10 Universal Myths Of The Ancient World

MORRIS M

No matter where you’re from, you probably have your fair share of wild myths. From stuff like the legend of King Arthur and his magic BFF to the mischievous gods of Ancient Greece to the insane epics of Hindu mythology, just about every culture comes with a set of stories that most other cultures call foreign or strange.

But then there are the universal myths—myths that crop up repeatedly in cultures separated by hundreds of miles and thousands of years. These myths are so near-universal that their prevalence is downright spooky.

10The Great Flood

The idea of a flood that drowns the entire world pops up in almost every single culture. Jews and Christians know it as the story of Noah, but other versions almost certainly predate the Genesis account. The Ancient Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh includes the tale of Utnapishtim, who builds a boat, fills it with animals to escape a deluge, and eventually comes to rest on a mountaintop. The Greeks had Deucalion, who survived a flood sent by Zeus. Other versions appear in Hindu, Mayan, and Native American legends.

These tales may or may not be inspired by reality. In 2009, National Geographic reported on the utter lack of evidence for a globe-destroying super-flood. Yet theories still persist of an ancient comet strike near Madagascar sending tsunamis across the globe or a sudden flood caused bymelting glaciers drowning the entire Black Sea area. Could this universal myth simply be the faded memory of a real event that occurred around 5,000 BC? We may never know.

9Paradise Lost

As anyone who’s heard to their grandpa wax lyrical about the 1950s knows, people see the past through rose-tinted glasses. But this yearning for nostalgia isn’t just restricted to old folk rattling on about how kids showed more respect in their day. Very often, it fills entire cultures.

Take the Garden of Eden. The story of a harmonious land uncorrupted by pain or lust is the biggest slice of “good old days” nostalgia you’ll ever encounter. The Ancient Greeks, meanwhile, fondly recalled their Golden and Heroic Ages—a time when the world was happier, men were men, and things basically didn’t suck so bad. Similar ideas appear in Hindu, Norse, and Persian belief, always featuring a lost utopia to which modern culture can never return.

Interestingly, there may be a scientific reason behind all this. Recentresearch into nostalgia has shown that idealized memories of the past may make us happier in the present.

8Epic Cosmic Battles

The idea of an unimaginable war that threatens to tear apart the cosmos connects with us so deeply that it still powers our epic stories. The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Doctor Who, and countless others all feature this age-old trope. It can be found in the legends of almost every ancient culture. Christianity has the battle between God and the rebel angels led by Satan. Ancient Greece had the story of the Titans taking on the gods of Mount Olympus. The Hindu tradition involves a dizzying series of battles so epic they’d give Peter Jackson daymares.

There are couple of ways of looking at this. One is to go down the Scientology route of claiming these legends are genetic memories of some apocalyptic battle that tore the galaxy apart billions of years ago. The other is to remember that most cultures throughout history have consistently been on the brink of war or prone to invasion, so an apocalyptic slaughter was probably never far from everyone’s minds. Either way, it suggests the human drive to war is just about universal.

7Vampires

If you hated the last couple of years of hormone-driven angst-inspired vampire media, try living in Medieval Europe. Back then, belief in vampires was so prevalent that barely a single country didn’t consider them a terrifying fact of life. When crops failed or there was drought or a baby was born with a slight deformity, you’d better believe vampires got the blame—a tradition that stretches back thousands of years.

Undead bloodsuckers aren’t a modern invention. They weren’t even dreamt up this side of the Common Era. Cultures as mind-bendingly old as theAncient Egyptians believed wholeheartedly in their existence, while versions of them turn up everywhere from China to Tibet to India. Even the Persians of Mesopotamia had a selection of ferocious blood-drinking demons to terrorize children, although they bore differences from our modern Anne Rice-inspired variety.

Looked at rationally, it’s easy to see how the vampire legend arose: our fear of death crossed with a huge degree of medical ignorance. Looking at it again after dark when a scary wind howls outside . . . well, let’s just say we won’t be hawking off our garlic stocks anytime soon.

6The Atlantis Myth

o credit: 9591353082/Wikimedia

We all know the myth of Atlantis: a utopian city wiped out in a single night thanks to an unearthly cataclysm. But Atlantis is only the most famous of mythical lost cities. Near-identical stories crop up with such regularity that it’s tempting to think they must be somehow related.

Take Iram (also known as Ubar). A fabled city in the deserts of modern Saudi Arabia, Iram is said to have been wiped out in a single night when Allah buried it under a flood of sand. In other words, it’s the Atlantis myth translated to a world without water. Then you have Ys off the coast of France, which was supposedly flooded around the 5th century by a mythical warrior king. And that’s before we get onto the story of Sodom and Gomorrah and the Hindu myth of Tripura, which both involve gods wiping out immoral cities in a rain of fire.

In short, the idea of a city obliterated overnight is so powerful it seems to show up everywhere. Are these half-remembered tragedies with some basis in fact (like Pompeii) or just stories that play to the apocalyptic fantasist in all of us? We’ll leave it to you to decide.

5A God’s Resurrection

Jesus’s resurrection is the big selling point of Christianity, a unique moment that established Christ as the one true savior. At least that’s the idea. In reality, the idea of a dying deity or important human who is later resurrected has been around for millennia.

Most famously, this includes the story of Osiris, the ancient Egyptian god whose birth was heralded by a star, who was betrayed by a friend, was murdered, and was later resurrected. But there are less explicit versions too. The Greek cult of Dionysus had their figurehead killed off every two years, only to rise again at a later date. Persephone also died regularly, and many pagan traditions from Scandinavia to Central America involved gods dying and returning to life or men dying and coming back as deities.

