H i s t o r y V i l l e Profile picture
Mar 13, 2020 6 tweets 2 min read Read on X
John "Mad Jack" Churchill was the last British soldier to go to war with bow and arrows, and a sword. And he did it during World War Two!

His motto was: "Any officer who goes into action without his sword is improperly dressed." #HistoryVille Image
Over the course of the war, Mad Jack killed German soldiers with his arrows and captured 42 of them as prisoners at sword-point during the Allied Invasion of Sicily in July 1943. #HistoryVille
However, in May 1944, the Germans captured him and flew him to Berlin thinking he was related to the famous British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. After much interrogation which yielded no result, Hitler sent him to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
In April 1945, the camp’s lighting system failed and Mad Jack took advantage of the opportunity and escaped to safety.

Safety wasn’t exactly something Mad Jack was after, though. He was disappointed to learn that the war was winding down and that he had missed a year of it.
Rather than return home, he got himself assigned to Burma where the war against Japan was still in full swing.

By the time he got over there, though, the bombs had been dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, meaning that the war was basically over.
An unhappy Churchill vented, “If it wasn’t for those damn Yanks, we could have kept the war going for another 10 years!”

14 years later, Mad Jack retired from the army as a Lieutenant-Colonel in 1959 and died in 1996 in Surrey, England. He was 89. #HistoryVille #MilitaryHistory

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with H i s t o r y V i l l e

H i s t o r y V i l l e Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @HistoryVille

Jun 5, 2023
On March 21, 2007, 30-year-old Christianah Oluwatoyin Oluwasesin was stabbed to death and burnt in her car by Muslim students for allegedly desecrating the Qur'an at a secondary school in Gandu, Gombe State, North-East Nigeria. Image
A mother of two, Oluwasesin was assigned to supervise an Islamic Religious Knowledge exam when one of the students wanted to enter the exam hall with books. Oluwasesin collected them and threw them outside.
The students, who claimed that one of the books was a copy of the Qur'an, started to chant "Allahu Akbar" (Allah is Great) and chased her to the school principal's office.
Read 9 tweets
Jun 5, 2023
#OnThisDay, June 5, 1967, Israel launches surprise strikes against Egyptian airfields in response to the mobilisation of Egyptian forces on the Israeli border sparking the Six-Day War. Image
The Six-Day War was fought between June 5 and 10, 1967, by Israel and the neighbouring states of Egypt (known at the time as the United Arab Republic), Jordan and Syria.

In the period leading up to June 1967, tensions became dangerously heightened.
Israel reiterated its post-1956 position that the closure of the straits of Tiran to its shipping would be a casus belli.

In May, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser announced that the straits would be closed to Israeli vessels and then mobilised his Egyptian forces along...
Read 9 tweets
Jun 4, 2023
Kudirat Abiola, the wife of the acclaimed winner of the June 12, 1993, presidential elections, Moshood Abiola, was assassinated by unknown gunmen in Lagos, #OnThisDay June 4, 1996. Image
Born in 1951 in Zaria, present-day Kaduna State, Kudirat Abiola attended Muslim Girls High School, Ijebu Ode, and married Moshood Abiola at the age of 18. She was the second of his four wives.
Although Kudirat never attended university, she used her bride price to help to pay for the education of her two sisters.

Her journey into politics began when her husband declared his intentions to contest as the president of Nigeria. She supported him via advocacy and activism.
Read 9 tweets
Jun 4, 2023
The church used for the Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit movie was St. Paul’s Catholic Church in the Noe Valley neighbourhood of San Francisco. The neighbourhood was upper middle class at the time, whereas the church in the film was supposed to be in a downtrodden neighbourhood.
As such, they had to dress down the neighbourhood around the church to make the setting work.

In the original script, the action took place in Chicago. However, Whoopi Goldberg (the star actor) had started her standup career in San Francisco and felt a kinship to the city.
As such, the setting was changed once she was signed on.

The prequel, Sister Act, made $231.6 million worldwide off of a budget of $31 million. It was the eighth-highest-grossing movie of 1992.
Read 4 tweets
May 15, 2023
MOTIVATIONAL MONDAY: THE MOUNTAINS AND THE LOVE OF A MOTHER

There were two warring tribes in the Andes, one that lived in the lowlands and the other high in the mountains. Image
The mountain people invaded the Lowlanders one day, and as part of their plundering of the people, they kidnapped a baby of one of the Lowlander families and took the infant with them back up into the mountains.
The Lowlanders didn't know how to climb the mountains. They didn't know any of the trails that the mountain people used, and they didn't know where to find the mountain people or how to track them in the steep terrain.
Read 8 tweets
Feb 14, 2023
King Ibrahim Mbouombouo Njoya (1867-1933) of Bamum, Western Cameroon, had 600 wives and 177 children.
Out of fear that important historical facts of the Bamum could be erased or corrupted, he developed the Bamum alphabet of 70 symbols and a writing system to preserve his kingdom's oral history which the French later destroyed.
Njoya, as part of ways to ensure the written language was widely adopted, established schools and directed that the Bamum language be used as a form of instruction along with the German language.
Read 6 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

:(