The President of Paraguay, Francisco Solano Lopez, was a huge admirer of Napoleon Bonaparte. He fancied himself a skilled tactician and excellent commander, but lacked one thing, a war. So to solve this problem, in 1864 he declared war on Paraguay’s three surrounding neighbors, Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. The outcome of the war? Paraguay was very nearly annihilated. It is estimated that 90% of its male population died during the war of disease, starvation, and battles with enemy armies. This was perhaps one of the most needless wars in history since Lopez had almost no reason to declare war on his more powerful neighbors.

Read about ten of these obscure and bizarre conflicts ay Listverse. Link -via The Daily What

This is 1988, back when the exigencies of anticommunism rendered Afghan holy warriors the “good guys.” One of them even refers to the U.S. as “the free world,” bless his heart. Rambo’s Afghan guide recites a graveyard-of-empires aphorism about how invaders would pray, “May God deliver us from the venom of the cobra, the teeth of the tiger, and the vengeance of the Afghans.” Rambo translates: “You guys don’t take any shit.” Watching Rambo III in 2011 is awwwwwwwkward.

And not just because of Rambo’s muj-ness. The camp invasion is crazy. Watch the Soviet helicopters overrun their own base while Rambo turns one of the Russkies’ anti-aircraft guns against Ivan. Why do the Soviets have anti-aircraft guns when they’re not facing an airborne threat? Because it’s badass, that’s why! Later in the film, Rambo magically becomes an expert in flying Russian Mi-24 attack helicopters. Must be his faith in Allah.

Videos clips are included; some scenes may be NSFW. Link -via Metafilter

It’s one thing to be a hero who kills hundreds of enemy soldiers in battle, but to become a hero without even using a weapon -now that’s impressive. Cracked has a great list of heroes who fought the good fight without ever handling a gun. Take, for example, Bill Millin who played bagpipes at the battle of Normandy.

So, he ordered his piper, Bill Millin, to go ashore on one of the main landing points for the invasion of Normandy and wail on a set of bagpipes. Once on the beach, Millin calmly walked up and down at the water’s edge, playing while carnage exploded and people died all around him….Millin later talked to some of the Germans who had been captured to ask why they never shot him, and discovered it was because they thought he had gone mad.

The other four fighters are just as impressive.

Link

Before World War II, cartoons with war themes attempted to use humor or satire to sway public opinion. The spread of military newspapers and the inclusion of cartoons as a feature designed to boost morale changed all that.

UP FRONT

Arguably the most well-known of the World War II cartoonists, Bill Mauldin created the characters Willie and Joe, who were depicted as rank-and-file soldiers dealing with the realities of war without sugarcoating that some leaders, including General George S. Patton, would have preferred to see. Mauldin’s caricatures, which began in 1940 when he was an 18-year-old in the U.S. Army’s 45th Infantry Division, were initially published in the division’s newsletter and soon became hugely popular with the soldiers on the front lines. In 1943 Mauldin’s cartoon was picked up by Stars and Stripes and was then distributed domestically by United Features Syndicate as Up Front, thanks in part to the war correspondent Ernie Pyle, who helped bring the cartoons to the attention of the general public.

Bill Mauldin did not attempt to glorify the fighting in any manner; rather, he used wry humor to demonstrate the absurdities of war. For example, to make an exaggerated commentary on the practice of sending increasingly younger soldiers to the front lines, Mauldin showed Willie and Joe in a bunker, reading a notice handed to them by an adolescent dressed in a soldier’s uniform. One says to the other, “I guess it’s okay. The replacement center says he comes from a long line of infantrymen.”

SAD SACK

At the time that he was drafted in the U.S. Army in June 1941, George Baker was a struggling animator on the verge of losing his job with the Walt Disney Company in Los Angeles. Although the war in Europe had been raging for several years, the possibility of the United States entering the war seemed remote to many at the time. Baker and other soldiers went through the motions of their training with little sense of purpose, waiting for their one-year enlistment to be up so they could get on with their lives.

To break up the monotony of Army life, Baker began to create drawings on his own time, attempting to explain pictorially what life was like in the armed forces. After taking his drawings to several New York publishers and being rejected, a despondent Baker put his cartoons away and tried to forget about them. However, a few months later, the armed forces sponsored a cartoon contest for servicemen. Baker decided to enter one of his drawing into the contest -and won first prize. This caught the attention of the editor of the Army’s Yank magazine, Major Hartzell Spence, who secured Baker a position on the Yank’s staff. Baker worked for Yank for the duration of World War II, moving from one training camp to another as a salesman for the magazine while also being exposed to the many facets of Army life, which he then used for the basis of his cartoons.

Baker’s character, named the Sad Sack, was a stumbling, bumbling soldier trying to fit in an Army comprised of stereotypes: trim and well-dressed men in perfect marching lines, belligerent drill sergeants, and unsympathetic cooks, doctors, and barbers. The Sack represented the common man trying to live up to the perceived ideal of what a soldier should be, and usually without success. Baker tried to show situations that troops in all branches of the service  -situated in any theater or at any training base- would recognize. One famous cartoon, titled “Drill,” showed the Sack in a marching drill, repeatedly bumping into taller, neatly-groomed men lined up in perfect formations, and then getting trampled and carted off in a stretcher. (Neither the Sack nor anyone else in the cartoons spoke a word.) Baker took a more lighthearted approach with his illustrations than did Bill Mauldin, which may be why Baker didn’t get into much trouble with his superiors.

After the war, Baker returned to civilian life and continued to draw Sad Sack until 1958, but Sack the civilian was not as popular as Sack the soldier, in part due to the younger audience for comic books. Baker had to use entirely new settings and use less suggestive material -and in the comic books, the Sack engaged in conversations, which changed the style of the cartoon considerably. Although Sad Sack (illustrated by other artists after 1958 and distributed by Harvey Comics) lasted into the 1990s and produced several spin-offs, it never matched the popularity of the cartoons done by Baker during World War II.

MALE CALL

Prior to World War II, Terry and the Pirates, produced by Milton Caniff, was one of the most popular comic strips in American newspapers. The serial comic followed the exploits of a young boy, Terry, and his adult sidekick, Pat Ryan, in the Far East, and the supporting cast included a beautiful blonde woman named Burma. When war broke out, Caniff, who was unable to enlist due to a childhood illness that damaged his lungs, wanted to contribute in his own way to the war effort. He created a special version of Terry and the Pirates, with Burma as the star, for the military’s newspapers. When civilian newspapers complained about not having access to the “unauthorized” version of the comic strip, Caniff changed it completely (including revising the material from a serial to a stand-alone) and renamed it Male Call. The new star was Miss Lace, a dark-haired woman who visited men on military bases and addressed everyone as “General.” Male Call’s intended audience was comprised exclusively of men in the military, so it was raunchier than what would appear in civilian newspapers, and contained numerous double entendres of a sexual nature. One of the strip’s notable features is that it showed injured soldiers in a genuine manner, including those who had been blinded or had lost a limb. Male Call last appeared in military newspapers in 1947.

Another of Caniff’s creations was the serial comic Steve Canyon, which he began in 1947 and continued until his death in 1988. The title character started out as a civilian pilot but joined the Air Force during the Korean War. Steve Canyon did not reach the heights of popularity seen by Terry and the Pirates and contained less-suggestive material than Male Call to appease the general public, but it achieved a wide circulation and lasted four decades, much longer than a typical comic strip.

G.I. JOE

Before Hasbro created the G.I. Joe action figure in 1964, Dave Breger introduced the original G.I. Joe to his comic strips in 1942. Begun upon Breger’s enlistment in 1941 and originally entitled Private Breger, it was distributed domestically by King Features Syndicate. In order to have the strip published in military newspapers, Breger had to rename his character. Joe was an ordinary private who attempted to be respectful of his superiors but often ended up doing something that was good for a chuckle. By no measure was the boyish-looking Joe even close to being the gruff hero idealized by the more well-known Hasbro action figures. G.I. Joe caught on with the troops so much that it became a name given to the common foot soldier. The 1945 movie  The Story of G.I. Joe was about correspondent Ernie Pyle, and Habro’s action figures simply pirated the name. After the war, Breger -both the cartoonist and the character- returned to civilian life. The new comic, Mister Breger, began to appear in newspaper, and continued until 1969.

TODAY’S MILITARY COMICS

As the World War II-era comic were phased out and others that had a military theme, such as Sgt. Rock, came and went, more comic books focused on the exploits of superheroes, and newspapers tried to make their funny pages, well, funnier. The unpopularity of the Vietnam War was another contributing factor in the decline of military-themed comics in the public eye. One exception was Beetle Bailey, which debuted in 1951 and has continued to this day, seemingly stuck in time and never engaged in combat (which may help explain its long tenure), but still good for a laugh.

Does that mean that military comics are becoming extinct? Not at all -they have simply become modernized via the internet, and continue to be printed in newspapers wherever U.S. troops are stationed. Today’s military comics aren’t just for the soldiers, either -one of the more popular is Julie Negron’s Jenny the Military Spouse, which revolves entirely around the lives of Air Force spouses and makes little mention of the enlisted men and women. Other comic strips focus on a certain service branch, as the ease of distributing a comic through the web means that any artist with a bit of skill and a computer can be successful without the direct support of the armed forces. Reading the funnies has long been a means for soldiers to share a daily laugh, to relieve a bit of the stress that comes with a military lifestyle, and to realize that they are not the only ones who want to roll their eyes when the red tape becomes almost overwhelming.

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The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Salutes the Armed Forces.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!

“I just go and see what happens,” he said. “At spring break I told my friends a ‘sick’ vacation would be to come here and fight with the rebels.”

He spent $800 on a one-way ticket from L.A. to Cairo, then traveled by land across the border into Libya, where he has now been for nearly two weeks. His parents do not know he is here. He speaks no Arabic, and has been staying with fighters and families in the area.

“I haven’t spent a dollar in weeks,” he says, because the people of Libya have extended such hospitality.

