What historical fact blows your mind?

 In 1965 the CIA lost something in the Himalayas that is still a threat to 600 million people.

China successfully conducted its first nuclear test in 1964, this caused serious concerns in both the US and India. Facing a common threat, the two countries decided it would be wise to spy on the Chinese from the heights of the Himalayas.

To do this they decided to plant a nuclear powered listening device on top of the second highest peak in India, Nanda Devi.

The device was called SNAP-19C, a radioisotope thermoelectric generator containing 5kgs of weapons grade plutonium. The plan was to conduct surveillance over the Tibetan Plateau and operate for decades with zero maintenance.

A joint team of American and Indian climbers was assembled and the mission went ahead. Everything was going well until they reached 7500 meters, just 300 meters from the summit, when a blizzard struck. To save their lives they had to retreat, leaving the generator anchored to an ice shelf. The plan was to retrieve it in spring.

But when they returned, an avalanche had already swallowed everything. Multiple recovery missions were launched but nothing was ever found.

60 years later, that 5kgs of weapons grade plutonium remains buried beneath the glaciers which are the source of River Ganga. The device is still missing, still radioactive and nobody is looking for it.

Do you know 10 fun historical facts?

 

1. Bob Marley was buried with his guitar, a soccer ball, a bible, a ring (a gift from an Ethiopian prince) and a stash of marijuana.
2. During his four films Rambo would have killed 370 people.
3. The word school derives from the ancient Greek skole which means rest, fun.
4. Originally, Coca Cola was green.
5. The word "cemetery" comes from the Greek koimetirion, which means "place to sleep".
6. During the Civil War, when troops returned to camps after a battle, the number of fallen soldiers was written on a blackboard. If there had been no losses, it was written "0 killed", hence the expression OK in the sense of "all good".
7. The Vikings never wore horned helmets.
8. Before the nineteenth century, shoes were not divided into right and left.
9. Venice is often called "The Bridge Capital of Europe" but it has only 398 bridges, while Amsterdam has 1280 and Hamburg has 2400.
10. In 1987, American Airlines saved $40,000 simply by removing an olive from each of the salads it served in first class.

What are some amazing historical photos?

 Traied best not to repeat photos.

1)This is bombed London in 1940. A little girl is sitting in the ruins of a building with her dolly.

Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa is returned to the Louvre after WWII

Back in 1956, a PanAm plane was needed to to transport a 5 MB hard drive.

Human-size chess game with actual soldiers in St. Petersburg, Russia (1924).

The 1937 “walking machine” tested wear on shoes (1937).

Arnold Schwarzenegger on the day he received his American citizenship

Testing bullet proof vest 1923. Because this is how they tested things back in the days - on humans

Elephants know how to have fun. Just ask Queenie, the first one to water surf (circa 1950)

Gandhi visits London

Police chasing skinny dippers.

Albert Einstein on the porch of your furry slippers. Even geniuses like cute stuff!

Shakira posts a TBT picture of her younger self for the International Women's Day

A woman uses an exercise bike (left) on the Titanic

The last known Tasmanian Tiger (now extinct) photographed in 1933

The Falling Man is a photograph taken by Associated Press photographer Richard Drew of a man falling from the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 9:41:15 a.m. during the September 11 attacks

Here are cameramen shooting and recording the lion roar for the MGM logo.

Steven Spielberg jokes his cult movie Jaws (Jaws) filming

Carl Akeley posed with the leopard he killed with his bare hands after it attacked him, 1896

What are some interesting historical facts that most people don't know?

 1. In 1991, a young Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were seen chatting together.

2. The cockpit of the famous Millennium Falcon spaceship. A scene from the filming of "Star Wars".

3. One of the original McDonald's restaurants. Photographed in 1948.

4. Singer Sting, rapper Tupac, and Madonna chatting together at a drinking party.

5. You might not believe it, but this is the city of Brasília. Construction began in 1960, and it is now the capital of Brazil.

