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Topic: OT - Weird History
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FearlessF · « **Reply #6286 on:** April 16, 2026, 08:29:33 AM »

THIS DAY IN HISTORY:

Chinese Submarine Suffers Mysterious Accident that Kills 70 (2003)
A week and a half after a mysterious event left the entire 70-man crew of the Chinese Ming-class submarine No. 361 dead at their posts, the stricken vessel was spotted by fishermen and towed to shore. The official explanation for the disaster is that the crew suffocated when diesel engines failed to shut down while the vessel was submerged.

MrNubbz · « **Reply #6287 on:** April 16, 2026, 03:00:09 PM »

Birthdays
1867 Wilbur Wright
1889 Charlie Chaplin

EVENTS
1881 In Dodge City, Kansas, Bat Masterson fights his last gun battle

1912 Harriet Quimby becomes the first female pilot to fly across the English Channel

1922 Annie Oakley sets women's record by breaking 100 clay targets in a row

1943 Swiss scientist Dr. Albert Hofmann discovers the psychedelic effects of LSD

1929 Cleveland Indians become the first MLB team to permanently feature numbers on the backs of their uniforms; the numbers correspond to each player's spot in the batting order

1929 Cleveland rookie center fielder Earl Averill, becomes first American League player to hit a HR on 1st at bat; Indians beat Detroit Tigers, 5-4 at League Park

1939 The Soviet Union proposes an alliance with Britain and France to counter Nazi Germany; the Soviets would later sign a secret agreement with the Nazis

1940 Cleveland Indians pitcher Bob Feller hurls the first and only Opening Day no-hitter in MLB history; beats Chicago WSWhite Sox, 1-0 at Comiskey Park

1945 US troops enter Nuremberg, Germany

1946 1st US launch of captured V-2 rocket, White Sands, New Mexicao; reaches altitude of 8 km

1947 Fire aboard French-flagged cargo ship SS Grandchamp, docked at Port of Texas City, Texas and loaded with 2,300 tons of ammonium nitrate causes massive explosion and spreads to nearby ships and oil facilities; deadliest industrial accident in US history kills 581, including all but one member of the city's fire departments

1951 British submarine Affray sank in English Channel, killing 75

1962 Walter Cronkite begins anchoring CBS Evening News

1983 Steve Garvey sets NL record by playing in 1,118 consecutive games

1987 Michael Jordan becomes the second NBA player in history to score 3,000 points in a season

2007 Virginia Tech massacre: The deadliest mass shooting in modern American history. The gunman, Seung-Hui Cho, kills 32 people and injures 23
others before committing suicide.

2015 Elizabeth Holmes, American entrepreneur, inventor, and founder and CEO of Theranos, is named one of TIME's "100 Most Influential People" of 2015 😁 (later convicted of fraud)

2019 Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson becomes the highest-paid player in NFL history with a 4-year $140m extension including record $65m signing bonus (another case of fraud)

2023 Broadway’s longest-running show, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Charles Hart's musical "Phantom of the Opera," closes at the Majestic Theatre, NYC, after 13,981 performances and 7 Tony Award wins

SFBadger96 · « **Reply #6288 on:** April 16, 2026, 05:09:40 PM »

Quote from: MrNubbz on April 16, 2026, 03:00:09 PM

1939 The Soviet Union proposes an alliance with Britain and France to counter Nazi Germany; the Soviets would later sign a secret agreement with the Nazis

The reality of this is so much more nuanced and interesting than the pop history version: the Soviets teamed up with Britain and France then backed out on them...

Stalin hated Britain. More than Germany. None of them trusted Stalin, and he didn't trust any of them. Stalin and his senior officials were working all of them to try to come up with a deal that would keep them the Soviet Union out of a war with Germany. And all of them were working the Soviet Union, hoping to get an upper hand on each other. The Germans knew Stalin was negotiating with Britain and France, and Britain and France knew Stalin was negotiating with Germany. Were the British and French annoyed when they found out Stalin had a "secret" pact with Germany? Sure, but not that surprised. It was really only the Poles who got the short end of the stick.

