106
votes
Accepted
Did the British navy fail to take into account the ballistics correction due to Coriolis force during WW1 Falkland Islands battle?
No. It is a complete invention of an urban myth.
Unless anybody produces a Royal Navy document that even does any mention of this influence of Coriolis effect, this seems to be just untrue. A ...
- 43.7k
89
votes
Is any male over 15 years of age considered a combatant if killed by a drone strike?
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 ...
- 102k
89
votes
Accepted
Did WWII Japanese soldiers engage in cannibalism of their enemies?
I'd like to note that this answer contains mentions of particular instances of cannibalism, and while no unnecessary details have been included, it may still be upsetting to some people.
Yes, ...
- 11.1k
87
votes
What is the origin of this photo of an unexploded bomb?
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 ...
- 18.7k
82
votes
Is there reliable evidence that depleted uranium from the 1999 NATO bombing is causing cancer in Serbia?
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 ...
- 18.9k
78
votes
Accepted
Was this Indian from British India the first to strike Berlin during World War I?
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 ...
- 56.7k
78
votes
Did Pakistan lose each and every war it fought with India from 1947 to 1999?
According to Wikipedia, there have been four declared wars between India and Pakistan. None of them were "won" or "lost" in that neither party in any of these wars was forced into ...
70
votes
Accepted
Did Donald Trump express support for the Iraq war?
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. ...
- 664
48
votes
Accepted
Did Christians kill thirty to fifty times as many people in political violence as Muslims in the 20th century?
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 ...
- 830
40
votes
Is there reliable evidence that depleted uranium from the 1999 NATO bombing is causing cancer in Serbia?
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 ...
- 2,429
38
votes
Did a Turkish cargo ship get bombed in the Black Sea during the Russian invasion of Ukraine?
It was reported on Lloyd's so it's probably real. I don't have a subscription, so I can't access (all) the details.
Turkish bulker hit by bomb off Odessa. The Yasa Jupiter suffered no casualties. It ...
- 54.7k
34
votes
Did the British navy fail to take into account the ballistics correction due to Coriolis force during WW1 Falkland Islands battle?
Rudolph Verner, the gunnery officer of the Inflexible, which took part in the battle, wrote a short set of notes about the successes and difficulties encountered during the engagement. He writes
...
- 11.1k
32
votes
Accepted
Have there been only 26 days of peace since 1945?
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 ...
- 137k
32
votes
Accepted
Does this map show every car bomb explosion in Baghdad since 2003?
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 ...
- 15.4k
26
votes
Accepted
Were American female soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan more likely to be raped by their fellow soldiers than attacked by the enemy?
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 ...
- 16.9k
26
votes
Accepted
Did the U.K. sabotage Russia/Ukraine peace deal in April?
This is probably not fully answerable until archives are opened and so forth, but it's probably worth pointing out that a few days before Johnson visited (on April 9), the negotiations were actually ...
- 54.7k
25
votes
Do gun homicides and suicides kill more Americans than war?
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, ...
- 29k
24
votes
Accepted
Have more US veterans taken their own life in the last six years than died in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Although exact numbers are hard to come by, there is clearly a higher rate of suicides among veterans than the general population and that number exceeds the number of combat deaths in Iraq missions ...
- 7,400
24
votes
Did Donald Trump express support for the Iraq war?
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 ...
- 7,307
24
votes
Accepted
Were more Americans fatally shot by March this calendar year than died during DDay as the Washington post claimed?
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,...
- 15.8k
20
votes
Accepted
Is "five" removed from military countdowns because it sounds like "fire"?
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" ...
- 29k
19
votes
Accepted
Was Monsanto the primary manufacturer of Agent Orange?
The amounts of agent orange, in units of 55-gallon (208 liter) drums by company is as follows:
Dow 78,235
Monsanto 67,065
Hercules 49,945
Thompson-Hayward Chemical (T.H. Agriculture and Nutrition ) ...
- 102k
17
votes
Accepted
Did Churchill come up with the idea of using civilian vessels to evacuate those trapped at Dunkirk, as portrayed in Darkest Hour?
tl:dr
The recruitment of civilian ships to evacuate the BEF was largely Ramsay's idea, set forth in the Dynamo Room at Dover during a conference on May 20th.
This is a bit difficult to answer.
One ...
- 43.7k
17
votes
During the Iran-Iraq war, did the Iranians use small children to trip land mines planted by Iraq?
Yes, according to the 07 July 1987 article For Iran's child soldiers, capture by the Iraqis is a mixed blessing from the Christian Science Monitor:
SHIRZAD lasted about 24 hours on the battlefield. ...
- 102k
17
votes
Accepted
During the Iran-Iraq war, did the Iranians use small children to trip land mines planted by Iraq?
Yes.
This use of child suicide minesweepers by Iran seems to be well-documented and discussed by academic scholars in reputable sources. Here are some examples I found:
Helen Brocklehurst, a social ...
- 4,539
15
votes
Was the death rate in Boer War concentration camps the same as in Glasgow?
The numbers of deaths in the concentrations camps differ in quality for 'white' and 'black' internees.
For black and coloured:
What records there are show that 115,700 were interned, slightly more ...
- 43.7k
14
votes
Did the North Korean Navy sink the heavy cruiser U.S.S. Chicago by torpedo boat in 1950?
No, the North Korean didn't sink or even damage any US ship with torpedoes during the Korean War.
As the question mentions, 4 ships sailed under the name "U.S.S Chicago", the Baltimore class heavy ...
- 29k
13
votes
Was the first German bombing of London an accident?
Yes, we have a number of reasons for believing the idea that it was an accident, based on Luftwaffe bombing patterns, the raid itself, and Hermann Göring's orders.
The Luftwaffe was not trying to ...
- 11.1k
12
votes
What is the origin of this photo of an unexploded bomb?
This is a Soviet truck, ZiL-131:
which is very unlikely to be used in Palestine.
So the claim it is from Palestine is wrong. The bouth Russian and Ukrainian media claimed the truck to be Ukrainian, ...
- 808
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible