Lol!
On This day in World War 1
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One hundred years ago today, William Leefe Robinson became the first person to shoot down a German airship over the UK. This success in the skies above London, which saw him awarded the Victoria Cross just 48 hours later, was due to a mixture of the 21-year-old’s own bravery, an improved defence strategy and a revolutionary flammable bullet designed to ignite the hydrogen gas used to fill the 620ft-long (190m) long balloon.
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Great read, Marc. Thanks.
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@wittmann:
Great read, Marc. Thanks.
The BBC has a good track record of picking up all sorts of interesting news stories related to the two World Wars, sometimes on quite obscure subjects, so they deserve a lot of credit for their interest in history.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-37302722
Today in history: the 100th anniversary of the tank’s first use in combat, at the Battle of the Somme. At the outbreak of World War One, practical battlefield machines were for most soldiers scarcely more than science fiction. A “Landships” committee was formed in early 1915, and tanks went from science fiction to steel fact in the space of six months. They were at the limits of technology. Engines were unreliable, armour was thin, tactics were guesswork. Communication was mostly by hand signal and pigeon. And that was before anyone started shooting. On 15 September 1916, the shooting would start.
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Interesting BBC story about the 100th anniversary of the decoding of the Zimmerman Telegram, the intellgence coup that eventually brought the US into WWI. When the story broke, the German foreign minister, Arthur Zimmerman, was mobbed by some journalists who wanted him to comment on the allegations that Germany was trying to get Mexico to go to war against the US, in exchange for a German promise to help Mexico regain some if its “lost territories” (like Arizona). One pro-German journalist (as I recall, he even was on the payroll of the German secret service) asked Zimmerman a “question” that was actually a broad hint about how Zimmerman should handle the situation: “Surely your Excellency will deny these allegations, will he not?” If Zimmerman had taken the hint, he would have put the Americans and the British into an awkward position – and even more so if he had challenged them to disclose their sources, which was something that they couldn’t do without revealing that the German diplomatic code had been cracked. Instead, Zimmerman – who doesn’t sound like he was the sharpest knife in the kitchen drawer – lamely answered, “I can’t deny it. It’s true.”
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Thanks mark. For this and all the other knowledge you share on these boards.
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April 6th, 1917 - The United States declares war on the German Empire.
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I think you guys would be interested in this -
The Great War, a YouTube WW1 documentary series.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUcyEsEjhPEDf69RRVhRh4AThey do a main episode every week, detailing events of that week 100 years ago.
So it’s still an ongoing series and will be til late 2018.
They also do side episodes on specific topics, at least once a week for that too.The main episodes are in playlists for viewer convenience too, having each season for each year the war takes place in.
Here’s the playlist for 1914, which is where you ought to start off if you’re interested.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FgaL0xIazk&list=PLB2vhKMBjSxO1lsrC98VOyOzfW0Gn8Tga
Definitely a worthwhile watch if you are particularly interested in WW1 history, I personally find it a joy to look forward to the next episode every week. Keeping up with the war on a weekly basis. -
I think you guys would be interested in this -
The Great War, a YouTube WW1 documentary series.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUcyEsEjhPEDf69RRVhRh4AThey do a main episode every week, detailing events of that week 100 years ago.
So it’s still an ongoing series and will be til late 2018.
They also do side episodes on specific topics, at least once a week for that too.The main episodes are in playlists for viewer convenience too, having each season for each year the war takes place in.
Here’s the playlist for 1914, which is where you ought to start off if you’re interested.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FgaL0xIazk&list=PLB2vhKMBjSxO1lsrC98VOyOzfW0Gn8Tga
Definitely a worthwhile watch if you are particularly interested in WW1 history, I personally find it a joy to look forward to the next episode every week. Keeping up with the war on a weekly basis.I follow the The Great War series on YouTube. First class series. Can’t say enough good things about the show.
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Today marks the 100th anniversary of the event that is commonly held to be the end of World War I: the armistice on the Western Front. Germany’s war effort was on the verge of collapse both militarily and domestically, and its allies had already signed separate armistice agreements during the preceding months. The signing took place early in the morning, the ceasefire went into effect at 11 AM.
Formally speaking, the notion that World War I ended with this armistice is incorrect. Hostilities had ended, but unlike the end of World War II, the armistice did not constitute a formal capitulation. So legally speaking, the war continued until the various parties involved had reached separate peace agreements, a process which took several years to complete – in the case of Germany, the Versailles treaty which was signed in 1919 and took effect on January 10, 1920. And the state of war with Turkey even continued until the 1923 treaty of Lausanne.
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