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What Amazing History/Science Fact do you want everyone to know about?
Agatha Christie was a surfer.
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*When the British invaded Washington, Madison, Monroe, and the entire cabinet didn't flee. They fought the invaders alongside the enlisted soldiers, making them the only President and cabinet to fight on the battlefield while in office.
*Meanwhile, Dolley (who may or may not have been the first lesbian first lady) was busy evacuating the White House, making sure that all workers, slaves, and paintings got out before she did. While the Red Army was marching through Washington.
*Getting away from Washington, at the Battle of York, Brigadier General Zebulon Pike was busy getting shot. He had proven to be the most talented tactician in the war, so when he was found by a British private the private did not kill him. Instead, he sought out his own higher ups, who rushed to Pike bringing medics with them, being of the mind that he was too great to die such an anticlimactic death. He did end up dying there, but he won the Americans the battle, so it was an ultimately honorable death.
* Elsewhere, Tecumseh was a dude that kicked ass. Like, he kicked so much ass, that he got a war named after him. He kicked so much ass, that he got a Civil War General named after him. As such, when he fought in 1812, it was a big deal -- and when he died at the Battle of Thames in 1813, it was an even bigger one. Richard Johnson (Secretary of the Navy for Andrew Mothafokkin Jackson) was said to have killed Tecumseh, though many other soldiers who fought there would refute the claim. Modern historians believe that he died of cholera.
*Speaking of General Governor President Mothafokker Jackson, let's talk about New Orleans. It's well known for being fought after the war was over, but no one knew it at the time. It should be pointed out, though, that it was a pretty excellent battle. AJ knew that slaughtering the Brits alone and bare-fisted like he wanted to wouldn't be awesome enough, so he asked for help from local pirates. The skirmish in whole cost the British over 2000 casualties, but the Americans under %10 of that.
Herbert Hoover not only got his start as a mining engineer in Australia, but without that experience and his Australian investments, he'd likely have never become president.
BTW, should rename this the Greg and Constantine thread.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toledo_War
No one was actually killed, and they calmed down soon thereafter. ;^)
Http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/football_war
Is it bad that I know that url from memory?
In 1954 the French asked the U.S. to help them during the siege of Dien Bien Phu by bombing the Viet Minh soldiers in the hills surrounding the base. That request was rejected by the Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: Lyndon Baines Johnson.
I could do this all day.
Also, Dolph Lungren has a Masters in Chemical engineering which he obtained from Sydney University, and to support himself he worked as a bouncer in the infamous King's Cross, where he was discovered by Grace Jones, and the rest is history.
Australia is a nation descended from Convicts in popular thought, but most of the Convicts had died by the time proto-Australia started any serious efforts at settling. Australia is actually a nation descended from Irish, Scottish, English and Asian farmers and miners primarily, very few people have any Convict ancestry.
Australia was the first allied nation to fire shots in anger in both World War 1 and 2.
We also lost a Prime minister, Harold Holt. As in, we-don't-know-where-he's-gone lost - he went for a swim, and fucking vanished. He does have a government sponsored memorial, though, which is considered one of the premier works of Brutalist Architecture.
Australia has eight recognized national flags - The Australian flag, the Aboriginal Flag, the Torres Strait Islander flag, The Royal Ensign, The ADF, Navy and Airforce ensigns, and the Maritime Ensign(which is essentially just the Australian flag, but in red).
