The Eastland sailed for several years after the additional lifeboats were added in 1912. While they were heavy, what sealed the ship's fate was the owners replacing the old wooden decking with (I kid you not) 2 inches of concrete, amounting to between 15 and 20 tons of additional weight above the waterline in 1914.
Even if it happened straight after they added extra lifeboats it's a failure of capitalism, not law. They could've done safety tests and then scrapped them in favour for a different design. Or close their business because it was no longer viable. But no let's just add more weight. Who cares if everyone on board could die, we've got profit margins to hit baby!
A plant I worked at used ammonia. We had a leak and tecs came in to replace some tanks. I asked a guy how bad would it smell if one of these tanks ruptured. He said you wouldn't have to worry about the smell... if one of these ruptured it would kill everybody within a 45 mile radius. I never looked at ammonia the same way again.
WOW!! I Know that it smells bad, and that in high concentrations it's unpleasant, but I had no idea that it's dangerous at THAT sort of level! Thanks for the education!
While that 45 mile radius was a gross exaggeration, ammonia can be very dangerous. Basically don't be down wind of the release where you can see a cloud. But ammonia is both lighter than air, so will go up above ground level and dissipate, and reacts aggressively with water in the atmosphere to become a less harmful form. In fact, its specifically anhydrous ammonia used in industry which is dangerous, were as household ammonia is aqueous ammonia which smells really bad but wont kill you. Anhydrous ammonia transforms into aqueous ammonia when it contacts water. But if you are that worried about it, know that its the same ammonia that farmers inject into the ground of their fields, where it reacts with the water there, and becomes fertilizer for the crops. Honestly, if I was worried about a release, I would worry less about an industrial plant with numerous and redundant safety systems, and more about the hundreds of farmers having it transported to their fields every spring and fall.
The Eastman disaster was far more nuanced than "lifeboats made it tip." The ship had a lousy track record already, it was MASSIVELY overloaded with passengers, and there were other mitigating circumstances. Ask The Mortician did an in depth video with interviews of relatives of victims and survivors, etc. a year or so ago. It is extremely well done and respectful.
It's a failure of capitalism, not law. They could've done safety tests and then scrapped them in favour for a different design. Or closed their business because if it was no longer viable with lower passenger numbers. But no let's just add more weight. Who cares if everyone on board could die, we've got profit margins to hit baby!
Midgeley almost certainly would not have cared if he knew freon caused massive environmental damage. He popularized lead as an additive. He demonstrated how safe it was by breathing leaded exhaust. He then had to take a vacation because he got lead poisoning. He still stood by lead's safety despite that and the fact we have known for a couple thousand years that lead is toxic. He ended up getting a severe case of polio and made a system of pulleys to continue working. That system ended up strangling him to death so we were spared any more of his discoveries.
The Eastland actually capsized on its side, not fully upside down. I found in the box of photos I inherited from my grandmother one of the Eastland in the Chicago River in the month before it was righted and towed away. My great-grandfather must have taken it from what looks like a small excursion boat-he was a barber on the city’s far South Side in 1915.
Drunk driving still kills about 10,000 people per year in the US. My opinion is that alcohol is the worst drug as it kills many innocent (non users) people(including children). No other drug, illegal or legal, does this. In Texas, where I live, DUI penalties get harder every year. A woman just recently went to prison after 6 DUI convictions.
From what I understand, lifeboats weren't intended (at the time) to rescue everyone at once in a scenario like the Titanic. They were to ferry people to a rescue ship and it was assumed there would be time to make multiple trips, before the ship sank.
Precisely, the Titanic carried the correct regulated number of lifeboats. The problem arose because it took ages for help to arrive: the nearest ship having switched off its radio for the night after some rather nasty words from the Titanic's radio operators (the radio operators were independent of the ship's operators and were paid on messages sent). It has been suggested that if the Titanic had rammed the iceberg ad opposed to trying to avoid it at the last moment, it is possible that less damage would have been made to the hull with less compartments breached below the water line and it would not have sunk, either not at all, or not so quickly.
@@cigmorfil4101 The _Titanic_ carried the legally-required amount, plus a couple boats worth of extra capacity, though the White Star Line emplaced two of those without giving any thought as to how they might be launched. I wouldn't call it the "correct" amount, though. The problem is that the regulations were hopelessly out of date. British lifeboat regulations were governed by the British Board of Trade, which had last revised its standards in 1894 with a rule covering all ships of greater than 10,000 GRT in passenger volume. The largest ship under that measure, the Cunarder _Campania_, was barely a quarter of the size of _Olympic_ and _Titanic_. Quite simply, the rules hadn't kept pace with maritime engineering.
@@fredocarroll Obviously keeping pace is important but it's also worth noting that this regulation was hardly twenty years old at the time. It was a period of rapid advancement, and that leads to regulations falling behind. We see the same in modern times with the internet.
@@Leyrann Absolutely true. I think that the general _laissez-faire_ attitudes definitely contributed to the slow reckoning with changing conditions in shipbuilding. And some at the time saw the peril. Stead, I think it was, had a conversation on the _Titanic_ that fateful Sunday night, warning that the shipbuilding race would lead to catastrophe, and so it did.
Supposedly gangsters toasted the beginning of Prohibition as they way to becoming multimillionaires. They even paid homage to this on the show Boardwalk Empire.
lol @ 4:02 "the German fleet was interred in Scapa Flow in Switzerland". Getting those dreadnoughts up the Swiss Alps must've been quite the feat :D FWIW, while Prohibition backfired in many ways, it did not get people to drink more. America's alcohol consumption per person dipped significantly during Prohibition. Even after repeal, alcohol consumption never went back to pre-Prohibition levels. So that was at least one thing Prohibition got right: it broke America's copious drinking habits, and by the time it ended, new drinking habits had taken root that involved significantly less alcohol consumption.
Without being 100% sure on this, I think what is refered to is the overall alcohol consumption went down(in terms of volume of pure alcohol), but not the act of "drinking" itself. A lot of the home distilleries could not refine alcohol to the same degree(lower purity, and worse taste) and was then often mixed with various flavours(like orange juice) to make it servicable. It was during prohibition that cocktails became a massive hit, and it really popularized Gin. Cocktail parties also became a thing. So rather than drinking as much pure hard liquor, it was "watered" down. It probably meant less alcohol consumption overall, but did not really make people drink "less often". A couple of other factors: Children no longer had access to cheap wine or beer and it was no longer a stable in many households. On the other hand, the roaring 20's saw an explosion of "young adults" being more "active", especially young women, who enjoyed the sweet cocktails. A lot of cities outside the border of the US also became popular tourist attractions, due to having more readily available alcohol.
