5 WTF Facts You Didn't Know About WWI

Remember The Blitz during World War II, when the Nazis bombed London for the better part of a year straight? Well, it turns out that was the big-budget sequel to an oft-forgotten original performance, which featured motherfucking Zeppelins.

Hans Rudolf Schulze
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Germany's airships were the only aircraft capable of making it across the English Channel and far enough up the Thames to rain hellfire on London, and from 1915 to 1917, that's precisely what they did. Problem was, though they undoubtedly looked metal as hell, the airships were basically just giant, floating bags of ludicrously flammable gas. While they initially operated at a higher altitude than the Brits could reach, improvements in anti-aircraft artillery soon transformed them into history's biggest fireworks displays. And that's when they were replaced by heavy bombers.

Said heavy bombers looked like this, by the way:

Wiki Commons
One of the Wright brothers lived to see this. We're pretty sure it's not what he had in mind.

Remember, the airplane was still a fairly new technology, so the first bombers were basically scaled-up biplanes with a big hole in the floor through which bombardiers dropped bombs. By hand.

That's right: Gallieni hired 600 of the City of Light's considerable battalion of cabs, and for the next 24 hours, a steady convoy of taxis carried carloads of French reserve troops to the battlefield the same way your drunk ass gets carried to the Taco Bell late Friday night.

The fighting during this so-called White War was like nothing you've ever seen in a war movie. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers battled at breathless altitudes in inhuman conditions. These armies leveled peaks, installed cableways and telephone lines, and even constructed entire villages just for the fight. In the Dolomites, the Austrian Corps of Engineers hollowed out a bona fide ice city inside the belly of a glacier. Why we're not currently sipping hot cocoa inside the Official World War I Ice City Museum and Memorial, we haven't the slightest idea.

Museo Storico Italiano Della Guerra Di Rovereto
"And this is where we're gonna put the ice bar."

That's also where those deadly avalanches we mentioned came into play: More than 10,000 soldiers died on a single day, when someone apparently pissed in a Yeti's cornflakes on Dec. 13, 1916. There's even speculation that the combatants weaponized Mother Nature, intentionally triggering avalanches above their enemies by launching artillery into the snow. Of course, something like that is difficult to prove, seeing as how any eyewitnesses are, you know, currently buried in a glacier. That's not to say no evidence is forthcoming, however: Letters, journals, and, holy shit, freeze-mummified soldiers are gradually finding their way out of the ice to this day.

The British had troops in the Middle East, battles raged in the Balkans, German U-boats sank merchant shipping vessels throughout the Atlantic as well as the Mediterranean, and Germany even tried to spur Mexico into invading the United States, back before the U.S. had even entered the war.

The French brought in supplementary troops from their colonies in Indochina (modern-day Vietnam), as well as Tunisia, Senegal, and Sudan. And, of course, the British called in their colonial armies everywhere from Canada to Australia and New Zealand (the Anzacs, famous for fighting in the Gallipoli Campaign in Turkey), not to mention laborers from around the world, including India and China. In mid-1918, even Costa Rica, Guatemala, Haiti, and Honduras joined in against Germany.

NASA
So just, all of this.

That's a whole lot of words to say that, damn straight, World War I earned every last bit of its moniker. Hell, if Germany hopped in a giant balloon and went to the moon, the world would have fought those sons of bitches in space, too.

Bryan Johnson dedicates this article to his great-grandfather, Sgt. Maj. Sidney Markham, Royal Marines Light Infantry (Battle of Mons, First Battle of Ypres, Second Battle of Ypres, Third Battle of Ypres). He also has a website about the Great War.

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