6. The last photograph of the Titanic before it sank. April 1912.

7. The wedding of Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of Propaganda.

The man in the trench coat and hat in the background is Hitler, serving as the groom's best man.

8. A commemorative photograph of Walt Disney and his brother Roy at the founding of Disney Studios. Their mother and wives are also in the picture.

9. The Porsche 911 assembly line in Stuttgart, Germany. Photographed in 1970.

10. Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. pulls up a crucifix that white supremacists had burned in front of his Atlanta home. His son stands beside him. Photographed in 1960.

Which celebrity/historical figure has a dark past that everyone seems to ignore?

 

• Abraham Lincoln.
  He is known as the president who abolished slavery in America in 1865. But many people do not know that he did this solely for the political stability of the country.
  In a presidential debate in 1858, he himself had stated that he did not believe in racial equality or that Black people should be allowed to vote.

• Winston Churchill.
  In Europe, everyone sees him as a good man who played an important role in stopping World War II.
  After the First World War, the Ottoman Empire fell apart, and the British controlled a few parts of it in the Middle East at the time due to conflict.
  And this is what he had written in a memo: "I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes" when the British were there in 1919.
  Also, under his leadership, millions of Indians died of famine when the British still held India.

• Nelson Mandela,
  the former South African president, is a massive symbol of civil rights who spent nearly three decades in prison protesting against the apartheid regime. While
  most people believe his imprisonment was due to mere racism, the fact is that Mandela belonged to a terrorist splinter group of the African National Congress that employed sabotage, torture, and rigid tactics in their operations and was collectively responsible for over 130 deaths.
  In 1961, he broke with fellow African National Congress members who advocated non-violence, creating a terrorist wing.
  Mandela even proposed cutting off the noses of Black people considered collaborators.

• Mahatma Gandhi
  is known for making India independent from the British in a loving and peaceful way.
  However, he did not always practice what he preached.
  Despite this, he had many affairs with women.
  He is said to have slept right next to underage girls.
  And he also said racist things about Black South Africans.

• Martin Luther King
  had prostitutes and relationships with as many as 40 women.
  And he also plagiarized a number of works.

What is a piece of historical trivia that is so bizarre it sounds like it was taken from a fictional movie?

 In the most D&D thing which has ever happened, the world’s oldest (surviving) printed book was found by a cleric as part of a trove of mystical works in a secret room in an abandoned temple.

This is the Mogao cave shrine near Dunhuang, China, on the edge of the Taklamakan desert:

It’s complex of small shrines dug into the side of a hill (they’re artificial, not natural caves). Construction and use started around the 4th century AD. It grew to significant size, with dozens of individual shrines and sub-rooms. Around the beginning of the 11th century, a room full of books—mostly Buddhist texts but covering a wide range of other topics, including a Jewish manuscript—and other paraphernalia was walled off for reasons yet unknown. And in the 14th century, the complex fell out of use after a period of decline.

The site was rarely visited, but around the dawn of the 20th century, a Taoist monk became interested in it and worked to try to preserve it from further damage from the elements. While exploring the site, he realized that there was a walled off room, so he opened it up and discovered the so-called library cave. Among them was a complete copy of the Diamond Sutra printed with wood blocks in 868. There’s older printed material, but it’s all fragmentary. This is still the oldest known complete printed book.

What are some of the worst examples of historical errors in movies?

 Apocalypto, 2006, directed by…

Ah. Mel Gibson.

Apocalypto is a film about the Mayan collapse, which happened by 900 A.D, and went to painstaking detail to show this. The film shows the famine surrounding the collapse, with barren fields and dying crops, due to the Mayans expanding too fast, cutting down too many trees for their cities and ruining their soil for crops.

But nevertheless, the film opens showing a hunter-gatherer tribe in the jungle.

