The What You Remember About Historical Events Off Of The Top Of Your Head Game

[Creed Malay]

 This may be fun. Or it may not be! We shall see.

This is what I propose. Each person posting in the thread posts all they can off handly remember about a historical event suggested by the previous poster, and then names the next historical event for the next poster to post about.
Only post things you can remember off the top of your head - no fair googling. We are sharing pre-existing knowledge and building us a gestalt of our shared head-facts, here, and learning through osmosis.
Course, if anyone gets a thing wrong, feel free to post about that. We don't want our gestalt soiled by no dirty old misinformation.

I set the game away with The Great Fire Of London.

* Happened some time in 1666.
* 17th century Bridget Jones equivelant Samuel Pepys buried some parmezan cheese in his back garden to save it from firey doom.
* It started at Pie Lane and ended at Pudding Corner.
* Though London burned pretty much down to nothing, less than a dozen people died. Yay!
* Was possibly started by some old ladies cow kicking over a lantern. But maybe I'm misremembering that bit.

Next historical event to be facted up -  The Battle of Hastings.

[magintz]

Happened in 1066.... in Hastings... and it was a battle. I wont post further as this isn't really knowledge but is all I recall

[SSH]

What's the next event, magintz?

[RickJ]

Was possibly started by some old ladies cow kicking over a lantern. But maybe I'm misremembering that bit.

Mrs. O'Leary's cow is widely credited with starting the great Chicago fire.   Apparently this kind of thing is a more common than many believe.

[Stupot]

Actually the majority of the Battle of Hastings happened in Battle, about 5 miles north-west of Hastings.

[Creed Malay]

So it was the Battle of Battle? How delightful!

[magintz]

I also recall it was October 14th. I remember that because it was the first date I went on an airplane; I visited California and before going we learned about BoH at school.

Okay, how about we throw it across the pond?

The Declaration of Independence?

[Sam.]

John Hancok set the world record for handwriting seen from space.

Next event, the french revolution

[Nacho]

I know a lot about the Hastings battle... We start with urban legends. King Harold was not shot dead in the eye by an arrow... Seems that hurting the eye was a way of depicting betrayal in those times, and that's what they did in the Bayeaux' s tapestry, but it was not true.

[Creed Malay]

Why did Hancock sign so big? Day of the Tentacle taught me that it was because he'd been told that "chicks dig a guy with a big... signature", but I am not totally convinced by that...

[magintz]

I think the ladies mentioned something about a big cock and he ended up signing john hanCOCK! Ended up without said booty.

[Snarky]

French revolution:

Started in 1789 or thereabouts with a fairly moderate attempt to update some laws to avert an economic crisis, calling in a convention of the Estates that hadn't met for a long time. The whole thing gradually got out of hand, they decided to change the constitution (still with some pretty moderate changes), clashed with the military. Riots, storming of the Bastille, the King eventually deposed and placed in house arrest. Deepening economic crisis, war with German states, uprisings against the aristocracy. King tries to flee, captured and executed in 1791-ish.

Radical Jacobins take control of the revolutionary government, led by ... [damn! I'm blanking on his name]. They launch The Terror in 1792, declaring many thousands of people counter-revolutionaries, traitors and criminals and putting them to death on the guillotine. Most of the original revolutionaries are executed, but the majority of victims are poor. Eventually, the parliament or whatever have had enough (many probably fearing for their own lives), kill whatshisname. The Terror subsides, though political oppression continues in milder forms.

France run by a succession of weak juntas who are unable to resolve nation's problems (continued economic depression and ongoing wars) until Napoleon and allies take power in a coup, effectively ending the French Revolution around 1799. Napoleon quickly dispatches rivals and achieves absolute power as dictator and later Emperor.

Next: How about Indian independence?

[Edit: The guy's name was Robespierre, King Louis XVI was executed in January 1793, the Reign of Terror was in 1793-1794, and the "succession of weak juntas" was the Directory, a corrupt and ineffectual governing body controlled by various unscrupulous politicians scheming against each other. Other than these details I think I got most of it right.]

[Baron]

Indian Independence: It was 1947, Ghandi was making a fashion statement and cheating on his [salt] taxes.  Muslims and Hindus make massive migrations to the new religiously homogenous states of Pakistan (east and west) and India, resulting in many a bloody encounter.  Bollywood is still in black and white.

OK, there's this guy who won an election to become the new head of state of his country.  He is 42 years old, and is considered one of the most charismatic politicians to come along for a long time.   He is taking over from an old guy who was the supreme commander in a war that ended fifteen years previously.  Who is this guy?

[Trent R]

Why did Hancock sign so big? Day of the Tentacle taught me that it was because he'd been told that "chicks dig a guy with a big... signature", but I am not totally convinced by that...

I was taught that he it was basically huge to openly prove his defiance against the King and that he was not timid in the least.

As for Baron's mystery person... I'm gonna go ahead and guess Hitler.


~Trent

[Makeout Patrol]

Indian Independence: It was 1947, Ghandi was making a fashion statement and cheating on his [salt] taxes.  Muslims and Hindus make massive migrations to the new religiously homogenous states of Pakistan (east and west) and India, resulting in many a bloody encounter.  Bollywood is still in black and white.