Perhaps most interestingly of all, a historical tablet known as “Gabriel’s Revelation” allegedly tells the story of a Jewish rebel known as Simon who was killed by the Romans, only to be resurrected three days later. The catch? It was written in 4 BC, over 30 years before Jesus allegedly pulled off the same trick. Either it’s a mistranslation, or the Son of God was building on centuries of groundwork by other deities.

4Dragons

Dragons are likely the most traveled creature in all of mythology. Even more than vampires, they have a habit of turning up in societies and cultures so far apart in time and space you’d think it was impossible. There are ancient Sumerian tablets that record the act of dragon-slaying, Greek tales of dragons cavorting with other monsters, and an entire science built around the uses of their bones in China. In Central America, the Mayans worshipped the feathered snake Quetzalcóatl, while both Norse and Christian mythologies specifically mention dragons.

As late as 1886, Victorian scientists still held that dragons had once existed but had gone extinct. Not until dinosaurs became firmly established in the public mind did people see the probable link between ancient fossils and dragon myths. Currently, our best guess is that various cultures all stumbled over dino bones at some point and translated them into gigantic mythological beasts.

3The Hero’s Quest

Thanks to the occasional self-indulgent movie adaptation, most of us probably have a vague knowledge of the poems of Homer. Considered the earliest examples of Western literature, his Iliad and Odyssey are epic myths of tortured heroes fighting their way across oceans and continents in search of metaphorical salvation—and they appear in near-identical form in almost every culture.

It’s called the “hero’s journey,” and just about all epic stories throughout history have followed the specific model. Famously, George Lucas deliberately based the first Star Wars on it, and you can find its influence inThe Lord of the Rings, the Oz books, and even Harry Potter. But this archetypal myth was around even before fancy-pants anthropologists handed it over to lazy scriptwriters.

The Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, the story of Sinbad the Sailor in the 1,001 Nights, the legend of King Arthur, the tale of the Argonauts . . . all of these and plenty more fit the structure of the hero’s journey just like Homer’s awesome poems above. In fact, nearly every single culture in recorded history has myths that fall into this category. Even Moses’s epic wanderings in the Bible fit this model. We as a species truly are lazy storytellers.

2Explanations

Cultural myths don’t just entertain us and record historical events. They also serve to explain why the world is the way it is. Hence the prevalence of stories designed to give a reason for some mystery of existence.

In the Bible, we have the Tower of Babel, which explains why we have different languages. God’s speech prior to expelling Adam and Eve from Eden is another example, giving a reason for both the agony of childbirth and why ancient man had to toil all day in the fields. Wander across traditions into the stories of the Ancient Greeks and the legend of Prometheus demonstrates why fire is so valuable, while the story of Pandora gives a reason for the existence of disease and suffering.

Start looking for them and you’ll find these explanatory myths scattered across every culture in history. There are myths that explain why rhinoceroses have no hairs, why incest is forbidden, and how medicine came into existence. Anything you can think of has some poetic explanation somewhere. In an unscientific age, poetry was often all we had.

1Apocalypse

Everything that begins has an end, and our ancient ancestors knew that as simply as we do. No surprise then that most cultures carry an End of Times myth to counter their creation story—a sort of consolation prize for those who won’t live to see the actual end (i.e. everyone).

For Christians, this apocalypse is a gigantic epic that plays out over many, many years and involves so many disasters, wars, and calamities that it’s hard to keep track. Same with the Norse Ragnarok, which is a collection of disasters and battles that results in the Earth being drowned and recreated afresh. In Hinduism, it’s another epic battle followed by a rebooted universe, while Buddhism annihilates the world in a pyrotechnic fireworks display so amazing it deserves its own Michael Bay film. 

In other words, most humans throughout history have lived with their own personal vision of the end of everything, one that makes sense in the context of their lives and cultures. And that’s all these myths really are: ways for us humans to make sense of the world we live in, no matter when or where we are. It’s just an added bonus that some of them make absolutely awesome stories, too. 

