Comical Historical Events

[Christian Confederation]

In the 80s there was a separatist movement in Quebec that wanted to join the US as the 51st State.

[Nationalist Northumbria]

In the 80s there was a separatist movement in Quebec that wanted to join the US as the 51st State.

I have not laughed at (or found amusing) a single one of your posts in this thread.

[Christian Confederation]

In the 80s there was a separatist movement in Quebec that wanted to join the US as the 51st State.

I have not laughed at (or found amusing) a single one of your posts in this thread.

Comedy is subjective

[Nationalist Northumbria]

I have not laughed at (or found amusing) a single one of your posts in this thread.

Comedy is subjective

Excepting you, I am confident that my opinion is held unanimously.

[The Selkie]

Comedy is subjective

Excepting you, I am confident that my opinion is held unanimously.

Sorry to burst your bubble, NN, but if you ask me, then CC indeed has a few nice stories to tell. Granted, it was more the little bemused "heh" rather then "I roll on the floor and laugh my arse off", but that is true for the majority of my contributions as well (Mile High Club, anyone?).
So, no, NN, your opinion is not held unanimously.

But, back to the topic at hand: Comical Historical Events.
Certainly not comical for the people on the receiving end, but during the Korean War, USS Wisconsin got hit, by a North Korean Gun Battery, which got a lucky shot in. Instead of a calm and measured response of a few five inch shells, the battleship returned fire with a broadside from her main artillery.
Her 16 inch main artillery.
All nine of them.
The comical part comes now: Upon seeing that, one of her escorts signalled to Wisconsin "Temper, temper."

[Ethel mermania]

Excepting you, I am confident that my opinion is held unanimously.

Sorry to burst your bubble, NN, but if you ask me, then CC indeed has a few nice stories to tell. Granted, it was more the little bemused "heh" rather then "I roll on the floor and laugh my arse off", but that is true for the majority of my contributions as well (Mile High Club, anyone?).
So, no, NN, your opinion is not held unanimously.

But, back to the topic at hand: Comical Historical Events.
Certainly not comical for the people on the receiving end, but during the Korean War, USS Wisconsin got hit, by a North Korean Gun Battery, which got a lucky shot in. Instead of a calm and measured response of a few five inch shells, the battleship returned fire with a broadside from her main artillery.
Her 16 inch main artillery.
All nine of them.
The comical part comes now: Upon seeing that, one of her escorts signalled to Wisconsin "Temper, temper."

Nah, and the amusing part of the Stonewall story is his arm.

And yes the Wisconsin story is an amusing one.

[Nationalist Northumbria]

Excepting you, I am confident that my opinion is held unanimously.

Sorry to burst your bubble, NN, but if you ask me, then CC indeed has a few nice stories to tell. Granted, it was more the little bemused "heh" rather then "I roll on the floor and laugh my arse off", but that is true for the majority of my contributions as well (Mile High Club, anyone?).
So, no, NN, your opinion is not held unanimously.

I speak for us all, except the tiny minority including you and CC.

[Kowani]

One day in 1995, a man robbed two Pittsburgh banks in broad daylight. He didn't wear a mask or any sort of disguise. And he smiled at surveillance cameras before walking out of each bank. Later that night, police arrested a surprised McArthur Wheeler. When they showed him the surveillance tapes, he stared in disbelief. "But I wore the juice," he mumbled. Apparently, Wheeler thought that rubbing lemon juice on his skin would render him invisible to videotape cameras. After all, lemon juice is used as invisible ink so, as long as he didn't come near a heat source, he should have been completely invisible. Police concluded that Wheeler was just incredibly mistaken.

---

In the 80s there was a separatist movement in Quebec that wanted to join the US as the 51st State.

