DeadfallI don't think you realize just how rich he is.In fact, I should put on a monocle.Registered Userregular
In the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam, Australian rower Bobby Pearce was leading in the quarter-final when he looked ahead and saw a family of ducks crossing his lane.
He leaned immediately on his oars and let them pass. This let Frenchman Victor Saurin catch up and then pull away to a five-length lead.
But Pearce rocketed after him and won by 20 lengths — setting a new course record and making him a favorite with Dutch schoolchildren.
The badass of the week guy is not very big in historical accuracy.
He's also done entries on junk like wolverine and darth vader. It's sometimes funny, in a gimmicky way, when he's actually focusing on historical figures (especially ones that don't receive as much attention in popular history), but his writing is basically slightly above reading an article on cracked.
Also to his credit he has focused on historical "badasses," that were not soldiers/generals/etc. occasionally, but most seem to be the garden variety "check out this dude from military history who KILLED PEOPLE, he was so badass he KILLED LOTS OF PEOPLE, seriously this dude KILLED PEOPLE!"
"KILLED!!"
CptKemzik on
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BlackDragon480Bluster KerfuffleMaster of Windy ImportRegistered Userregular
The White Knight of Christendom was totally awesome.
I've often wondered what sort of Turkish ass-destroying capabilities the Hungarians and Romanians might have fielded against Mehmed II, had him and Vlad Tespes been able to bury the hatchet and not spend so much time back-biting the other for political favor with the mighty incest machine that was the Habsburgs.
True, Vlad was bat-shit loco (although getting traded (and evidence pointing to sexual abuse once he was there) to the Turkish court by one's own dad might do that), but him and Janos were easily the 2 best military minds in Europe in the mid 15th century. With the manpower Hunyadi could've conscripted as regent of Hungary they could quite possibly have stomped Mehmed's balls so hard he wouldn't have been able to take Constantinople.
No matter where you go...there you are. ~ Buckaroo Banzai
One more reason to fear bears. They can help load artillery.
The Janissaries were very interesting because the whole, "kidnapping the children of our enemies to raise as shock troopers" was and is completely horrible, but they lived much, much better than the average peasant soldier and could advance very high in society, receiving excellent education and eventually political power if they were talented enough. They had retirement pensions for crying out loud!
I find it really goddamn hard to sympathize for the Confederate army when their standard MO was to "shoot every black soldier on sight whether they've surrendered or not."
It's enough to make one cheer for Sherman as he marched to the sea.
Yeah Lee was brave and what not, but still, the Confeds were dicks.
sherman probably didn't do that much damage
the csa destroyed stuff as it retreated
read lies my teacher told me
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Shortytouching the meatIntergalactic Cool CourtRegistered Userregular
In the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam, Australian rower Bobby Pearce was leading in the quarter-final when he looked ahead and saw a family of ducks crossing his lane.
He leaned immediately on his oars and let them pass. This let Frenchman Victor Saurin catch up and then pull away to a five-length lead.
But Pearce rocketed after him and won by 20 lengths — setting a new course record and making him a favorite with Dutch schoolchildren.
It was exaggerated by whining civilians/soldiers who were damn lucky all they lost was their property. That tends to happen when you, you know, lose a damn war. Anyway, I'm just not particularly sympathetic to the South at that time.
Abloo abloo my kids cried and they had my stuff hauled off by black people! She was lucky her Northern brethren were quite merciful in other ways.
It sucks when civilians suffer in war, but given how awful social institutions in the south were during, and after, the war there was no way they were going to change without it getting beaten out of them.
You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out.
--William Tecumseh Sherman
Letter to the city of Atlanta, 1864
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facetiousa wit so dryit shits sandRegistered Userregular
edited May 2012
Yeah that one is my favourite.
E: at ducks.
facetious on
"I am not young enough to know everything." - Oscar Wilde
Shortytouching the meatIntergalactic Cool CourtRegistered Userregular
edited May 2012
also the North had embraced a war philosophy of concilliation at the beginning of the conflict
it was only after southern guerillas aided by the general populace became a problem that Sherman and some other generals started lobbying Lincoln for a change in strategy
Really don't dig all the confederate flags I see these days.
In fucking Ohio.
But yeah, I actually think the north wasn't a ton better even during the war in regards to social institutions. Certainly after the war, segregation was a national problem for like almost 100 years.
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Shortytouching the meatIntergalactic Cool CourtRegistered Userregular
Really don't dig all the confederate flags I see these days.
