Did you know........

The Russian Czar Peter the Great worked incognito at a ship yard in the Dutch Republic in 1697 due to his desire to learn more about ship building and the creation of a navy.

you have been busy Paaskynen!

Did I know?

briefly

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yes

Thanks

Did you know you share your municipal coat of arms with a town in a foreign country?

The biggest naval engagement (before the battle of Leyte Gulf perhaps) took place in 1790 between the navies of Russia and Sweden in the battle of ruotsinsalmi/svensksund. Over 500 ships and boats took part and some 30 000 men.
The battle was a resounding victory for the Swedes, incidentally.

Hi Steve,

Thanx I could go on for hours, but have to work.
Which town has a similar coat of arms as Tornio?

Peter the Great also made a famous visit to England in 1698. It took us a few decades to get over it.

Fascinating account of his stay in England (by Arthur MagGreggor) here

http://www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/information_areas/journals/seventeenth/190116.pdf

Peter seemed to take a great delight in all things mechanical, before wrecking them.

Haparanda and Tornio have adopted a common coat of arms which they use on their respective municipal flag

from http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/xn-hato.html

OK, but that is a new coat of arms and we do not really consider Sweden as a foreign country . I thought you meant the present one, a red tower on a blue field (designed in a time when people mistakenly thought that the name of the town referred to a tower)

Detail: Tornio is actually the Finnified version of the Swedish name Torneå ("Torne river"), while Haparanda is a Swedified version for the Finnish name Haaparanta ("aspen bank")

Well, one more entry, before I definitely call it a day:

The oddest, or most uneven, naval engagement of WWII saw British destroyer HMS Glowworm pitched alone againts the German heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper (during the German conquest of Norway, 1940). Severely battered and with all its guns disabled the destroyer rammed the cruiser and the surviving crew of the only servicable cannon remaining on the Glowworm (immobile, but not out of order), fired their last three shells into the side of the Hipper while the German deck crew looked on dumbfounded from overhead.

The British ship subsequently sank with the loss of many hands, while many others were saved by the crew of the Hipper (there was still some chivalry left at the beginning of the war).

Peter the Great's Queen-consort, Catherine I (not the Great) was a actually a peasant girl from either Latvia or Lithuania. Historians seem to disagree on which specific Baltic state she hailed from.

BBB
The word posh, which denotes luxurious rooms or accomodations, originated when ticket agents in England marked the tickets of travelers going by ship to the Orient.

Since there was no air conditioning in those days, it was always better to have a cabin on the shady side of the ship as it passed through the Mediterranean and Suez area.

Since the sun is in the south, those with money paid extra to get cabin's on the left, or port, traveling to the Asia, and on the right, or starboard, when returning to Europe.

Hence their tickets were marked with the initials for Port Outbound Starboard Homebound, or POSH.

Never knew that about "posh", a nice tidbit.

The thin red line became the khaki line during and as a result of the (2nd) Boer War, because the red uniforms made the British soldiers (and especially their officers) too easy targets for the Boer sharpshooters.

BBB
The German Kaiser Wilhelm II had a withered arm and often hid the fact by posing with his hand resting on a sword, or by holding gloves.

THE US ARMY CAMEL CORPS

It was George H. Crosman, a U.S. Army second lieutenant who fought in the Seminole wars in Florida, who first proposed the introduction of camels to America. His argument, articulated here by his friend and fellow camel enthusiast E. F. Miller of Ipswich, Massachusetts, was:

For strength in carrying burdens, for patient endurance of labor, and privation of food, water & rest, and in some respects for speed also, the camel and dromedary (as the Arabian camel is called) are unrivaled among animals. The ordinary loads for camels are from seven to nine to ten hundred pounds each, and with these they can travel from thirty to forty miles per day, for many days in succession. They will go without water, and with but little food, for six or eight days, or it is said even longer. Their feet are alike well suited for traversing grassy or sandy plains, or rough, rocky & hilly paths, and they require no shoeing...

Reasonable though this was, no one in Washington took Crosman seriously, until he befriended Henry C. Wayne, a Quartermaster, and fellow major (Crosman had been promoted several times by then). Wayne was able to convince Jefferson Davis, a senator from Mississippi, that the Army should give camels a trial.

In his capacity as chairman of the Senate Committee on Military Affairs, Davis regularly advocated for the importation of camels on an experimental basis, but to no avail. It wasn't until Davis was appointed Secretary of War in 1852 that he was able to make an official recommendation on the subject of camels. Even then, it took another three years, during which time the matter was much discussed in the press, before the government took action. On March 3, 1855 Congress appropriated $30,000 for the project, and the stage was set for the birth of the U.S. Camel Corps.

http://www.drumbarracks.org/original%20website/Camel%20Corps.html

A large part of the U. S. Constitution is based on the Iroquois Five Nations (later the Six Nations after the Tuscarors joined them in the 1700's).

ABOUT THE IROQUOIS CONSTITUTION
Prepared by Gerald Murphy (The Cleveland Free-Net - aa300)

During the bi-centennial year of The Constitution of the United States, a number of books were written concerning the origin of that long-revered document. One of these, The Genius of the People, alleged that after the many weeks of debate a committee sat to combine the many agreements into one formal document. The chairman of the committee was John Rutledge of South Carolina. He had served in an earlier time, along with Ben Franklin and others, at the Stamp Act Congress, held in Albany, New York. This Committee of Detail was having trouble deciding just how to formalize the many items of discussion into one document that would satisfy one and all. Rutledge proposed they model the new government they were forming into something along the lines of the Iroquois League of Nations, which had been functioning as a democratic government for hundreds of years, and which he had observed in Albany.

http://tuscaroras.com/pages/history/about_iroquois_constitution.html

A submersible vessel was used in the Revolutionary War.

In the American Revolutionary War, a manned underwater craft named the American Turtle (or the "water-machine") was used against the British Navy. David Brushnell designed this ingenious machine in 1771. The submarine was a one manned, egg-shaped vessel which was propelled by hand-operated screw-like devices. It was bottom-heavy in order for it to remain upright. The operator would plant a submersible mine that could be triggered by a simple clockwork mechanism. He could paddle away after he attached the magazine of gunpowder onto the enemy ship. The operator could stay under for about thirty minutes
The American Turtle was ready for her initial mission on September 6, 1776, just after midnight in the New York Harbor. The operator, Ezra Lee, failed in his attempt to sink the HMS Eagle because he failed to secure the screw of the gunpowder magazine to the ship. The Turtle made two more attempts to sink enemy ships but they both failed. The end of the American Turtle is unknown. Some think she was accidentally sunk, dismantled, or destroyed. The Turtle was the very first submarine to be used in the art of war.

http://www.123helpme.com/view.asp?id=23281

BBB
The "Calabash" pipe, most often associated with Sherlock Holmes, was not used by him until William Gillette (an American) portrayed Holmes onstage. Gillette needed a pipe he could keep in his mouth while he spoke his lines.

Not to rain on your parade, BBB, but I believe that the Port Outbound Starboard Home story has been discredited by most linguists as 'folk etymology.' Which just means that they don't know where the expression came from.

In 1918 the Bolshevic firing squad failed to kill the daughters of Czar Nicholas II in their first volley, because, as it turned out, many bullets had been deflected by the jewels the girls had sewn into their corsets.

BBB
Sheriff came from Shire Reeve. During early years of feudal rule in England, each shire had a reeve who was the law for that shire. When the term was brought to the United States it was shortned to Sheriff.

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