Get your bookmarks out people... an "H" plague is comin round.

-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rare_diseases_starting_with_H

he Great Lakes Avengers are a comedic superhero group, fashioned after Marvel Comics’ Avengers. Created by John Byrne and Mike Machlan, they first appeared in The West Coast Avengers #46, July 1989.

The group consists of self-styled superheroes who possess bizarre powers, a lack of common sense and a naive insistence on being superheroes. The group idolizes the Avengers and, seeing as the team already had East and West Coast branches, dedicated itself to defending the Midwestern United States.

The members assembled in response to a newspaper ad written by Mr. Immortal after he decided that he would need help in his fight against crime.

• Mr. Immortal — Craig Hollis, the team leader, whose only power is the ability to come back from the dead. Apparently this is due to his destiny: he is intended to be the last living being in the Universe. A demonic entity called Deathurge has haunted him all his life, preparing him for his lonely fate by killing off all his friends and loved ones in an attempt to harden him. "Mr. I" is the only one who can see and communicate with Deathurge, causing some concern for his friends since they think he is swearing at himself.
• Dinah-Soar — a reptilian alien with flight powers and a sonic attack in the form of a high-pitched shriek. Her name is a reference^{[citation needed]} to Dinah Lance, aka Black Canary who possesses similar vocal prowess, as well as a pun on both the word dinosaur, and actress Dinah Shore's name. Only Mister Immortal was able to understand and communicate with her. She was tragically killed by Maelstrom during a recent mission.
• Big Bertha — model Ashley Crawford, who can transform into an incredibly fat (but also incredibly strong) version of herself. She must vomit before she can return to normal, spoofing the cliché that models often suffer from bulimia. Her staunch refusal to leave the less-than-glamorous city of Milwaukee to take part in photo sessions in Rome or Paris is a source of constant puzzlement to her agent. However, Bertha wishes to maintain her role with her team, primarily because she is their financial backer.
• Flatman — Dr. Val Ventura, who possesses an incredibly flat body that can stretch and slip through narrow spaces. He recently publicly revealed that he is gay. He has a certain resemblance to Mr. Fantastic, a fact that is often exploited for comic effect.
• Doorman — DeMarr Davis, who can use his body as a portal allowing his teammates to pass through walls. It was revealed in the GLA: Misassembled series that he has a connection to the Darkforce dimension. He is also the most sardonic member of the team. He is currently an angel of death, similar to Deathurge.
• Squirrel Girl — Doreen Green, a buck-toothed young girl with a long, bushy tail who has the abilities of a squirrel and can summon squirrels to help her. She had a wise-cracking pet squirrel called Monkey Joe, who was also a member until his untimely death. He has been replaced by Tippy-Toe, a female squirrel who has also become an official team member. Squirrel Girl joined the team during the Misassembled limited series. Despite her arguably silly powers, Squirrel Girl has single-handedly defeated Doctor Doom, Thanos, Terrax, M.O.D.O.K. and Deadpool.
• Leather Boy — Gene Lorrene misread Mr. Immortal's personal ad for "costumed adventurers", and left the group soon afterwards. To quote Mr. Immortal: "The less said about it, the better." (Leather Boy was not a member of the team when it was originally introduced in WCA #46, but was retconned into the roster in the 2005 Misassembled miniseries.) He later returned briefly (clad in a leather variation of Doctor Doom's mystical armor), seeking revenge for being ignored during the team's recent recruiting drive, and murdered Monkey Joe. Big Bertha, however, caught and defeated him by sitting on him (though this excited him sexually). His true name, Gene Lorrene, echoes that of Jean Loring, wife of the DC Comics superhero The Atom, who played a central role in the miniseries Identity Crisis, which the Misassembled series satirizes.
• Grasshopper — Doug Taggert, a Roxxon agent with a mechanical suit vaguely similar to that of Iron Man, albeit with an insect motif. He died 5.8 seconds after joining the team--according to Monkey Joe, a new record for the shortest tenure with any superhero team.