OK, there's this guy who won an election to become the new head of state of his country.  He is 42 years old, and is considered one of the most charismatic politicians to come along for a long time.   He is taking over from an old guy who was the supreme commander in a war that ended fifteen years previously.  Who is this guy?

This might be too obvious to even answer, but it's Barack Obama. Let's see what the next poster remembers about the Cuban Missile Crisis.

[Snarky]

I don't think it's that obvious, Makeout Patrol. First of all, Obama isn't 42, he's 47. Secondly, the guy he took over from was never "supreme commander in a war that ended fifteen years previously." (The closest would be Cheney, who was secretary of defense--not supreme commander--during the Gulf War, which ended 17 years before Obama came to office.)

Hitler seems like a much better fit, though some details don't match.

[Sam.]

Going out on a wildly flailing limb, but Dmitry Medvedev?

He's not very charismatic though..

[SSH]

Cuban Missile Crisis: Castro takes over Cuba, gets all chummy with the Russians who start preparing to install nuclear missiles. USA invades the Bay of Pigs and gets owned because Matt Damon's son left a model ship beside his lover's bed. JFK blockades Cuba so that the Russian ships carrying the missiles can't get through. WWIII narrowly averted because US schoolkids hide under their desks.

Next up: Napoleon's downfall

[Andail]

It took place in Waterloo in the beginning of the 19th century. That's about all I know 
I know he was placed on St. Helen in exile, but I can't remember if that was before or after Waterloo. I also know he lived on Elbe (spelling?) in the mediterranean sea in some sort of exile at one point.

Wow, I suck at history.

Next: The battle of Lützen

[Jared]

Okay, I'm going to fluff on this and go back one because I have no idea what the Battle of Lutzen even was, but as for Napoleon...

Napoleon had two separate falls from grace, both spectacular and in quick succession, the first in the collapse of his empire in 1814 shortly after the Battle of Tolouse and the second, far more famous after the Battle of Waterloo in ... June (?) 1815. It's a matter that historians will debate a lot, but in both cases a severe underestimation of his chief strategic rival the British commander-in-chief The Duke of Wellington seems to have been one of the biggest factors, although seeds were also sown with his lack of understanding of foreign relations. Napoleon, in his days of obsession of invading England had planned to destroy Great Britain through economic strangling by controlling all the docks and trading routes of Europe and thus forcing a surrender from Pitt. He did achieve mastery of Europe - aside from Portugal, which was England's chief ally.

At this point Spain had been a willing ally of the French and it had been so for decades - but due to the renewed fighting in such close quarters and losses that they had suffered under Napoleon already and pressure from England Spain's allegiance was in danger of shifting. Napoleon saw it necessary to take Spain and Portugal quickly rather than a gradual victory through diplomacy. To achieve his ends, he effectively kidnapped King Joseph at gunpoint and forced him to sign a peace treaty. This did not sit well with the Spanish who launched the first ever sustained guerilla war against his troops, which would cost French armies tens of thousands of troops and make lasting peace impossible.

In 1808, in the Battle of Vimiero, Wellington notably became the first English commander to turn back a French army and win a battle. This was ignored by Napoleon, as the battle was a small affair. However, to the victories of Oporto, Talavera, Busaca and Salamanca more attention should have been taken - Napoleon's major reflex action was to accuse the Marshall commanding Spain at the time of gross incompetence, generally before replacing them with undue haste. Despite his insistence that there was no excuse for losing to the British forces at no point did he actually take control of Spain - even after he promised to he instead went on his terror expedition to Russia, wherein he assembled the largest army ever seen in the world, and preceded to record the greatest number of casualties outside of battle through a brutal forced march. Ironically the political rift with the Tsar of Russia formed after the Tsar followed Wellington's battles and believed the course of the war to be turning.

When it came to Waterloo, Napoleon could indeed have had a great victory - he outnumbered the Allied armies, and succeeded in 'humbugging' Wellington by splitting the British force away from their key Prussian allies and their commander General Blucher who comprised roughly half of the opposing force. However, Napoleon had moved slow - although he forced the Prussians to retreat he did not advance far enough to know their location and he gave Wellington time to select the ideal battleground. Furthermore, he arrogantly assumed that victory was his and actually had his best commanders stationed in France to defend the nation from the Austrian and Spanish armies. His one commander who had faced Wellington personally (which Napoleon had not), Nicolas Soult, was scorned and insulted openly by Napoleon when he offered advice, and morale suffered.

His most famous mistake was splitting his force into two, losing his biggest advantage, so that they could pin down the Prussian army and stop them from relieving Wellington. The problem was that he had no idea where the Prussian army actually was. The entire day went badly from thereon in, to the point where at the end of the day Wellington complained about how easy the battle had been for him. Napoleon clung onto hope until the very end, though, even claiming that the advancing Prussian army was his own reinforcements to his men, to try and rally them for one final charge.

I'm not sure but I believe that Napoleon turned himself in after a month or so in the run, as in the aftermath the Prussian army ran amok allegedly plundering towns all over France.

Sorry, I just wanted my moment in the sun... and I'm sure that there's a few errors there (aside from differences in historical perspective)