History Nuts

A celebration of heroes from a braver age

[History Nuts @historynuts]

"He who goes gently, goes safely; he who goes safely, goes far"- motto of Joseph Thomson, who explored Africa without firing a shot in anger

[History Nuts @historynuts]

Churchill's wonderful response when told an MP had been arrested for having gay sex in a park on a cold Feb night: https://t.co/8DfQNPTct8

[Dan Jackson @northumbriana]

@historynuts he was also a British Field Marshal and Colonel in Chief of the Royal Dragoons

[History Nuts @historynuts]

Before the outbreak of #WWI in 1914, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany (King George V's cousin) was an Honorary Admiral of the @RoyalNavy

[Matthew Ward Hunter @HistoryNeedsYou]

Happy #DarwinDay - celebrating the birthday of #CharlesDarwin b1809 and the wonders of science

[Military History Now @MilHistNow]

During the 1900 Boxer Rebellion, Kaiser Wilhelm II urges his soldiers to be as merciless as “Huns”. The name sticks.

[History Nuts @historynuts]

Eccentric aviation pioneer Lady Mary Heath - the first woman to fly solo from South Africa to England - died in 1939 after falling off a bus

[History Nuts @historynuts]

"Nonsense, they couldn't hit an elephant at this dist-." Union general John Sedgwick moments before being shot by a Confederate sniper, 1864

[History Nuts @historynuts]

The 1st Westerner to cross Arabia's Empty Quarter was English civil servant Bertram Thomas, who saved up annual leave & set off in Oct 1930

[History Nuts @historynuts]

The first European to travel to Timbuktu & survive, Rene Callie, was so poor he had to travel up the Niger on the slave deck of a river boat

[History Nuts @historynuts]

Missionary John Williams - the "Apostle of Polynesia" - became the "Martyr of Erromango" in 1839 when he was killed and eaten by cannibals

[History Nuts @historynuts]

"You need have no fear of any failure”- eccentric explorer Percy Fawcett’s last note to his wife before vanishing in the Amazon jungle, 1925

[History Nuts @historynuts]

RIP Henry Worsley, descent of the great polar explorer Frank Worsley who sailed south with Shackleton. Brave man: https://t.co/yTgkwucjzG

[History Nuts @historynuts]

In 1827, explorer Richard Lander was accused of witchcraft in west Africa and forced to drink poison. If he died, he was guilty. He survived

[History Nuts @historynuts]

Sir Thomas Metcalfe (1795-1853), a fastidious colonial administrator in British India, considered it improper for women to eat cheese

[History Nuts @historynuts]

Scottish Highlander "Quaker" Wallace was said to have killed 22 men while reciting Psalm 116 during a furious bayonet charge in India, 1857

[History Nuts @historynuts]

When missionary-explorer Dr Livingstone travelled up the Zambezi in 1858 he brought along his brother Charles to serve as his "moral agent”

[History Nuts @historynuts]

In 1860, while preparing to head into Africa, Scotsman James Grant saw 2 men beheaded in Zanzibar for the recent murder of another explorer

[History Nuts @historynuts]

During World War II the RAF parachuted supplies of tea to Nesta Cox, an English nanny secretly working for the Resistance in Occupied France