History, Humanism, and other Shit.

Soviet sniper, WW2.

Unlike basically every other country, the USSR allowed women to join their sniper ranks during the second world war. This was awesome because 1) integration is a good thing for the military and for society as a whole but also because 2) now we have all these great pictures of bad ass sniper women from WW2.

todaysdocument:

Marines raising the flag atop Mount Suribachi during the battle for Iwo Jima, February 23, 1945.

(via todaysdocument)

Soldiers in Vietnam.

Speaks for itself, I think.

German soldiers heading to the front in 1914. The cart reads, “Trip to Paris,” “See you later on the Boulevard,” and “Into battle, my saber tip is itching.” Of course, this is before everyone realized WW1 was going to be one of the most horrifying things to be involved in ever.

I haven’t posted in forever, and this will be rectified - I’m hoping on getting back to a steady posting schedule now that I’m done filling out applications. Good to be back on tumblr - the new photo posting interface is interesting.

“It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle… waiters and shop-walkers looked you in the face and treated you as an equal… The revolutionary posters were everywhere…the loud-speakers were bellowing revolutionary songs all day and far into the night. And it was the aspect of the crowds that was the queerest thing of all. In outward appearance it was a town in which the wealthy classes had practically ceased to exist… All of this was queer and moving. There was much in it that I did not understand, in some ways I did not even like it, but I recognized immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for.

~George Orwell (the tall one in the middle), Homage to Catalonia. Otherwise known as one of the best possible gifts for a history nerd ever.

History in the making.

A mortar shot from Syria landed in Akcakale, a Turkish border town, today. It killed five people.

Turkey immediately responded by shelling Syria.

NATO has pledged to protect Turkey.

Luckily, Turkey has stated that it’s not planning on invading…but holy shit. Things are heating up quick. 

Hold on to your hats, people.

German infantry, 1914.

You know, before we loaded up our military outfits with things like “supplies” and “body armor”, we had a lot of room to make them look pretty damn cool. Look at them! They have little spikes on their helmets!

That’s pretty cool.

Meet Calgacus, a chieftain from what is now Scotland who fought against Rome in the Battle of Mons Graupius - if Tacitus didn’t just make him up, which he might of done.

If he did, he made one of the more bad ass characters ever to grace British history. To quote him on the topic of Romans -

“Robbers of the world, having by their universal plunder exhausted the land, they rifle the deep. If the enemy be rich, they are rapacious; if he be poor, they lust for dominion; neither the east nor the west has been able to satisfy them. Alone among men they covet with equal eagerness poverty and riches. To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of empire; they make a desert and call it peace.”

Fuck yeah.

Notre Dame de Reims (no, not that Notre Dame - there are many) in 1914.

The cathedral was hit by the Germans in the opening of WW1 as they shelled France. The destruction of the beautiful building must have been a terrifying sight - towers caught fire, melting the lead in the roof, which then flowed through the gargoyles. 

It was re-opened in the 30s thanks to one of the least dickish uses of money in the Rockefeller family history.