Topic: Military history/Military biography
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๐ Tarrare
Tarrare (c.ย 1772ย โย 1798), sometimes spelled Tarare, was a French showman and soldier, noted for his unusual eating habits. Able to eat vast amounts of meat, he was constantly hungry; his parents could not provide for him, and he was turned out of the family home as a teenager. He travelled France in the company of a band of thieves and prostitutes, before becoming the warm-up act to a travelling charlatan; he would swallow corks, stones, live animals and a whole basketful of apples. He then took this act to Paris where he worked as a street performer.
At the start of the War of the First Coalition, Tarrare joined the French Revolutionary Army. With military rations, though quadrupled, unable to satisfy his large appetite, he would eat any available food from gutters and refuse heaps but his condition still deteriorated through hunger. He was hospitalised due to exhaustion and became the subject of a series of medical experiments to test his eating capacity, in which, among other things, he ate a meal intended for 15 people in a single sitting, ate live cats, snakes, lizards and puppies, and swallowed eels whole without chewing. Despite his unusual diet, he was of normal size and appearance, and showed no signs of mental illness other than what was described as an apathetic temperament.
General Alexandre de Beauharnais decided to put Tarrare's abilities to military use, and he was employed as a courier by the French army, with the intention that he would swallow documents, pass through enemy lines, and recover them from his stool once safely at his destination. Tarrare could not speak German, and on his first mission was captured by Prussian forces, severely beaten and underwent a mock execution before being returned to French lines.
Chastened by this experience, he agreed to submit to any procedure that would cure his appetite, and was treated with laudanum, tobacco pills, wine vinegar and soft-boiled eggs. The procedures failed, and doctors could not keep him on a controlled diet; he would sneak out of the hospital to scavenge for offal in gutters, rubbish heaps and outside butchers' shops, and attempted to drink the blood of other patients in the hospital and to eat the corpses in the hospital morgue. After being suspected of eating a toddler he was ejected from the hospital. He reappeared four years later in Versailles with a case of severe tuberculosis, and died shortly afterwards, following a lengthy bout of exudative diarrhoea.
๐ Vasili Arkhipov โ Soviet Navy Officer Who Prevented Nuclear Strike in 1962
Vasily Arkhipov (Russian: ะะฐัะธะปะธะน ะัั ะธะฟะพะฒ) may refer to:
- Vasily Arkhipov (vice admiral) (1926โ1998), Soviet Navy officer credited with casting the single vote that prevented a Soviet nuclear strike
- Vasily Arkhipov (general) (1906โ1985), Commander of the 53rd Guards Tank Brigade of the Red Army during World War II, twice Hero of the Soviet Union
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- "Vasili Arkhipov โ Soviet Navy Officer Who Prevented Nuclear Strike in 1962" | 2016-12-24 | 92 Upvotes 19 Comments
- "Vasili Arkhipov" | 2013-08-24 | 200 Upvotes 53 Comments
๐ Happy Petrov day
Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov (Russian: ะกัะฐะฝะธัะปะฐฬะฒ ะะฒะณัะฐฬัะพะฒะธั ะะตััะพฬะฒ; 7 September 1939 โ 19 May 2017) was a lieutenant colonel of the Soviet Air Defence Forces who played a key role in the 1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident. On 26 September 1983, three weeks after the Soviet military had shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, Petrov was the duty officer at the command center for the Oko nuclear early-warning system when the system reported that a missile had been launched from the United States, followed by up to five more. Petrov judged the reports to be a false alarm, and his decision to disobey orders, against Soviet military protocol, is credited with having prevented an erroneous retaliatory nuclear attack on the United States and its NATO allies that could have resulted in large-scale nuclear war. Investigation later confirmed that the Soviet satellite warning system had indeed malfunctioned.
