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I'm guessing people are by now somewhat familiar with the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff, a cruise liner carrying refugees (men, women, children, sick and elderly as well as injured soldiers) fleeing the advancing Soviet army from East Prussia to western Germany in 1945. The ship was supposed carry just 1865 people, but on 30th January, over 10,500 people were on board. That night it was torpedoed and sunk by a Soviet submarine and 9343 people died. The worst naval disaster in history. My mother and her family missed being on that boat by just a few weeks.
Another perhaps little-known English historical fact: in 1945 a pretender, Perkin Warbeck, turned up claiming to be Prince Richard, the younger of the two Princes in the Tower supposedly murdered by their uncle Richard III. Why he pretended to be the younger prince instead of Edward V, nobody knows. After a few battles and skirmishes, poor Perkin was arrested, confined in the Tower of London and summarily executed.
The Peshtigo Fire remained a well-kept secret, since it took place the same day as the Chicago fire (and killed about 100 times as many people)..It remained the answer to trivia question well into the 1980s. It was not a true "urban fire" in the sense of Mrs. OLeary's cow. It was in fact just a forest fire that raged mile after mile and Peshtigo happened to be in its path.
The lead character in the 1995 Sit-Com "Caroline in the City" used Peshtigo, Wisconsin, as her hometown.
The Gen. Slocum disaster is depicted in a Clark Gable picture called Manhattan Melodrama. Which was the picture John Dillinger watched at the Biograph theater in Chicago just before he was murdered by the police as he left the theater.
I chose that quote from the article because I had never heard of the Peshtigo fire.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jtur88
The Peshtigo Fire remained a well-kept secret, since it took place the same day as the Chicago fire (and killed about 100 times as many people)..It remained the answer to trivia question well into the 1980s. It was not a true "urban fire" in the sense of Mrs. OLeary's cow. It was in fact just a forest fire that raged mile after mile and Peshtigo happened to be in its path.
The lead character in the 1995 Sit-Com "Caroline in the City" used Peshtigo, Wisconsin, as her hometown.
Interesting stories! I wasn't aware of the S.S. Sultana and Empress of Ireland tragedies. Question on the Allied Expeditionary force involvement in the Russian Civil War: Do you think that had much to do with Soviet paranoia toward the allies in WWII? I recall reading that the Russians were even reluctant to have American bombers land on Russian soil after completing their bombing runs over the Romanian Ploiesti oil fields. I believe I read, in one case, that the Russians withheld information about an impending German raid on Russian airfields and several American Flying Fortresses were destroyed.
Sorry for the delay in responding. Well, I would have to think that it was one factor at play here. Given that Stalin was a rather paranoid individual and had been recently burned by Hitler with the whole Non-Aggression Pact, offers of assistance from outside sources were probably viewed by him with a high degree of suspicion. Especially when the two most prominent countries offering aid are the same ones that a mere 20 years before were on your territory trying to overthrow the very government that you lead.
The early Bolshevik leadership and then the Soviet history books referred to the incident as "the American invasion". I think that fact alone says much about the mindset of Stalin and his minions regarding the United States.
Although the continent of Antarctica was rumored to exist for several centuries, it was the American naval officer John Wilkes who finally proved its existence between 1838 and 1840. Less than 65 years earlier, Captain Cook had sailed practically all the way around Antarctica without ever sighting any land!
Although the continent of Antarctica was rumored to exist for several centuries, it was the American naval officer John Wilkes who finally proved its existence between 1838 and 1840. Less than 65 years earlier, Captain Cook had sailed practically all the way around Antarctica without ever sighting any land!
Although the continent of Antarctica was rumored to exist for several centuries, it was the American naval officer John Wilkes who finally proved its existence between 1838 and 1840. Less than 65 years earlier, Captain Cook had sailed practically all the way around Antarctica without ever sighting any land!
Antarctica had actually been proven to exist long before Wilkes attempted to map the new continent -"On January 15, 1820, Bellingshausen crossed the Antarctic Circle (just west of the Greenwich Meridian). His crew was only the second group of men in history to do so. The next day, Bellingshausen was prevented from going further south by a massive, continental ice shelf. This was the Finibul Ice Shelf, and the occasion marked the first sighting of the continent of Antarctica by human eyes. Bellingshausen had beat Bransfield by two weeks."
Between January 1820 and March 1838 the rough outlines of the new continent had been sketched. On Wilkes second excursion, however, he charted several hundred miles of new coastline, starting with Cape Hudson in Terre Adlie on January 16, 1840 and ending with what is now called the Shackleton Ice Shelf on February 21. There were several inaccuracies in Wilkes' positions, however, such that James Clark Ross later sailed over some areas where Wilkes had drawn land on his charts.
The Battle of Isandlwana, a British defeat, has been put in the shadow of history by another event on that day, then British defensive gem of a victory at the nearby Battle of Rourke's Drift.
The Armenian genocide
The white/european slaves (I mean not only blacks were slaves at that time but how many knows?...)
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