In fucking Ohio.
But yeah, I actually think the north wasn't a ton better even during the war in regards to social institutions. Certainly after the war, segregation was a national problem for like almost 100 years.
for the record, schools in the US are exactly as segregated today as they were in the 60's (you know, when states were allowed to tell black folk they couldn't drink from the same water fountains as whites)
but because it's de facto segregation and not de rigeur (that is, it has resulted indirectly, from socio-economic conditions and lots of far-reaching problems too complicated and diverse to go into right now), a federal court decided this was fine
oh and also the north during the war wasn't a slave society
Really don't dig all the confederate flags I see these days.
In fucking Ohio.
But yeah, I actually think the north wasn't a ton better even during the war in regards to social institutions. Certainly after the war, segregation was a national problem for like almost 100 years.
for the record, schools in the US are exactly as segregated today as they were in the 60's
but because it's de facto segregation and not de rigeur (that is, it has resulted indirectly, from socio-economic conditions and lots of far-reaching problems too complicated and diverse to go into right now), a federal court decided this was fine
oh and also the north during the war wasn't a slave society
so, I'd say that's pretty significantly better
Well that's true.
But anyway fuck people with confederate flags on their pickup trucks.
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Shortytouching the meatIntergalactic Cool CourtRegistered Userregular
did you know that before anyone knew about radiological dating, they tried to calculate the age of the earth by taking all the known depths of the ocean, finding the probably average depth, then multiplying that by the known area of the ocean for the total amount of seawater, then investigating a bunch of rivers to determine the content of sodium per gallon, then multiplying that number by the calculated amount of water making its way into the ocean each year, then looking at the concentration of sodium in seawater plus non-oceanic salt clearly of a maritime origin like that deposited on the banks of the dead sea to find the total amount of sodium that had ever traveled from land into the sea, which was assumed to have been created as a body of freshwater
thereby calculating the age of the ocean, and by extension the earth: 80 to 100 million years
did you know that before anyone knew about radiological dating, they tried to calculate the age of the earth by taking all the known depths of the ocean, finding the probably average depth, then multiplying that by the known area of the ocean for the total amount of seawater, then investigating a bunch of rivers to determine the content of sodium per gallon, then multiplying that number by the calculated amount of water making its way into the ocean each year, then looking at the concentration of sodium in seawater plus non-oceanic salt clearly of a maritime origin like that deposited on the banks of the dead sea to find the total amount of sodium that had ever traveled from land into the sea, which was assumed to have been created as a body of freshwater
thereby calculating the age of the ocean, and by extension the earth: 80 to 100 million years
someone also calculated it based on the time it would have taken for the earth to cool, but they didn't know that radioactivity would have heated the earth, or that convection happened, so they got another much too low number (like 400-800?)
also, there was a geological school of thought called neptunism, that held that the earth had essentially formed as a big ball of mud, from which the rocks had been deposited in order of density, starting with granite and ending with sand-and siltstones with the water around the topmost layers
goethe was a neptunist and made fun of people because they thought it was bullshit (it was)
Arang on
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StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
Hmm
I spent four years of my life studying badass history things and somehow cannot remember a single one right now
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StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
He's not really a badass but he is the biggest cocksucker ever so this is kind of close
Back in the Peleponnessian war there was this dude named Alcibiades. He was an Athenian statesman and general, and was one of the major generals for the taking of Sicily. The night before he leaves he gets mad trashed and maybe commits some heresy. As he's fighting through his hangover he hears that people are kind of angry about this, and runs the fuck away. To Sparta. Enemy of Athens.
They welcome this rad general with open arms until he fucks enough wives to get run out of that town too, and he ends up working for Persia. So, essentially, at this point, he has worked as a general for every major military power in the area, during a fucking war. Where is there to go?
Back to Athens, Al decides, and his political allies get him his old job back. He does some good work, because, well, supremely talented general, but eventually fucks up at his job and gets exiled. Again.
He's still got some sweet enemies back in Sparta, so he decides to skip straight to the Persians and get himself a swank retirement package. Unfortunately, the Spartans are pretty damn unforgiving, and eventually track them down and set fire to that retirement package. Realizing that he is pretty much doomed, Alcibiades runs out the front door, dagger in hand, and is immediately met with a hail of arrows.
did you know that early on in the history of radio, especially prior to the first world war, filters were so expensive, large and useless that they were not widely used
the result was that, for example on the titanic, morse code did not come through as a neat series of beeps but as a constant stream of hiss with fluctuations in that hiss indicating a signal
so telegraphists not only had to decode morse at speed, but had to listen closely to determine what was a signal and what was atmospheric noise
it's worth noting that it is believed that one of the wives alcibiades fucked was the wife of one of the kings of sparta
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Captain Marcusnow arrives the hour of actionRegistered Userregular
edited May 2012
Let's see here...