Jeon plans to be back in L.A. before school starts later this month. Link -via The Daily What

(Image credit: Kristen Chick)

Have you ever been told that eating carrots will improve your eye sight? Then congratulations, you’ve just been fed propaganda from a very successful, but very silly British propaganda campaign.

During the Battle of Britain, the Germans started noticing that a bunch of their planes were getting shot down in instances where the British shouldn’t have seen them coming. It was almost like they had some sort of radio device that could detect the presence of incoming objects — actually, it was exactly that: Britain had perfected the radar and didn’t tell anyone about it. Obviously the Brits couldn’t let the Germans know they had access to this new technology…British papers published a story about a RAF pilot called John “Cat Eyes” Cunningham who had shot down 20 enemy planes thanks to his superhuman night vision, an ability he achieved by eating lots of carrots.

While carrots are good for your eyes, they can’t actually improve your eyesight and they certainly can’t give you night vision. Even so, many people still believe that munching them down like Bugs Bunny will help them get rid of their glasses all because of a propaganda campaign.

Link

I heard the mechanic click. I knew: this is not good. And I found myself lying face-down on the ground, engulfed in a cloud of dust, with the very clear knowledge that this has just happened and this is not good. I could see my legs were gone, and everybody around me was dazed. I was like, “Guys, I need help here.” And they turned around and saw me on the ground. They immediately sprang into action. I got dragged out of the kill zone, for safety reasons, to a patch of ground a few yards away.

Immediately, there were medics working on me. I picked up a camera, shot a few frames. The frames weren’t very good, quite frankly, but I was trying to record. I knew it wasn’t good, but I felt alive. Adrenaline kicked in. I was compos mentis; I was on top of things. So, I made some pictures. I dropped the camera, then I moved to Plan B, which was to pick up the satellite phone. I called my wife, Vivian, and told her, “My legs are gone, but I think I’m going to live.” Incidentally, I’m a father of two. I passed the telephone on to the correspondent so she could continue the conversation and keep Vivian calm.

Silva also talks about his recovery, the importance of photojournalism in dangerous places, and what he’s learned about the lingering effects of war. A gallery of his photographs accompany the article. Link -via The Daily What

(Image credit: Joao Silva for the New York Times)

During America’s wars, they were considered entertainers more than harbingers of fear to U.S. troops. But sometimes media stars like Tokyo Rose and Hanoi Hannah broadcast strategic information that there’s no way the enemy should have known.

As radio propagandists transmitting from enemy capitals, their job was to undermine the morale of opposing troops in World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. Uncle John examines the careers of seven infamous enemy broadcasters of the 20th century.

1. TOKYO ROSE

Iva Toguri was born in Los Angeles in 1916 and graduated from UCLA with a zoology degree; she was visiting Japan when war broke out in 1941. She was hardly a household name in World War II -until the name given her by Allied forces in the Pacific made her an international celebrity.

Wartime Activities: Tokyo Rose played American music and used American slang during her 20-minute daily newscast on Radio Tokyo’s “The Zero Hour” while she predicted attacks, identified American ships and submarines, and even peppered her conversation with the names of prominent individuals. Listeners thought she was uncannily accurate, but she had little impact on the offensive juggernaut that first isolated and then defeated Japan.

Postwar: After the war, Toguri was arrested, convicted of treason, and imprisoned; she was released for good behavior in 1956 after serving six years. Upon moving to Chicago, where her family ran a store, she insisted she had always been a loyal American. She claimed that she was forced to make the broadcasts, and Allied POWs who worked with her confirmed her story years later, convincing president Gerald Ford to pardon her in 1977. In January 2006, she received the Edgar J. Herlihy Citizenship Award from the World War II Veterans Committee; she died in September of that year.

2. LORD HAW-HAW

The British gave the nickname “Lord Haw-Haw” to a collection of announcers on the English-language propaganda broadcasts from Hamburg, Germany, during World War II. But it was William Joyce, who claimed to be a British citizen, who came to symbolize Lord Haw-Haw as the chief Nazi sympathizer. Born in the United States and raised in England and Ireland, Joyce was a member of the British Union of Fascists and was about to be arrested when he fled to Germany in 1939.

Wartime activities: From 1939 to 1945, his radio broadcasts to England on the “Germany Calling” program were designed to undermine the morale of the English, Canadian, Australian, and American troops, as well as the citizens of the British Isles. Joyce reported Allied ship losses and planes shot down, and bragged about Nazi secret weapons with the goal of demoralizing the Allies.

“Lord Haw-Haw” was originally the nickname of James Brudenell, the 19th-century British general who led the infamous Charge of the Light Brigade. A British radio critic borrowed the moniker and, whether or not he was specifically referring to Joyce, it stuck to him because he was the most popular announcer on “Germany Calling.” The radio critic noted sarcastically, “He speaks English of the ‘haw-haw, dammit-get-out-of-my-way’ variety.” The name stuck and his fame grew to the point that even the Germans introduced him on the air as “William Joyce, otherwise known as Lord Haw-Haw.”

Postwar: Joyce was captured by British troops, who got the last “haw” when the war ended. He was tried and hanged for treason in early 1946.

3. LORD HEE-HAW

A native of Dubuque, Iowa, Frederick Wilhelm Kaltenbach was on a bicycle tour of Germany after his high school graduation in 1914 when he was detained due to the outbreak of World War I. He liked Germany well enough, but after his release a few months later, he returned home and went to college. He joined the U.S. Army in 1918 but stayed stateside for the duration of the war, after which he earned his master’s degree in history from the University of Chicago. As a schoolteacher in Dubuque, he founded a Nazi-style club for boys in 1935 that was so controversial, the school board fired him. Kaltenbach promptly returned to Germany to work for Joseph Goebbels’ propaganda ministry as a broadcaster.

Wartime Activities: Kaltenbach’ thick Midwestern accent became familiar to British listeners, who dubbed him “Lord Hee-Haw” to differentiate him from “Lord Haw-Haw.” Kaltenbach’s reign on the air came to an end with the collapse of the Third Reich.

Postwar: He was under indictment in the United States for treason, but the Soviets got the last “hee.” They arrested him in Berlin in 1945 and refused to release him to American forces. The broadcaster died within a year in a Soviet prison.

4. AXIS SALLY

British and American GIs on the march through Italy in the last months of World War II were familiar with the radio voice of “Axis Sally.” Rita Luisa Zucca, born to a Manhattan restauranteur, called herself “Sally” while broadcasting propaganda first for Benito Mussolini’s fascist government and then for Nazi Germany. She was a regular voice on the “Jerry’s Front” program that aired from Rome. She’d come to Italy before the war to look after her family’s estate and was forced to renounce her American citizenship to keep the property from being expropriated by Mussolini’s government. She was 30 when she was hired as a radio announcer in February 1943.

Wartime Activities: Her theme song was “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea” and her signature sign-on was “Hello, suckers!” She mixed pop music, news of Allied troop movements, and appeals to the British and American troops to surrender.

Postwar: Sally was captured by the U.S. Army in Milan on June 5, 1945, with her newborn baby. Tried in Italy for collaboration with the enemy, she was convicted and sentenced to four and a half years in prison. Released after nine months, she lived the rest of her life in obscurity in Italy.

5. BERLIN BESSIE

Mildred Gillars, who was born in Maine, dreamed of being an actress but instead wound up as radio announcer “Berlin Bessie” for Radio Berlin in World War II. After dropping out of Ohio Wesleyan University, she left the United States in the 1930s for Dresden, Germany, to study music. She was working as an English teacher at the Berlitz School of Language in Berlin when war broke out across Europe in 1939.

Wartime Activities: Radio Berlin hired her as an actress and announcer in 1940. The Allied soldiers called her a variety of names: “Berlin Bessie,” “Olga,” and “The Bitch of Berlin.” Introducing herself on air as “Midge,” she tried to convince listeners that their wives and sweethearts back home were being unfaithful. Between American tunes, she made anti-Semitic remarks and criticized president Franklin D. Roosevelt. She stayed on the air until Berlin fell in 1945.

Postwar: Gillars tried to blend in among the thousands of displaced Germans, but she was captured and flown to the United States in 1948 and charged with treason, convicted, and imprisoned until her release in 1961. She took up residence in an Ohio convent and later earned her degree from Ohio Wesleyan in 1973. She went on to teach French and German at a prep school, and died of natural causes in 1988 at age 87.

6. SEOUL CITY SUE

During the Korean War, a Methodist missionary from Lawrence County, Arkansas, became the North Korean radio announcer better known a “Seoul City Sue.” Born in 1900, Anna Wallis Suh graduated from the Scarritt College for Christian Workers in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1930 and undertook a mission to Korea. After marrying Korean schoolteacher Suh Kyoon Chul, she dropped out of the missionary service of the Southern Methodist Conference and became interested in Korean politics.

Wartime Activities: When the Korean People’s Army captured Seoul in 1950, Anna went to work as a radio announcer on Radio Seoul. Her programs featured names of American soldiers captured or killed, and threatened newly arrived soldiers and ships sitting off the coast. She also taunted African-American soldiers for their lack of civil rights in the United States. She delivered all this in a monotone against a backdrop of soft music. American soldiers dubbed her “Seoul City Sue” after the 1946 pop tune “Sioux City Sue.”

Postwar: A few days before the U.S. forces retook Seoul from the North Koreans, the Suhs evacuated to the north. Anna lived there until her death in 1969.

7. HANOI HANNAH

Trinh Thi Ngo, born in Hanoi in 1931, was a Vietnamese radio personality who became the voice of anti-American propaganda during the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s. She was the daughter of a prosperous factory owner and learned English because she loved American movies like Gone With The Wind. By age 25, she was an English-language news broadcaster on Vietnam’s national radio in Hanoi.

Wartime Activities: Trinh made as many as three radio broadcasts daily in an attempt to demoralize the American troops who were defending South Vietnam from an insurgency from the north. To the GIs, she became “Hanoi Hannah” and “the Dragon Lady.” She played antiwar songs popular in the United States, and read the names of soldiers who had recently been killed or imprisoned. U.S. forces were impressed with her military intelligence, which included details about where individual units were deployed.

