MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
A guy claims he's (at least partially) solved the mystery of the lost colony of Roanoke. He did this via the most obvious method possible - going to the island where it's most likely the colonists had moved to and starting some digs. That island is Hatteras, which was sometimes called Croatoan at the time because of the Croatoan tribe that lived there. You know, the name that was carved into the tree at Roanoke, as if the people there had, you know, left a note to say where they went to (a nicer island nearby with friendly helpful people). And lo and behold, the guy and his team found artifacts dating to the late 1500s including items that would have been for English women, when this would've been the only place that would've had women from England at the time.
The biggest mystery for me has always been why, when the colonists there had left a dang note saying where they were (not far away, with friendly known people) why no one went and looked, both then and now. The rescue mission to Roanoke gave some weak excuses about, like, it was stormy so they wouldn't go to the next island over. Almost makes me wonder if the colonists had been found, living happily with the Croatoan tribe and not wanting to be rescued and go back to England with its horrible social structures and oppressive laws, and the rescue mission just couldn't deal with being rejected like that. And people didn't want to go looking for evidence before now because the thought that maybe the colonists noped out of "civilization" was too much to bear - better to just pretend they magically disappeared into the mist never to be seen again than question their cultural assumptions of superiority.
Or maybe people are just stupid and lazy. There could be that too.
A guy claims he's (at least partially) solved the mystery of the lost colony of Roanoke. He did this via the most obvious method possible - going to the island where it's most likely the colonists had moved to and starting some digs. That island is Hatteras, which was sometimes called Croatoan at the time because of the Croatoan tribe that lived there. You know, the name that was carved into the tree at Roanoke, as if the people there had, you know, left a note to say where they went to (a nicer island nearby with friendly helpful people). And lo and behold, the guy and his team found artifacts dating to the late 1500s including items that would have been for English women, when this would've been the only place that would've had women from England at the time.
The biggest mystery for me has always been why, when the colonists there had left a dang note saying where they were (not far away, with friendly known people) why no one went and looked, both then and now. The rescue mission to Roanoke gave some weak excuses about, like, it was stormy so they wouldn't go to the next island over. Almost makes me wonder if the colonists had been found, living happily with the Croatoan tribe and not wanting to be rescued and go back to England with its horrible social structures and oppressive laws, and the rescue mission just couldn't deal with being rejected like that. And people didn't want to go looking for evidence before now because the thought that maybe the colonists noped out of "civilization" was too much to bear - better to just pretend they magically disappeared into the mist never to be seen again than question their cultural assumptions of superiority.
Or maybe people are just stupid and lazy. There could be that too.
Just flipping through the wikipedia entry on Roanoke and nothing there seems particularly strange or in need of some alternate explanation. War with Spain breaks out making going back to check on the colony a pain in the ass. When White finally gets back there years later, they find the dismantled settlement and the message. But the weather and a snapped anchor cable make going over to check out the other island where they figure the colonists must be impossible and then luck gets worse.
The party returned to Hopewell that evening, and plans were made to return to Croatoan the following day. However, Hopewell's anchor cable snapped, leaving the ship with only one working cable and anchor. The search mission could not continue given the considerable risk of shipwreck. Moonlight set off for England, but the crew of Hopewell offered a compromise with White, in which they would spend winter in the Caribbean and return to the Outer Banks in the spring of 1591. This plan fell through, though, when Hopewell was blown off course, forcing them to stop for supplies in the Azores. When the winds prevented landfall there, the ship was again forced to change course for England, arriving on October 24, 1590
And then after that, well:
Although White failed to locate his colonists in 1590, his report suggested they had simply relocated and might yet be found alive. However, it served Raleigh's purposes to keep the matter in doubt; so long as the settlers could not be proven dead, he could legally maintain his claim on Virginia.
Then there's a few more attempts years and years later. Some of them get their own share of shit luck.
And it seems like "they probably integrated with the local tribes" was considered an option since at least the very early 1600s.
I'm not sure there's really any need to invent alternative takes here. Bad luck and circumstances prevented them from getting back quickly, they basically understood the message but couldn't check the other island and then circumstances and some good old fashioned greed made going back for another search a problem.
MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
In the long ago ancient before times of five years ago I posted about a date palm nicknamed Methuselah because he'd been sprouted from a seed found in an excavation of Masada, destroyed in 74 CE.
This wasn't the end of the story. Dr. Solowey and her team hunted down other ancient Judean date palm seeds of similar antiquity to try to sprout them. Six that she found did, including one possibly a couple centuries older than Methuselah. Some of these new sprouts were female, and the flowers of one (nicknamed Hannah) were fertilized with pollen off Methuselah. Hannah set fruit. Most of the fruits were harvested and sent off for analysis and testing and so forth, but after all this time, the good doctor had to try a few.
In the long ago ancient before times of five years ago I posted about a date palm nicknamed Methuselah because he'd been sprouted from a seed found in an excavation of Masada, destroyed in 74 CE.
This wasn't the end of the story. Dr. Solowey and her team hunted down other ancient Judean date palm seeds of similar antiquity to try to sprout them. Six that she found did, including one possibly a couple centuries older than Methuselah. Some of these new sprouts were female, and the flowers of one (nicknamed Hannah) were fertilized with pollen off Methuselah. Hannah set fruit. Most of the fruits were harvested and sent off for analysis and testing and so forth, but after all this time, the good doctor had to try a few.
