Dawn Brancheau was living her dream

As one of SeaWorld’s top trainers, she had a rare bond with orcas, especially Tilikum

But in 2010, her tragic death during a live show shook the world & exposed the darker side of marine mammal captivity

Here’s her story… (thread🧵) 1. Brancheau grew up in Indiana & fell in love with SeaWorld after visiting the park as a child.

Her dream was to work with orcas.

After earning a psychology degree and training as a zookeeper, she joined SeaWorld in 1994 and quickly became one of their top trainers.

By the end of WWII, Hitler wasn’t just a dictator - he was also a drug addict

Fueled by a cocktail of cocaine, amphetamines, & other bizarre injections, his substance abuse spiraled into full-blown dependency

Here’s how it started - and how it shaped his downfall… (thread🧵) 1. Hitler’s drug use began innocuously.

In the 1930s, he was a teetotaler & opposed smoking, promoting a “pure” lifestyle.

But by 1941, he relied heavily on drugs provided by his personal physician, Dr. Theodor Morell, who was nicknamed the “Reich Master of Injections."

A thread of what everyday life used to look like in the United States of America 🇺🇸

1. Average American family in Detroit, Michigan, 1954. A house, car, and enough to support a family, all on a Ford factory worker's wages! 2. Housewife poses with a weeks’ worth of groceries in 1947. She spent a total of $12.50 (not including milk) to buy her groceries. On this budget, she is able to feed herself, her husband, her four-year-old twins & their cat.

In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt was shot in the chest by a would-be assassin

The failed attempt is the most famous of Roosevelt's encounters with death but it’s far from the only one

Teddy looked death in the eyes multiple times & told it to come knocking another time (thread🧵) 1. Born on Oct. 27, 1858, Roosevelt suffered from constant ailments like colds, coughs, & fevers. The worst of all was his asthma.

“I was a sickly, delicate boy, suffered much from chronic asthma, and frequently had to be taken away on trips to find a place where I could breathe,” Roosevelt recalled in his autobiography.

His asthma attacks were so bad that his father often bundled him into the family’s carriage and took him for rides in hopes that the fresh air would help.

But Roosevelt’s ill health had an unexpected benefit. Bereft of physical strength, the young boy turned to intellectual pursuits. He devoured books, developed a love for nature, and even used his collection of animal specimens to start the “Roosevelt Museum of Natural History.”

Thread of chilling photos from Sean 'Diddy' Combs' secretive 'White Parties' that we are learning more & more about

1. Jay-Z, Diddy & Kelly Osborne in 2003

Thread of unbelievable facts that will mess with your perception of time (🧵)

1. John Tyler, the 10th U.S. president, was born in 1790 & has a living grandson.

John had a son, Lyon, at age 63 in 1853

Lyon had a son, Harrison, at age 75 in 1928

Harrison Tyler is now 96 2. George Washington died in 1799; the first dinosaur fossil was discovered in 1824. This means that George Washington never knew that dinosaurs existed.

I bet George would've been a BIG T-Rex fan

It’s easy to forget in the early 1930s, Hitler - though still seen as radical - was not considered a threat to world peace

It’s even easier to forget that Hitler had more than a few supporters in the United States

This is what Nazi support looked like in the USA

(thread🧵) 1. German-American Bund

A large portion of Nazi ideology revolved around the purity of the German “race,” and Hitler shrewdly realized early on that this could be exploited in the German migrant populations of his potential foes. A mere four months after his rise to power in 1933, an American organization known as “Friends of New Germany” was assembled from several smaller organizations around the US.

Originally made up of both German nationals & US citizens of German descent, it was restructured in 1936 into the German American Bund (“Bund” meaning “Alliance”), which admitted only German-Americans.

Since a quarter of the US population at the time had some German ancestry, membership was high. The Bund’s leader, Fritz Kuhn, was even dubbed the American Fuhrer.

While taking care to ensure its perception as an American organization remained solid (expressions of American patriotism were plentiful in Bund gatherings, which often took place on American holidays or on presidents’ birthdays) the fact remains that American citizens gave the Nazi salute, shouted “Heil Hitler,” and otherwise behaved much as an attendee at any German Nazi Party gathering would have.

The Nazis didn't just seize power - they were voted in

It's hard to imagine, but there was a time when Hitler was a name on a ballot in a democratic election

He was openly fascist & anti-semitic, but people still chose to vote for him

Here's how it all happened (thread 🧵) 1. The War Guilt Clause

The fuse that sparked World War II was lit as soon as World War I ended. When peace was signed with the Treaty of Versailles, the Germans were forced to sign the “War Guilt Clause.” They had to put in writing that the war had been their fault alone.

Major restrictions were put on Germany as a result. They were forced to concede major parts of their territory. They were held responsible for all damages in the war and forced to pay 132 billion goldmarks in reparations, an expense that took up 10 percent of their annual national income.

From the very start, right-wing groups like the Nazis campaigned to tear up the Treaty of Versailles. They called it a “dictated peace” that oppressed the nation. At first, most Germans were so tired of war that they didn’t fight it. But, as the consequence of the treaty played out, that started to change.

Thread of Vladimir Putin in strange situations

1. Putin getting jiggy with it in the background while George W. Bush dances in the foreground. This video was taken during the a meeting between the two presidents in 2008. They decided to dance together. 2. Putin watches Russian fighter jets escort his plane

Thread of the most iconic movie posters ever made

1. Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace (1999) 2. Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

61 years ago today, John F Kennedy was assassinated while in a presidential motorcade driving through Dallas

61 years later, there are still THOUSANDS of classified documents about what actually happened

What might they be hiding from us?

