18 Historic Events That Were Nothing Like You Picture Them

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18 Historic Events That Were Nothing Like You Picture Them

Postby EvilerDictator » Mon Apr 27, 2015 7:22 pm

http://www.cracked.com/photoplasty_1446_18-moments-in-history-youre-picturing-incorrectly

Awful lot of arguments going on here, specifically about number 5 on the list
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Re: 18 Historic Events That Were Nothing Like You Picture Th

Postby Deathclaw_Puncher » Mon Apr 27, 2015 7:47 pm

Not to mention #1. Obvious propaganda takes a backseat to clickbait, I guess.
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Re: 18 Historic Events That Were Nothing Like You Picture Th

Postby Ceiling_Squid » Mon Apr 27, 2015 8:48 pm

Warning: venting.

Number 5 reeks of the usual anti-American dick waving that happens online all the time. Because it was included as an entry, the base assumption is that the American readers don't already know any better. Don't insult us.

Yeah, we get it, Hollywood is ignorant and you bash our lowest common denominator whenever they say something stupid or historically-inaccurate, thereby "proving" that Americans are idiots. Have some Internet points.

The problem is, you don't get to swing it all the way to the other end, and completely overlook stuff like Lend-Lease or the other major contributions made by the US, especially on D-Day and in the Pacific theatre. WW2 was a team effort.

As for massive Russian casualties, America's late entry into the war, and a global approach to covering WW2? I learned about that shit in an American school. We've got the proper courses to teach that material. I'm sorry our basic history classes can be biased, but the advanced courses are pretty comprehensive.

I'm sick of people who judge an entire nationality based on it's most-ignorant members. It's such a cliche, dead-horse target, that there is no glory to be had taking yet another crack at it.

Rant over.
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Re: 18 Historic Events That Were Nothing Like You Picture Th

Postby EvilerDictator » Mon Apr 27, 2015 8:55 pm

We didn't learn about the wider war really - they liked to keep it confined to The Battle of Britain and the Blitz. I actually came out of high school knowing more about the Russian Revolution than nearly all of World War II, because they actually chose that (and the history of Israel) as our GCSE exam topic.

I'd have liked to learn more about the wider war though - things you have mentioned about America's involvement with lend leases and especially the battles my grandfather and great uncle took part in. Grandpa was at the Battle of el-Alamein and another one which name always escapes me, but because it wasn't something that happened over the UK or in France or was Nazi specific they didn't teach us about it.
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Re: 18 Historic Events That Were Nothing Like You Picture Th

Postby OrangeEyebrows » Mon Apr 27, 2015 9:16 pm

Yeah, my education about WWII was very Brit-centric. The Blitz, refugee children, women working on the home front, Dig For Victory, etc. Also concentration camps are bad and Hitler is bad and Anne Frank kept a diary. That was about it. I think what we learned about the US's involvement was largely that they come over here, stealing our wimmins with their fancy silk stockings because something something gravy browning.
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Re: 18 Historic Events That Were Nothing Like You Picture Th

Postby NathanLoiselle » Mon Apr 27, 2015 9:27 pm

TARS in Interstellar? Yeah, really didn't explain the entire situation to What'sHisName in the tesseract. He pretty much claimed "Well I'll be damned. I have no clue what's going on. Time to bust this joint and leave!". In fact, it was really a dapper man in a bowler hat drinking tea at a bistro that explained the situation.


Oh! You wanted real historic events...
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Re: 18 Historic Events That Were Nothing Like You Picture Th

Postby Edgar Cabrera » Mon Apr 27, 2015 10:07 pm

I was going to write something about #5, but after reading what Ceiling Squid wrote I'll just gonna say that, yes, while I certainly get the feel that in most American schools the war is painted as America saving the world while the casualty disparity is pushed under the table and the staggering deaths are overlooked, that entry in turn overlooks the efforts of the other Allies. As one comment said, war is not a video game with dead bodies as score points. At least it should not be.

As for #1, holy crap, I hope that the message it tried to get across was "hundreds died, but not on the Tiananmen Square itself" rather than "nobody died, move along" like in that episode of The Simpsons where they traveled to China, because it comes across something made by a rather subdued member of the 50 Cent Party.

Bonus track: I can't simply believe the arguments made in the Rasputin entry; it's like the only source was Nicholas and Alexandra. BTW, I can't help but find the guy portraying him in that movie so familiar...

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Last edited by Edgar Cabrera on Tue May 12, 2015 12:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: 18 Historic Events That Were Nothing Like You Picture Th

Postby OrangeEyebrows » Mon Apr 27, 2015 10:11 pm

Rasputin was FUCKING NUTS. He was a philanderer, almost certainly a rapist, waaaay into underage girls, and a conman. The only reason he wasn't a cult leader was because he thought cult leaders lacked ambition and went straight to brainwashing the Czarina.
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Re: 18 Historic Events That Were Nothing Like You Picture Th

Postby Cordslash » Mon Apr 27, 2015 10:36 pm

To be fair as far as WWII goes if you believed my mid level (8th to 9th grade) history teachers and textbooks South Africa pretty much single-handedly won the war in North Africa, beating back the Italians and Rommel and co with only the bare minimum of help from the Brits. The wider war was discussed but not in much detail. That only cale later on for those few of us who chose history as a specialist subject.