Oh good, I was wondering how 2020 would end, this whole Covid thing is wearing thin.
Nice to see we'll be getting ancient zombie pneumonia thanks to devouring excavated plants. THEY ARE ALWAYS BURIED FOR A REASON AND THAT REASON IS ALWAYS CURSES.
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MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
I can't let this joke lie here. It's not a cursed plant. Dr. Solowey (and the other doctors involved) have been trying to bring back lost and rare breeds of plants for the purposes of human survival. It's basically trying to preserve heirloom crops, only crops that went extinct because no one was trying to preserve them. She's a researcher at a nonprofit trying to build human resiliency via a wide variety of crops, so if something went wrong there would be some backup that could keep going, instead of just "yep, the potatoes all died; we starve now."
If you want cursed plants there's plenty of invasive giant hogweed around. Leave the nice date palms alone.
It's just one of the daily supply of awful "lol 2020 worst year ever mirite?" jokes
But Doctor, I am 2020!
RedTide#1907 on Battle.net
Come Overwatch with meeeee
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MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
Yeah, and the one time I try to post something not terrible, people try to turn it terrible.
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MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
A mass grave likely of victims of the Tulsa Race Massacre has been found, though the remains are in such bad condition and the weather is getting bad enough that confirmation exhumations will have to wait for further planning and preparations to make sure the researchers wouldn't cause more damage.
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MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
This has been active in locals minds for a long, long time. But especially over Trump's admin.
This is also far from the only truly horrific lynching to happen in Central Florida. While a diverse and international city now, that sort of diversity has only existed from about 40 years. Before that, we were just as bad, if not worse, than the most racist backwater of the rest of Dixie.
In-Range and Forgotten Weapons are the only gun channels worth a shit
I used to like Demolition Ranch but Matt's gone off the deep end. Hickok45 has actually been sliding slightly leftwards politically, so I watch more of his videos now than I used to. He was one of if not the first big gun channel to disavow the NRA when the corruption scandal broke.
Wehrhafte Schweiz ("Fortress of Peace") /Nous pouvons nous défendre ("We Can Defend Ourselves") is a 1964 Swiss Army propaganda film, made for the Expo 64 national exhibition and 1965 Oscar nominee for Best Short Film. The bulk of the film is un-narrated footage of a Swiss military exercise defending against a notional attacker.
For a work of official military propaganda, it is notable not only for its high production costs (it was shot on MCS-70 Super Panorama 70mm stock, giving it exceptionally clear quality) but also for its experimental nature: it was intended to be screened Cinerama-style on three separate side-by-side projectors showing different simultaneous shots, and has an artistic five-minute intro sequence.
In 2014, the footage was restored and the film was re-released to celebrate Expo 64.
tl;dr its 20 minutes of very crisp, clean footage of the 1960s Swiss Army pretending to fight a war
Wehrhafte Schweiz ("Fortress of Peace") /Nous pouvons nous défendre ("We Can Defend Ourselves") is a 1964 Swiss Army propaganda film, made for the Expo 64 national exhibition and 1965 Oscar nominee for Best Short Film. The bulk of the film is un-narrated footage of a Swiss military exercise defending against a notional attacker.
For a work of official military propaganda, it is notable not only for its high production costs (it was shot on MCS-70 Super Panorama 70mm stock, giving it exceptionally clear quality) but also for its experimental nature: it was intended to be screened Cinerama-style on three separate side-by-side projectors showing different simultaneous shots, and has an artistic five-minute intro sequence.
In 2014, the footage was restored and the film was re-released to celebrate Expo 64.
tl;dr its 20 minutes of very crisp, clean footage of the 1960s Swiss Army pretending to fight a war
On one hand, it's a very well done piece of propaganda. On the other hand, it's propaganda in service to supporting a lie - a lie that was famously found out with the discovery of a set of ledgers in the 90s.
Edit: I probably should explain that.
For a very long time, the Swiss pushed a myth about how their neutrality was defended by arms - that anyone invading Switzerland would find themselves facing a bitter war of attrition where the (state-armed) populace would make any invader pay dearly for every inch of Swiss soil, and this is why their neutrality was respected in WWII. This myth found purchase not only at home, but abroad as well - up until the 90s, gun rights activists in the US would point to Switzerland as an example of the need of the populace to be armed.
Then a security guard found a set of ledgers in the trash completely by accident, and the truth came out.
The ledgers showed that what actually kept Switzerland safe wasn't their military might or willingness to go to the mattresses as a nation - but the willingness of the Swiss banking industry to launder Nazi blood money coming out of the death camps. Needless to say, the discovery pretty much erased the myth of said "fortress of peace".
Wehrhafte Schweiz ("Fortress of Peace") /Nous pouvons nous défendre ("We Can Defend Ourselves") is a 1964 Swiss Army propaganda film, made for the Expo 64 national exhibition and 1965 Oscar nominee for Best Short Film. The bulk of the film is un-narrated footage of a Swiss military exercise defending against a notional attacker.
