Forgotten History

We know history, or the basic narrative we're taught in school. Or the mythology written by the winners. Or the history as agreed upon by the government or mainstream for desired political and ideological purposes.

But there are people, events, anecdotes of significant historical importance or of extreme novelty interest that's obscure for whatever reason. Or they were simply just "forgotten" and left to rot in the dustbins of history. I don't simply just want this thread to be a Reader's Digest or whatever where we go Did you know... but also a place where we can debate alternative thoughts, theories, perceptions about our past.

But for fun, here's the first entry in FORGOTTEN HISTORY:

A pro-Nazi U.S. Army unit in WWII

America’s Secret Nuclear Test

The Great (Forgotten) Debate: Reagan/RFK 1967








Why was this fascinating peculiar encounter forgotten?



Source: National Review

10 Unreleased Video Game Consoles

http://www.pcmag.com/slideshow/story/264435/10-unreleased-video-game-consoles/1

source: PC Magazine

We have a member around here who actually went to one of these shows.

The Clash at Bond's Casino

The Adventures of Superpup (1958)









Source: Wikipedia, Cracked.com

In honor of yesterday's "Rapture," here is a list...

10 Failed Doomsday Predictions

My favorite:



http://www.livescience.com/7926-10-failed-doomsday-predictions.html

In 1957, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Department of Defense conducted 29 nuclear tests at the Nevada Proving Grounds in "Operation Plumbob." Plumbbob released some 58,300 kilocuries of radioiodine (I-131) into the atmosphere. This was more than twice as much as any other continental test series. This produced total civilian radiation exposures amounting to 120 million person-rads of thyroid tissue exposure (about 32% of all exposure due to continental nuclear tests). This can be expected to eventually cause about 38,000 cases of thyroid cancer, leading to some 1900 deaths.

One of the test devices, "Hood," at 74 kilotons, was the largest nuclear device ever exploded in the continental US. It was also a thermonuclear (hydrogen) bomb, violating a solemn promise by our government to our people that no thermonuclears would ever be tested in the continental US. Lying f***k.

The Clint Eastwood/John Wayne Movie (We Never Got)



source: http://www.nndb.com/people/849/000022783/

America's Forgotten Presidential Sex Scandal







http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-s...itical-history/

A Short History of Lady Pirates

An excerpt:



http://img.slate.com/blogs/blogs/browbea...pisrc=obnetwork

How Nazi Scientists Tried to Create an Army of Talking Dogs





source: TIME Magazine

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20110526/wl...sfullworldyahoo

What, no "Arf wiedersehen"?

Signor V.

Ronald Reagan Had Issues With the Ending of E.T.

]

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2011/06/ronald_reagan_et.html

The GOP chant of the 1884 election: "Ma, Ma, where's my Pa? Gone to the White House, ha-ha-ha." A real toe-tapper.

What was really hidden was Cleveland's secret operation for cancer of the jaw. After being diagnosed, he gathered a team of doctors plus a dentist and announced he was going fishing on Long Island Sound on a yacht borrowed from a millionaire friend. He was operated on successfully and fitted with a rubber prosthesis. Although hints of his bout with cancer were published during his presidency, he got away with it. The full details weren't revealed untin after his death.

The American Medical Association did a review of secret illnesses of presidents, and how they were treated. Cleveland's was the earliest case, and they concluded that he was the only president who had competent medical care. Other cases were shocking:

Wilson's physician, Cary Grayson, a Navy doctor, had only one year of medical school. He and Wilson's wife conspired to keep his debilitating stroke secret--in effect, she ran the presidency for more than a year.

Harding's physician was a naturopath of doubtful credentials. He diagnosed Harding's extreme cardiac illness as "indigestion," leading to his death.

FDR's physicians deliberately kept his atherosclerosis secret from everyone. His blood pressure regularly was 300/200. They treated him with digitalis. In his last months, he was unable to concentrate for more than an hour a day, and often zonked out in the middle of sentences.

Eisenhower's physician, Howard Snyder, a ENT, deliberately expunged a chapter of Ike's medical record while he was a general that reported a moderate heart attack. Grateful Ike made him the White House physician when he was elected. Ike had another, major, heart attack in Denver in 1955. Snyder showed up two hours after being warned by Mamie and found Ike in extremis. He waited 12 hours before contacting a local hospital, then allowed Ike to get dressed and walk under his own power to the car that drove him to the hospital.

