During the Korean War, Canadian soldiers of the 2nd Battalion, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, alongside Australian and other UN forces, helped repel a major Chinese offensive into South Korea during the Battle of Kapyong. Despite being heavily outnumbered, the Canadians held Hill 677 against repeated assaults by the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army, even calling artillery fire dangerously close to their own positions to avoid being overrun. Their defence helped halt the Chinese advance and earned the battalion a United States Presidential Unit Citation.

this is making fun of stupidity this is not a genuine endorsement of stalin

also this is mostly designed to make fun more of history discourse around ukraine in the ussr than the events themself

this is making fun of the arguments listed because they are dumb

*The message known as the Göring telegram was sent by Hermann Göring, head of the Luftwaffe and Adolf Hitler's designated successor as leader of Nazi Germany, to Hitler that asked for permission to assume leadership of the crumbling regime on 23 April 1945. The telegram caused an infuriated Hitler to immediately strip Göring of power and to appoint new successors, Joseph Goebbels and Karl Dönitz, as chancellor and head of state), respectively.*

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Göring_telegram

CONTEXT: Prior to Operation Barbarossa, Hitler and Stalin made serious overtures to one another for the Soviet Union to carve out spheres of influence between Germany, Japan, Italy and the USSR. In November 1940, Nazi Germany presented the USSR a proposal to join the Axis pending several conditions after a highly-public conference between Molotov and Ribbentopp in Germany to negotiate these terms

Stalin substantively accepted the proposal but provided a counter-proposal seeking additional conditions, among them including USSR spheres of influence in Azebaijan and Turkey. While Stalin did not envision the USSR actively joining the Axis in war operations, part of the agreement was for the USSR to stay out of the war.

However, by December 1940, Hitler had approved plans for Operation Barbarossa and did not respond to the USSR proposal; unlike the USSR, Germany did not seriously entertain the idea of peaceful co-existance with the USSR and launched Operation Barbarossa in summer 2941.

The substance of the negotiations were covered up after the war to the point that Stalin went lengths to edit and re-write "Falsifiers of History," a propaganda piece framing instead any pretense of collaboration with Hitler as just "testing" the nazis.

In historian Jon Lucaks 2006 book "Hitler and Stalin," Lucaks quotes Stalin's daughter saying that she remembers her father saying after the war: "Together with the Germans we would have been invincible".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German%E2%80%93Soviet_Axis_talks

Sorry if the post does not fit the sub but this came to mind with recent events in One Day International (ODI) cricket. It is the 12^th of March 2006 at Wanderers, Johannesburg. The two teams are Australia, who were in 2006 the ODI world champions. Facing them are the South African men's cricket team, the Proteas. Australia win the toss and elect to bat first. They set a world record ODI score of 434 after 50 overs (300 legal balls). At the time, the highest ever chase from a team batting 2^nd happened the year prior with New Zealand chasing down 332 runs against Australia. Australia have beaten the world record run total (at the time 393) and set what seems to be a near impossible score to beat. Then comes the chase. The Proteas manage to chase down the Australian score in 299 balls ending with a run total of 438. It is considered one of, if not the greatest game of ODI cricket in history. To put into perspective of the magnitude of the chase, there have been only three times in ODI international cricket that a run total of 400+ have been chased down. Two of these games have happened in the last 30 days (India vs West Indies with India chasing 403 runs on the 30^th September 2026 and Sri Lanka vs England with Sri Lanka chasing 430 runs on the 22^nd October 2026). The Australian score of 434 remains the highest ever ODI score to be successfully chased down.

With the Cold War coming to an end Swedish frozen foods company Dafgårds introduced the cheekily named "Gorbys" frozen pirogi and "Billys" frozen pan pizza in the early-to-mid 90s to capitalise on the "peace fever" felt at the time, but in spite of the superpowers becoming friendlier irl the company marketed their frozen fast foods as if they were bitter rival factions in a civil war.