What are the records to show the alcohol consumption reduced during prohibition? As noted, which I can quite believe, the Speakeasies didn't exactly keep proper records (why should they? It would only leave a paper trail back to their customers). However, with the end of prohibition, it is likely that alcohol consumption reduced with the psychological effects of it no longer being illegal and so it lost its "naughtiness factor" and excitement; people would more likely drink in moderation as they no longer needed to drink as much as possible when they could get it
Yeah, I was waiting for that tidbit, especially after the hope of safer neighborhoods. The gang shootouts in Chcago and the like probably did more harm to certain neighborhoods than a bar or 2 did.
And as always, they ignore the sequel to prohibition; 'The 1973 war on drugs', which is still going on, accomplishing the very same effects, while street drugs are even more available than when it started. Crime will find a way. Today, you can place an order for your drugs online, and have it delivered in 15 minutes, often by a child who cannot be imprisoned or charged as an adult. Way to go, moral majority.
@@d.e.b.b5788 As someone that has been addicted to heroin/fentanyl, meth, and crack, this is the comment I was looking for. IMO, the current "War on Drugs", and all the other things our government(s) are doing to try and stop the inevitable is just so infuriatingly ironic that it hurts. Prohibition is not only taught in every school system in our country, but in many other country's education systems around the world as well. But, it might as well be redacted worldwide for all we've apparently learned from it. People will do anything to get what they want, especially if they are struggling, and especially when the thing they want is guaranteed to make them feel better for a bit, consequences and side effects be damned. Additionally, we already have multiple proven blueprints for for to roll out legalization and regulation of the harder drugs in the form of current alcohol laws (limit age of access, restrict open intoxications/highs, must have license for sale with health warning labels visible, limit areas of use/consumption to private residences/establishments with permits, etc.), and via the country of Portugal, which legalized all drugs years ago, and despite having some issues politically just like everywhere else, it is far from being in a state of anarchy as some proponents of the War on Drugs seem to think is the only possible outcome from legalizing drugs.
I don't think it's quite fair to suggest that the "good intentioned" lifeboats addition to the "Eastland" caused the disaster. As mentioned, the boat was poorly designed in the first place. Not only did the owners/operators know about this fact and ignore it, they also continually added to the problem by adding more and more weight to the boat in other ways such as gambling parlors and extra passenger spaces in order to get as much money out of the boat as they could, even if these additions would put the passengers and crew at further risk. The lifeboat additions, which of course were meant to save lives, were just the unfortunate and ironic straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak. The lifeboats shouldn't be blamed, the profit-greedy owners are to blame. (FYI, there is a great video about the disaster and its contributors on the channel "Fascinating Horror.")
That is how we get problems with historical recollection. Imagine 2000 years from now, some neo-archeologist digs up this video and takes it into consideration as a chronicle of an event... as we today often do with someone living 2000 years ago and writing to us about an event 2100 years ago. And we take it as truth, or we use it as a conflicting source and there is a faction that takes it as an "alternative fact". In reality, the creator made a goof, a slight mistake that we today know about. But what about people in the distant future? Do we think that knowledge once gained cannot be forgotten and/or twisted? You might say that in this digital age it can't be, or that no one in the future would take Simon as a relevant source of information but just a TH-camr (what ever that means by those days in the distant future) but... can you be sure? And are we sure that we haven't made the same mistake countless times by looking at things written hundreds or thousands of years ago? How many mistakes did we take as facts simply because we found them repeated in several sources? Aren't we aware how easy it is for a mistake to proliferate in different sources? From a simple and non-intentional mistake, a slip of a tongue like the one Simon made, I get very disturbing thoughts - simply because I can see in real time how information can get changed, morphed, obfuscated and twisted in simple weeks, or flat out invented and then spread around. Imagine now what thousands of years can do to a simple mistake in a source...
@@501Mobius How did they get the fleet there? Wait! I know. They first sailed to the coast of Bohemia that Shakespeare created for his _Winter's Tale._
You saved me saying the same thing, Sean. Cheers. Amusing thought, getting a Fleet of warships from the North Sea to Switzerland 😅. The liberties which Simon takes with 20th Century history, in the name of brevity, is a bit much. Russia withdrew from the war in 1917, so Germany's plan did work. Lenin's surname was Ulyanov, not 'Lenin', and Russia was a lot more than 'one of Germany's greatest rivals' in WWII, they bloody defeated the Third Reich and walked into Berlin first. That's only the first few minutes of this video. I hope Americans don't use this stuff as their primary source of historical education 🙄. I thought it was meant to be about lifeboats, anyway ! 😮
I worked 4 years for a juice packaging plant and the refrigerant was ammonia. We had a leak one night and had to evac the building. Took hours of venting to clear it out to get fixed. Nasty sh*t.
Somebody once said that every problem has a simple, elegant and wrong solution. It comes from focusing on one aspect of the problem to the exclusion of all other. And people who are looking at the evils of alcohol are understand the dangers of banning it.
Thank you for mentioning the Eastland. I had relatives on board that day (not all of whom survived), and so it's of special interest to the family. As someone said, the added lifeboats were the straw that broke the camel's back. The ballast kept shifting, the ship itself was top heavy (but stable while at speed, rather like a bike), it was overloaded with passengers, and the concrete floors of course did not help. After the inquest and all, it ended up in the hands of the US Navy and became a training ship. It was decommissioned right after WWII, if memory serves.
[00:00:00]1 Introduction to unintended consequences in history. [00:00:40]2 Germany’s situation in 1917 during World War I. [00:01:01]3 Russia’s withdrawal from WWI and the rise of Lenin. [00:02:00]4 Germany’s miscalculation in aiding Lenin’s return. [00:03:00]5 Formation of the Soviet Union and its impact. [00:03:15]6 Treaty of Versailles and its repercussions. [00:04:01]7 German naval fleet’s defiance and the treaty’s effects. [00:05:00]8 Economic consequences of the Treaty of Versailles. [00:05:55]9 Early refrigeration and the use of dangerous gases. [00:07:24]10 Invention of Freon and its unforeseen environmental damage. [00:09:40]11 The sinking of the RMS Titanic and lifeboat regulations. [00:10:31]12 The Seaman Act’s impact on the SS Eastland disaster. [00:12:27]13 Prohibition in America and its unintended outcomes. [00:14:10]14 Economic fallout from prohibition and increased reliance on income tax.
Regulations at the time of Titanic's sinking required ships it's size to only carry 16 lifeboats. It carried more than the minimum required (20), so legally speaking, the builders did nothing wrong in regards to the number of lifeboats on board. The issue was that the regulations only specified the number of lifeboats required, which didn't necessarily guarantee to fit all passengers. It took the sinking of the Titanic for the regulations to be changed to carry enough lifeboats to fit everyone on board.
It wouldn't have mattered if there were more lifeboats because they wouldn't have been able to launch any more They barely had enough time to launch the ones they did have. The collapsible boats on the officers quarters were launched just before the final plunge and even one of those ended up upside down in the panic. Other problems is often when a ship is sinking it can be very difficult to launch lifeboats from one side of the ship due to it listing and the imbalance caused by taking on water. The only way to overcome this is to have enough lifeboats for everyone on each side of the ship, so essentially double the amount of lifeboat capacity needed
@simon, Scapa Flow is within the Orkney Islands, 50 miles or so off the northern coast of Scotland. Not in a landlocked European nation. Other than that, great video 😂
No, as soon as he received any criticism he would have quit. (And criticism is inevitable with art.) If he wanted to paint, he didn't need art school, he was already a painter. He didn't want to paint, he wanted to quit and blame everyone else.