As for JFK, who may have been our chronically sickest president, here is a relevant selection from Sally Bedell Smith's "Grace and Power":

JFK’s life necessarily revolved around the vast responsibilities of the office, but less obviously his schedule included unusual accommodations to his myriad ailments. His principal physicians, Janet Travell and Admiral George Burkley, worked in a room on the ground floor, and he had an array of specialists in regular contact by telephone that included an allergist, endocrinologist (for his Addison’s disease), gastroenterologist (for colitis), urologist (for urinary tract infections resulting from venereal disease), and orthopedist (for his degenerative spine).
JFK’s regimen of strong medications requires strict oversight and constant calibration, especially the corticosteroids for his Addison’s. To treat his chronic back pain, Travell gave him daily injections of the local anesthetic procaine. Kennedy also routinely took Cytomel (for thyroid deficiency); Lomotil, Metamucil, paregoric, Phenobarbital, and Trasentine (to control the diarrhea from his colitis); testosterone (to increase energy and boost weight following bouts of colitis); penicillin (for urinary tract flare-ups); Fluroinef (to increase his ability to absorb salt, which Addison’s depleted); Tuinal (for insomnia, a side effect of the cortisone); antihistamines (for an array of allergies); vitamin C; and calcium supplements (to substitute for milk products, which exacerbated his colitis). As a precaution against triggering an Addisonian crisis, JFK’s doctors boosted his cortisone when he faced stressful situations such as speeches and press conferences.
Dr. Max Jacobson, a Manhattan physician to the rich and famous, was called “Dr. Feelgood” for his mysterious injections laced with amphetamines. Several days before his first debate with Nixon, Kennedy had secretly visited Jacobson’s office for an injection to relieve symptoms of fatigue and muscle weakness. Afterwards, he told Jacobson he felt “cool calm and very alert.” On Tuesday, May 23 [196l], Kennedy sneaked Jacobson into the White House for four days of amphetamine shots “to relieve his local discomfort” and “provide him with additional strength to cope with stress,” recalled Jacobson. Concerned about the impact his [back] injury could have on his stamina in the Paris and Vienna meetings [meeting DeGaulle and Khrushchev], Kennedy asked Jacobson to join him for the trip.
The Kennedys had barely a half hour to settle into the American ambassador’s residence (in Vienna) before JFK’s first meeting with Khrushchev. Almost immediately, Max Jacobson was directed to Kennedy’s room. “The meeting may last for a long time,” JFK told him. “See to it that my back won’t give me any trouble when I have to get up or move around.” Jacobson administered his injection, and a tanned and youthful Kennedy was next seen bounding out of the front door “like a bronco-buster sprung from his chute,” wrote Time.

I never knew the extent of JFK's illnesses, especially since he was so young. I knew about the Addison's and the bad back (from the war, I think), but had no idea about all the rest.

And my mother swears that nobody knew about FDR's paralysis. She read later that the press knew, but completely accommodated him. She read that during a press conference, the photographers would willingly lower their cameras to the ground until his aides had him propped up behind the podium. Imagine the press going along with something like that today?????

Did you all know that China invaded Vietnam in 1979?

And lost?

Yeah you would think China, as big and populated with endless cannon fodder, would make mince meat of 'Nam. But with a disorganized army, lack of troop training, using 19th century maps, and picking to invade the one people in the world who had fought (with gruesome guerilla tactics) the Japanese, French, and Americans for the past 35+ years...China's invasion stalled and withdrawed back to its border, claiming "victory."

Yeah and I'm a Chinese fighter pilot.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War

JFK's back problems far predated the famous PT-109 incident. He suffered from scoliosis, starting as a youngster. He was legitimately heroic in the PT-109 incident, but that didn't cause his back problems. He used it as an excuse for his long record of illnesses and absences from Congress. Had the real cause of his absences--Addison's--been known, he probably never would have been elected president.



Yes, the media in those days had an unwritten agreement not to show anything that revealed FDR's crippling as a result of polio. It's hard to find a photo of him wearing his leg braces, in a wheelchair, or being lifted in and out of a car. The media also had an unwritten agreement not to say anything about his philandering. Fifty reporters were on the train for his final trip from DC to Warm Springs, GA, where he later died. None reported that the train detoured for 12 hours in Flemington NJ so he could dally with his mistress, Lucy Mercer. She was with him when he died in Warm Springs. Media also never reported on JFK's spectacular philandering, which they were all aware of.

Bill Bryson wrote about his visit to Warm Springs. He was amazed at the peek it gave into FDR's paralysis. He was also surprised at the lovely room Lucy had at The Little White House, while Eleanor's was little more than a cell at the opposite end of the house.