Curiously, Stalin actually believed that the Germans would honor the deal he made with them, right up until the point that Germany invaded Russian Poland (the part that Germany had agreed to let Russia take, so long as Russia agreed to let Germany take the other half). Actually, until a little after that because the Russian command structure was so afraid to give Stalin bad news that they actually refrained from telling him about the invasion until a little after it happened.

This just in: Hitler and Stalin were lying, terrible people. Credit to the Russians, who deserve more credit than Americans typically give them for destroying Nazi Germany, but that doesn't make Stalin a good guy in any sense of the word.

MrNubbz · « **Reply #6289 on:** April 16, 2026, 05:12:24 PM »

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/y8nqZthQxts
Publicity stunt that worked

Gigem · « **Reply #6290 on:** April 17, 2026, 07:27:27 AM »

Quote from: SFBadger96 on April 16, 2026, 05:09:40 PM

The reality of this is so much more nuanced and interesting than the pop history version: the Soviets teamed up with Britain and France then backed out on them...

Stalin hated Britain. More than Germany. None of them trusted Stalin, and he didn't trust any of them. Stalin and his senior officials were working all of them to try to come up with a deal that would keep them the Soviet Union out of a war with Germany. And all of them were working the Soviet Union, hoping to get an upper hand on each other. The Germans knew Stalin was negotiating with Britain and France, and Britain and France knew Stalin was negotiating with Germany. Were the British and French annoyed when they found out Stalin had a "secret" pact with Germany? Sure, but not that surprised. It was really only the Poles who got the short end of the stick.

Curiously, Stalin actually believed that the Germans would honor the deal he made with them, right up until the point that Germany invaded Russian Poland (the part that Germany had agreed to let Russia take, so long as Russia agreed to let Germany take the other half). Actually, until a little after that because the Russian command structure was so afraid to give Stalin bad news that they actually refrained from telling him about the invasion until a little after it happened.

This just in: Hitler and Stalin were lying, terrible people. Credit to the Russians, who deserve more credit than Americans typically give them for destroying Nazi Germany, but that doesn't make Stalin a good guy in any sense of the word.

There is a video floating around somewhere showing losses suffered by the different countries who fought in WW2. The losses the Soviet Union suffered are staggering. Far and above what any other country suffered, by many multiples.

They pretty much considered their troops expendable, to the point that they used soldiers to clear minefields by blowing themselves up, or so I’m told.

I always wondered, WTH would Germany even do with the USSR, the whole of it? There was no way they could ever occupy nothing more than maybe 25% of it. Did they just plan on keeping the Western part, and leaving the rest alone?

MrNubbz · « **Reply #6291 on:** April 17, 2026, 08:19:27 AM »

Hitler figured he'd use the S.U. as a bread basket and an oil field and then the future citizens of the 1,000 Year Reich could figure out the rest

MrNubbz · « **Reply #6292 on:** April 17, 2026, 08:22:27 AM »

The weird history of great appliances
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/8J9kGgu1Jzk

FearlessF · « **Reply #6293 on:** April 17, 2026, 09:35:49 AM »

THIS DAY IN HISTORY:

Ford Mustang Debuts at New York World's Fair (1964)
Introduced at a relatively affordable $2,368, the Ford Mustang took the American auto market by storm. The initial sales projection of 100,000 units in the first year was surpassed within months, and a record 418,000 were on the road within the year. That year, the Mustang was featured in the James Bond film Goldfinger and appeared as the pace car at the Indianapolis 500, helping secure its iconic status.

FearlessF · « **Reply #6294 on:** April 17, 2026, 10:29:05 AM »

.............

FearlessF · « **Reply #6295 on:** April 17, 2026, 10:50:56 AM »

SFBadger96 · « **Reply #6296 on:** April 17, 2026, 02:15:46 PM »

Quote from: MrNubbz on April 17, 2026, 08:19:27 AM

Hitler figured he'd use the S.U. as a bread basket and an oil field and then the future citizens of the 1,000 Year Reich could figure out the rest

Essentially this. Hitler wanted the natural resources, mostly in the west, and likely assumed that after dispatching with the communist government--which probably wouldn't get a lot of complaints from the citizenry--he could install a puppet government that couldn't do any worse. Prior to the Soviet Union "changing the means of production," Ukraine had largely been Europe's breadbasket, other regions in western Russia were also good for grain production, and the oil in the southwest was appealing.