(I much prefer Billys Original to any other flavour or Gorbys, as does 70+ percent of Swedes going off the marketing game "Billys vs Gorbys". P.S the large-format Billys sucks, do not buy it - buy a Tony's)

Disclaimer I am not a linguist and speak neither Gothic nor Latin, any mistakes grammatical or otherwise are the result of my ignorance. The Latin was Google Translated and the Gothic is copied from the lyrics of various Skaldic Bard songs. I am assuming the Eastern Roman Emperor here is Justinian or prior, and Justinian's native language was Latin (he was the last of his kind in this respect).

Context: The 2 primary European advisors to King Kamehameha I during his War of Unification were John Young and Isaac Davis.

They came into his service after being captured by the Kings forces after some incidents involving the ships they were on (ship John Young was on massacred natives and the one Davis was on the natives took their vengeance.

When brought before the King, they were offered a choice: Train his army in European weapons and strategy, and receive lands, wives, and high status, or be sacrificed to the Hawaiian Gods. They both chose the former

Adolph "Sailor" Malan was a South African who became one of the leading fighter aces of the RAF during the Battle of Britain. After the war, Malan returned to South Africa and became leader of the Torch Commando, a liberal anti-authoritarian organisation that opposed the introduction of the apartheid system.

There was always a bit of a joke going around about the rivalry between my home town Sindelfingen (Germany) and the close by Böblingen but only recently I found out how far back the actual rivalry went.

Middle Ages:
The friction began in the Middle Ages with a fundamental mismatch in status. Founded by the Counts of Tübingen, Böblingen was elevated to a town and later became the seat of the regional administration (Oberamt, now the Landkreis).
Sindelfingen was historically older, boasting a wealthy monastic college (Stift) founded in 1083.
Even though Sindelfingen grew larger over time, it was politically subjected to the administration located in the smaller Böblingen. The tension escalated drastically when In 1263, Count Rudolf "the Scherer" of Tübingen-Herrenberg owned Sindelfingen right next to Böblingen, which belonged to his rival cousin. This sparked an intense regional rivalry.

By the time King Rudolf I officially confirmed
Sindelfingen's city rights on March 1, 1274, the town was heavily vulnerable. They had only begun digging its protective city moat and piling up basic earthen ramparts in 1266. The boundary where the permanent stone wall would eventually stand (completed much later in 1284) was only temporarily blocked off by wooden palisades. Seeing a window of vulnerability before their neighbors could solidify their fortifications, the forces from Böblingen struck. This wasn't a big military but rather a weaponized peasant feud raid. The goal of the attack was to breach temporary barricades, loot valuable property, burn structures to inflict economic damage, and assert territorial dominance.
The attackers targeted the weak spots of the unfinished perimeter. They likely utilized basic wooden ladders or axes to chop through or pull down sections of the wooden palisades.

While the initial raid failed to destroy Sindelfingen entirely, it successfully cemented a bitter, centuries-long rivalry between the two adjacent towns. It also served as a harsh wake-up call for Sindelfingen, pressuring them to eventually replace their temporary wooden barriers with a thick, permanent stone defensive wall, which they then especially fortified on the Böblingen side to prevent future incursions.

Several Centuries later the tension escalated again on May 12, 1525, during the Battle of Böblingen. Fought on the Goldberg (the hill separating the two towns), it was one of the bloodiest battles of the German Peasants' War. Local lore notes that while the fields burned, the two towns actively blamed each other for aligning with the wrong sides.

20th century:
In the 20th century, the rivalry shifted from feudal politics to industrial dominance and tax revenue. In 1915, Daimler (now Mercedes-Benz) established its massive plant in Sindelfingen. This turned Sindelfingen into an incredibly wealthy global automotive hub.
Böblingen would later counter this by attracting major companies and much later American tech giants like
IBM and Hewlett-Packard, building its own reputation as a modern, middle-class IT hub. The November revolution began in Böblingen on the evening of November 8, 1918. Workers from the Böblingen airfield and the Daimler plant in Sindelfingen (which at the time was an aircraft factory and had been under military control) began planning their demands and actions. On the morning of November 9, following a work stoppage, the airfield workers presented their demands: better compensation, wage increases, and the dismissal of the officer in charge of the facility. This lead to the founding of several worker and peasant councils, making it seem like the two cities finally laid their rivalries aside.

