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Yes Ping-machine I have heard a dog bark, which had it's vocal chord nerve cut. It was a Pomeranian, and it was loved by our neighbor. It would try to bark, and it sounded like a cheap toy ! ! Very sad. Later got eaten by coyotes. Which was REALLY sad ! ! (Sniff)


Comedian Ernie Kovacs smoked a box of Cuban cigars a day. He asked that his tombstone read "Nothing in Moderation." It doesn't, he died unexpectedly and deep in debt. His friends, including Frank Sinatra bought a tombstone that reads "Ernie Kovacs, we all loved him."

Bats are interesting critters. While most enjoy yummy insects, some eat fruit, and there are at least two known species of bat that feed on other bats: the Spectral Bat or American False Vampire bat and the Ghost Bat of Australia.

(eeeeuuwwwwwww)

Towards the end of WWII in Europe, the Russians, who had occupied most of the German coast at the Baltic Sea, tried to take control over still German occupied Denmark. Five British divisions and several US regiments met them in the German town Wismar on 2 May 1945 and threatened to open fire on them if they advanced further to the west. The Russians stopped.

However, the German troops on the Danish island Bornholm refused to surrender, so the Russians bombed the island until the Germans surrendered and than occupied it. They stayed until 1946. Bornholm is by the way situated much closer to the Swedish mainland than to the rest of Denmark.

The smoke from the fires in Berlin in spring 1945 could be smelled as far away as in the Swedish province Småland, several hundred miles north and on the other side of the Baltic Sea.

A gang of burglars once broke into a warehouse in Milan Italy.
They stole 100 burglar alarms

Donald Sutherland grew up in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia. He got his first part time job aged 14 as a news correspondent for local radio station, CKBW.

The last Nazi defenders of Berlin in 1945 were teenage boys. It un-nerved the hardened Russian troops to shoot at them. But they were truly hypnotized by the Nazis, and refused to surrender. The Russian soldiers who took part in that battle are still haunted by the idea they had to shoot and kill teenage boys.

Actually, some boys weren't even teenage. As late as today I looked at a picture which is pretty well known, where Hitler speaks to a Hitler-Junge he's just decorated. In this book, that my father got recently on his birthday, I found out that The Hitler-Junges last name was (ironically) Czech and he was only 12 years old...

In peacetime, Sweden has no field-marshals, only colonel-generals. The supreme commander has a rank half way between, the only Swedish general with four stars. If Sweden by any chance would happen to be attacked (it's constitutionally illegal for Sweden to declare war itself), he will automatically become field-marshal.

The Swedish King is nominally both colonel-general and admiral of the navy. If he's not civilian dressed, he will usually wear his admiral's uniform, since he did most of his military duty in the navy.

That's even creepier. I saw a documentary where they interviewed surviving Russian soldiers, and one chap broke down and started weeping when talking about it.

Sorry, I between-posted(?)

The story of the Chinese people who came to British Columbia in 1882 to work on the final link of the Canadian Pacific Railway is the subject of the Historica Minute 'Nitro'. The experience of these Chinese immigrants, who risked their lives performing the most dangerous jobs on the railway (for half the wages of white labourers) is only one chapter in the history of the Chinese in Canada.

In 1885, the federal government introduced the Act to Restrict and Regulate Chinese Immigration into Canada, which required that Chinese people entering Canada paid a head tax of $50 per person.

The USA fought the Viet Cong in Vietnam, right?

Wrong. The name "Viet Cong" was a name given to the Viet Minh guerrillas (rather than the NVA regulars) by the Americans themselves, because it sounded threatening and mysterious.

In 1838, 15000 Cherokees were uprooted by federal troops and led across the 800 mile "Trail of Tears" to present-day Oklahoma. 4000 of them died. The name "Trail of Tears" wasn't coined by the Cherokees, though, but by the soldiers who had to remove them. The Cherokees refused to use horses that they were offered by the troops and walked all the way, 4000 of them dropping dead along the road. They as well refused medical help from the soldiers. They wanted to show that if they didn't could be left alone on their land east of the Mississippi, neither would they accept any help from the whites.

The Swedish adjective "små" is actually the same as the English "small", but is only used in plural. The letter "å" is actually pronounciated as "a" in "small".

The province name "Småland" means "small lands". It's just an historical province, mainly constituted by three counties. In ancient times it was constituted of about 20 small tribal "kingdoms", though, from which it got its name.

Everyone's gonna DIE!! !