Give me a mind-blowing history fact - Page 3

Ghost of Andrew Eaton

2:33p, 12/31/23

chick79 said:
John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died on the same day, July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the signing of The Declaration of Independence. James Monroe died on the same day exactly five years later.

I believe there were some thoughts, or attempts to keep Madison alive long enough to die on the 4th as well.

If you say you hate the state of politics in this nation and you don't get involved in it, you obviously don't hate the state of politics in this nation.

Agthatbuilds

3:16p, 1/1/24

Mel blanc, the voice of bugs bunny and nearly every other Warner Brothers cartoon was nearly killed in a car crash but survived though he was left in a coma.

After 21 days, the doctor came in and asked how bugs bunny was doing and blanc responded as bugs bunny. They tried tweedy bird and he respond as tweedy bird.

Blanc went on to recover

BQ78

3:21p, 1/1/24

In reply to Agthatbuilds

Sticking with that theme, Tex Ritter developed the character of Daffy Duck while duck hunting on White Rock Lake.

LMCane

10:25a, 1/2/24

In reply to Agthatbuilds

Agthatbuilds said:
At the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis, the marathon was strange. The first place finisher did most of the race in a car, the guy in second almost died from eating rat poison, and the fourth place finisher raced in dress pants and shoes, and took a nap by the side of the road for part of the race.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-1904-olympic-marathon-may-have-been-the-strangest-ever-14910747/

The US Army intentionally poisoned all of San Francisco in 1950

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea-Spray

Operation Tiger:

Prior to dday, the allies had a training beach landing in which about 750 soldiers died because of friendly fire, poor communication and a uboat attack

INCORRECT

it was not a UBOAT attack, it was the German Shnellboote E Boats which were like our PT boats that John Kennedy served on.

LMCane

10:26a, 1/2/24

19 September 1864 Battle of Third Winchester

not just one, but two future US Presidents would fight on the same battlefield within a mile of each other.

Rabid Cougar

11:40a, 1/2/24

The last public execution by guillotine took place in 1939...

YokelRidesAgain

11:56a, 1/2/24

In reply to LMCane

LMCane said:
19 September 1864 Battle of Third Winchester

not just one, but two future US Presidents would fight on the same battlefield within a mile of each other.

George Patton's grandfather was also there on the Confederate side. He died of wounds sustained in the battle several days later.

No material on this site is intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. See full Medical Disclaimer.

CT'97

2:10p, 1/2/24

In 1490, prior to Columbus coming to the America's, the third largest city in the world was near modern day Saint Louis and stretched over 6 square miles. The population would have fluctuated but would have dwarfed Paris at the time which was only about 150,000 people.

JABQ04

8:12p, 1/2/24

As a former artilleryman, the fact the British and French fired 1.75 MILLION artillery shells the week prior to the battle of the Somme is staggering. Even more somber is the fact they took approx 60K casualties with 20K of them being KIA on the first day of the assault.

Not really mind blowing but the most poignant memorial on the Somme (imho) is at Devonshire Cemetary. Formerly the front line trench for the 9th Devonshire regiment, when it stepped off on July 1, 1916 it suffered heavy losses and as many of thei comrades were buried in their former trench. The memorial simply stated (and still does today)
"The Devonshires held this trench. The Devonshires hold it still"

CanyonAg77

9:00p, 1/2/24

In reply to Rabid Cougar

Rabid Cougar said:
The last public execution by guillotine took place in 1939...

And the last execution by guillotine took place in 1977...after Star Wars came out.

agrams

9:04p, 1/2/24

In reply to JABQ04

I can't recall the exact stat, but something along the lines that the French lost more on the first day if Verdun than all allied casualties from Normandy and the subsequent 30 days of fighting. was from hardcore history by Dan Carlin.

CanyonAg77

9:41p, 1/2/24

Don't know if it's mind-blowing, but the First Thanksgiving in America was not in Plymouth, Massachusetts, but near Floydada, Texas.

Seventy-nine years before the Pilgrims joined the party, Coronado proclaimed a feast of Thanksgiving while exploring Texas. Father Fray Juan De Padilla celebrated the Mass of Ascension, on May 29, 1541. Padilla later became the first Catholic martyr in the New World.

Coronado was camping in a canyon, originally thought to be Palo Duro Canyon. But ranchers found pieces of chain mail further south, in Blanco Canyon, in the 1960s. And a metal detecting buff found crossbow points in 1993. The significance of that, is that Coronado's is the only expedition to have used crossbows. They were obsolete by the time later explorations crossed Texas.