99 Fascinating Facts About . . . WORLD WAR II

1. World War II was the most destructive conflict in history. It cost more money, damaged more property, killed more people, and caused more far-reaching changes than any other war in history.^a
2. The country with the largest number of WWII causalities was Russia, with over 21 million.ⁱ
3. For every five German soldiers who died in WWII, four of them died on the Eastern Front.^c
4. It is estimated that 1.5 million children died during the Holocaust. Approximately 1.2 million of them were Jewish and tens of thousands were Gypsies.ⁱ
5. Eighty percent of Soviet males born in 1923 didn’t survive WWII.^c
6. Between 1939 and 1945, the Allies dropped 3.4 million tons of bombs, which averaged to 27,700 tons per month.^c
7. Russia and the Red Army were accused of several war crimes, including systematic mass rape (over 2 million German women aged 13-70 were allegedly raped by the Red Army) and genocide.^h
8. Many historians believe that the Battle at Stalingrad (1942-1943) is not only arguably the bloodiest battle in history (800,000-1,600,000 casualties), but also the turning point of WWII in Europe.^f
Many severely ill concentration camp prisoners died after liberation
9. Even after the Allies arrived, many concentration camp prisoners were beyond help. In Bergen-Belsen, for example, 13,000 prisoners died after liberation. Nearly 2,500 of the 33,000 survivors of Dachau died within six weeks of liberation.ⁱ
10. Max Heiliger was the fictitious name the SS used to establish a bank account in which they deposited money, gold, and jewels taken from European Jews.^c
11. The longest battle of WWII was the Battle of the Atlantic, which lasted from 1939-1945.^c
12. The original abbreviation of the National Socialist Party was Nasos. The word “Nazi” derives from a Bavarian word that means “simple minded” and was first used as a term of derision by journalist Konrad Heiden (1901-1966).^c
13. The swastika is an ancient religious symbol. It derives from the Sanskrit name for a hooked cross, which was used by ancient civilizations as a symbol of fertility and good fortune. It has been found in the ruins of Greece, Egypt, China, India, and Hindu temples.^c
14. In 1935, British engineer Robert Watson-Watt was working on a “death ray” that would destroy enemy aircraft using radio waves. His “death ray” instead evolved into radar—or “radio detection and ranging.”^c
15. Out of the 40,000 men who served on U-boats during WWII, only 10,000 returned.^c
16. Survivors of both atomic bombings in Japan are called niju hibakusha, which literally means “explosion-affected people.”^c
17. Approximately 600,000 Jews served in the United States armed forces during WWII. More than 35,000 were killed, wounded, captured, or missing. Approximately 8,000 died in combat. However, only two Jewish soldiers were awarded the Medal of Honor in WWII.ⁱ
18. The Battle of the Bulge is the largest and deadliest battle for U.S. troops to date, with more than 80,000 American casualties.^a
19. The Enola Gay became well known for dropping the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, but few people know the name of the B-29 that bombed Nagasaki. It was Bock’s Car,named after the plane’s usual commander, Frederick Bock.^c
20. More Russians (military and civilians) lost their lives during the Siege of Leningrad than did American and British soldiers combined in all of WWII.^c
21. The Nazis murdered approximately 12 million people, nearly 6 million of those being Jews killed in the Holocaust (“whole burnt”).ⁱ
22. During WWII, the Japanese launched 9,000 “wind ship weapons” of paper and rubberized-silk balloons that carried incendiary and anti-personnel bombs to the U.S. More than 1,000 balloons hit their targets and they reached as far east as Michigan. The only deaths resulting from a balloon bomb were six Americans (including five children and a pregnant woman) on a picnic in Oregon.^c,d
23. The Japanese Kamikaze (“divine wind”) tactic was suggested on October 19, 1944, by Vice-Admiral Onishi in an attempt to balance the technological advantage of invading American forces. Though the numbers are disputed, approximately 2,800 kamikaze pilots died. They sunk 34 U.S. ships, damaged 368, killed 4,900 sailors, and wounded 4,800.^c
24. Many Jews were subject to gruesome medical experiments. For example, doctors would bombard the testicles of men and the ovaries of women with X-rays to see the impact of different doses on sterility. Nazi doctors would break bones repeatedly to see how many times it could be done before a bone could not heal. They hit people’s heads with hammers to see what their skulls could withstand. Experiments were conducted to determine the effects of atmospheric pressure on the body. Prisoners were injected with different drugs and diseases, and limbs were amputated and muscles cut for transplantation experiments. Today reference to or use of the Nazi research is considered unethical.ⁱ
Dr. Mengele is infamous for his grisly human experiments
25. Dr. Josef Mengele (the “Angel of Death”) used about 3,000 twins, mostly Romany and Jewish children, for his painful genetic experiments. Only about 200 survived. His experiments included taking one twin’s eyeball and attaching it on the back of the other twin’s head or changing the eye color of children by injecting dye. In one instance, two Romany twins were sewn together in an attempt to create conjoined twins.ⁱ
26. In addition to Jews and gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses were also persecuted and murdered in German concentration camps.ⁱ
27. The decision to implement the “Final Solution” or Die Endlosung was made at the Wannsee Conference in Berlin on January 20, 1942. Heinrich Himmler was its chief architect. The earliest use of the phrase “Final Solution to the Jewish Problem” was actually used in an 1899 memo to Russian Tzar Nicholas about Zionism.ⁱ
28. WWII ended on September 2, 1945, when Japan signed a surrender agreement on the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.^f
29. Anne Frank and her sister died at Bergen-Belsen in March 1945, one month before the camp was liberated in April 1945. During its existence, nearly 50,000 people died. After evacuating the camp, British soldiers burned it to the ground to prevent the spread of typhus.ⁱ
30. In his book The Abandonment of the Jews, David Wyman (1929- ) argued that the failure to bomb concentration camps was a result of the Allies’ indifference to the fate of the Jews rather than the practical impossibility of the operation.ⁱ
31. Despite the risks, thousands of people helped save the Jews. For example, the country of Denmark saved its entire community. And individuals such as Raoul Wallenberg (1912-1947), Oscar Schindler (1908-1974), and Chiune Sugihara (1900-1986) saved thousands of lives.ⁱ
32. From 1940-1945, the U.S. defense budget increased form $1.9 billion to $59.8 billion.^c
33. At the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, there were 96 ships anchored. During the attack, 18 were sunk or seriously damaged, including eight battleships. There were 2,402 American men killed and 1,280 injured. Three hundred and fifty aircraft were destroyed or damaged.^g