He was quite competent doing landscapes and buildings, hence his Work as a postcard-painter. He couldn't do portraits. For such an academy who has so many applicants, "quite competent at landscapes" just doesn't cut it.
In those days, if a boat listed far enough you wouldn't be able to launch half the lifeboats anyway. It sure was lucky for the Titanic that she sunk on something like an even keel.
I didnt know midgely was dead when the spray applications for CFCs had been invented. Anytime I've heard his name mentioned he was labelled as the inventer of CFC sprays, and he was blamed for the atmospheric damage. He invented it for one specific application and it was used for other purposes by the people who came after him.
Every time I fall asleep with TH-cam playing your videos keep coming up. So I spend my nights listening to Simon Whistler... Damnit. Also great content thank you lol
The treaty of Versailles is an intresting beast. It was simultaniously not harsh enough (and enforced enough) so that germany was able to rearm after a few years, and at the same time too harsh and humiliating, that it lead to alot of resentment in germany
If you read Margaret MacMillan’s book, Paris 1919, you will realise that the Treaty of Versailles led to a whole century of bad outcomes, not just the circumstances in Germany that sparked the Second World War.
One good thing about Prohibition: Rum Runners made their cars stupidly fast to avoid cops, while still keeping them normal enough - or as close to stock - as possible to avoid tipping the cops off. When Prohibition was lifted, all those Rum Runners now had nothing to do except figure out who made the fastest, stock-looking car. So they started racing. This eventually lead to Bill France and a bunch of other people deciding that there should be a governing body to make sure that race winners actually got their payout. Thus, in 1948, the National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing - or NASCAR - was created!
Ammonia although toxic is so repulsive that nobody could willingly stay around it to get a lethal dose. Trace amounts will get buildings uninhabitable and self evacuation occurs
As a side note, consider that after WWI, the most devasting, horrific, and deadly war up to that point in human history, the Allied powers still only limited Germany's army because they could not comprehend the concept of a country NOT having any army at all.
That, or... A country without the means to defend itself at all, would easily collapse either due to internal or external factors, and possibly create more chaos in the region. Even when the US occupied Japan after WWII, only forces that allowed for aggressive warfare(expansion) were completely removed, allowing for a limited self-defense force(which was later expanded). Basically, the means to defend itself is paramount for a sovereign nation.
The Lifeboat thing is annoying. they are not supposed to carry people from the ship to the shore, they are supposed to carry people from the stricken ship to a rescue ship. they are ferries, not actual boats. Which is why there a so few of them.
Britain got cocky after transporting HMS Mimi and HMS Toutou inland to fight the Germans on Lake Tanganyika. They decided they'd intern the German ships on an Alpine lake.
Orkney is suitably miffed about a chunk of their island having been transported without consent to central Europe - Mr Whistler may (or may not) by charged with theft and defamation at some future time.
The Eastland tragedy wasn't just due to being top-heavy due to the addition of more lifeboats. The ship had an extra deck added to increase passenger loads. The ship was known to 'list/lurch' when boarding passengers and freight since she was launched. There are many layers that form the Eastland tragedy, which is relatively unknown today. Reminds me of the Iroquois Theatre fire of 1903. Wiki: The Iroquois Theatre fire was a catastrophic building fire in Chicago, Illinois, that broke out on December 30, 1903 during a performance attended by 1,700 people. The fire caused 602 deaths and 250 non-fatal injuries.[1] It ranks as the worst theater fire in the United States, surpassing the carnage of the Brooklyn Theatre fire of 1876, which claimed at least 278 lives.[2] For nearly a century, the Iroquois Theatre fire was the deadliest single-building disaster in American history.[3] Only the destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, claimed more lives in a disaster affecting an American building, when 1,466 office employees died in World Trade Center Tower 1 and 626 office workers in Tower 2, with the additional loss of life of over 400 fire fighters and public safety professionals in both buildings.[4]
Scapa Flow in ... Switzerland?????? And nice to see Thomas Midgeley finally being given some form of rehabilitation (in that he'd never intended Freon to be used the way it finally was) - still he was the guy that put lead in petrol
wild , the clip showing Fridges being built (at 8:08) I have that fridge, not sure it still works (hasnt been plugged in in decades), but still amazing😄
4:00 Scapa Flow is on the coast of Scotland as far as i know ... And Switzerland is a land locked country ...... so no holding Ships there LOL ..... I think a comma, or full stop , was maybe missed on the script 😂
Speaking of the Imperial German navy scuttling it's ships at Scapa Flow in Switzerland, there’s anther absolute historical fact that even Simon must not have known about because even he failed to mention it in this video. I've got it on the impeccable and unassailable word of none other than George Santos himself, that Santos' great, great grandfather, Count de Merde, Admiral Fraudulin Devolder III who was the head of the Swiss Navy at the time was the one who upon receiving a one hundred trillion U.S dollar bribe on behalf of the Swiss Emperor from the British Admiralty signed the Treaty of Crapola with Britain allowing the surrendering German fleet to sail south eastward across landlocked central Europe and be interned in Switzerland at Scapa Flow. And then once assembled there, after receiving yet another one hundred trillion U.S dollar bribe, this time from the German government, he signed the Treaty of Stier Scheiss that allowed the Germans to scuttle their fleet . Don't just take my word for any of this! If you don't believe me, go ask George Santos yourself! You know he'd never embellish, lie or make false statements about something like this!🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Re excess life boats, RMS Olympic originally (1911) had 14 life boats, 4 collapsible and two skiffs. After the Titanic, the number of lifeboats was increased. By 1917, the Olympic carried 88 lifeboats! (It was a troopship). Makes you wonder how they would have loaded and launched 88 lifeboats particularly after the other sister,(Britannic) sank in under an hour after hitting a mine and the Lusitania sank in 20 minutes after being hit by a torpedo. All three ships in the Olympic class carried more than the legal requirement for number of boats required by the Board of Trade.
Even if there were enough lifeboats for everyone on board the Titanic, there wouldn't have been enough time to launch them. The last two collapsible lifeboats were floated off the deck as the ship began it's final plunge. One was upside down. So no. The Titanic having more lifeboats really wouldn't have made much of a difference.
They had over 2 hours, and the ship behaved exactly as intended, it maintained stability despite flooding, there was no list (as with Lusitania) so that all the boats could have been filled and launched given a properly trained crew and sufficient lifeboats.
I would suggest the pope’s ex-communication of Frederik the second in 1228 was the best example of unintended consequences. In a nutshell it weakened the Catholic church’s authority (oh… that’s the best they can do…) and it weakened the holy Roman empire. This was the slow trigger that niggled away at both institutions and ultimately created room for the reformation, the 30 year war and all of those consequences to take place.
