History (and related interesting facts)

I confess I've always been more attached to Prussia and Moscowi/Russia. Prussia has always been the place of cool knights, philosophers, flags! etc. ... and 19th century Germany. Russia and their Cossacks are so important in pacifying central Asia and stopping waves of Nomad Barbarians that had been ruining the west and the middle east (since proto-Huns till Genghis Khan's Mongols and Timur the lame time). And lately they have Putin which redeems Russia from 70 years of communism!

But the role of Poland in history was not clear for me. Only lately for their rational decisions in politics unlike Germany I find them interesting and praiseworthy! I'm so ignorant about Poland's history. Please introduce its highlights in Medieval and Renaissance history.

One of the best inventors ever.

Well the main most important events of Poland were:
1) winning in ottoman wars (Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth) battle of Vienna being very important since if Ottomans would have won there they would have advanced further into Europe
2)1919–1921 soviet polish war, where Poland defeated soviets therefore stopping the spread of communism further
3)Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth was the only force in history that managed to take over Moscow

those three are far the major events in my opinion.
It may not sounds much but for Poland to survive as a country is amazing since we were stuck between Russia and Germany(well Prussia depends on time period really), partition of Poland by Prussia, Austria and Russia occurred and we weren't a country for 123 years (after WW1 Poland was formed again)
Our greatest man and women were killed by Nazis and soviets, and here we are still standing (makes me quite proud)
But yet back in WW2 people didnt give up the Warsaw uprising, Battle of Monte Cassino, battle of Britain, my great uncle was a pilot.

Obviously i don't know history amazingly well but i think those points i stated are correct!

Or how about interesting random historical facts, like ''Dancing mania'' diseases occurred in Europe between 14th and 17th century where people used to dance until they collapsed from exhaustion, and still no one know really why it happened

(horrible histories tv show was brilliant for these things)

i wasn't aware of that, thanks for the information!

A brief history of middle east before Islam.



^ Totally chewed the last part tho.



If you are not bothered with the accent! I don't agree with a few parts of the the second video, but overall it's informative for you.

Alright here is a interesting historical tidbit.

As some of you likely know my ancestry is primarily until fairly recently (the last sixty or so years) Norwegian in origin and the german a fairly recent influx only occurring after the war. However that is not the first tie my family had with the germans as a people, the first contact came with no surprise the arrival of the German military in Norway in onset of the Second World War. My grandfather on my mother's side(the Norwegian side) was one of several thousand that saw the coming of the germans as boon, abet for immediate political reasoning with the rise of American Imperialism and Communism both threatening to snuff out Norway's place of superiority on the peninsula.

My grandfather was a and I have said this before without any sort of shame, a member of Unity party, and yes a follower of Quislings. At the time he was a captain in the royal navy and while he viewed the invasion as a gross misstep of the bounds that he had assumed would be Norway's and Germany's relation...seeing the King order the military fight to the death while he and member's of the parliament fled to England did not endear the government he had already saw as failing his people. In the aftermath of Quisling's coup and the formation of the occupational government he briefly served as steward of a handful of naval yards and handled logistics for the scarce ships left from the departure of the, in his eyes traitorous navy that handed itself over to England.

This is all just a prelude alright? Then came the year 1943, February the creation of the 11th Volunteer Panzer, Nordland a unit devised of Norwegian, Finnish, Estonians and what have you. Despite being in his mid thirties by the time he enlisted along with a great many of the remaining Norwegian military, He already knew that Norway wouldn't hold itself aloft if Germany fell so he went to war for the people that had invaded his nation just years prior. He saw a fair bit of action in 1944 across the USSR and on the retreat back across Europe, I unfortunately never met the man, we will come to that bit of the story later on but I was told of it by mother and several surviving letters and documents that survive from the time.

All of this ultimately culminated in what I actually wanted to speak of the Tannenberg Line offensive. In which you had 20,000 or so members of various Panzer corps, the XXVI reserve army, a few division of Estonian border guard, and police against a veritable horde of communists numbering well over a hundred thousand strong. Note this action took place in the heavily hilled and wooded northern estonian border. We are talking thick country, trees and brush so packed together and concentrated you couldn't see for hope of it, making it a fairly good place to lay a defensive action even against a ridiculously sized force.

Which is good because by this point in the war, especially in the retreat action from Russia with several notable battles and issues between them and the primary forces back in Germany and France, they were down to less then 10 tanks, only had a few score of aircraft, and very limited artillery. Later in the year Model would make history as the General responsible for the most single Americans killed in a combat action, by making usage of terrain and artillery to great effect to stall their offensive at the Westwall, but here, they did not have the resources for a protracted siege and did not have the positions to offer up that much fight, so instead they pulled back into the hills and assembled positions as best they could awaited the russian horde to catch up to them and only July 25th they did.