Okayyyyyy…

They look Mayan I suppose, and they are a hunter-gatherer tribe, so I suppose this could be an accurate look? Right let’s move on and say they look Mayan.

Mel Gibson even had the actors speak Yucatec Mayan, so props to him.

Their village is raided and a lot of inhabitants captured, and are set off on a journey across Mayan land to get to a Mayan city. The journey takes about two days to get to the city, which isn’t that much of a problem I suppose, it’s accurate.

The problems arise on the way.

So as they are on their merry travels, they come across an infected girl, crying over her mother, who died of an infection that results in blisters all across the body. The girl has this unknown disease too. Don’t hang around infected dead bodies kids.

Hold on. What are those blisters?

They look quite similar to smallpox blisters.

Obviously, the boy in the picture has a very bad case of it, and far more than the girl does. But nonetheless, that looks like smallpox, right? In fact, let’s look at her mother.

It is smallpox. It’s fucking smallpox.

That disease that the conquistadors brought with them that decimated native populations as they had never encountered it before and thus had no resistance against it?

But…the Christopher Columbus first arrived in 1492…

The Mayan collapse happened before 900 A.D.

Are you shitting me?

*Gibson giggling…Gibbling?*

So as the captives are taken to the Mayan city…finally. It looks good.

It looks good. There’s lime quarrying on the outskirts, which the process to make was one of the prime reasons to the collapse, at least in cities. The women look accurate, with absolutely bonkers hair.

It’s good. The pyramids are accurate, the industry, trade and general hustle and bustle is accurate. It’s very good. Mr Gibson, you’ve outdone yourself here.

Then we get to the sacrifice bit. The captives are dragged to the top of the pyramid, laid over an altar, have their heart extracted and are beheaded.

Isn’t that technique borrowed from the Aztec’s…who aren’t around yet?

Mayans preferred decapitation or non-lethal bloodletting. They wouldn’t learn the extracting the heart technique for a few hundred years.

Plus, that’s a hell of a lot of people they’re killing? There’s piles on piles of bodies at the base of the pyramid, far more than the Mayan’s would sacrifice. Wow. There’s even a mass grave later in the film. Full to the brim of bodies. The Mayan’s wouldn’t sacrfice that many at one time.

Nevertheless, the main character is saved by a timely solar eclipse, suggesting to the Mayans that their gods are appeased and no more sacrifices are needed.

Okay this is good. The Mayan leaders would control the populace through their religion, manipulating them and using their knowledge of solar eclipses to suggest when their gods are happy or unhappy, essentially, and what the populace should do about it. They were good astronomers, so when in the movie, the priest smiles at the king, it shows they knew the eclipse was going to happen. Good. Very good Mr Gibson.

The Mayans decide to spare the rest of the prisoners being sacrifices and instead decide to use them as target practice. Nothing wrong here. The main character kills the main bad guy’s son and runs into the forest.

The last half hour or so is a huge chase, with the main character using tricks like tree frog venom on blow darts etc until…until…

*More gibbling…almost maniacal*

There are…things in the background.

No.

Please Gibson.

Please.

I can’t think of a single explanation. The chase took 600 years? The journey did? They’re time travelling conquistadors? The film follows generations of one family, the main character being identical every generation?

I…can’t think of anything more broken.

So if the conquistadors are only just arriving (the characters have clearly never seen anything like this before) how did that girl get smallpox? It’s still the Mayan collapse right? It can’t be. What fucking year is this Gibson? What is this?!

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What are some rare historical photos whose existence you never imagined?

 At the dawn of the 20th century, the Russian photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) developed a three-lens camera that produced images of incredible quality for the time. Impressed, Tsar Nicholas II sent him to do a photographic report on the Russian Empire.

The photos that Sergei managed to take, although they are over a century old, look like they were taken yesterday, giving a realistic picture of the daily lives of Russians ten years before the Soviet Union.

I highly recommend that you do some research on Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii, as all of his photos are extraordinary.