Having been away from the board for more than a week, I just discovered this thread - pretty neat work, Ragnarblackmane!
I have some catching up to do and then see if I have anything worth contributing. :-)

There is an episode of Brazil's participation in WW1 called "Batalha das Toninhas" (can't find an Wikipedia article). It happened on the Straight of Gibraltar in November of 1918. Basically, Admiral Pedro Max Fernando Frontin was patroling the region when an English alert was sent out that german subs could be on the area.
When the cruiser Bahia(commanded by Admiral Pedro Frontin) got to the area he saw trails that he thought was from the submarines. He ordered the crew to open fire and after some time(and a lot of dakka) Pedro Frontin ceased fire and ordered the Bahia to approach the site. When he got there he discovered that he massacred a school of dolphins.
There is a joke here in Brazil that an german admiral watching the massacre from the periscophe from his sub he said "If they did this to a school of fish,imagine what they'll do to us."
Also I got this link(in Portuguese):http://www.historiabrasileira.com/brasil-republica/a-batalha-das-toninhas/

Poor dolphins:(

Here's something a bit more "uplifting"...

Being both a certified bicycle mechanic and an Ohioan, the Wright Brothers are special to me twice over. A lot of people don't realize that they used the same tools for making bike parts to make their first airplane engine and a lot of the other materials used in their historic crafts.
1908 – Wilbur Wright makes his first flight at a racecourse at Le Mans, France. It is the Wright Brothers' first public flight.

The brothers' contracts with the U.S. Army and a French syndicate depended on successful public flight demonstrations that met certain conditions. The brothers had to divide their efforts. Wilbur sailed for Europe; Orville would fly near Washington, D.C.

Facing much skepticism in the French aeronautical community and outright scorn by some newspapers that called him a "bluffeur", Wilbur began official public demonstrations on August 8, 1908 at the Hunaudières horse racing track near the town of Le Mans, France. His first flight lasted only one minute 45 seconds, but his ability to effortlessly make banking turns and fly a circle amazed and stunned onlookers, including several pioneer French aviators, among them Louis Bleriot. In the following days, Wilbur made a series of technically challenging flights, including figure-eights, demonstrating his skills as a pilot and the capability of his flying machine, which far surpassed those of all other pioneering aircraft and pilots of the day.[90][91]

The French public was thrilled by Wilbur's feats and flocked to the field by the thousands, and the Wright brothers instantly became world-famous. Former doubters issued apologies and effusive praise. L'Aérophile editor Georges Besançon wrote that the flights "have completely dissipated all doubts. Not one of the former detractors of the Wrights dare question, today, the previous experiments of the men who were truly the first to fly...."[92] Leading French aviation promoter Ernest Archdeacon wrote, "For a long time, the Wright brothers have been accused in Europe of bluff... They are today hallowed in France, and I feel an intense pleasure...to make amends."[93]

On October 7, 1908, Edith Berg, the wife of the brothers' European business agent, became the first American woman passenger when she flew with Wilbur—-one of many passengers who rode with him that autumn.[94][N 4] Wilbur also became acquainted with Léon Bollée and his family. Bollée was the owner of an automobile factory where Wilbur would assemble the Flyer and where he would be provided with hired assistance. Bollée would fly that autumn with Wilbur. Madame Bollée had been in the latter stages of pregnancy when Wilbur arrived in LeMans in June 1908 to assemble the Flyer. Wilbur promised her that he would make his first European flight the day her baby was born which he did, August 8, 1908.[95]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers#Public_showing

Cool thread! One neat little anecdote I like to bring up is George Orwells preface about self censorship in the press to Animal Farm,which was ironically self censored by the publisher. He critizised how certain things about military allies can not be said in the "free press". It is still relevant today, as you rarely find criticism of our allies in the mainstream media.
Back then you could not criticise Russia, today it would for example be the Saudi Dicatorship and many others.

http://orwell.ru/library/novels/Animal_Farm/english/efp_go

The beginning of the first crusade is interesting...

So Byzantine Emperor Alexios I was starting to get nervous about the Seljuq Turks invading his land. Desperate, he appealed to Pope Urban II to help drive them out. Pope Urban jumped at the chance, wanting to get his hands back on the lost orthodox lands in the East. Fortunately for Urban he had two great weapons at his disposal: bored knights and a fanatical population.

The 10th century brought with it much conversion to christianity and fall of empires, ushering in peace through the 11th century. However, this left a very bored and blood thirsty knightly class to deal with. To sake their thirst, they would ravage countrysides, to the point where the Pope made certain days holy strictly so there would be no fighting. Some have also suggested that the wider use of relics came about this time, knights being made to swear oaths not to terrorize and slaughter those who could not defend themselves. Nice guys.

Sick of dealing with their crap, Urban decided that sending them to Byzantium would allow them to get all the killing out of their system. For those knights that may not want to leave their wealth he offered another incentive: those that died in the crusade automatically went to heaven, no matter what they did on the campaign.

It was not just the knights that heard the call to take up the cross however. Many, many, many, many (did i say many?) peasants, including women, joined up. So many in fact, that the the group was less army and more rabble. Urban and other priests' descriptions of the horrors facing good Christians out East (especially those female virgin ones) caused many to give up everything they had (which probably wasn't much) and set off.