Postwar: After the war, Trinh and others revealed that their wartime information came from the American military newspaper Stars and Stripes. Today, she lives in relative obscurity with her husband in Ho Chi Minh City (the former Saigon). In the United States, her voice can be heard on the computer game “Battlefield Vietnam.”

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The article above was reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader History’s Lists.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!

Flickr user Agan Harahap created a great series of images depicting heroes, villains and other pop icons Photoshopped into historical photographs. The result is a funny take on world history filled with icons we all recognize.

Link Via Mental Floss

Have you ever noticed that middle school American history classes tend to rush through the War of 1812 in order to get through the Civil War before the school year ends? College Humor imagines what it would have been like if the participants understood the conflict just as well as we do.-via Buzzfeed

Dickerson says this is not about him, but other soldiers who may have the same thing happen to them. He says they should get better treatment from the United States Military, especially after laying their lives on the line while serving their country.

“I don’t want you to think I’m whining and complaining, because I’m not, I really don’t want this to happen to another soldier or any service member of the United States, it’s degrading,” Dickerson said.

Dickerson did get an apology and a money order for his out of pocket costs, but he says he couldn’t cash it, because it was made out to Roy Dirksen, not Rob Dickerson.

Traditionally, the Purple Heart is awarded in a ceremony. Link -via Fark

What is war good for? In Peru it may be good for starting an advanced civilization. Archeologists are studying this occurrence to see how war may have been a common factor in the rise of more advanced civilizations.

The Peru of the first millennium BCE was full of smaller groups, but it isn’t until the region endured centuries of war that two large, dominant societies emerged in the vicinity of Lake Titicaca: the Taraco along the Ramis River and the Pukara of the grassland pampas.

Link

It was only a matter of time before filmmaker Freddie Wong tackled the subject of cats. Of course, it wouldn’t be a Freddie Wong video without a lot of gunfire. -via Laughing Squid

With so many boring days sitting around on the base, soldiers are known to relieve the boredom and stress of their jobs by goofing around. Environmental Graffiti has some great photos of these playful occurrences for your viewing pleasure.

Link

G.I. Joe was enlisted in the United States Army Pigeon Service and went on to save the lives of the villagers of Calvi Vecchia, Italy, as well as the British troops occupying it. This village was going to be bombarded by Allied forces, but he delivered the message just in time to prevent it. He was awarded the Dickin Medal for gallantry in November 1946.

Link

Easy Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division is a group of World War II heroes you might know from the book or the miniseries Band of Brothers. They fought at the D-Day Invasion, the Battle of the Bulge, and Operation Market Garden, and liberated concentration camps, yet they came home and went on with their lives. No one knew much about what they did until the book came out. But these men gained quite a bit of wisdom from their war experiences, tempered by age, which they gave us in their stories. The Art of Manliness took some of those quotes and made them into a series of awesome motivational posters. Link -via Gorilla Mask

What happens to all of our tanks, planes and ships when the war is over? It seems that a lot of them are left on the battlefield to rust and rot as seen in this interesting collection of photos. See the full gallery at the link.

Link

Clara Kayser-Bril, Nicolas Kayser-Bril and Marion Kotlarski collaborated to create this innocuously named yet truly gruesome infographic called 100 years of world cuisine. The project aims to provide an image to the statistics of the deaths caused by wars:

Ten casualties. Ten million casualties. Our understanding of conflicts is often nothing more than a handful of digits, the more precise, the less meaningful. The anchor’s tone remains the same when talking about major wars or isolated outbursts of violence. The horror lays hidden beneath the rigidity of numbers. Figures give us knowledge, not meaning.

We wanted to put a picture on these digits. A shocking, gory picture, like the reality of war. We wanted to give context, like a scale on which we could visualize each conflict next to the others.

We’re not historians and our choices were, in part, left to our own judgement. It is obviously impossible to display all conflicts. It is also impossible to agree on when or where a conflict starts and ends. Focusing on the death toll should not take our minds away from those who survived through mutilation, exile or rape. This project remains artistic in scope and does not aim at scientificity. It sheds another light and, perhaps, restores meaning.

Link – via fastcodesign

During World War I soldiers relied on horses for transportation on the battlefield. The introduction of chemical warfare at this time meant horses had to be just as protected as their human counterparts so they were  fitted  with gas masks over their muzzles to prevent them from inhaling poison gases such as chlorine and phosgene.

Link – Via Archie McPhee

The art collective named Dorothy created a series of four “green army men” that reflect the reality of many veterans. The figures represent disability, homelessness, violence, and suicide. The art project, called “Casulaties of War,” is not for sale. Link -via Boing Boing

Rockhopper Penguin (Image credit: Flickr user Marcus Borg)

For several hundred years, human activity on the Falkland Islands -roughly 300 miles of the Argentine coast- threatened its penguins’ survival. But the trend started to reverse in 1982, when Argentina and Britain began duking it out for control of the Falklands. Turns out, a war, a few landmines, and some unstable diplomatic relations might have been just enough to get the penguins back on track.

The Falkland Islands are small. Collectively, the 200-plus islands that make up the Falklands are only about as big as Connecticut. But through the years, they’ve managed to inspire some Texas-sized international contention. Ever since Argentina gained independence from Spain in 1816, it’s been vying for control of the Falklands in one form or another. Some Argentines even claims possession of the region today, even though Queen Elizabeth’s face graces every piece of currency, the Union Jack appears on the official flag, and every other government in the world recognizes British rule over the Falklands. Despire the fact that Argentina famously lost its military bid for control of the islands back in 1982, national polls still show 80 percent of Argentines want their government to take back the Islas Malvinas, as they’re known in the Spanish-speaking nation.

King Penguins (Image credit: Flickr user andym8y)

So what is it the Argentines so jealously covet? Hard to say. The Falkland Islands aren’t home to much, other than about 3,000 humans, 700,000 sheep, and a few fishing installations. What they do have, however, is an enormous population of penguins from five different species -the Southern Rockhoppers, the Magellanic, the King, the Gentoo, andthe Macaroni. Their names derive from, respectively, the ability to hop on rocks, a celebrated circumnavigator, a British ruler, a religious slur, and a slang reference to flashy dressers. With those five species combined, the Falklands are home to to a penguin army more than 1 million strong. That’s pretty impressive, but it’s believed the number was closer to 10 million only 300 years ago.

In the 18th century, the whale oil industry was booming, and the Falklands had their fair share of whales. Not coincidentally, the French, British, and Spanish groups began showing up on the islands to get in on the action. But whale oil isn’t exactly the easiest thing to produce. First, whales are brought ashore. Then their blubber is separated from their bodies, and the fat is rendered into oil in gigantic vats of boiling water. The Falkland Islands had plenty of whales, but they’re mostly void of timber, and burning whale oil to render whale oil seemed a little silly. So how did the settlers make their Falkland outposts survive? “Francoise, throw another penguin on the fire!” Yes, as it turned out, penguins made surprisingly good kindling, thanks to layers of protective (and, apparently, highly flammable) fat beneath their skin. And it didn’t hurt that they’re so easy to catch. Penguins are flightless and unafraid of humans, so anytime the rendering fires got low, whalers simply grabbed a penguin or two and tossed ‘em in.

Gentoo Penguins (Image credit: Flickr user andym8y)

ONE FISH, TWO FISH

Fortunately for the penguins, the whale oil business died out in the 1860s with the discovery of fossil fuels. That left the islands with little commercial industry, and the worst thing the penguins had to worry about for a while was the occasional egg theft. But peaceful human-penguin relations hit a roadblock again in 1982 when Argentina made its ill-fated attempt to reclaim the Falklands.

Although the British presence on the Falkland Islands has long been a sore spot for Argentina, no Argentine leader had ever tried to force a national claim to the land. At the time, however, the military government, led by General Leopoldo Galtieri, was in a unique situation. Already unpopular at home because of his habit of kidnapping and killing opposition leaders, Galtieri started to get truly nervous when the Argentine economy began to sink. Fearing outright rebellion, Galtieri tried to enlist the spirit of nationalism by invading the largely unprotected Falkland Islands on April 2. He quickly declared victory over the British, but his success was short-lived. Unfortunately for Galtieri, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher didn’t believe in capitulating to dictators, even regarding land as inconsequential and unprofitable as the Falklands. The United Kingdom quickly struck back. In the ensuing two-month conflict, more than 1,000 Argentine servicemen died, and Galtieri’s political downfall was solidified.

Magellanic Penguin (Image credit: Flickr user Bruno Furnari)

When the dust cleared, Britain’s rulers realized they’d just spent several million pounds to assert control over the Falklands, and it was probably in their best interest to find some way to prove that the expense had been worthwhile. Fishing seemed like the best way to make the Falklands economically self-sufficient, so the British government set up an exclusive fishing zone around the islands and began selling permits to everyone from local islanders to gigantic international fishing companies. It was a fine plan, except that the penguins relied on those same fish for survival. Before long, competing with humans for food had become a far greater threat to penguins than whaling had ever been. In a single decade, the Islands’ penguin population dropped from more than 6 million to fewer than 1 million.

THE SPOILS OF WAR

The Falkland Islands War, and the dwindling supply of fish that came with it, seriously threatened the local penguins. But, ironically enough, it also led to their gradual comeback. Since the dispute, Britain and Argentina have approached one another on diplomatic eggshells, if at all. As a result, neither side has been willing to risk angering the other by drilling for oil off the Falklands coast -even though experts estimate that 11 billion barrels worth of oil lie buried out there. That’s good news for all of penguinkind. In other parts of the world, even small amounts of oil leaked from drilling stations have proved disastrous for penguins. The flightless birds rely on a very specific balance of oils on their feathers in order to maintain perfect buoyancy. When mixed with crude oil, penguins will either sink and drown or float and starve. But as long as tensions remain high between the two nations, the Falkland penguins are in the clear.