For a work of official military propaganda, it is notable not only for its high production costs (it was shot on MCS-70 Super Panorama 70mm stock, giving it exceptionally clear quality) but also for its experimental nature: it was intended to be screened Cinerama-style on three separate side-by-side projectors showing different simultaneous shots, and has an artistic five-minute intro sequence.
In 2014, the footage was restored and the film was re-released to celebrate Expo 64.
tl;dr its 20 minutes of very crisp, clean footage of the 1960s Swiss Army pretending to fight a war
If nothing else the photography is incredible. If they'd have hired Kubrick to make the movie, then I feel like it wouldn't have changed a bit!
I know very little about Swiss history, but I imagine it is very interesting from the perspective of views on Swiss neutrality during the cold war
So, spoilers for the latest Call of Duty but the games plot reminded me of a hilarious Cold War plan:
The games story revolves around a rouge Soviet agent trying to activate a series of nukes the US buried in Western Europe to be denoted in case during a war the Soviets overran the area. I knew the idea of left behind nukes in Europe sounded familiar. So I did some googling and was reminded about Operation Blue Peacock, a British plan to do just that.
The best part? Well, due to the fear that cold weather would disable the weapons when left in the ground, there was a plan to fill the nukes with chickens would have enough food and water for 10 days.
On one hand, it's a very well done piece of propaganda. On the other hand, it's propaganda in service to supporting a lie - a lie that was famously found out with the discovery of a set of ledgers in the 90s.
Edit: I probably should explain that.
For a very long time, the Swiss pushed a myth about how their neutrality was defended by arms - that anyone invading Switzerland would find themselves facing a bitter war of attrition where the (state-armed) populace would make any invader pay dearly for every inch of Swiss soil, and this is why their neutrality was respected in WWII. This myth found purchase not only at home, but abroad as well - up until the 90s, gun rights activists in the US would point to Switzerland as an example of the need of the populace to be armed.
Then a security guard found a set of ledgers in the trash completely by accident, and the truth came out.
The ledgers showed that what actually kept Switzerland safe wasn't their military might or willingness to go to the mattresses as a nation - but the willingness of the Swiss banking industry to launder Nazi blood money coming out of the death camps. Needless to say, the discovery pretty much erased the myth of said "fortress of peace".
Well, yes and no. The Swiss did defend their neutrality by force of arms in World War Two. During the Battle of France in 1940, the Swiss Air Force shot down 11 German aircraft and lost three of their own fighters intercepting Luftwaffe formations that violated their airspace. The Luftwaffe later sent saboteurs to attack Swiss airfields, who were captured by the Swiss Army.
After Germany defeated France, the Swiss recognized that they were surrounded by the Axis and could not keep provoking Germany, so they switched from weapons-free intercepts to merely forcing foreign aircraft down and interning their crews. Swiss Army antiaircraft guns continued to fire at anyone violating their airspace. Later on, in 1944-45, the Swiss Air Force again started shooting down foreign aircraft, mostly American bombers, following repeated incidents where Allied air raids hit Swiss towns by mistake. Several Swiss fighters were shot down by American gunners.
This willingness to use force against both sides, coupled with the mobilization of the Swiss Army throughout the war, was indisputably a critical factor in deterring a German invasion of Switzerland. There is no particular reason I know of to doubt that the Swiss Army would implemented their attritional defense plans against such an invasion. Financial cooperation with Germany was the other side of that coin. I don't believe either one would have been sufficient by itself to prevent the Axis from occupying Switzerland.
e: it is also important to note that at the time, Switzerland had a significant fascist/nazi movement, mainly among the German population, and the government struggled (successfully) to keep those elements from gaining political control of the country.
ee: also while the Swiss population at the time was (and is) indeed armed by the state, this wasn't a case of literally just giving them all guns and expecting them to fight the war on their own initiative. It is a myth that the Swiss use some kind of militia system in place of a standing army. They merely practice universal conscription for all adult men, and you are expected to take your service rifle home after your service in case you are called up from the reserves (until 2007, you were also issued a small quantity of ammunition, but this policy has been rescinded. Now you draw the ammunition at the depot when you report with your rifle) Modern gun rights activists tend to point more to the fact that Switzerland has an extremely liberal gun control regime in general without any of the problems of gun violence that the US has.
Possibly worse than financial compromises are the allegations that German trains carrying Jews and Italian slave laborers, as well as weapons and troops, were allowed to pass through Switzerland during the war. Most of this traffic would have taken place from 1943 onwards, following the German occupation of northern Italy. Allied bombing frequently closed the railroad on the Brenner Pass through Austria, leaving the St. Gotthard Pass through Switzerland as the most efficient alternate line of communication between Italy and Germany.
First of all, it is important to note that Switzerland had a 1909 treaty with Germany and Italy that regulated traffic through the St. Gotthard Pass, which permitted certain kinds of wartime traffic, but not troops or arms. It is also worth noting that the Italian government refused to deport Italian Jews to Germany until the Germans started doing it by force after the Italian surrender in 1943, along with taking Italians as slave labor.
It seems fairly likely that Germany sent illegal war materiel and troops on these trains - contemporary Swiss politicians have claimed that they did - and that Switzerland probably tolerated this practice to some degree, although there must have been a limit to how much they would tolerate it, because if the Germans were moving large numbers of troops through Switzerland then the Allied air forces would have started bombing Swiss railways in earnest. Starting in the 1990s, some Swiss civilians and railway workers reported that they had witnessed Italian slave laborers on cattle cars passing through Swiss stations.
