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Forgotten History

Stalin tried to assassinate Tito on numerous occasions.
Eventually Tito wrote him a letter saying "stop trying to kill me we've already captured and killed those you sent. If I want to kill you I won't fail"

Tito was a force of nature.
 
Recently read about the Santiago fire of 1863 when the Church of the Company of Jesus caught fire just as the mass of the Immaculate Conception was about to start, on 8th December . From what I can work out, it was mainly or even exclusively attended by women, There were lighted lamps, candles, flowers, plenty of drapes. A number of tapestries were especially created. A fire broke out. An attendant knocked an oil lamp over trying to smother the first fire and soon more items were soon aflame. Panic broke out and the worshippers tried to flee.
The doors were already closed, and most of them opened inward so couldn't be used in the crush.
1863 was part of the hoop skirt fashion, and which were highly flammable . The dome of the building was wooden. Must have been absolutely terrifying. There were around 2,500 deaths, many of the bodies were severely burned.

https://paulwandrews.wordpress.com/2018/05/14/the-most-deadly-fire-disaster-in-all-history/
 
I was unfamiliar with horrifying story about that Santiago fire. I read the piece in total shock, thinking how bad it was, and then when I read this...it became a whole lot worse.

All the officiating priests escaped through the vestry door with the holy relics in hand. The vestry door was then closed to keep the fire from spreading to the rectory mansion next door. No doubt hundreds of victims could have found safety through that door. Vocal outrage fumed in the press and public at the near criminal indifference of the priests to the safety of their largely female congregation.
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Kondoru said:
And what was done about it?
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The fact that the priests would have actually closed the door upon burning children and horribly-suffering people?

Or concerns regarding future public safety in large cramped spaces?

I suspect that in 1863 both would have been considered salved with prayers of intercession: but it was an utterly-terrible set of circumstances irrespective of the era.

An underpinning thought regarding this disaster makes me feel even more sickened by the story: some (perhaps many) people in the church that night will have been afraid that a fire could happen. But their faith in God would have kept them cramming in, in the sure & certain knowledge that He would protect them.
 
Ermintruder said:
The fact that the priests would have actually closed the door upon burning children and horribly-suffering people?

Or concerns regarding future public safety in large cramped spaces?

I suspect that in 1863 both would have been considered salved with prayers of intercession: but it was an utterly-terrible set of circumstances irrespective of the era.

An underpinning thought regarding this disaster makes me feel even more sickened by the story: some (perhaps many) people in the church that night will have been afraid that a fire could happen. But their faith in God would have kept them cramming in, in the sure & certain knowledge that He would protect them.
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Yes it is horrifying to read about.

According to this post here , there is an interesting link to Wales.
Also the disaster led to the establishment of a fire brigade in Santiago.

http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/20027

There is a New York Times account on line ( pay to access site) : I haven't got round to reading it so sharing for information purposes only.

https://www.nytimes.com/1864/01/18/...wo-thousand-five-hundred-persons-roasted.html
 
One eighteenth-century lieutenant general of police allegedly boasted that when three people came together for a conversation, one of them was sure to be one of his agents. These showed a pronounced appetite for catching amorous priests or prominent noblemen in flagrante, and describing in graphic detail exactly what they did with their partners. Antoine de Sartine, lieutenant general of police during the reign of Louis XV, was particularly active in this respect, ‘spying on the shameful secrets’ of his subjects ‘to amuse a king even more libertine than himself, with all the nudities of vice’, in the words of a later commissioner of police who had immersed himself (with evident relish) in the reports.

Phantom Terror: The Threat of Revolution and the Repression of Liberty 1789-1848
Adam Zamoyski
 
uair01 said:
‘spying on the shameful secrets’ of his subjects ‘to amuse a king even more libertine than himself, with all the nudities of vice’, in the words of a later commissioner of police who had immersed himself (with evident relish) in the reports.
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Sounds like those big-money American preachers who are caught out doing exactly what they loudly denounce. :chuckle:
 
I am interested in examples of 'Forgotten History' that is then remembered , but forgotten again. I have looked at the 1864 conflict -some times called the Second Schleswig War -which saw Denmark getting invaded by Prussia and Austria due to the question of the territories of Schleswig - Holstein,nominally under Danish rule.
Denmark arguably provoked the outbreak of hostilities, due to a wave of radical national-liberalism, and was soundly defeated. Losing a great deal of land and population. By contrast Prussia became more confident, defeating Austria in 1866, France in 1870, and created a united Germany.
A Danish TV series made in 2014 titled '1864' reached an international audience, claiming to highlight a 'forgotten' war. The fact that said series appeared at the time when Europe was preparing to commemorate the centenary of World War 1 was probably helpful.
But nearly ten years later, his war seems to have been forgotten again, which is a shame. And the tv series concerned was rather good.
https://bleakchesneywold.blogspot.com/2023/05/1864-whatever-happened-to-forgotten-war.html
 
I really liked that tv series. And as you say it was a forgotten conflict which deserved some attention. Plus the battle scenes were pretty gruesome.
 
staticgirl said:
I really liked that tv series. And as you say it was a forgotten conflict which deserved some attention. Plus the battle scenes were pretty gruesome.
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Indeed, I think that the scene with the canon training, when the pig pen gets hit, is incredible. The new recruits, who are mainly quite jolly, get to see that soon it will be men who will be lying on the ground shrieking in agony. The old soldier remains serious faced right from the start, having already seen battle.
Playback on other sites is not permitted, but the clip can be viewed on Youtube by searching for '1864-canon training'.
 
