Forgotten History

[escargot]

Wilmington 1898: When white supremacists overthrew a US government

Following state elections in 1898, white supremacists moved into the US port of Wilmington, North Carolina, then the largest city in the state. They destroyed black-owned businesses, murdered black residents, and forced the elected local government - a coalition of white and black politicians - to resign en masse.



In this case, it was Democrats rather than Republicans who were the chief offenders in overt racism/white supremacy.
more at link

Can only say fucking bastards.

 

[Beresford]

The story of state-owned pubs during World War One. What is more surprising is that some of these establishments weren't privatised until 1973.

https://www.morningadvertiser.co.uk...-nationalised-pubs-during-the-First-World-War

 

[Swifty]

 

[Kondoru]

The story of state-owned pubs during World War One. What is more surprising is that some of these establishments weren't privatised until 1973.

Oh, that is an interesting story

 

[Beresford]

Oh, that is an interesting story

The part I found most surprising was staff having to sign the Official Secrets Act.

 

[Stormkhan]

Swifty - you might like to look into the author Kinky Friedman. I've several of his novels, one of which is a HB signed copy of Blast From The Past. In keeping with the title, the back photo on the jacket is of ...
"Richard 'Kinky' Friedman, age 7, playing World Grandmaster Samuel Reschevsky (standing). Houston, Texas, 1952"
The author was happy to confirm - in writing and in a chat with me in a bar - that while the 'photo is absolutely genuine and inspiring, the "old guy beat me hands down, without even pausing to light a cigarette. It looks so cool, though - me and a recognised genius in chess!"

 

[Stormkhan]

Just found this - the wonders of Google:

"Kinky Friedman: My dad taught me chess, and I was a prodigy at seven. It’s been downhill from there but, yeah, I did play Samuel Reshevsky. He was playing fifty people at one time, of which I was the youngest. He beat everybody, but I did better than a lot of the other players, and he told my dad afterwards that he’s really got to watch it with this seven-year-old. If he were to lose to anybody under say, 12 or 13, it would make headlines; it could mean his career. But he was a very nice man."
Source: A Conversation with Kinky Friedman - The American Interest (the-american-interest.com)

 

[JamesWhitehead]

Britain's worst road disaster?

We might expect it to be a motorway pile-up.

In fact, it was at Dibbles Bridge in the Yorkshire Dales.

A quiet and dignified 2019 documentary recalls the 1975 event, with some survivors able to participate.

It led to improved safety on coaches but the accident blackspot is not much-improved by signage.

The impact was very local. The victims, apart from the driver, were all women. RIP.

 

[Stormkhan]

There's a You Tube channel called Bad Day HQ that runs documentaries on disasters (fires, weather-related and so on), mainly in Canada. Two videos are on Canadian bus crashes (The St. Joseph bus accident in 1997 and the Eastman bus crash of 1978). Watching the Dibbles Bridge documentary is really similar.

 

[marhawkman]

There's no doubt that Hitler's "national socialism" was genuine in the sense that fair-haired Aryan Germans were given a lot of perks by the State,

Pfft!.. no. Most Germans even those in Hitler's elite didn't match the ridiculous standards he put forth as the ideal "Aryan" appearance.... Also... One interesting question is where Hitler got the idea from.
1: Aryan is not a real European ethnic group.
2: the only real ethnic group with that name... Probably lived in a region south of the Caspian Sea in what is now Iran. In fact the name Iran is most likely a derivative of the name Aryan.

How does that square with Hitler's rants? The "Aryan race" Hitler was talking about was his own invention. It borrowed ideas from older philosophies, but didn't actually copy any of them.

What does that say about the people of Germany circa 1939? They'd never heard of it before Hitler started popularizing it. Hitler won their support by promising economic reforms. How did that work?

At one point in time a Deutches Mark was close to the dollar in value. This coin was stamped out of ALUMINUM and around the same size as a modern US 1 dollar coin. I'm sure you can guess what that says about it's value and by comparison the terrible state of the German economy.

Hitler fixed that problem THEN started preaching about Aryan supremacy. He didn't start "weeding out" undesirables until long after he'd stabilized the economy. Of course part of the reason he hated certain groups was seeing them as impediments to his plans.

but having got their support he was then able to begin his campaign of conquest. Whether he had that planned out from the beginning, and whether he had thought he could do it without opposition from Britain and other major powers, is the question. In Speer's book he mentions Hitler referring to the war with Britain as "this mess," as though it really hadn't occurred to him that he would be challenged over his actions.

Honestly? Hitler lied so often that only a handful of his elite actually knew the truth of his plans.

