Random Thoughts and Trivia from History
- Deception in the Falklands War (1982)
To protect their airfields from further British attacks, the Argentinians piled dirt on their runways during the day to make it look like previous bombing raids were successful. It worked, the British pilots thought the airfields were not operational and did not continue action.
- Roman Slavery
In ancient Rome if a slave murdered his master all the slaves in the household were put to death giving great incentive to all the slaves to disclose any plots.
Cato bought uneducated slaves, gave them an education, and sold them for a profit.
- Battle of Berlin
Taking Berlin in WWII cost the Soviets 305,000 casualties. I had thought that Patton should have been allowed to race to Berlin insuring an Allied occupation of the city, but due to treaty obligations, the city would be turned over to the Soviets after the war anyway.
- Irish Monks
In the 7th century Irish monks put spaces in between words making reading much easier, but they also introduced the concept of lower-case letters which has been a plague upon mankind.
- Battle of Midway
War games played by the Japanese to help prepare for Midway suggested defeat, but an umpire overruled the actions of those playing the Americans.
- Puma Punku
The Tiwanaku people of Central America built a temple complex at Puma Punku around 200 BC which includes stonework of amazing precision with one block being measured as 36 feet by 16 feet by 6 feet.
- A few facts about the Gettysburg Address?
Contrary to popular belief, Lincoln did not write the most famous presidential speech on the train going to Gettysburg or compose it on the back of an envolope, although those details would lend a air of inspiration to the speech.
Edward Everett gave the main two hour dedication speech for the new national cemetary, but the world took little note nor remembered long what Everett said. Lincoln spoke afterwards as a postscript, a mere two minutes.
Lincoln was in the early stages of smallpox when he gave the speech.
- Why did the U.S. fight the Pacific War in WWII?
The Japanese invaded China in the 1930s. The United States disapproved and cut off supplies of oil and steel to pressure the Japanese to withdraw. Without oil and steel the Japanese economy would grind to a halt. Unwilling to pull out of China, the Japanese gambled and started the war. Basically the US went to war to protect China from Japanese occupation.
- Why did the U.S. fight WWII in Europe?
Britain and France entered WWII to save Poland from a foreign dictatorship. Ironically, after all the devastation of the war, Poland was still ruled by a foreign dictator.
- Why did Japan invade French Indochina in WWII?
The Japanese were fighting to control China. Forty-one percent of all the war materials flowing in to China to resist the Japanese were coming from one harbor - Haiphong in Vietnam. It would make perfect sense to invade Vietnam and stop the supplies from reaching the Chinese. Also, the French were "occupied" elsewhere and could not mount much resistance.
- The Humble Potato
Although the potato would have been an excellent addition to the diet for the people in Germany, they did not eat them because they grew underground (nearer the devil), had poisonous leaves, and had leaves in the shape of pentagons. It took the 30 Years War to make the tuber popular. With armies continually ravishing the landscape and burning cereal crops, the spuds became popular since they could not be burned by marauding cavalry.
- Hitler in WWII
I've been listening to Childer's lectures on World War II. A few things struck me.
- Hitler never intended to fight France or Great Britain. He wanted to go East. After WWI a new country was carved from Germany's east side called Poland. Hitler wanted to get the territory back. He also hated Communism and wanted to destroy Russia. He did not expect Great Britain and France to object when he took Poland. He was quite surprised after Czechoslovakia that the Allies did anything.
- The Germans had a lot of breadth in their armaments, but not much depth. They depended on the Blitzkrieg for fast easy wins. They never planned for a long drawn out war.
- The resistance in Russia surprised the Germans. After smashing through Russian territory, they expected the Russians to surrender like the French. After a few months of the Russian campaign, Hitler ordered the economy off a war time footing since the war was just about over. He remembered the unpopular sentiment of the German people suffering during WWI towards the government and did not want to repeat that.
- The Germans were always trying to make sense of the Russian counterattacks in the early days of the invasion and divine the overall strategy of the Russians. What the Germans didn't know was that no overall gameplan existed. The individual Russian units were acting on their own, so no sense could be made of various attacks.
- A German soldier was writing about the resistance in Russian being so much stiffer than in France. In France, he wrote, it was like an exercise with live ammunition. The Russians fought tenaciously because they knew their fate if captured by the Germans.
- Alchemy
Aristotle taught that all metals were combinations of sulfur and mercury. The exact proportions of the two ingredients determined the type of metal. This explains the interest of the alchemist in turning base metals into gold. Today we think it silly to even try to convert copper to gold (outside a nuclear furnace), but back then, if all you had to do was to change the proportions just slightly, it could be very appealing.
- Hippocratic Oath
"First, Do No Harm" although not directly in the Hippocratic Oath, appears in Hippocrates' Epidemics Bk. I, Sect. XI. as : "Declare the past, diagnose the present, foretell the future; practice these acts. As to diseases, make a habit of two things - to help, or at least to do no harm." I was thinking about this in regard to Luke chapter 8(?) about the woman who had spent all she had on physicians. According to Mark the doctors only made her worse. Luke neglects the phrase "and they only made her worse", perhaps to give his fellow physicians the benefit of the doubt. Hippocrates worked around 470-370BC and laid some foundations for Greek medicine. Since Palestine had been ruled by the Greeks for 250 years before the Gospels, its reasonable to assume Luke was familiar with Greek medical practice.
- Croesus and the Oracle at Delphi
Croesus the King of Lydia sent messagers to the Oracle at Delphi if he should attach Cyrus the Persian. Apollo answered with "if Croesus attacked the Persians, he would destroy a mighty empire" (Herodotus Book 1.53). Croesus did indeed attack the Persians, lost big time, and indeed destroyed an empire - his own.
- Egyptians Abroad
My friend Frank Altobelli was commenting that the Egyptians in the Classical Age never started any colonies unlike many of ancient cultures. The feeling was that the Egyptians had to be buried in Egypt for a proper afterlife.
- The First Pony Express
Herodotus wrote about the Persian mail system operating 2,500 years ago. Couriers rode horses for a day and switched for a fresh horse at way stations that were a day's ride apart. Their motto was "Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night, stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds."
- Sugar Boycott
To reduce slave labour in the West Indies, the Anti-Saccharine Society of Great Britain urged citizens not to consume West Indian sugar since it was produced by the blood and sweat of slaves. Similiar to our boycott of 'Blood Diamonds' today.