A mob lynched this man, at best police stood by. It happened in Liverpool.

A sailor who died after he was pursued by a white mob in one of the UK's worst outbreaks of racist violence is to have a permanent headstone on his grave.

Charles Wotten, also known as Wootton, died in Liverpool in 1919 and was buried in a pauper's grave. The headstone will be officially unveiled at a ceremony in Anfield Cemetery at 14:00 BST. It is the first of several memorials marking the contributions of black people to the city.

The event is the result of five years of fundraising and campaigning by the Liverpool Black History Research Group in collaboration with the Liverpool Enslaved Memorial Project.

Mr Wotten was buried in a public grave without a permanent headstone.

"We had to get Home Office permission for the headstone because Charles is in a public grave," Laurence Westgaph, of the Liverpool Black History Research Group, said.

"We want to recognise Charles Wotten but also the adult education centre named after him in Liverpool 8 which became a hub for Liverpool's black community inspiring a generation of young activists in the fight for equality," said Mr Westgaph.

Mr Westgaph, whose own grandmother had to flee the disturbances which claimed the life of Mr Wotten, said: "People forget that Liverpool's black community was long established before Windrush."

The Liverpool Museum of Slavery explained by the summer of 1919 tensions that had been rising for many months finally boiled over. Servicemen returning from World War One found their jobs had either disappeared or were filled by lower paid women and immigrant workers.

On the evening of 5 June police raided a boarding house in Upper Pitt Street, home to mainly Caribbean and West African seafarers.

Mr Wotten, 24, a Bermudan ship's fireman, escaped the house and fled towards the docks, chased by police and the mob.

It is not clear exactly what happened but he was held by the police and somehow ended up in the dock.

He tried to swim away, while the mob pelted him bricks and stones, but he soon drowned.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-merseyside-65813499
 
Mr Bleak said:
Indeed, I think that the scene with the canon training, when the pig pen gets hit, is incredible. The new recruits, who are mainly quite jolly, get to see that soon it will be men who will be lying on the ground shrieking in agony. The old soldier remains serious faced right from the start, having already seen battle.
Playback on other sites is not permitted, but the clip can be viewed on Youtube by searching for '1864-canon training'.
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In the clip, the bloke giving the demonstration should have known whether the cannon was loaded or not. That's his job.
 
escargot said:
In the clip, the bloke giving the demonstration should have known whether the cannon was loaded or not. That's his job.
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Yes fair comment, didn't quite get that part of the scene myself ! Perhaps the point that '1864' was trying to make was that the captain was a total cretin and blamed some poor rookie for his own foul ups.
 
Finally the voices of the victims prevails.

An Australian newspaper has offered a historic apology for its coverage of a massacre of Aboriginal people in 1838.

At least 28 people, mainly women and children, were brutally murdered in the New South Wales town of Myall Creek. The massacre was the first - and only - time colonists were prosecuted for mass killings of Aboriginal people. The Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) admitted to spreading racist views and misinformation while campaigning for the killers to escape justice.

The masthead, which is one of the nation's oldest publications, also opposed the death sentence eventually handed down to seven of the 12 men involved.

"This was not due to a lack of evidence or genuine doubts over the integrity of any legal process, but because the perpetrators were white and the dead black," the paper said in an editorial on Friday. "The Herald has a long and proud history of telling the Australian story. But on Myall Creek, the truth is we failed dismally."

It also apologised for other historic articles which had encouraged readers to kill Aboriginal people if they ever felt "threatened", acknowledging its editorial positions had helped support the proposition colonists were "entitled to impunity" for their violence.

The editorial added that the masthead's coverage at the time was out of step with other papers, quoting a historian who deemed it "as brutal as colonial journalism gets".

The SMH said it was apologising on the 185th anniversary of the Myall Creek - on 10 June - because it felt "truth is an essential force for reconciliation".

The mass killings at Myall Creek Station were carried out by a group of European stockmen - mostly ex-convicts - who rounded up and executed Wirrayaraay women, children, and elders, while the men in their families were working nearby.

The events unfolded during Australia's Frontier Wars - a period of genocidal violence throughout the first 140 years of British settlement, when Indigenous people fought to defend themselves and their land from colonists.

In 2022, research from the University of Newcastle Australia found there had been 19 recorded genocidal massacres - defined as a series of reprisal massacres carried out by the same perpetrators in an effort to kill every Aboriginal person in a region.