-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_Avengers

I love the idea that the last living being in the universe is going to be from the american midwest. Let's be frank withourselves. I would fuck squirrel girl, and doorman is a great, great, great idea.

Superheroes with superfeelings and shit.

"Avengers Disassembled", referred to in some participating series as "Disassembled", is a crossover event between several Marvel Comics series. The general idea is that the major heroes (the Avengers, Spider-Man, and the Fantastic Four) are assaulted, not just physically, but emotionally. Author Brian Michael Bendis said in an article in Newsarama that the one thing that separates this crossover from others is that "not everyone is coming back from this one".
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avengers_Disassembled

jesus man, don't sneeze!

A Contagious shooting or "Mass reflexive response" is "gunfire that spreads among officers who believe that they, or their colleagues, are facing a threat. It spreads like germs, like laughter, or fear." ^[1]

Incidents

• 2006 Five officers fired 50 rounds at Sean Bell who was leaving his bachelor party in New York, including 31 by one detective^[2]
• 2006 Three officers fired 26 shots at a pit bull that had bitten a chunk out of an officer’s leg in the Bronx, New York in July^[3]
• 2005 Eight officers fired 43 shots at Brian Allen, an armed man, in Queens, New York killing him^[4]
• 1999 Five officers fired 50 rounds at Amadou Diallo in the Bronx, New York on February 4, 1999
• 1998 New Jersey State Police fired 11 shots at Daniel Reyes and three other basketball players in their car in April ^[5]

-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contagious_shooting

I think the simple explanation for this is that shooting at people is a lot of fun and you're not normally allowed to.

Slay the beast of personal reaction.

Several literary critics treated Burroughs's work harshly. For example Anatole Broyard and Philip Toynbee wrote devastating reviews of some of his most important books. In a short essay entitled A Review of the Reviewers, Burroughs answers his critics in this way:

Critics constantly complain that writers are lacking in standards, yet they themselves seem to have no standards other than personal prejudice for literary criticism. (...) such standards do exist. Matthew Arnold set up three criteria for criticism: 1. What is the writer trying to do? 2. How well does he succeed in doing it? (...) 3. Does the work exhibit "high seriousness"? That is, does it touch on basic issues of good and evil, life and death and the human condition. I would also apply a fourth criterion (...) Write about what you know. More writers fail because they try to write about things they don't know than for any other reason.

—William S. Burroughs, 'A Review of the Reviewers'

Burroughs clearly indicates that he prefers to be evaluated against such criteria over being reviewed based on the reviewer's personal reactions to a certain book. He specifically criticized Anatole Broyard for reading authorial intentionality into his works where there is none. Thus he distanced himself from the movement around New Criticism, by referring to the old school (as exemplified by Matthew Arnold).
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Burroughs
-

What's a non-notorious bootlegging?

Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam (The Man Who Saves The World) is a Turkish-made film commonly known as Turkish Star Wars because of its notorious bootlegging of Star Wars film clips worked into the film.

Released in 1982, Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam was created in Turkey caught in the midst of massive political upheaval. As a result, American-made films were not easily acquired and were often remade with a Turkish cast and setting. The three most notable films to be so bootlegged are Star Wars, The Wizard of Oz and E.T., all of which have Turkish variations.
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%BCnyay%C4%B1_Kurtaran_Adam

Asians are so much smarter than us, it's insane. Note: not sarcasm.

A void deck is a spacious area under a Housing and Development Board apartment block in Singapore. The void deck occupies the ground level, while apartments are usually on the second floor onwards. Sometimes, events like Malay weddings, Chinese weddings or even funeral wakes are held in such places. Rentals of void decks typically cost only around S$10 per day, and are usually free for funeral wakes. However, electricity usage incurs separate charges.

Small grocers, medical and dental clinics, bakeries and other shops are often located in void decks, especially in older HDB blocks. Most void decks also feature bicycle racks, benches, and recreational tables for residents' use. It is common for void deck tables to have either a xiangqi or checkers board carved on them.

