Kinda surprised there was no mention of the British cavalry charge on the Russian guns in the Battle of Balaclava, best known as the Charge of the Light Brigade. Especially since the quiz title made me think of a line from the Tennyson poem....
Read "The Reason Why" by Cecil Woodham-Smith for a powerful account of all the screwups, based on personal animosities, undeserved privilege, and incompetence, that produced this disaster.
The Soviets in Afghanistan wasn't really an invasion as they where invited by the Afghan government, which was then a communist government, which had been established through a coup led by the Soviets.
So yeah, intervention would be a better word since they never invaded the country. And yes, even though they invited themselves into the country it still wasn't and isn't considered an invasion.
I think you could call it an invasion if your troops enter your country, kill the leader and install their own. (Along with the international community demanding that the troops leave, sounds like an invasion to me.)
Just listened to "Ghosts of the Ostfront" from Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast.
You really, really don't want to invade Russia.
It's hard to defeat people who don't even value their own lives and won't surrender even when their cause is hopeless. Most countries would have sued for peace in 1941, but Russia kept fighting, and just threw millions of their own people into the meat grinder.
correction - people who don't even care for others' lives. I suspect that pretty much all of those who died fighting for the USSR valued their own lives.
I would argue that the blunder at Gettysburg was committed by Robert E. Lee rather than Pickett. The plan was Lee's, and he's the one who insisted on going forward with it even over General Longstreet's objection. Pickett is just the one to whom it fell to try and make the bad plan work.
The question on annexation by Germany in 1938 needs to be changed to include Austria. Parts of Austria were also annexed by Germany in March of 1938 and since this was the only annexation I was aware of I didn't have any other alternatives. Please amend. Source: https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/germany-annexes-austria
The only thing about the question that could maybe be improved is that Britain did a lot worse than just allowing annexation. They actively negotiated away the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia to give to the Reich.
If I've learned anything in school so far it's that people should never invade Russia in the winter, never invade Russia any other time of the year, and to never buy discount coleslaw. 2 of these 3 helped me.
One thing I remember from high school history class is that Russia has two generals who will always defeat invaders - General Distance and General Weather.
The Germans did just fine invading Russia in World War I. Granted their greatest victories took place in August and September of 1914, but they still managed to rout the numerically superior Russian forces in the early stages of the war and to defeat them in almost every battle that followed. Competent leadership and better logistical systems overcame any problems that the sheer size of the front or the Russians' supposed indifference to their own lives might have posed.
Nor is weather a sufficient explanation, although it made Napoleon's and Hitler's mistakes all the more disastrous. There's a line in "Grand Illusion," Jean Renoir's classic film about French prisoners of war during World War I, in which one of them ruefully says to the others in the prison yard: "And General Winter, who'd kill off the wicked Boche, but act as a tonic for the Allies." Just as generals are always fighting the last war, we tend to overgeneralize the lessons of the past.
The break-in was not at the Watergate Hotel; it was at the Watergate Office Building. (The Watergate complex consists of the office building, the hotel, and condos.)
There's also a CVS where you can get passport photos taken, and a coffee stand and a pastry store. Convenient when making visa runs to the Saudi Arabian embassy right across the street.
I would like to advocate for more leniency concerning Chernobyl. I would like to bring forward the spellings "Cernobyl" and "Czernobyl". "Cernobyl" because slavic langauges often use "č" for this sound and the latter, because in English this sound is often written thus.
True. During WWII the US supplied Ho Chi Minh with arms and guerilla training to help his Viet Minh fight the Japanese, which came back to haunt them when he became an enemy. As communists came closer to taking over, no US president wanted to go down in history as the one who allowed Vietnam to fall to communism and they kept increasing troops and support. Historians say that President Kennedy planned to have all troops out by 1965. After Kennedy's assassination, Johnson took over and felt he had to send in more troops to appease General Westmoreland. Nixon used the war for political gain and prolonged it, but at least he finally ended it. I heard his speech on TV and cried because my husband had a low draft number and would surely have been called up had the war not ended.
They wouldn't have gotten involved (on the side against Ho) in the first place except that deGaulle demanded it, and as France was crucial to Western Europe's resistance against Communism and the Soviets, the US gave up their support for Vietnamese independence. Roosevelt said the year before this, "Indo-China should not go back to France...France has had the country...one hundred years, and the people are worse off than they were at the beginning."
The captain of the Titanic followed all procedures and posted notices for the iceberg warnings. What else was he going to do? Stop the ship and wait for the icebergs to hit him?
Not certain if Russia selling Alaska should actually be considered as blunder. It may look like one, thinking of the oil drilled there during the recent decades. But during the 19th century it was really pretty worthless. And I dare guess that USA OR UK would have captured Alaska anyway after the communist revolution in Russia 1917.