Honestly... I personally think Hitler made up the Aryan Supremacy thing as a propaganda tool and didn't actually believe it to be true. We know he kept most of the crimes of the Reich secret from the public, both in and out of Germany. This was handled by the same propaganda machine.

But this applied to the Allied powers to. He kept secret anything he thought they'd object to. Obviously keeping the invasion of Poland a secret wouldn't last, but... perhaps he thought he could hide WHY he invaded?

 

[Beresford]

Hitler fixed that problem THEN started preaching about Aryan supremacy. He didn't start "weeding out" undesirables until long after he'd stabilized the economy. Of course part of the reason he hated certain groups was seeing them as impediments to his plans.
Honestly? Hitler lied so often that only a handful of his elite actually knew the truth of his plans.

Dachau was opened in March 1933, just under two months after Hitler was appointed Chancellor. Originally intended for political prisoners, other groups were sent there long before the beginning of the war. Hitler didn't always have a complete plan in his head, never mind on paper. A lot of things were down to initiatives from below.

 

[Cochise]

Honestly? Hitler lied so often that only a handful of his elite actually knew the truth of his plans.

I think the issues are more complex than Hitler 'just making the Aryan thing up' - but the line I've quoted above I absolutely agree with.

Whatever Hitler's intentions, some of his lieutenants such as Himmler believed totally in both the racist/nationalist and the socialist part of Hitler's platform - socialism in this case being of course confined to Aryans, the rest to be serfs, slaves. or exterminated.

 

[marhawkman]

Dachau was opened in March 1933, just under two months after Hitler was appointed Chancellor. Originally intended for political prisoners, other groups were sent there long before the beginning of the war. Hitler didn't always have a complete plan in his head, never mind on paper. A lot of things were down to initiatives from below.

Dachau was the first purpose built one, although the German Empire had similar prisons in WW1 some of which got used by the Nazis. Hitler's rise to power does seem to have included the goal of getting rid of the German communist party. They were the first carted off to the camps. That started in March 1933. Apparently Slavs were considered so inferior that they often didn't live long enough to get taken to camps. But yeah... the camps included anyone Hitler didn't like. It started off rather slowly in 1933 though. Also it was mostly political dissidents who had actually been arrested, and not people that were being rounded up en masse. there was a LOT of arrests, but mass arrests were less common in 1933.

While Hitler probably anticipated the idea before becoming chancellor, it's clear the scope and specific purpose of the camps was an evolving beast and one that grew much much bigger over time. And like you said... Himmler was the architect of the concentration camps, Hitler merely approved of it.

I think the issues are more complex than Hitler 'just making the Aryan thing up' - but the line I've quoted above I absolutely agree with.

Well I did say Hitler based it on older ideas. Arthur de Gobineau was apparently one source of inspiration Hitler used. But Hitler created his own version of it dramatically different from Gobineau's ideas. IIRC Hitler's version had the idea that Aryans were originally a race of demi-gods.

Whatever Hitler's intentions, some of his lieutenants such as Himmler believed totally in both the racist/nationalist and the socialist part of Hitler's platform - socialism in this case being of course confined to Aryans, the rest to be serfs, slaves. or exterminated.

well that's a typical thing with cults. the originator knows it's fake, but at least some of the cultists believe it to be true.

 

[Mythopoeika]

Perhaps Hitler meant Eireann, but didn't like that dodgy Irish spelling?

 

[JamesWhitehead]

The Sutro Baths of San Francisco.

An elaborate entertainment-complex, brainchild of an eccentric millionaire, this art nouveau folly lasted from the 1890s until 1966, when it was torched by a disgruntled employee - probably.

In its later years, only part of the complex was still in use, as a skating rink. I especially like the stories of the naughty kids, who were tempted to venture through the fire-doors to gaze in wonderment at the ruins of the disused baths beyond . . .

 

[JamesWhitehead]

A much less happy piece of American forgotten history.

The deadliest school massacre in American history? Not really a pub-quiz question, unless your pub was the Cemetery Inn, or something.

Try getting the decade right . . .

1920s? You watched the video first! Or live in Michigan.

Kehoe, the culprit - no question about it - was an ageing, disappointed politician, not the usual INCEL type.

 

[ramonmercado]

Kohima remembered.

Captain Robin Rowland was 22 when his regiment was deployed to the north-eastern Indian town of Kohima. It was May 1944, and a small group of British-Indian soldiers was under assault by an entire division of Japanese forces.

Capt Rowland, now 99, vividly remembers approaching the town, following a trail of devastation to the front line.

"We saw abandoned trenches and destroyed villages, and as we moved forward the smell of death was everywhere," he said.

The young captain was a member of the Punjab regiment of the British Indian army, on his way to help relieve 1,500 of his fellow soldiers who had spent weeks resisting 10 times their number in Japanese forces.

