Yeah, I think I got it mixed up a bit. It was actually my great great (greatx2) grandfather. I put in 3 greats because it was 3 generations back behind my parents (my mistake).
And now that I think about it, I'm not entirely sure if my grandfather served in WW 2 or in Korea or Vietnam or what. My parents always told me he was a soldier that served in some war; I don't know exactly which war he served in. He could have served in the Gulf Wars for all I know. My memory of my family history is a little foggy, and so is my knowledge of generational timespans.
As for the burning suicide: I have no idea myself. I also wonder what kind of mindset she had to have been in to carry through with it and if she ever thought of her 4 children, 2 of which she was still raising.
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Seem like pretty cool people, your ancestors. If my ancestors did anything cool in any wars I never heard about them (not that I don't respect their service). Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), I never had any gangster relatives. Most of my family ancestors were rather religious.
As for relatives I'd want to meet, one of my great grandmothers passed away recently and she was at least 100 years old. She never went senile and I would have loved to ask about her life growing up in the 1920s.
I would have also liked to ask my great great grandfather why he changed his name. Before he immigrated, his name was "Blomqvist", but he changed it "Bloomquist" later. Spelling error? Mistranslation? Wanting to start under a new name? Who knows? I'd also like to ask why he immigrated in the first place.
edited 9th Apr '16 8:59:45 PM by Nerevarine
Not necessarily. Canada has deployed troops to Afghanistan,
both overtly and (temporarily) covertly, from 2001 to 2013.
edited 10th Apr '16 6:45:02 AM by Nohbody
All your safe space are belong to TrumpMy paternal side is a good mixture of Appalachian backwoodsmen and Cherokee survivors. Can't trace that side's lineage past the 1835 trail of tears roll. To avoid deportation apparently some of my ancestors there intermarried with some of the Georgians that took their land via the lottery. The last "practicing" member of the family that held on to some of the traditions was probably my great-great grandmother who died in the 1970's. Since the family for the most part lived in really remote areas they pretty much avoided most of the wars until Vietnam where almost every eligible male in the family wound up drafted. Dunno how they managed it but most ended up the the same unit, which meant that they were all in the same spot to be soaked in agent orange one day and spent the rest of their lives suffering the effects of it. A class action lawsuit ended with the last survivor of the bunch receiving a multi-million dollar payout only 3 months before his death a few years ago.
My maternal side is a mix of Shetland immigrants and Georgia slave traders. My grandmother comes from a long line of slimy plantation owners and Georgia politicians
. Her lot originated from England in the early 1800's, fought for the confederates during the civil war, and somehow managed to keep most of their lands and slaves after the war. The slaves stayed pretty much the same but were technically "sharecroppers" after that. The cycle of dickery ended with my great-grandfather. His mom was typical southern aristocracy who wouldn't sully her hands with raising her own kids so all of the child-rearing was left to the servants, so one of the black nannies who's name is lost to time pretty much became his adopted mother. When he was older and the plantation and family lands came into his possession he deeded all of it save for a small house to the sharecroppers, and moved to Louisiana (where he married and my grandmother eventually came into existence.) Of course, from what I can tell (there are few documents/articles to be had concerning it) they were likely swindled out of most of the land a decade or two later.
That branch of the family managed to avoid WWII drafts through some unknown means. My great-grandfather was something of a savant and until his death he liked to buy advanced uni mathematics books and complete the worksheets like someone else might do crossword puzzles. Became a self-taught engineer in Louisiana and through some unknown circumstances got into the Manhattan Project. He and the family stayed in Oak Ridge until a year after the war, and no one really knows what he did; he had an escort to and from the facility every morning that wasn't the norm for most of the usual laborers.
Maternal grandfather's entire family came from the Shetlands in early 1900's. Farmers and businessmen who hailed from Norwegian settlers several hundred years prior. Only my grandfather was drafted during Korea, got into some army intelligence branch and was essentially a paper pusher for 4 years or so in West Germany. He never likes being called a veteran due to this and never registered with anything related to that until medical concerns forced him to register with the VA.
Speaking of the Romans, I just remembered something. My friend Max was once confused as to why nobody in Europe came to the Byzantine Empire's defense since everybody feared and hated the Ottoman Turks.
Come on! Let's bless them all until we get fershnickered!That's true, but I actually meant their attack in 1453.
Come on! Let's bless them all until we get fershnickered!There were actually a bunch of Italians helping out
, most notably the Genoans led by Giovanni Giustiniani
.
The Ottomans brought a lot of punch to the Siege as well. Approximately 70 cannons about a dozen of the large cannons of the era and the rest being smaller guns. That is lot of guns for the time and really expensive. The Ottomans had to have been well funded to field that kind of artillery force at the time. Especially given some of the guns used were purchased from European Foundries.
Who watches the watchmen?I'd need to recheck my copy of The Gunpowder Age, but they had at least some help from a renegade in Constantinople who was fed up with not getting paid, crossed the lines, and was commissioned to help with the artillery, which he did.
Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.Wasn't he Obran and Hungarian/German? I know he tried to get paid for his services by the Emperor but they couldn't foot the bill. I need to dig up the paper I read on it again.
It was Obran and he went to the Ottomans before the Siege and was paid to build their guns. Well there you go.
edited 11th Apr '16 10:39:19 PM by TuefelHundenIV
Who watches the watchmen?Which story about the origin and discovery of coffee do y'all think is the correct one?
In one version (which I like), a monk was traveling through the wilderness of Ethiopia, whereupon he observed birds with unusual vitality, and he found that they got it from eating the berries of a particular bush.
In the other, a farmer found out about it after eating it was giving his goats bursts of energy.
Come on! Let's bless them all until we get fershnickered!

In terms of ages, my wartime relatives were pretty young. Grandad was just out of college when he was in the Korean War. He soon went to military training, and from what I know didn't spend much time there. I believe there's a few things at grandma's house he brought home. The they met shortly after his service.
As mentioned before, his uncle(my great-great uncle) is a potential causality of the conflict. The records state that he was killed during the end at age 21, but my grandmother states that he lost his leg and people mistake him for being KIA. She says that a nearby museum has the truth, and since I visit her I should ask her the specifics. I have a picture of him in his army get-up
edited 9th Apr '16 8:21:11 PM by RJ-19-CLOVIS-93