Any truth to the story that blowing tobacco smoke up the anus was believed to revive a drowning victim? There were supposedly bellows invented to accomplish this. Before, I guess they did it....manually?

Hence, the phrase about 'blowing smoke up your @$$'

CanyonAg77 said:

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Any truth to the story that blowing tobacco smoke up the anus was believed to revive a drowning victim? There were supposedly bellows invented to accomplish this. Before, I guess they did it....manually?

Hence, the phrase about 'blowing smoke up your @$$'

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It's true. I used to teach CPR part time and included a brief history of the art during my class. Tobacco smoke had more uses than just stimulating drowning victims. Also used to treat colds and cholera. Here's a link to the history of the practice of using tobacco smoke enemas.

https://bcmj.org/special-feature/special-feature-tobacco-smoke-enemas#:~:text=Initially%2520the%2520%E2%80%9Cpipe%2520smoker%2520London,%252C%2520and%2520second%252C%2520stimulating%2520respiration.

agrams said:

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typically when they plow fields in they bring them up.

I forgot where I read it, but the dud rate on artillery in WW1 was insanely high, 10-25%.

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Yes, when David Lloyd George took over the new role of Minister of Munitions, he did everything he could to speed up shell production. The result was poor quality control and a very high dud rate for British artillery.

following

Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee was Robert E Lee's father and a legendary figure from the revolutionary war after whom Lee County in VA was named and the character Mel Gibson played in the Patriot was based. Ironically, he died from injuries suffered not in a war itself, but rather while trying to assist/protect his friend from a Democrat-Republican mob (in Baltimore) upset his paper opposed the war of 1812.

If he had lived longer, it's unlikely his most famous son would have wound up in the military.

Light Horse Harry 🐴!

Learn about this revolutionary hero! pic.twitter.com/4QotNzjvCC

— History by Xyonz (@Xyonzhistory) January 25, 2025

Well, the family wasn't always destitute anyway, and while it's tough to theorize too much about alternate-history narratives (I probably overstated the cause:effect), he was well educated even as a child/young man, though his father died when he was 6. He went to West Point largely because by that age his mother had run out of funds to send him to a University, I have read, but maybe that is wrong.

In any case, one could rightly point out it was another fairly disgusting family scandal (which reminds me of another recently famous American family) that probably pushed him finally to head to West Point:

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In peacetime Henry Lee steadily lost money and reputation because of unwise land speculation. He was sent to debtor's prison while Robert was still an infant. In 1813, badly beaten by a political mob, and dodging his creditors, he skipped bail to sail for the West Indies. Robert never saw his father again.
Now dependent on the generosity of their kin, the family moved to Alexandria. Robert attended a relative's plantation school and the Alexandria Academy, where he was given a classical education. His boyhood was enriched by a supportive and engaging extended family and academic success, but pinched by poverty and his mother's failing health.

Misfortune again touched Robert's life in 1821 with a scandal involving his half brother. Henry Lee IV shocked Virginians by seducing his young wardher name was Elizabeth "Betsy" McCarty and she was Henry IV's sister-in-lawembezzling her inheritance, and possibly murdering their child. Believing this disgrace would lead to social isolation, Robert convinced his mother to let him join the army.

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nortex97 said:

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Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee was Robert E Lee's father and a legendary figure from the revolutionary war after whom Lee County in VA was named and the character Mel Gibson played in the Patriot was based.

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This is misstated. Francis Marion AKA "Swamp Fox" was the primary inspiration for Benjamin Martin (Mel Gibson's character). Chris Cooper's character, Colonel Harry Burwell, was inspired by Lee.

In both cases though, the characters got the typical Hollywood embellishment.

William Washington would be the better figure to base him off of. Lee wasn't at Cowpens. However, that movie is a massive mess anyway.

