Please feel free to add to my list. These are some examples of trivia that history geeks may know but not the mainstream population.


1. Napoleon's native languages were Corsican and Italian. He did not start learning French until he was 10.

2. Josef Stalin's native language was Georgian, not Russian.

3. John Paul Jones sought and attained employment with the Imperial Russian Navy when the ship he was supposed to command in the newly formed Continental Navy was given to the French. .

4. Martin van Buren is the only US President whose native language was not English.

Good post PM I'll be following this one-

A little history.
I grew up speaking English.
I took a year of French in high school and 2 years in college.
I also took German in college.
I can only speak English to this day.

LOL! Fascinating stuff indeed RK.

John Paul did not add the Jones to his name until he went to America

They found his body in the catacombs of Paris, the French had preserved his body in case the Americans wanted it back, it took more than 100 years for the Americans to ask for it to be returned.

He then went on a reunion tour with Led Zeppelin.

@RK Hahahahha

And he came to America after a sailor from a prominent family died after a Paul ordered flogging.

Union General Crawford was at the very beginning and end of the US Civil War.

https://www.ohiocivilwarcentral.com/entry.php?rec=1614

Here's another fact that you will never see portrayed in any Hollywood film:


During the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Jesse Owens met Adolf Hitler in private and even shook hands. This is according to what Jesse Owens himself has said about the event.

I observed these railings near to where a daughter was living in London.




Intrigued by the strange indents evident I did some research
In 1938 London with the threat of war postponed thanks to the much-maligned 'Peace in Our Time' agreement between Hitler and PM Chamberlain which gave time for building up arms and materiel for the inevitable conflict, Civil Defence measures were prepared on the premise that:
"The Bomber Will always Get Through".
With the threat of the 'knockout blow' and possible gas attack, 300,000 stretchers were produced, made out of steel mesh that could easily be decontaminated.
Never used, some enterprising soul in the planning department for post war redevelopment of devastated areas of South London, utilised them as railings for the new housing estates.

Wow, i actually knew that one about the stretchers.

Two Aussie ones..possibly related.

In 1932, Francis De Groot, a retired cavalry officer, managed to get himself selected as part of the honour guard at the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. When the ribbon was about to be cut, he galloped forward on his horse and slashed the ribbon with his sword, declaring the bridge open in the name of 'the decent citizens of New South Wales'. The ribbon was then tied back together and the ceremony continued. De Groot was carried off to a mental hospital, declared insane and later fined for the replacement cost of one ribbon.

It has been reported that the first European settlers in Australia drank more alcohol per head of population than any other community in the history of mankind.

In keeping with the Australian theme, how the heck did Mel Gibson lose his Australian accent so quickly when he moved back to the US?

Why was he declared insane? No decent citizens in NSW?



Well, it did start out as a British penal colony.



I didn't think he did. It wasn't as pronounced, but you could still pick it up now and then in the first couple of "Lethal Weapon" movies.

The Australian term "Pommy" is a contraction of Prisoner of his/her Majesty POHM

'
I didn't know that, I presumed it related to potato eating! Similar to 'Limey' or 'Roastbeefs' I thought.

I had no clue what "pommy" meant until the first time I watched the Australian "Bruce" sketch from Monty Python.