The harshness of the treaty of versailles is often overstated. The problem was the reluctance to enforce the treaty by the British and French that allowed rearmament by Germany. I would also like to add that the treaty of Versailles is relatively light if compared to the treaty of frankfurt which ended the Franco-Prussian war in the 19th century.
Prohibition taught me to brew alcohol. My grandpa always made delicious sweet fruit wine that you can't find anything comparable in stores (I have found a few small wineries that are similar). Turns out my great grandpa ran a speakeasy with his homebrew and the recipe has been passed down. It's so tasty I wasn't letting that recipe die with time.
Ah yes, the famous naval port if Scapa flow in Switzerland 😂 Sure, Switzerland may be landlocked. But why let that stop you from having a mighty navy, right? Lmao 🤣
The Titanic's issues with her lifeboats had 2 big problems: 1. Not Enough 2. People weren't getting in them, so they were sent away filled anywhere from 1/2 to 1/4 capacity. If people won't actually get into the lifeboats, then the number of lifeboats starts to become moot.
Scapa Flow in Switzerland!? I nearly spat my coffee out. Imagine trying to get the High Seas fleet all the way to Switzerland... (Still a great and interesting video though Simon. Thanks)
I don't think blaming the lifeboats for the ship sinking is fair. The ship sank because of corporate greed. They knew the boats were already top heavy. They knew reducing the number of passengers to fit the lifeboats already present was the safest option. The captain was made aware of the excess listing during boarding. They chose money over safety and 800 people paid the price.
Since we can not predict the future, and thus can never foresee every unintended consequence, we should never do anything. This seems illogical but also the way some people think
Scapa Flow in... Switzerland? Simon. Simon, Simon, Simon, Simon, Simon. Simon. Even if you didn't know that Scapa Flow was in Scotland, specifically the Orkneys, you perhaps should have suspected something was amiss with the idea of a navy being interned in a landlocked country.
Er - 4:05 - The German Navy were interned at Scapa flow in Switzerland??? Pretty sure the landlocked country of Switzerland wasn't hosting a huge great flotilla of warships in one of their lakes! I'm also fairly sure that Scapa Flow is in Scotland, having been there & dived on the wrecks, but hey - I'm sure the Swiss had at least heard of Scapa Flow🤣
It's so disgusting how much people seems to love drinking and how much money is made on it. It's one of most detrimental things you can do to yourself, easily destroying your life, career and people around you. All the stupid things people choose to do in life.
It prevents reflections from his lights. I presume the teleprompter has text that's large and bright enough that he doesn't need real glasses to read the script.
Your first sentence is grammatically incorrect. The proper statement would be "Simon, I am a big fan of all of your channels." Your subject is lacking an action, and cannot be considered a complete sentence.
Switzerland got it as war reparations in the first draft of the treaty. Britain stopped the transfer when the mistake was spotted. Since there was then no place in Switzerland for the ships to go they were scuttled instead. The official story is a cover up.
If my quick check on Google is right, you misrepresented what happened with alcohol consumption during Prohibition. According to what I saw, there was an initial major drop in alcohol consumption followed by an increase that, while massive compared with the lowest level, did not bring alcohol consumption back to the level before Prohibition.
The Eastland sailed for several years after the additional lifeboats were added in 1912. While they were heavy, what sealed the ship's fate was the owners replacing the old wooden decking with (I kid you not) 2 inches of concrete, amounting to between 15 and 20 tons of additional weight above the waterline in 1914.
wow
🤯🤯🤯🤯 What. The....?
Even if it happened straight after they added extra lifeboats it's a failure of capitalism, not law. They could've done safety tests and then scrapped them in favour for a different design. Or close their business because it was no longer viable. But no let's just add more weight. Who cares if everyone on board could die, we've got profit margins to hit baby!
Oh my god! That's wild.
I grew up in a Michigan town of about 6,000 people. Packing 2,000 people into a passenger ship just sounds nuts to me.
@@toweypat The biggest cruise ship going now carries about 10,000 people!
A plant I worked at used ammonia. We had a leak and tecs came in to replace some tanks. I asked a guy how bad would it smell if one of these tanks ruptured. He said you wouldn't have to worry about the smell... if one of these ruptured it would kill everybody within a 45 mile radius. I never looked at ammonia the same way again.
WOW!! I Know that it smells bad, and that in high concentrations it's unpleasant, but I had no idea that it's dangerous at THAT sort of level! Thanks for the education!
I think he was maybe exagerating a little
45 miles? How big are these tanks?
@@ivorynk752 a few hundred tonnes of ammonia under pressure could probably do it... and yes, they do exist within 45 miles of cities like Philadelphia
While that 45 mile radius was a gross exaggeration, ammonia can be very dangerous. Basically don't be down wind of the release where you can see a cloud. But ammonia is both lighter than air, so will go up above ground level and dissipate, and reacts aggressively with water in the atmosphere to become a less harmful form. In fact, its specifically anhydrous ammonia used in industry which is dangerous, were as household ammonia is aqueous ammonia which smells really bad but wont kill you. Anhydrous ammonia transforms into aqueous ammonia when it contacts water. But if you are that worried about it, know that its the same ammonia that farmers inject into the ground of their fields, where it reacts with the water there, and becomes fertilizer for the crops. Honestly, if I was worried about a release, I would worry less about an industrial plant with numerous and redundant safety systems, and more about the hundreds of farmers having it transported to their fields every spring and fall.
The Eastman disaster was far more nuanced than "lifeboats made it tip." The ship had a lousy track record already, it was MASSIVELY overloaded with passengers, and there were other mitigating circumstances. Ask The Mortician did an in depth video with interviews of relatives of victims and survivors, etc. a year or so ago. It is extremely well done and respectful.
It's a failure of capitalism, not law. They could've done safety tests and then scrapped them in favour for a different design. Or closed their business because if it was no longer viable with lower passenger numbers. But no let's just add more weight. Who cares if everyone on board could die, we've got profit margins to hit baby!
Midgeley almost certainly would not have cared if he knew freon caused massive environmental damage. He popularized lead as an additive. He demonstrated how safe it was by breathing leaded exhaust. He then had to take a vacation because he got lead poisoning. He still stood by lead's safety despite that and the fact we have known for a couple thousand years that lead is toxic. He ended up getting a severe case of polio and made a system of pulleys to continue working. That system ended up strangling him to death so we were spared any more of his discoveries.
Midgley cared about NOTHING other than money.
@@DavidFMayerPhDLike most business men and CEOs.
Sounds like the Flint Mayor.
Cautionary Tales has a great podcast on this ecological terrorist
The Eastland actually capsized on its side, not fully upside down. I found in the box of photos I inherited from my grandmother one of the Eastland in the Chicago River in the month before it was righted and towed away. My great-grandfather must have taken it from what looks like a small excursion boat-he was a barber on the city’s far South Side in 1915.
they also like, showed the pictures of it in the video lol
The coast of Switzerland is notoriously dangerous.
