a lot of cool things that were either taught to you wrong or that you learned wrong. The book just goes to show that a lot of history is actually kind of cool.
Friday, November 22, 2013
Picture Post
This is one of those interesting books that you can find out about
a lot of cool things that were either taught to you wrong or that you learned wrong. The book just goes to show that a lot of history is actually kind of cool. 
a lot of cool things that were either taught to you wrong or that you learned wrong. The book just goes to show that a lot of history is actually kind of cool.
Friday, November 8, 2013
The Great Emu War
I referenced this war a few times last post. I feel like it is only right that it be my first history post here. The "war" lasted about a month and the emu's ended up winning it. Yeah you read that right, a month long war against animals and the animals won.
In the early 1930's a lot of ex-soldiers went to Western Australia to grow wheat to try to make some money. So many people were doing this that the price of wheat ended up dropping. This coupled with the government not doing what they were supposed to, created a lot of tensions between the people and the government. This happened around the time that the emu's were migrating back inland after their mating seasons. The farmlands happened to be a prime piece of land for the returning birds, so they took it over (because why not?). The farmers complained to the government, and then the government sent soldiers with big guns to solve the problem. The general that accompanied the soldiers was named G.P.W. Meredith. Now Meredith was a smart guy. He knew that to beat the emu's he couldn't just charge at them and shoot them. So he ordered an ambush at a nearby dam. The soldiers hid in the brush with their guns and once the emu's got up close, they fired everything they had. Or at least they would have if the guns hadn't jammed after killing about 10 of them. The emu's spread out and no one saw anymore.... until the next day. A few days later in his report back to the government, they shot 2,500 rounds of ammunition and killed about 100 of the 20,000 birds. One of the most hilarious comments was this "The machine-gunners' dreams of point blank fire into serried masses of Emus were soon dissipated. The Emu command had evidently ordered guerrilla tactics, and its unwieldy army soon split up into innumerable small units that made use of the military equipment uneconomic. A crestfallen field force therefore withdrew from the combat area after about a month" With more of the great tactics from earlier, the great general Meredith ended up killing 1,000 emus with about 10,000 rounds of ammo.
Even after this grand victory against the emu's, they came back a few years later during 1934. They came again in 43, and once more in 48. And that is the story of the time Australia had a war against 20,000 emu and lost.
In the early 1930's a lot of ex-soldiers went to Western Australia to grow wheat to try to make some money. So many people were doing this that the price of wheat ended up dropping. This coupled with the government not doing what they were supposed to, created a lot of tensions between the people and the government. This happened around the time that the emu's were migrating back inland after their mating seasons. The farmlands happened to be a prime piece of land for the returning birds, so they took it over (because why not?). The farmers complained to the government, and then the government sent soldiers with big guns to solve the problem. The general that accompanied the soldiers was named G.P.W. Meredith. Now Meredith was a smart guy. He knew that to beat the emu's he couldn't just charge at them and shoot them. So he ordered an ambush at a nearby dam. The soldiers hid in the brush with their guns and once the emu's got up close, they fired everything they had. Or at least they would have if the guns hadn't jammed after killing about 10 of them. The emu's spread out and no one saw anymore.... until the next day. A few days later in his report back to the government, they shot 2,500 rounds of ammunition and killed about 100 of the 20,000 birds. One of the most hilarious comments was this "The machine-gunners' dreams of point blank fire into serried masses of Emus were soon dissipated. The Emu command had evidently ordered guerrilla tactics, and its unwieldy army soon split up into innumerable small units that made use of the military equipment uneconomic. A crestfallen field force therefore withdrew from the combat area after about a month" With more of the great tactics from earlier, the great general Meredith ended up killing 1,000 emus with about 10,000 rounds of ammo.
Even after this grand victory against the emu's, they came back a few years later during 1934. They came again in 43, and once more in 48. And that is the story of the time Australia had a war against 20,000 emu and lost.
Saturday, November 2, 2013
Introduction to History
History. It is generally considered a boring subject in school. It's the thing that everyone sleeps through and just blows off. I am here to tell you about why it's actually not that boring. There are tons of things in history, obscure and otherwise, that are actually pretty interesting. Things like the Australian army once having to fight a war against about 20,000 emu (which are kind of like ostrich).
I really enjoy reading. I have a huge library of books and a lot of those books are about interesting things that have happened in history. Those books have already given me tons of ideas to work with and everything the books talk about are interesting. Writing this blog may even make some people enjoy reading more. Writing about history like this also gives me a chance to describe some of the useless and/or cool facts that I have learned about history throughout the years. Since history is so long and there is so many interesting things to describe, I will hopefully not run out of anything to talk about this year. There's always something interesting to find out about in history, and even if it's not super interesting, it could be something funny, or it may not even be interesting to me but could be to someone else. The possibilities are almost endless.
Off the top of my head I can name a few interesting topics already. There was a Mexican President who was in office for only about 45 minutes, there was a time when the Lichtenstein army sent 80 soldiers to war and ended up coming back with 81 soldiers, and then there was the thing I mentioned earlier about Australia having to fight a war against Emu and then them basically losing it. Hopefully this blog will end up getting more people to like history and maybe even encourage other people to find interesting things in history that they like.
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