Interesting Facts and Stories
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DasTiger
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We got ya beat. The top three are higher than that. Granted it was in a different era with more advanced weapons.
http://www.civilwarhome.com/Battles.htm
Not that the totals are a good thing. I just try to remind people how brutal and costly the Civil War was. As any war is.
Having a look at those numbers it appears Robert E Lee was the man... several times he entered the field of battle with fewer men than the Union armies but still managed a victory. And how the hell did he win the battle below. He was outnumbered by more than 2:1??
#3
Battle of Chancellorsville
Date: May 1-4, 1863 Location:<small> Virginia
</small>Confederate Commander:<small> Robert E. Lee
</small>Union Commander:<small> Joseph Hooker
</small>Confederate Forces Engaged: <small>60,892
</small>Union Forces Engaged: <small>133,868
</small>Winner:<small> Confederacy
</small>Casualties:<small> 30,099 (17,278 Union and 12,821 Confederate) </small>
#3
Battle of Chancellorsville
Date: May 1-4, 1863 Location:<small> Virginia
</small>Confederate Commander:<small> Robert E. Lee
</small>Union Commander:<small> Joseph Hooker
</small>Confederate Forces Engaged: <small>60,892
</small>Union Forces Engaged: <small>133,868
</small>Winner:<small> Confederacy
</small>Casualties:<small> 30,099 (17,278 Union and 12,821 Confederate) </small>
Im not an authority, but two reason's come to mind...
1. Stonewall Jackson. He marched his forces onto the flank of the deploying Union, and just rolled them up. It would be Jackson's last battle as he was shot later that evening by his own troops, and died several days later from complications after his left arm was amputated. When Lee was told of Jackson's loss, he was heard to say... "He has lost his left arm, but I have lost my right arm."
2. Joseph Hooker. He is remembered most notably as providing the nickname for the women who followed the army to ply their trade, 'Hookers'. And for this disastrous defeat only shortly after being made commander of the Army of the Potomac.
A few days before his return to Paris Napoleon Bonaparte wrote to his lover Josephine, and told her to stop washing.
Now that does sound a bit Frenchy......I have heard that the French do not wash as often as they should.....Is that true or What.
Did you know that if you measure three times round your head, that is the lengh of your Body ?
Ha Ha Ha .......now that is a good example to prove me wrong....Like It
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In 2008, 88-year-old Felix Dadaev, a former dancer and juggler, disclosed that he had been one of four look-alikes whom Stalin had employed as decoys to mislead enemies and potential assassins.
Felix Dadaev (left)
Felix Dadaev (left)
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Joseph Phillippe Lemercier Laroche was the only black man to perish in the Titanic sinking.
Laroche, shown on the photo, was on board with his pregnant wife Juliette and their two young daughters. The story of this interracial family did not become widely known until three years after the movie's release, when the Chicago Museum of Science & Industry and the Titanic Historical Society featured the information as part of a Titanic exhibit. Joseph Laroche was born in Haiti in 1889 into a powerful family — his uncle, Dessalines M. Cincinnatus Leconte, was the president of Haiti.
When he was fifteen, Joseph Laroche left Haiti to study engineering in Beauvais, France. Several years later, he met Juliette Lafargue, the 22-year-old daughter of a local wine seller. The two eventually married. Despite having an engineering degree, Joseph's skin color left him unable to find employment in France.-
The Laroches decided to return to Haiti and booked second-class reservations on the Titanic. After the ship struck an iceberg, Joseph loaded his wife and children onto a lifeboat and he went down with the ship.-
His body was never recovered.-
Laroche, shown on the photo, was on board with his pregnant wife Juliette and their two young daughters. The story of this interracial family did not become widely known until three years after the movie's release, when the Chicago Museum of Science & Industry and the Titanic Historical Society featured the information as part of a Titanic exhibit. Joseph Laroche was born in Haiti in 1889 into a powerful family — his uncle, Dessalines M. Cincinnatus Leconte, was the president of Haiti.
When he was fifteen, Joseph Laroche left Haiti to study engineering in Beauvais, France. Several years later, he met Juliette Lafargue, the 22-year-old daughter of a local wine seller. The two eventually married. Despite having an engineering degree, Joseph's skin color left him unable to find employment in France.-
The Laroches decided to return to Haiti and booked second-class reservations on the Titanic. After the ship struck an iceberg, Joseph loaded his wife and children onto a lifeboat and he went down with the ship.-
His body was never recovered.-
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Operation Dynamo
During late May and early June, of 1940, French, British and Canadian troops were trapped between the English Channel - near Dunkirk - and advancing German forces. Not just a disastrous defeat, the situation was a catastrophe-in-the-making because there appeared no way to quickly evacuate hundreds of thousands of stranded Allied troops.