34. The Air Force was part of the Army in WWII and didn’t become a separate branch of the military until after the war.^c
35. In 1941, a private earned $21 a month. In 1942, a private earned $50 a month.^c
36. German U-boats sunk 2,000 Allied ships at a cost of 781 U-boats destroyed.^c
37. More than 650,000 Jeeps were built during WWII. American factories also produced 300,000 military aircraft; 89,000 tanks; 3 million machine guns; and 7 million rifles.^c
38. The Germans used the first jet fighters in World War II, among them the Messerschmitt ME-262. However, they were developed too late to change the course of the war.^c
39. The most powerful artillery gun created by any nation and used in WWII was named Karl by its designer General Karl Becker. Used mostly against the Russians, the huge gun could shoot a 2.5 ton shell over three miles. The shells were 24 inches wide and could go through eight to nine feet of concrete.^c
40. During WWII, the acronym BAM stood for “Broad-Assed Marines,” or women soldiers in the U.S. Marine Corp. The women, however, called the men HAMs, for “Hairy-Assed Marines.”^c
41. The SS ran a brothel named “The Kitty Salon” for foreign diplomats and other VIPs in Berlin. It was wiretapped, and 20 prostitutes underwent several weeks of intense indoctrination and training. They were specifically trained to glean information from clients through seemingly innocuous conversations.^c
42. WWII resulted in the downfall of Europe as a center of world power and led to the rise of the U.S. and Russia as super powers. This set up conditions for both the US-USSR cold war and the nuclear age.^a
Most historians agree WWII began when Germany invaded Poland in 1939
43. Most historians agree that WWII began when Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. Others say it started when Japan invaded Manchuria on September 18, 1931. And some scholars suggest WWII is actually a continuation of WWI, with a break in between.^f
44. During WWII, hamburgers in the U.S. were dubbed “Liberty Steaks” to avoid the German-sounding name.^c
45. The Nazis pirated the Harvard “fight song” to compose their Sieg Heil march.^c
46. Joseph Kramer (1906-1945), a commander of Bergen-Belsen, was known as the “Beast of Belsen.” When asked if he “felt anything” as he watched and participated in the deaths of thousands of men, women, and children, Kramer said he didn’t feel anything because he was following orders. He was later executed for crimes against humanity.ⁱ
47. The ace of all fighter aces of all nations is German fighter pilot Erich Hartmann (“the Blond Knight”) with 352 “kills.”^c
48. Members of Adolf Hitler’s inner circle allegedly called Rudolf Hess “Fraulein Anna” because he was reportedly a homosexual. He was also known as the “Brown Mouse.”^c
49. William Hitler, a nephew of Adolf Hitler, was in the U.S. Navy during WWII. He changed his name after the war.^c
50. Italian Fascists took as their symbol the “fasces,” a bundle of bound rods that symbolized the power of ancient Rome.^c
51. The Nazis killed millions of Poles. But they thought that some Polish babies and children looked German and kidnapped about 50,000 of them to be adopted by German parents to become “Germanized.”ⁱ
52. Special units run by the SS called Einsatzgruppen (“task forces”) followed the German army’s invasion of countries. They would force Jews to dig a pit and then shoot them so they would fall into an open grave. It is estimated that the Einsatzgruppen killed 1.4 million Jews.ⁱ
53. Prisoners called Sonderkommando were forced to bury corpses or burn them in ovens. Fewer than 20 of the thousands of Sonderkommando survived, though buried and hidden accounts of some were found later at camps.ⁱ
54. Several famous actors were decorated during WWII. For example, Henry Fonda won a Bronze Star in the Pacific, Walter Matthau was awarded six battle stars while serving on a B-17, and David Niven was awarded the U.S. Legion of Merit. Christopher Lee was a pilot in the Royal Air Force and also won a number of awards.^c
55. John Wayne (Marion Robert Morrison) starred in 14 WWII movies; however, due to a football injury, he never actually served in the war.^c
Adolf Hitler revered American industrialist Henry Ford
56. Hitler kept a framed photo of Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company, on his desk. Henry Ford also kept a framed photo of the Nazi leader on his desk in Dearborn, Michigan. In Mein Kampf, Hitler included some anti-Semitic views attributed to Ford.^c
57. On January 31, 1945, Private Eddie Slovik was shot for desertion, the first American executed for the crime since the Civil War and the only one to suffer this punishment during WWII.^c
58. Although Japan fought on the side of Britain, France, and the U.S. during WWI, it felt cheated by its failure to gain much territory when the peace treaty was composed. Additionally, in the 1920s, its government came under control of fanatical nationalists and allied with the army, which eventually prompted Japan to side with Germany.^a
59. After its defeat in WWI, Germany was forced to sign the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. Germany lost all its overseas empires as well as land to its neighbors, and it was prevented from maintaining a large army. Most Germans opposed the treaty, and their resentment would eventually undo the settlement, leading to WWII.^f
60. The Great Depression had a ripple effect throughout the world. It prevented Germany from paying WWI reparations, which forced Great Britain and France to default on their debts to the U.S. which, in turn, sowed discontent throughout the globe.^f
61. The most decorated unit ever in U.S. history is the 442nd regimental Combat Team, whose motto was “Go for Broke.” It consisted of Japanese-American volunteers. Together they won 4,667 major medals, awards, and citations, including 560 Silver Stars (28 of which had oak-leaf clusters), 4,000 Bronze Stars, 52 Distinguished Service Crosses, and one Medal of Honor, plus 54 other decorations. It also held the distinction of never having a case of desertion.^c
62. Norvell Gillespie, the garden editor of Better Homes and Gardens, designed the camouflage print for U.S. service uniforms in WWII.^c
63. The greatest tank battle in history occurred between the Germans and Russians at the Kursk salient in Russia from July 4-22, 1943. More than 3,600 tanks were involved.^c
64. The largest Japanese spy ring during WWII was not in the U.S. but in Mexico, where it spied on the U.S. Atlantic Fleet.^c
65. Prisoners of war in Russian camps experienced an 85% mortality rate.^c
66. Germany had a total of 3,363 generals during the war while the U.S. had just over 1,500.^c
67. The vast majority of German war criminals passed themselves off as refugees at displaced persons camps when the war ended, thereby gaining freedom.ⁱ
68. Before Nazi Germany decided to eliminate the Jews by gassing them, it had considered sending them to the island of Madagascar.ⁱ
Initial atomic explosions caused over 200,000 immediate casualties
69. If it became necessary to drop a third atom bomb on Japan, the city that would have been the target was Tokyo.^a
70. The greatest loss of life ever sustained by the U.S. Navy occurred on July 30, 1945. The USS Indianapolis was shot by Japanese submarine I-58. Captain Charles McVay, commanding officer of the cruiser, was the only U.S. Navy officer ever to be court-martialed for losing a ship in war.^c
