A Note Concerning the Previous Great Emu War Article

Quite recently, I, Slavoj Morrison, received many emails and letters denouncing my article on the Great Emu War of 1932 and the new insight and information I provided concerning it. I was sadly disappointed at the lack of faith my consistent readers seem to have developed in my writing and researching abilities. I had set out to shine new light on a battle that had been discreetly been brushed under the rug by its administrators, but in return for this deed, I was laughed out of several magazine interviews.
Clearly, this was because I had not provided nearly enough detail concerning the emu's strategy and battle tactics. In this piece I will attempt to continue the research I began in my first piece on the Great Emu War of 1932. 
To show an example of the emu group's excellent strategy and perceptiveness, one of my sources and a good friend of mine, Dr. Beachcombing of strangehistory.net recounts one of the incidents which occurred near the end of the war: 
"The greatest battle of the campaign took place on 4 November. An Australian machine gunner O’Halloran had set up a hidden gun behind a dam wall and watched amazed as a thousand emus approached his position. He waited till they were upon him and then gave the order to open fire. Twelve emus fell in quick succession and then the machine gun jammed…
A subsequent attempt to kill emus involved mounting a machine gun on the back of a lorry and driving it after a small group. Not a single bird was killed, not a single bullet was shot (the gunner had problems enough hanging on) and a stretch of fence was destroyed when the truck careered into it.
The campaign was ended by a series of mocking questions in the Australian Parliament on 9 November of the same year. When one wag asked whether their would be medals given for the campaign, a representative from Western Australia, A.E.Green made the point that the medals should be given to the emus who had ‘won every round so far’.
In fact,  the most authoritative account of the war pays tribute to the emus themselves, who are often sold as the recipients of human stupidity, but who were actually wily guerrillas. " 

Here is a portion of the aforementioned account:

‘Each mob [of birds] has its leader, always an enormous black-plumed bird standing fully six-feet high, who keeps watch while his fellows busy themselves with the wheat. At the first suspicious sign, he gives the signal, and dozens of heads stretch up out of the crop. A few birds will take fright, starting a headlong stampede for the scrub, the leader always remaining until his followers have reached safety."

Hopefully, in the future, blog readers will take his work more seriously, as it is very important and significant in the historical realm.

Nikola Tesla's Love of Pigeons

Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla (Serbian Cyrillic: Никола Тесла; 10 July 1856 – 7 January 1943) was a Serbian American^[3][4][5][6] inventor,electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, physicist, and futurist best known for his contributions to the design of the modernalternating current (AC) electricity supply system.^[7]

Tesla gained experience in telephony and electrical engineering before immigrating to the United States in 1884 to work forThomas Edison in New York City. He soon struck out on his own with financial backers, setting up laboratories and companies to develop a range of electrical devices. His patented AC induction motor and transformer were licensed byGeorge Westinghouse, who also hired Tesla for a short time as a consultant. His work in the formative years of electric power development was involved in a corporate alternating current/direct current "War of Currents" as well as various patent battles.

However, there was something else about him, a quirk, that less people knew. A quirk that led to his eventual end in career, in fact. This strange obsession involved pigeons. He loved pigeons and even fell in love with one later on.

Now you might think, "well, everyone has a favorite animal."  But this was something more.  Nikola Tesla would open the windows to his hotel room and let pigeons inside where he would feed them and let them sleep.  Even still, there was one pigeon in particular he was in love with.

The pigeon Nikola Tesla was in love with

It was love at first sight. He knew from the moment she flew into his hotel room that he loved her.  "I have been feeding pigeons, thousands of them for years. But there was one, a beautiful bird, pure white with light grey tips on its wings; that one was different. It was a female. I had only to wish and call her and she would come flying to me. I loved that pigeon as a man loves a woman, and she loved me. As long as I had her, there was a purpose to my life." Said Tesla on his love.  

Sadly, this love was not to last long.  One day she flew in his hotel room, and he knew. She was going to die.

“When that pigeon died, something went out of my life. Up to that time I knew a certainty that I  would complete my work, no matter how ambitious my program, but when that something went  out of my life, I knew my life’s work was finished.”  

After his beloved pigeon died, Tesla ceased work in his laboratory and lived out the rest of his days fairly quietly.

