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A group of people, forced into one of the worst jobs in human history, decide to launch a suicidal revolt to destroy the tools of the Holocaust.

Sources:

Lawerence Langer. Versions of Survival: The Holocaust and the Human Spirit

Primo Levi. The Drowned and the Saved.

Nathan Cohen. Diaries of the Sonderkommando - Confronting Fate and Reality.

Tzipora Hager Halivni. Preparation for Revolt in Auschwitz-Birkenau: Heroes and Martyrs.

Filip Muller. Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three Years in the Gas Chambers.

Henryk Tauber. Deposition made on May 24, 1945. Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the gas chambers.

https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/sonderkommando-uprising-auschwitz-birkenau

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In the early days of English ambassadorships to the Ottoman Empire, an increasingly petty collection of grievances among European envoys and Ottoman dignitaries set the conditions for a single errant snowball to incite an anti-English riot. Witness the story of the snowball that got a bunch of English guys' beaten with oblong objects.

Research: Dr Joel Butler

Reources:

Public Records Office, The National Archives, Kew, London: SP 97/3; SP 97/4.

‘Bu bir nefret cinayetidir: Gazeteci Nuh Köklü, 'kartopu oynarken' öldürüldü.’ Radikal (2 February 2015).

‘Gazeteci Nuh Köklü kar topu oynarken öldürüldü’, BBC News Türkçe (18 February 2015).

‘Journalist Nuh Köklü murdered for playing snowball’, Agos (18 February 2015).

‘Life in prison for man who stabbed Turkish journalist over snowball fight’, Hürriyet Daily News (5 June 2015).

Atran, S. ‘The Devoted Actor: Unconditional Commitment and Intractable Conflict across Cultures’, Current Anthropology, 57/S13 (2016), S192-S203.

Brotton, J. The Sultan and the Queen: The Untold Story of Elizabeth and Islam (New York, 2017)

Brown, H.F. Calendar of State Papers Relating To English Affairs in the Archives of Venice, Volume 9, 1592-1603 (London, 1897).

Burian, O. The Report of Lello, Third English Ambassador to the Sublime Porte / Babıâli Nezdinde Üçüncü İngiliz Elçisi Lello’nun Muhtırası (Ankara, 1952).

Butler, J.D. ‘Between Company and State: Anglo-Ottoman Diplomacy and Ottoman Political Culture, 1565-1607’, unpubd. DPhil thesis, University of Oxford (2022).

_________. ‘Lello, Henry’, The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2023).

Coulter, L.J.F. ‘The involvement of the English crown and its embassy in Constantinople with pretenders to the throne of the principality of Moldavia between the years 1583 and 1620, with particular reference to the pretender Stefan Bogdan between 1590 and 1612’, unpubd. PhD thesis, University of London (1993).

Foster, W. (ed.) The Travels of John Sanderson in the Levant (1584-1602) (London, 1931).

Horniker, A.L. ‘Anglo-French Rivalry in the Levant from 1583 to 1612’, The Journal of Modern History, 18/4 (1946), 289-305.

Hutnyk, J. ‘Nuh Köklü. Statement from Yeldeğirmeni Dayanışması’ (20 February 2015) at: https://hutnyk.wordpress.com/2015/02/20/nuh-koklu-statement-from-yeldegirmeni-dayanismasi/ (accessed 8 March 2025).

Kowalczyk, T.D. ‘Edward Barton and Anglo-Ottoman Relations, 1588-98’, unpubd. PhD thesis, University of Sussex (2020).

MacLean, G. ‘Courting the Porte: Early Anglo-Ottoman Diplomacy’, University of Bucharest Review, 10/2 (2008), 80-88.

MacLean, G. & Matar, N. Britain & the Islamic World, 1558-1713 (Oxford, 2011).

Newson, M. ‘Football, fan violence, and identity fusion’, International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 54/4 (2019), 431-444.

Newson, M., Buhrmester, M. & Whitehouse, H. ‘United in defeat: shared suffering and group bonding among football fans’, Managing Sport and Leisure, 28/2 (2023), 164-181.

Purchas, S. Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas His Pilgrimes, viii (Glasgow, 1905).

Sheikh, H., Gómez, Á. & Altran, S. ‘Empirical Evidence for the Devoted Actor Model’, Current Anthropology, 57/S13 (2016), S204-S209.

Unknown Artist. (c1604). The Somerset House Conference, 1604 (oil on canvas). London: National Portrait Gallery.

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Huge thank you to

Boonta Vista

The Worst of All Possible Worlds

Hell of a Way to Dad

For making a very stupid idea for an ad possible.

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Towards the end of the Crimean War the Russians invade the Ottoman Empire, coming up against the Fortress City of Kars. Command of the Ottoman forces fall to an old drunk, British man who may or may not be the bastard child of Prince Edward, all of the Turkish officers under him are actually Hungarian, and one American catholic.

Sources:

Winifred Baumgart. The Crimean War: 1853-1856

Raugh Harold. The Victorians at War: 1815-1914

Humphrey Sandwith. The Siege of Kars 1856

William Edward David Allen, Paul Muratoff. Caucasian Battlefields: The History of the Wars of the Turco-Caucasian Border 1828-1921

It's the late 16th century and the Ottoman Empire is continuing to advance across the eastern Mediterranean. In Istanbul, the Ottomans have begun ratifying ambassadorships and trade deals with the English crown. And in the middle of this comes a crew of the most sunburned Barbary Pirates you've ever met, hell-bent on plundering any ship they can find before they high-tail it back to...England?

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Early during the US War in Vietnam, incompetent American advisors to the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), who is also incompetent, get incredibly mad as they attempt to get them to fight the Viet Cong, despite the fact the Americans never bothered to tell the ARVN about the battle plan, and every ARVN commander on the ground has to ask for permission to do any command position in a game of telephone that goes all of the way up to the President of South Vietnam.

Sources:

David Elliot. The Vietnamese War: Revolution and Change in the Mekong Delta 1930-1975

David Halberstam. The Making of a Quagmire: American and Vietnam During the Kennedy Era.

Neil Sheehan. A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam.

https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/educational-services/staff-rides/VSR/Ap-Bac-Vietnam/Material/Ap-Bac%20Preliminary%20Study%20Guide%20V1.0.pdf

https://www.historynet.com/the-battle-at-ap-bac-changed-americas-view-of-the-vietnam-war/

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In the opening stages of WWI, an Army of 40 year old reservists from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, armed with decades-old weapons and no food, and largely unable to even speak to one another, attempt to hold off the Russian Imperial Army in what became known as "Austria-Hungary's Stalingrad"

Sources:

Graydon Tunstall. Written in Blood: The Battles For Fortress Przemysl in WWI.

Dr. Alexander Watson. The Fortress: The Siege of Przemsysl and the Making of Europe's Bloodlands.

Christopher Miskimon. The Siege of Przemysl. Military Heritage. Jan 2016. Volume 17, No 4.