Cool History Stuff

The Orlan space suit was designed by the Soviet Union for spacewalks outside stations like Salyut, Mir, and later the ISS. Instead of being put on in pieces, cosmonauts climb into the suit through a rear hatch built into the backpack, which also contains the life-support system that keeps them alive in the vacuum of space.

@rico Wow! It must've taken a really cool character to even contemplate a spacewalk, amazing!

When your siege engine is also a runaway firework!

WWII’s most chaotic ‘breach the wall’ idea: the Great Panjandrum—an explosive-filled, rocket-propelled cart on giant wheels meant to charge off a landing craft and smash the Atlantic Wall. Tests were… wildly uncontrollable, so it never saw action.

The Trier Gold Hoard!

 The largest Roman gold coin hoard ever found! More than 2,650 Roman gold ‘aurei’, weighing 18.5 kg, were discovered inside a bronze vessel during construction work in 1993.

Rheinisches Landesmuseum, Trier

How to give your fireplace an inferiority complex.

Room in the Castello Cini (Castle of Monselice), Padua, Italy.

https://www.castellodimonselice.it/en/

I need to finish that game. 😝 

⚙️🌙 The Antikythera Mechanism — the 2,000-year-old Greek “computer”

This corroded lump of bronze gears was recovered from a Roman shipwreck near the Greek island of Antikythera in 1901. Scientists later realized it was an astonishing device built around 100 BC that could predict eclipses, track the Moon’s phases, and model planetary movements. With more than 30 precision gears, it functioned like a hand-powered astronomical calculator. What makes it even more amazing is that technology this complex wouldn’t appear again in Europe for over a thousand years. An ancient computer… lost to history. ⚙️🌙☀️🤯

@rico Where do you poop?

This pic show Latvians and Lithuanians protesting decades-long Soviet occupation of their respective home countries, c. 1991

Posted by: @thegreatwhitenorth

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@rico Where do you poop?

That's kind of a personal question? 😀 

Inflatable dummy tanks were central to the Allies’ secret “Ghost Army” in World War II, a small unit of about 1,100 men that used fake equipment, radio traffic, and sound effects to appear as a force of 30,000. Their deception helped convince German commanders that the main invasion would come at Pas-de-Calais even after D-Day, delaying their response to Normandy. Staffed in part by artists and designers, the unit’s work saved thousands of lives, remained classified for decades, and was finally honored with the Congressional Gold Medal in 2024.

In 1919, a massive molasses tank in Boston suddenly burst, unleashing a deadly wave through the streets. The thick syrup surged at surprising speed, destroying buildings, derailing structures, and trapping people and horses in its path. Twenty-one people were killed and over 100 injured in what became known as the Great Molasses Flood. In the aftermath, cleanup took weeks—and for years, locals claimed you could still smell molasses on warm days.

@panzer-lehr They came to a sticky end! Crazy!

81 years ago, on April 7, 1945, during Operation Ten-Go, approximately 250 aircraft from eight US Navy carriers sank the battleship Yamato, the pride of the Imperial Japanese Navy. It took 35 bombs and 19 torpedoes to complete the mission.

Interesting, really interesting...

Beecham Dugout was a WW1 German position on the northern outskirts of Zonnebeke (in Belgium), utilised by Allied troops following its capture. The underground dugout was unearthed in 1999 following a collapse adjacent to the wall of the Beecham farm, triggered when Mrs Simonne Callens stepped on the area. Simonne was trapped in the hole until her husband came home but was fortunately unhurt. The farm had unwittingly been rebuilt over the former dugout post war.

Johan Vandewalle (a important Belgian civil engineering and architecture) supervised the pumping out, surveying and excavation of Beecham dugout which was then backfilled. That part of the dugout that could not be accessed beneath the building caused further subsidence 5 years later beneath the house and further remedial work was required. Beecham dugout was on one level two metres beneath the surface and had provided sleeping spaces for three officers and 66 men.

There are various indications that the dugout was made by the Germans. For example, the roof was an average of two metres under the ground. Close to the front, dugouts are deeper to resist heavy shelling. Before the Third Battle of Ypres, this was a relatively quiet area. After the New Zealanders took the construction on 4 Oct, it was subsequently used by British troops.

After the war the farm was reconstructed just to the south of the pre-war building, by accident on top of the underground network.

The Halifax Explosion (1917) — A French munitions ship collided with another vessel in the harbor at Halifax, Nova Scotia, sparking a fire that drew crowds to watch. Minutes later, the ship detonated in one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history, leveling much of the city, killing nearly 2,000 people, and shattering windows miles away. The blast was so powerful it created a shockwave felt across the Atlantic—and a tsunami that swept the shoreline.

The Halifax explosion devastated the city, destroying some 6,000 buildings and leaving 25,000 homeless.