170
TL;DR: No, the image is photo-shopped.
This is shown by:
Finding an earlier published image which is extremely similar, aside from the content of the placard being Israeli flag (star of David) instead of a message; and no other changes aside from minor image processing ones (different compression ratio, minor cropping)
Preponderance of circumstantial ...
90
The New York Times reported in the 29 May 2012 article Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will:
Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there ...
84
There are several points to consider here.
1) Depleted Uranium is not that much "depleted".
"Depleted uranium," the byproduct of the enrichment process, has about 0.002 percent 234U, 0.2 percent 235U and 99.8 percent 238U, and about 60 percent of natural uranium's radioactivity.
-- U.S. Office of the Secretary of Defense, emphasis mine.
2) Uranium is ...
79
The original photo appears to have been posted by Ukrainian soldier Andrew Zaharov on his Facebook photo album. as it predates the articles from any of the news sources below.
The initial hit for this image was carried out by cropping the image with Photoshop, then performing a reverse image search, which resulted in a hit to this Ukrainian news site, ...
72
Although the person named existed and served in the Royal Flying Corps, the story itself is very likely not true.
First the good news. "Dattabraya Laxuman Patwardhan" certainly existed and was apparrently a member of the Royal Flying corps. The London Gazette of 25 March 1919 records his appointment to the temporary honorary rank of Second Lieutenant. The ...
68
Factcheck.org covers this: "Donald Trump and the Iraq War", FactCheck.Org
On September 11, 2002:
Howard Stern asks Trump if he supports invading Iraq. Trump answers hesitantly. “Yeah, I guess so. You know, I wish it was, I wish the first time it was done correctly.”
Whether that is "support" is a semantic argument, so I just present the facts about what ...
65
First of all, a concise yes/no answer heavily depends on:
What the timeframe was?
Do you include pre-Roman Gauls? Frankish kings? Medieval period? Post-Westphalian nation state only? Modern era only? (e.g. post late 18th century)
How you define "French"?
This is somewhat tied in with timeframe? Do you include only post-Westphalian-soveregnity nation state?...
64
2. Was invented specifically for this purpose?
3. Has it ever been used as such?
Short answer: No, Yes
Long answer:
In an article written by Una/Straight Dope the following is stated:
Super glue, Krazy glue, Eastman 910 and similar glues are all a
special type of glue called cyanoacrylates. Cyanoacrylates were
invented in 1942 by Dr. Harry Coover ...
48
No, the figures that were used to produce this graph are inaccurate, exaggerating the ratio.
The basic numbers being claimed are:
Christian Europe killed 100 million in the 20th Century, consisting of:
60 million in World War II
16 million in World War I
millions more in colonial wars.
Muslims killed more than a 2 million people or so in political ...
47
I agree with DVK's analysis that the question requires knowing (a) who are the French? and (b) what is winning?
Nonetheless, France was until its loss to the Prussians in 1870 the pre-eminent military power in Europe, which is why it generally fought alone against coalitions, and, also, why coalitions were formed to contain it. Until 1870, it was the French ...
39
Check out this paper: Cancer mortality in Serbia, 1991–2015, published in 2018. The study is based on official data on cancer-related deaths. The conclusions drawn by the authors are:
Overall cancer mortality rate (ASR - age-standartized rate) increased between 1991 and 2009 by 0.8-0.9% per year.
After 2009, the trend changed to decline, again by 0.9% per ...
34
It's plausible.
The map appears to be based on the same data set as this interactive map by The Guardian, which is of "every incident where somebody died" in Iraq, between 2003 and 2009, and is based on data obtained via Wikileaks.
We took all these incidents where someone had died and put it on the map above.
Of relevance to the question, from the raw ...
32
It would seem to be correct. The following is an extract the Nature Journal's archive:
For example, in a building camouflaged with large irregular patches of
colour, the actual outline of the building may be lost in the jumble
of these patterns. But the colour-blind person may be scarcely
conscious of the variegated colours, so that to him the ...
32
Well, since no-one provided a complete answer so far I'll try to do it (though I am an Israeli, so I'm biased).
The answer to the question in the title is yes. The data I'm about to bring is taken from B'Tselem which is the "Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories".
According to the B'Tselem report, between Jan 19, 2009 (the ...
32
The claim is essentially correct -- tens of millions of Orthodox Christians died of political violence in the 20th century. However, everything that Mr. Serfes tries to imply by making that claim is basically wrong.
Complications
First, it's hard to be more precise about the claim because Mr. Serfes' essay loaded with so much hyperbole that his claim is ...
