post a random historical fact

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What are you guys doin' up this early on a Saturday morning?

In 1893, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky conducted the first public performance of his Symphony No. 6 in B minor ("Pathetique") in St. Petersburg, Russia, just nine days before his death.

During the siege of Stalingrad in WWII, Hitler promoted a German general to Field Marshal, on the grounds that a German Field Marshal had never surrendered to enemy forces. Shortly afterwards, said Field Marshal surrendered, as his troops had been reduced to eating the corpses of their comrades, rats, and their own shoes in order to stay alive.

In 1919, Congress enacted the Volstead Act, which provided for enforcement of Prohibition, over President Wilson's veto.

June 25 1950 North korea invades south korea.

Suez Canal Crisis Begins (1956)
After Great Britain and the US withdrew their pledges of financial support to help Egypt build the Aswan High Dam, Egyptian President Gamal Abdal Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal. The move angered both Britain and France, countries that had direct financial stakes in the canal. A joint invasion of Egypt ensued, but the US forced a settlement stipulating the withdrawal of foreign troops in exchange for an open canal.

1867 was the year the US purchased Alaska from Russia.

Unfortunately, the warranty ran out the next year.

Of the five men created Marshal of the Soviet Union in 1936, three were dead by 1939, executed during Stalin's purges.

1871 was the year of the Franco-Prussian War, the last of a series of wars that united Germany under Prussian leadership.

The war cost French Emperor Napoleon III his throne, and led to a bloody insurrection by Parisian citizens.

Henry Ford, an American engineer, introduced the world's first moving assembly line at the Ford Motor Company's Highland Park plant, which reduced chassis assembly time from 12½ hours to less than 3 hours. These innovations were not popular with the staff, however, and in order to stop them from deserting their monotonous jobs, Ford doubled their pay and reduced their shifts by one hour.

The parchute was invented 120 years before the plane.
It was intended to save people who had to jump from burning buildings.

In 1961 Cuban leader Fidel Castro announced in a national broadcast speech that he was a Marxist-Leninist and that Cuba would adopt Communism. His announcement came nearly 8 months after the Bay of Pigs invasion by the US.

At the Battle of Tanga in 1914, the British army in East Africa was defeated by bad planning, arrogance, racial prejudice... and the accidental disturbance of several hives of angry African bees.

Having been roused by the noise of battle and the bullets in the air around them, the bees emerged in massive clouds - and most of them, as luck would have it, swarmed enraged towards the British lines, engulfing the Indian and British troops in a furious cloud of stinging, buzzing anger. Some of them were refreshingly impartial, attacking the Askari tribesmen who were aiding the Germans, but most were focused on the British lines - one engineer was stung 300 times!

Following this dismal failure, the British commander General Aitken was returned to Britain, reduced to Colonel, and then retired on half-pay.