That's why everyone who sails it should carry a Swiss Army Knife.
I'm from the Swiss northern isles where Scapa Flow is located. It's an absolute bloodbath up here
0:40 - Chapter 1 - Lenin's rise to power
3:15 - Chapter 2 - The treaty of versailles
5:55 - Chapter 3 - CFCS in the atmosphere
9:40 - Chapter 4 - The eastland disaster
12:30 - Chapter 5 - Prohibition
This comment really should have been pinned.
Fun fact, in NYC during prohibition, drunk driving was the leading cause of death for several years...
Thanks for sharing! Wild…
Drunk driving still kills about 10,000 people per year in the US. My opinion is that alcohol is the worst drug as it kills many innocent (non users) people(including children). No other drug, illegal or legal, does this. In Texas, where I live, DUI penalties get harder every year. A woman just recently went to prison after 6 DUI convictions.
Thomas Midgeley was also instrumental in reated leaded petrol (gasoline). He was described as a one-man environmental disaster.
From what I understand, lifeboats weren't intended (at the time) to rescue everyone at once in a scenario like the Titanic. They were to ferry people to a rescue ship and it was assumed there would be time to make multiple trips, before the ship sank.
Precisely, the Titanic carried the correct regulated number of lifeboats. The problem arose because it took ages for help to arrive: the nearest ship having switched off its radio for the night after some rather nasty words from the Titanic's radio operators (the radio operators were independent of the ship's operators and were paid on messages sent).
It has been suggested that if the Titanic had rammed the iceberg ad opposed to trying to avoid it at the last moment, it is possible that less damage would have been made to the hull with less compartments breached below the water line and it would not have sunk, either not at all, or not so quickly.
@@cigmorfil4101 The _Titanic_ carried the legally-required amount, plus a couple boats worth of extra capacity, though the White Star Line emplaced two of those without giving any thought as to how they might be launched. I wouldn't call it the "correct" amount, though.
The problem is that the regulations were hopelessly out of date. British lifeboat regulations were governed by the British Board of Trade, which had last revised its standards in 1894 with a rule covering all ships of greater than 10,000 GRT in passenger volume. The largest ship under that measure, the Cunarder _Campania_, was barely a quarter of the size of _Olympic_ and _Titanic_. Quite simply, the rules hadn't kept pace with maritime engineering.
@@fredocarroll Obviously keeping pace is important but it's also worth noting that this regulation was hardly twenty years old at the time. It was a period of rapid advancement, and that leads to regulations falling behind. We see the same in modern times with the internet.
@@Leyrann Absolutely true. I think that the general _laissez-faire_ attitudes definitely contributed to the slow reckoning with changing conditions in shipbuilding. And some at the time saw the peril. Stead, I think it was, had a conversation on the _Titanic_ that fateful Sunday night, warning that the shipbuilding race would lead to catastrophe, and so it did.
About prohibition; the politicians were drinking when they passed the prohibition law.
Very much a rule for thee but not for me scenario.
I believe Harding and Hoover served alcohol at the White House.
I remember reading something talking about how they use to.
Kinda like the covid rules…😂
Supposedly gangsters toasted the beginning of Prohibition as they way to becoming multimillionaires. They even paid homage to this on the show Boardwalk Empire.
Yeah, as usual Simon did a great job presenting what happened. But the intentions behind prohibition were not noble.
lol @ 4:02 "the German fleet was interred in Scapa Flow in Switzerland". Getting those dreadnoughts up the Swiss Alps must've been quite the feat :D
FWIW, while Prohibition backfired in many ways, it did not get people to drink more. America's alcohol consumption per person dipped significantly during Prohibition. Even after repeal, alcohol consumption never went back to pre-Prohibition levels. So that was at least one thing Prohibition got right: it broke America's copious drinking habits, and by the time it ended, new drinking habits had taken root that involved significantly less alcohol consumption.
Without being 100% sure on this, I think what is refered to is the overall alcohol consumption went down(in terms of volume of pure alcohol), but not the act of "drinking" itself.
A lot of the home distilleries could not refine alcohol to the same degree(lower purity, and worse taste) and was then often mixed with various flavours(like orange juice) to make it servicable. It was during prohibition that cocktails became a massive hit, and it really popularized Gin. Cocktail parties also became a thing.
So rather than drinking as much pure hard liquor, it was "watered" down. It probably meant less alcohol consumption overall, but did not really make people drink "less often".
A couple of other factors: Children no longer had access to cheap wine or beer and it was no longer a stable in many households. On the other hand, the roaring 20's saw an explosion of "young adults" being more "active", especially young women, who enjoyed the sweet cocktails.
A lot of cities outside the border of the US also became popular tourist attractions, due to having more readily available alcohol.
What are the records to show the alcohol consumption reduced during prohibition? As noted, which I can quite believe, the Speakeasies didn't exactly keep proper records (why should they? It would only leave a paper trail back to their customers).
However, with the end of prohibition, it is likely that alcohol consumption reduced with the psychological effects of it no longer being illegal and so it lost its "naughtiness factor" and excitement; people would more likely drink in moderation as they no longer needed to drink as much as possible when they could get it
I like how he didn't even have to mention organized crime for Prohibition.
Yeah, I was waiting for that tidbit, especially after the hope of safer neighborhoods. The gang shootouts in Chcago and the like probably did more harm to certain neighborhoods than a bar or 2 did.
And then the passing of the National Firearms Act, as a way of going after the gangsters since they couldn’t get them on prohibition charges often.
And as always, they ignore the sequel to prohibition; 'The 1973 war on drugs', which is still going on, accomplishing the very same effects, while street drugs are even more available than when it started. Crime will find a way. Today, you can place an order for your drugs online, and have it delivered in 15 minutes, often by a child who cannot be imprisoned or charged as an adult. Way to go, moral majority.
@@d.e.b.b5788 As someone that has been addicted to heroin/fentanyl, meth, and crack, this is the comment I was looking for. IMO, the current "War on Drugs", and all the other things our government(s) are doing to try and stop the inevitable is just so infuriatingly ironic that it hurts. Prohibition is not only taught in every school system in our country, but in many other country's education systems around the world as well. But, it might as well be redacted worldwide for all we've apparently learned from it. People will do anything to get what they want, especially if they are struggling, and especially when the thing they want is guaranteed to make them feel better for a bit, consequences and side effects be damned. Additionally, we already have multiple proven blueprints for for to roll out legalization and regulation of the harder drugs in the form of current alcohol laws (limit age of access, restrict open intoxications/highs, must have license for sale with health warning labels visible, limit areas of use/consumption to private residences/establishments with permits, etc.), and via the country of Portugal, which legalized all drugs years ago, and despite having some issues politically just like everywhere else, it is far from being in a state of anarchy as some proponents of the War on Drugs seem to think is the only possible outcome from legalizing drugs.
