This thread is for any strange, funny and amazing facts about history that you might happen to know.
Strange History collection.
- Thread starter Count of Crisco
- Start date
Ruina Montinum
The Roman historian Pliny the Elder described a roman means of mining where holes would be drilled into the mountain. Water would then be pored into the hole and when winter came the water would freeze, cracking the rock apart and exposing any metal which could be smelted down.
The method produced more metal than the world would produce until the mid nineteenth century. Today evidence of the process can be seen throughout the former empire, especially Iberia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruina_montium
Also a google image search brings up all kinds of really cool images.
The Roman historian Pliny the Elder described a roman means of mining where holes would be drilled into the mountain. Water would then be pored into the hole and when winter came the water would freeze, cracking the rock apart and exposing any metal which could be smelted down.
The method produced more metal than the world would produce until the mid nineteenth century. Today evidence of the process can be seen throughout the former empire, especially Iberia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruina_montium
Also a google image search brings up all kinds of really cool images.
The Family Sanson.
If emperors, kings and dictators can sleep well, why shouldn’t an executioner?
Charles-Henri Sanson [attrib.]
An interesting bunch whom a time traveller might encounter, hopefully in a social rather than occupational setting…
It started in 1688 when one Charles-Louis Sanson received a commission from King Louis XIV of France, better known as the Sun King. He was appointed Royal Executioner, a position that would be held by his family for six generations, despite such minor squabbles as the French Revolution.
Sanson I has been an army officer (serving in the regiment of the Marquis de la Boissier), born near Rouen, and assistant to the former executioner Pierre Jouenne, whose daughter he married in 1675. His appointment by King Louis was due to the mishandling of an execution by the former holder of the position.
[II]
Next the role passed to Charles-Louis’s son, Charles Sanson II, in 1703 when his father retired (he died peacefully in 1707). Previously Charles II had assisted his father. The second generation saw the execution of a few notables, including the notorious gang leader Louis Dominique Bourguignon (known as ‘Cartouche’ or cartridge) who was gruesomely executed in 1721 by breaking on the wheel. From most accounts Charles II wasn't well suited to the job of executioner, described as a "mild-mannered and gentle man" but he performed the role of torturer and executioner to provide for his family.
Charles II died in 1726 and was interred in St. Lawrence with great pomp.
[III]
The third generation of Sansons, Charles Jean-Baptiste, was only seven when his father died and didn’t take up his profession until 1739 (when he reached majority). In the interim his mother acted as “regent” and the role of executioner was carried out by her second husband, François Prudhomme.
Charles III married twice, his first wife died after a few years and bore him a son Charles-Henri (more on him later). His second wife was Jeanne Gabrielle Berger, daughter of the executioner of Sens and granddaughter of the executioner of Etampes. They had fifteen children, nine of whom survived infancy.
Charles III was attacked and partially paralysed in 1754. While officially holding the post, most of the work was carried out by Charles-Henri, assisted by his step-grandfather François Prudhomme. One of his most notorious cases was that of the attempted regicide Robert-François Damiens. Damiens was the last man in France to die by drawing and quartering; after torture his limbs were torn off by horses and his (possibly still living) body burned. Charles-Henri assisted his uncle Nicolas-Charles-Gabriel Sanson (executioner of Reims) in that case.
Charles III resigned in 1777 and died in 1778. That same year Charles-Henri was formally oppointed Royal Executioner and received the traditional blood-red coat.
[IV]
Charles-Henri Sanson was the second longest serving of the family, and the best known. He ran the family business carefully, exploiting his privileges for best effect, though he had never wanted to be an executioner and had initially studied medicine (and later dissected many of those he killed) and produced herbal potions as a hobby.
In 1789 the French Revolution began and while Charles-Henri wasn’t much of a Monarchist he was concerned about the climate. Some of the revolutionaries (including Robespierre) favoured ending the use of the death penalty, and he was personally accused of harbouring a Royalist pamphleteer in his home. He sued some of his accusers and won in court, but this didn’t help with his financial problems. In the early days of the Revolution there were few jobs for him, and he was constantly harassed by creditors.
The in 1793 the Reign of Terror began and suddenly there was work aplenty for the Sanson dynasty.
A new tool was instituted for execution; the "national razor" as it became known proposed by Doctor Joseph Guillotin as a humane method of execution.
The Sansons welcomed the development, and participated in the testing of the machine; not out of compassion, but because it was cheaper and more efficient than rope and sword.
"Monsieur de Paris" as he was better known used the device to kill 2,794 people (out of his total of 2,918 executions). Somewhat ironically his total included his former patrol, Louis XVI, and numerous revolutionaries as the different factions vied for power; Danton, Robespierre, Saint-Just, Hébert, and Desmoulins were among them.
Charles-Henri retired from his position in 1795 and was succeeded by his son Henri. He died in 1806.