Another important function of void decks is that they allow people to walk through HDB blocks rather than having to go around them. This saves a lot of time when making one's way through the very dense public housing estates typical of space-starved Singapore.

-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Void_deck

Seeing as I am a housefly, this is a serious concern.

Calorie restriction or Caloric restriction (CR) is the practice of limiting dietary energy intake in the hope that it will improve health and retard aging. In human subjects, CR has been shown to lower cholesterol, fasting glucose, and blood pressure. Some consider these to be biomarkers of aging, since there is a correlation between these markers and risk of diseases associated with aging. Except for houseflies (below), animal species tested with CR so far, including primates, rats, mice, spiders, Drosophila, C. elegans and rotifers, have shown lifespan extension. CR is the only known dietary measure capable of extending maximum lifespan, as opposed to average lifespan. In CR, energy intake is minimized, but sufficient quantities of vitamins, minerals and other important nutrients must be eaten. To emphasize the difference between CR and mere "FR" (food restriction), CR is often referred to by a plethora of other names such as CRON or CRAN (calorie restriction with optimal/adequate nutrition), or the "high-low diet" (high in all nutrients aside from calories, in which it is "low"). Other names for the diet emphasize the goal of the diet, such as CRL (calorie restriction for longevity), or simply The Longevity Diet, as in a recently published book by that name.

Objections to Calorie Restriction

No benefit to houseflies

One of the most significant oppositions to caloric restriction comes from Michael Cooper, who has shown that caloric restriction has no benefit in the housefly PMID: 15319362. Michael Cooper claims that the widely purported effects of calorie restriction may be because a diet containing more calories can increase bacterial proliferation, or that the type of high calorie diets used in past experiments have a stickiness, general composition, or texture that reduces longevity.

-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calorie_restricted_diet

Selection and comparison constitutes an intentional, subjective act.

The paradox of hedonism was first explicitly noted by the philosopher Henry Sidgwick in The Methods of Ethics.

More than a few common proverbs capture the idea that when one pursues happiness itself, one is miserable; but, when one pursues some other purpose (e.g. a challenging career, a project important to humanity, a code of ethics, a religious commitment), one achieves happiness. Among other thinkers, John Stuart Mill, a Utilitarian philosopher, noted this sentiment in his autobiography:

"But I now thought that this end [one's happiness] was only to be attained by not making it the direct end. Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness[....] Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness along the way[....] Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so." (p. 94)

Happiness is often naively equated with pleasure, though sometimes the identification of the two concepts has been questioned. If, whether for good or bad reasons, one does equate happiness with pleasure, then the paradox of hedonism arises. When one aims solely towards pleasure itself, one's aim is frustrated. Sidgwick comments on such frustration after a discussion of self-love in the above-mentioned work:

"I should not, however, infer from this that the pursuit of pleasure is necessarily self-defeating and futile; but merely that the principle of Egoistic Hedonism, when applied with a due knowledge of the laws of human nature, is practically self-limiting; i.e., that a rational method of attaining the end at which it aims requires that we should to some extent put it out of sight and not directly aim at it." (p. 3)

Aristotle might possibly have also noted the paradoxical side of pursuing pleasure, though not, at any rate, as clearly as Sidgwick. Human beings are actors whose endeavors bring about consequences, and among these are pleasure. Aristotle then argues as follows:

"How, then, is it that no one is continuously pleased? Is it that we grow weary? Certainly all human things are incapable of continuous activity. Therefore pleasure also is not continuous; for it accompanies activity." (p. 1099)

-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_hedonism

Time is fleeting.