I imagine that one was considered so obvious/well-known by the writer as to not be worth mentioning.
I don't think it's quite fair to suggest that the "good intentioned" lifeboats addition to the "Eastland" caused the disaster. As mentioned, the boat was poorly designed in the first place. Not only did the owners/operators know about this fact and ignore it, they also continually added to the problem by adding more and more weight to the boat in other ways such as gambling parlors and extra passenger spaces in order to get as much money out of the boat as they could, even if these additions would put the passengers and crew at further risk. The lifeboat additions, which of course were meant to save lives, were just the unfortunate and ironic straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak. The lifeboats shouldn't be blamed, the profit-greedy owners are to blame. (FYI, there is a great video about the disaster and its contributors on the channel "Fascinating Horror.")
I should read the comment section before commenting! Kudos, more eloquently and succinct compared to my mediocrity!
Fascinating Horror is one of my favorite channels!
Ask A Mortician also has a great video on the Eastland
@@ThatWeirdo04 cool, I'll have to check it out. (The more sources on topic, the more that can be learned of the topic.)
Thanks so much Simon and Side Projects for entertaining me for hours while I did yard work on a Sunday. Much appreciated!!!
Well I guess Scotland and Switzerland both start with 'S'.
Thought I heard him say that 🤣😂
... and end in 'land' ... so near enough
That is how we get problems with historical recollection. Imagine 2000 years from now, some neo-archeologist digs up this video and takes it into consideration as a chronicle of an event... as we today often do with someone living 2000 years ago and writing to us about an event 2100 years ago. And we take it as truth, or we use it as a conflicting source and there is a faction that takes it as an "alternative fact". In reality, the creator made a goof, a slight mistake that we today know about. But what about people in the distant future? Do we think that knowledge once gained cannot be forgotten and/or twisted?
You might say that in this digital age it can't be, or that no one in the future would take Simon as a relevant source of information but just a TH-camr (what ever that means by those days in the distant future) but... can you be sure? And are we sure that we haven't made the same mistake countless times by looking at things written hundreds or thousands of years ago? How many mistakes did we take as facts simply because we found them repeated in several sources? Aren't we aware how easy it is for a mistake to proliferate in different sources?
From a simple and non-intentional mistake, a slip of a tongue like the one Simon made, I get very disturbing thoughts - simply because I can see in real time how information can get changed, morphed, obfuscated and twisted in simple weeks, or flat out invented and then spread around. Imagine now what thousands of years can do to a simple mistake in a source...
4:03 "Scapa Flow in Switzerland"?!?! NO!!!
Yes, that one caught my attention, too. Poor Simon, turned off his brain obviously.
Lake Geneva here they come.
@@501Mobius How did they get the fleet there? Wait! I know. They first sailed to the coast of Bohemia that Shakespeare created for his _Winter's Tale._
I had to rewind it to make sure I wasn’t hearing things 🤷♂️
You saved me saying the same thing, Sean. Cheers. Amusing thought, getting a Fleet of warships from the North Sea to Switzerland 😅. The liberties which Simon takes with 20th Century history, in the name of brevity, is a bit much. Russia withdrew from the war in 1917, so Germany's plan did work. Lenin's surname was Ulyanov, not 'Lenin', and Russia was a lot more than 'one of Germany's greatest rivals' in WWII, they bloody defeated the Third Reich and walked into Berlin first. That's only the first few minutes of this video. I hope Americans don't use this stuff as their primary source of historical education 🙄. I thought it was meant to be about lifeboats, anyway ! 😮
I worked 4 years for a juice packaging plant and the refrigerant was ammonia. We had a leak one night and had to evac the building. Took hours of venting to clear it out to get fixed. Nasty sh*t.
Somebody once said that every problem has a simple, elegant and wrong solution. It comes from focusing on one aspect of the problem to the exclusion of all other. And people who are looking at the evils of alcohol are understand the dangers of banning it.
Thank you for mentioning the Eastland. I had relatives on board that day (not all of whom survived), and so it's of special interest to the family. As someone said, the added lifeboats were the straw that broke the camel's back. The ballast kept shifting, the ship itself was top heavy (but stable while at speed, rather like a bike), it was overloaded with passengers, and the concrete floors of course did not help.
After the inquest and all, it ended up in the hands of the US Navy and became a training ship. It was decommissioned right after WWII, if memory serves.
Thomas Midgely also had the idea of putting lead in fuel to stop engine knocking…
...and then he went on tour promoting it to ensure it was deployed worldwide.
Absolutely brilliant! You are an outstanding channel. Talky Orcs and Star Wars, you are just the best
Scapa Flow in Switzerland, didn’t know it moved, as Switzerland is land locked. Scapa Flow, is a body of Water in the Orkney Islands, Scotland.
They moved it to make scuttling ships harder next time 😁
4:02 - surely Scapa Flow is in Scotland? Bit hard to transport a fleet to Switzerland - we still love you though!
Rare "with with" sighting!
[00:00:00]1 Introduction to unintended consequences in history.
[00:00:40]2 Germany’s situation in 1917 during World War I.
[00:01:01]3 Russia’s withdrawal from WWI and the rise of Lenin.
[00:02:00]4 Germany’s miscalculation in aiding Lenin’s return.
[00:03:00]5 Formation of the Soviet Union and its impact.
[00:03:15]6 Treaty of Versailles and its repercussions.
[00:04:01]7 German naval fleet’s defiance and the treaty’s effects.
[00:05:00]8 Economic consequences of the Treaty of Versailles.
[00:05:55]9 Early refrigeration and the use of dangerous gases.
[00:07:24]10 Invention of Freon and its unforeseen environmental damage.
[00:09:40]11 The sinking of the RMS Titanic and lifeboat regulations.
[00:10:31]12 The Seaman Act’s impact on the SS Eastland disaster.
[00:12:27]13 Prohibition in America and its unintended outcomes.
[00:14:10]14 Economic fallout from prohibition and increased reliance on income tax.
Regulations at the time of Titanic's sinking required ships it's size to only carry 16 lifeboats. It carried more than the minimum required (20), so legally speaking, the builders did nothing wrong in regards to the number of lifeboats on board. The issue was that the regulations only specified the number of lifeboats required, which didn't necessarily guarantee to fit all passengers. It took the sinking of the Titanic for the regulations to be changed to carry enough lifeboats to fit everyone on board.
It wouldn't have mattered if there were more lifeboats because they wouldn't have been able to launch any more
They barely had enough time to launch the ones they did have. The collapsible boats on the officers quarters were launched just before the final plunge and even one of those ended up upside down in the panic. Other problems is often when a ship is sinking it can be very difficult to launch lifeboats from one side of the ship due to it listing and the imbalance caused by taking on water. The only way to overcome this is to have enough lifeboats for everyone on each side of the ship, so essentially double the amount of lifeboat capacity needed
"The German Naval Fleet was interned at Scapa Flow in Switzerland..."
I had to re-play that several times just to make sure.