Bombs and artillery cleared forests that had remained for centuries, fire raked the panzer divisions and estonians. Here is the kicker though, their advance was met by a fierce barrage by the surviving german artillery and infantry, entire infantry corps were dispatched by the russians to engage, and engage they did, charging and pushing and trying to surge the positions in similar fashions that saw them to success at Leningrad and Stalingrad. The losses of the following days with the battle ultimately ending at the onset of august the 2nd, were staggering, well over 50,000 dead, 150 tanks, entire rifle battlaions left in tatters, the russian advance was completely halted on this section of the eastern front, yet it had not been without cost, 2,000 germans, norwegians, finnish and estonians lay dead on that hill as well, even as they continued to fight a retreating back trying to link up with the now beleaguered and incomplete II Army Corps.

The battle of the Blue Hills notes my Grandfather's fourth battle for the germans in the Nordland SS unit, and unfortunately the last we have any knowledge of given he would go on with his fellows, retreating back into Germany, being pulled into the vanguard to defend the capital during the final days of the Reich as it crumbled around them. He'd die there, and unlike his would be counterpart, my grandfather on my father's side, he would not see the war end. According what mixed accounts exist from this very hectic time period, he died somewhere around where the former Reich Chancellery stood, along with a lot of the Nordland in the government quarter of the city around April 29th.

Why this little story? Well Nordland as a concept and service unit has fascinated me since I learned of it truthfully. You must understand I grew up well after two decades since the war had come to its end, there were numerous stories, articles and accounts floating around these days of the war, and those who fought, and why, and how, numerous books, and volumes devoted to the subject. As a child I did not truly grasp it despite being surrounded by a bunch of bitter germans who had up and left their home rather then see it ruled by russians, but that is another story, I was told stories, and forced to listen to lecture after lecture of the truth of the war.

Note that a good majority of these men were either former Wehrmacht or State Security. Notably my great uncle, grandfather on my father's side, two of his brothers, and one of his sons (not my father, he was only a kid when the war was ongoing) So basically this mishmash of those who either fought for Germany directly, or those who were related to those who had dominated a good bit of my early life, I grew to appreciate military service early, and saw at least some I suppose of what they were trying to get across.

As a younger man I walked a decent bit of Europe, back when borders were fairly easy to pass through, examined battlefields from decades prior, walked on snow that was once melted away by knee high tides of blood, before I came to America I realized just what the fascinating bit about Nordland was and just how it went against what I had learned in school. At least in part, Nordland and its sibling units are note worthy because it shows a side of that war that we would never not focus on, it is a eager mindset that would place on onus on the Japanese and Germans for the war, that they were evil empires seeking to conquer the entire world, and they killed or enslaved any culture they came across, that is patently untrue.

The motivations for these nations to lend their soldiers, their citizenry, for these people to step into the ranks differ obviously, threat of communism, threat of imperialism, whatever the reasoning, these men from these nations stood together with who if you follow the majority of historical accounts, are the antagonists of this tale of their own free will. Often without pay, often being tossed into the roughest and bloodiest bits of the war.

My family history, at least the prior chapter was dominated by that war, it saw numerous members of either side killed indirectly or directly by it. Both branches of it were shaped and molded by it, and even my existence was impacted by it, through stories I was told by those who lived it.

So I view this not just as the history of the war, of the Nordland unit, but of my family as well.

And all this is centered around a battle of that war, in a war of so many great battles, that is all but unknown by history outside of the land were it occurred it.

Wikipedia isn't the best source to get info from.... 

About the second point i should have been more specific, it was between 1605–1618 wars and i did say polish-Lithuanian union, not Poland! (it was for short time tho)
 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%E2%80%93Muscovite_War_(1605%E2%80%9318)#Poles_in_Moscow_.281610.29

About what you posted (the second link) i dont know much about those wars back then, so i cant comment much.

And i think that first piece of information is quite interesting cheers!




(also whilst its true wikipedia is not the best source,  but it is the fastest one to get and to get sources you can look at the bottom of an article after all)

Cross-posted from the Real Name thread!

The Vikings. They did a lot of stuff.

Alan Turing
-prominent figure in the foundations of theoretical computer science.
-Created the Basis of the turing machine.
-Created the Turing Test which measures how efficient AI is
-Cracked The Enigma code.
-Suffered due to anti LGBTQ laws.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing


Grace Hopper
-Responsible for creating the first compiler
-was a Navy Rear Admiral
-Wrote one of the first high level programming languages, COBOL(it is kind of horrible though )
-Played a part into the terminology of calling computer glitches bugs(interesting story, programming back in the day was close to hardware as possible. The reason they called it a bug was because there was an actual bug in the circuits which disturbed the flow of the program)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper


Edsger Djikstra
-Responsible for coming up with the shortest path algorithm that is used to optimize various computational routes
-played a huge part in stopping the use of the GOTO statement in programming languages('GOTO is Harmful' paper, homepages.cwi.nl/~storm/teaching/reader/Dijkstra68.pdf)
-Proponent for the advancement of structured programming.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dijkstra%27s_algorithm
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structured_programming

Oh, the origin of the term "bug"... I remember that story