Page 14 - History Facts

Fanta was invented in Nazi Germany!

Fanta originated in Germany in 1941. It is owned by the Coca-Cola Company. It was difficult to important Coca-Cola syrup in Nazi Germany during World War II due to trade embargos. So, the head of Coca-Cola Deutschland, Max Keith, decided to make a new product for the German market.

He used ingredients available already in Germany at the time, including whey and pomace. During a brainstorm on what to name the beverage, Keith said “use your imagination” or “fantasie” in German. Salesman Joe Knipp yelled out “Fanta!” And it stuck.

During the war, the plant was effectively cut off from the headquarters of Coca-Cola, but the plant management never joined the Nazi Party. After the war, headquarters regained control over the plant and overtook the trademarks for the new Fanta product.

They also accessed and took all the plant profits made during the war. Today, there are 100 flavors worldwide of Fanta. Sunkist, Crush, and Slice are all fruit-flavored carbonated soft drinks that mimic Fanta or are offbrands of Fanta.

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A man was looking for his hammer with a metal detector. He found found the largest hoard Roman gold and silver ever found in Britain!

The hoard was discovered in a field of a farm, about 1.5 miles southwest of the village of Hoxne in Suffolk, in November 1992. Peter Whatling, the tenant farmer, had lost a hammer and asked his friend Eric Lawes, a retired gardener and amateur metal detectorist, to help look for it.

While searching the field with his metal detector, Lawes discovered silver spoons, gold jewelery and numerous gold and silver coins. After retrieving a few items, he and Whatling notified the landowners and the police, without attempting to dig out any more objects.

The following day, a team of archaeologists from the Suffolk Archaeological Unit carried out an emergency excavation of the site. The entire hoard was excavated in a single day, with the removal of several large blocks of unbroken material for laboratory excavation.

The area within a radius of 98 feet from the find spot was searched using metal detectors. Peter Whatling's missing hammer was also recovered and donated to the British Museum.

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One of the plans to get rid of Fidel Castro was to claim he was the Anti-Christ!

Major General Edward Geary Lansdale was a bit of an oddball, and is most notable for his sacreligious plan to overthrow Fidel Castro. The plan had a few different components to it. The first was that the American military would somehow spread word that the Second Coming of Christ was imminent.

After that was established, the second part of the plan was to proclaim that Christ was against Castro who was the anti-Christ. More importantly, the military planned on spreading around a specific date of the Second Coming.

Next, the military would set up a submarine just outside of Cuba that would launch star-shells (essentially giant flares that can illuminate the night sky). On the day of the "Second Coming" the submarine would launch Star-shells at the same time an American plane hidden behind the clouds would broadcast messages in the voice of Jesus, whatever that may be.

At the sight of all these extraordinary events, the Cuban people would then be expected to overthrow Castro fearing that they would be doomed to eternity in hell if they disobeyed Christ during his Second Coming.

The plan never went through because although it was seen as a genius ploy, the government also calculated the success rate to be virtually zero. Read the full story here!

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In Japanese Folklore, when an object turns 100, it comes alive and self-aware!

Tsukumogami is understood by many Western scholars, for the most part. It was a concept that was highly popular in Japanese folklore as far back as the tenth century, used while spreading Shingon Buddhism.

Tsukumogami objects are often considered to be harmless, and would occasionally play pranks on humans. However, according to legend, these objects would also have the capacity for anger and would sometimes band together (with other objects) and take revenge upon those who were wasteful and threw them away!

To prevent these animate objects from resenting mankind, to this day, ceremonies are performed to console items that are broken and considered unusable.

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During World War 1, the United States Government tried to rename hamburgers as 'liberty sandwiches' to promote patriotism

In 2003, when the United States was in the midst of the war with Iraq, France was not particularly supportive. As such, Americans attempted to rename French fries "freedom fries." A similar rebranding occurred in the US during World War I.

The government encouraged Americans to rename traditionally German foods. They attempted to rename sauerkraut "liberty cabbage" and hamburgers "Liberty Sandwiches." Whether or not Americans embraced this change, eventually we went back to calling these foods by their original names.

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