Winston Churchill called the events in Northern France the greatest military defeat in centuries. He warned that "the whole root, the core, and brain of the British Army" was stranded (and likely to die) in Dunkirk.
Then the Operation Dynamo was put into motion to rescue men who seemingly had no means of escape. Using every available ship, including the smallest vessel, Britain undertook what Churchill called a "miracle of deliverance."
By the time the last boat left Dunkirk harbor, about 338,226 soldiers (198,229 British and 139,997 French) were evacuated by a fleet of 860 boats.
There's a reason why the evacuation was dubbed "Operation Dynamo." During World War One, Dover Castle was powered with electricity by a dynamo located beneath the castle. Used as naval headquarters during World War Two, the dynamo room is where British Vice-Admiral Bertram Ramsay planned the Dunkirk rescue mission. It is also the place where Ramsay briefed Churchill while rescue efforts were underway.-
The story of the Dunkirk Little Ships that helped to rescue members of the British Expeditionary Force from France has gone down in history as a defining moment of the Second World War.-
More than 700 private boats sailed from Ramsgate to Dunkirk between May 26 and June 4, 1940, and participated in rescuing over 338,000 trapped Allied soldiers.-
awesomestories
telegraph.co.uk
During late May and early June, of 1940, French, British and Canadian troops were trapped between the English Channel - near Dunkirk - and advancing German forces. Not just a disastrous defeat, the situation was a catastrophe-in-the-making because there appeared no way to quickly evacuate hundreds of thousands of stranded Allied troops.
Winston Churchill called the events in Northern France the greatest military defeat in centuries. He warned that "the whole root, the core, and brain of the British Army" was stranded (and likely to die) in Dunkirk.
Then the Operation Dynamo was put into motion to rescue men who seemingly had no means of escape. Using every available ship, including the smallest vessel, Britain undertook what Churchill called a "miracle of deliverance."
By the time the last boat left Dunkirk harbor, about 338,226 soldiers (198,229 British and 139,997 French) were evacuated by a fleet of 860 boats.
There's a reason why the evacuation was dubbed "Operation Dynamo." During World War One, Dover Castle was powered with electricity by a dynamo located beneath the castle. Used as naval headquarters during World War Two, the dynamo room is where British Vice-Admiral Bertram Ramsay planned the Dunkirk rescue mission. It is also the place where Ramsay briefed Churchill while rescue efforts were underway.-
The story of the Dunkirk Little Ships that helped to rescue members of the British Expeditionary Force from France has gone down in history as a defining moment of the Second World War.-
More than 700 private boats sailed from Ramsgate to Dunkirk between May 26 and June 4, 1940, and participated in rescuing over 338,000 trapped Allied soldiers.-
awesomestories
telegraph.co.uk
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"Pavlov's House" was a four-story building, in the center of Stalingrad, built parallel to the embankment of the river Volga and overseeing the "9th January Square", which was scene of brutal fighting from 23 September to 25 November 1942, during the battle of Stalingrad. It was held and defended by a 25-man understrenght platoon and Soviet citizens under direct command of Junior Sergeant Yakov Pavlov. To prevent being isolated, a communication trench was dug to Soviet positions outside.-
The house was attacked by German soldiers, and a platoon of the Soviet 13th Guards Rifle Division was ordered to seize and defend it. The platoon was led by Junior Sgt. Yakov Pavlov, a low-level noncommissioned officer serving as acting platoon commander since the unit's lieutenant and senior sergeants had all been wounded or killed. The attack on the building was successful, although the fighting was brutal, with only four men in the 30-man platoon surviving the assault.-
The strategic benefit of the house was its position on a cross-street giving the defenders a 1 km line of sight to the north, south and west.-
After several days, reinforcements and resupply arrived for Pavlov's men, bringing the unit up to a 25-man understrength platoon and equipping the defenders with machine guns, anti-tank rifles, and mortars. In keeping with Stalin's Order No. 227 - "not one step back", Sgt. Pavlov was ordered to fortify the building and defend it to the last bullet and the last man. Taking this advice to heart, Pavlov ordered the building to be surrounded with four layers of barbed wire and minefields, and set up machine-gun posts in every available window facing the square. In the early stages of the defense, Pavlov discovered that a PTRS-41 anti-tank rifle he had mounted on the roof was particularly effective when used to ambush unsuspecting German tanks; once the tanks had approached to within 25 meters of the building, their thin turret-roof armor became exposed to AT rifle fire from above, but they were unable to elevate their weapons enough to retaliate. Pavlov had reportedly destroyed nearly a dozen tanks personally using this tactic.