The allegation that Jews were sent through Switzerland is less substantiated; there is afaik only a couple of Swiss who claim to have seen Jewish deportees on trains. No holocaust survivors report having passed through Switzerland, and surviving German records indicate the holocaust trains from Italy went through Austria. If any of them did go through Switzerland, it is unknown to what extent the Swiss government would have been aware of their contents.
I've been to Switzerland a few times, through various borders, and I have to say, I don't think I'd bother trying to invade it
It's just a natural fortress. The Swiss Alps are big and most of the country is like that! I will say that Germany and Italy absolutely did plan to invade Switzerland and carve it up at some point. Operation Green is what the Nazis called it. And if they'd actually decided to do it, I reckon they would have succeeded. But obviously there were various other much more pressing situations (North Africa, Eastern Front etc). Mussolini thought that Italian speaking Swiss Cantons should be part of Italy in the very least.
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EncA Fool with CompassionPronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered Userregular
I've been to Switzerland a few times, through various borders, and I have to say, I don't think I'd bother trying to invade it
It's just a natural fortress. The Swiss Alps are big and most of the country is like that! I will say that Germany and Italy absolutely did plan to invade Switzerland and carve it up at some point. Operation Green is what the Nazis called it. And if they'd actually decided to do it, I reckon they would have succeeded. But obviously there were various other much more pressing situations (North Africa, Eastern Front etc). Mussolini thought that Italian speaking Swiss Cantons should be part of Italy in the very least.
Counterargument: planes and you already surround the whole thing. The Nazi's kept the Swiss "neutral" because they were useful in being a fig leaf for other countries, including the Allies, to keep doing business during the war. Lots of businesses in the US and UK still did business indirectly with German companies through the Swiss.
Nazi victory over Switzerland would have been inevitable, but it would be a costly campaign and a costly occupation for relatively little gain, which is why Operation Tannenbaum was shelved. Prior to the Allied landings in Italy, which made transalpine lines of communication important for Germany, I don't think there was a real strategic rationale for invading Switzerland, and by that point the costs of the invasion were more than Germany could afford.
e: of course, early-war Germany had an uncanny ability for winning what should have been "costly campaigns" with remarkable ease, so despite all military logic militating against it, it is possible that Switzerland would have fallen with the same ease as Poland, Norway, Belgium, Yugoslavia, Greece and France
I've been to Switzerland a few times, through various borders, and I have to say, I don't think I'd bother trying to invade it
It's just a natural fortress. The Swiss Alps are big and most of the country is like that! I will say that Germany and Italy absolutely did plan to invade Switzerland and carve it up at some point. Operation Green is what the Nazis called it. And if they'd actually decided to do it, I reckon they would have succeeded. But obviously there were various other much more pressing situations (North Africa, Eastern Front etc). Mussolini thought that Italian speaking Swiss Cantons should be part of Italy in the very least.
I was about to tell you that Fall Grun (Case Green) was the war plan against Czechoslovakia, not Switzerland, but I looked it up and you're right, they also called the Swiss invasion plan Operation Green before changing the name to Tannenbaum
I think it would have been Denmark and Norway redux. The Swiss army had been at peace since 1815 and had little training and equipment to fight a real war by WW2 standards. There would have been some resistance, even a few victories, but against Panzers, Stukas and paratroopers it would collapse in short order.
Its easy to say we will fight to death as long as nobody calls your bluff. Its should also be noted that Switzerland imports a lot of necessities from its now nazi-occupied neighbors.
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
I've been to Switzerland a few times, through various borders, and I have to say, I don't think I'd bother trying to invade it
It's just a natural fortress. The Swiss Alps are big and most of the country is like that! I will say that Germany and Italy absolutely did plan to invade Switzerland and carve it up at some point. Operation Green is what the Nazis called it. And if they'd actually decided to do it, I reckon they would have succeeded. But obviously there were various other much more pressing situations (North Africa, Eastern Front etc). Mussolini thought that Italian speaking Swiss Cantons should be part of Italy in the very least.
That was renamed to Tannenbaum. Green was the plan to invade Ireland. They had a plan to invade basically everywhere, like you would if you were planning an offensive war
The only difference between "nations planning an offensive war" and "nations not planning an offensive war" is how much time high command has taken to look over the many many war scenarios that officerschools produce every year.
And invading Switzerland was something that Hitler wanted, but only after germany had won the war (against the soviet union and britain) and had the resources for vanity projects.
Because Hitler absolutely hated the idea of a multilingual, multicultural state on his borders.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
This is like how most corporations have departments dedicated to creating spreadsheets about the syncretic values of buying/merging/being bought with/by their competitors
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MonwynApathy's a tragedy, and boredom is a crime.A little bit of everything, all of the time.Registered Userregular
I've been to Switzerland a few times, through various borders, and I have to say, I don't think I'd bother trying to invade it
It's just a natural fortress. The Swiss Alps are big and most of the country is like that! I will say that Germany and Italy absolutely did plan to invade Switzerland and carve it up at some point. Operation Green is what the Nazis called it. And if they'd actually decided to do it, I reckon they would have succeeded. But obviously there were various other much more pressing situations (North Africa, Eastern Front etc). Mussolini thought that Italian speaking Swiss Cantons should be part of Italy in the very least.