71. Calvin Graham was only 12 years old when he enlisted in the U.S. Navy. He won a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart before the Navy found out how old he was.^c
72. Rudolf Hess, Adolf Hitler’s deputy in the Nazi party, was the last person to have been incarcerated in the Tower of London.^c
73. While in prison, Hitler envisioned the development of a “people’s car” or aVolkswagen, from the word volk, meaning “people” or “nation.”^c
74. On December 8, 1941, Britain and the U.S. declared war on Japan. On December 11, Germany declared war on the U.S. The U.S. is the only nation Germany formally declared war on.^a
75. The Nazis called their rule the Third Reich (1933-1945). The First Reich was the Holy Roman Empire (962-1806). The Second Reich was the German Empire of 1871-1918. The Weimar Republic was from 1919-1933.^f
76. At the behest of the Nazi regime, book-burning campaigns took place in Berlin and other German cities between March and June 1933, with senior academics and university students incinerating books deemed to contain “un-German” ideas. Authors targeted by the book-burning campaign included Jack London, H.G. Wells, Thomas Mann, Sigmund Freud, and Albert Einstein. A century before Hitler, the German poet Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) predicted: “Where one burns books, one will, in the end, burn people.”^a
77. In the 1930s, the U.S. Army had only about 130,000 soldiers, making it the sixteenth largest force in the world, smaller than Czechoslovakia, Poland, Turkey, Spain, and Romania.^a
78. In a bizarre move, Hitler’s deputy and confidant Rudolf Hess parachuted into Scotland on May 10, 1941, to negotiate a peace agreement. The British concluded he was mentally unstable. He was kept as a POW and given a life sentence at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial.^c
79. On July 14, 1941, the Soviets introduced a new weapon, the Katyusha, which could fire 320 rockets in 25 seconds. More than 50 years later, the Katyusha remains an effective weapon.^c
After Pearl Harbor, FDR bought Al Capone's bulletproof car
80. After the sneak attack at Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt searched for a bulletproof car. However, because government regulation prohibited spending more than $750 to buy a car, the only one they could find was Al Capone’s limo, which had been seized by the Treasury Department after he was arrested for tax evasion. FDR said, “I hope Mr. Capone won’t mind.”^c
81. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement toward Hitler is generally thought to have been a mistake, but his defenders claimed that it bought Britain time to prepare for war.^a
82. In the 1928 elections, less than 3% of Germans voted for the Nazi party. In 1938, Hitler was Time magazine’s man of the year.^f
83. That Nazi salute was modeled on the salute of Italian Fascists, the ancient Romans, as well as ancient Germans. The raised arm resembles a raised spear.^c
84. Hitler designed the Nazi flag. Red stood for the social idea of Nazism, white for nationalism, and the black swastika for the struggle of the Aryan man.^a
85. Large, inflatable barrage balloons were used to protect major towns and cities in Britain from air raids. The balloons were launched before a raid and trailed a network of steel cables beneath them. Bombers had to fly high to avoid becoming tangled in the cables, thus reducing their accuracy.^c
86. The main success of the Blitzkreig or “lightening war” was due to tank units supported from the air by dive-bombers, such as the Junkers Ju87 (Stuka). The Stukas were fitted with sirens, which sounded like screaming to terrify the population.^c
87. Because the Norway leader Vidkun Quisling (1887-1945) actively collaborated with Germany after its occupation, his name has entered the Norwegian language as a word for “traitor.”^c
88. Throughout occupied Europe, many people actively collaborated with the Germans. As their countries were liberated, some locals took revenge against the collaborators by beating or shooting them or by shaving the female traitors’ heads.^c
Japanese soldier Lt. Onodo finally surrendered in 1974
89. In 1974, a Japanese soldier named Hiroo Onoda (1922- ) came out of the jungle of the Pacific island of Lubang. He had been hiding there for 29 years, unaware that his country had surrendered.^c
90. Japan and Russia never formally ended hostilities after WWII. Plans for them to sign an official peace treaty in 2000 failed because Japan wanted Russia to return four offshore islands it had taken after the war.^a
91. Author Ian Fleming based his character “007” on the Yugoslavian-born spy Dusko Popov (1912-1980). Popov spoke at least five languages and came up with his own formula for invisible ink. He was the first spy to use microdots, or photos shrunk down to the size of dots. He obtained information that the Japanese were planning an air strike on Pearl Harbor, but the FBI did not act on his warning. Popov later lived in the U.S. in a penthouse and created a reputation as a playboy. He wrote an account of his wartime activities in his novel Spy, Counterspy (1974).^c
92. From 1942, U.S. Marines in the Pacific used the Navajo language as their secret code. The language didn’t have the vocabulary for existing WWII technology, so existing words had to be given new meanings. For example, the word for “hummingbird” (da-he-ti-hi) became code for fighter plane. Around 400 Navajo Indians (Code Talkers) were trained to use the code, and the Japanese never cracked it.^c
93. The Russians were the first to have paratroopers, which they exhibited in 1935. The Allies did not catch up until 1940, when the Central Landing School opened near Manchester.^c
94. The most important medical advance that saved soldiers’ lives during WWII was the blood transfusion.^c
95. In 1939, the Nazis began a “euthanasia” program in which 80,000 to 100,000 Germans who were disabled, mentally retarded, or insane were murdered. The program was based in Berlin at No. 4 Tiergartenstrasse and became known as the T-4 program.ⁱ
96. The Auschwitz Concentration Camp Complex was the only place where prisoners were given identification number tattoos. The practice began in 1941 when Russian POWs were stamped on the upper-left breast. Jews started receiving tattoos (on their forearms) in 1942.ⁱ
97. Poison gas was first used in WWI to break the trench warfare stalemate. Though all powers had chemical weapons, only Japan (in China) and Italy (in Ethiopia) used them during WWII.^c
98. Formed as a personal protection service for Hitler, “SS” is an abbreviation ofSchuftzstaffel (“Protective Echelon”). Virtually a state within a state, the SS was headed by Heinrich Luitopold Himmler (1900-1945) and carried out massive executions of political opponents and ethnic minorities. It was divided into two groups, the Allgemeine-SS (General SS) and the Waffen-SS (Armed SS).^a
99. WWII casualties totaled between 50 and 70 million people. More than 80% of this total came from four countries: Russia, China, Germany, and Poland. More than half of these casualties were civilians, most of whom were women and children.^c 
    
