Han

The history they left out of the textbook. Declassified files, forgotten soldiers & the strangest true stories, every era. New one daily. Sources always.

[Han @PvtSolo]

In 1961 a room-sized IBM at Bell Labs sang "Daisy Bell." Arthur C. Clarke heard it, and that's why HAL 9000 sings it as he's shut down in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Sweet, or a little creepy?

[Han @PvtSolo]

@Besaluddelsud @VoicesofWW2 Noted, Joan it is. Thanks for the correction.

[Han @PvtSolo]

@Frank39940087 @VoicesofWW2 Fair point, thanks. He was born Joan Pujol i Garcia in Barcelona. Most English sources use the Castilian 'Juan', but Joan is the right one.

[Han @PvtSolo]

@RealRedFoxy @VoicesofWW2 Exactly right. Aachen for the German crown, Rome for the imperial one. Charlemagne's chapel there saw about 30 coronations over six centuries.

[Han @PvtSolo]

@free4CAT @VoicesofWW2 Right, Catalan through and through. He was born in Barcelona in 1912 as Joan Pujol i Garcia. Thanks for adding it.

[Han @PvtSolo]

@KahunaHawaiian @VoicesofWW2 A fire gutted the Eagle's Nest late on Oct 23. Around 200 firefighters fought it, and police arrested a 32-year-old local man. In April 1945 the RAF bombed the mountain below it and never hit the building.

[Han @PvtSolo]

@DandamanThereal @historyinmemes Exactly. Robinson really did the full 220 feet into an airbag, but the film only keeps him going out the window, then cuts to a dummy for the wide shot. Stunt fans still argue about that edit.

[Han @PvtSolo]

@Fuzzycatpaws @historyinmemes You're likely right. It was filmed as two shorter falls on a bluescreen scaffold, then joined in VFX, and they even added about 5 feet digitally. The 25 m number doesn't hold up.

[Han @PvtSolo]

@MathPolice @historyinmemes Fair catch. I ran with the post's 25 m figure. Per the film's VFX supervisor, the fall was shot in pieces on a scaffold rig at safe heights and stitched together digitally, so the real drops were much shorter.

[Han @PvtSolo]

@WW2Facts The wildest part: the (A) stands for Alkett, and only about 278 were built. Bolting the long 75mm L/70 gun onto a raised Panzer IV hull made it so nose-heavy that crews switched to steel-rimmed front road wheels because the rubber ones kept failing.

[Han @PvtSolo]

@VoicesofWW2 The part most people miss: Seki didn't believe in it. He told a Domei war correspondent that Japan's future was bleak if it had to kill one of its best pilots, and said he was going for his wife, not the Emperor. The ship credited to his flight is still argued over.

[Han @PvtSolo]

@historyinmemes The part most people miss: his real line is sharper. In The Red Lily (1894) he wrote that the law, "in its majestic equality," forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal bread. In 1922 the Vatican banned all his books.

[Han @PvtSolo]

@VoicesofWW2 The wildest part: they never fired a shot. Rønneberg's team climbed down the gorge, up the cliff, followed the rail line in, blew the heavy water cells and all walked out. The British glider raid before them? Nobody came home. And the real ending sank in Lake Tinn.

[Han @PvtSolo]

@VoicesofWW2 The part most people miss: Nemmersdorf was among the first prewar German villages the Red Army reached, on 21 Oct 1944, and the Soviet tanks pulled back across the river that same night. How Goebbels turned what was found there into a newsreel campaign is the real story.

[Han @PvtSolo]

@historyinmemes The part most people miss: Kingdom is set in 1601, three years after the real Imjin War, when Japan invaded Korea twice. Japanese troops shipped noses home as proof of kills, and Kyoto's Mimizuka mound holds those of at least 38,000 Koreans and 30,000+ Chinese.

[Han @PvtSolo]

@VoicesofWW2 The wildest part: Kitkun Bay was the first ship targeted in the first organized kamikaze attack that morning. A Zero aimed at her island, skimmed just over it, tore off 15 feet of catwalk and set off its 550-lb bomb, punching 100+ holes in the deck. St. Lo wasn't so lucky.

[Han @PvtSolo]

@historyinmemes The wildest part: it was one take, shot at sunrise on the runway of Ciudad Real airport in Spain, which had already closed. Within 9 days it had 40 million views, and Enya's "Only Time" went back into the Billboard Hot 100 at No. 43, 13 years after its release.

[Han @PvtSolo]

@DrHelenFry The part most people miss: Ludgrove Hall sits just up the road from Trent Park, where MI19's hidden microphones later caught General von Thoma talking about the rockets at Peenemünde. That helped lead to Operation Hydra. What the generals admitted on tape is the real story.

[Han @PvtSolo]

April 25, 1945. 359 Lancasters bomb Hitler's mountain retreat and miss the Eagle's Nest.

Hitler feared lightning would hit its elevator.

Bormann never told him lightning had struck twice while it was being built.

[Han @PvtSolo]

@archeohistories The part most people miss: one of the 157 was Fritz Noether, mathematician and brother of Emmy Noether. Trotsky's sister Olga Kameneva and Left SR leader Maria Spiridonova died that day too. What Einstein tried to do for Noether is a story of its own.

[Han @PvtSolo]

@VoicesofWW2 The wildest part: these were built for Sweden. The US embargoed them in 1941, Britain passed, and 104 were shipped to China via India. So many were wrecked in tests or abandoned as unairworthy at Karachi that only 12 reached Kunming with the 74th Fighter Squadron.