fame in 1992.

- Thomas Edison once electrocuted a circus elephant to death on Coney Island. Over a thousand people came to watch her die while Edison recorded it on video.

- Before dentures were invented, teeth were pulled from the mouths of dead soldiers for use as prosthetics.

- Researchers believe that the famous Guanajuato Mummies’ terrible expressions are the result of the victims being buried alive.
 

nikolino840

Member
The great pyramid of Giza Is empty Without any writing or painting and we know very few things about Cheops
this Is the only proof about Cheops,a statue of 7,5 cm
200px-Khufu_CEM.jpg


and a pyramid of 138,8 meter High
260px-Kheops-Pyramid.jpg
 

Thurible

Member
The Battle of the Crater was one of the dumbest and weirdest military blunders imo. During the U.S. Civil War, there came a time where the Union and Confederate sides were stuck in trench warfare at Petersburg. During this stalemate, some of the Union soldiers suggested tunneling underground to into confederate lines and setting off explosives. The resulting explosion created a large crater in which union soldiers rushed in during the confusion and found themselves trapped. They then were basically picked off by the confederates.
 

Thurible

Member
On the subject of the supernatural, Houdini was a noted skeptic of spiritualism and the occult. He regarded mediums as charlatans who preyed on vulnerable people and began a campaign to debunk them.

Before he died, he and his wife Bess had a plan when one of them dies first, they would hold a yearly seance to try to contact the spirit of the deceased (likely a final act to disprove the "power" of spiritualists). The thing is, they had a special code that only Houdini and his wife knew, and the spirit had to tell the living spouse the code to verify the legitmacy of the seance. Bess never got the code.
 

MaestroMike

Gold Member
29. Why do the bears only eat part of the fish?
If you see bears only eating the skin, brains, and eggs of a salmon, they are practicing good energy economics. At these times, a bear’s profit margin in calories is so high that it can ignore some excess fish. As a bear fills up on salmon, it can “afford” to not eat certain parts of the fish. This behavior has been nicknamed “high-grading.” Like miners looking for high-grade ore, bears try to consume high grade fat.

Salmon are a high calorie meal for a bear. A sockeye salmon contains about 4500 calories, but the fattiest parts of the fish contain the most calories proportionally. Bears know this and prefer to eat the skin, brain, and eggs—the fattiest parts of a salmon—when fish are in abundance. This is an ephemeral behavior, however. When salmon are not abundant or hard to catch then bears will not be as selective and will most often eat the whole fish. Watch a video of a bear high-grading fish at Brooks Falls.

 
  1. More than 43 million Americans struggle with mental illness.[1]
  2. 1 in 5 young people (age 13-18) has or will develop a mental illness in their lifetime.[2]
  3. Youth depression rates have risen from 5.9% to 8.2% since 2012. Depression symptoms can impact performance in school and interfere with personal relationships.[3]
  4. Most Americans lack access to adequate mental health treatment. 56% of American adults with mental illness did not receive care in the last year.[4]
  5. Mental illnesses can affect people of any age, race, religion, or income. A mental illness is a medical condition that disrupts a person’s thinking, feeling, mood, and ability to relate to others and daily functioning.[5]
  6. Many factors contribute to the development of a mental health condition, including life experiences (such as trauma or a history of abuse), biological factors, and family history of mental illness.[6]
  7. Depression is the leading cause of disability worldwide.[7]
  8. Members of LGBTQ+ community are almost 3 times more likely to experience a mental health condition such as major depression or generalized anxiety disorder.[8]
  9. Common signs of mental health issues include: extreme mood swings, changes in eating habits, excessive worrying or fear, problems concentrating, and avoiding friends or social activities.[9]
  10. 1/2 of all mental illnesses show early signs before a person turns 14 years old, and 3/4 of mental illnesses begin before age 24.[10]
  11. More than 1 in 4 adults living with serious mental illnesses also struggles with substance abuse.[11]
 

GreyHorace

Member
One of Poland's national heroes is a bear.

Yes. You heard me. And not just any bear. Wojtek (as he was named) was a corporal in the Polish II Corps and served with the 22nd Artillery Supply Company during the battle of Monte Casino, Italy in 1944 helping to move supplies to the front.

For his service, after the war he became a minor celebrity amongst the Allied Forces and was allowed to live the rest of his days at the Edinburgh Zoo in Scotland, where he died at the ripe old age of 21. Since then, numerous tributes were erected in Wojtek's honor both in both England and Poland.

Here's a nice video from Buzzfeed covering Wojtek's history.

 

Liljagare

Gold Member
- Thomas Edison once electrocuted a circus elephant to death on Coney Island. Over a thousand people came to watch her die while Edison recorded it on video.
Actually, from what I understand, it cannot be proven that Edison was even there. It was his film company that filmed it . And the elephant was killed using AC current (that is what she officially died from) because Edison's followers and Edison himself wanted to prove that Tesla's AC current was far more dangerous than Edison's DC current. It was part of the "War of the Currents" (look it up). Edison went out and publically electrocuted all sorts of animals with AC current to prove that his form of electrical current was much safer than Tesla's. The elephant was part of the publicity stunt. Actually I just saw that they made a movie out of this "War of the Currents" called "The Current War" (big shocker :p).

The death of the elephant was thought, at that time, considered kinder than hanging her which is what they originally wanted to do. It was the SPCA (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) who pushed for the electrocution because they thought it was a more humane way to die although they agreed to a blend of hanging, poisoning, and electrocution because nooone had ever really killed an elephant before. Really the whole thing was just messed up.

Here's some fun facts:

Lord Byron, angered that his college Trinity College didn’t allow dogs in dorms, kept a pet bear instead.
Ketchup originated in China as a boiled down brine mixture of picked fish and spices called ke-chiap.
 
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There is very few quality pictures of Neil Armstrong on the moon, it's Buzz all day every day. Here's one of Buzz Aldrin with Neil and the lunar module reflected in his visor.

533683221.jpg
 
1 millions more tons of bombs were dropped in the Laos and Cambodia part of the Ho Chi Men trail by Americans in the Vietnam war then all of the bombs dropped in WW2 (by Americans).
 

#Phonepunk#

Banned
the nuclear age arms race of the Cold War is a very WTF era for me. never before did we play with death at such a grand scale. some crazy facts:

- over the course of the Cold War more than 2,000 nuclear weapons tests were conducted on the planet.

Rael_Nuclear_use_locations_world_map.png


- 904 of these nuclear tests occurred at the Nevada test site. at one point they were a tourist attraction and could be seen from Las Vegas. people would watch nuclear bombs go off from their hotel swimming pools.

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- the nuclear race was so normalized there was even a "Miss Atomic Bomb" model wearing a mushroom cloud dress.

enhanced-buzz-orig-23122-1362750721-11.jpg
 
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Happosai

Hold onto your panties
Also, strange presidential pets. This is worth a read.
 
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