r/HistoryMemes

Context: Magnesium-Elektron Ltd (today Luxfer MEL Technologies) was a British magnesium alloys manufacturer founded in the 1930s, partly owned by and using the products and processes of IG Farben, the German chemicals giant which at one point was the largest conglomerate in Europe and the world's biggest chemicals manufacturer.

At this time magnesium manufacturing used ores and minerals from salt lakes and solution mining, as well as from rocks such as dolomite and magnesite. Magnesium as a metal is super reactive so it can't be extracted by heating like with iron. You first need to produce magnesium chloride, which then needs to be electrolysed to make the pure metal. IG Farben's process was to grab magnesium oxide (for example from crushed and calcinated ores) and then blast it in a 1000°C furnace while pumping in chlorine gas (called the Chlorinator), which was then scooped out as a molten soup and electroplated, recycling the gas. After all this was done you got magnesium metal, pretty strong and very light, perfect for aircraft. Most of the industrial developments had come from Germany, and by 1938 nazi Germany was making more magnesium than every other country combined.

Anyway in 1939 the UK declares war on nazi Germany, and within weeks German subs are already sinking ships around Britain. MEL was in a bind, as they no longer had reliable supplies from abroad, were cut off from IG Farben, were in a country actively fighting the company whose stuff they were using, and British demand for aircraft production was only increasing. The thing is though that magnesium isn't actually that difficult to find, it's the 4th most common element on earth, the 8th most in the crust, and the 3rd most common element dissolved in seawater (after you know, the sodium chloride). The hard part has always been separating it out.

Enter the Dow process, pioneered by Dow Chemical in the US, who worked out that mixing calcium oxide and seawater allowed insoluble magnesium hydroxide sludge to be separated, which after the addition of hydrochloric acid, produced your electrolysis precursor. In this way, by 1941 MEL could produce magnesium metal by pulling it right out of the sea from the comfort of wartime Britain (well, Hartlepool and Manchester), making thousands of tons across the war for all sorts of industries. Nowadays magnesium is the third most common structural metal, used for everything from car parts and pyrotechnics to temporary prosthetics and laxatives.

TL;DR during WWII a British magnesium manufacturer was cut off from their supply, but got around it by yoinking metal straight out of the ocean and using it to build planes

R. B. Bennett is up next, and he was Canada's 13th prime minister.

Bennett was elected due to the great depression kicking off, and this would be the main issue of his time as PM. He started by doing a very familiar act to us in the modern day, tariffs to boost Canadian industries. He, and the rest of the conservative party were very pro business, and big fans of laissez-faire capitalism. He wasnt a fan of the government meddling in buissness, and he sure as shit didnt belive in and relief for the unemployed. He set up labour camps for single men where they could work for 20 cents (around 4 dollars in today's money) a day to work out in the Canadian wilderness for 44 hours a week. He only did this because, as he said "it is preferable to having bloodshed in the streets" due to the large amout of unemployed men in the cities.

He was also a raving anti communist, he enacted section 98 of the criminal code of canada, which initially came about after the 1919 Winnipeg General strike, but essentially did away with the presumtion of innocence. He used this against those who "advocated for the violent overthrow of the Canadian government". In practice, this was used as a beating stick against the Communist party of Canada, labour unions, and really anyone else who was being uppity.

Hell he had the nickname "Iron heel Bennett" due to these actions (although his name came frome one of his anti communist speeches and not him stamping on rights and whatnot)

Now, on a lighter note, he represented Canada at the 1931 statute of westminster, which established the Country as its own entity, a co-equal member of the british commonwealth, and its own nation (with the slight caveat that the british parliment technically had to green light any changes to the constitution, that'll get fixed later)

He also campaigned for a free trade agreement throughout the commonwealth, but he only scored a lower tariff rate and better deals with Britain

This was also time of the dust bowl in the praries, and he put through legislation that made it easier for farmers to get a loan and harder for the banks to foreclose on their homes

And finally we come to his downfall, in 1935, with no end in sight to the Deppression, and acting on advice from his envoy to the United States, he did a complete 180 on his whole economic platform. The government is intervening in a big way, progressive income taxing, a minimum wage, maximum amout of work hours in a week, health insurance, unemployment insurance, he went all in on a Canadian new deal.

Small problem, his party was the very much pro small government conservative party, and he was doing big government things. His minister of trade and commerce bolted, and formed his own party, and the public either saw him as going too far or not far enough. He was crushed by Mackenzie King's liberals in what was at the time the greatest defeat of a ruling party in the nation's history.

The conservatives would not have a majority government again until 1958

​

The Korean War of 1950 created one of history's strangest alliances: Turks and Greeks fighting side by side under the United Nations banner.

Random countries with absolutely nothing to do in the Korean peninsular at that time, participating in some random ass war.

But but but....

In the end, the image of Turks and Greeks fighting together in Korea is both ironic and symbolic. It reminds us that alliances can change quickly

If I had to explain, during the First Italo-Ethiopian War, the Empire of Italy had hoped Ethiopia was just a simple band of tribes.

Ethiopia was one of the few African states that wasn't colonized by Europeans, and it had a very long history, they even partook in the Crusades. However, the only country that recognized Ethiopia was the Russian Empire because both groups were Orthodox Christians.

Emperor Menelik II called for aid from Russia, and the Empire funded them with weapons far more advanced than the Italian military was using.

That, plus superior numbers and incompetence from the Italian military, allowed Menelik to lead a major victory against the Italians. Ethiopia was the only African country to repel colonial forces during the Scramble for Africa.

Fascist Italy colonized Ethiopia, but this occupation didn't last long as WW2 led to the Axis defeat.

Everyone wants to be the true successors or Roman Empire....

Byzantines,

Holy Romans,

Turks

Blah blah blah