On this day in history...

[g-one]

April 23, 1516: Reinheitsgebot
'Barley, hops, & water. Under the series of late-medieval regulations known as the Reinheitsgebot (or “purity order”), the German Duchy of Bavaria forbade its brewers from using any ingredients but those in making their beer.'

[Arneb]

Good move, that. Still enjoying the results. Also, keeps abominations like these from happening over here (well, not from happening, but from being called "beer").

Boss, wouldn't you love a purity law that would keep anything with ketchup on it a "Hot dog"?

[Arneb]

30 years ago today, Daedalus flew from Crete to Santorini under the force of only his muscles. Yes, really!. Unlike his mythical predecessor, he didn't quite make it, being pushed into the water by a malevolent wind God 7 m (yes, meters!) short of his goal.

[Lance]

Boss, wouldn't you love a purity law that would keep anything with ketchup on it a "Hot dog"?

What a great idea!

[Lianachan]

April 24th, 1918 - first hot tank on tank action, as 3 British Mark IVs meet 3 German A7Vs during the second Battle of Villers-Bretonneux.

[Heid the Ba]

The British tanks were two female and one male, the latter driving the German tanks off. Female were armed with machine guns, male with two 6pdr guns.

[Lianachan]

The British tanks were two female and one male

Is........ Is that how armoured cars are made?

[Heid the Ba]

When two tanks really love one another . . .

[Lance]

[Lianachan]

Filthy.

[Arneb]

Something more uplifitng? 21 years ago today, a totally insignificant, not quite young anymore physician received a grade of Doctor medicinae (Dr. med.) for his thesis, "Charakterisierung des aktiven Zentrums der Ratten-Dipeptidylpeptidase IV durch Mutanten ihrer cDNA", from the Free University of Berlin. That physician is only marginally less insignificant today, but it's a nice story, and you can all try your German on this title.

Maybe one or more members of this board takes a diabetes drug belonging to the class of "DPP4 inhibtors". It ist THAT enzyme the title of the work is referring to, and funnily enough, diabetes type 2 isn't even mentioned in the thesis. 21 years ago, we didn't know the physiological ligand for the enzyme; nowadays people, by the millions, take an inhibitor of it to make their diabetes better. That's how fast medicine develops.

[Heid the Ba]

Good work anonymous German medical dude!

[Lianachan]

Indeed, and good to have something positive in this thread for a change.

[Arneb]

27 April, 1945 - Crunch time. Bremen falls to the British, the Red Army takes parts of Potsam and Rathenow. Spandau, Neukölln and Tempelhof, three large burroughs of Berlin, are also taken.

A description of the horrible conditions at Buchenwald is published in Britain. The Americans take a large subdivision of the Dachau conecentration camp complex, at Kaufering.

Austria regains her independence from the dying Reich when the Soviet occupation administration recognizes a provisional government under one State Chancellor Karl Renner. So happy 73rd, Second Republic of Austria. You've been a crusty old friend ever since, even though you can't stop bitching about us Piefkes.

Speaking of Berlin - in 1920, the city doubled its population and enlarged 13-fold in area by incorparating Charlottenburg, Köpenick, Lichtenberg, Neukölln, Schöneberg, Spandau and Wilmersdorf, along with 57 small municipal bits and pieces, into Groß-Berlin. I was born in Neukölln, raised in Spandau, went to school and had my first appartment in Wilmersdorf, had a big unhappy love of mine in Charlottenburg, sang Bach's St. Matthew Passion in Köpenick, was governed from Schöneberg before the fall of the wall, and only rarely and under unavoidable circumstances visited Lichtenberg. So thank you, Preußischer Landtag.

Do we have to mention that the airbus A380 made her maiden flight in 2005 on that day? It's a lot of space flying around, but she doesn't have the beauty of her older cousin, does she?

[Arneb]

28 April, 1945 - Benito Mussolini and his fiancée are caught and shot dead (it's debated if it happened with or without a hurried "trial") by Communist partisans near lake Como, Italy.

[Arneb]

7 May 2018: Happy 200th, Karl Marx

[Heid the Ba]

9th May 1974: The United States House Committee on the Judiciary opens formal and public impeachment hearings against President Richard Nixon.

[Arneb]

9 May, 1945 was V-Day for the Soviet Union. Aachener Nachrichten, in the first German city to be liberated by the U.S. Army, came out with the headline, "Der Krieg ist aus".

[Arneb]

14 May, 1948, founding of the State of Israel. I'd like to wish you a happy 70th, but I know it is a very subdued celebration - or at least, it is for those who wish you peace, prosperity and not being hated by your neighbours.

[Lianachan]

May 17th, 1902: Discovery of the Antikythera mechanism, an Ancient Greek analogue computer of considerable complexity and one of my favourite things.

[Arneb]

23 May, 1948 - 70 years ago today, the Grundgesetz für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland was published, marking the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany
23 May, 1618 - the Second Defenestration of Prague is nowadays considered to be the beginning of the 30 Years War, the first war that ripped apart our entire continent. We'll have to wait until Oct 24 to mark the 270th anniversary of the Westphalian Peace.

[Arneb]

03 June, 1998 - Near Eschede, in North West Germany, an ICE high speed train derails on track, at 130 mph, because a metallic wheel band broke. The derailed third coach crashes into a road bridge, blocking the passage, and the following 6 coaches crash into it. The train deforms, accordion-like, forming a heap of rubble in which the interiors of the coaches are extremeley hard to reach for assistance workers. The road bridge, to make matters worse, collapses on the wreckage.

101 people die in this worst rail accident of postwar Germany. When I trained for my emergency medicine certificate (which I never completed), it was Eschede everywhere: In caring for people you can't pull out, in organizing assistance services in a mass accident setting, in triaging casualties, in emergency psychologic assistance, and in dealing with personal trauma received while on the job during a mass casualty situation. This accident left a deep mark on how we run our EMSs.

On a far less significant, and entirely more pleasant note, on 04 June, 1988, I had my last A-levls exam, an oral. The larger subject was the East-West (or "system") conflict as seen from the German perspective. The assignment for the exam were the three Berlin crises.
Can you still name those three?

[Lianachan]

Can you still name those three?

I don't know if I ever could, never mind "still". Are the wall and the airlift two of them?

[Arneb]

Exactly, the third is the one that is usually forgotten.

[Heid the Ba]

Is this Post-Wall when the Ossies and Soviets stopped the three western powers from accessing East Berlin/DDR? Which they had no right to do in terms of the treaty. The US commander sent tanks to the border so the Volksarmee did the same and it turned into a staring contest until cooler heads prevailed? If not then I have no idea.