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- "It's Stanislav Petrov day โ40yrs ago he saved world by suppressing a tech glitch" | 2023-09-26 | 129 Upvotes 7 Comments
- "Happy Petrov day" | 2013-09-26 | 138 Upvotes 30 Comments
๐ The man who did not have a conversation in over 50 years
Andrรกs Toma (5 December 1925 โ 30 March 2004) was a Hungarian soldier taken prisoner by the Red Army in 1945, then discovered living in a Russian psychiatric hospital in 2000. He was probably the last prisoner of war from the Second World War to be repatriated.
Because Toma never learned Russian and nobody at the hospital spoke Hungarian, he had apparently not had a single conversation in over 50 years, a situation of great interest for the fields of psychiatry and psycholinguistics.
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- "The man who did not have a conversation in over 50 years" | 2023-09-30 | 213 Upvotes 61 Comments
๐ Grace Hopper
Grace Brewster Murray Hopper (nรฉeย Murray December 9, 1906 โ January 1, 1992) was an American computer scientist and United States Navy rear admiral. One of the first programmers of the Harvard Markย I computer, she was a pioneer of computer programming who invented one of the first linkers. She popularized the idea of machine-independent programming languages, which led to the development of COBOL, an early high-level programming language still in use today.
Prior to joining the Navy, Hopper earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale University and was a professor of mathematics at Vassar College. Hopper attempted to enlist in the Navy during World War II but was rejected because she was 34 years old. She instead joined the Navy Reserves. Hopper began her computing career in 1944 when she worked on the Harvard Mark I team led by Howard H. Aiken. In 1949, she joined the EckertโMauchly Computer Corporation and was part of the team that developed the UNIVAC I computer. At EckertโMauchly she began developing the compiler. She believed that a programming language based on English was possible. Her compiler converted English terms into machine code understood by computers. By 1952, Hopper had finished her program linker (originally called a compiler), which was written for the A-0 System. During her wartime service, she co-authored three papers based on her work on the Harvard Mark 1.
In 1954, EckertโMauchly chose Hopper to lead their department for automatic programming, and she led the release of some of the first compiled languages like FLOW-MATIC. In 1959, she participated in the CODASYL consortium, which consulted Hopper to guide them in creating a machine-independent programming language. This led to the COBOL language, which was inspired by her idea of a language being based on English words. In 1966, she retired from the Naval Reserve, but in 1967 the Navy recalled her to active duty. She retired from the Navy in 1986 and found work as a consultant for the Digital Equipment Corporation, sharing her computing experiences.
The U.S. Navy Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USSย Hopper was named for her, as was the Cray XE6 "Hopper" supercomputer at NERSC. During her lifetime, Hopper was awarded 40 honorary degrees from universities across the world. A college at Yale University was renamed in her honor. In 1991, she received the National Medal of Technology. On November 22, 2016, she was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama.
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- "Grace Hopper" | 2013-08-31 | 190 Upvotes 54 Comments
๐ Harold Hering
Harold L. Hering (born 1936) is a former officer of the United States Air Force, who was discharged in 1975 for requesting basic information about checks and balances to prevent an unauthorized order to launch nuclear missiles. Major Hering was subsequently presented the 2017 Courage of Conscience Award at the Peace Abbey, Boston, Massachusetts.
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- "Harold Hering" | 2022-03-02 | 105 Upvotes 38 Comments
๐ Agent 355
Agent 355 (died after 1780) was the code name of a female spy during the American Revolution, part of the Culper Ring. Agent 355 was one of the first spies for the United States, but her real identity is unknown. The number, 355, could be de-crypted from the system the Culper Ring used to mean "lady."
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- "Agent 355" | 2019-07-04 | 115 Upvotes 10 Comments
๐ WWII: Failed novelist becomes a spy for Germany, makes up a fake spy network
Juan Pujol Garcรญa (Spanish: [หxwan puหสol ษฃaษพหฮธi.a]; 14 February 1912 โ 10 October 1988), also known as Joan Pujol i Garcรญa (Catalan: [สuหan puหสษl i ษฃษษพหsi.ษ]), was a Spanish spy who acted as a double agent loyal to Great Britain against Nazi Germany during World War II, when he relocated to Britain to carry out fictitious spying activities for the Germans. He was given the codename Garbo by the British; their German counterparts codenamed him Alaric and referred to his non-existent spy network as "Arabal".