Ans van Dijk: The Only Dutch Woman Executed for Nazi Collaboration

In WWII, Ans van Dijk, a Dutch collaborator, betrayed fellow Jews to the Nazis, leading to numerous deportations. Arrested after the war, she was sentenced to death by a Special Court in Amsterdam and executed in… pic.twitter.com/1oqCjAg1lZ

— Black In White (@BlackInWhite434) January 29, 2025

Speculation:

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According to Gerald Kremer's The Backyard of the Secret Annex, the Guardianreports, the Franks were betrayed by Anna "Ans" van Dijk, a Jewish woman executed in 1948 for her collaboration in the capture of 145 people. Ans van Dijk has often been suggested as a leading suspect. But despite independent and police studies, the Anne Frank House museum and research center has not been able to prove or disprove the theory. Kremer's book may add another piece of evidence to the pile.

Kremer's father was an acquaintance of Van Dijk in Amsterdam during World War II, where he worked as a caretaker in an office building close to the Franks' annex. During the Dutch occupation, two floors of the building were turned into a kind of Nazi office for German authorities and the Dutch Nazi organization the NSB. Kremer's father, the book claims, remembers Van Dijk making frequent visits to the office, where she would make telephone calls.

Despite having been arrested on Easter Sunday 1943, Van Dijk evaded being sent to concentration camps by promising to work for Nazi Intelligence services. She pretended to be a member of the resistance by helping Jews to hide and obtain false papersthen turned them in, including her own brother and his family. It's estimated that at least 85 and perhaps as many as 700 people died as a result of her collaboration. (Van Dijk was executed in 1948 for her role in these deaths.)

In early August 1944, the book says, Kremer's father overheard a conversation between Van Dijk and Nazi officials about Prinsengracht, where the Franks were hiding. That same week, the Franks were arrestedwhile Van Dijk was away in the Hague.

Speaking to the Guardian, a spokesperson for the Anne Frank House said they had investigated Van Dijk in 2016, and found no conclusive evidence. Their most recent study, in late 2016, suggests that the Franks and their friends were discovered by chance, amid an investigation into claims of illegal ration books. "We have not been able to find evidence for this theory, nor for other betrayal theories," the spokesperson said.
But the book's publishing house, Lantaam, took a different tack: "We can't claim that this is 100 percent the answer but we really do think it is a part of the puzzle that may be able to complete the story."
Millions of people have wondered about this puzzle: The Diary of Anne Frank, first released in 1947, is often described as one of the most important documents of World War II, translated into more than 60 languages and read by adults and children alike. Frank's account meticulously and movingly detailed the daily lives of the eight people captured that day. Whether Kremer's book will bring investigators closer to closing this very cold case remains to be seen.

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More;
https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2011/12/04/on-traitors-and-victims-the-ans-van-dijk-story/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ans_van_Dijk

Some combat engineer must have screamed for joy when he got that assignment.

From that Wikipedia link:

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Werner Heisenberg (19011976) first formulated the equation underlying his theory of quantum mechanics while on Heligoland in the 1920s. While a student of Arnold Sommerfeld at Munich, Heisenberg first met the Danish physicist Niels Bohr in 1922 at the Bohr Festival, Gottingen. He and Bohr went for long hikes in the mountains and discussed the failure of existing theories to account for the new experimental results on the quantum structure of matter. Following these discussions, Heisenberg plunged into several months of intensive theoretical research but met with continual frustration. Finally, suffering from a severe attack of hay fever that his aspirin and cocaine treatment was failing to alleviate, he retreated to the treeless (and pollenless) island of Heligoland in the summer of 1925. There he conceived the basis of the quantum theory.

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Imagine coming up with quantum theory while hopped up on cocaine.

nortex97 said:

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From that Wikipedia link:

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Werner Heisenberg (19011976) first formulated the equation underlying his theory of quantum mechanics while on Heligoland in the 1920s. While a student of Arnold Sommerfeld at Munich, Heisenberg first met the Danish physicist Niels Bohr in 1922 at the Bohr Festival, Gottingen. He and Bohr went for long hikes in the mountains and discussed the failure of existing theories to account for the new experimental results on the quantum structure of matter. Following these discussions, Heisenberg plunged into several months of intensive theoretical research but met with continual frustration. Finally, suffering from a severe attack of hay fever that his aspirin and cocaine treatment was failing to alleviate, he retreated to the treeless (and pollenless) island of Heligoland in the summer of 1925. There he conceived the basis of the quantum theory.