    World War II Causalities by Country ^j

    Country	Military Deaths	Civilian Deaths	Total
    USSR	13,600,000	7,700,000	21,300,000
    China	1,324,000	10,000,000	11,324,000
    Germany	3,250,000	3,810,000	7,060,000
    Poland	850,000	6,000,000	6,850,000
    United States	500,000	0	500,000
    Italy	330,000	80,000	410,000
    Great Britain	326,000	62,000	388,000

    
    
    *These numbers are estimates and vary according to source
    Jewish Casualties of the Holocaust ^b

    Country	Estimated Number of Jews Killed in the Holocaust	Percent of the Jewish Population
    Austria	50,000	36
    Lithuania	220,000	94
    Netherlands	106,000	76
    Bohemia / Moravia	80,000	89

    
    
    *These numbers are estimates and vary according to source
    Hiroshima and Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Casualties ^e

    City	Casualties	Area Destroyed	Weapon
    Hiroshima	90,000-166,000	4.7 sq miles	Little Boy 15 kT (15,000 tons of TNT)
    Nagasaki	60,000-80,000	1.8 sq miles	Fat Man 21 kT (21,000 tons of TNT)

    
    
    *These numbers are estimates and vary according to source
    **Many who were wounded would later die from effects of radiation.
    ***It is estimated that 20,000 Koreans were killed in Hiroshima and 2,000 died in Nagasaki.^c

100 unsinkable facts about the Titanic

Her last signal rocket flared out a century ago. And the desperate cries from her decks became still a long time past.

R.M.S. Titanic, perhaps the most famous ship that ever sailed, hit an iceberg, and the next morning - April 15, 1912 - sank beneath the North Atlantic waves. She took 1,517 women, men and children to the bottom of the ocean with her, including some of the most famous names of her time.

But Titanic's voyage continues - in movies, books, TV shows and the public's fascination. Part historic chronicle, part human drama, part paranormal thriller, the tale of the doomed ship still has us in its hooks.

Today her story shifts like starlight sparkling on sea ice. Accounts and numbers differ, research changes "myth" into "fact," and vice versa. But her saga won't end.

So to mark the 100th anniversary of her loss, we give you 100 remembrances of the Titanic.

'The Ship of Dreams'

1. At the time of her launch, the Royal Mail Steamer Titanic was the largest man-made moving object on Earth.

2. The Titanic cost $7.5 million to build.

3. The White Star Line's Titanic and her sister ship Olympic were designed to compete with the famous Cunard liners Lusitania and Mauretania.

4. More than 15,000 men worked on the ship during its construction in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

5. The Titanic's wake was so huge that, at its launch, it sucked in another ship and almost caused a collision.

6. The Titanic featured an onboard swimming pool, a gymnasium, a squash court, and a Turkish bath and two separate libraries - one for first-class passengers, and one for second class.

7. The top speed of the Titanic was 23 knots (more than 26 miles per hour).

8. The Titanic originally was designed to carry 64 lifeboats. To save from cluttering decks, the ship ended up carrying 20 on her maiden voyage.

9. Only 706 passengers and crew would survive the disaster.

Premonitions of doom

10. Passenger and fashion writer Edith Rosenbaum cabled her secretary in Paris that she had "a premonition of trouble" about the Titanic. (She survived.)

11. Governess Elizabeth Shutes was so unnerved by the smell of the night air on April 14 that she could not fall asleep. She told fellow passengers that the smell reminded her of the air inside an ice cave she had visited. (She survived.)

12. William Edward Minahan, a doctor from Fond du Lac, Wis., had his fortune read shortly before the voyage. The fortune teller predicted his death aboard the ship. She was right.

13. The plot of Morgan Robertson's novel "Futility" bears an uncanny resemblance to the Titanic disaster. The novel tells the story of the Titan, the largest ship ever built, billed as "unsinkable," which strikes an iceberg in April and sinks. In the book, more than half the passengers die in the North Atlantic because of a lifeboat shortage. The book was published 14 years before the Titanic sank.

Wisconsin on deck

14. Capt. Edward G. Crosby, a Milwaukee veteran of the Civil War, founded a steamship company on Lake Michigan but became famous for refusing to put enough lifeboats for all the passengers on his steamers. Aboard the Titanic, he was unable to find a place on a lifeboat, and he sank with the ship.

15. Danish immigrant Claus Peter Hansen and his wife, Jennie, operated a barbershop in Racine. He went into the Atlantic waters after the collision. Jennie made it into a lifeboat and lived until 1952.

16. Louise Kink Pope was 4 years old when she went on board the Titanic. She and her mother, Luise, were loaded into a lifeboat, but her father was told to remain on deck. Instead, he jumped into the lifeboat as it was being lowered. The family survived and Pope died in Milwaukee at age 84 in 1992.

