r/HistoryAnecdotes

Image 1 — On August 3-4, 1991 the cruise ship MTS Oceanos sank off the coast of South Africa. The captain and several crew members abandoned the ship while passengers were still aboard. Thanks to the actions of the ship's entertainers all 500+ people onboard were rescued.

Image 2 — On August 3-4, 1991 the cruise ship MTS Oceanos sank off the coast of South Africa. The captain and several crew members abandoned the ship while passengers were still aboard. Thanks to the actions of the ship's entertainers all 500+ people onboard were rescued.

Image 3 — On August 3-4, 1991 the cruise ship MTS Oceanos sank off the coast of South Africa. The captain and several crew members abandoned the ship while passengers were still aboard. Thanks to the actions of the ship's entertainers all 500+ people onboard were rescued.

Image 4 — On August 3-4, 1991 the cruise ship MTS Oceanos sank off the coast of South Africa. The captain and several crew members abandoned the ship while passengers were still aboard. Thanks to the actions of the ship's entertainers all 500+ people onboard were rescued.

Image 5 — On August 3-4, 1991 the cruise ship MTS Oceanos sank off the coast of South Africa. The captain and several crew members abandoned the ship while passengers were still aboard. Thanks to the actions of the ship's entertainers all 500+ people onboard were rescued.

Image 6 — On August 3-4, 1991 the cruise ship MTS Oceanos sank off the coast of South Africa. The captain and several crew members abandoned the ship while passengers were still aboard. Thanks to the actions of the ship's entertainers all 500+ people onboard were rescued.

On August 3-4, 1991 the cruise ship MTS Oceanos sank off the coast of South Africa. The captain and several crew members abandoned the ship while passengers were still aboard. Thanks to the actions of the ship's entertainers all 500+ people onboard were rescued.

Gutairist Moss Hills and his wife Tracy (last photo) were members of the ship's band. That night they set sail the weather was rough and at approximately 9:30 the ships power went out. None of the ships officers were giving the passengers instructions and after a while Moss decided to find out what was going on. He went down to the lower decks and saw the crew running around panicked and could see signs that the ship was sinking. The evacuation was a trainwreck as senior officers were getting into lifeboats without issuing a general alarm to the passengers and the captain was insisting the ship wasn't sinking (apparently he was also caught trying to board a lifeboat). Eventually they couldn't launch any more lifeboats (either because of the ship's tilt or because several of the lifeboats had left only partially full) and there were still 220 people left on board. Hills went up to the bridge which he found was completely abandoned and made a distress call. He got in touch with the captain of a nearby container ship who helped coordinate the rescue. 13 helicopters from the South African Defense Force arrived to airlift the remaining passengers and crew off the sinking ship According to the Hills and several other witnesses the captain was one of the first to be airlifted out by the helicopters when there were still passengers on board, The Hills would be among the last to be rescued before the Oceanos sunk beneath the waves at 3:30 pm on August 4. All passengers and crew were rescued (sources conflicted about the exact number being either 571 or 581).

Moss Hills would be praised as a hero in the aftermath of the sinking and would later change careers becoming a cruise director. The captain and some of the crew would later be convicted of negligence for their actions during the sinking.

u/Ill_Definition8074 — 11 days ago

▲ 108 r/HistoryAnecdotes+1 crossposts

In 1822 a Scottish soldier sold London a country that didn't exist.

https://preview.redd.it/nx78rw3sy3sh1.png?width=800&format=png&auto=webp&s=9030dc0d1749e8d755ca05bfcafb69c51909965f

Gregor MacGregor came back from the South American wars with a land grant for a strip of Honduran swamp. Worthless as territory. So he turned it into the Kingdom of Poyais instead, and gave it everything a country needs: a capital, a cathedral, a bank, a constitution, a flag, an anthem, a currency. He made himself Cazique, Prince of the Poyers. He had a 355 page guidebook written, credited to an army officer who didn't exist.

Then he floated a £200,000 loan on the London market at par, and it sold. He came back for £300,000 more, and that sold too.

He also sold the land itself. Thirty acres for a few shillings, to Scottish farmers and clerks who sold everything they had in Britain to buy it. About 250 of them got on ships. What they found at the Black River was swamp, jungle and malaria. They tried to build the colony anyway. More than half of them died.

Nobody was ever tried for it. MacGregor was in Paris by then, trying to float another £300,000 of Poyaisian debt. The French arrested him, tried him, and acquitted him. He died in Caracas in 1845 on a Venezuelan army pension, perfectly respectable.

The part that sticks with me is that all of it was checkable at the time. Nobody checked. London was flush with money after Napoleon, Colombian and Chilean bonds had just made people rich, and the market badly wanted another New World country to lend to. MacGregor didn't outsmart anyone. He just showed up with the story they were already waiting for.

Investors lost around £1.3 million. The surviving bonds now sell for thousands.

Read the full story here: Online article

reddit.com

u/scripophilyhub — 9 days ago

▲ 120 r/HistoryAnecdotes+1 crossposts

I recently visited the grave of Just Nuisance the only dog to be officially enlisted in the Royal Navy.

The story of Just Nuisance is one of the most unique pieces of military history from World War Two. He was a massive Great Dane who lived in Simon's Town, South Africa, and spent all his time hanging out with Royal Navy sailors. He used to lay across the narrow gangplanks of the ships, and because he was so huge, the sailors constantly had to yell at him for being a total nuisance. The nickname stuck, and he officially became Just Nuisance.

What makes his story wild is that he actually became an officially enlisted member of the Royal Navy. He loved following the sailors onto the local trains to Cape Town, but the railway company got tired of him riding without a ticket. They threatened to put him down if the sailors did not start paying his fare. To save his life, the Navy command stepped in and officially signed him up as a volunteer in 1939. This gave him a free train pass, military rations, and a bunk to sleep in.

He ended up being promoted to Able Seaman and had a hilarious disciplinary record. He was caught fighting other dogs, going AWOL to visit local pubs, and sleeping in the beds of higher ranking officers. Despite the trouble, he was a massive morale booster during the war and would even escort drunk sailors back to the base at night. When he passed away in 1944, he was given a full military funeral with a firing squad. If you ever visit Simon's Town today, you can still see his bronze statue in the town square and visit his grave up on Red Hill.

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

u/blesandthebridges — 10 days ago