[V]
Henri Sanson hadn’t expected to inherit his father’s position, it should have gone to his eldest brother Gabriel who’d been their father’s principal assistant. However Gabriel had died in 1792
[VI]
Henry-Clément Sanson held the position of Royal Executioner of the City of Paris under King Louis-Philippe I from 1840 to 1847. He was disgraced by his lifestyle (drunken and dissolute, unlike his forebears) especially his pawning of the family owned guillotine. A week after he pawned it an execution order was issued and he lacked the funds to reclaim it...
The city authorities were not amused. After they paid for it's return, the execution was performed and Sanson dismissed.
A sad end to the family business.
If emperors, kings and dictators can sleep well, why shouldn’t an executioner?
Charles-Henri Sanson [attrib.]
An interesting bunch whom a time traveller might encounter, hopefully in a social rather than occupational setting…
It started in 1688 when one Charles-Louis Sanson received a commission from King Louis XIV of France, better known as the Sun King. He was appointed Royal Executioner, a position that would be held by his family for six generations, despite such minor squabbles as the French Revolution.
Sanson I has been an army officer (serving in the regiment of the Marquis de la Boissier), born near Rouen, and assistant to the former executioner Pierre Jouenne, whose daughter he married in 1675. His appointment by King Louis was due to the mishandling of an execution by the former holder of the position.
- Being drunk is often a disadvantage in a job; being drunk while attempting to decapitate someone with a large sword, in front of a crowd, is a major (and embarrassing) problem.
- It's said that Charles-Louis had seduced his future wife when he father arrived and his introduction to the family and profession wasn't voluntary.
- A different account states that Mademoiselle Jouanne nursed him after a fall from a horse.
[II]
Next the role passed to Charles-Louis’s son, Charles Sanson II, in 1703 when his father retired (he died peacefully in 1707). Previously Charles II had assisted his father. The second generation saw the execution of a few notables, including the notorious gang leader Louis Dominique Bourguignon (known as ‘Cartouche’ or cartridge) who was gruesomely executed in 1721 by breaking on the wheel. From most accounts Charles II wasn't well suited to the job of executioner, described as a "mild-mannered and gentle man" but he performed the role of torturer and executioner to provide for his family.
Charles II died in 1726 and was interred in St. Lawrence with great pomp.
[III]
The third generation of Sansons, Charles Jean-Baptiste, was only seven when his father died and didn’t take up his profession until 1739 (when he reached majority). In the interim his mother acted as “regent” and the role of executioner was carried out by her second husband, François Prudhomme.
Charles III married twice, his first wife died after a few years and bore him a son Charles-Henri (more on him later). His second wife was Jeanne Gabrielle Berger, daughter of the executioner of Sens and granddaughter of the executioner of Etampes. They had fifteen children, nine of whom survived infancy.
Charles III was attacked and partially paralysed in 1754. While officially holding the post, most of the work was carried out by Charles-Henri, assisted by his step-grandfather François Prudhomme. One of his most notorious cases was that of the attempted regicide Robert-François Damiens. Damiens was the last man in France to die by drawing and quartering; after torture his limbs were torn off by horses and his (possibly still living) body burned. Charles-Henri assisted his uncle Nicolas-Charles-Gabriel Sanson (executioner of Reims) in that case.
Charles III resigned in 1777 and died in 1778. That same year Charles-Henri was formally oppointed Royal Executioner and received the traditional blood-red coat.
[IV]
Charles-Henri Sanson was the second longest serving of the family, and the best known. He ran the family business carefully, exploiting his privileges for best effect, though he had never wanted to be an executioner and had initially studied medicine (and later dissected many of those he killed) and produced herbal potions as a hobby.
- For example it was his right to take a handful of provisions each day from every merchant in the Paris food market; Charles-Henri dispatched his assistants with capacious wooden scoops to bring back the food, which he used, stored or resold for profit.
- He was also well known for his elegant manner and elaborate dress, though when he was prohibited from wearing blue (sumptuary laws reserved it for noblemen) he managed to make his signature deep green extremely fashionable. Members of the royal court began dressing à la Sanson.
In 1789 the French Revolution began and while Charles-Henri wasn’t much of a Monarchist he was concerned about the climate. Some of the revolutionaries (including Robespierre) favoured ending the use of the death penalty, and he was personally accused of harbouring a Royalist pamphleteer in his home. He sued some of his accusers and won in court, but this didn’t help with his financial problems. In the early days of the Revolution there were few jobs for him, and he was constantly harassed by creditors.
The in 1793 the Reign of Terror began and suddenly there was work aplenty for the Sanson dynasty.
A new tool was instituted for execution; the "national razor" as it became known proposed by Doctor Joseph Guillotin as a humane method of execution.
The Sansons welcomed the development, and participated in the testing of the machine; not out of compassion, but because it was cheaper and more efficient than rope and sword.
"Monsieur de Paris" as he was better known used the device to kill 2,794 people (out of his total of 2,918 executions). Somewhat ironically his total included his former patrol, Louis XVI, and numerous revolutionaries as the different factions vied for power; Danton, Robespierre, Saint-Just, Hébert, and Desmoulins were among them.