Napoleon Bonaparte: The Superstition Behind the Man

Napoleon Bonaparte

Napoléon Bonaparte (/nəˈpoʊliən, -ˈpoʊljən/;[2] French: [napɔleɔ̃ bɔnapaʁt], born Napoleone di Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821) was a French military and political leader who rose to prominence during the French Revolution and itsassociated wars. As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 until 1814, and again in 1815. Napoleon dominated European affairs for nearly two decades while leading France against a series of coalitions in the Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars. He won several of these wars and the vast majority of his battles, rapidly conquering most of continental Europe before his ultimate defeat in 1815. One of the greatest commanders in history, his campaigns are studied at military schools worldwide and he remains one of the most celebrated and controversial political figures in Western history.[3][4]

Napoleon was born on 15 August 1769 to Carlo Maria di Buonaparte and Maria Letizia Ramolino in his family's ancestral home, Casa Buonaparte, in Ajaccio, the capital of the island of Corsica. He was their 4th child and 3rd son. This was a year after the island was transferred to France by the Republic of Genoa.[9] He was christened Napoleone di Buonaparte, probably named after an uncle (an older brother, who did not survive infancy, was the first of the sons to be called Napoleone). In his twenties, he adopted the more French-sounding Napoléon Bonaparte.[10][note 1]

Napoleon, like many people from Corsica, had grown up with stories of ghosts and vampires. His nurse, Ilari, chanted incantations over him to protect him from demons and he believed in omens and good luck charms. Most of the time he wore a little black satin heart between his flannel waistcoat and his shirt and he carried a scarab that he had found in a Pharaoh’s tomb in Egypt in his waistcoat pocket.

When he grew up, this superstitions continued to determine his judgement. He believed in a Little Red Man of Destiny, who he believed controlled his fate.

The Little Red Man of Destiny was a ghost that followed Napoleon and helped him with his campaigns.  The Little Red Man of Destiny would sometimes appear to him as a small man.  Other times it would follow him as a large red star.  The Little Red Man of Destiny would give Napoleon truthful insight to the future.  

One time the Little Red Man of Destiny appeared to Napoleon and told him not to invade Russia, saying that he would lose his power if he didn't attempt to make peace with the rest of Europe.  When Napoleon ignored the Little Red Man of Destiny he started his downward spiral of failure.  

The Great Emu War

The Emu War, also known as the Great Emu War,^[1] was a nuisance wildlife management operation undertaken in Australiaover the latter part of 1932 to address public concern over the number of emus said to be running amok in the Campion district of Western Australia. The attempts to curb the population of emus, a large flightless bird indigenous to Australia, employed soldiers armed with machine guns—leading the media to adopt the name "Emu War" when referring to the incident.

The new settlers in Australia had attempted to move onto the western area of the continent, but were presented with a surpassingly intelligent, yet extremely violent tribe of emu. Soldiers attempted to fight the emus off the land, with all their war power, and enlisted the help of their allies, as well, but to no avail. The emu were stronger and more powerful than the new Australians had ever imagined. In fact, the Aboriginals were even wary of the emu and dared not reside in that territory. They had an emu god they worshipped they called the Jeltzon, which was the god of war and civilization, which they consulted on a regular basis. The emu had a language which was enunciated by the clicking of its beak, the swishing of its tail feathers, and its loud boisterous cry.
Yet the people of Australia knew none of this, and lost a war to their mysterious enemy. This would be the Great Emu War, and would only be lightly upon in Austrian schools, because of the embarrassment it caused to society for many years afterward. 
Now, today, the Western area of Australia is sparkly inhabited area, and occupied by people living in fear.

Ivan the Terrible

Ivan the Terrible was the Grand Prince of Moscow from 1533 to 1547 and Tsar of All the Russias from 1547 until his death. His long reign saw the conquest of the Khanates of Kazan, Astrakhan and Siberia, transforming Russia into a multiethnic and multiconfessional state spanning almost one billion acres, approximately 4,046,856 km² (1,562,500 sq mi). Ivan managed countless changes in the progression from a medieval state to an empire and emerging regional power, and became the first ruler to be crowned as Tsar of All the Russias.

Historic sources present disparate accounts of Ivan's complex personality: he was described as intelligent and devout, yet given to rages and prone to episodic outbreaks of mental illness^[2] that increased with his age, affecting his reign. However, the reason of these outbreaks of mental illness was because of his little known love of Monopoly. When he lost a game to a leader of a neighboring territory, the victor could expect to find large areas of his property and towns pillaged and burned because of one of Ivan's fits of rage.

Above: An ancient Monopoly board found in the ruins of Ivan the Terrible's palace. Now available for display at the Ancient History Museum of Russia.

Ivan's love for Monopoly(the equivalent of it in that time period at least) was a little known fact so cannot be found on many websites and historical databases. However, one of the secret reasons he received his allegory, Ivan the Terrible, in the first place, was because of his keen ability to dominate in Monopoly games, always buying up the Silk Roads(Railroads, in today's version) and the Ottoman Empire (today known as Park Place), which he covered in palaces(developments used in modern Monopoly). Often this strategy would work however he often had to change his strategy to add to his game-playing unpredictability.  But when he lost, battles would be fought, for instance the Russo-Kazan Wars and the conquest of Siberia. The ways he would justify this conquest in letters would make it seem as if he was fighting these wars for different reasons, but various understudies and apostles to Ivan the Terrible say otherwise.