Counterargument: planes and you already surround the whole thing. The Nazi's kept the Swiss "neutral" because they were useful in being a fig leaf for other countries, including the Allies, to keep doing business during the war. Lots of businesses in the US and UK still did business indirectly with German companies through the Swiss.
The Nazis (somewhat strangely) didn't use a lot of paratroopers, and you can't hold ground without infantry. Like, yeah, you can fight your way through the Alps, but why bother when Poland and the Ukraine - territory far more amenable to your as-yet unstoppable mechanized units - is available right over there? The Swiss have a four hundred year history of not giving a fuck and there's basically nothing to gain; why waste your time?
Germany made extensive use of paratroopers, but after the near-disastrous invasion of Crete they abandoned parachute assaults and converted all the Fallschirmjager to heavy infantry divisions.
The airborne assault that took Fort Eben Emael in Belgium made the Fall of France possible
Dongs Galore on
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MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
In ancient Babylon, there was a long-standing festival, a twelve day event starting at the first New Moon after the Spring Equinox, a sort of New Year's festival set at the start of spring. It was called Akitu, and one of the most important rituals was that of the king getting slapped across the face.
On the fourth day of the ceremonies, the king of Babylon would go before the high priest, who would strip the king of his royal vestments, then drag him by the ear to the statue of Bel/Marduk (king of the gods, who had gained that title after defeating Tiamat, who represented the primordial chaos). There the king had to kneel, pray for forgiveness, and then go through a long, long list of things that he had done properly (or had not done improperly) over the previous year. Once the list was complete, the high priest had to slap the king's cheek as hard as possible, trying to bring about tears. If the king cried, that meant Marduk blessed the city and they would have a good year.
This wasn't just a funny thing they did. It was a ritual that the people took seriously. The most well-regarded kings (including those big names still remembered) went through this ritual annually. Kings that would not? They found themselves quickly being declared illegitimate, that their staying on the throne would bring ruin down upon them, and they were overthrown.
Tl;dr: Kings should all be slapped in the face publicly.
In ancient Babylon, there was a long-standing festival, a twelve day event starting at the first New Moon after the Spring Equinox, a sort of New Year's festival set at the start of spring. It was called Akitu, and one of the most important rituals was that of the king getting slapped across the face.
On the fourth day of the ceremonies, the king of Babylon would go before the high priest, who would strip the king of his royal vestments, then drag him by the ear to the statue of Bel/Marduk (king of the gods, who had gained that title after defeating Tiamat, who represented the primordial chaos). There the king had to kneel, pray for forgiveness, and then go through a long, long list of things that he had done properly (or had not done improperly) over the previous year. Once the list was complete, the high priest had to slap the king's cheek as hard as possible, trying to bring about tears. If the king cried, that meant Marduk blessed the city and they would have a good year.
This wasn't just a funny thing they did. It was a ritual that the people took seriously. The most well-regarded kings (including those big names still remembered) went through this ritual annually. Kings that would not? They found themselves quickly being declared illegitimate, that their staying on the throne would bring ruin down upon them, and they were overthrown.
Tl;dr: Kings should all be slapped in the face publicly.
Sounds like the Babylonians found a halfway decent way to screen against narcissistic sociopathy. One of the most dangerous qualities in a ruler is lack of humility, and anyone who can’t at least muster enough to fake it convincingly needs to be stripped of legitimacy and tossed aside as soon as possible.
America has political humility rituals, too. Like the White House correspondents dinner. The pardoning of the turkey. The concession speech. That sort of thing.
So, I did some research and this is what I could find online for free, combined from several sources.
List of nuclear weapons that have been lost:
1956: A B-47 carrying two nukes disappeared over the Mediterranean.
Type of Weapon loss unknown.
1958: A B-47 collided with an F-86 fighter. The bomber dropped the bomb over water somewhere off the coast of Georgia.
Weapon Lost: Mark 15 nuclear bomb, yield 1.69 to 3.8 Megatons
1965: An A-4 Skyhawk carrying a free fall bomb rolled off a carrier. The pilot,
Weapon Lost: B43 with a 70 kiloton to 1 Megaton yield.
1968: A US B-52 crashed into the sea near Greenland. It caused a diplomatic row with Demark because it revealed that the US was basing nuclear weapons on Danish soil, in opposition to Denmark’s public position of being a nuclear free zone.
Weapons Lost: 4 B28FI thermonuclear bombs, 1.1 to 1.45 Megaton yield. 3 were recovered.
1968: A Soviet Project 629 ballistic missile sub, K-129, sank off 750 miles off the coast of Hawaii, cause unknown. The US launched and effort to raise the sub* attempted to do so in 1974. Official story is that the attempt was unsuccessful, but there is still an extreme amount of secrecy around the project.
Weapons Lost: Three R-21 ballistic missiles each with a 1 Megaton Warhead. Possibly Recovered?
*Yes, the US really attempted grand theft nuclear weapon
1968: The USS Scorpion, a Skipjack class Submarine, was lost in the Atlantic while transferring from Virginia to Spain. Cause unknown also unknown.