The phrase about "writing history with lightning" and Birth of a Nation attributed to Woodrow Wilson was most likely made up by a Hollywood PR man.
The most powerful the Klan has ever been was in early 20's Indiana.
The Nazi civil engineering/public works organisation Organisation Todt (Todt also means "death" in German) use forced labor to build a massive series of underground complexes in Eastern Europe. According to the construction manifests, over half of the complexes have not been found/explored.
The Soviets used large amounts of slave labor of German civilians in their mines after the war.
In real life, this gun fight was even crazier though the only KIA was Curley. I'm quoting from Wyatt Earp the Life Behind the Legend. By Casey Tefertiller.
"As we got near the place I had a presentiment that something was wrong, and unlimbered my shotgun," Earp said. "Sure enough, nine cowboys spran up from the bank where the spring was and began firing at us." One of them hit Vermillion's horse and the animal fell atop Texas Jack's leg.
Earp leaped off his horse and threw the bridle over his arm. "I expected Holliday and my companions to do the same thing and make a fight," he said. "I was surprised when I looked around to see them disappearing in a cloud of dust as fast as their horses could carry them. I reckoned that my time had come. But if I was to die, I proposed that Curley Bill at least should die with me.
The rustler fired rapidly with his shotgun tearing into the skirts of Earp's long coat. Earp brought his own shotgun to his shoulder and pointed directly at Curley Bill's heart, then fired both barrels. "His chest was torn open by the big charge of buckshot. He yelled like a demon as he went down," Earp said.
After that he tried to retrieve his Winchester but his horse was bucking too hard so he couldn't grab it, he went for his pistol... and the cartridge belt had slipped off of him. He went for another pistol and finally wounded another cowboy. Then he finally got to remounting his horse, bear in mind, he's still being shot at. A bullet blew off the heel of his boot.
"When I got to the ground, I found that the skirts of my coat, which had been held out at my sides by my leather holsters had been riddled into shreds." When Earp rode up, Holliday grabbed him gently by the arm and said, "You must be shot all to pieces." The party was stunned to find he was untouched.
"Our escape was miraculous," Holliday said. The shots cut our clothes and saddles and killed one horse, but did not hit us. I think we would have been all killed if God Almighty wasn't on our side."
So to sum up, in real life. Earp did that whole shoot out alone, killed Curley Bill and wounded another cowboy without access to most of his weapons, remounted his horse under fire, and did not lose a single drop of blood.
That is how legends get made. And yes, before anyone asks, no one disputes how this battle unfolded. The account is the same from participants on both sides, unlike the O.K. Coral.
Just let that name sink in for a moment. Just let that title sink in, because none of your foreign heroes and explorers have anywhere near the class of this dude. This dude, people didn't believe he actually existed, even at the time of his death. He was a living legend, a name whispered in hushed tones between European aristocracy. Hey, is that Drake bastard out conquering the known world again? You bet your ass he is, Mister Ambassador. Now eat your shrimp.
OK first things first, he was the second person to circumnavigate the Earth. Ever. And unlike that dick Magellan he had the British dignity to not fucking die halfway around in some Godless tropical hellhole. He stood on the prow of his ship as he sailed it all the way up the Thames right into goddamn London itself, victorious and full of glory, applauded on his route by what was described as 'All of England'.
Well anyway, before that, after making his way to Argentina, he put in at some completely random bay that fifty years earlier Magellan had used to execute some mutineers. Upon finding the bleached skeletons swinging from, and I quote, 'poorly constructed Spanish gibbets', he discovered one of his own ships was rotting. So he burned it and executed the captain for not upholding the English naval standards.
Once he made his way into the Pacific, on his expedition to circumnavigate the globe, he stopped off at some Spanish colonies for a spot of 'light pillaging'. With a fleet outfitted for navigation and endurance, not combat, he massacred them so hard that he actually had to dump cargo at Lima because the sheer amount of plundered gold was weighing down his vessels.
