Yeah, they lost incredible numbers. During the siege of Leningrad an estimated 800,000 civiliansnearly as many as all the World War II deaths of the United States and the United Kingdom combined, died of starvation. Their daily ration was 125 g of bread daily. About 2 1/2 slices of the sandwich bread I have on my counter. My wife's father survived the seige as a young teenager. His mother died on the train as they were leaving the city after it ended.

7 out of 8 German soldiers who died in WWII died on the Russian front. America may have been the war engine with our economy, but Russia was the human grease in those gears

Aggie1205 said:

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If you add up military deaths of all of the Allied countries (even though some of the deaths from countries like Poland could have been killed in the service of Germany or Russia), the number comes to a bit over 2 million. To put things in perspective, there were 3.3 million Russian POW's who died in German POW camps alone. Since they were considered traitors for having been captured, no one even knows many of the names and families weren't notified.

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"considered traitor for having been captured"...

Wilford Brimley once worked as a body guard for Howard Hughes:

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It's easy to see Wilford Brimley primarily as an actor, but as William Grimes of the New York Times notes, his professional life involved a great many other, often even more exciting jobs. Brimley started his professional career early, dropping out of school when he was 14 and starting a new life as a cowboy. Yes, an actual cowboy. After doing that in three different states, he decided to tick yet another box in his awesomeness check list, and enlisted in the Marine Corps. After that, it was back to Old West life for young Wilford. who spent some time as a wrangler, a ranch hand, and even a blacksmith. At one point, he ventured outside his cowboy comfort zone by working as a bodyguard. For Howard Hughes. Yeah, it's that kind of a resume.

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New Mexico State University's first graduating class had one member, who was shot and killed before graduation.

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• NMSU's first graduating class, the class of 1893, had just one member Samuel Steel. Unfortunately, Steel was shot and killed shortly before graduation in what was then still very much the Wild West.
• The following year we had five graduates. All received bachelor's of science degrees. One of them was the university's first female graduate, Agnes Williams. Another person in that class was Fabian Garcia.

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Sam Steel got his degree awarded 105 years later:

"and there is some talk of lynching him"...
which would be click bait if posted today,
but they meant it.

the Norden bombsight project costs over 1.5 billion, with over 90,000 being ordered. this was 2/3 the cost of the Manhattan project.

not until 1944 did Germany kill more British soldiers than it had british citizens.

more airmen from the 8th army air forces died over Europe than marine died in ww2

Cinco Ranch Aggie said:

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In 1942, James Doolittle leads the Raiders to bombing locations across Japan by launching B-25 Mitchell medium bombers from the deck of the USS Hornet.

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There is no part of me that doesn't read his name and IMMEDIATELY ask which animals he colluded with while fighting.

Jacques Cousteau's Calypso was originally a Seattle built, British leashed, WW2 wooden minesweeper.

It was also, briefly, a ferry in Malta. It's currently rotting in Turkey.

Man, I loved this show growing up.

A soldiers dying wish engraved in civil war marker:



Incredibly, this gravestone (in Kansas) is by a Grigsy whose brother was married to Lincoln's sister and had gone to school with him.

Quote:

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Went to school with Lincoln's. Brother to Aaron Grigsby who married Abe Lincoln's oldest sister. Visited in White House.

Through this inscription I wish to enter my dying protest against what is called the Democratic party I have watched it closely since the days of Jackson and know that all the misfortunes of our nation has come to it through this so called party therefore beware of this party of treason.

Put on in fulfillment of promise to Deceased.

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General William Westmorland met his wife at his first post out of West Point at Ft. Sill in 1936. She was the daughter of a fellow officer. She was 9 years old at the time. They married 11 years later.

My wife is 14 years younger than me and I've told her I'm really glad I didn't know her when she was a 1st Grader and I was a Junior at A&M.

A German tale of rent control:

Rent in the German village of Fuggerei has not risen since the year 1520. At $1 a year, it's quite a real estate bargain. The waiting list to move in is four years long, with a very strict code of conduct. For one, you must be at least 60 years old, Catholic, have zero debt, pray 3 times a day for the Fugger family, take up a community volunteer job, and abide by a 10pm curfew.

That's in Augsburg, isn't it? My dad was stationed in Augsburg when I was a kid and we visited the Fuggerei.

The Fugger family themselves are amazing. They founded and financed the Fuggerei. Little is known today of the Fuggers, but from wikipedia:

Alongside the Welser family, the Fugger family controlled much of the European economy in the sixteenth century and accumulated enormous wealth. The Fuggers held a near monopoly on the European copper market.
This banking family replaced the Medici family who influenced all of Europe during the Renaissance. The Fuggers took over many of the Medicis' assets and their political power and influence. They were closely affiliated with the House of Habsburg whose rise to world power they financed.

Jakob Fugger "the Rich" was elevated to the nobility of the Holy Roman Empire in May 1511 and assumed the title Imperial Count of Kirchberg and Weissenhorn in 1514. Today, he is considered to be one of the wealthiest people ever to have lived, with a GDP-adjusted net worth of over $400 billion, and approximately 2% of the entire GDP of Europe at the time.