30
Yes. Anwar al-Awlaki was a United States citizen targeted and killed by a missile strike. The NY Times writes:
In 2010, the Obama administration had taken the rare step of authorizing the targeted killing of Mr. Awlaki, even though he was an American citizen — a step that had provoked lawsuits and criticism from human rights groups.
Although technically ...
28
The body of the question has this clarification (screenshot if you can't find it for some reason http://imgur.com/b4YZ5 or if it's edited):
Does anyone have any statistics on that...
So let me try and answer that part:
Any civilian killed, especially children is tragic and it's hard to speak of it as cold statistics, but since it was requested, here is ...
28
I did some more research on this tonight, and was able to answer my own question, at least to some extent.
The conclusions seem to be:
For the world as a whole, this is a very unlikely claim.
For the United States of America in particular, this likely true, at least for the deaths of Americans in wars since the country was founded. This is possibly the ...
27
No, it is not fair to say that "a missed telegraph pole delivery" was "what caused" World War II. Even if we are willing to give the Joker the benefit of doubt, that he meant "one of the causes", the impact of that one missed delivery is much less significant than The Joker, or the web articles you quoted, imply.
Poincare's decision to invade the Ruhr came ...
25
Yes.
According to Politifact who examined the claim by Mark Shields:
You know, Judy, the reality is -- and it's a terrible reality -- since Robert Kennedy died in the Ambassador Hotel on June 4, 1968, more Americans have died from gunfire than died in … all the wars of this country's history, from the Revolutionary through the Civil War, World War I, ...
24
Unclear, but a still considered a serious problem. With the parameters of the statement provided, it is difficult to definitively confirm or refute it. In order to do so we would would need to know the time frames involved (e.g. one year versus the entire campaign) along with what "attacked by the enemy" means. The latter could be resolved through the use of ...
23
Tongue-in-cheek but true, this Cracked article pretty much sums it up
They've won 109, lost 49 and drawn (or as close as you can "draw" a war) 10 times.
And for references, there is this page on French military action
And some examples still unquoted here
The battle of Maregnano, and its legendary swiss-kickings
The French revolutionary wars, where ...
23
King Goujian's army was known for scaring its enemies before battle by forcing its front line, composed of criminals sentenced to death, to commit suicide by decapitating themselves.
Unfortunately, Wikipedia did a poor job in translating Shiji. As pointed out by the OP and Wikipedia, the exact corresponding sentence in Chinese (second sentence of second ...
23
It is difficult to give a straight answer to the question, because if we define peace as the absence of war (example), we still have the problem of the nebulous definition of war. Does war include guerilla wars, civil wars, insurgencies and other forms of conflict? Does war have a clearly defined start and end date?
For example, when did World War II end? ...
23
The evidence is that he didn't begin to publicly voice opposition to the war in Iraq until about a year after it began. Before that he expressed support for it.
Washington Post:
We have found no evidence of his early opposition to the invasion. Trump expressed lukewarm support the first time he was asked about it on Sept. 11, 2002, and was not clearly ...
22
According to the CDC (Table 18) in 2013 there were 33,636 deaths due to firearms, of which 21,175 were suicides. That leaves 12,461 (of which 281 were "undetermined", so could have been suicide).
12,461 deaths per year is 34.1 per day. At that rate reaching 2,501 would take 74 days, which was March 15th.
The WaPo article claims that for this year the date ...
20
No.
According to the timeline posted by The Washington Post. The times listed are Benghazi time (EET, UTC+2) on the night of Sept. 11 and the morning of Sept. 12:
21:40 - The U.S. Consulate in Benghazi calls the nearest CIA base for help
22:04 - A six-person rescue squad leaves towards the embassy
22:10 - The squad negotiates with heavily armed militias ...
20
Avionics do not allow a total override of a weapon system as these articles claim. As someone who not only designs aircraft avionics, but also flew military aircraft, I can state this with certainty. It's a silly claim. It is purely propaganda and headline generation, nothing more.
If such technology existed, don't you think that it would have been used to ...
20
Timestamps are not a good source of information unless you are really sure where they come from. They are set using the system time of the computer creating the file, which might, for example, be set incorrectly; or the program might make a mistake when creating them or writing them to the file. For a quick demonstration of why timestamps are not reliable, I ...
20
Yes, at least sometimes.
In the 2nd episode of the 2nd season of the British TV show Scrapheap Challenge the challenge was to build a cannon. They tested the cannons in a DERA facility where "real" cannons are tested, and the test was supervised and lead by DERA personal.
When firing the second time, the host of the show asked the DERA person that was in ...
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