Motherfucker was so good at this that not only did the Spanish name him 'The Dragon', but a bounty 6.5 million dollars (adjusted) was placed on his head by the King of Spain, that's six times the bounty put on Bin Laden. They hated him.
So Drake, the world's ultimate pirate, practically overflowing with booty decides not only to press on regardless, but he does so despite disease and the loss of another ship, and some crew which he used to found another English colony, this time in California. As though there weren't enough English colonies out there.
Drake gets back to England with more gold than the entire Empire had earned in a year, hands it all over to the Queen for an ungodly reward, and then becomes the Duke of Ash. Just look at that title and weep because you are never going to be 'The Dragon, Duke of Ash'.
The rest of his life was relatively uneventful. Except for, you know, destroying the Spanish Armada, flawlessly raiding yet more Spanish towns, this time in Spain, pillaging and looting to essentially no limit, and finally being buried (in full military dress) within a stone coffin at sea by a royally hand picked crew of the finest sailors in the entire Empire, brought together for that one purpose from across the globe. He was buried by the goddamn Sea Avengers.
His flagship, the Golden Hinde (another badass name, by the way) single-handedly paid off England's entire foreign debt. Think about that for a moment. One man, one ship, one crew, stole so much gold and jewels and treasures and valuable sea charts, and founded enough colonies and outposts and trading ports, in one journey around the world, that they bankrolled the largest Empire the world has ever seen, or ever will see. Badasses to the end. National heroes. Legends.
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TrippyJingMoses supposes his toeses are roses.But Moses supposes erroneously.Registered Userregular
During the Black Death of the 14th century, entire communities of Jewish people were murdered by ignorant and hysterical Christians who thought that the Jews were causing the plague by poisoning the wells and the rivers.
Pope Clement VI was a voice of reason, proclaiming:
Hey, you dumb fucks. There are plenty of Jews dying of the plague, too! Why would they be poisoning themselves? I mean, holy shit. What is wrong with you? Goddamnit. Fucking shit.
Having read a lot of racist rationalization in my time:
Well, obviously they're trying to put themselves above suspicion! And you know those Jews are always fucking each other over!
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BeastehTHAT WOULD NOTKILL DRACULARegistered Userregular
from my bedroom window i can see francis drakes' house
he is from my city you see
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facetiousa wit so dryit shits sandRegistered Userregular
Just let that name sink in for a moment. Just let that title sink in, because none of your foreign heroes and explorers have anywhere near the class of this dude. This dude, people didn't believe he actually existed, even at the time of his death. He was a living legend, a name whispered in hushed tones between European aristocracy. Hey, is that Drake bastard out conquering the known world again? You bet your ass he is, Mister Ambassador. Now eat your shrimp.
OK first things first, he was the second person to circumnavigate the Earth. Ever. And unlike that dick Magellan he had the British dignity to not fucking die halfway around in some Godless tropical hellhole. He stood on the prow of his ship as he sailed it all the way up the Thames right into goddamn London itself, victorious and full of glory, applauded on his route by what was described as 'All of England'.
Well anyway, before that, after making his way to Argentina, he put in at some completely random bay that fifty years earlier Magellan had used to execute some mutineers. Upon finding the bleached skeletons swinging from, and I quote, 'poorly constructed Spanish gibbets', he discovered one of his own ships was rotting. So he burned it and executed the captain for not upholding the English naval standards.
Once he made his way into the Pacific, on his expedition to circumnavigate the globe, he stopped off at some Spanish colonies for a spot of 'light pillaging'. With a fleet outfitted for navigation and endurance, not combat, he massacred them so hard that he actually had to dump cargo at Lima because the sheer amount of plundered gold was weighing down his vessels.
Motherfucker was so good at this that not only did the Spanish name him 'The Dragon', but a bounty 6.5 million dollars (adjusted) was placed on his head by the King of Spain, that's six times the bounty put on Bin Laden. They hated him.
So Drake, the world's ultimate pirate, practically overflowing with booty decides not only to press on regardless, but he does so despite disease and the loss of another ship, and some crew which he used to found another English colony, this time in California. As though there weren't enough English colonies out there.
Drake gets back to England with more gold than the entire Empire had earned in a year, hands it all over to the Queen for an ungodly reward, and then becomes the Duke of Ash. Just look at that title and weep because you are never going to be 'The Dragon, Duke of Ash'.