Charles-Henri retired from his position in 1795 and was succeeded by his son Henri. He died in 1806.
[V]
Henri Sanson hadn’t expected to inherit his father’s position, it should have gone to his eldest brother Gabriel who’d been their father’s principal assistant. However Gabriel had died in 1792
- He slipped off a scaffold as he displayed a severed head to the crowd.
[VI]
Henry-Clément Sanson held the position of Royal Executioner of the City of Paris under King Louis-Philippe I from 1840 to 1847. He was disgraced by his lifestyle (drunken and dissolute, unlike his forebears) especially his pawning of the family owned guillotine. A week after he pawned it an execution order was issued and he lacked the funds to reclaim it...
The city authorities were not amused. After they paid for it's return, the execution was performed and Sanson dismissed.
A sad end to the family business.
The Lives of Reilly.
"James Bond is just a piece of nonsense I dreamed up. He's not a Sidney Reilly, you know!"
Ian Fleming
He came out of nowhere and back to nowhere he disappeared some fifty years later. In the meantime while some of his activities are known, most are not. He was Sidney Reilly, the 'Ace of Spies'.
An ideal character to drop into a historical story or game scenario set in the 1890s to 1920s or even later.
Many biographies of Reilly still give his "real name" as Zigmund Markovich Rozenblum and place his birth on 24MAR1874 in Odessa, the son of a stockbroker and an impoverished noblewoman. However this is highly unreliable, being based on the statement of Reilly himself and the Soviet OGPU, neither exactly reliable sources.
However this story probably isn’t true.
Another account (by Andrew Cook) has some more supporting evidence (though not much); in it Reilly (as Sigmund Rosenblum) arrived in London from France in December 1895 on the run from a double murder and robbery. He and Yan Voitek had ambushed two Italian anarchists on Christmas Day 1895, knifed them, and stolen a substantial sum of revolutionary funds (mostly the proceeds of other crimes).
A third has the money coming from the Okhrana, with Reilly working as a double agent for them, monitoring revolutionaries, and stealing the money from them.
However he got to Britain Reilly (still as Sigmund Rosenblum) acquired a flat in Rosetta Street, in the Waterloo district of London, and set up a company named the Ozone Preparations Company which made and sold quack patent medicines. He also began his career as a spy, monitoring the Russian émigré community for the police. He was also an associate of the antiquarian and bookseller (and former revolutionary) Wilfrid Voynich whom he assisted (so it’s said) in forging manuscripts. He also had an affair with Voynich’s wife, Ethel.
He’d met Margaret Thomas through her husband, the much older, far richer and somewhat unwell, Reverend Hugh Thomas. The Reverend died on 12MAR1898, a week after changing his will to leave his estate (the then huge sum of £825,000) to his young wife. The death occurred in a hotel and a death certificate was issued by a Doctor T. W. Andrew listing influenza as the cause of death.
So far, and it’s only 1898, we have adultery, three murders, espionage and forgery. A good start.
Over the next decade and a half Reilly travelled extensively; continual Europe, Tsarist Russia, China and the Far East, and the United States. His known activities include espionage, bigamy, arms deals (involving Basil Zaharoff) and double dealing. In 1890 Reilly spied on German arms purchased by the Boers in the Netherlands. He reconnoitered the Caucasus oil deposits for Britain, and the defenses of Port Arthur for both Britain and Japan, while dabbling in war profiteering as a sideline.
This was a successful attempt by the British Government to acquire control of oil rights in Mesopotamia from the Ottoman Empire. The Royal Navy was planning to move from coal to oil as it’s primary fuel and a secure source was needed.
After his intrigue against de Rothschilds, Reilly spent some time on the Côte d'Azur (with another new mistress) before travelling to Brussels and thence back to St. Petersburg as the Russo-Japanese War was coming to an end and Russia was looking to re-arm.
The next few years are sparse in soyrces but in 1909 Reilly was in Germany engaged in more spying. He may have stolen and duplicated plans for new German artillery in Essen (killing a foreman who interrupted a burglary) and may have been involved in the theft of an advanced magneto in Frankfurt.
Early in the Great War Reilly was again in the USA, where he sold obsolete weapons to Russia, and arranged for German agents to destroy them, profiting from both sides. He also sold munitions to Germany. In 1917 (after US entry to the war disrupted his profitable arms double-dealing) Reilly joined British Intelligence, MI-1c under Mansfield Smith-Cumming (‘C’), and was sent to Russia to monitor the situation after the revolutions of 1917.
There Reilly initiated what’s known as the Lockhart Plot (also called the Ambassadors' Plot); an attempt to end the Bolshevik Government and assassinate Vladimir Lenin. Unless it was actually a Soviet plot, and Reilly a Cheka double-agent of course.
Certainly Reilly and Lockhart, in collusion with French and US diplomats, attempted to corrupt the Latvian Riflemen who guarded the Kremlin. However the coup fell apart and led to the ‘Red Terror’ with thousands of arrests (including a least three of Reilly’s mistresses). Lockhart was arrested and imprisoned, but released, while Reilly escaped (in a German Embassy railway car; either a monumental bluff, an owed favour or another layer to the plot). Both men were sentenced to death in absentia. In Britain Reilly was awarded the Military Cross "for distinguished services rendered in connection with military operations in the field".