The Falklands War also left the penguins with a bizarre kind of habitat protection.  During Argentina’s occupation of the islands, its military laid landmines along the beaches and pastureland near the capital city to deter the British from reclaiming the area. So far, those landmines haven’t killed anyone, but the well-marked and fenced-off explosive zones have made for prime penguin habitat. The penguins aren’t heavy enough to set off the mines, but because sheep and humans are, the little guys have to minefields all to themselves.

Macaroni Penguin (Image credit: Flickr user Terry Saunders)

Today there is still an estimated 25,000 landmines in the Falkland Islands. Over the years, they’ve come in pretty handy not only for protecting the penguin habitat from over-grazing, but also for keeping out overzealous tourists. Consequently, Falkland Islanders have decided that maybe having landmines is not such a bad thing. Even though the British government is obligated to remove them by 2009, the islanders recently put forth a proposal calling for their government to instead clean up the same number of mines in greater-risk areas such as Angola, Cambodia, or Afghanistan. After all, signs warning “Keep away from the penguins” will never be as effective as “Keep away from the penguins -or die.”

Ed. Note: Although the British began removing the landmines in a 2009-2010 pilot program, thousands still remain there today.

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The above article by Hank Green is reprinted with permission from the March-April 2006 issue of mental_floss magazine.

Be sure to visit mental_floss‘ entertaining website and blog for more fun stuff!

On April 12th, 1861, 150 years ago today, the first battle of the US Civil War was fought at Ft. Sumter, in Charleston, South Carolina. Southern states had been seceding from the union for months, but the US still maintained coastal forts.

During the four months leading up to Lincoln’s Inauguration, the seceding states, one after another, seized federal forts, arsenals, and customs houses within their borders.

There was little to oppose the breakaway forces, a caretaker and a guard or two comprising many of the garrisons. Most of the 16,000 or so regular Army soldiers had been posted to the western frontier to protect settlers against the perceived threat from American Indians.

On March 4, 1861, Lincoln was inaugurated, promising the seceding states that he would use force only “to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places” belonging to the federal government.

The stage was set for the inevitable showdown.

National Geographic takes a look back with a rundown of what actually happened on April 12th at Ft. Sumter, and how those actions sent the nation into four years of war and cost more than 600,000 men their lives. Link

(Image credit: Library of Congress)

I’ve walked by manholes in New York City streets and smelled the sludge river I walked along in north Baghdad in 2008. I’ve stopped dead in my tracks to watch a street hawker in Midtown, a large black man with a rolling laugh and a British accent, who looked just like my old scout platoon’s interpreter. And I’ve had every single slamming dumpster lid — every single damn one — rip off my fatalistic cloak and reveal me to be, still, a panicked young man desperate not to die because of an unseen I.E.D.

Despite these metaphysical dalliances with time travel the names on my black bracelet are, in fact, stuck in time.  Or, more accurately, stuck in memory, where they’ll fade out and disappear like distant stars before becoming shadows of the men we served with and knew.

So it goes.

Link -via Metafilter

Depending on how much you follow the schedule of upcoming movie releases, you may or may not know that MGM was planning to release a remake of Red Dawn on November 24, 2010 (the picture above is from the set). I say “was” because the studio is facing such major financial difficulties that the release has been postponed and the movie may be shelved indefinitely. To make matters worse, the Chinese press got a hold of the leaked script, which was based around a Chinese invasion of America (as opposed to the Soviet invasion in the first movie), and the headlines are not pretty. A few notable newspapers covered the story saying things like, “U.S. reshoots Cold War movie to demonize China” and “American movie plants hostile seeds against China.”

In honor of a movie that may soon join the ranks of many other films that might have been, let’s enjoy some trivia about the original 1984 version of Red Dawn.

Image via g jewels [Flickr]

Shifting Focus

If you’re one of the many people who think the movie is a pathetic excuse to rally Americans against communists, then you may be surprised to know that the original story was much more intellectual and less action-oriented. Unlike the final version of Red Dawn, the original tale was more like Lord of the Flies, focusing on tensions between the group members and serving to illustrate the aggressive nature of mankind rather than the evils of communist Russia. The story, originally called Ten Soldiers, was also focused on kids who were in their early teens, rather than the older teens featured in the final version.

Getting Ready For Action

The cast and crew both had a lot of work ahead of them even before filming started. The actors, which included Patrick Swayze, Jennifer Grey and Charlie Sheen, were all required to go through an intensive eight-week military-styled boot camp to get them in shape and ready to fight.

Meanwhile, the production crews were tasked with creating realistic weapons and vehicles for the American and Communist forces to use in the film. One of the movies T-72 tanks turned out to be such a perfect replica that the CIA actually dispatched two officers to find out where the Russian tank had come from and what it was doing in LA.

What Happens In Vegas Stays In New Mexico

While the movie is set in Calumet, Colorado, it was filmed mostly in Las Vegas, New Mexico. A rundown Safeway grocery store was used as a sound stage and many scenes were filmed there. Many of the buildings seen in the movie are still standing, with the exception being a 107 year-old historical building that was used for the headquarters of the invaders in the movie. Although it managed to survive being bombed by Wolverines for the purpose of production, it didn’t survive severe thunderstorms in the summer of 2006 and was torn down shortly after.

Setting A New Standard

If you ever thought there was nothing noteworthy about Red Dawn, you’re wrong. Not only did the movie represent the Charlie Sheen’s debut onto film, it also was the first PG-13 movie released in to theaters and the most violent film ever made at the time, according to Guinness. Technically The Flamingo Kid was the first movie to receive a PG-13 rating, but because its release was delayed five months, Red Dawn is largely credited with being the first PG-13 movie ever.

Many parent groups protested the movie, notably The National Coalition on Television Violence, which was shocked by the Guinness Record given to the movie. According to the record, the movie had 134 acts of violence per hour, over two every minute. The Coalition claimed that 1984 had the most violent blockbusters ever released in one summer, as Indiana Jones, Gremlins and Dreamscape also hit theaters that year.

Real World Inspirations

Many critics claimed the film was a fantasyland for war hawks who wanted to use the movie as an excuse to go to war. While the Cold War ended shortly after the movie was released, critics were right in assuming that the military was inspired by the film. When a Hussein disappeared during the Iraq war, the Army set up Operation Red Dawn, and named the targets of the mission Wolverine 1 and Wolverine 2. The captain who named the mission, Geoffrey McMurray, said it “was so fitting because it was a patriotic, pro-American movie.”

Politics on Neatorama are pretty divided and can be very heated, so I’m sure many of you have quite different opinions on the movie. So what do you guys think? Do you like Red Dawn? Are you hoping to see the sequel when (and if) it comes out?

Sources: Wikipedia, New York Times, IMDB, Slash Film

Murphy’s unit was down to 19 men out of 128. They couldn’t fight, they needed to rearm, and they needed somebody to hold the line. So Murphy stayed behind, shooting Germans until he ran out of ammo. Then, deciding he wasn’t done killing Germans, he jumped onto a burning tank and starting using its .50 caliber machine gun. He even killed an entire squad of Germans trying to sneak up on him. Oh, and he did this for almost an hour, while wounded in the leg. And then his men showed up, and Murphy led them on a forward action. Translation: after spending an hour in the freezing cold on a burning tank spraying Germans with machine gun fire, he decided that wasn’t enough and decided to get close and personal.

And he is just one of ten soldiers from all over the world listed as the most badass. Link -via Unique Daily

In the beginning, the German U-boats were hardly a threat to the world’s largest naval powers. Even after the U-l’s dreadful collision during its first test during a training exercise, the German engineers stayed hopeful. Germany now had a powerful weapon.

The Lusitania, carrying war supplies for the war effort, had already been warned prior to its maiden voyage. In fact, the German embassy posted a full page advertisement in the New York Times, warning Americans that German U-boats would be in the water and may attack due to the wartime cargo aboard the ship. Against warnings, the Lusitania sailed. On May 7, 1915, the Lusitania was torpedoed by a German U-boat, killing close to 1200 people, 124 of which were Americans. Rumors serviced that blamed German U-boats for the second explosion, after the Lusitania was already sinking. Further investigations, however, proved that the explosion was due to the ammunition aboard Lusitania.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by lannaxe96.

On left: vintage can of South Pacific Export Lager; on right artist/sign-painter, Kaipel Ka next to to one of his painted wooden shields.

When one thinks of heraldry, images of the lion and the unicorn most often spring to mind. In Papua New Guinea, however, beer labels are featured on shields used as protection in battle. Fighting shields had not been used in 50 years but when war broke out between groups in the 1980′s there was a need for them once more.  Artist Kaipel Ka uses beer advertising designs on shields he makes for various warring groups. The emblems act like the team colors of sporting groups.

Kaipel’s own explanation of his use of the SP design was that he had been asked by senior men to incorporate a representation of a beer bottle on the shield, to make the point that “it was beer alone which had precipitated this fighting”. (The war followed the breakdown of negotiations for compensation after an inebriated Senglap [clan] man had fallen from a Dange [clan]-owned vehicle.) Rather than including a picture of a beer bottle, Kaipel decided instead to make the point by using the SP design as a whole.

Link

Attun Paladin, sometimes referred to as Teruo Nakamura, was the last Japanese soldier to surrender in World War II.* He wasn’t ethnically Japanese, but a Taiwanese native who was conscripted into an auxiliary unit of the Imperial Japanese Army. In 1944, his unit was sent to the island of Morotai, Indonesia. When Japan surrendered the following year, Paladin and other stragglers hid in the jungle until 1954. After a dispute with them, he struck out on his own. Paladin built a hut, planted a garden, and did not see another human being for twenty years. An airplane pilot, however, did see Paladin from the sky and reported his presence to Indonesian authorities.