After developing a loathing of political extremism of all sorts during the Spanish Civil War, Pujol decided to become a spy for Britain as a way to do something "for the good of humanity". Pujol and his wife contacted the British Embassy in Madrid, which rejected his offer.
Undeterred, he created a false identity as a fanatically pro-Nazi Spanish government official and successfully became a German agent. He was instructed to travel to Britain and recruit additional agents; instead he moved to Lisbon and created bogus reports about Britain from a variety of public sources, including a tourist guide to Britain, train timetables, cinema newsreels and magazine advertisements.
Although the information would not have withstood close examination, Pujol soon established himself as a trustworthy agent. He began inventing fictitious sub-agents who could be blamed for false information and mistakes. The Allies finally accepted Pujol when the Germans expended considerable resources attempting to hunt down a fictitious convoy. Following interviews by Desmond Bristow of Section V MI6 Iberian Section, Juan Pujol was taken on. The family were moved to Britain and Pujol was given the code name "Garbo". Pujol and his handler Tomรกs Harris spent the rest of the war expanding the fictitious network, communicating to the German handlers at first by letters and later by radio. Eventually the Germans were funding a network of 27 agents, all fictitious.
Pujol had a key role in the success of Operation Fortitude, the deception operation intended to mislead the Germans about the timing, location and scale of the invasion of Normandy in 1944. The false information Pujol supplied helped persuade the Germans that the main attack would be in the Pas de Calais, so that they kept large forces there before and even after the invasion. Pujol had the distinction of receiving military decorations from both sides of the warย โ being awarded the Iron Cross and becoming a Member of the Order of the British Empire.
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- "WWII: Failed novelist becomes a spy for Germany, makes up a fake spy network" | 2024-03-08 | 79 Upvotes 41 Comments
๐ Soviet Pilot Escapes from POW Camp by Stealing a German Bomber and Flying Home
Mikhail Petrovich Devyatayev (Russian: ะะธั ะฐะธะป ะะตััะพะฒะธั ะะตะฒััะฐะตะฒ; Moksha/Erzya: ะะธั ะฐะธะป ะะตััะพะฒะธั ะะตะฒััะฐะตะฒ; 8 July 1917 โ 24 November 2002) was a Soviet fighter pilot known for his incredible escape from a Nazi concentration camp on the island of Usedom, in the Baltic Sea.
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- "Soviet Pilot Escapes from POW Camp by Stealing a German Bomber and Flying Home" | 2021-01-18 | 75 Upvotes 33 Comments
๐ Subutai โ Primary military strategist of Genghis Khan
Subutai (Classical Mongolian: Sรผbรผgรคtรคi or Sรผbรผ'รคtรคi; Tuvan: ะกาฏะฑัะดัะน, [sybษหdษj]; Modern Mongolian: ะกาฏะฑััะดัะน, Sรผbeedei. [sสbeหหdษ]; Chinese: ้ไธๅฐ 1175โ1248) was an Uriankhai general, and the primary military strategist of Genghis Khan and รgedei Khan. He directed more than 20 campaigns in which he conquered 32 nations and won 65 pitched battles, during which he conquered or overran more territory than any other commander in history. He gained victory by means of imaginative and sophisticated strategies and routinely coordinated movements of armies that were hundreds of kilometers away from each other. He is also remembered for devising the campaign that destroyed the armies of Hungary and Poland within two days of each other, by forces over 500 kilometers apart.
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- "Subutai โ Primary military strategist of Genghis Khan" | 2017-06-14 | 84 Upvotes 22 Comments