Dec 20, 2018

Random Thursday

We once again dive into Doug Lennox's The Little Book of Answers, continuing the chapter on War & Military! Let's see what we will learn today!


(image borrowed from Agri-Pulse)
When someone has died people used to say, "he bought the farm," this came about during WWII after a pilot was shot down. If you fought and died for your country, the life insurance money would be enough for one's family to pay off their mortgage and thusly "buy the farm."


I don't think I've ever heard that expression before!


(image borrowed from Pinterest)
Snafus are known as glaring errors and they earned this name during WWII. Some massive military operations were so big that they basically crapped out because of their massive size. The frustrated servicemen called them SNAFUs which stood for "Situation Normal: All Fouled Up." Though it's likely that "fouled" was used as a censorship for family use, but we can all guess what word was used!


(image borrowed from The Steve Laube Agency)
We all know what a deadline is when it comes to papers and newspaper articles, but the expression actually came from the American Civil War prisoners. These prisoners were kept in makeshift type boundaries which could be as simple as a line in the sand. They were told that if they were to cross the line, they'd be dead. And thus the word deadline is born!


Definitely a lot scarier than the other one!


(image borrowed from Wikipedia)
During WWII Native American paratroopers would jump from a plane and shout out Geronimo to honor the original Geronimo. When Geronimo was cornered by U.S. cavalrymen he shouted his own name in defiance and jumped off a cliff, but instead of dying he managed to escape injury and death by the bluecoats.


That's interesting! I never knew that before, but glad I do now!






1 comment:

  1. How interesting! I love these weird facts. I'll definitely be sharing the one about deadline with some people as a fun fact XD

    ReplyDelete

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