On 18 December 1974, a unit of Indonesian Army troops trained for this mission surrounded his hut and began singing the Kimigayo — the Japanese national anthem. Paladin did not resist arrest and returned with the soldiers to a military base. Now the hard question: Taiwan was no longer a Japanese colony, so to what country should he be repatriated? Paladin clearly identified with Japan, but had never been to Japan itself and was certainly not ethnically Japanese. After some brief debate in Japan about what it meant to be truly Japanese, he was repatriated to Taiwan on 8 January 1975 to greet a son he had never met and a wife who had remarried twenty years previously. Bitter and confused, Paladin died of lung cancer five years later.

The CSS Shenandoah was a British-built merchant steamship converted into a commerce raider by the Confederacy during the American Civil War. It set sail late in 1864 from the Maderia Islands under Lt. Cdr. James Iredell Waddell. It captured or sunk dozens of US merchant vessels in the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans, as well as the Sea of Japan, Okhotsk Sea, and Bering Sea. Waddell’s primary objective was to greatly damange the US North Pacific whaling fleet, and he was largely successful. The Shenandoah was welcomed in Australia, where it was repaired in dry dock and reprovisioned. Waddell needed additional crewmen, but could not legally recruit them in Australia, so he enlisted the 42 men that had stowed away and discovered by him immediately after leaving Australian waters.

By June 1865, Waddell received word from men on a captured ship that the Confederacy had surrendered. Disbelieving the report, he carried on his attacks on American shipping in the Pacific. That August, he encountered a British captain who confirmed the devastating news. Waddell accepted the report as true and decided to sail back to Britain. He hauled down the Confederate ensign, ignored all further encounters with US merchant vessels, and anchored the Shenandoah in the Mersey River. Waddell, after a journey of 58,000 miles and 38 captured vessels, distributed the prize money and released the crew. The American Civil War was now well and truly over.

When World War I broke out in 1914, the northeastern part of New Guinea was a German colony. But Germany lacked the naval forces in the Pacific necessary to protect its territories in that region, and they rapidly fell into Allied hands. Captain Hermann Dentzer, an army surveyor assigned to German New Guinea at the time, decided against surrendering to the large Australian forces occupying the colony. He and the small force under his command sojourned out into the Saruwaged Mountains of the Huon Peninsula, exploring the area, raiding the Australians, and perhaps becoming the first outsider to see the central high grasslands of the island.

The Australians never caught him, and it was only after learning of the 11 November 1918 armistice that Dentzer decided to surrender. In January of 1919, he put on his well-preserved dress uniform and, raising the flag of the German Empire, marched his force into an Australian base. When he returned to Germany, Dentzer was hailed as a national hero. His book about his adventures, Four Years Among the Cannibals, was a bestseller. You can read a German-language version of that book here.

Svalbard is a frozen archipelago in the Arctic Ocean north of Norway, and under the sovereignty of that nation. Although Germany conquered Norway in April 1940, it was unable to immediately take Svalbard, which had an abundance of coal and was in a strategically useful location for gathering weather data. Moreover, after Hitler’s 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union, the islands gained even greater significance as they lay over the convoy routes to the beleaguered Soviet Union. So, that summer, British, Canadian, and Norwegian troops occupied the islands to keep them from German control. However, the winters there are so harsh that the Allied troops left for the winter.

When they returned in the Spring of 1942, they found that the Germans had set up several weather monitoring stations around the archipelago. The Allies drove them out after suffering heavy casualties. Two German battleships raided Svalbard the following the year, devastating the settlements, including setting on fire one mine that continued to burn until the 1960s.

The Germans demonstrated little interest in the islands until 1944, when they set up a single station at Nordaustlandet under the command of Wilhelm Dege. Trapped by the ice, it remained in service after the official surrender of German forces from 7-9 May, 1945. At that point, Dege, recognizing that all nations need sound weather information, began broadcasting his data openly instead of encoded. It was not until four months later, in September, that Norwegian forces arrived at the station in a converted fishing vessel to accept the surrender of Dege and his ten soldiers. War North of 80: The Last German Arctic Weather Station of World War II is his memoir of the mission.

Baron Ungern von Sternberg — “The Bloody Baron” — was the last Tsarist general active in the Russian Civil War. Born in Graz, Austria, he came from an Estonian German family that had served the Tsars for 200 years. Von Sternberg spoke six languages and worked in various military assignments throughout the vast Russian Empire, starting in the Russo-Japanese War when he developed a fascination with East Asia. During the chaos of the Russian Revolution in 1917, he was in Central Asia. Von Sternberg developed a mysticism that synthesized Christianity and Mongolian Buddhism. He envisioned that a new order would come over Russia from the East — and that he would lead it.

In October 1920, as the Bolsheviks consolidated their hold over western Russia, von Sternberg led his cobbled army of Buriat, Mongolian, and White Russian forces into Mongolia. He captured Ulan Bator and declared himself, in the name of the Buddha, the successor of Genghis Khan. Many of the inhabitants viewed him as a god, and von Sternberg agreed. He surrounded himself with shamans who fed his growing megalomania and took the Mongolian name “Great Star Mountain”. Von Sternberg was brutal to his enemies, who were variously fed to wolves, torn apart by horses, or burned at the stake.

This was too much for the few remaining White leaders in eastern Russia, and von Sternberg became increasingly isolated. Financial support from the Japanese, who hoped to use von Sternberg to divide and weaken Russia, was not enough to keep him in power. After a year in power and the growing advance of Red forces across the east, von Sternberg was betrayed by his own lieutenants and handed over to the Bolsheviks. When, at the beginning of an interrogation, he was addressed as “Ungern”, he corrected the interrogator’s over-familiarity by bellowing out “Baron Ungern von Sternberg!” He was later executed at Nowo-Nicolajevsk.

*Internet rumor identifies a Captain Fumio Nakahira as the last Japanese holdout. He is said to have surrendered on Mindoro Island in 1980, but I have been unable to confirm this tale with what I would call reliable sources.

Images: Valca.cz, Wikimedia Commons, University of Texas

Toward the end of World War II, the Air Force was looking for a better way to burn Japanese cities to the ground. A dental surgeon contacted the White House, and suggested strapping small incendiary devices to bats, loading them into cages shaped like bombshells and dropping them over a wide area.

According to the plan, millions of bats would escape from the bombshells as they parachuted toward earth, and the flying mammals would find their way into the attics of barns and factories, where they would rest until the charges they were carrying exploded. In the early 1940s, a test with some armed bats went awry, and they set fire to a small Air Force base in Carlsbad, New Mexico.

The bats eventually had a successful test, although the bats themselves wouldn’t consider it so. Link -via Digg

(Image credit: Flickr user Furryscaly)

First, he addressed the part of prison escape that every other escapee forgets–what you’ll do once you’re outside the walls. The prison was right there in Germany, after all, and he didn’t even know the language. So, he convinced his captors to start classes in how to learn German.

Next, he needed to coordinate with somebody on the outside. His letters to and from his wife were read and censored by the guards, but they somehow developed a system of embedding coded messages that the captors never picked up on. Next, he got ahold of a map and memorized every detail of the surrounding geography.

All right, now there’s just the matter of the, uh, 150-foot drop outside the prison walls that had made escape utterly impossible for the last eight centuries.

He and a friend came up with some twine, thin stuff like they use to bind packages. They twisted it together, bit by bit, until they had 150 feet of it. It took a year.

Last, he got himself a Tyrolean hat.

Together, these preparations helped Giraud pull it off. Link -via Gorilla Mask

undermine: If your colleagues constantly undermine you, just be glad they aren’t doing so in the traditional sense. Undermine, a word that dates back to the 14th century, was once a military term for digging a clandestine passage under a building to sneak up on the enemy. The term quickly turned metaphorical, but in Shakespeare’s day, its literal meaning was still commonly known. He even playe with it in All’s Well That Ends Well , when the maiden Helena asks a soldier if there’s a way to safeguard her virginity. He replies, “There is none: man, sitting down before you, will undermine you, and blow you up.”

fleabag: Starting in the 1830s, a fleabag was a soldier’s bed. Although the word fleabag now seems wedded to hotel, it can be applied more broadly, as in the 1958 example for the Oxford English Dictionary, “God, how I hated Paris! Paris was one big flea-bag.”

basket case: Today, a basket case is simply a neurotic person, but during WWII, it meant a living soldier who had lost all his limbs and was brought home in a basket. The United States military denies that real baskets were ever used to carry soldiers. Regardless, the original meaning of the word is still gruesome.

(Image credit: Flickr user drakegoodman)

flak:Celebrities catch a lot of flak for idiotic behavior, but contemporary flak isn’t what it used to be. When the term originated in the 1930s, it was short for fliegerabwehrkanone, the German word for anti-aircraft guns. After a generation, the meaning shifted so that catching flak now means absorbing criticism instead of cannonfire.

gung ho: You may be gung ho about collecting stamps, playing solitaire, or other individual pursuits, but originally the term was more applicable to teams. The U.S. Marines first used it a as a slogan during World War II, after general Evans Carlson adapted the Chinese kung ho, which means “work in harmony”. While the teamwork element of the definition has faded, the enthusiasm bit has certainly remained.

fobbit, hillbilly armor, and IED: The war in Iraq is contributing its own expressions. A popular word on the rise is fobbit, a term that combines FOB (forward operating base) with hobbit. The word is a derogatory term for soldiers who stay too close to base and help themselves to three square meals a day. Another expression gaining steam is hillbilly armor, a term for scraps used to bulletproof vehicles.

Some words have already entered civilian life. IEDS, or improvised explosive devices, refer to the homemade bombs created by terrorists and insurgents. A recent GQ article about inappropriate office-party behavior uses it like this: “The workplace minefield is hard enough to negotiate without planting your own IEDs.” So, what are the chances any of these new words will stick around? Who knows? The only thing that’s certain is that as long as there are new wars, new words will crop up, too.

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How Violence Increases Our Vocabulary was written by Mark Peters. It is reprinted with permission from the Scatterbrained section of the May/June 2008 issue of mental_floss magazine.

Be sure to visit mental_floss‘ entertaining website and blog for more fun stuff!