In July 1969, Honduras and El Salvador fought briefly in what was called the Football War due to a couple of soccer matches playing a role in sparking it. The real cause was more complex but calling it the Football war is quite catching. During the fight, a dogfight took place involving (4) F4U Corsairs and (2) P51 Mustangs. This was the last time two piston-engine aircraft fought each other.


M3A1 Stuarts were also used in the conflict.

Visually striking...Sioux dancing from way back

Earlier in this thread I described the mind blowing story of his horse, but Myles Keogh himself was a little mind-blowing. Before the Civil War he joined the Papal Army as a lieutenant. He was captured and imprisoned briefly before being exchanged during the War of Italian Unification.

After his release he was appointed to the Papal Guard or Swiss Guard. When the Civil War broke out he resigned from the Swiss Guard and enlisted in the Federal Army. At Gettysburg he served in Buford's Division alongside a fellow Swiss Guard, Lt. Joseph O'keefe.

Keogh would be the only former Papal Guard to die at the Little Big Horn but his horse Comanche was the sole survivor of the fight in the Greasy Grass fought mainly on Last Stand and Calhoun Hills

New Mexico has more plague cases than the rest of the US combined.

In the 50-year period 1970-2020, New Mexico had more than half of plague cases in the U.S.253 out of a total of 496followed by Colorado with 66 cases, Arizona with 65 cases and California with 45 cases, according to figures compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). There were 19 cases in Oregon in the time period and 15 in Utah

https://www.newsweek.com/plague-map-us-cases-since-1970-new-mexico-1878428

And NM also has the highest rate of Hantavirus cases in the US since tracking began in 1993.
https://www.cdc.gov/hantavirus/data-research/cases/index.html
A technical article, but still gripping. https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/24/11/18-0381_article

In WW2, the bloody South Pacific battle of Peleliu didn't need to be fought. The island was intended to protect the main thrust to Japan which was thought to be MacArthur through the Philippines and thus protect his right flank. The war in the Pacific went by island hopping through the Central Pacific instead. I have read this in several history books of that era.

The word "robot" has only been used in English for a little over one hundred years. It comes from the Czech word "robotica" that meant "drudge-labor" and was made famous in a 1921 play named "RUR" that was perhaps the first popular story to have robots taking over the world (mechanized beings were in ancient stories).

The third Mig shootdown by the US in the Vietnam War occurred when two Mig-17s attacked a flight of four A-1 Skyraiders on a rescue combat air patrol 40 miles SE of Hanoi on June 17, 1965.

Unable to out perform the Migs, the A-1s flew down to the deck, broke into pairs and began to fly in tight defensive Luftbery Circles (maintaining a continuous turning orbit so each plane covered their wingman's 6). After a five minute battle with the Migs trying to get on one of the tails of the A-1s, one pair of A-1s got on the tail of the Mig as it lined up on the other pair for a kill. Unleashing a fusillade of 50 caliber into the Mig's tail, it spiraled down into the hills of North Vietnam. Lt. Clint Johnson and Lt. (JG) Charles Hartmann shared the kill of the jet aircraft by using World War I tactics in World War II vintage aircraft.

BQ78 said:

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The third Mig shootdown by the US in the Vietnam War occurred when two Mig-17s attacked a flight of four A-1 Skyraiders on a rescue combat air patrol 40 miles SE of Hanoi on June 17, 1965.

Unable to out perform the Migs, the A-1s flew down to the deck, broke into pairs and began to fly in tight defensive Luftbery Circles (maintaining a continuous turning orbit so each plane covered their wingman's 6). After a five minute battle with the Migs trying to get on one of the tails of the A-1s, one pair of A-1s got on the tail of the Mig as it lined up on the other pair for a kill. Unleashing a fusillade of 50 caliber into the Mig's tail, it spiraled down into the hills of North Vietnam. Lt. Clint Johnson and Lt. (JG) Charles Hartmann shared the kill of the jet aircraft by using World War I tactics in World War II vintage aircraft.

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That's awesome.

And I love the use of the word 'fusillade'.

While we are in the air over North Vietnam on July 24, 1965 Capt. Dick Keirn, flying an F-4, 55 miles NW of Hanoi, was the first American to be shot down by an SA-2 in Vietnam. Twenty one years earlier, a 19 year old Keirn had been shot down in his B-17. In the German POW camp, his nickname to his fellow inmates was "Junior." During his seven years of captivity in North Vietnam the 40-year old Keirn was known to his fellow inmates as "Pop."

BQ78 said:

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While we are in the air over North Vietnam on July 24, 1965 Capt. Dick Keirn, flying an F-4, 55 miles NW of Hanoi, was the first American to be shot down by an SA-2 in Vietnam. Twenty one years earlier, a 19 year old Keirn had been shot down in his B-17. In the German POW camp, his nickname to his fellow inmates was "Junior." During his seven years of captivity in North Vietnam the 40-year old Keirn was known to his fellow inmates as "Pop."

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That's a lot of time locked up.

nortex97 said:

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A soldiers dying wish engraved in civil war marker:

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Spotted this while on a bike ride. Guy died in about 1974