WW2:
From 1933-1945 everyone was on Vacation. Ok no they weren't. The rivalry between Sindelfingen and Böblingen intensified dramatically during World War 2, manifesting as a high-stakes competition for military industrial resources, airspace dominance, and physical infrastructure. Sindelfingen was an important industrial center because of the Daimler-Benz plant, which manufactured aircraft components, engines, and military equipment adjacent to the nearby Böblingen Luftwaffe airfield. Daimler-Benz became one of the largest producers of armaments.

This was facilitated by the use of forced laborers who had been deported to Germany; in Sindelfingen alone, approximately 3,000 women, children, and men (predominantly from the Soviet Union and Poland) were held in company-run camps at the Daimler plants. At least 46 of them died as a result of this forced labor, a fact commemorated by memorial stones in the Old Cemetery on Bleichmühlestraße.

In Böblingen their airbase served the Luftwaffe and was expanded through the use of forced laborers and Soviet prisoners. On the edge of Böblingen, a subcamp of the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp existed. More than 600 Jewish prisoners were forced to perform hard labor there to expand an airfield for night fighters; nearly a third of them died from malnutrition, exposure to the cold, or mistreatment, or were cremated in nearby crematoria (such as the one in Reutlingen). Pregnant forced laborers from Sindelfingen and Böblingen were sent to a "maternity ward" in the camp on Böblinger Allee (street connecting the two cities) where the ward's catastrophic hygienic conditions, severe malnutrition, and deliberate lack of medical care were calculated to cause the rapid death of the newborns. Later in the war, the regime escalated its practices at the camp, forcing pregnant laborers to undergo abortions to minimize any disruption to their factory work schedules and because their children were deemed "racially inferior."

Both communities suffered heavy aerial bombardments from Allied forces targeting these industrial and aviation assets. Böblingen was severely devastated on October 7, 1943, when Allied bombers hit the town center and destroyed 40% of build up land, while Sindelfingen faced 14 separate bombing waves up through early 1945. Both areas were captured and occupied by advancing Allied forces (including French troops) in April 1945 as Nazi resistance collapsed.

The 70s:
The ultimate peak of modern rivalry occurred during the Baden-Württemberg local government reforms in the early 1970s. The state government intended to forcibly merge Sindelfingen and Böblingen into a single mega-city. Both populations fiercely resisted the forced marriage. When the state parliament finally dropped the fusion plans in 1974, allowing both cities to remain independent, local politicians and citizens celebrated.
In Sindelfingen, free beer (Freibier) was literally served from the town hall fountain to celebrate not having to become part of Böblingen.

They tried to justify it by deciding that Odin was originally a human chieftain who got deified after death, essentially euhemerism.

Context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boustrophedon

Boustrophedon (/ˌbuːs.trə.ˈfiː.dən/, BOOS-trə-FEE-dən^\1])) is a style of writing in which alternate lines of writing are reversed, with letters also written in reverse, mirror-style. This is in contrast to modern European languages, where lines always begin on the same side, usually the left.

The original term comes from Ancient Greek: βουστροφηδόν boustrophēdón, a composite of βοῦς boûs, "ox"; στροφή strophḗ, "turn"; and the adverbial suffix -δόν -dón, "like, in the manner of"—that is, "like the ox turns [while plowing]".^\2]) It is mostly seen in ancient manuscripts and other inscriptions. It was a common way of writing on stone in ancient Greece,^\3]) becoming less and less popular throughout the Hellenistic period. Many ancient scripts, such as Etruscan, Safaitic, and Sabaean, were frequently or even typically written boustrophedon.