Let's take a look... (thread 🧵) 2. 65% of U.S. adults think Oswald worked in kahoots with others & 29% say he was solely responsible. These numbers are roughly in line with the previous readings from 10 years ago. Belief in a conspiracy was higher between 1976 and 2003.

So what aren't they releasing?

Unsettling historical photos from pre-war Nazi Germany, 1933-1939

(thread 🧵)

1. Reichserntedankfest rally of 1934, essentially the Thanksgiving Celebration of the Third Reich. 700,000+ people participated. 2. League of German Girls dancing during the 1938 Reich Party Congress, Nuremberg, Germany.

Thread of what great American cities used to look like versus today

1. What is now the fully developed Las Vegas strip for sale in 1955 vs Vegas today 2. Honolulu, Hawaii, late 1890s to today

Wojtek wasn’t your average bear - he was a beer-guzzling, cigarette-eating soldier who fought Nazis during WWII.

Wojtek would wrestle with the soldiers, salute his commanders & when it came time to fight, he was ready

This is the true story of Corporal Wojtek

(thread 🧵) 1. Wojtek was a Syrian brown bear born in Iran. After his mother was shot by hunters when he was young, Wojtek was found as a cub by a young Iranian boy who sold him to Polish soldiers. They fed him condensed milk out of an empty vodka bottle (what else?) & quickly adopted him into their ranks.

Thread of bizarre beauty pageant queens from American history

1. Miss Sausage Queen Geene Courtney of 1955. Sponsored by the Zion Meat Company during National Hot Dog Week. 2. Connie Blake from Bassett, Nebraska was "Miss Stock Grower" of 1969.

A thread on how to recognize & combat Holocaust denial

1/ It's important to define what is talked about here. Within the relevant scholarly literature & for the purpose of this post, the Holocaust is defined as the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews and millions more Roma, Sinti, & other groups by the Nazi regime & its collaborators.

Holocaust Denial is the attempt & effort to negate, distort, and/or trivialize the established facts about the Nazi genocides against Jews, Roma, & others with the goal to rehabilitate Nazism as an ideology. 2/ The fact that the Nazi regime applied the tools at the disposal of the modern state to genocidal ends, their sheer brutality, and a variety of other factors, the ideology of Nazism & the broader historical phenomenon of Fascism in which Nazism is often placed, have become – rightfully so – politically tainted.

As an ideology that is at its core racist, anti-Semitic, and genocidal, Nazism and Fascism have become politically discredited throughout most of the world.

Holocaust Deniers seek to remove this taint from the ideology of Nazism by distorting, ignoring, & misrepresenting historical fact & thereby make Nazism and Fascism socially acceptable again. In other words, Holocaust Denial is a form of political agitation in the service of bigotry, racism, & anti-Semitism.

Thread of historical images if they had been taken today

1. A Bird's Eye View of New York City, 1851 & 2020 2. Quincy Market, Boston, 1900 & 2018

Thread of what everyday life used to look like

1. Teenagers at a party in Tulsa, Oklahoma, 1947. 2. A happy, thankful family, 1959.

If you ask what the evilest event in history is, many would say the Holocaust

Ask who the most monstrous figure was, and Josef Mengele - nicknamed the “Angel of Death” - often tops the list

The more you learn about Mengele, the more horrifying & sadistic he gets

Thread 🧵 1. Josef earned a doctorate in Anthropology from the University of Munich in 1935. He followed this by working in genetics with some of the leading medical minds of Germany & and he earned a second, medical doctorate

Mengele was a dedicated Nazi & joined the SS around the same time he earned his medical degree. When World War II broke out, he was sent to the eastern front as an officer to fight the Soviets. He earned an Iron Cross Second Class in 1941.

In 2014, Lars Mittank was caught on camera running into a forest in Bulgaria. He vanished without a trace.

This came days after Lars got in a fight & became paranoid, saying that he was being chased & hunted.

The more you learn about the case, the stranger it gets (thread🧵) 1. 28-year-old Lars Mittank joined a handful of his friends on vacation to Bulgaria

At one point during the trip, Lars found himself involved in a bar fight with four men about which football club was better: SV Werder Bremen or Bayern Munich.

Mittank was a Werder supporter, while the other four supported Bayern. Mittank left the bar before his friends did & they allegedly didn’t see him again until the next morning, after he had been beaten up.

A thread of last-minute decisions that changed the course of history

1. The Officer That Doomed The Titanic - The sinking of the Titanic is one of the greatest naval tragedies in history. The ship, famously described as “unsinkable,” hit an iceberg in the Atlantic and sank shortly thereafter. There is plenty of blame to be passed around for the massive loss of life on that night, but one portion belongs to a last-minute decision to switch officers.

Second Officer David Blair was removed from the crew just before the ship set sail, and he forgot to hand in his key to a locker that contained binoculars for the lookout. The ship had set off before he realized, and so the crew had to watch for icebergs using only their eyes. Obviously, this proved woefully inadequate. 2. MLK Improvised 'I Have A Dream' - If there’s one Martin Luther King Jr. quote that everyone knows, it’s “I have a dream.” This line came as part of a powerful and inspiring speech on civil rights delivered by the reverend August 28, 1963 in front of the Lincoln Memorial. In it, King espoused his vision of a future that included racial harmony, framed around the idea of a “dream” he had. However, originally, there wasn’t meant to be any mention of dreaming.

King had an entire speech written and prepared, but when Mahalia Jackson, a gospel singer in the audience, shouted “tell ‘em about the dream,” King started to improvise. He began speaking from the heart, not his prepared notes, & the result was perhaps the greatest example of public speaking in American history.