Random Historical Facts

[Kyng]

We had a thread like this on the old board, but since Tapatalk seems to be down right now, I can't post the link . 

Just post any old historical facts from anywhere and any time . 

1) Nearly 90% of the men who fought for Britain in World War I survived. In total, around 6 million men served, and roughly 700,000 of those were killed in action.

[JHG]

2. Mansa Musa was among the wealthiest people in Africa.

[Kyng]

3) Despite its long-lasting legacy, the Roman Empire is only the 25th-largest land empire in history. 

(That's according to this list. Admittedly, they're double-counting some 'empires', because they're counting each Chinese dynasty as a separate empire, for example)

[Kyng]

4) During World War II, the USA wanted to minimise the number of planes it lost in battle. So, they brought in a mathematician named Abraham Wald, to study their aircraft to find out where the bullet holes were. When he finished his study, he told them they should strengthen the bits that DIDN'T have bullet holes. 

This sounds completely counter-intuitive, but there's a very good reason for it. Wald realised, quite brilliantly, that the lack of bullet holes in those places wasn't because no planes were being hit there: it was because the planes that were being hit in those places weren't surviving the missions.

[Moonshroom]

5) The experimental plane ME-163 Komet started on autopilot because it was expected to knock the pilot unconscious during the rocket-powered takeoff.

[JHG]

6. Saladin took power as the inaugural Ayyubid king in 1171.

[Moonshroom]

7) When the Titanic went down, her bow sank as expected; but, due to the way it submerged, the stern section was filled with air, not water, as it descended to her final resting place on the seabed. This caused the increasing water pressure to expand the air pockets found within that section of the ship and cause powerful underwater explosions that could be heard all the way up to the surface.

Can you imagine what that must have been like? You had just survived a highly stressful, highly traumatizing experience; the very assumption that got you to even board the ship was proven wrong in the crudest way possible ("this ship cannot be sunk"), and you were just hanging on to life on nothing more than a life jacket (or, if you were extremely lucky, a crowded life raft), surrounded by the agonizing screams of those freezing and drowning to death and now hearing how the very water you are floating on is exploding beneath your limbs.

It's tough to even imagine that.

[Kyng]

Wow, I did not know that . I studied the Titanic at school, but I don't remember that ever being mentioned. 

8) In 1861, at the beginning of the American Civil War, Scott County seceded from the state of Tennessee (because it supported the Union while the rest of Tennessee supported the Confederacy). Tennessee never recognised the secession (nor did either the Union or the Confederacy), but Scott County didn't officially rescind it until 1986.

[JHG]

9. Daimyo were some of the wealthiest people in feudal Japan.

[Kyng]

Here's a sad one:

10) In the late 19th century, L. L. Zamenhof constructed the language of Esperanto, with the hope that it would become the common international language and unify people by erasing the divisions between them. A noble goal, but one he sadly never came close to achieving: all three of his children died in the Holocaust .

(Zamenhof himself never knew about this - he was long-dead by World War II - but even so, it's just awful)