I bet you didn't know that this thread would have a part 2

KevRossi

Candie wrote: »

The secret police of the GDR was formed in 1950 and within ten years about one in 30 East Germans was a Stasi agent. About a third of the population was under close surveillance at any given time.

Kids were brainwashed with schools and programs aimed at terrifying them into a lifetime of conformity.

Well, this is only partly true. 1 in 30 would have given info to the Stasi at some time, they certainly didn't work for them. Some gave it voluntarily, some were coerced, most fell in between. Most of the '1 in 30' gave info once, on one particular person of interest, be it a work colleague, teacher etc.

Kids were about as 'brainwashed' as we are here. They didn't have access to a lot of West German media, but a lot of the DDR could receive West German TV. Everything in grey in the map below could receive it, the red squares are high powered transmitters. It was illegal to watch it, but everybody did.

East German kids went to the FDJ, a sort of scout movement that ran a huge amount of weekend and holiday camps. My ex-GF is an Ossi, born in the early 70's, I lived in Leipzig for a bit and one of my best mates is from Dresden. I always found that East Germans were more sociable and were better in big groups than West Germans.

No idea about the porn, but they had more sex partners than west Germans, and swinging was a big thing in the DDR, as was nudism (FKK). And statistically their women have more orgasms than west German women.

KevRossi

And if you want to see a very accurate portrayal of East German life, I'd suggest the mini series Deutschland 83.

New Home

And if you want to watch a very quirky, funny, touching film set in 1989, watch "Goodbye Lenin".

Bring back GDR!

The one in 30 comes from the meticulous records; payments and favours were carefully recorded. I don't think most were one-offs, but I'm not an expert.

The porn section (the horn section?) was made public knowledge in 2008, but was set up in 1982 and made 12 movies before the fall in 1989. There's an MDR documentary about it.

peasant

KevRossi wrote: »

They didn't have access to a lot of West German media, but a lot of the DDR could receive West German TV. Everything in grey in the map below could receive it, the red squares are high powered transmitters. It was illegal to watch it, but everybody did.

My relatives lived (and still do) near Dresden.
They couldn't get West-TV.*
In the GDR people called this area: Das Tal der Ahnungslosen (the valley of the clueless)


*well...they couldn't receive it on the rabbits ears in their flat, but that was quickly fixed when the whole block of flats got together and installed a proper aerial in the attic and an improvised cable TV for the whole house as soon as officialdom had given up on actual prosecutions for watching West-TV. It was still illegal, but non-enforcable at that point.

joujoujou

Speaking about East Germany...

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1410281/

Living in a shadow of Berlin Wall from wild rabbits point of view. Worth watching.

Capt'n Midnight

KevRossi wrote: »

They didn't have access to a lot of West German media, but a lot of the DDR could receive West German TV. Everything in grey in the map below could receive it, the red squares are high powered transmitters. It was illegal to watch it, but everybody did.

The Eastern Bloc countries use the French SECAM system for colour TV.

This meant that you could see Western TV, but only in black and white.
It was a compromise. No one had to get illegal TV's but the West looked as drab as the East.

It worked both ways. The GDR show The Sandman Sandmännchen was very popular in the West too.



Very different to Korea where thanks to the South's adoption of loan words and time moving on North Koreans are sometimes subtitled when on TV in the South


Which leads on to the North Korean monster movie Pulgasari when they kidnapped the director from the South and got the Japanese do the effects. It's an anti-monarchy Kaiju.

BaZmO*

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Which leads on to the North Korean monster movie Pulgasari when they kidnapped the director from the South and got the Japanese do the effects. It's an anti-monarchy Kaiju.

I watched a really good documentary on BBC4 about this a few years back.

The abduction of Shin Sang-ok and Choi Eun-hee occurred in North Korea between 1978 and 1986. Shin Sang-ok was a famous South Korean film director married to actress Choi Eun-hee. Together, they established Shin Film and made many films through the 1960s which garnered recognition for South Korea at various film festivals. In 1978 Choi was abducted and taken to North Korea to the country's future dictator Kim Jong-il. The abduction of Shin followed six months later.

After three years in prison, Shin was united with Choi, and the two were instructed by Kim Jong-il to make films for him in order to gain global recognition for North Korea's film industry. After making many films for Kim, in 1986 Choi and Shin escaped from North Korean supervision to a US embassy while in Vienna.

Kim Jong-il was a big movie buff.

New Home

Candie wrote: »

Bring back GDR!

The one in 30 comes from the meticulous records; payments and favours were carefully recorded. I don't think most were one-offs, but I'm not an expert.

The porn section (the horn section?) was made public knowledge in 2008, but was set up in 1982 and made 12 movies before the fall in 1989. There's an MDR documentary about it.

Maybe they tried, but the got it all wrong: they wanted a German Democratic Porn Republic but instead they created GDPR.

ohnonotgmail

Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first president to have an armoured limousine. there were fears of an assassination attempt after Pearl Harbor so they modified his existing limousine. they added armor plating for the doors, bullet-proof tires, inch-thick windows and storage compartments for pistols and sub-machine guns. the car was a convertible and Roosevelt preferred to drive with the top down.