But in 1919 Reilly was back in Russia, with another British agent (George Hill,), studying defenses and bases in the Black Sea region and gathering information on anti-Bolshevik groups.
For the next few years there is another gap but in 1924 Reilly was linked to the infamous "Zinoviev letter", a forged letter published by the Daily Mail newspaper just the 1924 general election, which purported to link the British Labour Party with Russian plans for a communist revolution in the UK. The election led to a Conservative landslide. Reilly, with a past history of forgery, is claimed by some to have created the letter, perhaps at the instigation of Winston Churchill (for whom he did engage in various counter-Bolshevik plots in Poland and the Crimea in the early 1920s).
In September 1925 Reilly was in Germany, probably liaising with anti-Bolshevik groups, when he departed for Finland. There he met a group of men, ostensibly an anti-Communist organisation that called itself The Trust. According to history it was an OGPU deception ('false flag') to capture foreign agents. When he crossed into the Soviet Union Reilly was arrested and ended up in Moscow, in the infamous Lubyanka Prison. There he was interrogated but maintained his cover of a British subject born in Clonmel, and denying any connection to espionage or counter-revolutionary activity.
Unless of course he'd escaped, or was released and another prisoner shot in his place (his head was bagged at the mortuary and no examination carried out) or had never been captured, or was shot crossing the Finnish border, or defected and worked as a Soviet agent or advisor, or was still in prison and was executed in 1927, or any one of a dozen or more other accounts.
One account has him still alive in the Lubyanka in 1932, while another puts him in Shanghai in 1938 (Doing what? For whom? Others have him running confidence games in South America as late as 1947 (he'd have been around 73). Or working for Mossad, or the KGB.
Or both.
Certainly that last trip to the Soviet Union seems strange; the British government always maintained that he wasn't working for them (it's saved quite a lot in pensions) and the OGPU scheme seems too crude to entangle the experienced and devious Reilly.
"James Bond is just a piece of nonsense I dreamed up. He's not a Sidney Reilly, you know!"
Ian Fleming
He came out of nowhere and back to nowhere he disappeared some fifty years later. In the meantime while some of his activities are known, most are not. He was Sidney Reilly, the 'Ace of Spies'.
An ideal character to drop into a historical story or game scenario set in the 1890s to 1920s or even later.
Many biographies of Reilly still give his "real name" as Zigmund Markovich Rozenblum and place his birth on 24MAR1874 in Odessa, the son of a stockbroker and an impoverished noblewoman. However this is highly unreliable, being based on the statement of Reilly himself and the Soviet OGPU, neither exactly reliable sources.
- The OGPU (All Union State Political Directorate) was the third Soviet secret police/internal security apparatus, from 1923 to 1934, succeeding the GPU and Cheka (themselves the successors of the Tsarist Okhrana) and being succeeded by the NKVD. It was led, until his death in 1926 (heart attack, probably natural causes), by the infamous ‘Iron Felix’; Felix Dzerzhinsky.
- It’s just as possible that ‘Rosenblum’ was another identity that Reilly (who probably was a Russian Jew of some sort) ‘borrowed’ from one of the millions of refugees from Tsarist Russia who could be found around Europe in the late nineteenth century. Unless he was actually the son of a Irish merchant mariner.
However this story probably isn’t true.
Another account (by Andrew Cook) has some more supporting evidence (though not much); in it Reilly (as Sigmund Rosenblum) arrived in London from France in December 1895 on the run from a double murder and robbery. He and Yan Voitek had ambushed two Italian anarchists on Christmas Day 1895, knifed them, and stolen a substantial sum of revolutionary funds (mostly the proceeds of other crimes).
A third has the money coming from the Okhrana, with Reilly working as a double agent for them, monitoring revolutionaries, and stealing the money from them.
However he got to Britain Reilly (still as Sigmund Rosenblum) acquired a flat in Rosetta Street, in the Waterloo district of London, and set up a company named the Ozone Preparations Company which made and sold quack patent medicines. He also began his career as a spy, monitoring the Russian émigré community for the police. He was also an associate of the antiquarian and bookseller (and former revolutionary) Wilfrid Voynich whom he assisted (so it’s said) in forging manuscripts. He also had an affair with Voynich’s wife, Ethel.
- Yes, that Wilfrid Voynich.
- 'Reilly' himself was a collector of artworks and rare books and manuscripts (especially those connected to Napoleon Bonaparte) all his life.
He’d met Margaret Thomas through her husband, the much older, far richer and somewhat unwell, Reverend Hugh Thomas. The Reverend died on 12MAR1898, a week after changing his will to leave his estate (the then huge sum of £825,000) to his young wife. The death occurred in a hotel and a death certificate was issued by a Doctor T. W. Andrew listing influenza as the cause of death.
