Forgotten History

ramonmercado said:
In the years following World War II, an audacious British plan would have used Nazi rockets to put a man in space.

In the summer of 1945, with the war in Europe over, Allied forces rushed to unravel the secrets of Nazi V2 rockets. These terror weapons, built by slave labourers, did little to affect the outcome of the war – but they had the potential to change the world.

“There was an unseemly scramble to get hold of V2 missile technology,” says John Becklake, former head of engineering at London’s Science Museum. “The Americans, the Russians, the French and us.”

The leader of Hitler’s Vengeance weapon program, Wernher von Braun, surrendered to American forces in May 1945 and was quietly spirited away to the United States. In the same month the Russians captured Von Braun’s research and test facilities at Peenemunde on the Baltic coast. The French, meanwhile, gathered some 40 German rocket scientists and engineers and the British assembled rockets for a series of test flights.

Known as Operation Backfire, the British program involved firing V2 rockets from the Netherlands to the edge of space before they splashed down in the North Sea. The experiment proved successful, with the missiles reportedly descending within three miles of their targets – more accurately than the Germans managed during the war.

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/201...t-could-have-put-a-briton-in-space?ocid=twfut
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This has been my bed-time reading for the last few days and it's been quite illuminating.

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Whilst everyone knows about the flamboyant Wernher von Braun, what is less well known is that the Soviets either bribed or otherwise coerced almost 200 top Nazi scientists to work for them at the end of WW2 - including the brilliant Helmut Gröttrup. Rather more of a boffin and more studious than the playboy-like von Braun, Gröttrup's research and development initially put the Soviets well ahead in the space race, with the first artificial satellite, first animal in space (R.I.P. poor Laika) and of course Yuri Gagarin. The Soviets were sensitive about admitting to so much help from ex-Nazis and so they publicly claimed that the role Gröttrup and some 200 other German scientists played was negligible. The reality of this forgotten history though is that Gröttrup and co's work helped give the Soviets the edge, when von Braun was too busy enjoying the high life and his almost film star status.
 
Sillyhuron said:
Found a couple of interesting articles about the cold war turning very hot in 1947 Alaska/Siberia.
https://ordonews.com/war-of-the-chukchi-and-eskimos-in-1947/
http://www.globaldomainsnews.com/as-the-soviet-chukchi-attacked-eskimos-in-alaska-in-1947

Never heard of this before. Russian and American citizens actually killing each other.
Even more interesting that both superpowers used an existing ethnic/tribal feud to advance their interests. Sound familiar?
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Heard of it. but yeah. it's an old stratagem.
 
So I'm browsing: Die Kunst der Staatsführung, Die schriften des chinesischen Meisters Han Fei, Wilmar Mögling, Komet, 1994 p.283. And it says:

In Yan there was a man who was a bit crazy and bathed in dog manure. His wife had an intimate relationship with a scholar. When her husband returned home earlier than usual one day, the lover was leaving the house. The man asked who the stranger was, but the woman replied, "There is no stranger." Then he asked the servants, but also the servants all said as if from one mouth that there was no stranger. His wife said to him, "I'm sure you're a bit confused," and then bathed him in dog manure.

I'm totally blown away by the wonders and wisdom of Chinese classics :cool:

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uair01 said:
So I'm browsing: Die Kunst der Staatsführung, Die schriften des chinesischen Meisters Han Fei, Wilmar Mögling, Komet, 1994 p.283. And it says: In Yan there was a man who was a bit crazy and bathed in dog manure. His wife had an intimate relationship with a scholar. When her husband returned home earlier than usual one day, the lover was leaving the house. The man asked who the stranger was, but the woman replied, "There is no stranger." Then he asked the servants, but also the servants all said as if from one mouth that there was no stranger. His wife said to him, "I'm sure you're a bit confused," and then bathed him in dog manure. I'm totally blown away by the wonders and wisdom of Chinese classics :cool: View attachment 55130
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uair01 said:
So I'm browsing: Die Kunst der Staatsführung, Die schriften des chinesischen Meisters Han Fei, Wilmar Mögling, Komet, 1994 p.283. And it says:

In Yan there was a man who was a bit crazy and bathed in dog manure. His wife had an intimate relationship with a scholar. When her husband returned home earlier than usual one day, the lover was leaving the house. The man asked who the stranger was, but the woman replied, "There is no stranger." Then he asked the servants, but also the servants all said as if from one mouth that there was no stranger. His wife said to him, "I'm sure you're a bit confused," and then bathed him in dog manure.