17. Ida "Daisy" Minahan, sister to William (See No. 12), caught one of the last departing lifeboats, along with Minahan's wife, Lillian.

18. In one of the most obvious "Titanic" movie goofs, Leonardo DiCaprio's character, Jack Dawson, claims to have gone ice fishing on Lake Wissota near Chippewa Falls. Unfortunately for scriptwriter James Cameron, Lake Wissota is a man-made reservoir that didn't exist until 1917.

Lifestyles of the rich . . .

19. The cost of the most expensive First Class Parlor ticket to New York was $4,350 - about $69,600 today.

20. The first-class dining saloon was sheathed in hand-cut mahogany paneling.

21. The first-class smoking lounge was for men only.

22. First-class passenger Eleanor Widener wore a famous multi- strand pearl necklace then valued at $250,000.

23. Many of the first-class female passengers left the Titanic still dressed in the silk evening gowns they had worn to dinner.

24. A new Renault car was part of Titanic's cargo.

25. The Titanic was stocked with 20,000 bottles of beer and stout, 1,500 bottles of wine and 8,000 cigars for use by first-class passengers.

26. The last dinner served in the first-class saloon consisted of 11 courses.

27. Buglers called first-class passengers to dinner by playing "The Roast Beef of Old England."

28. First-class passengers were given copies of "The White Star Music Book" containing 352 songs so they could make requests. The musicians had to know all the titles.

29. About 60% of the first-class passengers survived.

. . . and the rest

30. Second-class accommodations were equivalent to first class in most other ocean liners of the time.

31. Most third-class cabins contained four to six bunks.

32. Third-class passengers could hear the loud roar of the ship's engines in their cabins at all times.

33. Only two bathtubs were available for more than 700 third-class passengers - one for men, one for women.

34. Gates separating the third-class spaces from the other classes were kept locked even after the collision, according to some first-hand reports.

35. About 42% of the second-class passengers aboard survived.

36. About 25% of the third-class passengers survived.

The berg

37. The iceberg was spawned from a glacier in Greenland.

38. One recent scientific theory holds that the moon's extremely close approach to Earth on Jan. 4, 1912, created such strong tides that it sent an array of icebergs south into the Titanic's path.

39. The Titanic's launch was delayed by six weeks because her sister ship Olympic needed repairs in the same dry dock. That delay put seasonal icebergs right in the Titanic's path.

40. Titanic Capt. Edward Smith did try to avoid ice danger by altering the ship's course to the south after receiving warnings of icebergs from other ships.

41. At 11:40 p.m., Frederick Fleet was the first person on the Titanic to see the iceberg, describing it as something "even darker than the darkness."

42. The berg was about 100 feet tall.

43. At 32 degrees, the iceberg was warmer than the water Titanic passengers fell into that night. The ocean waters were 28 degrees, below the freezing point but not frozen because of the water's salt content.

The collision

44. A recent story in Smithsonian magazine theorizes that atmospheric conditions on the night of the sinking created optical illusions that prevented the Titanic's lookouts from seeing the iceberg.

45. The Titanic's lookout was not equipped with binoculars to see icebergs in time to avoid collision.

46. First Officer William Murdoch attempted to turn the ship to swing it past the berg.

47. From the lookout's first sighting to impact with the berg took only about 37 seconds.

48. Passengers had different descriptions for how the collision felt, from "a slight tremor" to - as described in "Shadow of the Titanic" - "as though The Titanic had passed over a thousand marbles."

49. If only four of the Titanic's watertight compartments had been breached, it would have stayed afloat. The iceberg sliced through six.

50. If the ship had hit the berg head on, Titanic probably would have survived because of the strength of its bulkheads.

The disaster

51. The Titanic's crew failed to fire correct distress signals after hitting the iceberg. Random rockets were fired, but according to the British inquiry into the wreck, the message sent by the rockets' pattern never signaled "distress." Instead, the incorrect rocket pattern signaled to any ship in the area the message: "I'm having navigation problem. Please stand clear."

52. The Titanic held no passenger lifeboat drills during its voyage.

53. A nearby vessel could be seen off the port side of the Titanic, but the ship's identity remains a mystery. The ship probably was either the Californian or a sealer called the Sampson. Had it responded, the ship would have arrived in time to save many Titanic passengers.

54. The waltz "Songe d'Automne," not "Nearer My God to Thee," was almost certainly the last song played by the Titanic orchestra, although the debate about the last song continues.

55. The musicians played for two hours and five minutes as the ship sank.

56. The ship's doom was hastened when crewman opened a gangway door to try to load lifeboats from a lower level. They couldn't reclose it, and seawater rushed in.

57. The final SOS position the Titanic sent out was incorrect.

58. The ship broke in two in its final moments.

59. The Titanic went under the waves at 2:20 a.m. ship's time April 15, about 400 miles off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland.

Among the saved

60. The rescue ship Carpathia began taking in Titanic survivors at 4:10 a.m.

61. Tennis players Dick Williams and Karl Behr survived and eventually would become teammates on the U.S. Davis Cup Team.

62. Margaret "Molly" Brown, social activist, U.S. Senate candidate and estranged wife of a Colorado silver mine operator, would go on to become famous in Hollywood as "The Unsinkable." During the Titanic sinking, she famously told the crewman on her lifeboat that she would throw him overboard if he kept berating the women.

63. Perfume salesman Adolphe Saalfeld lost his sample case of bottles in the sinking. He survived. Decades later, the bottles and the scents inside were recovered from the Titanic wreck and exhibited.