- Curiously, but perhaps to no-one's surprise, there was no doctor of that name then registered in the UK.
- The ’doctor’ also strikingly resembled one Sigmund Rosenblum…
- For even more intrigue both witnesses at the wedding had links to William Melville then the head of the Metropolitan Police’s Special Branch and Reilly’s employer in his capacity as spy.
So far, and it’s only 1898, we have adultery, three murders, espionage and forgery. A good start.
Over the next decade and a half Reilly travelled extensively; continual Europe, Tsarist Russia, China and the Far East, and the United States. His known activities include espionage, bigamy, arms deals (involving Basil Zaharoff) and double dealing. In 1890 Reilly spied on German arms purchased by the Boers in the Netherlands. He reconnoitered the Caucasus oil deposits for Britain, and the defenses of Port Arthur for both Britain and Japan, while dabbling in war profiteering as a sideline.
- It’s said that the easy passage of Japanese forces through the harbour defenses was down to plans stolen by Reilly and a Chinese engineer named Ho Liangshung.
This was a successful attempt by the British Government to acquire control of oil rights in Mesopotamia from the Ottoman Empire. The Royal Navy was planning to move from coal to oil as it’s primary fuel and a secure source was needed.
After his intrigue against de Rothschilds, Reilly spent some time on the Côte d'Azur (with another new mistress) before travelling to Brussels and thence back to St. Petersburg as the Russo-Japanese War was coming to an end and Russia was looking to re-arm.
The next few years are sparse in soyrces but in 1909 Reilly was in Germany engaged in more spying. He may have stolen and duplicated plans for new German artillery in Essen (killing a foreman who interrupted a burglary) and may have been involved in the theft of an advanced magneto in Frankfurt.
Early in the Great War Reilly was again in the USA, where he sold obsolete weapons to Russia, and arranged for German agents to destroy them, profiting from both sides. He also sold munitions to Germany. In 1917 (after US entry to the war disrupted his profitable arms double-dealing) Reilly joined British Intelligence, MI-1c under Mansfield Smith-Cumming (‘C’), and was sent to Russia to monitor the situation after the revolutions of 1917.
There Reilly initiated what’s known as the Lockhart Plot (also called the Ambassadors' Plot); an attempt to end the Bolshevik Government and assassinate Vladimir Lenin. Unless it was actually a Soviet plot, and Reilly a Cheka double-agent of course.
Certainly Reilly and Lockhart, in collusion with French and US diplomats, attempted to corrupt the Latvian Riflemen who guarded the Kremlin. However the coup fell apart and led to the ‘Red Terror’ with thousands of arrests (including a least three of Reilly’s mistresses). Lockhart was arrested and imprisoned, but released, while Reilly escaped (in a German Embassy railway car; either a monumental bluff, an owed favour or another layer to the plot). Both men were sentenced to death in absentia. In Britain Reilly was awarded the Military Cross "for distinguished services rendered in connection with military operations in the field".
But in 1919 Reilly was back in Russia, with another British agent (George Hill,), studying defenses and bases in the Black Sea region and gathering information on anti-Bolshevik groups.
For the next few years there is another gap but in 1924 Reilly was linked to the infamous "Zinoviev letter", a forged letter published by the Daily Mail newspaper just the 1924 general election, which purported to link the British Labour Party with Russian plans for a communist revolution in the UK. The election led to a Conservative landslide. Reilly, with a past history of forgery, is claimed by some to have created the letter, perhaps at the instigation of Winston Churchill (for whom he did engage in various counter-Bolshevik plots in Poland and the Crimea in the early 1920s).
In September 1925 Reilly was in Germany, probably liaising with anti-Bolshevik groups, when he departed for Finland. There he met a group of men, ostensibly an anti-Communist organisation that called itself The Trust. According to history it was an OGPU deception ('false flag') to capture foreign agents. When he crossed into the Soviet Union Reilly was arrested and ended up in Moscow, in the infamous Lubyanka Prison. There he was interrogated but maintained his cover of a British subject born in Clonmel, and denying any connection to espionage or counter-revolutionary activity.
- He also kept a secret diary, tiny notes kept on cigarette papers hidden in his cell. He analysed the interrogation techniques of his captors. The diary was found after his apparent death and archived by the OGPU.
Unless of course he'd escaped, or was released and another prisoner shot in his place (his head was bagged at the mortuary and no examination carried out) or had never been captured, or was shot crossing the Finnish border, or defected and worked as a Soviet agent or advisor, or was still in prison and was executed in 1927, or any one of a dozen or more other accounts.
One account has him still alive in the Lubyanka in 1932, while another puts him in Shanghai in 1938 (Doing what? For whom? Others have him running confidence games in South America as late as 1947 (he'd have been around 73). Or working for Mossad, or the KGB.
Or both.
Certainly that last trip to the Soviet Union seems strange; the British government always maintained that he wasn't working for them (it's saved quite a lot in pensions) and the OGPU scheme seems too crude to entangle the experienced and devious Reilly.