I'm totally blown away by the wonders and wisdom of Chinese classics :cool:

View attachment 55130
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We do have an expression in Australia - dog shit crazy. I doubt that there's any wisdom behind our utterance...
 
uair01 said:
So I'm browsing: Die Kunst der Staatsführung, Die schriften des chinesischen Meisters Han Fei, Wilmar Mögling, Komet, 1994 p.283. And it says:

In Yan there was a man who was a bit crazy and bathed in dog manure. His wife had an intimate relationship with a scholar. When her husband returned home earlier than usual one day, the lover was leaving the house. The man asked who the stranger was, but the woman replied, "There is no stranger." Then he asked the servants, but also the servants all said as if from one mouth that there was no stranger. His wife said to him, "I'm sure you're a bit confused," and then bathed him in dog manure.

I'm totally blown away by the wonders and wisdom of Chinese classics :cool:
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I found another translation, and there is a similar tale in the next paragraph. Also featuring dog sh*t!

A man of Yen was easily bewildered and therefore would bathe in dogs' dung. The wife of the man of Yen was intimate with a bachelor. Once, when her husband came home early from outside, the fellow happened to be going out from the home. "Who is the visitor"? asked the husband. "No visitor at all," replied the wife, Then he asked the servants, who all said "None!" as though the reply came from one mouth. "You certainly became insane." So saying, his wife bathed him in dogs' dung.

According to a different source: A man of Yen, named Li Chi, would go far away. His wife was intimate with a bachelor. One day he suddenly came home while the fellow was in. Over this his wife worried, so her woman servant said to her: "Let the young gentleman go naked and with his hairs dispersed rush straight out through the door. Then all of us will pretend to have been nothing." Thereupon the young fellow followed the plan and ran out fast through the door. "Who is that man?" asked Chi. "Nobody," replied everyone in the house. "Have I seen a ghost?" "Certainly." "What shall I do then?" "Get the dung of the five animals 19 and bathe in it." "All right," said Chi. So he bathed in the dung. According to another different source he bathed in hot orchid water.

http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/saxon...1&toc.depth=1&toc.id=d2.20&doc.lang=bilingual
 
rynner2 said:
May's mystery church was in fact St Margaret of Antioch in Hinton Waldrist, a village just off the A420 between Oxford and Swindon.
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A St Margaret of Antioch fan badge found.

A medieval silver badge of allegiance showing St Margaret of Antioch would probably have been owned by a literate, upper class woman, an historian said.

St Margaret was revered as the patron saint of childbirth and pregnant women.
The 15th or 16th Century piece was found at Cawston, Norfolk, in September and has been declared treasure.
Silver veneration badges usually depict St George and the dragon, making this a "rare and unusual" find, according to Dr Helen Geake.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-norfolk-61439097
 
ramonmercado said:
A St Margaret of Antioch fan badge found.

A medieval silver badge of allegiance showing St Margaret of Antioch would probably have been owned by a literate, upper class woman, an historian said.

St Margaret was revered as the patron saint of childbirth and pregnant women.
The 15th or 16th Century piece was found at Cawston, Norfolk, in September and has been declared treasure.
Silver veneration badges usually depict St George and the dragon, making this a "rare and unusual" find, according to Dr Helen Geake.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-norfolk-61439097
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Is she the maker of The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbi...y,refer to the mythical Holy Spear of Antioch.

(I'll get my coat. As a practicing Catholic I should probably not make this kind of joke :oops: )
 
Health claims for beer have long been forbidden in the UK. Yet a few years ago - maybe 15? - I bought loads of Export Mackeson lactic stout, at a bargain outlet, evidently from a "grey" source. Intended for a Chinese or other Far East market, the symbols on the bottles included a strong man juggling clubs, as well as the trademark milk-churn. The export-strength stout was delicious but I did no juggling, afterwards!

That churn always reminded me of the Capstan on the notorious Full-Strength, filterless fags, loved by my Gran!

I suppose, somewhere overseas, they are still promoting ciggies with the sort of health-claims which were endorsed by Hollywood stars in the forties and fifties! :oops:
 
JamesWhitehead said:
Health claims for beer have long been forbidden in the UK. Yet a few years ago - maybe 15? - I bought loads of Export Mackeson lactic stout, at a bargain outlet, evidently from a "grey" source. Intended for a Chinese or other Far East market, the symbols on the bottles included a strong man juggling clubs, as well as the trademark milk-churn. The export-strength stout was delicious but I did no juggling, afterwards!