Weapons Lost: Two W34 Nuclear warheads for torpedoes, 11 Kiloton yield
1970: Soviet Project 627 Kit class submarine K-8 caught fire in the Bay of Biscay off France. Captain’s orders to abandon ship with overridden once a merchant ship arrived with order to tow the sub. All hands lost due to CO poisoning and flooding, and the sub sunk while under tow in the rough seas.
Weapons Lost: 4 Nuclear Torpedo’s, class unknown.
1986: K-219, a Project 667A Navaga class Soviet ballistic missile submarine, experience a fire and explosion in one of its missile tubes. The crew managed to surface the sub and shut down the reactor in a pretty heroic manner. The captain ordered the crew to evacuate to a freighter than had arrived to tow the vessel while he stayed behind. Unable to tow the sub and unhappy with the situation, the security officer was ordered assume command and return to the sub with the crew. Thankfully the sub sank before this could happen.
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The biggest mystery for me has always been why, when the colonists there had left a dang note saying where they were (not far away, with friendly known people) why no one went and looked, both then and now. The rescue mission to Roanoke gave some weak excuses about, like, it was stormy so they wouldn't go to the next island over. Almost makes me wonder if the colonists had been found, living happily with the Croatoan tribe and not wanting to be rescued and go back to England with its horrible social structures and oppressive laws, and the rescue mission just couldn't deal with being rejected like that. And people didn't want to go looking for evidence before now because the thought that maybe the colonists noped out of "civilization" was too much to bear - better to just pretend they magically disappeared into the mist never to be seen again than question their cultural assumptions of superiority.
Or maybe people are just stupid and lazy. There could be that too.
Just flipping through the wikipedia entry on Roanoke and nothing there seems particularly strange or in need of some alternate explanation. War with Spain breaks out making going back to check on the colony a pain in the ass. When White finally gets back there years later, they find the dismantled settlement and the message. But the weather and a snapped anchor cable make going over to check out the other island where they figure the colonists must be impossible and then luck gets worse.
And then after that, well: Then there's a few more attempts years and years later. Some of them get their own share of shit luck.
And it seems like "they probably integrated with the local tribes" was considered an option since at least the very early 1600s.
I'm not sure there's really any need to invent alternative takes here. Bad luck and circumstances prevented them from getting back quickly, they basically understood the message but couldn't check the other island and then circumstances and some good old fashioned greed made going back for another search a problem.
:edit: It seems Rosatom made it private, but not before someone else grabbed it, so here it is again.
This wasn't the end of the story. Dr. Solowey and her team hunted down other ancient Judean date palm seeds of similar antiquity to try to sprout them. Six that she found did, including one possibly a couple centuries older than Methuselah. Some of these new sprouts were female, and the flowers of one (nicknamed Hannah) were fertilized with pollen off Methuselah. Hannah set fruit. Most of the fruits were harvested and sent off for analysis and testing and so forth, but after all this time, the good doctor had to try a few.
They were delicious.
First video is back again. I'm amused that the USSR cold war videos have extremely similar vibes to the US ones.
Propaganda is still propaganda
Oh good, I was wondering how 2020 would end, this whole Covid thing is wearing thin.
Nice to see we'll be getting ancient zombie pneumonia thanks to devouring excavated plants. THEY ARE ALWAYS BURIED FOR A REASON AND THAT REASON IS ALWAYS CURSES.
If you want cursed plants there's plenty of invasive giant hogweed around. Leave the nice date palms alone.
But Doctor, I am 2020!
Come Overwatch with meeeee
This has been active in locals minds for a long, long time. But especially over Trump's admin.
This is also far from the only truly horrific lynching to happen in Central Florida. While a diverse and international city now, that sort of diversity has only existed from about 40 years. Before that, we were just as bad, if not worse, than the most racist backwater of the rest of Dixie.
Law and Order ≠ Justice
ACNH Island Isla Cero: DA-3082-2045-4142
Captain of the SES Comptroller of the State
C&Rsenal is quite good as well
I used to like Demolition Ranch but Matt's gone off the deep end. Hickok45 has actually been sliding slightly leftwards politically, so I watch more of his videos now than I used to. He was one of if not the first big gun channel to disavow the NRA when the corruption scandal broke.
Wehrhafte Schweiz ("Fortress of Peace") /Nous pouvons nous défendre ("We Can Defend Ourselves") is a 1964 Swiss Army propaganda film, made for the Expo 64 national exhibition and 1965 Oscar nominee for Best Short Film. The bulk of the film is un-narrated footage of a Swiss military exercise defending against a notional attacker.
For a work of official military propaganda, it is notable not only for its high production costs (it was shot on MCS-70 Super Panorama 70mm stock, giving it exceptionally clear quality) but also for its experimental nature: it was intended to be screened Cinerama-style on three separate side-by-side projectors showing different simultaneous shots, and has an artistic five-minute intro sequence.
In 2014, the footage was restored and the film was re-released to celebrate Expo 64.
tl;dr its 20 minutes of very crisp, clean footage of the 1960s Swiss Army pretending to fight a war
On one hand, it's a very well done piece of propaganda. On the other hand, it's propaganda in service to supporting a lie - a lie that was famously found out with the discovery of a set of ledgers in the 90s.
