Illuminati-R-Us

Heid the Ba wrote:July 16, 2018 the US President committed treason live on tv.

Even by his standards of fuckwittery, that was pretty remarkable.

Heid the Ba wrote:July 16, 2018 the US President committed treason live on tv.

Fake News! Sad!

18 July, 1918, birth of Nelson Mandela

It is hard to imagine that he was alive barely five years ago, what with our Trumps, Johnsons, Erdogans, Orbans, Le Pens, Gaulands, Farages and Putins all working hard to destroy the notion that peace, reconciliation and compromise are possible, and that mindless violence is neither inescable nor something to be cherished and promotef.

20 July, 1944 The last attempt to kill Adolf Hitler fails narrowly at Wolfschanze, East Prussia. In the ensuing final months of the war, more peopele are killed than in the 5 years before

He had a few close escapes. Yes, it would probably have worked out considerably better for huge numbers of people had he not been so lucky in that regard.

20th July, 911 - Rollo lays siege to Chartres. Rollo's actual name was Hrólfr, and he was the viking leader who conquered and settled parts of northern France in the late 9th and early 10th centuries, leading to the foundation of Normandy.

20th July, 1976 - a Viking goes further than that, as Viking 1 lands on Mars.

Lianachan wrote:He had a few close escapes. Yes, it would probably have worked out considerably better for huge numbers of people had he not been so lucky in that regard.

We nearly did for him twice in the Kaiser's War, shrapnel on The Somme and gas at Messines if memory serves.

From the "Hitler wasn't such a bad chap" file: He and his generals (who were all Great War veterans) wouldn't let the SS destroy the British and French memorials in France and Belgium. I think they only blew up one French one, I can't remember why, and they demolished a statue of Mangin who they hated for using black African savages against noble Germans. Mangin was an odd man though, as racist as they come, even by the standards of the time.

Nice afterthought on that: Mutti held her annual pre-summer press conference today, and to no-ones's surprise, it was a very low- key affair. In a comment, F.A.Z. wrote, "once more, she couldn't keep up with performances of Trump, Putin, Erdogan. And truth be told, no-one has to resent that, on a 20th July, of all days.

So true.

All good things, I mean, it’s not like anyone landed on the moon or anything like that . . .

Мастер wrote:All good things, I mean, it’s not like anyone landed on the moon or anything like that . . .

Well, two people did, 49 years ago today (we Euroweasels are always behind, of course, but just look at those Merkins...)

Happy 40th, Louise Brown! Probably not the first child to be conceived by IVF, but the first to be (conceived, implanted, carried to term, delivered and) taken home in good health, you and your parents had a lot of shit hurled at you for the way you came to this world.

May you always happily shrug it off!

July 30th, happy 80th birthday to Scottish comic The Beano.

August 2, 1945: End of the Potsdam Conference and signing of the Potsam Agreement, which shaped the political and geographical postwar landscape not only of Germany but of Europe as a whole. Its provisions remained valid until 1990, when the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany (a.k.a. the "2+4 Treaty") was agreed on.

100 years ago: Two Royal Navy Destroyers, Vehemen andAriel are sunk by German mines, causing loss of 97 lives; the French sity of Soissons is re-captured, for the final time, by French troups.

Arneb wrote: the French sity of Soissons is re-captured, for the final time, by French troups.

Yes, we're getting into The Hundred Days at this point. The Battle of the Marne 1918 was just ending and the BEF was gearing up for Amiens.

4 August, 1918:
End of the Second Battle of the Marne (Wikipedia puts the end at August 6), Allied Forces capture 35 k POWs and 700 pieces of artillery.
Adolf Hitler receives his Iron Cross, First Class, for personal bravery. He is not promoted, however, beyond his rank of Private, because his superiors think he will be unable to make himself respected.

And happy 213th, William Rowan Hamilton

August 6th, 1945 - a bad day to be in Hiroshima.

August 6th, 1962 - a great day to be in Jamaica, as they become independent from the UK (lucky bastards!)

6 August, 1918 - Ferdinand Foche becomes Marshall of France.

Assorted back-and-fro (but mostly back, from a German perspective) on several fronts in France.

Britain gives a no-intervention guarantee to Russia. This seems be one of the promises they've kept.

Er . . . Ummm . . .

Arneb wrote:Assorted back-and-fro (but mostly back, from a German perspective) on several fronts in France.

Tangentially, I have been sent a book to review about the battles of summer 1918, published for the anniversary. Something about the typeface looked odd so I checked the date of publication, to find it is a reprint of a book brought out in 1968 for the 50th anniversary. No new foreword, no change to the introduction, the only mention is a throwaway line to the author dieing in 1986.

The other book I got is a rather splendid little tome on the Sino-Indian War of 1962.

Heid the Ba wrote:Tangentially, I have been sent a book to review about the battles of summer 1918, published for the anniversary. Something about the typeface looked odd so I checked the date of publication, to find it is a reprint of a book brought out in 1968 for the 50th anniversary. No new foreword, no change to the introduction, the only mention is a throwaway line to the author dieing in 1986.

For sale:

Heid the Ba wrote:Er . . . Ummm . . .

Oh dear, I should have known...

Arneb wrote:

Heid the Ba wrote:Er . . . Ummm . . .

Oh dear, I should have known...

Yes, you can count the number of kept British promises on the fingers of one foot.

I think the rationale was that we promised one lot (the Mensheviks maybe?) but intervened against another (the Bolsheviks?). You can imagine how happy and enthusiastic troops who thought they were going to be demobbed after the German surrender were to end up in Archangel in winter.

Lianachan wrote:For sale:

Indeed.

7 August, 1918: French Cruiser Dupetit Thouars sunk by U62, with loss of 13 crew.

1869 - Foundational Congress of the Social Democratic Worker's Party, from which came fourt our still existing Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). Happy 149th.

1998 - The Darassalam and Nairobi double attack on the respective American embassies (224 people killed in total).

1908 - During rail construction work, a 25,000 yo stone figure is unearthed in a village in Lower Austria: The Venus of Willendorf. And ain't she a beauty?