In the Battle of Thermopylae of 480 BC an alliance of Greek city-states fought the invading Persian army in the mountain pass of Thermopylae. Vastly outnumbered, the Greeks delayed the enemy in one of the most famous last stands of history. A small force led by King Leonidas of Sparta blocked the only road through which the massive army of Xerxes I could pass. After several days of confrontation, the Persians attacked and defeated the Greeks but sustained heavy losses, disproportionate to those sustained by the Greeks. A local resident named Ephialtes betrayed the Greeks, revealing a mountain path that led behind the Greek lines. With the rest of the army dismissed, King Leonidas stayed behind, with his guard of 300 Spartans and 700 Thespian volunteers. Though they knew it meant their deaths, they allowed the rest of the Greeks to escape.

The significance of the Thespians' refusal to leave should not be ignored. The Spartans, as brave as their sacrifice indubitably was, were professional soldiers, trained from birth to be ready to give their lives in combat as Spartan law dictated. Conversely, the Thespians were citizen-soldiers (Demophilus, for example, made his living as an architect) who elected to add whatever they could to the fight, rather than allow the Spartans to be annihilated alone. Though their bravery is often overlooked by history, it was most certainly not overlooked by the Spartans, who are said to have exchanged cloaks with the Thespians and promised to be allies for eternity.
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Thermopylae

But in these few hours of limitless joy, we feel more than most do in a lifetime. The thousand men are a single axe. I believe I could leap into the void. I would be completed and overwhelmed. Leave this world while it still holds sweetness.

Need to visit me some of that.

A dead mall is a shopping mall with a high vacancy rate or a low consumer traffic level, or that is dated or deteriorating in some manner. There are many malls in the United States that are considered "dead". Dead malls may be made up of one or more "dead" anchors, meaning that the space where an anchor store (often a large department store) would be located is empty.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_mall

If we could create... if we could be surrounded by those who create... then all we need is space and time, and we could create our own happiness anywhere. Work. Progress. Creation. Something to do. Build a brewery. Paint a mural. Something with which to occupy ourselves. Something to strive for. These we need more than anything else.

Genocide is only a crime if there are cameras.

As the Jewish Encyclopedia put it, "David waged a sacred war of extermination against the Amalekites," who subsequently disappeared from history. Long after, in the time of Hezekiah, five hundred Simeonites annihilated the last remnant "of the Amalekites that had escaped" on Mount Seir, and settled in their place (1 Chr. 4:42-43).

The Biblical relationship between the Hebrew and Amalekite tribes was that the Hebrew tribes hated the Amalekites, primarily due to Amalek's attacking Israel on their way out of Egypt.
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amalekites#Genocide_of_the_Amalekites

To Live and Love In Exciting Times

After the First English Civil War, King Charles I was a prisoner of the Parliamentarians. They tried to negotiate a compromise with him, but he stuck steadfastly to his view that he was King by Divine Right and attempted in secret to raise an army to fight against them. When it became obvious to the leaders of the Parliamentarians that they could not negotiate a settlement with him and they could not trust him to refrain from raising an army against them, they reluctantly came to the conclusion that they would have to kill him. On 13 December 1648, the House of Commons broke off negotiations with the King. Two days later, the Council of Officers of the New Model Army voted that the King be moved from the Isle of Wight, where he was prisoner, to Windsor "in order to the bringing of him speedily to justice". In the middle of December, the King was moved from Windsor to London. The House of Commons of the Rump Parliament passed a Bill setting up a High Court of Justice in order to try Charles I for high treason in the name of the people of England. From a Royalist and post-restoration perspective this Bill was not lawful, since the House of Lords refused to pass it and it failed to receive Royal Assent. However, the Parliamentary leaders and the Army pressed on with the trial anyway.

At his trial in front of The High Court of Justice on Saturday 20 January 1649 in Westminster Hall, Charles asked "would know by what power I am called hither. I would know by what authority, I mean lawful [authority]". In view of the historic issues involved, both sides based themselves on surprisingly technical legal grounds. Charles did not dispute that Parliament as a whole did have some judicial powers, but he maintained that the House of Commons on its own could not try anybody, and so he refused to plead. At that time under English law if a prisoner refused to plead then this was treated as a plea of guilty. (This has since been changed; a refusal to plead now is interpreted as a not-guilty plea.)