64. Lady Duff Gordon, one of the biggest fashion designers of her time, and her husband, Sir Cosmo Duff Gordon, both were saved but were later accused of bribing the crew to row off with only 12 people in their lifeboat. They both eventually were cleared.

65. Third-class passenger Rhoda Abbott jumped from the Titanic deck along with her two sons. The two boys drowned, but Abbott was the only female Titanic survivor to be pulled from the water.

66. Chief Baker Charles Joughin helped load bread into the lifeboats. Apparently immunized to freezing cold waters by the whiskey he had drunk, Joughin reportedly survived several hours swimming in the ocean before being rescued.

67. An Italian emigrant aboard the Titanic, who leaped into the sea when the last lifeboat was lowered, swam to the side of a lifeboat and was dragged in when he said he had a bottle of whiskey, Alice Johnson, a passenger in the lifeboat, told friends.

68. G. Wikeman, the Titanic's barber, reported he'd been blown off the ship during one of its explosions.

69. J. Bruce Ismay, owner of the Titanic, jumped in a lifeboat and was rowed away. He spent the rest of his life mostly in seclusion in Ireland.

70. Of the 12 dogs onboard the Titanic, only three survived its sinking: a Pekingese and two Pomeranians.

Among the lost

71. Archibald Butt, aide to Presidents William Taft and Theodore Roosevelt, had taken a vacation to recover after finding himself in the middle of a feud between the two presidents he'd served. He went down with the ship.

72. William Thomas Stead, one of the founders of investigative journalism, who exposed the evils of child prostitution, was last seen sitting in a leather chair reading a book.

73. Macy's department store partner Isidor Straus and his wife, Ida, died together. Ida reportedly had her foot on the edge of a lifeboat and was about to climb in. Instead, she returned to her husband and shared his fate.

74. The body of the richest man on board, John Jacob Astor, was found with his gold pocket watch dangling from its chain. Investigators believed Astor had checked his watch right before leaping from the Titanic.

75. Millionaire Benjamin Guggenheim put his mistress into a lifeboat and then changed into evening wear to await the ship's fatal plunge.

76. All eight members of the Titanic band died in the sinking.

77. Joseph Laroche, a native of Haiti and an engineer, was the only black passenger reported on board. He died in the wreck.

78. 3,500 bags of mail were lost.

79. Capt. E.J. Smith, who had planned to retire from the sea after helming Titanic's maiden voyage, went down with his ship.

80. One of the lifeboats was found in the ocean almost a month after the sinking with three bodies in it.

81. Only 306 bodies of Titanic passengers were recovered.

82. Rescuers burned some of the clothing from recovered bodies to deter souvenir hunting.

83. The body of a 2-year-old passenger was not identified until 2007. DNA evidence finally showed that the body was that of Sidney Leslie Goodwin of England.

Survivors who never lived

84. Maxixe the Pig Music Box. Owner Edith Rosenbaum Russell retrieved her pig music box from her Titanic stateroom just before getting into a lifeboat. She played the pig to help calm children in the boat. The pig became part of the Titanic legend, and the subject of the children's book, "Pig on the Titanic: A True Story."

85. Polar the Titanic Bear. Douglas Spedden, 7, took his stuffed bear Polar with him on the Titanic. Spedden and Polar were rescued, and Spedden's mother wrote a book, "Polar the Titanic Bear," as a Christmas gift for Douglas. In 1994, the book was published publicly, selling more than 250,000 copies.

Aftermath

86. The British newspaper The London Daily Mail reported "Titanic Sunk, No Lives Lost," in its initial April 16, 1912, story.

87. The New York Times devoted 75 pages to coverage of the Titanic in the first week after the sinking.

88. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch suggested the suffragette movement would end after the Titanic's sinking because women would fear that it would end the "women and children first" lifeboat rule.

89. The U.S. Senate inquiry into the disaster led to a recommendation that U.S. statutes be changed to require that all passenger vessels carry "sufficient lifeboats to accommodate every passenger and every member of the crew."

Its heart goes on

90. Titanic survivor actress Dorothy Gibson starred in the silent film "Saved From the Titanic" four weeks after the wreck, wearing the same clothes she wore aboard ship.

91. Second Officer Charles Lightoller and passenger Jack Thayer both wrote books describing their survival experiences aboard the Titanic.

92. According to the California ScienCenter, nearly five Titanics could be built at today's approximate equivalent cost of $400 million each with the money Cameron's movie "Titanic" has made (more than $1.84 billion worldwide so far).

93. Passenger Lawrence Beesley survived two Titanic sinkings. After the first, he made the lifeboats, and later was hired as a consultant for the 1958 film "A Night to Remember." He sneaked on the set as an extra scheduled to go down with the ship during filming, but he was discovered by the director and was thrown out.

94. The song "Down With the Old Canoe" about the Titanic sinking was recorded decades later by a group of South Carolina cotton mill workers.

95. Lady Marjorie Bellamy is lost with the Titanic in an episode of the "Masterpiece Theatre" series "Upstairs Downstairs," but her maid survives.

96. In the first episode of the hit PBS series "Downton Abbey," the presumptive heir to Downton Abbey dies aboard the Titanic.

97. "The Titanic Requiem," a debut symphonic work from Bee Gees singer Robin Gibb and his son Robin-John Gibb, recorded with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, was released April 3 to commemorate the Titanic anniversary.

98. A first-class lunch menu from the Titanic dated April 14, 1912, sold for 76,000 British pounds on March 31, 2012.

99. Of course, there's an app for the Titanic; it's published by The History Press.

100. Cyril Quigley watched the Titanic leave Belfast's Harland and Wolff shipyard in 1912 when he was 4. On March 31, 2012, Quigley, age 105, was guest of honor at the opening of the Titanic Belfast museum in Northern Ireland.