Note: the political party that advocates this, Parti 51, was relaunched in 2016

[The Selkie]

One day in 1995, a man robbed two Pittsburgh banks in broad daylight. He didn't wear a mask or any sort of disguise. And he smiled at surveillance cameras before walking out of each bank. Later that night, police arrested a surprised McArthur Wheeler. When they showed him the surveillance tapes, he stared in disbelief. "But I wore the juice," he mumbled. Apparently, Wheeler thought that rubbing lemon juice on his skin would render him invisible to videotape cameras. After all, lemon juice is used as invisible ink so, as long as he didn't come near a heat source, he should have been completely invisible. Police concluded that Wheeler was just incredibly mistaken.
[...]

That reminds me of the time a soldier of the Bundeswehr robbed a bank - he wore his Flecktarn uniform, ski mask and had his name tag on.
Needless to say, he did not enjoy his money for long.

480 BC, Xerxes I launches the Second Persian Invasion of Greece, wants to cross the Dardanelles and has his men build Pontoon Bridges. A storm comes, wrecks it.
Xerxes is furious and, after beheading the engineers, who build a pontoon bridge, which was destroyed by a storm, he punished the Dardanelles: Three hundred times, the whip cracked, chains were thrown into the water, branded it with red hot iron and had his soldiers shout at it.
Apparently, it worked, only for Xerxes to be stopped again at a then little known coastal pass called Thermopylae... while he emerged victorious there, eventually, he did not win at Salamis or at Plataea (which stopped the invasion and which were decidedly not fun times for anyone involved).

[Bendicion]

One day in 1995, a man robbed two Pittsburgh banks in broad daylight. He didn't wear a mask or any sort of disguise. And he smiled at surveillance cameras before walking out of each bank. Later that night, police arrested a surprised McArthur Wheeler. When they showed him the surveillance tapes, he stared in disbelief. "But I wore the juice," he mumbled. Apparently, Wheeler thought that rubbing lemon juice on his skin would render him invisible to videotape cameras. After all, lemon juice is used as invisible ink so, as long as he didn't come near a heat source, he should have been completely invisible. Police concluded that Wheeler was just incredibly mistaken.
[...]

That reminds me of the time a soldier of the Bundeswehr robbed a bank - he wore his Flecktarn uniform, ski mask and had his name tag on.
Needless to say, he did not enjoy his money for long.

480 BC, Xerxes I launches the Second Persian Invasion of Greece, wants to cross the Dardanelles and has his men build Pontoon Bridges. A storm comes, wrecks it.
Xerxes is furious and, after beheading the engineers, who build a pontoon bridge, which was destroyed by a storm, he punished the Dardanelles: Three hundred times, the whip cracked, chains were thrown into the water, branded it with red hot iron and had his soldiers shout at it.
Apparently, it worked, only for Xerxes to be stopped again at a then little known coastal pass called Thermopylae... while he emerged victorious there, eventually, he did not win at Salamis or at Plataea (which stopped the invasion and which were decidedly not fun times for anyone involved).

I have heard this story as well. Im not sure if he had gone mad after getting so angry or he was simply just that superstitious

[Christian Confederation]

John Wilkes Booth Broke his leg after leaping from President Lincoln's box.

[Valentine Z]

I'm not very sure if this is in the spirit of the thread, but I'm going to risk it a little. Mind you, the preceding, the context, and the aftermath wasn't exactly peachy, but it was the *process* of it that was bordering on comedy.

Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich. A series of events involving a jammed gun (apparently due to the plants Jozef Gabcik collected for his pet rabbit, but I can't find this other than from a listicle comedy site), chasing the Czech assassins with an empty Luger, mistimed grenade, on-foot chase (rather than telling the driver to drive away). I mean sure, trying to assassinate a High-Ranking target in an enemy territory was stressful... but the icing to me is probably Heydrich ordering his driver to, you know, chase the two guys on foot.

https://www.backwoodshome.com/blogs/Mas ... can-guns/#

[Concejos Unidos]

After receiving a letter informing him of a threat on his life at a masked ball, King Gustav III of Sweden went out onto a balcony and waited 10 minutes, daring any assassins to shoot him. After dismounting from the balcony and descending to the dance floor, he was attacked, having worn medals that were enough for the assassins to identify him at a masked ball. He died from an infection 2 weeks later.

[Christian Confederation]

Whall on the topic of Assassinations Senator Huey Long was most likely killed by his own security when they opened fire on the Assassin with Tommy Guns.

[Mawshire]

Franz Reichelt was an Austrian inventor based in Paris who developed a design for a wearable parachute, intended for pilots to wear in case they needed to jump from their aircraft. He was so determined to demonstrate that his parachute suit worked that he planned to jump from the Eiffel Tower wearing it. Around 30 journalists and a newsreel camera crew were invited to document the jump. Friends and onlookers pleaded with him to call off the jump, or to use a dummy instead, but Reichelt was adamant that the experiment would be a success. When he did finally jump, the parachute malfunctioned and he fell to his death.

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

[The Selkie]

1957, the Cold War is underway and of course, one can not go into the End of the World as we know it (and I feel fine) without proper training. So, the US Air Force, merely ten years at the time, regularly send their pilots up with WMDs to prepare them.
That, too, happened on the 22nd of May 1957 at the Kirtland Air Force Base near Albuquerque.
The B-36 Peacemaker took off, a 15 megaton Mark 17 hydrogen bomb onboard.
They do their practice run, someone yells "Bombs away!"... and the plane lurches as said 15 megaton Mark 17 hydrogen bomb drops through the bomb bay doors roughly 500 metres to the ground.
As the bomb was inert, the materials to make it go boom were aboard, but not installed as a safety precaution, Albuquerque still exists, but the bomb dropped onto a field, where the conventional explosives aboard detonated and killed a cow, scattering debris and radioactive material over a mile (the military did clean up, though).

This was by far not the only time, when a nuclear or hydrogen bomb was lost, though. Some were never found.

[Mathuvan Union]

Don’t know if this has already been mentioned, but
Back in my day around the late 880s, Louis III of France died while riding a horse that rode into a doorway in West Francia.
Probably one of the more peculiar deaths of the last couple Millenia.

[Christian Confederation]

The US Air Force lost a nuclear bomber off the coast of Savanah Georgia. They have no Idea where the bomb is but do know it is more than likely perfectly harmless on the floor if the Atlantic.

[The Blaatschapen]

Speaking of lost stuff, the soviets lost a reflector on the moon for nearly four decades. It was rediscovered in 2010 when the soviets didn't exist anymore.

[Mathuvan Union]

The US Air Force lost a nuclear bomber off the coast of Savanah Georgia. They have no Idea where the bomb is but do know it is more than likely perfectly harmless on the floor if the Atlantic.

They’re called ‘broken arrows’ and there’s a disturbing amount of them.

[Christian Confederation]

The US Air Force lost a nuclear bomber off the coast of Savanah Georgia. They have no Idea where the bomb is but do know it is more than likely perfectly harmless on the floor if the Atlantic.

They’re called ‘broken arrows’ and there’s a disturbing amount of them.

At least 32, 14 of which are declassified

[The Selkie]

To steer away from atomic weapons at the Lost and Found Office (a mental image I do not enjoy), to a thief of the birdy kind: Livius tells us, that the Etruscan King of Rome, a chap by the name of Tarquinius Priscus, had his hat stolen by an eagle. While the bird brings the hat back, which Priscus' wife Tanaquil interprets as a good omen, as she wont to as she was skilled in augury (as most Etruscans were, according to Livy).
The whole story is in Verses 7 to 10.

[Bendicion]

Speaking of lost stuff, the soviets lost a reflector on the moon for nearly four decades. It was rediscovered in 2010 when the soviets didn't exist anymore.

Not gonna lie, i quickly searched this one lol

[Neutraligon]

From what I recall the Spain decided to get rid of their supply of a useless metal known as platinum by dumping it in the sea.

[Korwin]

That time when a bunch of American fascists, perma-virgins, basement dwellers, and unemployed white supremacists attempted to overthrow the US government and install an unelected tyrant, only to immediately hide tail and blame Antifa and people they disagree with when it failed.