He was found guilty on Saturday 27 January 1649, and his death warrant was signed by 59 Commissioners. To show their agreement with the sentence of death, all of the Commissioners who were present rose to their feet.

On the day of his execution, 30 January 1649, Charles dressed in two shirts so that he would not shiver from the cold, in case it was said that he was shivering from fear. His execution was delayed by several hours so that the House of Commons could pass an emergency bill to make it an offence to proclaim a new King, and to declare the representatives of the people, the House of Commons, as the source of all just power. Charles was then escorted through the Banqueting House in the Palace of Whitehall to a scaffold. He forgave those who had passed sentence on him and gave instructions to his enemies that they should learn to "know their duty to God, the King - that is, my successors - and the people". He then gave a brief speech outlining his unchanged views of the relationship between the monarchy and the monarch's subjects, ending with the words "I am the martyr of the people". His head was severed from his body with one blow, and a groan went up from the crowd that witnessed the execution.

One week later, the Rump, sitting in the House of Commons, passed a bill abolishing the monarchy. Ardent Royalists refused to accept it on the basis that there could never be a vacancy of the Crown. Others refused because, as the bill had not passed the House of Lords and did not have Royal Assent, it could not become an Act of Parliament.

-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regicide

It's a fucking eurovision song entry, not a war crimes trial. Lighten up!

While the performance itself remained relatively static (the Contest was still conducted in a room of music professionals, rather than the general-admission Contest of more recent years), a series of high-fives brought some movement to proceedings.
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wir_Geben_%27Ne_Party

The more of a patriot you are, the more you will be hated.

Jacques Vergès (born March 5, 1925 at Ubon) is a controversial French lawyer and former Free French Forces guerrilla. He has been noted for defending unpopular figures such as Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie in 1987 and Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy in 1996.

Recently, after the US-led occupation forces invaded Iraq (March 2003), Vergès was asked to represent Tariq Aziz in court. On December 13, 2003, the United States arrested Saddam Hussein (Iraq's President since 1979). Jacques Vergès also offered to defend Saddam if he was asked to. "If I have to choose between defending the wolf or the dog, I choose the wolf, especially when he is bleeding". As of March 27, 2004, Mr Vergès has been confirmed to defend Hussein. His tactic will apparently be to accuse US government officials such as Donald Rumsfeld, of complicity in Saddam's alleged crimes. The governments of the US, France and Britain sold conventional, and illegal biological and chemical weapons to Hussein to support Saddam's war against Iran in the 1980s. Hussein has been accused of genocide against the Kurdish population of Iraq using chemical weapons.

Because of his tendency to represent some of the most infamous defendants, Vergès is sometimes referred to as "The Devil's Advocate."

-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Verg%C3%A8s

Those that define justice are usually clever enough not to take it seriously.

In 1984, Klaus Barbie was put on trial for crimes committed while he was in charge of the Gestapo in Lyon between 1942 and 1944. As the trial opened Philip A. Potter, a Caribbean pastor, described Barbie in an interview in the February 11, 1984 Le Monde as the last product of the Enlightenment, which, he claimed, had produced four things: "the Industrial Revolution, which subordinated man to the machine; the founding of the United States on a declaration of independence where liberty and equality were applied to all men - except for blacks and Indians; - the French Revolution of 1789 where liberty, brotherhood, and equality were indeed claimed by the bourgeoisie; and imperialism based on racism".

At the trial Barbie received support not only from Nazi apologists like François Genoud, but also from leftist lawyer Jacques Vergès. He had a reputation for attacking the French political system, particularly in French colonial territories. In 1960, he extracted a confession of torture from Paul Teitgen, secretary general of the police in Algiers. Vergès' strategy at the trial was to use the trial to expose war crimes committed by France since 1945. Indeed, many of the charges against Barbie were dropped, thanks to legislation that had protected people accused of crimes under the Vichy regime and in French Algeria.

