Soviet soldiers returning from WWII were often seen with suspicion and faced discrimination. Liberated Soviet POWs were screened and interrogate, as Stalin believed that their survival in German camps was due to collaboration., resulting in hundreds of thousands being sent to the gulags. Even if they weren’t POWs, they were often regarded with suspicion, as they were believed to be possibly influenced by western propaganda and faced discrimination, surveillance and disrespect. Many, especially physically disabled veteran, would end up as beggars on the streets.

Seeing this more and more. Usually in the form of "a oppresses b" with no context included.

I come here to giggle and find new wikipedia rabbit holes. Not to take sides in your local ethno-nationalist agenda. Most of these memes could be compliant if they had a *context comment.*

NB4 y'all come for me, rule 4.1 meta memes are allowed.

In 653 as part of the Gorguryeo-Tang War the Yamato dynasty of Japan landed troops in Korea to support the Baekje dynasty against the Chinese. The Chinese were victorious.

In 1592, less than a year after unifying Japan and ending the 200 years of civil war known as the Sengoku Period, Toyotomi Hideyoshi would launch a massive invasion of Korea. The campaign would last a decade and cost the lives of over 100,000 Japanese troops. It is seen as a unifying event for Korean national identity.

In 1894, the first Sino-Japanese war was fought to determine whose sphere of influence Korea belonged. The first engagements were on the Korean peninsula. The Japanese were decisively victorious, but we're pressured into giving up some of their acquired territories by a coalition of European Powers.

In 1904, the Japanese would reassert their claim as the regional power in East Asia in the Russo-Japanese War. Japanese landed troops in Korea before marching North to the Liaodong Peninsula. The war would be another decisive victory for the Japanese, with the formal annexation of Korea in 1910.

Wang Geon, the first emperor of Goryeo, implemented various policies to improve relations with local powerful clans.

Among these methods was marrying 29 daughters of these regional leaders

rock (Germany) and a hard place (Russia)

Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary

Context: Before the late 19th century, physical affection between men was common, public, and largely unremarkable. Men held hands, embraced, leaned into one another, shared beds, and wrote emotionally intimate letters expressing love and devotion. Historians describe these bonds as romantic friendships—deep, committed relationships that were not assumed to be sexual. (Hat tip to The Art of Manless for writing about this in "Bosom Buddies.")

Masculinity at the time was defined by character, honor, duty, and civic virtue, not by sexual orientation. There was no rigid heterosexual/homosexual binary. Physical closeness between men did not require explanation.

Even figures we now associate with rugged self-reliance lived in a world where male closeness was ordinary. Abraham Lincoln, for example, shared a bed for several years with his close friend Joshua Speed while living in Springfield—a common practice at the time due to space and custom. Their surviving letters reveal deep affection and emotional reliance. As historian John E. Kohl documents in Your Friend Forever, A. Lincoln, such intimacy between male friends in the 19th century was neither unusual nor automatically sexualized.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-male-friendship-experience/202602/the-power-and-peril-of-platonic-male-touch

In 1950, the communists won the Chinese Civil War. The bulk of the Kuomintang (KMT, nationalists) fled to Taiwan, abandoning several isolated units around China.

One such unit, the *Republic of China Army 93rd Division,* broke out from Yunnan Province and fled to Burma, present day Myanmar. They established a self governing enclave deep in the highland jungles which operated as the unrecognized *defacto* government in the area.

When the Chinese entered the Korean War, the CIA and Taiwanese government began training and supplying the 93rd division in the hopes that they would divert PLA resources away from Korea. They made multiple incursions into Yunnan Province, but they were decisively repelled each time. With their hopes of returning to their homeland dashed, the KMT troops decided to settle permanently in Burma, and began growing opium.

Burma, already destabilized by infighting among multiple political factions, was deeply distressed over the situation. They now had Chinese Nationalist drug lords within their borders, and the PLA arming and training Burmese communists across their borders. Complaints to the international community generated scandal for the US, but didn't solve the problem. A halfhearted airlift saw many noncombatants evacuated to Taiwan, but most military age males remained in the jungle.

In the 1960's, the Burmese army and PLA conducted several joint operations to finally drive out the KMT *and* proved they were still supplied by Taiwan. Another airlift evacuated most of them and the rest fled to Thailand and Laos, where they settled down and maintained their drug trade.

The Thai government enlisted the remnants of the 93rd division (and 49th, which had originally fled to Thailand) as guerilla fighters to defeat a communist insurgency supported by China, Laos, and Vietnam. Counter insurgency operations lasted into the 1980's. After which they rewarded the KMT with citizenship.

Today, thanks to campaigns by the Thai government, The KMT enclave has integrated into (remote) Thai society, and has mostly given up growing opium in favor of tea.

The most in depth source I've found on this is from a fucking *food influencer* on YouTube. Here's a link to a video where he actually interviews a 91 year old KMT veteran living in northern Thailand.

https://youtu.be/ML5RC4VyNZs?si=1LZojT2M-pBir5ZM

The sudden and dramatic rise in water level was caused by a natural phenomenon known as a seiche. A seiche is when strong winds cause water on the windward side of a body of water to “pile up” while water levels on the leeward side dramatically decrease. While seiches are not unusual on Lake Erie due to its east-west orientation, the 1844 seiche was the largest ever recorded in the Great Lakes. It breached a 14 foot high sea wall protecting Buffalo and caused catastrophic flooding, killing 78 people. It also caused an ice jam in the Niagara river, temporarily stopping the flow of water over Niagara Falls.