Presenting, in our humble opinion, our leading leaders of men and women at war.

1. GEORGE WASHINGTON (1732-99)

Born in Westmoreland County, Virginia, Washington grew up under the guardianship of his eldest brother. After a spotty education, he became a surveyor and eventually inherited his brother’s prosperous estate, Mount Vernon.

He joined the Virginia militia in 1752, advanced to major, fought during the French and Indian War (1754-60), and made it to the rank of honorary brigadier general. Washington didn’t return to the battlefield until July 1775, after being appointed general by the Continental Congress. At Cambridge, outside Boston, he took command of the disintegrating Continental Army.

The American Revolutionary War-Washington energetically and skillfully revitalized the militias at Cambridge and organized them into Continental Army regiments. Using cannons borrowed from the colonies, he occupied Dorchester Heights and brilliantly forced Sir William Howe’s British army to evacuate Boston and retire by sea to New York City. Washington tried to drive the British from Ney York but failed, partly due to his own inexperience and partly due to untrained troops and clumsy subordinates. His masterful withdrawal from Long Island and Harlem Heights into New Jersey and Pennsylvania during the autumn of 1776 saved the army from extinction.

General Howe captured most of New Jersey and made the mistake of believing Washington’s army was militarily impotent. On the night of December 25-26, 1776, Washington’s forces crossed the Delaware River in boats, drove Howe’s Hessians out of Trenton, and on January 3, 1777, Washington learned that General John Burgoyne planned to invade the Hudson Valley from Canada. Though soon hard-pressed defending Philadelphia, the national capital, he sent many of his best troops upriver and, in October, defeated the British at Saratoga. Having weakened his forces defending Philadelphia, Washington abandoned the defense of the city on September 26, forcing the Continental Congress to move west to York. Not everything went well for Washington, but he managed to contain one British force in the north while sending forces south to fight another British force under General Charles Cornwallis at Yorktown. The strategy worked, and on October 19, 1781, Cornwallis surrendered.

What Made Him Great?

Washington’s unorthodox military education kept him from becoming an orthodox 18th-century general, which led to his boldness. The Continental Army never numbered more than 35,000 men, and Washington never had more than a third of it under his personal command, yet he managed to subdue, with help from the French fleet, Great Britain’s professional army. Underrated by modern standards, Washington was a brilliant strategist and self-taught tactician. He also became a gifted statesman. He believed in civilian government and the rule of law, spurning attempts by his officers to make him a military dictator.

2. WINFIELD SCOTT (1786-1866)

Known as “Old Fuss and Feathers,” Scott was born outside Petersburg, Virginia, and studied law until 1807, when he enlisted in a cavalry troop. At 6’5″ and 250 pounds, Scott could cripple a horse-and did-so he transferred to the light artillery as a captain. Suspended briefly in 1810 for making inappropriate remarks to his superior, Scott rejoined the Army as a lieutenant colonel when the War of 1812 broke out, and led more troops into more battles in that war than any other officer. He suffered two wounds at Lundy’s Lane on June 25, 1814, but 10 days later won an important victory at Chippawa, Ontario. Raised to the rank of major general for distinguished service, Scott became a national hero.

For the next 30 years, except for two trips to Europe to study military developments, Scott fought Seminole Indians in the South and Plains Indians in the West. In 1845-46, when General Zachary Taylor’s battles with General Santa Anna’s army in northern Mexico were inconclusive, Scott recommended to President James K. Polk an amphibious landing at Veracruz as the fastest way to conquer Mexico City. Scott planned the massive operation, and on March 9, 1847, landed near Veracruz and 18 days later captured the city. On April 8 he began the march inland, routed Santa Anna’s larger army on April 18 at Cerro Gordo, and occupied Puebla on May 15. He paused to collect supplies, resumed his advance on Mexico City on August 7, and after fighting decisive battles at Contreras, Churubusco, Molino Del Rey, and Chapultepec, captured the Mexican capital on September 14. He served as military governor there until April 22, 1848, when he returned to Washington.

Promoted brevet lieutenant general in February 1855, Scott became the highest-ranking officer in the Army since George Washington. As general-in-chief of the Army, he tried to prevent the American Civil War by counseling presidents James Buchanan and Abraham Lincoln. He sadly became what his nickname implied, “Old Fuss and Feathers,” a man obsessed with strict adherence to Army red tape with the out-of-date habit of adorning his military headwear with feathers. Though physically infirm, his mind was still sharp, but he could no longer take the field and, on November 1, 1861, resigned.

What Made Him Great?

Scott left a remarkable record as a strategist, a diplomat, and a brave and skillful tactician. His Anaconda Plan for strangling the South by keeping it from its sources of supply during the Civil War was first sneered at by Union generals, but was later adopted by Lincoln, and turned out to be the overriding strategy that eventually won the war.

3. ROBERT E. LEE (1807-70)

The greatest Confederate general of the Civil War, Lee graduated from West Point in 1829, second in a class of 46, and joined the engineers. A Virginian by birth, Lee claimed that he fought for his home state more than for the Confederacy.

The Mexican War-During the Mexican War, Lee served with distinction as a member of General Scott’s staff at Veracruz in March 1847, and at Cerro Gordo the following month. His eye for reconnaissance and tactical improvisations led to Scott’s victories reconnaissance and tactical improvisations led to Scott’s victories at Churubusco, Chapultepec, and eventually to the surrender of Mexico City. Lee worked a desk job from 1852 to 1855 as superintendent at West Point, after which he became colonel of the 2nd U.S. Cavalry and served in the Southwest until shortly before the outbreak of the Civil War. Lee was offered but rejected a top command in the Union army and resigned when Virginia seceded. On June 1, 1862, he replaced wounded General Joseph E. Johnston and took command of the Army of Northern Virginia.

The Civil War-Lee became one of those rare generals who thought strategically, broadly designed his tactics, and took chances. He understood the generals of the North better than those generals understood themselves. He came up with the strategy for Major General Thomas J. “Stonewall: Jackson’s Shenandoah Valley Campaign during the spring of 1862, making Jackson the most celebrated officer in the Confederacy-until he was later eclipsed by Lee. In late June, Lee’s smaller force bluffed Major General George B. McClellan’s army into withdrawing, and two months later Lee outmaneuvered Major General John Pope and defeated the Army of Virginia at the Second Battle of Bull Run on August 29-30. On September 17, with a force half the size of McClellan’s Army of the Potomac, Lee repulsed the Federals in a drawn battle at Antietam. After President Lincoln replaced McClellan with Major General Ambrose Burnside, Lee bloodied the massive Union army on December 13 at Fredericksburg.

Lee’s aggressive instincts were never more evident than at Chancellorsville. He ignored the maxims of warfare, divided his much smaller force, and on May 2-4, 1863, decimated the right flank of the Army of the Potomac with a surprise attack. But his greatest mistake occurred on July 1-3 at Gettysburg, when he was overly aggressive at a time when he should have fought defensively. He admitted the error and withdrew into Virginia.

By 1864 many of Lee’s best officers had been killed and there were no more soldiers to replace those who’d been lost in battle. Forced to fight defensively, Lee held off Grant’s offensive in the Battle of the Wilderness on ay5-6, at Spotsylvania on May 8-12, and repulsed the Union assault at Cold Harbor on June 3. Those battles cost Grant a third of his men, but Lee couldn’t withstand the pressure and withdrew to Petersburg’s trenches. It took Grant eight months to flush Lee out of Petersburg and force his surrender on April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Court House.

What Made Him Great?

Lee’s men adored him. In victory and defeat, they witnessed his great strength of character, his high sense of duty, and his humility and selflessness. Even Northerners accepted Lee as the greatest general of the Civil War.

4. ULYSSES S. GRANT (1822-85)

Born Hiram Ulysses at Point Pleasant, Ohio, the future general grew up on his father’s farm. In 1839 he entered West Point and found himself listed by his middle name and his mother’s maiden name. On that day he became Ulysses Simpson Grant, which in later years became “U.S.” Grant and “unconditional Surrender” Grant. In 1843 he graduated 21st in a class of 39 and became a second lieutenant in the 4th Infantry.

The Mexican-American War-During the Mexican-American War, Grant distinguished himself while serving under General Zachary Taylor in Texas and later under General Winfield Scott in Mexico, where he received two brevets (commissions of higher rank) for gallantry. Grant enjoyed fighting, but he found n pleasure in the peacetime army. In July 1854, he resigned as captain from a dismal post in Oregon and returned to his family in Missouri, where for six years he tried without much success to scratch out a living on the family farm.

The Civil War-Grant Reemerged in June 1861 as colonel of the 21st Illinois Infantry. Promoted to brigadier general in August, Grant ran his own campaigns and on February 6, 1862, seized Fort Henry on the Tennessee River and 10 days later demanded the “unconditional surrender” of Fort Donelson. In April, after first being surprised by a Confederate attack at Shiloh, he repulsed the enemy. Privately, he feuded with Major General Henry W. Halleck and was accused of drunkenness, but redeemed himself on July 4, 1863, by capturing Vicksburg. When men like Halleck questioned Grant’s ability, Lincoln countered with a brisk rejoinder, replying, “I can’t lose him. He fights.”

After Vicksburg, Grant’s stature as a fighting general bloomed. When Major General William S. Rosecrans’s army was bottled up at Chattanooga, Grant took charge, broke the siege, and drove the Confederates into Georgia. Lincoln rewarded Grant with a promotion to lieutenant general and made him general-in-chief of the armies. Instead of establishing an office in Washington, Grant took the field with the struggling Army of the Potomac. With characteristic doggedness, he drove General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia to its final defeat at Appomattox on April 9, 1865.

What Made Him Great?

Though the point is still argued, Grant was an effective strategist. He made mistakes and learned from them. His drive and resolution made him a first-class general. Grant’s postwar popularity earned him the presidency in 1869, but he was a warrior, never a good businessman or a politician. In fact, his hapless presidency was marked by the corruption of unworthy appointees he trusted.