That churn always reminded me of the Capstan on the notorious Full-Strength, filterless fags, loved by my Gran!

I suppose, somewhere overseas, they are still promoting ciggies with the sort of health-claims which were endorsed by Hollywood stars in the forties and fifties! :oops:
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Beer is actually good for you. It is essentially very dilute porridge. Unless, of course, one indulges to excess. Wine also good for you, for slightly different reasons.

Tobacco - not so much, although it may depend on how you take it. Most of the problems with smoking are to do with inhaling the toxic smoke from burning herbal products, not so much the nicotine itself. And the exact same problems apply to smoking cannabis, although apparently no-one wants to know that.
 
Following a reference in a footnote of one of Robert MacFarlane's books, I've begun reading Ronald Blyth's Akenfield. It's a compelling read: an oral history of a Suffolk village told by its inhabitants in 1969. Some of whom were old enough to have fought in WW1. I have come to it after a similar period of time has passed as between their war service and Blyth recording their testimony.

It is full of astounding information. Growing up in Bradford, I was very familiar with stories of the industrial poverty and hardship in the city (Engels, famously, noted the same), but I had absolutely no idea about the rural equivalent in Suffolk. How approximately 700 thousand agricultural workers used agricultural union funds to emigrate towards the end of the nineteenth century, because of the crushing poverty and toll on health. That's a huge exodus, which I never heard of before. All of what Blyth recounts is in the shadow of this troubled history: the pride in a job well done versus the impossibility of actually surviving on that labour.

The village blacksmith talks of scraping shit out of pig intestines as a child, so that they could swap them with the butcher, who'd use them for sausage skins. In return, they'd get a lump of fat and gristle. In 1934, the family had a blackbird pie for Christmas dinner. By 1969, however, he'd ridden the wave of incomer nostalgia and was selling craft items. Making a reasonable living, but all the time haunted by his forebears, and what they would have thought.

The language carries an unforced eloquence and poetry. Take this, from a 39-year-old who'd learned to be a gardener at the local lord's estate. It's the final sentence of his testimony: "I am thirty-nine and I am a Victorian gardener, and this is why the world is strange to me."

I'm 120 pages in, and every page carries something equally beautiful or horrifying. I gather it's something of a classic, and I can well understand why. The past is, proverbially, another country. What an incredible document this is.
 
Although Wallace had broken with Roerich, unease about his occult connections followed him after his nomination for the vice-presidency in 1940. Republicans obtained copies of the so-called “guru letters” from the early 1930s in which Wallace had written to Nicholas Roerich as his “dear Guru” and signed himself as “G” for Sir Galahad. In the letters, Wallace told Roerich that he eagerly awaited the imminent apocalypse and the arrival of the people of North Shamballah (a Buddhist term for heaven, but used in Theosophy to refer to the place of the Ascended Masters, the aliens, etc.), who would cleanse the earth of poverty and lead to a new era of peace. Democrats contained the scandal only by threatening to reveal Republican presidential nominee Wendell Wilkie’s extramarital affair with Irita Van Doren. The two parties agreed to suppress the other’s scandal.

From:
https://www.amazon.com/Faking-History-Essays-Atlantis-Monsters/dp/1482387824
 
uair01 said:
View attachment 55390View attachment 55391
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One of my favourite country songs, recorded by Jerry Lee Lewis in 1968 is specifically about this brand of beer, and references their slogan, "The beer that made Milwaukee famous."

This isn't the thread for links to music videos, but you can easily find the song if you search Youtube for "What's Made Milwaukee Famous". It has also been recorded by Rod Stewart and no doubt other artists, but the Jerry Lee Lewis version is an exceptional performance.

An aspect of "forgotten history" in its own right: most British people know of Jerry Lee Lewis as a one hit wonder, or possibly for his 2 best known rock 'n' roll songs both recorded in 1957. However, his country and gospel music career flourished and he was still recording 63 years later in 2020. Fans will know he was banned from the Grand Ole Opry in 1973, but it is less well known that he is due to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in October 2022.

There are many famous or historical people whose whole lives or careers are "defined" by one event, hit record, statement, or mistake many years ago — or even by an rumour or an event that never happened — and all of the good or ill that they did after that date is never noticed.
 
