Things you didn't know until very recently...

Hmmm. I'm guessing his dad wasn't just a scientist with 'work/life balance' problems?

...Uh, let's just say that he did. (For a certain value of "work" and "life" - as in, working with absolutely no respect for human / animal life, that is.)

edited 25th Oct '12 5:55:46 AM by Pyrite

Nope. He even tried to induce bestiality.

Oh God, don't remind me...

In the 80s, Samuel L. Jackson was in a TV movie adaptation of Uncle Tom's Cabin.

I think it looks strangely hilarious.

There are such thing as flying tanks.

Yes, really.

edited 27th Oct '12 6:44:37 PM by dRoy

Awesome. Kinda.

Truth is stranger than fiction. I mean, seriously, even in a sci-fi work, if you have something like that people will immediately call is bullshit.

Well, the real life ones were unsuccessful anyway, so... the fiction works do have a point.

edited 27th Oct '12 6:48:21 PM by ThatHuman

Yeah, but they had the insanity to actually try.

Also, this one actually worked.

edited 27th Oct '12 6:59:49 PM by dRoy

For the longest time, I thought that the Philadelphia Flyers only had one minor league affiliate (the Adirondanck [formerly Philadelphia] Phantoms of the American Hockey League), but it appears there is another...the Trenton Titans of the East Coast Hockey League.

There are people who collect barbed wire.

The World War II happened from 1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945, lasting total 6 years, 1 day.

Huh, I thought it started somewhere around 42~43 and ended at 48~49.

It's pretty common for Americans to think that Pearl Harbor had something to do with WWII's beginning.

Europeans have convinced the world that the German invasion of Poland in September '39 was the start of WWII, but I disagree with that. I'd consider the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937 the starting point of WWII. Much like the USSR was the main enemy of Germany through most of WWII, China was Japan's most important enemy and front in the war; but Western Europe and the US like to think that they were the ones who did the most to defeat Germany and Japan, so 1939 is the start point if you ask Europeans and if you ask an American it's likely going to be 1941.

EDIT: If you start from 1937, you can also include the Anschluss of Austria (annexation of Austria into Germany,) the annexation of the Sudetenland and eventually the Czech half of Czechoslovakia, the Italian conquest of Albania, all of which happened before major histilities began in Europe.

The German Eastern Front (against the USSR) and the Chinese Front were the main battle fronts of WWII, more important than the Pacific or Africa or even Western Europe. They stand out especially if you look at the total number of forces committed or casualties inflicted.

EDIT: I would've thought, though, that most Americans would remember that 1945 was the year WWII ended. Japan surrendered to the US after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Before that, Germany had been defeated (mostly by the USSR) and surrendered, too.

edited 30th Oct '12 9:26:48 AM by BestOf

I think it may be that we are generally taught very little about WWII at all, in any organized fashion, anyway. There's Pearl Harbor, and Normandy, and Midway, and Iwo Jima (maybe...) and... that's really about it as far as what gets covered in most school history classes. But we are taught that it lasted six years. So, if it started with Pearl Harbor in '42, it must have lasted til '48.

Oh, wait, we might also hear about the London Blitz and Dunkirk, in a sort of "mentioned in-passing" way.

edited 30th Oct '12 9:57:02 AM by Madrugada

How can people not know even the basic the details of the single greatest conflict in human history? Especially given that it happened within living memory.

Living memory only if you're 70+ years old. That's assuming that people don't remember most of what goes on around them until they're at least five or six, and about what's happening elsewhere in the world than their immediate area til they're probably closer to 10 or so.

'Within living memory' means 'within the memory of currently living people'.

There's really no excuse for not knowing this stuff. I mean, the entire world is still sorting out the aftermath.

@Jones - Well, I have no excuse.

Hey, what I know about both world wars I gleaned from fiction. Nobody taught it to me; what little history was compulsory for me in school was very episodic in nature.

It's easy not to know. Just... nobody teaches you. Knowledge of history doesn't just osmose into people's minds from the ether, you know.

I think he just finds it strange that people aren't taught this stuff. (For the record, I was taught when it ended but told that the exact beginning is debatable and here are the parts that some people consider the beginning and some consider the prelude).

Apparently turning skin into blood is a thing now.

Apparently, I look young enough to be mistaken for 13. And this time, it was without the baggy jacket and huge schoolbag.

edited 31st Oct '12 4:42:16 AM by thekikoperson

Jones: Every country will have its own biases when it comes to teaching about World War II. To most students in Singapore (at least, up to the O-levels), the extent of our coverage of World War II proper is basically, "Malaya got invaded, the Brits weren't prepared, the Japanese proceeded to be complete dickwads for about 3 years, and then they surrendered. Yay." (Oddly enough, we covered the interbellum period and the collapse of the German economy... up to the point just before Hitler rose to power.)

Besides, nobody's going to teach the military history bits in school, so you have to read up on it on your own.

(Also, I'd wager that to most people, the dates are the least important part of the lessons learnt from the war, so there's that, too.)