5. JOHN J. PERSHING (1860-1948)

Pershing grew up on a farm in Laclede, Missouri, and displayed a high level of intelligence as a child. He taught school for four years before getting an appointment to West Point in 1882.

The Indian Wars-Commissioned a second lieutenant in the 6th Cavalry Regiment in June 1886, he served in the West during the Indian wars. In 1895 he commanded the famous African American Buffalo Soldiers, which is where he got the nickname “Black Jack.”

The Spanish-and Philippine-American Wars-During the Spanish-American War, he served with the 10th Cavalry at San Juan Hill, and he also commanded troops in the Philippine-American War from 1899 to 1901. He went wherever he could find action and eventually returned to San Francisco in 1914 to take command of the 8th Infantry Brigade.

The Mexican War-When the Mexican civil war of 1914 spread across the border, Pershing led a 4,800-man brigade and for 10 months unsuccessfully pursued Pancho Villa’s forces into Mexico, and experience that prepared him for his next move-and a big one.

World War I-In 1917, after a short interview, President Woodrow Wilson decided that Pershing would command the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) in Europe. Pershing arrived in France on June 23 to begin a massive buildup of U.S. forces. When France demanded that American units fight under French field commanders, Pershing refused. He preserved the AEF as an independent fighting force and directed three major offensives in 1918: Aisne-Marne from July 25 to August 2, Saint-Mihiel from September 12 to 19, and the final Meuse-Argonne offensive on September 26 to November 11.

Pershing didn’t use the same tactics employed by the French, which, after four years of war, had failed to dislodge the enemy. Trench warfare created enormous casualties. Taking a page from Robert E. Lee’s playbook, Pershing operated on the flanks of the enemy. He was also the first to use air power to soften up fortified positions by bombing instead of relying entirely on artillery. While the French and British thought the war could be won by 1919 or 1920, Pershing said the AEF would end the war in 1918-and they did.

His appointment as General of the Armies of the United States in July 1919 made him the first and only general to receive the rank in his own lifetime. He avoided politics and served for two years as chief of staff, retiring in 1924. He is seldom remembered because the AEF didn’t contribute to major European campaigns until 1918.

What Made Him Great?

Like Lee and Grant, Pershing took the field with his men and was recognized for his personal bravery. A strict disciplinarian, he was also cold, distant, and demanding, which many of his subordinates disliked-but he was also fair, just, and tenacious, virtues that his detractors overlooked. Had any other general been sent to France to command the AEF, American units would probably have been propelled into the French army to fight poorly conducted battles under generals using ineffective tactics.

6. DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER (1890-1969)

“Ike” was born in Denison, Texas, and grew up in Abilene, Kansas. He graduated from West Point in 1915, and played football there. Unlike most officers, Eisenhower rarely served in the field. After performing a variety of training duties during World War I, he graduated at the top of his class from the Command and General Staff School in 1926 and from the Army War College in 1928. He was on General Douglas MacArthur’s staff from 1933 to 1939, and in September 1941 he received a promotion to brigadier general while serving as chief of staff to the 3rd Army. Attached to the Army War Plans Division from December 1941 to June 1942, Eisenhower advanced to major general and was put in charge of U.S. forces in Europe.

World War II-Eisenhower assumed command of Operation Torch, the November 8 invasion of French North Africa, and the invasion of Tunisia one week later. It took Allied forces six months to drive the German and Italian armies out of Africa.

On July 9, 1943, Eisenhower commanded the invasion of Sicily. Once the Allies secured a strong holding position in Italy, President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved Eisenhower to England to plan the cross-channel invasion of France. Appointed Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, Eisenhower directed Operation Overlord, the Allied amphibious assault on Normandy, France, on June 6, 1944.

It was at this point that Eisenhower’s role became extremely political: he had to placate Great Britain and the other Allies while making decisions regarding the war in Europe. He also had problems with some of his generals and made political concessions that produced poor results. Yet he made extremely sound decisions when reacting to setbacks, such as the German Ardennes offensive (Battle of the Bulge) from December 1944 to January 1945. When the Allied offensive resumed in February, he planned and implemented the crossing of the Rhine and the push into Germany. After Germany’s surrender on May 7-8, 1945, Eisenhower commanded the Allied occupation forces until November. He returned home and replaced General George C. Marshall as chief of staff, the highest-ranking officer in the U.S. Army.

What Made Him Great?

Eisenhower became a man of exceptional ability. He retired in February 1948 to become president of Columbia University, but in December 1950 President Harry S. Truman made him the first supreme commander of NATO. Eisenhower retired again in 1952, ran for president, and won. Part of his foreign policy was to protect Middle Eastern countries from Soviet aggression and to avoid getting the United States involved in countries like Vietnam.

7. DOUGLAS MacARTHUR (1880-1964)

MacArthur was the son of Medal of Honor recipient Lieutenant General Arthur MacArthur Jr., and followed in his father’s footsteps. He graduated from West Point in 1903, first in his class, and began his career serving under his father in the Philippines.

During World War I, he went to France and commanded a brigade at Saint-Mihiel and a division during the Meuse-Argonne campaign. After the war, he returned to the Philippines as a major general. He retired from the Army in August 1936 to become the Philippine government’s field marshal. As war with Japan became imminent, President Roosevelt reinstated MacArthur as a lieutenant general commanding U.S. forces in the Far East.

World War II-Though he was warned repeatedly that the Philippines could be struck by Japan, and was provided with B-17 bombers to defend against an attack, MacArthur believed the islands would not be invaded before the spring of 1942. This miscalculation led to faulty vigilance and would have resulted in the removal of any other commander but MacArthur. Instead, he was ordered to Australia to stem the Japanese advance, awarded the Medal of Honor for the defense of the Philippines, and became the supreme commander of Allied forces in the Southwest Pacific.

Always a superb strategist, MacArthur stopped the Japanese drive on New Guinea and recovered western New Britain. In November 1942 he began leap-frogging forces along the northern coast of New Guinea to Morotai in the Molucca Islands, which reopened the way to the Philippines. On October 20, 1944, he led the invasion of Leyte, fulfilling his promise to return to the Philippines. President Roosevelt raised MacArthur to general of the armies and put him in charge of planning the invasion of Japan, which was preempted by Japan’s surrender. MacArthur remained in Tokyo as supreme commander of the occupation forces and administered the defeated country with benevolence. He was still there when North Korea invaded South Korea in June 1950.

The Korean War-As supreme commander of United Nations forces in Korea, MacArthur conceived one of the greatest double envelopments in military history. Using a force strong enough to hold a perimeter in the southeastern corner of Korea, he sent a strong amphibious force to assault Inchon in the northwestern corner of the country. The resulting “pincers” movement virtually destroyed the North Korean army. He followed this brilliant move and stepped on the toes of Communist China. Neither President Truman nor the United Nations wanted China drawn into the Korean War, but MacArthur, mainly from arrogance, allowed it to happen. After he was recalled to the United States and replaced by Lieutenant General Matthew Ridgway, MacArthur retired.

What Made Him Great?

Though egotistical and controversial, MacArthur was nevertheless one of the greatest generals of World War II and of history. His amphibious campaigns were masterpieces of strategy and boldness, and were noted for their efficiency and low casualty rates. Despite his flamboyance, MacArthur cared for his men and believed thorough planning would save lives -and it did.

8. GEORGE S. PATTON (1885-1945)

Patton was descended from an old Virginia military family but was born in San Gabriel, california. He attended the Virginia Military Institute and went on to West Point, graduating in 1909. After placing fifth in the modern pentathlon at the 1912 Olympics, Patton joined the cavalry when men still rode horses, and he never left the branch after it became mechanized. He learned a great deal about fighting while serving under General John J. Pershing, and during World War I he organized and led the 1st Tank Brigade during the Saint-Mihiel and Meuse-Argonna campaigns late in 1918. During the postwar years, Patton spread his time between studying and advancing tank technology (a series of tanks were named for him), serving on the general staff, and attending the Army War College. By April 1941 he had risen in the ranks to major general and was in command of the 2nd Armored Division. By then, Patton had earned the reputation of having a uniquely gifted military mind, immense energy, and a penchant for being blunt.

World War II-Patton participated in the planning of Operation Torch and in November 1942 commanded the landings in French Morocco. He replaced Major General Lloyd Fredendall following the defeat at Kasserine Pass on march 3, 1943, and assumed command of the 2nd Army Corps. Temporarily relieved of duty after a minor quarrel with the British, Patton subsequently took command of the 1st Armored Corps, which later became the 7th Army. His brilliant campaign in Sicily during July and August of 1943 was overshadowed by a highly-publicized face-slapping incident in a hospital on August 3rd. Patton despised cowardice, and when he found a soldier skulking in a hospital bed with no evidence of an injury, he called him a “damned coward” and slapped his face in the presence of reporters. After the incident made national news, General Eisenhower brought Patton to England and tried to keep him out of trouble until the Normandy campaign.

Patton sulked for five months before Eisenhower gave him command of the newly formed 3rd Army. He landed in France on July 6, 1944, broke out of Normandy with his tanks, advanced east across France, wheeled suddenly north, and struck the flank of the German army. When the German Ardennes offensive in December 1944 threatened to swallow up a surrounded American division at Bastogne, Patton pushed the 3rd Army through mud and snow and relieved Bastogne on december 26, 1944. He pressed on to the Rhine under stiff resistance, crossded it on March 22nd, and pushed through central Germany into Bavaria. By May 8, when Germany surrendered, his spearheads had reached into Czechoslovakia.

Now without a war to fight, Patton’s inappropriate political comments once again put him at odds with Eisenhower. Removed from command of the 3rd Army, Patton moved to the 15th Army, which had few troops and existed mainly on paper. With one day to go before his return to the United States, a car he was riding in was hit by a truck. Patton was paralyzed from the neck down and died less than two weeks later.

What made him great?