Cut off by the Japanese, the allied forces were depending solely on supplies by air, and very few believed they could sustain the relentless onslaught. Japan's soldiers had marched to Kohima through what was then Burma - their aim to invade India. The Japanese had already routed the British in Burma, but no-one expected them to successfully negotiate the mosquito-infested jungle hills and fast-flowing streams en route to Kohima, the capital of Nagaland, and Imphal, the capital of Manipur state in India.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-55625447

 

[Lord Lucan]

19 Years ago today, the move now known as 'The Bradbury' came to be. Legendary in Australia, possibly forgotten on the world stage:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1361442514813657089

 

[pandacracker]

^that's^ fantastic!

 

[Bad Bungle]

19 Years ago today, the move now known as 'The Bradbury' came to be. Legendary in Australia, possibly forgotten on the world stage:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1361442514813657089

It can't possibly be already 19 years ago ?

 

[cycleboy2]

19 Years ago today, the move now known as 'The Bradbury' came to be. Legendary in Australia, possibly forgotten on the world stage:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1361442514813657089

I love it when a plan comes together!

That's one of my favourite sporting memories ever, and I'm speaking as a lifelong cricket, football, rugby (both codes) and cycling fan. And regarding short track speed skating, I feel sorry for Wilf O'Reilly. He was one of the world's best short-course skaters at a time it wasn't an Olympic sport, picking up two golds when it was a demonstration event in 1988 and a world title in 1991. However, come the 1994 Olympics he crashed out of both his events. Shame, the UK hadn't exactly excelled at winter events prior to then, with a few exceptions...

 

[uair01]

Stumbled on this:

The detonation..took one-fifteenth of a second, five times faster than the blink of an eye. The epicenter of the explosion instantaneously shot up to 9,000 degrees Fahrenheit, about six times hotter than molten lava…The explosion started in the gigantic steel casement of the cargo hold, which had been packed tight and was far too small to contain such an exponential expansion. The blast shot outward in all directions at 3,400 miles per hour, or four times the speed of sound. It tore through the ship’s steel hull like wet tissue paper, converting the vessel into a monstrous hand grenade. The heat vaporized the water surrounding the ship and the people trying to tie her up and put out the fire. The remains of these victims were never found because there were no remains to find…”
- John U. Bacon, The Great Halifax Explosion


One hundred years ago, in the midst of one of the bloodiest and calamitous wars in human history, some 2,000 people in Halifax, Nova Scotia, were obliterated by one of the largest manmade explosions ever created. On December 6, 1917, a cargo ship called the Mont Blanc collided with a second ship, the Imo, in the Narrows of Halifax Harbor. The Mont Blanc was packed to the gills with explosive material:

62 tons of gun cotton, similar to dynamite; 246 tons of a new and particularly combustible airplane fuel called benzol, packed in 494 thin steel drums and stacked three and four barrels high; 250 tons of TNT; and 2,366 tons of picric acid, a notoriously unstable and poisonous chemical more powerful than its cousin, TNT, which was used to make shells, the Great War’s principle weapon.


When the Mont Blanc went off, it leveled a hugh swath of town. Along with the fatalities, around 9,000 people were injured. The mushroom cloud that rose over Halifax would be recognizable in a later day as something akin to a nuclear blast.

The Halifax Explosion was a massive disaster, striking in terms of loss of life, injuries, property damage, and human error. Yet, today, it is mostly forgotten, or at least unknown, possibly a result of it occurring at a time when millions had been killed in the trenches, and millions more were about to be killed by the flu.

 

[Stormkhan]

There's some good You Tube documentaries on the Halifax Explosion.
So many people were blinded because they were at the window, watching the fire. A section of the Mont Blanc anchor weighing just over 0.5 tons landed 2.5 miles from the blast!

 

[CarlosTheDJ]

There was once a seaplane station just down the road from me (in fact it's on our regular cycle route).

This site is aimed at younger readers but there are some interesting nuggets and good pics.


Why Tide Mills for a Seaplane Station?

In 1917, Germany (one of the countries Britain was at war with) announced unrestricted submarine warfare. German submarines were called U-Boats and they were deadly.

Britain relied on big ships to transport ammunition and supplies for the war from Newhaven in England to Dieppe in France, but the U-Boats were sinking them with torpedoes. This was bad for the British.

The supply ships needed protecting, so a large seaplane station was built at Tide Mills, next to the port at Newhaven. This meant that the seaplanes could escort the ships, keeping a look out for U-Boats below the waves!

https://tidemillsproject.uk/explore/ww1-seaplane-station/#seaplanestation

 

[JamesWhitehead]

I am old enough to remember the days when a trip up to Scotland was a rite of passage!

