- In 1429, when the English controlled half of France and were threatening to overrun the remainder, a 17-year-old peasant girl named Joan inspired the French in the beleaguered stronghold of Orleans to rally and drive the British off. Soon after, French allies of England captured Joan and sold her to the English forces, who tried her for heresy in 1431. Not surprisingly, she was found guilty, but her conviction was, in effect, appealed in 1448. After eight years of investigation, a second court in 1456 overturned the first verdict and Joan of Arc was, in the words of the appeal court, "washed clean". Unfortunately, she had been burned at the stake 25 years earlier.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower, later the 34th President of the United States, was designated Commanding General, European Theater, in June 1942. A few months later, in November, he was named Commander-in-Chief, Allied Forces, North Africa. His permanent rank in the U. S. Army in 1942? Lieutenant Colonel.
Eisenhower's promotions to Colonel (March, 1941), Brigadier General (September, 1941), Major General (March, 1942), Lt. General (July, 1942), and General (February, 1943) were all temporary.
- Winston Churchill taught his parrot Charlie to direct obscenities at Adolf Hitler during World War II. Incidentally, while Churchill died in January, 1965, shortly after his 90th birthday, Charlie - always referred to as "he" despite being a female - is still lively and fit at 104 years old (as of January, 2004).
- Pretty much everyone knows that Lt. Col. (brevet Brigadier General) George A. Custer died commanding the 7th Cavalry at the Little Bighorn. Not so well known are the other losses suffered by the Custer clan that day. Also killed in the famous battle were George's brother, Capt. Thomas W. Custer (commanding Company C in Custer's column); his brother-in-law Lt. James "Jimmi" Calhoun (commanding Company L); his brother Boston Custer (a civilian packer with the supply train); and his nephew Autie Reed (accompanying Gen. Custer as a guest).
- The State of Kentucky was once Kentucky County, Virginia.
- T. C. Frank, Donald Henderson, Lloyd E. James, and Frank Laughlin appear in the credits of the film The Young Sinner as crew members. They are actually all the same person - Tom Laughlin, who, using his real name, also played the lead character.
- Among Brazil's Guarani Indians, when a woman gives birth, she stops eating beef, pork, fish, beans, eggs, milk, salt, sugar, and fruit for forty days.
- We tend to think of a pirate in the 1600s as dealing death with a flintlock pistol, a cutlass, or even a dagger clenched between his teeth, but consider the infamous pirate Captain William Kidd and his gunner, William Moore. When Moore challenged his captain, Kidd beat him to death with a bucket.
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the musical prodigy who was composing at age six and writing operas at age 11, died prematurely at age 35. The rumor that he was poisoned is almost certainly false, but his death certificate lists "heated military fever" as the cause of death, a mysterious ailment that never appeared in any medical text.
- On the evening of April 14, 1912, the cargo ship Californian slowed and then stopped in the north Atlantic some 400 miles to the south and east of Newfoundland. Her captain, Stanley Lord, considered it too dangerous to continue moving in the dark; there was just too much ice in the water. Nevertheless, he and his officers saw another ship steam swiftly past. Indeed, despite the obvious hazards, this ship was making 22 knots through the ice-filled water. It was the best speed the Titanic ever made ... or ever would make.
- On January 15, 1919, a flood in Boston killed 21 men, women, and children. It also destroyed buildings, damaged train tracks, and killed horses. It was traveling at 35 miles per hour, with a fifteen-foot crest. This wasn't an ordinary flood, though; it was a flood of molasses.
- The last Japanese combatant of WWII was taken into custody on Guam after he was discovered living in a cave and subsisting on nuts, mangos, papaya, breadfruit, snails, and rats. When U.S. forces took Guam in 1944, Shoichi Yokoi retreated into the jungle instead of surrendering. He was "captured" there on January 24, 1972.
- When the volcano Krakatua (or Krakatoa) erupted explosively on August 27, 1883, blowing away two-thirds of the Indonesian island of Rakata, it produced one of the loudest noises known. People almost 3,000 miles away heard it. Incidentally, debris from the eruption caused such brilliant red sunsets in New England three months later that people in Connecticut and New York called in fire alarms.
- Peter Cruzatte had only one eye when he signed on with the Lewis and Clark expedition, which helps explain why, while hunting with Meriwether Lewis, he shot his buckskinned captain in the left buttock, thinking he was an elk.
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