Vergès argued that the Nazi crimes were no different in nature from those committed by French imperialism, and thus the French courts were in no position to try Barbie. Nabil Bouaita, an Algerian lawyer, and Jean-Martin M'Bemba, a Congolese lawyer, joined the defense team. "Does crime against humanity only force emotion or merit commemoration if it hurt Europeans?" Vergès asked. B'Memba gave an account of how 8,000 Africans died building 140 kilometres of railway in French colonial Africa. Bouaita discussed Sabra and Shatila.

In the end, Barbie was found guilty, but Vergès' defense had changed the terms of debate about crimes against humanity. This has led to the term New World Negationism to describe the denial or trivialisation of crimes against humanity such as genocide and slavery that were perpetrated by Europeans in the New World (i.e. North and South America).

Barbie was sentenced to life imprisonment, but died in prison four years into his sentence at the age of 77.

-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaus_Barbie

Next time, don't let a 12 year old draw your fucking great seal.

-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Great_Seal_of_US%2C_Verso_Design%2C_1782.png

If only such requirements existed today.

After the selection of the Council of the Ancients by lot, it remained to name the directors. For its own security the Left resolved that all five must be old members of the Convention and regicides. The Ancients chose Rewbell, Barras, La Révellière Lépeaux, Carnot and Letourneur.
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Directory

This time, the game is real! Or something...

vote against deletion

• Smack has listed the pages for all 21 sea maps on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion#December 16. Reason for deletion: he believes they are fan variants because he's never heard of the two seafarers expansion sets. RickK has voted for deletion, in line with his history of ignorance and lack of integrity from the copyright and fair use discussion. Please tell these two gentlemen to go home. ~ stardust 02:17, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)
  • Please read the Wikipedia:Rules to consider that are called Wikipedia:No personal attacks and Wikipedia:Remove personal attacks. If your critics are wrong, it's sufficient to say so here, having previously argued your case. (No claim to be a paragon here, but as C. S. Lewis said, you can't argue effectively against a sin you're not tempted to!) Dandrake 06:28, Dec 19, 2003 (UTC)

• RickK and Gentgeen have also quietly posted the images up at Wikipedia:Possible copyright infringements#December 11, even after the subject was closed here. Please remember to vote against deletion there as well. ~ stardust 08:57, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)

-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Settlers_of_Catan

If my middle name was leroy, I too would be driven to protest.

David Gatchell of Tennesee ran for governor in 2002 and is running for Senate in 2006 as a protest, officially changing his middle name from "Leroy" to "None of the Above."
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Gatchell

Suggest that this page be merged with "Wikipedia"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Articles_which_may_be_biased

computer programmers are cute.

, also referred to as pitfalls, are classes of commonly-reinvented bad solutions to problems. They are studied, as a category, in order that they may be avoided in the future, and that instances of them may be recognized when investigating non-working systems.

The term originates in computer science, apparently inspired by the Gang of Four's Design Patterns book, which laid out examples of good programming practice. The authors termed these good methods "design patterns", by analogy with the term as used in architecture. "Anti-patterns", as described in the book by Brown, Malveau, McCormick and Mowbray, are a natural counterpart, though not mentioned in the original Design Patterns book. Part of good programming practice is the avoidance of anti-patterns.

The concept is readily applied to engineering in general, and also applies outside engineering, in any human endeavour. Although the term is not commonly used outside engineering, the concept is quite universal.

-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-pattern

Example:


Reinventing the square wheel is the practice of unnecessarily engineering artifacts that provide functionality already provided by existing standard artifacts (reinventing the wheel) and ending up with a worse result than the standard (a square wheel). This is an anti-pattern which occurs when the engineer is unaware or contemptuous of the standard solution and also does not understand the problem or the standard solution sufficiently to avoid problems overcome by the standard. It is mostly an affliction of inexperienced engineers.
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinventing_the_square_wheel

Whoever brought bacon, I salute you.