FearlessF · « **Reply #6297 on:** April 17, 2026, 05:28:43 PM »

April 17th, 1951: Following the passage of the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949, the Peak District becomes the first British national park. Centrally located in the Derbyshire region, the park contains moorland and rocky escarpments, as well as caves and limestone gorges. Later that same year, three more national parks will be created: Lake District, Snowdonia, and Dartmoor.

FearlessF · « **Reply #6298 on:** April 17, 2026, 09:50:49 PM »

WILTSHIRE, England —
A life jacket worn by a survivor of the Titanic is going on sale this weekend, in a rare auction described as a “once in a generation” opportunity.

The jacket, which is expected to fetch between £250,000 ($339,000) and £350,000 ($474,000), is the only one from a survivor of the 1912 tragedy to go under the hammer, according to U.K. auction house Henry Aldridge and Son.

The garment was worn by Laura Mabel Francatelli, a first class passenger on the historic liner, which sank 114 years ago this week.

MrNubbz · « **Reply #6299 on:** **Today** at 07:27:24 AM »

1506 The cornerstone of the current St. Peter's Basilica is laid in the Vatican by Pope Julius II

1521 Diet of Worms: Cardinal Alexander questions Martin Luther

1688 "Quaker Petition Against Slavery": Francis Daniel Pastorius presents 1st formal written protest against African-American slavery in English colonies in Germantown, Pennsylvania

1775 Paul Revere meets with Samuel Adams and John Hancock in Lexington, Massachusetts, and warns them that British troops are marching from Boston to Lexington - atta boy Paul

1783 George Washington issues General Orders announcing the end of hostilities with Britain in the American Revolutionary War, giving thanks to the Almighty, offering congratulations, and authorizing an extra ration of alcohol to the troops to celebrate - atta boy George

1861 Colonel Robert E. Lee turns down offer to command Union armies before US Civil War - no atta boy for you Robert

1865 Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston surrenders to General William T. Sherman in North Carolina

1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire kills nearly 4,000 while destroying 75% of the city - they sshould have left it

1912 Cunard liner RMS Carpathia brings 705 survivors from the RMS Titanic to New York City

1918 Cleveland center fielder Tris Speaker turns an unassisted double play

1923 74,000 (62,281 paid) on hand for opening of Yankee Stadium

1924 First crossword puzzle book published by Simon & Schuster

1934 C.A. Tannahill opens the first US laundromat in Fort Worth, Texas; four electric washing machines are available for hourly rental, but no dryers are available

1938 Superman first appears in DC Comics' Action Comics Series Issue #1, dated June 1938

1942 The Doolittle Raid: James Doolittle leads the first air raid on mainland Japan, bombing Tokyo & other Japanese cities

1943 Operation Vengeance: US Army Air Force P-38G fighter aircraft from Kukum Field on Guadalcanal ambush and shoot down the transport bomber
aircraft of Isoroku Yamamoto, commander-in-chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy and mastermind behind the Pearl Harbor attack

1949 Republic of Ireland withdraws from British Commonwealth

1955 First "Walk"/"Don't Walk" lighted street signals are installed

1964 LA Dodgers pitcher Sandy Koufax strikes out the side on 9 pitches, for major league best third time in his career

1967 Jonathan Frid makes his first appearance as 200-year-old vampire Barnabas Collins on TV's "Dark Shadows," and the show becomes a huge hit

1982 Canada Constitution Act replaces British North America Act

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Topic: OT - Weird History

FearlessF

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MrNubbz

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SFBadger96

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MrNubbz

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Gigem

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MrNubbz

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MrNubbz

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FearlessF

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FearlessF

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FearlessF

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SFBadger96

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FearlessF

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MrNubbz

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