Like many field commanders, Patton was a warrior and not a politician. His tactics were brilliant. By any measure, he became America’s greatest leader of heavy-armor forces, as well of one of America’s outstanding field commanders.

9. MATTHEW B. RIDGWAY (1895-1993)

Best known for saving the UN effort in the Korean War, Ridgway was also a celebrated leader in World War II. He was born at Fort Monroe, Virginia, and graduated from West Point in 1917. During World War I, Ridgway served with the 3rd Infantry Regiment but did not go overseas. During the postwar years, the army sent Ridgway to China and the Philippines. He periodically returned stateside to attend high-level military training. In December 1941 he joined the 82nd Infantry Division, which he later commanded as the 82nd Airborne, one of the army’s new airborne divisions.

In early 1943 Major General Ridgway brought the division to the Mediterranean and on July 9-10 made the first American airborne assault on Sicily. He led elements of the division during the September 9 amphibious assault on Salerno. On D-day, June 6, 1944, he parachuted into France with his troops. In August he moved up to command the 18th Airborne Corps, which consisted of the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions, and led his men in the airborne assault at Arnhem on September 17. He played a major role in stemming the German Ardennes offensive in December 1944 and later participated in the Rhineland and the Ruhr campaigns, during which he received his third star.

The Korean War-Ridgway’s greatest hour came during the Korean War, when the Joint Chiefs of Staff sent him to Korea to clean up MacArthur’s mess. The Chinese had led MacArthur’s UN forces reeling back from the Manchurian border in December 1950, recaptured the South Korean capital of Seoul, and threatened to drive US forces completely out of Korea. Ridgway stopped the counteroffensive 75 miles south of Seoul and gradually reestablished control of the area, fighting his way back to the original border between the two Koreas. For the next several months, he fought a battle of containment, forcing the enemy to throw hundreds of thousands of men into his stubborn mincing machine before agreeing to truce talks. Ridgway’s strategy of containment became the adopted policy of the United States throughout the Cold War.

After serving briefly as Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, Ridgway returned to the United States in October 1953 to become the Army’s chief of staff during the Eisenhower administration. Because of his personal policy of Communist containment, he probably kept the Unites States from becoming involved in the Vietnam War for ten years.

What Made Him Great?

Ridgway did not believe in massive retaliation to Communist threats, but he did sanction “flexible response”, which is the strategy he followed that ended the Korean War. With the exception of Vietnam, it is the same policy American presidents followed until the Iraq War in 2003.

10. H. NORMAN SCHWARZKOPF (1934- )

Born in Trenton, New Jersey, Schwarzkopf was an army brat whose father served on both World Wars. Like his father, he graduated from West Point, and in June 1956 he became a second lieutenant in the infantry.

Vietnam War-The man who became known as “Stormin’ Norman” served two tours in Vietnam, first as an advisor to the South Vietnamese in 1965 and later as commander of the 23rd Infantry Division, where he earned the first of three Silver Stars and Two Purple Hearts Promoted to colonel, he returned to the United States in a body cast due to war injuries. After reaching home, Schwarzkopf was shocked by the public’s hostility to the war and considered resigning. He privately blamed the government for becoming involved in a war with unclear objectives and a misconceived strategy.

Between the Wars-Schwarzkopf remained in the army and for the next twenty years worked his way up the ladder by commanding the 172nd Brigade in Alaska and the 1st Brigade, 9th Infantry Division at Fort Lewis, Washington. After serving as deputy director of plans for the Pacific command in 1978-80, he eventually became a major general and commanded the 24th Mechanized Infantry Division at Fort Stewart, Georgia. He returned to Fort Lewis in 1986 as a lieutenant general and took command of the 1st Corps. With his elevation the U.S. Central Command in 1988, he was responsible for planning Desert Shield, which became Desert Storm in January 1991, the ousting of Iraqi forces from Kuwait.

Desert Storm-In this capacity Schwarzkopf planned, organized, and executed the largest U.S. mechanized combat operation since 1945. Between August 1990 and and January 1991, he assembled 765,000 troops-of which 541,000 were American-from 28 countries, hundreds of ships, and thousands of tanks and aircraft. When a six-week aerial bombardment failed to bring Saddam, Hussein to the negotiating table, Schwarzkopf drew Iraqi forces out of position with a fake amphibious landing and performed what he termed an “end run” around Iraq’s vaunted Republican Guard. He cut the enemy’s communications, destroyed their supply lines, and in 1090 days forced Saddam to adopt a cease-fire. Total U.S. casualties were 293 killed and 467 wounded.

Schwarzkopf could have marched into Baghdad with little resistance, and he expressed a willingness to do so. But UN resolutions did not include the capture of Iraq, so Schwarzkopf stood down. Somewhat annoyed by not finishing the job, he retired from the Army in 1992.

What Made Him Great?

Schwarzkopf executed a classic campaign and left no messes within the scope of his task. He understood his orders and performed them with few casualties and received much praise from the world community.

__________

The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Salutes the Armed Forces.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!

In principle, yes, your enemy could come at you from any direction at all. In practice, though, the Buggers are going to do no such thing. At least, not until someone invents an FTL drive, and we can actually pop our battle fleets into existence anywhere near our enemies. The marauding space fleets are going to be governed by orbit dynamics – not just of their own ships in orbit around planets and suns, but those planets’ orbits. For the same reason that we have Space Shuttle launch delays, we’ll be able to tell exactly what trajectories our enemies could take between planets: the launch window. At any given point in time, there are only so many routes from here to Mars that will leave our imperialist forces enough fuel and energy to put down the colonists’ revolt.

That’s just the beginning of the difference we would see between a movie battle and what would happen in the outer space we have. Read more at Gizmodo. Link -via Digg

The people who are making decisions about the internet are, fundamentally, deciding the access of all future generations to come. Forget Afghanistan and Iraq; these are the theaters of war where democracy will live or die. SherWeb has an overview of the most contentious battles over who controls the web.

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From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by mrmunchies.

"The War to End All Wars" ended 91 years ago on the 11th Hour of the 11th Day of the 11th Month in 1918. This became known as Armistice Day, and later as Veteran’s Day. For many, especially Americans, World War I has been practically forgotten as it is overshadowed by WWII in history classes, but WWI had a great impact on the 20th century and that impact lingers to this day. The nation of Iraq was created in the aftermath of the war, for example.

World War I in many ways was the “War to end all Wars” in that it was every war past and future rolled up into one. There were Napoleonic charges, aerial bombardment, a few misguided cavalry charges with actual horses, tanks, machine guns, artillery barrages, air combat, poison gas attacks, flamethrowers, submarine warfare, and primitive hand-to-hand fighting that came down to knives, sharpened spades, and clubs.

The trenches were hell on earth – mud, water, snipers, artillery barrages, barbed wire, machine gun fire, and the rotting corpses of those who fell in No-Man’s Land, the deadly area between the opposing armies’ trenches. Plus there was rampant disease, lice, and rats grown fat from feeding off of corpses.

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From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by samuraidave.

The three robots are the Talon, a small, manoeuvrable machine with thermal-image cameras; the Black Max, which is similar to a quad bike and has a high-pressure hose, and the Brokk 90, which is a heavy-duty digger that removes debris.

The robots, manufactured by QinetiQ, went into service in London yesterday. Link -via Unique Daily

It was a four-year "war" witnessed by Dr Jane Goodall, and Dr Muller’s PhD supervisor, Richard Wrangham, a professor of primatology from Harvard University, Boston, that put an end to our cosy ideas.

In the Seventies, Prof Wrangham and Dr Goodall watched a group of chimpanzees split into two factions. One group killed every male and some of the females in the other group. The victims had recently been their companions.

Although Dr Goodall was the first to suggest it, Prof Wrangham went on to develop a theory that would explain human violence based on the aggression he had witnessed. As he points out, we are hardly a peaceful species. In Britain, men are 24 times more likely to kill or assault another person, and 263 times more likely to commit a sexual offence than a woman.

Prof Wrangham’s theory is called the Demonic Male Hypothesis. He argues that human males and chimps share a tendency to be aggressive with our closest common ancestor. Chimpanzees and humans have many attributes in common: we share approximately 98.5 per cent of our DNA, we both hunt and males show a strong desire to form alliances against other males while jockeying for status. Male chimpanzees are hostile towards other groups of chimps; you don’t even have to go to Arsenal to know that men are not dissimilar.

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It’s important to keep kids feeling comfortable and happy, even when they need to watch out for poisonous gas clouds -or at least, that must be the theory behind this Mickey Mouse gas mask sold in WWII. Paranoia and consumerism sure make for an interesting combination.

Link Via Consumerist

Remember when you were little and playing outside with your friends and someone said lets play ‘War’, ‘Cowboys and Indians’ or ‘Cops and Robbers’? And using your imagination that stick you found turned into a weapon complete with sounds and recoil and the times when you’d argue with friends on whether or not they got hit by your weapon? Well, these kids are doing the same thing but are using their imagination at a much more prodigious level.

**Note: This movie has subtitles so please turn them on by following the instructions that pop up when you press play!

By virtually wiping out the ‘male stock’, tribal women hope they can avoid deadly bow-and-arrow wars between the villages in the future.

‘Babies grow into men and men turn into warriors,’ said Rona Luke, a village wife who is attending a special ‘peace and reconciliation’ meeting in the mountain village of Goroka.

‘It’s because of the terrible fights that have brought death and destruction to our villages for the past 20 years that all the womenfolk have agreed to have all new-born male babies killed,’ said Mrs Luke.

‘The women have had enough of men engaging in tribal conflicts and bringing misery to them.’

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A bag belonging to a World War II soldier from Lancashire has been discovered in the Egyptian desert after lying there for more than 60 years. Alec Ross, from Burnley, lost the bag containing personal letters and photos, while serving with the 8th Army. Egyptian tour guide Kahled Makram found the bag in the Sahara desert and traced Mr Ross’s family through a BBC website on World War II. The bag is being sent to Burnley to Mr Ross’s sister, Irene Porter.

Video: LiveLeak – Via: BBC