Edit: I probably should explain that.
For a very long time, the Swiss pushed a myth about how their neutrality was defended by arms - that anyone invading Switzerland would find themselves facing a bitter war of attrition where the (state-armed) populace would make any invader pay dearly for every inch of Swiss soil, and this is why their neutrality was respected in WWII. This myth found purchase not only at home, but abroad as well - up until the 90s, gun rights activists in the US would point to Switzerland as an example of the need of the populace to be armed.
Then a security guard found a set of ledgers in the trash completely by accident, and the truth came out.
The ledgers showed that what actually kept Switzerland safe wasn't their military might or willingness to go to the mattresses as a nation - but the willingness of the Swiss banking industry to launder Nazi blood money coming out of the death camps. Needless to say, the discovery pretty much erased the myth of said "fortress of peace".
Can I just say how wild it is to me that the dude also runs the Vet Ranch channel?
If nothing else the photography is incredible. If they'd have hired Kubrick to make the movie, then I feel like it wouldn't have changed a bit!
I know very little about Swiss history, but I imagine it is very interesting from the perspective of views on Swiss neutrality during the cold war
The best part? Well, due to the fear that cold weather would disable the weapons when left in the ground, there was a plan to fill the nukes with chickens would have enough food and water for 10 days.
https://www.businessinsider.com/uk-developed-chicken-warmed-nuclear-landmines-2016-11
Chicken powered nukes. Reality is stranger than fiction....
Well, yes and no. The Swiss did defend their neutrality by force of arms in World War Two. During the Battle of France in 1940, the Swiss Air Force shot down 11 German aircraft and lost three of their own fighters intercepting Luftwaffe formations that violated their airspace. The Luftwaffe later sent saboteurs to attack Swiss airfields, who were captured by the Swiss Army.
After Germany defeated France, the Swiss recognized that they were surrounded by the Axis and could not keep provoking Germany, so they switched from weapons-free intercepts to merely forcing foreign aircraft down and interning their crews. Swiss Army antiaircraft guns continued to fire at anyone violating their airspace. Later on, in 1944-45, the Swiss Air Force again started shooting down foreign aircraft, mostly American bombers, following repeated incidents where Allied air raids hit Swiss towns by mistake. Several Swiss fighters were shot down by American gunners.
This willingness to use force against both sides, coupled with the mobilization of the Swiss Army throughout the war, was indisputably a critical factor in deterring a German invasion of Switzerland. There is no particular reason I know of to doubt that the Swiss Army would implemented their attritional defense plans against such an invasion. Financial cooperation with Germany was the other side of that coin. I don't believe either one would have been sufficient by itself to prevent the Axis from occupying Switzerland.
e: it is also important to note that at the time, Switzerland had a significant fascist/nazi movement, mainly among the German population, and the government struggled (successfully) to keep those elements from gaining political control of the country.
ee: also while the Swiss population at the time was (and is) indeed armed by the state, this wasn't a case of literally just giving them all guns and expecting them to fight the war on their own initiative. It is a myth that the Swiss use some kind of militia system in place of a standing army. They merely practice universal conscription for all adult men, and you are expected to take your service rifle home after your service in case you are called up from the reserves (until 2007, you were also issued a small quantity of ammunition, but this policy has been rescinded. Now you draw the ammunition at the depot when you report with your rifle) Modern gun rights activists tend to point more to the fact that Switzerland has an extremely liberal gun control regime in general without any of the problems of gun violence that the US has.
First of all, it is important to note that Switzerland had a 1909 treaty with Germany and Italy that regulated traffic through the St. Gotthard Pass, which permitted certain kinds of wartime traffic, but not troops or arms. It is also worth noting that the Italian government refused to deport Italian Jews to Germany until the Germans started doing it by force after the Italian surrender in 1943, along with taking Italians as slave labor.
It seems fairly likely that Germany sent illegal war materiel and troops on these trains - contemporary Swiss politicians have claimed that they did - and that Switzerland probably tolerated this practice to some degree, although there must have been a limit to how much they would tolerate it, because if the Germans were moving large numbers of troops through Switzerland then the Allied air forces would have started bombing Swiss railways in earnest. Starting in the 1990s, some Swiss civilians and railway workers reported that they had witnessed Italian slave laborers on cattle cars passing through Swiss stations.
The allegation that Jews were sent through Switzerland is less substantiated; there is afaik only a couple of Swiss who claim to have seen Jewish deportees on trains. No holocaust survivors report having passed through Switzerland, and surviving German records indicate the holocaust trains from Italy went through Austria. If any of them did go through Switzerland, it is unknown to what extent the Swiss government would have been aware of their contents.
It's just a natural fortress. The Swiss Alps are big and most of the country is like that! I will say that Germany and Italy absolutely did plan to invade Switzerland and carve it up at some point. Operation Green is what the Nazis called it. And if they'd actually decided to do it, I reckon they would have succeeded. But obviously there were various other much more pressing situations (North Africa, Eastern Front etc). Mussolini thought that Italian speaking Swiss Cantons should be part of Italy in the very least.
