Tuesday, December 2, 2014

THE PRAIRIE EDITOR: Ten More Amazing Facts From History And Science You Probably Didn't Know About

1.   TRAGIC NEWS IN GERMANY IN JANUARY, 1945,        
      THE SINKING OF THE NAZI VESSEL WILHELM
      GUSTLOFF WITH THE LOSS OF ABOUT 8000 
      LIVES, WAS THE WORST SINGLE SHIP DISASTER 
      IN HISTORY (I PREVIOUSLY WROTE ABOUT
      THIS INCIDENT).  BUT AN EVEN BIGGER STORY 
      FOR GERMANY, THEN IN THE FINAL DAYS OF  
      ENDURING 12 YEARS OF NAZI BARBARISM AND
      TYRANNY, WAS THAT MORE THAN ONE
      MILLION GERMANS CIVILIANS AND SOLDIERS 
      WERE EVACUATED FROM EAST PRUSSIA (NOW
      POLAND).  "Operation Hannibal"was the largest short-term
      military evacuation by sea in history, dwarfing the more
      celebrated British evacuation at Dunkirk in 1940. It rescued
      these ethnic Germans from advancing Soviet troops bent
      on revenge for the atrocities committed by the Nazi armies
      in Russia. However, once back in Germany, many of these
      refugees and soldiers were swept up in the chaos of the
      end of the war, and did not fare well.

      [Further reading: Death in the Baltic by Catherine J. Prince]
    
  2. GAVRILO PRINCIP, WHO ASSASSINATED
      ARCHDUKE FRANZ FERDINAND IN SARAJEVO IN
      1914, AN ACT WHICH DIRECTLY CAUSED WORLD   
      WAR I, WAS NOT EXECUTED BUT DIED OF
      PNEUMONIA IN CAPTIVITY IN THERESIENSTAT  
      PRISON  IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA IN APRIL, 1918.
      In one of history’s cruelest ironies, Theresienstat
      became one of the most notorious concentration
      camps of the Holocaust of World War II --- the war
      and the Holocaust. having led directly from World
      War I. (An added irony is that Princip’s first name
      is Serbo-Croatian for the Hebrew name for “Gabriel”
      which means “”messenger of the Lord.”
     
  3. CRIMEA, NOW A CRISIS POINT BETWEEN        
      RUSSIA AND UKRAINE, WAS MORE THAN 1000
      YEARS AGO PART OF A JEWISH KINGDOM.
      The Khazars were an Asian Turkic people who in
      the 4th century A.D. conquered the area north of
      the Black Sea, including the Crimean peninsula.
      Grown rich from taxing the silk caravans that
      passed through Khazar lands, the kingdom became
      powerful and very rich. In the 8th century, the king     
      and the Khazar elites converted to Judaism,
      although there are conflicting stories about why and
      how it happened. Jewish rule was relatively brief,
      but it is an amazing story considering the
      subsequent tragic history of the Jews in the same
      place a thousand years later.     
     
  4. ONE OF THE OLDEST ETHNIC GROUPS IN
      EUROPE HAS NOT EVER HAD THEIR OWN
      NATION. THE RUSYNS (OR CARPATHO-RUSYNS)
      SPEAK THEIR OWN LANGUAGE, AND HAVE A
      DISTINCT RELIGIOUS AND CULTURAL
      HERITAGE. An ancient people who have lived in
      the area around the Carpathian Mountains in
      central Europe for the past thousand years, the
      Rusyn lands have been part of Russia, Ukraine,
      Austro-Hungary, Slovakia, Poland and Romania.
      In 1919, after World War I, various Rusyn leaders
      traveled to the Versailles Conference in Paris to
      plead for their own nation, but were denied. Today,
      many of the 4 million Rusyns live in the U.S.

     [Further reading: The People From Nowhere by 
            Robert Magocsi]

  5. ONE OF THE VERY FEW NATIVE FOODS OF THE
      AMERICAN MIDWEST RECOGNIZED GLOBALLY
      AS A GOURMET DISH, MINNESOTA WILD RICE,
      IS NOT A MEMBER OF THE RICE FAMILY BUT IS
      A GRASS. There are four kinds of true wild rice.
      The most well-known is native to the northern
      prairies, including especially northern Minnesota.
      Other varieties are native to eastern U.S., Texas
      and China, and varieties have been transplanted to
      California, but the primary commercial crop is
      from Minnesota.   
     