Australian inventions include: Refrigerators, torpedos, Mechanical clippers, the electric drill, notepads, feature films, Surf Skis, Tanks, Film Clapperboards, Zinc Cream, Splayds(the stupidest eating utensil ever), Rotary Clotheslines, Box kites, Powered flight(without the inventor of which, Lawrence Hargreaves, the Wright Brothers would have never flown), Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometers, Solar Hot water, DME radios, Flame ionisation detectors, Ultrasound, inflatable escape slides, Box wine, self-sharpening knives, Variable rack and pinion steering, Orbital engines, Power strips, Digital samplers, cochlear implants, The winged Keel(The New York yacht club are still salty about the beat they took with that one), Embryo transfer, Baby Capsules, Gene Shears, Polymer Notes, Forensic Lamps, Multi-focal contact lenses, Spray on skin, Product Activation(sorry), Wi-Fi, underwater computers, the Frazier lens, Anti-flu Medication, Scramjets, Blast Glass, and finally, Quantum Bits - as in, the basic operating unit of a Quantum computer.
Also depends what you consider to be "Australian" - There were plenty of people in Australia, but before 1901, there wasn't any such national entity. Also, with the brand new nation(and not long beforehand) there were a lot of people who were born overseas, but emigrated and considered themselves Australians, as do historians. Curiously, also the largest population in the world of New Zealanders and Maori bouncers. Go figure.
I figure you guys have the American stuff covered, so I'm going local before I branch out into Europe and Asia.
Oh the Hundred Years' War is hilarious on both sides. It stands as a testament to the arrogance of Edward III that he thought it was a good idea to march his army across France and not thing something bad would happen. That is saying nothing about how desperate the French must have been to believe that a mad peasant girl could talk to god. I mean come on that is bonkers!
Edit; Also our witch trials were pretty much as portrayed in Monty Python. In contrast Mary I was bloody crazy! But thats what you get when you put a papist on the throne.
This problem was bad enough that the size of the standard musket ball for the Land Pattern musket was downsized repeatedly to counteract the effects, which also served to lower the accuracy of the weapons even further. Though water would eventually clean the fouling, you needed a lot of elbow grease and a specialized swabbing tool to do it, not really practical unless you have an hour or so to devote to the task. However, it was soon learned that one could piss down the barrel of your gun, and that was a more effective rapid fix to the problem; perfect for a lull in the action.
About a hundred years later, the British Army had switched to a much more lethal weapon for their colonial adventures, the Vickers machine-gun. This beautiful weapon has a water cooling sleeve around the barrel. See, a lot of people don't realize that the bullet actually catches on the inside of the barrel of a weapon a little bit. It's not so much of an issue most of the time, though it does give barrels a lifespan before you have to replace them. With machine-guns that fire a lot of shots, however, the friction causes a lot of heat build-up. That overheating thing from video games isn't just a game mechanic. Anyway, most machine-gunners would have to carry spare barrels for their weapon, which was heavy and awkward, and there's nothing quite like trying to remove a barrel from a weapon while it is so hot that the metal is warping.
The Vickers, however, solved this problem with it's water sleeve. Yes, it was a bit of a bitch to carry everywhere, seeing as you needed a tank of water, plus this huge awkward thing on the barrel. But the heat from firing would be whisked away by the water through simple hydrodynamics, where you would let it cool down, or, if desperate, dump it and replace it with cold water.
During action in World War 1, however, these weapons could see hours upon hours worth of action, firing more or less continuously for far longer than they ought to. With water already at a premium in the trenches, an ingenious solution was cooked up; fire until the water is heated, use the now hot water to make everyone some tea (caffine was important, so you could keep shooting germans), and then replace that water with, well, piss. That kept the gun shooting, the troops happy, and your loader from doing his stupid pee dance which might attract sniper fire.
Finally, in 1915 during the Second Battle of Ypres, the dastardly Huns pulled a new sort of dick move with the introduction of chlorine gas, which fucked the French up mightily. When it got to Canadian lines, however, a smart dude by the name of Francis Alexander Caron Scrimger figured out that if you piss on a rag and hold it to your face, the ammonia would counteract the gas. It was far from perfect, but it meant that the Canadian retreat was orderly, and that certain counteracttacks could be made.
Finally, this ancient and noble tool of the British army maybe making a comeback, as due to recent budget cuts soldiers may soon be forced to resort to urinating upon the enemy as a means of ranged attack.