Eleanor originally caught FDR philandering, years earlier, with his secretary, Missie LeHand (her name may provide a clue as to how a man crippled by polio had sex). After that, FDR and Eleanor slept in separate bedrooms. She knew about Lucy Mercer, too.

source: The Guardian

Did you all know that China invaded Vietnam in 1979?

And lost?

Yeah you would think China, as big and populated with endless cannon fodder, would make mince meat of 'Nam. But with a disorganized army, lack of troop training, using 19th century maps, and picking to invade the one people in the world who had fought (with gruesome guerilla tactics) the Japanese, French, and Americans for the past 35+ years...China's invasion stalled and withdrawed back to its border, claiming "victory."

Yeah and I'm a Chinese fighter pilot.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War

China and Vietnam (well actually China and just about everyone in the region) are scrapping again over rights to the South China Sea. Typically, China has claimed it all and has sent ships/boats into what are considered to be Vietnamese or Phillipino waters.

Vietnam just held a live fire drill and rather disingenuously told China not to worry about anything.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110613/wl_asia_afp/vietnamchinamaritimemilitary

How JFK in the '60 election lost support of the Catholic Church, but won the Jewish vote.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_p...catholic_1.html

I know I've told this before, but I can't resist. I was only 12 when JFK was running for President and can't say I knew a lot about politics (tho I credit JFK for sparking my interest). I can only say, I was at a Italian/Catholic school and the nuns, priest were thrilled to death to have a Catholic running for President.

You can imagine when we heard JFK would be passing right by the school in his motorcade how jazzed we all were. The entire school (which was only about 100 kids) walked to the corner to greet/cheer JFK. I'll NEVER forget it. We got pretty much up close since it was not a stop, but rather the motorcade driving by, with JFK sitting on top of back seat of an open convertible waving. I was pretty small (and determined) and wormed my way to the front of a not so huge crowd, to get a good look and a wave. That memory is so ingrained in my mind. I'll never forget it.

I don't dispute RRs article, just sharing my experience. To this day I truly wish I had a picture of that event. I can't believe nobody had a camera.

TIS

That's a great memory, TIS. I was born several months after the Kennedy assassination. Growing up in a predominantly Catholic area, I was used to seeing pictures of Kennedy hanging in every Irish, Italian and Polish home, usually next to a picture of Jesus or a crucifix.

I remember as a young boy, thinking it very strange and peculiar if a house didn't have his picture hanging. It was like not having indoor plumbing.

Kly,

Looking back NOW I remember how excited the nuns were. We were ALL cheering "Kennedy Kennedy he's our man, if he can't do it nobody can" EVEN the nuns.

People (campaign ppl I imagine) were selling campaign items. I bought a pin which, if you moved it, flashed a pic of JFK and the guy running for gov of MI (Swainson). I paid a dollar which probably was two weeks allowance for it. Did I get yelled at when I showed my mom. She called it a waste of money. I didn't care tho, I was still glad I got it. LOL

TIS

Do you still have the pin, TIS?

Sadly NO, I don't know what happened to it. Here's the pin (showing only JFK side) which I see you can buy for $7.00.




During that time, if you remember, when bubble gum had baseball cards in them, for a while they put pics of JFK & family in the gum packages. I have quite a few of those in a scrapbook from the time period along with some worn/torn newspaper articles.


TIS

Did Churchill sacrifice a city to protect a secret?

http://theweek.com/article/index/237427/...rotect-a-secret

U.S. Civil War: The US-Russian Alliance that Saved the Union

The following essay tells about the largely untold alliance between President Abraham Lincoln and Russian Tsar Alexander II, which by many accounts was key to the North winning the U.S. Civil War, sealing the defeat of the British strategic design.

http://www.voltairenet.org/U-S-Civil-War-The-US-Russian

Coventry is a bit of a shit hole anyways, truth be told!!

Hey, I was there once. Went to a fairly new, modern office building belonging to British Telecom.

My wife remembers seeing Kennedy drive through Exeter on Rt 11. He was in a convertible, wearing a light, summer suit. The town was going crazy. Nice Irish, Catholic boy...oh yeah and a Democrat to boot.

You know you learn new things everyday.



http://lareviewofbooks.org/article.php?t...e-text-cutpoint

Did you all know Winston Churchill dabbled in alternate history fiction?

Published in 1930, "If Lee Had Not Won the Battle of Gettysburg."

http://poliscifi.pbworks.com/f/churchill.pdf

That Churchill was a genius eh? No wonder he is one of our national treasures