Broken crockery was also found in Blanco Canyon, which fits accounts that Coronado's men suffered through a hail storm.

Further reading:

https://www.myplainview.com/news/article/America-s-first-Thanksgiving-celebrated-in-Palo-8419493.php

https://www.texasalmanac.com/articles/coronado-expedition-in-1541

Artist's depiction of Coronado camp

Chain mail glove found near Blanco Canyon

ChucoAg

11:07p, 1/2/24

In reply to CanyonAg77

This Coronado guy seems like a nice guy! He sounds like he treats the natives really well

USAFAg

12:03a, 1/3/24

In reply to JABQ04

JABQ04 said:
As a former artilleryman, the fact the British and French fired 1.75 MILLION artillery shells the week prior to the battle of the Somme is staggering. Even more somber is the fact they took approx 60K casualties with 20K of them being KIA on the first day of the assault.

Not really mind blowing but the most poignant memorial on the Somme (imho) is at Devonshire Cemetary. Formerly the front line trench for the 9th Devonshire regiment, when it stepped off on July 1, 1916 it suffered heavy losses and as many of thei comrades were buried in their former trench. The memorial simply stated (and still does today)
"The Devonshires held this trench. The Devonshires hold it still"

As a retired American Serviceman (USMC and USAF), as an Englishman (and Irishman and Texan) by birth, family and heredity, this makes me both sad...and extremely proud. We've lost a lot of that service, courage and selflessness...but it still lives...we just need to remind people.

12thFan/Websider Since 2003

CanyonAg77

8:37a, 1/3/24

In reply to ChucoAg

Do you Premium Board posters spend the off season looking for threads to crap on?

Ghost of Andrew Eaton

8:57a, 1/3/24

In reply to YokelRidesAgain

YokelRidesAgain said:
LMCane said:
19 September 1864 Battle of Third Winchester

not just one, but two future US Presidents would fight on the same battlefield within a mile of each other.
George Patton's grandfather was also there on the Confederate side. He died of wounds sustained in the battle several days later.

If I remember correctly, his children played with the children of Jeff Davis.

If you say you hate the state of politics in this nation and you don't get involved in it, you obviously don't hate the state of politics in this nation.

jkag89

10:27a, 1/3/24

ChucoAg

11:11a, 1/3/24

In reply to CanyonAg77

CanyonAg77 said:
Do you Premium Board posters spend the off season looking for threads to crap on?

What? I'm the one who made this thread, I was just making a joke since Coronado was not a nice guy. I love history, please stop acting like the police

agrams

1:33p, 1/3/24

Teddy Roosevelt as a boy watched Lincoln's funeral procession from his Grandfathers house.

https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2010/11/09/teddy-roosevelt-and-abraham-lincoln-in-the-same-photo/

Martin Cash

3:32p, 1/3/24

112 men died in the construction of Hoover Dam, The first was a surveyor named George Tierney who drowned in the Colorado on 12/20/22 while trying to find the ideal location for the dam.

The last man died on 12/20/35. His name was Patrick Tierney. George's son.

TexAgBolter

7:14p, 1/3/24

Most expensive US WW2 wartime project was not the Manhattan Project, but the development of the B29 bomber.

whoop1995

8:50p, 1/3/24

In reply to TexAgBolter

TexAgBolter said:
Most expensive US WW2 wartime project was not the Manhattan Project, but the development of the B29 bomber.

I always thought that the oak ridge site was the most expensive - guess I need to look into this! I was way off - Thanks for bringing it up.

I collect ticket stubs! looking for a 1944 orange bowl and 1981 independence bowl ticket stub as well as Aggie vs tu stubs - 1926 and below, 1935-1937, 1939-1944, 1946-1948, 1950-1951, 1953, 1956-1957, 1959, 1960, 1963-1966, 1969-1970, 1972-1974, 1980-1981, 1983-1984, 1990, 2004, 2008, 2010

CanyonAg77

9:39p, 1/3/24

In reply to whoop1995

I believe the Manhattan Project and B-29 were close to the same cost, with the -29 the most expensive. Kind of funny, as one definitely needed the other.

And Oak Ridge was just one part of the Manhattan Project, don't forget Los Alamos, Hansford, Trinity Site, etc. etc. etc.

Cen-Tex

8:54a, 1/4/24

In reply to BQ78

BQ78 said:
Sticking with that theme, Tex Ritter developed the character of Daffy Duck while duck hunting on White Rock Lake.

It was a 'Tex' but not Ritter. Frederick Bean 'Tex' Avery from Taylor, Tx and Bob Clampett were given credit for the character.