Perhaps nationalism is just a universal thing and countries try to play up their own angle. It's not just the Americans Ceiling Squid. Everyone does it.
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Re: 18 Historic Events That Were Nothing Like You Picture Th

Postby DjiboutiDan » Mon Apr 27, 2015 11:15 pm

I don't know about anyone else, but my history classes in grade school were terrible. They were heavily biased towards the ancient world versus the modern one. In fact, every history class I ever took stopped at WWII. Maybe once or twice Vietnam got mentioned, but I know very little about politics and history during the 50's-80's because I was never taught ANY of it. Every year we'd crack open a new textbook, spend 3 weeks talking about ancient Egyptian irrigation techniques and never get around to those last few chapters about modern history. Even the US History classes I took in high school ended with Vietnam (or before). I think in total, I spent more time learning about John Tyler than Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, H.W. Bush, and Clinton combined. To this day I still have a poor concept of anything that happened between 1945 and 1990. Everything I've learned was on my own and without any kind of context or help in understanding.

Also of note, the only thing I ever learned in history about the Pacific Rim of WWII is that we were at war with Japan because of Pearl Harbor, and so we nuked them. That whole thing tends to get overlooked in America for some reason. Everyone can quote you all sorts of information about the Nazis, the Russians, D-Day, the battles throughout Europe, and the Holocaust. But people can only name one (at most) battle with Japan.
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Re: 18 Historic Events That Were Nothing Like You Picture Th

Postby jbobsully11 » Mon Apr 27, 2015 11:26 pm

...Pretty much what everyone said about what they learned about WWII. In high school, we focused on the USA, but that was specifically a US history class. The casualty rates were only briefly mentioned when we finished that unit. In college, by contrast, we barely focused on the US at all, in anything (and that class went from just before WWI all the way to Vietnam).
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Re: 18 Historic Events That Were Nothing Like You Picture Th

Postby Ceiling_Squid » Tue Apr 28, 2015 3:05 am

May I say, it's incredibly gratifying to hear that provincialism in education is fairly universal.

I suppose I can blame Hollywood's global reach and visibility for making criticism appear disproportionate.

Thanks for weathering my earlier rant - lets just say I am a bit annoyed with the usual unimaginative, short-sighted "truth bombs" you see jackasses trying to drop on the internet.

There was something I found morally objectionable with treating body count like a score metric.

DjiboutiDan wrote:Also of note, the only thing I ever learned in history about the Pacific Rim of WWII is that we were at war with Japan because of Pearl Harbor, and so we nuked them. That whole thing tends to get overlooked in America for some reason. Everyone can quote you all sorts of information about the Nazis, the Russians, D-Day, the battles throughout Europe, and the Holocaust. But people can only name one (at most) battle with Japan.


A great deal of attention was also given to Japanese internment camps in my basic US history courses.

To tell the truth, if I hadn't taken an Advanced Placement course back in high school, I wouldn't know quite so much myself. It's weird that even US history courses seem to gloss over the Pacific war, even though it was the war, as far as American involvement in WWII was concerned. What's more distressing is that the Rape of Nanking and other Japanese atrocities (Unit 731 in particular) are also generally ignored or glossed over in lessons. For a history curriculum that is often slammed for being supposedly "pro-America", the limited coverage of the Pacific theatre seems to feature some very strange omissions.

Maybe it's guilt over the bombs? There's gotta be something more to it.
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Re: 18 Historic Events That Were Nothing Like You Picture Th

Postby Tuli » Tue Apr 28, 2015 11:33 am

What I learned about WW2 in school: Russia and Germany sign the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact to fuck over Europe.

I'm not down with hailing the USSR as some sort of hero for defeating the nazis when they were just as responsible for starting the war in the first place.
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Re: 18 Historic Events That Were Nothing Like You Picture Th

Postby Anglerphobe » Tue Apr 28, 2015 12:34 pm

Winston Churchill wrote: If Hitler invaded Hell, I would at least make a favourable reference for the Devil in the house of commons.


Nazi Germany was the world's Godzilla threshold for working with the Soviets.

I really can't remember what I was taught about the war in school (I err... wasn't the best of students) but I can't recall the Soviets being mentioned at all. It can be no surprise that, given the four decades of nuclear stalemate with the USSR that followed, our schools were not in the habit of commending the Soviet contribution against Hitler.

It is interesting to see how this one piece of history that most of the world shares is taught in the many countries involved in it. In East Asia, Hitler is (or was at least, this may have changed) barely mentioned at all; a distant foreign figure during the war with Japan.
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Re: 18 Historic Events That Were Nothing Like You Picture Th

Postby FieldMarshalFry » Tue Apr 28, 2015 1:54 pm

*looks around, decides to risk it*




still late for both Wars...
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