Counterargument: planes and you already surround the whole thing. The Nazi's kept the Swiss "neutral" because they were useful in being a fig leaf for other countries, including the Allies, to keep doing business during the war. Lots of businesses in the US and UK still did business indirectly with German companies through the Swiss.
e: of course, early-war Germany had an uncanny ability for winning what should have been "costly campaigns" with remarkable ease, so despite all military logic militating against it, it is possible that Switzerland would have fallen with the same ease as Poland, Norway, Belgium, Yugoslavia, Greece and France
I was about to tell you that Fall Grun (Case Green) was the war plan against Czechoslovakia, not Switzerland, but I looked it up and you're right, they also called the Swiss invasion plan Operation Green before changing the name to Tannenbaum
Its easy to say we will fight to death as long as nobody calls your bluff. Its should also be noted that Switzerland imports a lot of necessities from its now nazi-occupied neighbors.
That was renamed to Tannenbaum. Green was the plan to invade Ireland. They had a plan to invade basically everywhere, like you would if you were planning an offensive war
And invading Switzerland was something that Hitler wanted, but only after germany had won the war (against the soviet union and britain) and had the resources for vanity projects.
Because Hitler absolutely hated the idea of a multilingual, multicultural state on his borders.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
The Nazis (somewhat strangely) didn't use a lot of paratroopers, and you can't hold ground without infantry. Like, yeah, you can fight your way through the Alps, but why bother when Poland and the Ukraine - territory far more amenable to your as-yet unstoppable mechanized units - is available right over there? The Swiss have a four hundred year history of not giving a fuck and there's basically nothing to gain; why waste your time?
The airborne assault that took Fort Eben Emael in Belgium made the Fall of France possible
On the fourth day of the ceremonies, the king of Babylon would go before the high priest, who would strip the king of his royal vestments, then drag him by the ear to the statue of Bel/Marduk (king of the gods, who had gained that title after defeating Tiamat, who represented the primordial chaos). There the king had to kneel, pray for forgiveness, and then go through a long, long list of things that he had done properly (or had not done improperly) over the previous year. Once the list was complete, the high priest had to slap the king's cheek as hard as possible, trying to bring about tears. If the king cried, that meant Marduk blessed the city and they would have a good year.
This wasn't just a funny thing they did. It was a ritual that the people took seriously. The most well-regarded kings (including those big names still remembered) went through this ritual annually. Kings that would not? They found themselves quickly being declared illegitimate, that their staying on the throne would bring ruin down upon them, and they were overthrown.
Tl;dr: Kings should all be slapped in the face publicly.
Sounds like the Babylonians found a halfway decent way to screen against narcissistic sociopathy. One of the most dangerous qualities in a ruler is lack of humility, and anyone who can’t at least muster enough to fake it convincingly needs to be stripped of legitimacy and tossed aside as soon as possible.
List of nuclear weapons that have been lost:
1956: A B-47 carrying two nukes disappeared over the Mediterranean.
Type of Weapon loss unknown.
1958: A B-47 collided with an F-86 fighter. The bomber dropped the bomb over water somewhere off the coast of Georgia.
Weapon Lost: Mark 15 nuclear bomb, yield 1.69 to 3.8 Megatons
1965: An A-4 Skyhawk carrying a free fall bomb rolled off a carrier. The pilot,
Weapon Lost: B43 with a 70 kiloton to 1 Megaton yield.
1968: A US B-52 crashed into the sea near Greenland. It caused a diplomatic row with Demark because it revealed that the US was basing nuclear weapons on Danish soil, in opposition to Denmark’s public position of being a nuclear free zone.
Weapons Lost: 4 B28FI thermonuclear bombs, 1.1 to 1.45 Megaton yield. 3 were recovered.
1968: A Soviet Project 629 ballistic missile sub, K-129, sank off 750 miles off the coast of Hawaii, cause unknown. The US launched and effort to raise the sub* attempted to do so in 1974. Official story is that the attempt was unsuccessful, but there is still an extreme amount of secrecy around the project.
Weapons Lost: Three R-21 ballistic missiles each with a 1 Megaton Warhead. Possibly Recovered?
*Yes, the US really attempted grand theft nuclear weapon
1968: The USS Scorpion, a Skipjack class Submarine, was lost in the Atlantic while transferring from Virginia to Spain. Cause unknown also unknown.
Weapons Lost: Two W34 Nuclear warheads for torpedoes, 11 Kiloton yield
1970: Soviet Project 627 Kit class submarine K-8 caught fire in the Bay of Biscay off France. Captain’s orders to abandon ship with overridden once a merchant ship arrived with order to tow the sub. All hands lost due to CO poisoning and flooding, and the sub sunk while under tow in the rough seas.
Weapons Lost: 4 Nuclear Torpedo’s, class unknown.
1986: K-219, a Project 667A Navaga class Soviet ballistic missile submarine, experience a fire and explosion in one of its missile tubes. The crew managed to surface the sub and shut down the reactor in a pretty heroic manner. The captain ordered the crew to evacuate to a freighter than had arrived to tow the vessel while he stayed behind. Unable to tow the sub and unhappy with the situation, the security officer was ordered assume command and return to the sub with the crew. Thankfully the sub sank before this could happen.
Weapons lost: 32 or 48 warheads, unknown class.