@simon, Scapa Flow is within the Orkney Islands, 50 miles or so off the northern coast of Scotland. Not in a landlocked European nation. Other than that, great video 😂
Great timing . Simon all the way home from work.
Thanks to everyone .
The Eastland was also very, very overloaded with people.
Some European art school rejecting a *certain* Austrian painter certainly had some unintended consequences…
And he was a good painter! If only they had admitted him. If only!
@@toweypatReally? Everything I’ve read has said he was pretty mediocre.
@@smooshiebear80 You should be able to find his paintings online.
No, as soon as he received any criticism he would have quit. (And criticism is inevitable with art.) If he wanted to paint, he didn't need art school, he was already a painter. He didn't want to paint, he wanted to quit and blame everyone else.
He was quite competent doing landscapes and buildings, hence his Work as a postcard-painter. He couldn't do portraits. For such an academy who has so many applicants, "quite competent at landscapes" just doesn't cut it.
Prohibition was great for my city. I'm in Canada, across from Detroit and business was BOOMING lol
Excellent video 👍 Thank you 💜
The problem with with
In those days, if a boat listed far enough you wouldn't be able to launch half the lifeboats anyway. It sure was lucky for the Titanic that she sunk on something like an even keel.
I didnt know midgely was dead when the spray applications for CFCs had been invented. Anytime I've heard his name mentioned he was labelled as the inventer of CFC sprays, and he was blamed for the atmospheric damage. He invented it for one specific application and it was used for other purposes by the people who came after him.
Every time I fall asleep with TH-cam playing your videos keep coming up. So I spend my nights listening to Simon Whistler... Damnit. Also great content thank you lol
3:09 What's the name of this track again? I just can't get myself to remember...
The treaty of Versailles is an intresting beast. It was simultaniously not harsh enough (and enforced enough) so that germany was able to rearm after a few years, and at the same time too harsh and humiliating, that it lead to alot of resentment in germany
The Drug Way has recapitulated the failures of Prohibition
Brilliant. I know the SS Eastland disaster well, never read about the new lifeboats till you.
12:23 Too bad the lessons learned from Prohibition weren't headed when they did it all over again with the "war on drugs".
If you read Margaret MacMillan’s book, Paris 1919, you will realise that the Treaty of Versailles led to a whole century of bad outcomes, not just the circumstances in Germany that sparked the Second World War.
The extra lifeboats didn't kill anyone, greed killed them.
One good thing about Prohibition: Rum Runners made their cars stupidly fast to avoid cops, while still keeping them normal enough - or as close to stock - as possible to avoid tipping the cops off. When Prohibition was lifted, all those Rum Runners now had nothing to do except figure out who made the fastest, stock-looking car. So they started racing. This eventually lead to Bill France and a bunch of other people deciding that there should be a governing body to make sure that race winners actually got their payout. Thus, in 1948, the National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing - or NASCAR - was created!
Ammonia although toxic is so repulsive that nobody could willingly stay around it to get a lethal dose.
Trace amounts will get buildings uninhabitable and self evacuation occurs
As a side note, consider that after WWI, the most devasting, horrific, and deadly war up to that point in human history, the Allied powers still only limited Germany's army because they could not comprehend the concept of a country NOT having any army at all.
That, or... A country without the means to defend itself at all, would easily collapse either due to internal or external factors, and possibly create more chaos in the region.
Even when the US occupied Japan after WWII, only forces that allowed for aggressive warfare(expansion) were completely removed, allowing for a limited self-defense force(which was later expanded).
Basically, the means to defend itself is paramount for a sovereign nation.
Governments are the kings of "unintended" consequences
The Lifeboat thing is annoying. they are not supposed to carry people from the ship to the shore, they are supposed to carry people from the stricken ship to a rescue ship. they are ferries, not actual boats. Which is why there a so few of them.
Scapa flow in Switzerland 😂
Was just about to point this out as well
Well if there's one thing Switzerland is famous for it's the abundance of large naval ports.
Switzerland that famous naval power.
Britain got cocky after transporting HMS Mimi and HMS Toutou inland to fight the Germans on Lake Tanganyika. They decided they'd intern the German ships on an Alpine lake.
Orkney is suitably miffed about a chunk of their island having been transported without consent to central Europe - Mr Whistler may (or may not) by charged with theft and defamation at some future time.
The Eastland tragedy wasn't just due to being top-heavy due to the addition of more lifeboats. The ship had an extra deck added to increase passenger loads. The ship was known to 'list/lurch' when boarding passengers and freight since she was launched. There are many layers that form the Eastland tragedy, which is relatively unknown today. Reminds me of the Iroquois Theatre fire of 1903.
Wiki:
The Iroquois Theatre fire was a catastrophic building fire in Chicago, Illinois, that broke out on December 30, 1903 during a performance attended by 1,700 people. The fire caused 602 deaths and 250 non-fatal injuries.[1] It ranks as the worst theater fire in the United States, surpassing the carnage of the Brooklyn Theatre fire of 1876, which claimed at least 278 lives.[2]
For nearly a century, the Iroquois Theatre fire was the deadliest single-building disaster in American history.[3] Only the destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, claimed more lives in a disaster affecting an American building, when 1,466 office employees died in World Trade Center Tower 1 and 626 office workers in Tower 2, with the additional loss of life of over 400 fire fighters and public safety professionals in both buildings.[4]
Scapa Flow in ... Switzerland?????? And nice to see Thomas Midgeley finally being given some form of rehabilitation (in that he'd never intended Freon to be used the way it finally was) - still he was the guy that put lead in petrol
"The March of Folly", as named by another great writer and story teller of history.
wild , the clip showing Fridges being built (at 8:08)
I have that fridge, not sure it still works (hasnt been plugged in in decades), but still amazing😄
You'll really struggle to sail a fleet of battleships to Switzerland.
4:00 Scapa Flow is on the coast of Scotland as far as i know ...
And Switzerland is a land locked country ...... so no holding Ships there LOL ..... I think a comma, or full stop , was maybe missed on the script 😂
Speaking of the Imperial German navy scuttling it's ships at Scapa Flow in Switzerland, there’s anther absolute historical fact that even Simon must not have known about because even he failed to mention it in this video. I've got it on the impeccable and unassailable word of none other than George Santos himself, that Santos' great, great grandfather, Count de Merde, Admiral Fraudulin Devolder III who was the head of the Swiss Navy at the time was the one who upon receiving a one hundred trillion U.S dollar bribe on behalf of the Swiss Emperor from the British Admiralty signed the Treaty of Crapola with Britain allowing the surrendering German fleet to sail south eastward across landlocked central Europe and be interned in Switzerland at Scapa Flow. And then once assembled there, after receiving yet another one hundred trillion U.S dollar bribe, this time from the German government, he signed the Treaty of Stier Scheiss that allowed the Germans to scuttle their fleet . Don't just take my word for any of this! If you don't believe me, go ask George Santos yourself! You know he'd never embellish, lie or make false statements about something like this!🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Happy belated birthday Simon!!!