The Grafton Affair.
A century or so ago two nations were at war, let's call them A and B. The war wasn't going too well for B but they knew that A had a restive province (C) with an active nationalist movement seeking independence. Seeking a distraction they dispatched an agent to foment revolution in B's backyard. Off he sailed on an old ship loaded with with rifles, ammunition, explosives and other stores. Plus quite a lot of booze. The mission failed, down to the one of the leading revolutionaries on the ship having run out of cigarettes and almost being arrested after being put ashore, while attempting to burglarise a tobacconist, the ship's crew getting drunk, and the arrival of B's navy....
The scheme was partially successful, some arms were landed at Kemi and more at Jakobstad but when the ship left Jakobstad she ran aground.
None of the rifles were ever used against the Russian authorities, though some were used for moose hunting.
More.
Ref: Griffiths; Clandestine Japanese activity in the Baltic during the Russo-Japanese war.
A century or so ago two nations were at war, let's call them A and B. The war wasn't going too well for B but they knew that A had a restive province (C) with an active nationalist movement seeking independence. Seeking a distraction they dispatched an agent to foment revolution in B's backyard. Off he sailed on an old ship loaded with with rifles, ammunition, explosives and other stores. Plus quite a lot of booze. The mission failed, down to the one of the leading revolutionaries on the ship having run out of cigarettes and almost being arrested after being put ashore, while attempting to burglarise a tobacconist, the ship's crew getting drunk, and the arrival of B's navy....
- I should now reveal that C was not Ireland.
- In fact A was Russia, B was Japan and C was Finland.
- Motojiro is a fascinating character, a noted poet and painter as well as a spy. He recruited the (in)famous agent Sidney Reilly to work for Japan, and evaded the Ochrana on numerous occasions while travelling around Europe and inside the Russian Empire. He was later a highly successful Governor-General of Taiwan, and is the only Japanese Governor-General buried there. He's considered the Japanese equivalent of James Bond in media.
The scheme was partially successful, some arms were landed at Kemi and more at Jakobstad but when the ship left Jakobstad she ran aground.
- The presence of a large quantity of wine on the ship, part of it's original disguise, was greatly responsible for the grounding.
None of the rifles were ever used against the Russian authorities, though some were used for moose hunting.
More.
Ref: Griffiths; Clandestine Japanese activity in the Baltic during the Russo-Japanese war.
Floating Bombs.
While the Japanese use of balloon bombs (Fu-Go) against the USA during World War 2 is well known they weren't the only ones to use such devices.
Operation Outward was a British programme that launched nearly 100,000 hydrogen filled balloons (surplus Royal Navy weather balloons) towards Germany and Occupied Europe. Some carried incendiary payloads, though most carried 200m of trailing wires designed to damage power lines. The programme was hampered by inter-service rivalries but was still surprisingly successful with damage to the German electrical grid, several forest fires and considerable waste of resources stopping the attacks. Link.
After the war the United States developed the last serious programme of weaponised balloons; the US E77 developed in the 1950s and intended as a strategic weapon to deploy biological weapon payloads. At one stage about 15% of the US bio-weapons stock was to be deployed in this way, mainly agents useful against food crops.
While the Japanese use of balloon bombs (Fu-Go) against the USA during World War 2 is well known they weren't the only ones to use such devices.
- Interestingly the Japanese programme was the byproduct of a scientific experiment; Japan was attempting to map air currents by launching balloons (with instruments attached) from the western side of Japan and picking them up on the East. This led to the discovery of a powerful trans-Pacific air currant at around 9km altitude.
Operation Outward was a British programme that launched nearly 100,000 hydrogen filled balloons (surplus Royal Navy weather balloons) towards Germany and Occupied Europe. Some carried incendiary payloads, though most carried 200m of trailing wires designed to damage power lines. The programme was hampered by inter-service rivalries but was still surprisingly successful with damage to the German electrical grid, several forest fires and considerable waste of resources stopping the attacks. Link.
After the war the United States developed the last serious programme of weaponised balloons; the US E77 developed in the 1950s and intended as a strategic weapon to deploy biological weapon payloads. At one stage about 15% of the US bio-weapons stock was to be deployed in this way, mainly agents useful against food crops.
Have you heard about the great Emu war?
Following the end of the first world war large numbers of Australian and British veterans moved to western Australia and took up farming in isolated communities inland from the large cities.
When the price of wheat rose rapidly during the late twenties many of these farmers began to increase the amount of the grain they planted. With the onset of the great depression in 1929 many of the farmers were then promised heavy government subsidies if they continued to grow wheat. And so for the next few years the farmers planted, farmed and harvested wheat which no one bought and with no government money to show for their efforts.
You may be asking where the Emu come into our little story. In fact some of you may be wondering just what an Emu is. Well I can tell you both. The Emu is a large flightless bird native to Australia. These birds migrate inland from the coast for breeding season during the summer. Just when the wheat crop is ready to be harvested.
Well in 1932 over twenty thousand of these birds made the journey. And right smack dab in the middle of their path was the lush fields of wheat planted and all ready to be harvested by the farmers.