The rest of his life was relatively uneventful. Except for, you know, destroying the Spanish Armada, flawlessly raiding yet more Spanish towns, this time in Spain, pillaging and looting to essentially no limit, and finally being buried (in full military dress) within a stone coffin at sea by a royally hand picked crew of the finest sailors in the entire Empire, brought together for that one purpose from across the globe. He was buried by the goddamn Sea Avengers.
His flagship, the Golden Hinde (another badass name, by the way) single-handedly paid off England's entire foreign debt. Think about that for a moment. One man, one ship, one crew, stole so much gold and jewels and treasures and valuable sea charts, and founded enough colonies and outposts and trading ports, in one journey around the world, that they bankrolled the largest Empire the world has ever seen, or ever will see. Badasses to the end. National heroes. Legends.
Just let that name sink in for a moment. Just let that title sink in, because none of your foreign heroes and explorers have anywhere near the class of this dude. This dude, people didn't believe he actually existed, even at the time of his death. He was a living legend, a name whispered in hushed tones between European aristocracy. Hey, is that Drake bastard out conquering the known world again? You bet your ass he is, Mister Ambassador. Now eat your shrimp.
OK first things first, he was the second person to circumnavigate the Earth. Ever. And unlike that dick Magellan he had the British dignity to not fucking die halfway around in some Godless tropical hellhole. He stood on the prow of his ship as he sailed it all the way up the Thames right into goddamn London itself, victorious and full of glory, applauded on his route by what was described as 'All of England'.
Well anyway, before that, after making his way to Argentina, he put in at some completely random bay that fifty years earlier Magellan had used to execute some mutineers. Upon finding the bleached skeletons swinging from, and I quote, 'poorly constructed Spanish gibbets', he discovered one of his own ships was rotting. So he burned it and executed the captain for not upholding the English naval standards.
Once he made his way into the Pacific, on his expedition to circumnavigate the globe, he stopped off at some Spanish colonies for a spot of 'light pillaging'. With a fleet outfitted for navigation and endurance, not combat, he massacred them so hard that he actually had to dump cargo at Lima because the sheer amount of plundered gold was weighing down his vessels.
Motherfucker was so good at this that not only did the Spanish name him 'The Dragon', but a bounty 6.5 million dollars (adjusted) was placed on his head by the King of Spain, that's six times the bounty put on Bin Laden. They hated him.
So Drake, the world's ultimate pirate, practically overflowing with booty decides not only to press on regardless, but he does so despite disease and the loss of another ship, and some crew which he used to found another English colony, this time in California. As though there weren't enough English colonies out there.
Drake gets back to England with more gold than the entire Empire had earned in a year, hands it all over to the Queen for an ungodly reward, and then becomes the Duke of Ash. Just look at that title and weep because you are never going to be 'The Dragon, Duke of Ash'.
The rest of his life was relatively uneventful. Except for, you know, destroying the Spanish Armada, flawlessly raiding yet more Spanish towns, this time in Spain, pillaging and looting to essentially no limit, and finally being buried (in full military dress) within a stone coffin at sea by a royally hand picked crew of the finest sailors in the entire Empire, brought together for that one purpose from across the globe. He was buried by the goddamn Sea Avengers.
His flagship, the Golden Hinde (another badass name, by the way) single-handedly paid off England's entire foreign debt. Think about that for a moment. One man, one ship, one crew, stole so much gold and jewels and treasures and valuable sea charts, and founded enough colonies and outposts and trading ports, in one journey around the world, that they bankrolled the largest Empire the world has ever seen, or ever will see. Badasses to the end. National heroes. Legends.
I am in tears
I am saluting.
And not in that limp wristed American palm down way either.
Posts
http://badassoftheweek.com/hunyadi.html
Love this.
xbl - HowYouGetAnts
steam - WeAreAllGeth
He's also done entries on junk like wolverine and darth vader. It's sometimes funny, in a gimmicky way, when he's actually focusing on historical figures (especially ones that don't receive as much attention in popular history), but his writing is basically slightly above reading an article on cracked.
Also to his credit he has focused on historical "badasses," that were not soldiers/generals/etc. occasionally, but most seem to be the garden variety "check out this dude from military history who KILLED PEOPLE, he was so badass he KILLED LOTS OF PEOPLE, seriously this dude KILLED PEOPLE!"
"KILLED!!"
The White Knight of Christendom was totally awesome.
I've often wondered what sort of Turkish ass-destroying capabilities the Hungarians and Romanians might have fielded against Mehmed II, had him and Vlad Tespes been able to bury the hatchet and not spend so much time back-biting the other for political favor with the mighty incest machine that was the Habsburgs.