My Chemical Romance played the main stage at the 2006 Reading and Leeds Festivals - this was the largest show they have ever played in the UK. They were not received warmly by the crowd at Reading, as the band was subjected to heavy concert bottling. Large sections of the audience threw bacon, tangerines, golf balls, and drink bottles filled with urine at the group as they played. This reportedly upset frontman Way, who then introduced a track saying, "This song is called Thanks For All The Bottles, Thanks For All The Piss, Thanks For All The Golf Balls, Thanks For All The Apples And Thanks For All The Sticky Shit." My Chemical Romance did, however, complete their set.

-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Chemical_Romance

Someday, I shall tell their story.

The Potsdam Giants was a Prussian infantry regiment composed of taller-than-average soldiers. Its founder was the Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm I of Prussia (1688-1740). The unit was known as the „Potsdamer Riesengarde“ ("giant guard of Potsdam") in German, but the Prussian population quickly nicknamed them the „Lange Kerls“ ("Long guys").

When Friedrich Wilhelm I of Prussia ascended to the throne in 1713 he proceeded to decrease expenses of the court and strengthen his military. He let Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Dessau improve the drill and weapons of his army and hired 40,000 foreign mercenaries. He believed in harsh discipline.

The Potsdam Giants was based on the king's personal regiment that his father had given him to play with. He had already begun to recruit taller soldiers for it. Official name of the regiment was the 'Grand Grenadiers of Potsdam' or 'Potsdam Grenadiers' for short. However, when the amount of tall soldiers increased, the regiment earned its nickname 'Potsdam Giants'. Their uniform was a red hat, blue jacket with gold trim, scarlet trousers, white stockings, and black shoes. Their weapons were muskets, white bandoleers, and daggers. The soldiers wore a hat without a brim in order to be able to throw their heavy grenades with ease.

The original required height was 1.8 meters (5 ft 11 in). The tallest soldiers were reportedly 2.17 meters (about 7 feet) in height. The king — who was 1.5 meters (4'11" feet) himself — needed few hundred more recruits each year. He tried to obtain them by any means, and once confided to the French ambassador that "The most beautiful girl or woman in the world would be a matter of indifference to me, but tall soldiers--they are my weakness." He gave bonuses to fathers of tall sons and landowners who gave up their tallest farm workers to join the regiment. He recruited tall soldiers from the armies of other European countries. Foreign rulers like the Emperor of Austria, Russian Tsar Peter the Great and even the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire sent tall soldiers to him in order to encourage friendly relations. Once, Peter the Great retracted his annual gift of 40 soldiers to the regiment, and following that action, Friedrich Wilhelm refused to speak to the Russian ambassador until they were returned.

If the man concerned was not interested, the king resorted to forced recruitment and kidnapping — his agents kidnapped tall priests, monks, innkeepers, etc, from all over Europe. Once they even tried to abduct an Austrian diplomat. He even forced tall women to marry tall soldiers so they could breed more tall boys. If some regimental commander failed to inform the king of a potential tall recruit under his own command, he faced royal displeasure.

Pay was high but not all giants were content, especially if they were forcibly recruited. They attempted desertion or suicide. The king's idea to stretch his troopers to make them taller was met with open rebellion.

The king never risked the Giants in battle. He trained and drilled them every day. He liked to paint their portraits from memory. He tried to show them to foreign visitors and dignitaries to impress them. At times he would try to cheer himself up by ordering them to march before him, even if he was in sickbed. This procession, which included the entire regiment, was led by their mascot, a bear.

When the king died in 1740, crown prince Frederick — future Frederick the Great — did not share his sentiments about the regiment, which seemed to him an unnecessary expense. He dismissed the Giants. Forcibly recruited foreigners returned to their home countries after a long service. In Nancy Mitford's biography of Frederick the Great, it quotes contemporary sources saying the roads to Paris were littered with half-wit giants trying to find their way home.

-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potsdam_Giants