The Emu being birds and not people they did the inconsiderate thing and trampled all over the farmers crops. The farmers were understandably incensed at the behavior of the birds and demanded that the government take some action to solve the problem. A few men even went to the territorial governor and asked that machine guns be put at their disposal to fight the birds. The governor, knowing the effectiveness of machine guns in the first world war agreed and several thousand rounds of ammunition and a few lewis machine guns were put at the disposal of the ex soldiers.
What then followed was a month of utter hilarity in which several men were wounded due to friendly fire, tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition were expended across most of western Australia. And not a single Emu was confirmed killed. Thats right your ears did not deceive you, not one of the big birds was killed despite major effort on the part of hundreds of men.
A Emu, likely descended from the many birds that were not killed in the war.
Following the end of the first world war large numbers of Australian and British veterans moved to western Australia and took up farming in isolated communities inland from the large cities.
When the price of wheat rose rapidly during the late twenties many of these farmers began to increase the amount of the grain they planted. With the onset of the great depression in 1929 many of the farmers were then promised heavy government subsidies if they continued to grow wheat. And so for the next few years the farmers planted, farmed and harvested wheat which no one bought and with no government money to show for their efforts.
You may be asking where the Emu come into our little story. In fact some of you may be wondering just what an Emu is. Well I can tell you both. The Emu is a large flightless bird native to Australia. These birds migrate inland from the coast for breeding season during the summer. Just when the wheat crop is ready to be harvested.
Well in 1932 over twenty thousand of these birds made the journey. And right smack dab in the middle of their path was the lush fields of wheat planted and all ready to be harvested by the farmers.
The Emu being birds and not people they did the inconsiderate thing and trampled all over the farmers crops. The farmers were understandably incensed at the behavior of the birds and demanded that the government take some action to solve the problem. A few men even went to the territorial governor and asked that machine guns be put at their disposal to fight the birds. The governor, knowing the effectiveness of machine guns in the first world war agreed and several thousand rounds of ammunition and a few lewis machine guns were put at the disposal of the ex soldiers.
What then followed was a month of utter hilarity in which several men were wounded due to friendly fire, tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition were expended across most of western Australia. And not a single Emu was confirmed killed. Thats right your ears did not deceive you, not one of the big birds was killed despite major effort on the part of hundreds of men.
A Emu, likely descended from the many birds that were not killed in the war.
David Dixon Porter was an American naval officer serving on the side of Union forces during the American civil war. Before that his father, also David Porter, had been an officer in the navy during the war of 1812. The US navy in its wisdom decided to honor these two distinguished members of their ranks with the naming of a brand new torpedo boat after them.
The USS David Porter, Torpedo Boat Number 6, was completed in 1896, and five years later was commissioned into the United States navy. She was small and poorly armed. Carrying only a few torpedoes. It was with one of these weapons that the Porter almost sank the Armored Cruiser New York while on routine harbor duty.
Fortunately the torpedo missed the New York and instead ran out of power and sank. The ships captain was severely reprimanded for his efforts, but beyond that nothing else came of it. Future ships named Porter would consider her career quite lucky in comparison to theirs.
The second ship to be named USS David porter (DD59) was a ship of the Tucker class. Commissioned in 1916 she saw some service during the great war but was scrapped soon afterwards in compliance with the 1921 Washington Naval Treaty. By far she was the luckiest of the bunch.
The Third Porter (DD 356) was where things really got going. She was a flotilla leader of the Porter class. She was more a light cruiser than a destroyer with her eight five inch guns in four twin turrets. She was one of seven ships in her class. Seven of them would survive the war.
Upon the outbreak of war the Porter was stationed in Pearl Harbor Hawaii. However when the Japanese attacked she was at sea with the carrier fleet (The Japanese target) and so escaped damage or loss (A rare streak of luck)
After the attack she was deployed with the ships of Task Force 16 after serving some months in convoy duty. It was with the task force that she fought in the battle of the Santa Cruz islands where she protected the carriers Enterprise and Hornet from waves of Japanese bombers.
When a Avenger torpedo bomber went down the Porter maneuvered to save the crew. Only for the torpedo from the downed aircraft to sink the ship. The survivors were rescued by the USS Shaw, a survivor of Pearl Harbor.
After the heroic loss of the ship the USN commissioned a brand new ship of the Fletcher class to serve as the next Porter. The DD 579 was commissioned in 1942 and immediately got herself into trouble when while on maneuvers with the home fleet she accidentally fired a torpedo spread at the battleship USS Iowa. A ship which at that moment was carrying President Roosevelt, the secretary of state, and many of the top military leaders of the US armed forces. The Iowa saw the torpedoes coming and avoided them, saving the lives of many people.
Porter was ordered to the docks where her entire crew was arrested and interrogated as part of an investigation to see whether or not the torpedo launch was an accident, or an assassination attempt. The investigators found nothing and the Porter, minus her captain, was sent to Alaska to assist in the repulsion of the Japanese invasion force, and lay low for a little bit. While on station the Porter gave fire support to ground forces, using her guns to hit Japanese positions inland.
