World history quiz thread

Started by milkanannan, Sat 07/10/2017 05:13:52

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Mandle

Quote from: Ponch on Sat 09/11/2019 13:38:10
I'm starting to wonder if you're taking this seriously.  :wink:

Hey... Im just going off the clues and not googling anything...

Jack

We don't spend as much time with cowboys as you do, Mr Cow.

Most of us have to go off what we learned from Die Hard.

Roy Rogers?


Ponch

Quote from: Mandle on Sat 09/11/2019 15:45:21
Quote from: Jack on Sat 09/11/2019 15:40:18
Roy Rogers?
TRIGGERED!!!
:cheesy:

Okay, how about this clue: He once played himself in a movie about how he won the Medal of Honor.

Mandle

Okay, with a bit of research...

Spoiler
Audie Murphy
[close]

lorenzo

You're probably right, given the photo in his Wikipedia page, where he has more medals on his jacket than buttons: (laugh)

Spoiler

[close]

I've seen him in a bunch of films, but I didn't remember his name. Nor knew about his medals. Nor that he was a veteran. Thinking about it, I knew very little about him...

Ponch

Audie Murphy it is. Hell of a good soldier. His PTSD made a wreck of his later life though.

Anyhoo, it's Mandle's turn now.

milkanannan

OK Mandle, give us something good...

Mandle

By pretending he had never read a letter he most likely saved humanity. (or, as with most history, so the story goes)

Who was he and what was the circumstance?

lorenzo

Stanislav Petrov? The Russian man who refused to launch a nuclear attack during the Cold War? Although I'm not sure that a letter was involved.

milkanannan

Yeah Cold War has got to be connected to the answer if we're talking about destruction of humanity. If an attack was ordered, it's unlikely to have occurred after the installation of the nuclear hotline between the Soviet Union and the US in the early 1960s. So...the answer must be someone operating as, or connected closely to, Secretary of Defence (or the Soviet equivalent) between 1945 and 1960. Can anyone name these people? (I can't!)

Mandle

Quote from: lorenzo on Mon 11/11/2019 12:24:37
Stanislav Petrov? The Russian man who refused to launch a nuclear attack during the Cold War? Although I'm not sure that a letter was involved.

Not the answer I was looking for, but I must look into the story of this man... He saved us all!

Mandle

It is the closest we have even come (they we publicly know of) to deliberate nuclear war.

Mandle


milkanannan

I take it this was connected to the Cuban Missile Crisis? Even if it is, I don't recall any story like that at all, so I'm tapping out. It has been almost a month on this one, so perhaps no one knows?

Mandle

Quote from: man n fist on Tue 03/12/2019 16:26:33
I take it this was connected to the Cuban Missile Crisis?

Yes.

milkanannan

Another week rolls by. Does anyone know it?

Mandle

I will just answer it so we can move on...

This is from an article on Khrushchev...

"On October 26, Khrushchev sent Kennedy another letter. In this he proposed that the Soviet Union would be willing to remove the missiles in Cuba in exchange for a promise by the United States that they would not invade Cuba. The next day a second letter from Khrushchev arrived demanding that the United States remove their nuclear bases in Turkey.

While the president and his advisers were analyzing Khrushchev's two letters, news came through that a U-2 plane had been shot down over Cuba. The leaders of the military, reminding Kennedy of the promise he had made, argued that he should now give orders for the bombing of Cuba. Kennedy refused and instead sent a letter to Khrushchev accepting the terms of his first letter.

Khrushchev agreed and gave orders for the missiles to be dismantled."


Even though the second, more threatening, letter came later, Kennedy, in a brilliant move, pretended that he had never seen it and replied to the first, more conciliatory, letter instead.

It worked and we are all still alive today to look back in wonder and terror at how close we came to the edge.

Jack



The last real president of the United States.

Does anyone know any more incredibly stupid things that Kennedy avoided? I got one.

Mandle

Quote from: Jack on Mon 09/12/2019 22:38:52
Does anyone know any more incredibly stupid things that Kennedy avoided?

Old age?

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