True, Vlad was bat-shit loco (although getting traded (and evidence pointing to sexual abuse once he was there) to the Turkish court by one's own dad might do that), but him and Janos were easily the 2 best military minds in Europe in the mid 15th century. With the manpower Hunyadi could've conscripted as regent of Hungary they could quite possibly have stomped Mehmed's balls so hard he wouldn't have been able to take Constantinople.
~ Buckaroo Banzai
The Janissaries were very interesting because the whole, "kidnapping the children of our enemies to raise as shock troopers" was and is completely horrible, but they lived much, much better than the average peasant soldier and could advance very high in society, receiving excellent education and eventually political power if they were talented enough. They had retirement pensions for crying out loud!
sherman probably didn't do that much damage
the csa destroyed stuff as it retreated
read lies my teacher told me
oh goodness yes
http://beta.effinghamherald.net/archives/4385/
Abloo abloo my kids cried and they had my stuff hauled off by black people! She was lucky her Northern brethren were quite merciful in other ways.
It sucks when civilians suffer in war, but given how awful social institutions in the south were during, and after, the war there was no way they were going to change without it getting beaten out of them.
E: at ducks.
Steam: Chagrin LoL: Bonhomie
it was only after southern guerillas aided by the general populace became a problem that Sherman and some other generals started lobbying Lincoln for a change in strategy
to what is called punitive war
In fucking Ohio.
But yeah, I actually think the north wasn't a ton better even during the war in regards to social institutions. Certainly after the war, segregation was a national problem for like almost 100 years.
for the record, schools in the US are exactly as segregated today as they were in the 60's (you know, when states were allowed to tell black folk they couldn't drink from the same water fountains as whites)
but because it's de facto segregation and not de rigeur (that is, it has resulted indirectly, from socio-economic conditions and lots of far-reaching problems too complicated and diverse to go into right now), a federal court decided this was fine
oh and also the north during the war wasn't a slave society
so, I'd say that's pretty significantly better
But anyway fuck people with confederate flags on their pickup trucks.
and the government wasn't segregated until woodrow wilson did it
man, i used to like that guy in history class, but he was a huge asshole
What a nerd.
There are a whole bunch of places named after him
Before that there was a Jesse James Drive In Theater there. Well, before I was born.
Not sure what Jesse James ever did in Toledo Ohio?
Probably nothing, probably more had to do with the movies they would show there.
thereby calculating the age of the ocean, and by extension the earth: 80 to 100 million years
Still higher than 6000.
Suck it creationists.
Yeah, the moon landings were fake? SCREW YOU BUDDY!
also, there was a geological school of thought called neptunism, that held that the earth had essentially formed as a big ball of mud, from which the rocks had been deposited in order of density, starting with granite and ending with sand-and siltstones with the water around the topmost layers
goethe was a neptunist and made fun of people because they thought it was bullshit (it was)
I spent four years of my life studying badass history things and somehow cannot remember a single one right now
Back in the Peleponnessian war there was this dude named Alcibiades. He was an Athenian statesman and general, and was one of the major generals for the taking of Sicily. The night before he leaves he gets mad trashed and maybe commits some heresy. As he's fighting through his hangover he hears that people are kind of angry about this, and runs the fuck away. To Sparta. Enemy of Athens.
They welcome this rad general with open arms until he fucks enough wives to get run out of that town too, and he ends up working for Persia. So, essentially, at this point, he has worked as a general for every major military power in the area, during a fucking war. Where is there to go?
Back to Athens, Al decides, and his political allies get him his old job back. He does some good work, because, well, supremely talented general, but eventually fucks up at his job and gets exiled. Again.
He's still got some sweet enemies back in Sparta, so he decides to skip straight to the Persians and get himself a swank retirement package. Unfortunately, the Spartans are pretty damn unforgiving, and eventually track them down and set fire to that retirement package. Realizing that he is pretty much doomed, Alcibiades runs out the front door, dagger in hand, and is immediately met with a hail of arrows.
the result was that, for example on the titanic, morse code did not come through as a neat series of beeps but as a constant stream of hiss with fluctuations in that hiss indicating a signal
so telegraphists not only had to decode morse at speed, but had to listen closely to determine what was a signal and what was atmospheric noise
The phrase about "writing history with lightning" and Birth of a Nation attributed to Woodrow Wilson was most likely made up by a Hollywood PR man.