During one such exercise the ship got her directions mixed up and wound up firing at the army command center and setting it on fire. The smoke had not yet cleared by the time the Porter received orders to head to the Philippines.
It was during heavy fighting around the island of Okinawa that the Porter would see her last action. The ship was serving as an anti-aircraft battery shooting down waves of Japanese Kamikaze planes attempting to disrupt the US marine landings.
A Kate Torpedo bomber made a run for the Porter, only for accurate fire from the ship to bring the plane down. However the Kate continued on its trajectory for the ship, now more torpedo than missile, and impacted against the ships hull. Tearing a great gash in the side of the ship and causing her to sink.
The US would commission yet another Porter, also of the Fletcher class. The DD 800 saw limited service during the war before she was placed into mothballs. She was brought out of retirement briefly during the Korean war where she was used for AA duties. And then back into storage she went until she was scrapped in 1974. Out of 30 years the ship would spend only four in active service as a ship of the US navy.
The fifth and most recent ship to be named Porter is the DDG 78, a ship of the Arleigh Burke class she is most well known for colliding with the Japanese merchant ship the Otowasan in 2012. The accident left the ship with a new captain and large sent in her hull. She is still in service and heaven help those who
The USS David Porter, Torpedo Boat Number 6, was completed in 1896, and five years later was commissioned into the United States navy. She was small and poorly armed. Carrying only a few torpedoes. It was with one of these weapons that the Porter almost sank the Armored Cruiser New York while on routine harbor duty.
Fortunately the torpedo missed the New York and instead ran out of power and sank. The ships captain was severely reprimanded for his efforts, but beyond that nothing else came of it. Future ships named Porter would consider her career quite lucky in comparison to theirs.
The second ship to be named USS David porter (DD59) was a ship of the Tucker class. Commissioned in 1916 she saw some service during the great war but was scrapped soon afterwards in compliance with the 1921 Washington Naval Treaty. By far she was the luckiest of the bunch.
The Third Porter (DD 356) was where things really got going. She was a flotilla leader of the Porter class. She was more a light cruiser than a destroyer with her eight five inch guns in four twin turrets. She was one of seven ships in her class. Seven of them would survive the war.
Upon the outbreak of war the Porter was stationed in Pearl Harbor Hawaii. However when the Japanese attacked she was at sea with the carrier fleet (The Japanese target) and so escaped damage or loss (A rare streak of luck)
After the attack she was deployed with the ships of Task Force 16 after serving some months in convoy duty. It was with the task force that she fought in the battle of the Santa Cruz islands where she protected the carriers Enterprise and Hornet from waves of Japanese bombers.
When a Avenger torpedo bomber went down the Porter maneuvered to save the crew. Only for the torpedo from the downed aircraft to sink the ship. The survivors were rescued by the USS Shaw, a survivor of Pearl Harbor.
After the heroic loss of the ship the USN commissioned a brand new ship of the Fletcher class to serve as the next Porter. The DD 579 was commissioned in 1942 and immediately got herself into trouble when while on maneuvers with the home fleet she accidentally fired a torpedo spread at the battleship USS Iowa. A ship which at that moment was carrying President Roosevelt, the secretary of state, and many of the top military leaders of the US armed forces. The Iowa saw the torpedoes coming and avoided them, saving the lives of many people.
Porter was ordered to the docks where her entire crew was arrested and interrogated as part of an investigation to see whether or not the torpedo launch was an accident, or an assassination attempt. The investigators found nothing and the Porter, minus her captain, was sent to Alaska to assist in the repulsion of the Japanese invasion force, and lay low for a little bit. While on station the Porter gave fire support to ground forces, using her guns to hit Japanese positions inland.
During one such exercise the ship got her directions mixed up and wound up firing at the army command center and setting it on fire. The smoke had not yet cleared by the time the Porter received orders to head to the Philippines.
It was during heavy fighting around the island of Okinawa that the Porter would see her last action. The ship was serving as an anti-aircraft battery shooting down waves of Japanese Kamikaze planes attempting to disrupt the US marine landings.
A Kate Torpedo bomber made a run for the Porter, only for accurate fire from the ship to bring the plane down. However the Kate continued on its trajectory for the ship, now more torpedo than missile, and impacted against the ships hull. Tearing a great gash in the side of the ship and causing her to sink.
The US would commission yet another Porter, also of the Fletcher class. The DD 800 saw limited service during the war before she was placed into mothballs. She was brought out of retirement briefly during the Korean war where she was used for AA duties. And then back into storage she went until she was scrapped in 1974. Out of 30 years the ship would spend only four in active service as a ship of the US navy.
The fifth and most recent ship to be named Porter is the DDG 78, a ship of the Arleigh Burke class she is most well known for colliding with the Japanese merchant ship the Otowasan in 2012. The accident left the ship with a new captain and large sent in her hull. She is still in service and heaven help those who