For better internal communication, Pavlov's soldiers breached the walls in the basement and upper floors, and dug a communications trench to Soviet positions outside. Supplies were brought in via the trench or by boats crossing the river, defying German air raids and shelling. Nevertheless, food and especially water was in short supply. Lacking beds, the soldiers tried to sleep on insulation wool torn off pipes but were subjected to harassing fire every night in order to try and break their resistance.
The Germans attacked the building several times a day. Each time German infantry or tanks tried to cross the square and to close in on the house, Pavlov's men laid down a withering barrage of machine gun and AT rifle fire from the basement, the windows and from the roof top, devastating the German attackers and forcing them to retreat. By mid-November, Pavlov's men reportedly had to use lulls in the fighting to run out and kick over the heaped piles of German corpses so they could not be used as cover by the next round of attackers.
Eventually the defenders, as well as the Soviet civilians who kept living in the basement all that time, held out during intensive fighting from 27 September - 25 November 1942, when they were relieved by the counter-attacking Soviet forces.
Pavlov was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union for his actions.-
"Pavlov's House" today:
It was rebuild after the battle and a memorial, made from bricks from the original building, was attached to the eastern outer wall of the complex. The text on this memorial reads: "In this house, military and workers heroic deeds were united."
ww2museums
wiki
The house was attacked by German soldiers, and a platoon of the Soviet 13th Guards Rifle Division was ordered to seize and defend it. The platoon was led by Junior Sgt. Yakov Pavlov, a low-level noncommissioned officer serving as acting platoon commander since the unit's lieutenant and senior sergeants had all been wounded or killed. The attack on the building was successful, although the fighting was brutal, with only four men in the 30-man platoon surviving the assault.-
The strategic benefit of the house was its position on a cross-street giving the defenders a 1 km line of sight to the north, south and west.-
After several days, reinforcements and resupply arrived for Pavlov's men, bringing the unit up to a 25-man understrength platoon and equipping the defenders with machine guns, anti-tank rifles, and mortars. In keeping with Stalin's Order No. 227 - "not one step back", Sgt. Pavlov was ordered to fortify the building and defend it to the last bullet and the last man. Taking this advice to heart, Pavlov ordered the building to be surrounded with four layers of barbed wire and minefields, and set up machine-gun posts in every available window facing the square. In the early stages of the defense, Pavlov discovered that a PTRS-41 anti-tank rifle he had mounted on the roof was particularly effective when used to ambush unsuspecting German tanks; once the tanks had approached to within 25 meters of the building, their thin turret-roof armor became exposed to AT rifle fire from above, but they were unable to elevate their weapons enough to retaliate. Pavlov had reportedly destroyed nearly a dozen tanks personally using this tactic.
For better internal communication, Pavlov's soldiers breached the walls in the basement and upper floors, and dug a communications trench to Soviet positions outside. Supplies were brought in via the trench or by boats crossing the river, defying German air raids and shelling. Nevertheless, food and especially water was in short supply. Lacking beds, the soldiers tried to sleep on insulation wool torn off pipes but were subjected to harassing fire every night in order to try and break their resistance.
The Germans attacked the building several times a day. Each time German infantry or tanks tried to cross the square and to close in on the house, Pavlov's men laid down a withering barrage of machine gun and AT rifle fire from the basement, the windows and from the roof top, devastating the German attackers and forcing them to retreat. By mid-November, Pavlov's men reportedly had to use lulls in the fighting to run out and kick over the heaped piles of German corpses so they could not be used as cover by the next round of attackers.
Eventually the defenders, as well as the Soviet civilians who kept living in the basement all that time, held out during intensive fighting from 27 September - 25 November 1942, when they were relieved by the counter-attacking Soviet forces.
Pavlov was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union for his actions.-
"Pavlov's House" today:
It was rebuild after the battle and a memorial, made from bricks from the original building, was attached to the eastern outer wall of the complex. The text on this memorial reads: "In this house, military and workers heroic deeds were united."
ww2museums
wiki