Father Hernandez

Apollo 14 commander Alan Shepard was the first American astronaut in space, but today he's almost as well known as the first -- and so far, only -- person to hit a golf ball on the Moon.

Just before leaving the lunar surface in 1971, he attached a 6-iron golf club head to the foldable shaft of a lunar soil sampler and whacked two golf balls out into the gray lunar distance.

He sliced the first and hit the second about 200 yards.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kionasmith/2019/02/06/astronaut-alan-shepards-out-of-this-world-round-of-golf-on-the-moon/#1c3dadc82500

Wibbs

Bloody golfists. The buggers are everywhere.

In 1966, the birth rate in Japan was much lower than in the years before or after it. This is due to Hinoe Uma ("fire-horse") and it is traditionally believed to recur on a 60 year cycle. It is the belief that children born on those years will be headstrong, and in particular that women born on such years will bring bad luck to their husbands.

Ipso

Father Hernandez wrote: »

Apollo 14 commander Alan Shepard was the first American astronaut in space, but today he's almost as well known as the first -- and so far, only -- person to hit a golf ball on the Moon.

Just before leaving the lunar surface in 1971, he attached a 6-iron golf club head to the foldable shaft of a lunar soil sampler and whacked two golf balls out into the gray lunar distance.

He sliced the first and hit the second about 200 yards.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kionasmith/2019/02/06/astronaut-alan-shepards-out-of-this-world-round-of-golf-on-the-moon/#1c3dadc82500

A good moonwalk spoiled!

mikhail

Deleted User wrote: »

In 1966, the birth rate in Japan was much lower than in the years before or after it. This is due to Hinoe Uma ("fire-horse") and it is traditionally believed to recur on a 60 year cycle. It is the belief that children born on those years will be headstrong, and in particular that women born on such years will bring bad luck to their husbands.

April 1966 must have been a fun month in Japan.

Wibbs

Ipso wrote: »

A good moonwalk spoiled!

ohnonotgmail

Fax machines are so old it is possible that an actual genuine samurai could have used one.

New Home

I've just looked it up, it seems a version of the telefax (more like a telegram-fax) was actually invented before the phone was!! :eek:

Professor Moriarty

New Home wrote: »

I've just looked it up, it seems a version of the telefax (more like a telegram-fax) was actually invented before the phone was!! :eek:

The earliest recorded method of long distance communication was homing pigeons in Egypt in 2,900 BC.

ohnonotgmail

in 2015 and 2018 Nigel richards from New Zealand won the french world scrabble championships. He doesn't speak french.

Gloomtastic!

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

in 2015 and 2018 Nigel richards from New Zealand won the french world scrabble championships. He doesn't speak french.

That’s mad. A quick wiki said he spent 9 weeks studying a French dictionary. Boy, his fellow contestants must have been pee’d off!

KevRossi

Gloomtastic! wrote: »

That’s mad. A quick wiki said he spent 9 weeks studying a French dictionary. Boy, his fellow contestants must have been pee’d off!

Surely if they were French they would be Pee D'Off. :pac:

Capt'n Midnight

KevRossi wrote: »

Surely if they were French they would be Pee D'Off. :pac:

Oui oui.

mzungu

The Canary Islands were named after dogs. In Spanish, the area's name is Islas Canarias, which comes from the Latin phrase Canariae Insulae for "island of dogs."

ohnonotgmail

mzungu wrote: »

The Canary Islands were named after dogs. In Spanish, the area's name is Islas Canarias, which comes from the Latin phrase Canariae Insulae for "island of dogs."

and the birds are named after the islands.

this is the breed of dog the islands are named after, the presa canario.

Bloody Nora! That's surely some kind of genetically engineered horse-dog?

He looks like a doggy version of an olympic weight lifter after a lifetime of steroid abuse.

ohnonotgmail

Candie wrote: »

Bloody Nora! That's surely some kind of genetically engineered horse-dog?

He looks like a doggy version of an olympic weight lifter after a lifetime of steroid abuse.

they are working dogs for livestock. they are usually about the same height as your thigh so a decent size as well.

ohnonotgmail

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

they are working dogs for livestock. they are usually about the same height as your thigh so a decent size as well.

Is the livestock a herd of T-Rex?

New Home

Look up Neapolitan Bullmastiff, Candie. The only one I ever saw in real life was probably overweight, too, but it was the size of a hot water tank with legs. They're supposed to be big softies, but I wouldn't be taking my chances...

New Home

New Home wrote: »

Look up Neapolitan Bullmastiff, Candie. The only one I ever saw in real life was probably overweight, too, but it was the size of a hot water tank with legs. They'te supposed to be big softies, but I wouldn't be taking my chances...

Did an image search - I've driven smaller cars!

cdeb

Speaking of the Canary Islands, why is island spelled with an s anyway? What a silly silent letter.

The word in middle English was iland, which makes sense. But in the 15th century, it was thought that the unrelated French word isle was actually related, which would mean that the English version had dropped an "s" somewhere along the way. So it was added back in, having never been there in the first place.

Isle comes from the Latin insula, which does have an "s". Iland comes from the the Norwegian øy or the Swedish ö (meaning island) and the general suffix "land", meaning "land", neither of which have an s.