The most powerful the Klan has ever been was in early 20's Indiana.
The Nazi civil engineering/public works organisation Organisation Todt (Todt also means "death" in German) use forced labor to build a massive series of underground complexes in Eastern Europe. According to the construction manifests, over half of the complexes have not been found/explored.
The Soviets used large amounts of slave labor of German civilians in their mines after the war.
In real life, this gun fight was even crazier though the only KIA was Curley. I'm quoting from Wyatt Earp the Life Behind the Legend. By Casey Tefertiller.
After that he tried to retrieve his Winchester but his horse was bucking too hard so he couldn't grab it, he went for his pistol... and the cartridge belt had slipped off of him. He went for another pistol and finally wounded another cowboy. Then he finally got to remounting his horse, bear in mind, he's still being shot at. A bullet blew off the heel of his boot.
So to sum up, in real life. Earp did that whole shoot out alone, killed Curley Bill and wounded another cowboy without access to most of his weapons, remounted his horse under fire, and did not lose a single drop of blood.
That is how legends get made. And yes, before anyone asks, no one disputes how this battle unfolded. The account is the same from participants on both sides, unlike the O.K. Coral.
Welcome to the own zone, motherfuckers.
Sir Francis Drake.
Just let that name sink in for a moment. Just let that title sink in, because none of your foreign heroes and explorers have anywhere near the class of this dude. This dude, people didn't believe he actually existed, even at the time of his death. He was a living legend, a name whispered in hushed tones between European aristocracy. Hey, is that Drake bastard out conquering the known world again? You bet your ass he is, Mister Ambassador. Now eat your shrimp.
OK first things first, he was the second person to circumnavigate the Earth. Ever. And unlike that dick Magellan he had the British dignity to not fucking die halfway around in some Godless tropical hellhole. He stood on the prow of his ship as he sailed it all the way up the Thames right into goddamn London itself, victorious and full of glory, applauded on his route by what was described as 'All of England'.
Well anyway, before that, after making his way to Argentina, he put in at some completely random bay that fifty years earlier Magellan had used to execute some mutineers. Upon finding the bleached skeletons swinging from, and I quote, 'poorly constructed Spanish gibbets', he discovered one of his own ships was rotting. So he burned it and executed the captain for not upholding the English naval standards.
Once he made his way into the Pacific, on his expedition to circumnavigate the globe, he stopped off at some Spanish colonies for a spot of 'light pillaging'. With a fleet outfitted for navigation and endurance, not combat, he massacred them so hard that he actually had to dump cargo at Lima because the sheer amount of plundered gold was weighing down his vessels.
Motherfucker was so good at this that not only did the Spanish name him 'The Dragon', but a bounty 6.5 million dollars (adjusted) was placed on his head by the King of Spain, that's six times the bounty put on Bin Laden. They hated him.
So Drake, the world's ultimate pirate, practically overflowing with booty decides not only to press on regardless, but he does so despite disease and the loss of another ship, and some crew which he used to found another English colony, this time in California. As though there weren't enough English colonies out there.
Drake gets back to England with more gold than the entire Empire had earned in a year, hands it all over to the Queen for an ungodly reward, and then becomes the Duke of Ash. Just look at that title and weep because you are never going to be 'The Dragon, Duke of Ash'.
The rest of his life was relatively uneventful. Except for, you know, destroying the Spanish Armada, flawlessly raiding yet more Spanish towns, this time in Spain, pillaging and looting to essentially no limit, and finally being buried (in full military dress) within a stone coffin at sea by a royally hand picked crew of the finest sailors in the entire Empire, brought together for that one purpose from across the globe. He was buried by the goddamn Sea Avengers.
His flagship, the Golden Hinde (another badass name, by the way) single-handedly paid off England's entire foreign debt. Think about that for a moment. One man, one ship, one crew, stole so much gold and jewels and treasures and valuable sea charts, and founded enough colonies and outposts and trading ports, in one journey around the world, that they bankrolled the largest Empire the world has ever seen, or ever will see. Badasses to the end. National heroes. Legends.
Having read a lot of racist rationalization in my time:
Well, obviously they're trying to put themselves above suspicion! And you know those Jews are always fucking each other over!
he is from my city you see
So he was Charizard?
Steam: Chagrin LoL: Bonhomie
I am in tears
I am saluting.
And not in that limp wristed American palm down way either.