  6. THE MOST CELEBRATED SPY OF WORLD WAR II
      WAS A CATALAN WHO HAD TO SIGN UP FIRST AS 
      A NAZI AGENT IN ORDER TO BE CONSIDERED 
      BY BRITISH INTELLIGENCE AS THEIR DOUBLE
      AGENT.  Juan Pujols, known universally by the cover
      name “Garbo,” devised and implemented the
      greatest military deception in modern history by
      fooling Hitler and the German Wehrmacht to think
      the primary Allied invasion of Europe in 1944 would
      be at Calais and not at Normandy. Even three
      months after D-Day, “Garbo” persuaded the Nazis
      to hold vital divisions at Calais, waiting for an
      imaginary army invasion that did not come, and
      many consider Garbo’s efforts was a vital part of
      D-Day’s ultimate success.
      
      [Further reading: Agent Garbo by Steven Talty]

 7. THE FIRST SCIENTIST TO CONCEIVE THE
     THERMONUCLEAR REACTION IN HYDROGEN,
     A DISCOVERY THAT LED DIRECTLY TO THE
     H-BOMB, WAS NOT AN AMERICAN, NOR A
     GERMAN NOR ANY EUROPEAN. The first physicist 
     to do so was, ironically, the Japanese physicist
     Togutaru Hagiwara who revealed his discovery at
     lecture in Kyoto in May 1941, seven months before
     Pearl Harbor. Although the first H-bomb was not
     exploded until 1954, Hagiwara was also a pioneer
     in the theories which led to the first A-bomb
     exploded over Hiroshima in August, 1945’

     [Further reading: The Making of the Atomic Bomb by 
            Richard Rhodes]   

 8. ARAMAIC WAS THE ACTUAL LANGUAGE OF THE
     OLD TESTAMENT. Although Hebrew and Arabic are
     today derived from it, it is still a living language for
     about two million Assyrians, a Christian people who
     live in Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq where they have
     faced persecution for centuries. (A senior member of
     the U.S. house of representatives, Anna Eshoo of
     California, is the only Assyrian-American in
     Congress. 
    
 9. KING FAROUK OF EGYPT, WHO WAS OUSTED
     FROM POWER BY THE EGYPTIAN MILITARY
     IN 1952, THE SAME GROUP NOW IN CONTROL
     IN THAT COUNTRY, WAS ONE OF THE WORLD’S
     FOREMOST NUMISMATISTS OR COIN
     COLLECTORS. His fabled collection included at
     least one of the most valuable coins ever issued by
     the U.S. Mint, the 1913 “Liberty” nickel (one sold for 
     $5 million in 2007) He also owned an “unofficial” 1933 
     U.S. gold double eagle that sold at auction for the highest
     price for any coin in history, $7.4 million.
    
10.WHEN THE U.S. DOLLAR WAS CONVERTIBLE TO
     GOLD, THE PRICE OF GOLD WAS $35 AN OUNCE,
     AND LATER, $42 AN OUNCE AND THEN $44 AN
     OUNCE. From 1933 until recently, the U.S. Mint did
     not issue gold coins, and they were not legal tender.
     Nevertheless, gold coins have been bought and sold
     on the collector’s market throughout the nation’s
     history. In 1971, the U.S. ended converting dollars
     into gold. At that time, common dates of twenty
     dollar gold pieces were routinely bought and sold
     for under $50 each (There was almost exactly one
     ounce of gold in those “double eagles”). When gold
     reached its all-time peak in 2011, those same gold
     pieces traded at about $1900 each. Today the price of
     gold is about $1200 per ounce. (Gold coins of all
     denominations which have numismatic value can
     exceed the official price by significant amounts --- as
     can be noted in the previous “amazing” fact of
     history.)

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Copyright (c) 2014 by Barry Casselman. All rights reserved.

     

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