Capt'n Midnight

I used to think the shortest pitch was for Miami Vice it was just "MTV Cops."

But James Cameron pitched Aliens by writing the title on a chalkboard and drawing a line on the S (making it a dollar sign). The next day, the film was greenlighted and given an $18 million budget.

1990sman

i bet you didn't know that helen hunt looks class in the rain.

larchielads

peasant wrote: »

silly dress... check
silly walk ... check
actual conflict potential ... treble check :eek:

closing ceremony at India/Pakistan border

It's like that film step up

LostinBlanch

Big cats go wild for Calvin Klein’s obsession for Men.

https://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/news/00000144-0a2e-d3cb-a96c-7b2fe7b70000

Insert cougar jokes here.

Capt'n Midnight

If you have highly enriched uranium of 93.5% you can make an atomic bomb without explosives or detonators.

Simply drop one of the sub-critical pieces 4.4 meters to the other and it's 50:50 whether you get a bang or a fizzle.

KevRossi

None of the countries that bordered Poland in 1990 existed in 1993. They had all been dissolved, founded, split or reunified with another one.

East Germany had been reunified with West Germany

Czechoslovakia had been split into Czech Republic and Slovakia

USSR was now Russia

Lithuania gained independence from USSR.

https://omniatlas.com/maps/europe/19891110/

LostinBlanch

Did you know Sudocrem was invented by Cabra pharmacist Thomas Smith in in 1931? Every tub sold worldwide is made in Baldoyle.

His son Brendan dealt with all the marketing.

Brendan, came up with the idea of sending the cream out to new mothers. He would trawl the local papers for the births announcements and send out sample cream to all of the mothers on the lists.

Smith wasn’t just a whiz at direct marketing it seems, he was also unusually pro-active about dealing with customer feedback. If someone wrote to complain about Sudocrem, he would visit the family personally to find out what the problem was.Such dedication paid off in the ’60s and ’70s when lucrative new markets opened up for his creation.

There was a post in broadsheet about it.

KevRossi

LostinBlanch wrote: »

Did you know Sudocrem was invented by Cabra pharmacist Thomas Smith in in 1931? Every tub sold worldwide is made in Baldoyle.

His son Brendan dealt with all the marketing.




There was a post in broadsheet about it.

I never worked out how it never became a real global seller. I used to have to truck boxes of it back to Germany to mates who had had kids when I was there in the 1990's.

I did a couple of Camino's last year and people were blown away by it, how good it was for rash and some other ailments. Truly magical stuff.

its_steve116

Anthrax are the only one of the "Big Four" 80s thrash metal bands (Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax, Slayer) not from LA. They're from Queens, New York.

secondrowgal

From Twitter:

In 1974, Ramesses II was sent on a flight to Paris for preservation and maintenance work. But since French law required every person, living or dead to fly with a valid passport, Egypt was forced to issue a passport to the Pharaoh, 3,000 years after his death.

He's looking well

https://twitter.com/victorocampo/status/1304351074019467272?s=21

ohnonotgmail

secondrowgal wrote: »

From Twitter:

In 1974, Ramesses II was sent on a flight to Paris for preservation and maintenance work. But since French law required every person, living or dead to fly with a valid passport, Egypt was forced to issue a passport to the Pharaoh, 3,000 years after his death.

He's looking well

https://twitter.com/victorocampo/status/1304351074019467272?s=21

3000 years old and he still has a better passport photo than i do

KevRossi

They had machine readable passports in 1974? Also, would it not be in Arabic as well as English?

FWIW, in the 1990's I used to issue 'passports' for paintings and sculptures. If it was worth about $250,000 or more on the international market the insurance companies would insist on them.

Skylinehead

KevRossi wrote: »

They had machine readable passports in 1974? Also, would it not be in Arabic as well as English?

FWIW, in the 1990's I used to issue 'passports' for paintings and sculptures. If it was worth about $250,000 or more on the international market the insurance companies would insist on them.

Yeah it seems that the image there is a reconstruction.

New Home

In fairness, I don't think he'd have changed that much...

Adyx

LostinBlanch wrote: »

If someone wrote to complain about Sudocrem, he would visit the family personally to find out what the problem was.

This sounds worse than it probably was. :pac:

Capt'n Midnight

Australian astronomers have an average carbon footprint of 37 tons a year.

Over four times that of a EU citizen.

Marcusm

KevRossi wrote: »

This is one of the best threads on Boards.ie, but the first post in the original thread has only received 8 Thanks to date.



Anyway, there are 7 islands that are divided by international borders.

Here they are:

There are more; including St Martin/Sint Maarten.

Capt'n Midnight

Marcusm wrote: »

There are more; including St Martin/Sint Maarten.

Anguilla is another island 8km away. But it's British. And the main airport is on Sint Maarten and Brexit won't make things easier there.

Capt'n Midnight

Thanks to the Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659) Pheasant Island aka Île des Faisans aka Île de la Conférence aka Isla de los Faisanes aka Konpantzia is Spanish from 1 February – 31 July and French from 1 August – 31 January.