Before the M6 existed - or before its segments had been joined-up - road traffic had to negotiate the hazardous A6, through Shap Fell.

Was it the Hillman - badly named - the Austin or the Rover that was laden up one year for the epic journey?

We would risk such a trip in summer, only but there was every chance that the radiator would boil dry, especially if we were in a convoy of slow-moving vehicles. No wonder certain views of Shap Fell are fixed in my mind from trips of the 1960s!

Here is a delightful slice of nostalgia, as some old commercial vehicles make the journey up the old A6!

It's in five-minute segments; the last one shorter. It runs about 52 minutes in all. Delightful interviewees. It must have been made a few years back!

I loved the tales of the Jungle Café, the Leyland Clock - now in Kendal - and, best of all, the "carnivorous forest" - mentioned in video 4.

 

[RaM]

Brilliant, Think the Jungle is now or was a caravan sales pitch, you can
run the whole length now a days and only see 4 or 5 other vehicle's,
A far cry from HGV's nose to tail struggling up in crawl with flames
2 ft long coming out of the exhaust, now and then with the driver
standing in the open door one hand on the wheel one foot flat on the
accelerator, peeing on the road.
Did wonder were the clock went.

 

[ramonmercado]

This Thread started with a post regarding the Algerian War of Independence and now more light is shed on another dark chapter in that conflict.

France has admitted that a prominent Algerian nationalist was tortured and murdered by its army more than 60 years ago.

Ali Boumendjel was arrested during the Algerian War of Independence in 1957, and his death shortly after was covered-up as a suicide.

But, in a meeting with Boumendjel's grandchildren on Tuesday, President Emmanuel Macron reassessed the death. "[He] did not commit suicide. He was tortured and then killed," he said.

Algeria gained independence from France in 1962 after a bloody seven-year war. Boumendjel, a 37-year-old lawyer and nationalist, was active in the campaign against French colonial rule. He was detained during the Battle of Algiers and placed in solitary confinement by French troops. The activist was then killed and thrown from the sixth-floor of a building in an effort to disguise his death as a suicide.

The BBC's Ahmed Rouaba says that Algerian and French organisations have been campaigning for decades for the truth about Boumendjel's death.

In 2001 Gen Paul Aussaresses, who was at the time head of French intelligence in Algeria, confessed to ordering the killing of dozens of Algerian prisoners, including Boumendjel.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56262963

 

[Swifty]

I'm not even old and I remember using dial telephones (or I'm old and I remember using dial telephones) ..

The Dial Comes To Town - YouTube

 

[Stormkhan]

I was amused when an electronics firm sold "retro" dial telephones ... it had buttons in the place of the holes in the dial. So, the old dial technology is too complex to recreate digitally? (y'know what I mean). They're not retro dial 'phones - they are a new design of button 'phones.

 

[Mikefule]

I think this is "Forgotten History" rather than "Strange Deaths".

I came across this when following up links as I was reading about the Lochnagar Crater.

For full details of the incident, here is a sizeable extract from the official report.

The gist of it: 15th July 1944, 6 trucks arrived at USAAF Station 366, Metfield, Suffolk, England (later known as RAF Metfield) with a delivery of 500 Pound bombs. The explosive in the bombs was compacted with beeswax to make them roughly 50% more powerful.

The personnel who would have operated the hoist to unload them were on their break. The truck drivers were too impatient to wait, disobeyed instructions, and used an established technique to unload. This seems to have involved moving each bomb to the rear of the truck then reversing and stopping suddenly so that the bomb rolled off the back. (What could possibly go wrong?) This is still a common technique in some countries when delivering heavy loads where "cosmetic appearance" is not an issue, such as timber or rubble.

One bomb landed on another and set off a chain reaction of 1,200 tons of the beeswax-enhanced explosive.

As a result:

• 6 people died, including 3 soldiers memorialised as "missing in action". (One driver ,who had nipped for a cigarette, survived: they don't mention that on the compulsory warnings on fag packets!)
• 23 or 24 B24 aircraft were damaged beyond repair. That would have been a hard day's work for the Luftwaffe.
• Sensitive instruments such as pressure gauges and altimeters were damaged on a further 54 aircraft, meaning around 78 aircraft were put out of action — although some of the instrument damage was not discovered until the planes were airborne on later missions.
• 6 trucks were destroyed.
• Buildings were damaged.
• A civilian was reportedly blown off his feet 3.5 miles away. (5.6 km)
• A crater 75 feet wide and 25 feet deep (23 metres x 7.5 metres) was created, and it was necessary to build a loop road to skirt around this.
• Quite a lot of bombs were wasted!