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Imagine coming up with quantum theory while hopped up on cocaine.

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That may explain the incomprehensibility of quantum theory, lol.

No wonder he was so 'uncertain.'

If I remember correctly, these pirates had a significant impact on westward exploration and the routes that Europeans took. I can't remember the specifics though.

The 'handcart saga' is a bit fascinating/interesting, though this is of course embellished I think with LDS religious fervor/bias.

Wikipedia source/alternate version.

Tyrannosaurus Ross said:

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Reading Eric Foner's book on Reconstruction. Found this to be an interesting fact:

The US established a generous pension system for Union veterans and their families. By the turn of the century, maintenance of this pension system constituted one-third of the Federal budget.

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Union veteran pensions were basically the country's first social safety net.

When the German army attacked Verdun, France, on Feb. 21, 1916, it ran up against a ring of 18 large forts and 23 smaller strongpoints the French called ouvrages. Fort Douaumont, the largest and strongest fortification of the system, was taken without a shot being fired, virtually single-handedly by a German sergeant.

Contemporary military experts considered massive Fort Douaumont the world's strongest fortification. Built in 1885, it was part of the Sr de Rivires system of border defenses France established following its 1871 defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. Continually strengthened and modernized through 1913, Douaumont comprised an elongated pentagon more than 500 yards across at its widest point. Its outer defenses started with two concentric, 30-foot-deep belts of barbed wire. Backing the wire was a line of 8-foot sharpened stakes. A dry moat 24 feet deep and 35 feet wide surrounded the fort proper. Machine guns in inward-facing counterscarp galleries on the moat's outer corners covered every inch of the ditch with enfilading fire. The gun embrasures were 12 feet above the moat's floor, and the galleries were accessible only from inside the fort.

Although Douaumont should have been impregnable, the French had severely weakened it well before the battle. In 1915 French commander in chief General Joseph Joffre had decided that field guns in the flanking batteries and most of the troops manning the Verdun forts were needed elsewhere. By the time the Germans advanced on Fort Douaumont on February 25, only the two 75mm guns and single 155mm remained.

The German 12th Grenadier Regiment stormed Douaumont, supported by the 24th Brandenburg Infantry Regiment. But during the approach march, the two units lost contact in a blinding snowstorm, and the 12th Grenadiers veered off course in the Chauffour Woods. At about 1630 hours, a 24th Brandenburg pioneer squad under Feldwebel Felix Kunze found itself just 50 yards from the apex of the fort. Kunze's orders had been to clear obstacles in front of the advancing infantry.

Douaumont's remaining guns were eerily silent as Kunze and his men crept around the outer edge of the moat, probing for a way in. As they neared one of the counterscarp galleries, a German artillery shell blew down part of the wall, knocking Kunze into the moat. A shaken Kunze quickly recovered and ordered his reluctant squad to descend into the breach created by the blast. His men then formed a human pyramid against the counterscarp face, enabling Kunze and two others to scramble up into one of the gun embrasures 12 feet up the wall.

The trio followed a tunnel to the center of the fort. Leaving his two men to secure what seemed a key fork in the dimly lit passage, Kunze followed the sound of the 155mm gun, which had resumed firing. Taking the four surprised French artillerymen captive, Kunze then tried to work his way back to his own men. He got lost in the labyrinth, however, and his captives bolted. As Kunze chased them through the dark, damp corridors, he happened upon a large room in which a French NCO was conducting a training class for about 20 troops. Kunze rushed in, pointing his rifle and yelling, "Hande hoch!" ("Hands up!"). Just then a large shell hit the fort, knocking out the lights.

Realizing the French could rush him in the dark, Kunze jumped from the room and bolted the door. When the lights came back on, he left the trapped Frenchmen and soon captured another one in the corridor. Kunze demanded to be taken to the fort's commander, not realizing that a sergeant major was the senior French soldier on hand. As the German and his prisoner wandered the corridors, they passed a mess hall, its tables still laden with food. Famished because he had not eaten all day, Kunze, like any good soldier, took the opportunity to grab some chow.

Kunze was effectively out of the fight but he had captured most of the garrison and was soon joined by another squad from the 24th.