Yeah, I don't think it was a blunder. It cost Russia far more than it was worth, and chances are the UK or US would have taken it even before the Revolution, and if not them, probably Japan during the Russo-Japanese War. At any rate, whatever value it may have subsequently had, I don't think Russia had much in the way of feasible options to hold onto it, making the sale difficult to describe as a blunder.
A lot of these are at the very least debatable as "blunders". Unless you're going for a very superficial look at history, like "Napoleon/Hitler tried to invade Russia and failed, lol".
Oops, I thought it was asking for the name of the city the Spanish were allowed in, not the name of the conquistador. This is why you read carefully, folks.
Wouldn't have gotten the charge of the light brigade without "charge of the" being there. Now "half a league, half a league, half a league onward" is stuck in my head.
Challenger's O-rings weren't faulty. They were the same as the O-rings in every successful shuttle mission, but they were operated outside of their design parameters. NASA was aware that it was too cold to launch. The disaster wasn't caused by a mechanical failure but by human error. A more accurate clue – which would actually make it a blunder – would be, "This space shuttle explodes after launching under unsafe conditions."
I'm having a hard time seeing some of these as "blunders" which implies an oopsy or some minor screw up. Many innocent people died in these examples. Many change the wording?
Churchill gets off very lightly for his disastrous strategy against the Ottoman Empire including the failed Gallipoli invasion. A few days before Britain declared war on the Ottomans, Churchill (as First Lord of the Admiralty) ordered a naval bombardment of the forts at the Narrows in the Dardanelles which achieved nothing other than to alert the Turks who quickly began improving their coastal defences - just in time for Churchill's second plan for the ANZACs to invade at Gallopoli, which also achieved no strategic gains and was abandoned after much loss of life on both sides.
Should be labeled as "easy". And to those who missed the light brigade please read the poem! Should be standard knowledge to anyone who finishes high school, especially in English-language speaking countries.
Which is what attacking Pearl Harbor meant. Also, the Japanese failed to find or sink any American aircraft carriers during the attack which would later prove decisive at Midway.
? Russia has successfully annexed the largest amount of territory since something like WWII. And arguably at an extremely low cost of life for them. They're successfully fighting against something like 40-50 of the most-developed countries on Earth. They acted; Europe was shown to be meek.
Anyone can argue the financial cost, and set whatever boundaries on that as they wish. Or "reputation" (as though any of the permanent UN SC members care).
In 50 years who will be controlling the territory? Looks like Russia; same country that controls it today.
This space shuttle explodes due to faulty O-rings.
The O-rings were not faulty. The UK supplier kept contacting the US over and over all day but was ignored. They were trying to call off the launch because the O-rings would be brittle due to the temperature.
Morton Thiokol is an American company--where did you get UK? And it was Morthon Thiokol managers who overrode their engineers and called their data "inconclusive", contributing to the blunderous decision to launch. No company or organization is an unheard hero here.
Not sure where you got the impression the UK was involved or that anyone was calling "the US", whatever you mean by that. The course of events leading up to the launch is pretty well-documented.
You checked the box for some reason so I'll respond.
Regardless of what you think of Brexit, its trivial compared to things like the Vietnam War where hundreds of thousands of people died, often in horrible ways. Compared to that, Brexit is a non-event.
So yeah, intervention would be a better word since they never invaded the country. And yes, even though they invited themselves into the country it still wasn't and isn't considered an invasion.
You really, really don't want to invade Russia.
It's hard to defeat people who don't even value their own lives and won't surrender even when their cause is hopeless. Most countries would have sued for peace in 1941, but Russia kept fighting, and just threw millions of their own people into the meat grinder.
Nor is weather a sufficient explanation, although it made Napoleon's and Hitler's mistakes all the more disastrous. There's a line in "Grand Illusion," Jean Renoir's classic film about French prisoners of war during World War I, in which one of them ruefully says to the others in the prison yard: "And General Winter, who'd kill off the wicked Boche, but act as a tonic for the Allies." Just as generals are always fighting the last war, we tend to overgeneralize the lessons of the past.
* The Trojan Rabbit
* Vizzini engaging in a battle of wits with the Man in Black.
* Me attempting this quiz.
* Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line ;)
FTFY
Anyone can argue the financial cost, and set whatever boundaries on that as they wish. Or "reputation" (as though any of the permanent UN SC members care).
In 50 years who will be controlling the territory? Looks like Russia; same country that controls it today.
The O-rings were not faulty. The UK supplier kept contacting the US over and over all day but was ignored. They were trying to call off the launch because the O-rings would be brittle due to the temperature.
Not sure where you got the impression the UK was involved or that anyone was calling "the US", whatever you mean by that. The course of events leading up to the launch is pretty well-documented.
"This process led to steam explosions and a meltdown"
didn't read the question apparently....
Regardless of what you think of Brexit, its trivial compared to things like the Vietnam War where hundreds of thousands of people died, often in horrible ways. Compared to that, Brexit is a non-event.