The violence inflicted in Myall Creek that day is only known because the perpetrators were tried and convicted, historians say. Countless other atrocities from the Frontier Wars remain untold, leaving a gaping hole in Australia's history.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-65852772
 
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The singers of Lulli’s operas had all the faults of their later brethren. Dumenil, the tenor, used to steal the jewelry of the prime donne, and get intoxicated with the baritone. He is said to have drank six bottles of champagne every night, and only the sixth deteriorated his performance.

Marthe Le Rochois, another of the troupe, on being accused of too much intimacy with the bassoon of the orchestra, exhibited a promise of marriage from the fond performer, written on the back of an ace of spades.

Mlle. de Maupin was the wildest scapegrace the stage ever saw: her adventures read like the most improbable sensational novel, and would take as much space to reproduce.

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/66216/pg66216-images.html#c41
 
An interesting story.

The story of a World War Two battalion of black women who came to England to solve a postal crisis has been hidden for decades, but they are starting to get the recognition they deserve. The BBC spoke to some of their relatives about the unit known as Six Triple Eight.

In 1945, as war continued to grip many parts of the globe, 855 women answered the US Army's call to revive troop morale and clear a two-year postal backlog in England.

They set sail from America to the UK, finally settling in Birmingham to join the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion.

Then aged 26, trailblazer Major Charity Adams became the first black woman to command an overseas battalion in the US Army and led the women to solve a huge problem.

They were given six months, but through 24-hour shifts they sorted through 17 million letters and packages in half the time.
In doing so, they helped boost the spirits of personnel on the front line who had lost communication with their loved ones back home.

"I seldom heard anything about black women serving in World War Two, it's like they were deleted from history," said Col Edna Cummings, a retired US Army officer who served for 25 years.

6888th battalion
IMAGE SOURCE, US ARMY Image caption, The women had a motto: "No mail, low morale"

Based at King Edward's School, in Edgbaston, the women - who went on to Rouen and Paris in France - faced many challenges including using outdated equipment, cultural differences and gender discrimination. They worked in cramped, unheated and dimly-lit buildings with packages stacked to the ceilings. Many reported being surrounded by mice and rats which had sought out spoiled food in some of the parcels.

Despite this, they defied all odds and earned themselves a reputation for their efficiency and dedication by working under their motto: No mail, low morale.

When they returned home in 1946, the unit, which also included some Hispanic women, were not given ceremonies, parades or any public recognition of their accomplishments.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-birmingham-66045635
 
ramonmercado said:
An interesting story.

The story of a World War Two battalion of black women who came to England to solve a postal crisis has been hidden for decades, but they are starting to get the recognition they deserve. The BBC spoke to some of their relatives about the unit known as Six Triple Eight.

In 1945, as war continued to grip many parts of the globe, 855 women answered the US Army's call to revive troop morale and clear a two-year postal backlog in England.

They set sail from America to the UK, finally settling in Birmingham to join the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion.

Then aged 26, trailblazer Major Charity Adams became the first black woman to command an overseas battalion in the US Army and led the women to solve a huge problem.

They were given six months, but through 24-hour shifts they sorted through 17 million letters and packages in half the time.
In doing so, they helped boost the spirits of personnel on the front line who had lost communication with their loved ones back home.

"I seldom heard anything about black women serving in World War Two, it's like they were deleted from history," said Col Edna Cummings, a retired US Army officer who served for 25 years.

6888th battalion
IMAGE SOURCE, US ARMY Image caption, The women had a motto: "No mail, low morale"

Based at King Edward's School, in Edgbaston, the women - who went on to Rouen and Paris in France - faced many challenges including using outdated equipment, cultural differences and gender discrimination. They worked in cramped, unheated and dimly-lit buildings with packages stacked to the ceilings. Many reported being surrounded by mice and rats which had sought out spoiled food in some of the parcels.

Despite this, they defied all odds and earned themselves a reputation for their efficiency and dedication by working under their motto: No mail, low morale.

When they returned home in 1946, the unit, which also included some Hispanic women, were not given ceremonies, parades or any public recognition of their accomplishments.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-birmingham-66045635
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Heard the item about this on R4 last week. These must have been highly literate ladies.
 
MorningAngel said:
I’ve never heard of this until today. Probably because it was before I was born. But it’s truly awful, those poor people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summerland_disaster?wprov=sfti1
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This happened when I was a young teenager. My parents took the Daily Mirror, a tabloid which covered the disaster in detail with lots of photos. I did of course read every word.

While it wasn't exactly local to me, the Isle of Man is close enough to be covered by the same regional TV news shows. We heard a LOT about it.
Altogether a solid Silly Season story. Like the Enfield Poltergeist.
 
escargot said:
This happened when I was a young teenager. My parents took the Daily Mirror, a tabloid which covered the disaster in detail with lots of photos. I did of course read every word.

While it wasn't exactly local to me, the Isle of Man is close enough to be covered by the same regional TV news shows. We heard a LOT about it.
Altogether a solid Silly Season story. Like the Enfield Poltergeist.
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I would have thought something that bad would have had a lot of national news coverage. If it’s anything like today the media loves it when something truly horrible happens.
 
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