Can you imagine the look on Emperor Alexios' face when his army arrived? He asked Urban for help, expecting 500 well trained knights who he could give commands to. Instead what showed up on his doorstep was 30,000 crazy peasants who could easily take over his city if they so inclined.

Good first post in this thread. One of my favorite bits of church irony is the concept of the "Peace and Truce of God" which was established by priests to try and curb the rampant bloodletting of the knightly classes. Essentially they said it's not alright to kill peasants, churchmen, merchants, etc...unless they weren't Christians, then by all means have at them!
The Truce of God was an attempt to limit which days violence was permitted. Literally, warfare could not performed "specific days of the week, viz., Thursday, in memory of the Ascension, Friday, the day of the Passion, and Saturday, the day of the Resurrection (council 1041)."
Of course both of these rules were barely ever adhered to; the fact that most of those who suffered and were killed in medieval warfare were peasantfolk testifies to this.

Subsequent crusades were largely called up for these reasons since christian leaders were perpetually at war with each other.

Today I would like to discuss Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, better known as Caligula, and I like to call Crazy Pants.

Caligula was born into the Julio-Claudian house to General Germanicus and Agrippina. As a boy, he accompanied his father on campaigns and earned the nickname Caligula, "little boots", from the soldiers his father commanded. He grew up, his father died, and then Emperor Tiberius turned on his family, destroying or killing everyone but Caligula. After this, Tiberius had Caligula come stay with him on the island of Capri, which Caligula really didn't have an option to refuse. So yeah, that's gonna be fun. Both men had unusual and depraved tastes, which often went unchecked on the island. Tiberius adopted Caligula and later died, making him the next emperor. yay!

Caligula's first six months or so in office were pretty good. He had tons of gory games, which the Romans loved, gave out coin and bread, and was just a really fun guy to be around. And then, the cra-cra began. It is not known how accurate some of his shenanigans are (historians tended to paint you bad if you were an ass), but they are still fun to discuss.

At one point, he declared himself a god and then decided to wage war on the Ocean. He gathered his men, went to the shore, and ordered them to spear the water. After some time, he deemed the Ocean thwarted and gathered his spoils of war: seashells.

He also intended his horse, Incitatus, to be made a consul. The favored horse was lavished in only the finest things: a marble stable, fine oats mixed with gold dust and attended by servants. The horse later became his priest.

There are also tons of stories about is sexual indiscretions, with his sister, senators' wives... Once at a dinner, he had a senator's wife leave with him to the bedroom. He came back and then discussed in great detail how the wife performed for the rest of dinner.

What caused him to be so ruthless and nanners? Some say the odd behavior was exaggerated by historians to sell books, some that living with Tiberius flamed his sadistic tendancies, others that he was crazy due to lead poisoning from drinking too much wine with defrutum. Either way, his personal guards assassinated his crazy butt in 41 AD.

It seems he despised Roman culture, Romans and especially senators. So that would explain some of his behavior.

Yes, I read that some of his crap was done just to piss off the senate (the horse). He even wanted to move the capitol to Egypt.

Ahem- perhaps you confused him with Nero- he was the one admiring Greek culture-Caligula was just a nutter in general. :-)

P.S. I would post also some other facts about Caligula and also how his succesor Claudius came to be an emperor, but just as I had finished writing an elaborate long post, I closed the posting window by accident! Ugh!

Edit-will post some wikipedia links that say pretty much what I wasted my time writing, only to lose this stuff as I was about to post it!
About the ascenscion of Claudius to the throne
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudius#Assassination_of_Caligula_.2841_AD.29
(It mentions briefly there one of the things I meant to say-the fact that Caligula actually had a wife and a 2-year-old daughter who were also assassinated as to prevent anyone from avenging the dead emperor in the future.)
About Caligula
um-actually forget that-I just mentioned how a possible cause for Caligula to get crazed was the fact that he fell ill with a high fever and almost died and a couple of anecdotes that further prove Caligula's nuttiness.

awwww, claudius is a great story!! :(

No, he is right, Caligula didn't like the senate. There are accounts that he would force them to have dinner with his horse just to mock them. The roman historians later took these events and twisted them to make Caligula look worse and sell books. So the theory goes anyway.
but don't get me wrong, caligula was nuts.

When thinking about mathematics and physics - Just how dark was the Dark age?

Example 1: Antikythera Mechanism aka Worlds first analog computer (astronomical). (no, you cant play GOG games on it)

Found in bottom of the sea around 1900 in Antikythera and was dated back to between 150-100 BC. So over 2100 years old. The second time something like this was done in the 14th century. Mere 1500 years gap.

What it looks like atm: foto

Replica: [url=http://www.ancient-wisdom.co.uk/Images/countries/Greek%20pics/antikythera%20front.jpg]foto2

Very interesting documentary on it

If you haven't watched the BBC Miniseries I, Claudius yet, you are missing out. It's awesome and features Sir Derek Jacobi and Brian "Why the hell is he not a Sir yet?!" Blessed, as well as many others including Sir Patrick "Bald is Badass" Stewart .

John Hurt gives a wonderfully deranged performance as Caligula too.

Very cool. It makes me think of Archimedes. He was so close to developing calculus (if memory serves). Can you imagine how much further we would be if he had? His last words, supposedly, to the invading soldiers that barged into his home and killed him were, "don't disturb my circles".
i will look into this :)

I was actually going to write a word about him bit later :)