BQ78

9:26a, 1/4/24

In reply to Cen-Tex

You are correct it was Avery, not the singer, duh!

Rabid Cougar

1:39p, 1/4/24

In 1900 there were nearly 200,000 horses/mules living in New York City. Horses produce between 10-14 pounds of manure everyday. That's 4 Million pound of horse sh*t plus about 180,000 gallons of horse piss

There were also roughly 15,000 horses dying every year. Most were left where they fell.

The automobile was the green solution to the horse.....

Green2Maroon

2:23p, 1/4/24

In reply to Rabid Cougar

It's kind of scary to imagine how nasty big cities must have been in those days, or especially before that.

Jabin

3:41p, 1/4/24

In reply to Green2Maroon

I've read historical novels set in part in London in the late 18th - early 19th centuries. They describe the Thames as an open sewer that did not drain. Since Thames is tidal, all of the sludge would come back with the rising tide.

There were at least 2 million people in London by that time, and hundreds of thousands of horses. Everything went into the Thames, if it went anywhere. If someone happened to fall into the river, their life expectancy was measured in days. Everyone visiting London commented on how horribly it stunk.

whoop1995

3:50p, 1/4/24

In reply to Jabin

Jabin said:
I've read historical novels set in part in London in the late 18th - early 19th centuries. They describe the Thames as an open sewer that did not drain. Since Thames is tidal, all of the sludge would come back with the rising tide.

There were at least 2 million people in London by that time, and hundreds of thousands of horses. Everything went into the Thames, if it went anywhere. If someone happened to fall into the river, their life expectancy was measured in days. Everyone visiting London commented on how horribly it stunk.

I toured the Tower of London and they said this exact point - when they first dug the moat around the castle to deep or deeper than the Thames river so none of the body waste would leave the premises when the tide came in or out. The body waste would go right into the moat.

I collect ticket stubs! looking for a 1944 orange bowl and 1981 independence bowl ticket stub as well as Aggie vs tu stubs - 1926 and below, 1935-1937, 1939-1944, 1946-1948, 1950-1951, 1953, 1956-1957, 1959, 1960, 1963-1966, 1969-1970, 1972-1974, 1980-1981, 1983-1984, 1990, 2004, 2008, 2010

Sapper Redux

9:19p, 1/4/24

In reply to Jabin

Jabin said:
I've read historical novels set in part in London in the late 18th - early 19th centuries. They describe the Thames as an open sewer that did not drain. Since Thames is tidal, all of the sludge would come back with the rising tide.

There were at least 2 million people in London by that time, and hundreds of thousands of horses. Everything went into the Thames, if it went anywhere. If someone happened to fall into the river, their life expectancy was measured in days. Everyone visiting London commented on how horribly it stunk.

And this was before large scale industrialization added coal soot to the air. Air quality was so bad in the late 19th and early 20th century that people died during periods of heavy smog.

Agthatbuilds

9:28p, 1/4/24

In reply to CanyonAg77

One of the scientist, joseph kennedy, credited with discovering plutonium was from nacogdoches, tx and a graduate of sfa

CanyonAg77

9:42p, 1/4/24

In reply to Agthatbuilds

My recollection was that it was Glen Seaborg. But Google confirms that Kennedy was on the team.

https://discover.lanl.gov/publications/national-security-science/2021-winter/plutonium-timeline/

Seaborg stored the first sample of Plutonium in a cigar box. You can see it at DOE HQ in Washington, DC. There is a small museum on the ground floor that is open to the public.

Cen-Tex

9:58p, 1/4/24

The 1937 New London School explosion in Rusk County Texas resulted in 295 fatalities. That disaster was the impetus for a U.S. federal regulation requiring the odorization of combustible gas in most transmission and distribution piping. (49CFR, 192.625)

CanyonAg77

10:18p, 1/4/24

In reply to Cen-Tex

Expressions of sympathy flowed in from around the world, including one from the Chancellor of Germany, one A. Hitler. A cub reporter was sent out from Dallas to cover the disaster. His name was Walter Cronkite.

Mom had a distant cousin who survived. She walked home in a daze, with most of her clothes torn off, and burns on her body.

agrams

12:04a, 1/5/24

7 of 8 German soldiers who died in WWII died on the eastern front vs Russia.

Its amazing how many casualties other countries experienced as compared to the united states.

we had less than 1/3 of 1% killed per our 1939 population. (about 1 death per 312 people). Poland lost 1 in 6 of their population (mainly civilians).

The American war production capacity may have been the machine behind victory, but Russia was the meat grinder that chewed up most of Germany's soldiers.