Most sad depressing thing about the prohibition is that they didn't tough it out and keep alcohol banned or at least more regulated as it should be
With with content like this,
I get smarter smarter.
Thank you you Simon.
Next time someone claims climate change is a hoax by saying "what happened to the claims that the ozone layer is being destroyed?" You know the answer
It will always remain that even the idea of reparations in any way is a horrible cluster that only creates animosity
Re excess life boats, RMS Olympic originally (1911) had 14 life boats, 4 collapsible and two skiffs. After the Titanic, the number of lifeboats was increased. By 1917, the Olympic carried 88 lifeboats! (It was a troopship). Makes you wonder how they would have loaded and launched 88 lifeboats particularly after the other sister,(Britannic) sank in under an hour after hitting a mine and the Lusitania sank in 20 minutes after being hit by a torpedo. All three ships in the Olympic class carried more than the legal requirement for number of boats required by the Board of Trade.
Even if there were enough lifeboats for everyone on board the Titanic, there wouldn't have been enough time to launch them. The last two collapsible lifeboats were floated off the deck as the ship began it's final plunge. One was upside down. So no. The Titanic having more lifeboats really wouldn't have made much of a difference.
They had over 2 hours, and the ship behaved exactly as intended, it maintained stability despite flooding, there was no list (as with Lusitania) so that all the boats could have been filled and launched given a properly trained crew and sufficient lifeboats.
The problem “with with”?
Paris
In the
The spring
They are indeed having a problem with with. With keeps showing up where it's not supposed to.
It's not not what we think
Haha was just about to point that out
Not supposed to pick on the handicapped. 😂
Watching the German High Seas fleet sail to Switzerland.
It would be a sight.
Was going to say... Some wunderwaffa right there.
That's why they are on the high seas
I would suggest the pope’s ex-communication of Frederik the second in 1228 was the best example of unintended consequences.
In a nutshell it weakened the Catholic church’s authority (oh… that’s the best they can do…) and it weakened the holy Roman empire.
This was the slow trigger that niggled away at both institutions and ultimately created room for the reformation, the 30 year war and all of those consequences to take place.
The harshness of the treaty of versailles is often overstated. The problem was the reluctance to enforce the treaty by the British and French that allowed rearmament by Germany. I would also like to add that the treaty of Versailles is relatively light if compared to the treaty of frankfurt which ended the Franco-Prussian war in the 19th century.
Lead additive to gasoline in the 1920's was also a very poor decision.
that was also Thomas Midgley, the freon guy.... and the best is he never recognized the consequences...
Simon you breathing crazy in this one.
Orkney, Simon. Scapa Flow is in Orkney.
Prohibition taught me to brew alcohol. My grandpa always made delicious sweet fruit wine that you can't find anything comparable in stores (I have found a few small wineries that are similar). Turns out my great grandpa ran a speakeasy with his homebrew and the recipe has been passed down. It's so tasty I wasn't letting that recipe die with time.
Ah yes, the famous naval port if Scapa flow in Switzerland 😂
Sure, Switzerland may be landlocked. But why let that stop you from having a mighty navy, right? Lmao 🤣
[9:42] lifeboats chapter timestamp
The Titanic's issues with her lifeboats had 2 big problems:
1. Not Enough
2. People weren't getting in them, so they were sent away filled anywhere from 1/2 to 1/4 capacity.
If people won't actually get into the lifeboats, then the number of lifeboats starts to become moot.
Scapa Flow in Switzerland!? I nearly spat my coffee out. Imagine trying to get the High Seas fleet all the way to Switzerland... (Still a great and interesting video though Simon. Thanks)
Government programs almost always have the exact opposite effect of what's stated.
Switzerland, aka Scotland
Hey. The footage isn't over bright and washed out. So you finally fixed it!
I don't think blaming the lifeboats for the ship sinking is fair. The ship sank because of corporate greed. They knew the boats were already top heavy. They knew reducing the number of passengers to fit the lifeboats already present was the safest option. The captain was made aware of the excess listing during boarding. They chose money over safety and 800 people paid the price.
Since we can not predict the future, and thus can never foresee every unintended consequence, we should never do anything. This seems illogical but also the way some people think
Scapa Flow in... Switzerland?
Simon. Simon, Simon, Simon, Simon, Simon. Simon. Even if you didn't know that Scapa Flow was in Scotland, specifically the Orkneys, you perhaps should have suspected something was amiss with the idea of a navy being interned in a landlocked country.
There is a good series called "great moments in unintended consequences"
"Scapa Flow, in Switzerland"
Wait, what?
Keeps must be damaging his brain. :D
Isn't Scapa Flow in Scotland?
Er - 4:05 - The German Navy were interned at Scapa flow in Switzerland??? Pretty sure the landlocked country of Switzerland wasn't hosting a huge great flotilla of warships in one of their lakes! I'm also fairly sure that Scapa Flow is in Scotland, having been there & dived on the wrecks, but hey - I'm sure the Swiss had at least heard of Scapa Flow🤣
It's so disgusting how much people seems to love drinking and how much money is made on it. It's one of most detrimental things you can do to yourself, easily destroying your life, career and people around you. All the stupid things people choose to do in life.
Interestingly enough we are back to using highly flammable and explosive refrigerants. Mixtures of isobutane and propane are now very common.
Surprised you didn't mention the British Indian Cobra fiasco that coined the term cobra effect
You did the word "with" twice on your thumbnail:
The problem with
WITH MORE LIFEBOATS
Whats with the glasses without lenses?
They're called blanks.
It prevents reflections from his lights. I presume the teleprompter has text that's large and bright enough that he doesn't need real glasses to read the script.
"With without"
@@JohnDrummondPhoto I get that, but why bother with glasses in that case?
@@ghaznavidglasses are a vibe
Can you do a video on the Sakya Monastery
At least Midgely took himself out with one of his inventions.
Simon, big fan of all your channels. If you need a proofreader (say, for things like thumbnails?) I can make myself available.
lmao Zoomers are illiterate though
Your first sentence is grammatically incorrect. The proper statement would be "Simon, I am a big fan of all of your channels."
Your subject is lacking an action, and cannot be considered a complete sentence.
Scapa Flow is in SCOTLAND
Scapa Flow is in Switzerland???
Thought Switzerland was landlocked. Could be wrong...
Switzerland got it as war reparations in the first draft of the treaty. Britain stopped the transfer when the mistake was spotted. Since there was then no place in Switzerland for the ships to go they were scuttled instead. The official story is a cover up.
Scapa Flow in Switzerland?
How did the German navy get there? 😂😂😂
If my quick check on Google is right, you misrepresented what happened with alcohol consumption during Prohibition. According to what I saw, there was an initial major drop in alcohol consumption followed by an increase that, while massive compared with the lowest level, did not bring alcohol consumption back to the level before Prohibition.
Scapa Flow in Switzerland? Wtf!? 😂😂😂