Comments by "Helium Road" (@RCAvhstape) on "Today I Found Out"
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This is a fun and interesting thread. Couple of things to add: there were colonists of German ancestry in the Continental Army, in particular from Pennsylvania, where some people still speak a dialect of German to this day (especially the Amish and Mennonite communities), but they were small in proportion to the rest of the army. I think I read somewhere that many Hessian mercenaries who were taken as POWs wound up settling in Lancaster County, Penna. after the war, but I don't have a source to cite at the moment.
Also, when the war began, most of the American rebels thought of Parliament as the enemy, not King George III. The American Colonies had no representation in Parliament and it was believed to be unfair that Parliament impose taxes and other laws on the Colonies, treating the colonists as second class Englishmen. There was initially hope that by going around Parliament and appealing directly to the king they could regain their rights as Englishmen, end the uprising, and continue as loyal subjects of the crown. Obviously things didn't work out that way and the revolution took a more radical turn with separation being the result.
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Here's a bonus fact I was hoping you'd mention: In the 50s or 60s there was a machine called the "Lady Godiva Device" which was an unshielded nuclear reactor. It was used by US nuclear scientists to create short bursts of radiation for testing purposes, and it was basically a metal framework with two fuel elements. One element was fixed and had a hole through it, and the other element slid down a rail and passed through the hole as it fell. For a brief moment, as the two elements passed, they formed a critical mass and reacted, creating a blast of neutrons and gamma rays, which would be used to dose items placed nearby. The reaction was less than a second, so the thing wasn't supposed to get hot enough to need a cooling system, but there was an accident once when the element didn't slide fast enough and the reaction created enough heat to bend the metal structure and wreck the machine. From what I've read the machine was operated out in the open air desert in a pit, and the operators stayed a safe distance away. I don't know why it was called Lady Godiva but I would guess because it's a "naked" reactor, maybe?
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