At length, having knowledge that the Pope’s holy tooth greatly delighted to new-fangled strange delicacies and dainty dishes, it came in [Cromwell’s] mind to prepare certain fine dishes of jelly, after the best fashion, after our country manner here in England ...

The way to a pope’s heart was clearly through his stomach. A convenient (and presumably expendable) cardinal tasted the strangers’ sweetmeats and pronounced them not only safe to eat but entirely delectable. The Pope then consumed the delicacies
:)
and, enchanted by their flavour, ordered the indulgences to be approved by his personal signet stamp without further ado.
(From a book on Thomas Cromwell.)
 
[Anne Boleyn] After probably suffering a miscarriage in July 1534, she was so desperate to become pregnant again – it was her principal role as queen, after all – that in her despair and frustration she spoke slightingly of Henry’s lacklustre performance in bed where, she said, he had neither skill nor virility. Attacking Henry’s over-inflated ego was tantamount to suicide within his whispering, rumour-ridden court and these unwise indiscretions were to count against her in the future. But eventually, in October 1535, she conceived another child.
 
uair01 said:
[Anne Boleyn] After probably suffering a miscarriage in July 1534, she was so desperate to become pregnant again – it was her principal role as queen, after all – that in her despair and frustration she spoke slightingly of Henry’s lacklustre performance in bed where, she said, he had neither skill nor virility. Attacking Henry’s over-inflated ego was tantamount to suicide within his whispering, rumour-ridden court and these unwise indiscretions were to count against her in the future. But eventually, in October 1535, she conceived another child.
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Then he produced his trump card. Lady Rochford discreetly wrote down the Queen’s incautious words about Henry’s lack of manly prowess in bed and handed the paper over to the twenty-six peers who sat as judges. She had written: ‘Que le Roy n’estait habile en cas de soi copuler avec femme, et qu’il n’avait ni vertu ni puissance’ – ‘The King was not skilful when copulating with a woman and he had not virtue or power.’ Cromwell’s veiled implication was not difficult to discern: if Anne could not have a son by the King, she would look elsewhere to beget a child and pass it off as an heir. The Queen was finished. So was her brother.

From here. Good book. I had always assumed Britsh history was boring ... but not so!

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show...ll?from_search=true&from_srp=OZH9KsK9BL&qid=5
 
uair01 said:
Then he produced his trump card. Lady Rochford discreetly wrote down the Queen’s incautious words about Henry’s lack of manly prowess in bed and handed the paper over to the twenty-six peers who sat as judges. She had written: ‘Que le Roy n’estait habile en cas de soi copuler avec femme, et qu’il n’avait ni vertu ni puissance’ – ‘The King was not skilful when copulating with a woman and he had not virtue or power.’ Cromwell’s veiled implication was not difficult to discern: if Anne could not have a son by the King, she would look elsewhere to beget a child and pass it off as an heir. The Queen was finished. So was her brother.

From here. Good book. I had always assumed Britsh history was boring ... but not so!

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show...ll?from_search=true&from_srp=OZH9KsK9BL&qid=5
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You should look up the reason why there was only one King Stephen. :p
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen,_King_of_England
Hoo boy... people think Game of Thrones is fully fictional? Sure the setting is technically fictional, but the real-world dramas that inspired it are just as exciting.
 
I assume graciously that "mount" is meant in the equestrian sense :)

Predictably, Henry was by no means abashed by such a show of moral rectitude. He pressed his demand to scrutinise the would-be brides, insisting: ‘By God! I trust no one but myself. The thing touches me too near. I wish to see them and know them some time before deciding.’ Castillon, in turn, knew the value of a joke to turn aside royal wrath. He neatly punctured the English King’s pomposity by embarrassing him: ‘Then maybe your grace would like to mount them one after the other and keep the one you find the best broken in. Is that the way the knights of the Round Table treated women in times past?’ His mocking taunt hit home. Henry ‘laughed and blushed at the same time and recognised that the way he had taken was a little discourteous’, the ambassador reported later.
 
In May 1964, there was a serious typhoid outbreak in Aberdeen, with over 400 cases being hospitalised and a handful of deaths.
It was traced to a contaminated batch of Argentinian corned beef, but was exacerbated by very poor hygiene at the time.

It prompted the Secretary of State for Scotland Michael Noble MP to set aside funds for hand washing facilities to be made mandatory in Scottish public toilets.


X-noble.png
 
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