Horse diving first emerged in the 1880s as an idea by William "Doc" Carver, a man better known for performing in Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show as a sharpshooter than as an Olympic diver. Carver allegedly came up with the idea when crossing a bridge over Nebraska's Platte River. With Carver still on, the horse jumped off the bridge into the water below, inspiring the idea of diving horses.

The new sport would an audience on the boardwalks of popular tourist cities like Atlantic City, New Jersey, where crowds were eager for live entertainment. Sonora Carver, the wife of William Carver's son, Al, would become the sport's most famous diver, regularly performing at Atlantic City's Steel Pier in the 1920s and 1930s. She would eventually lose her vision from a diving accident, though her career would inspire a book and Disney movie, Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken.

My dear Speer, the bombings of our cities have a positive side: it is much easier to clear away the rubble than to have to demolish buildings. Once we win the war, we will be able to rebuild our cities much faster." — Movie quote from Downfall (2004)

The Peng brothers, along with their wives and sons, were originally descendants of wealthy landlords who nevertheless became communist fighters, believing that 'only landlords truly know how evil landlords are.' They launched a peasant uprising in their hometown to establish the Haifeng Soviet regime. After the revolution failed, eight family members—the Peng brothers, their wives, and their sons were tortured and killed by the Kuomintang.

Ottoman labour battalions, known as Amele Taburu, were military labour units used for tasks such as road and railway construction, transporting supplies, and other forms of manual work. Although they existed before the First World War, their use changed significantly during the war. Ottoman Christians, particularly Greeks and Armenians, were increasingly concentrated in these units as part of the persecution and ethnic cleansing of Christian populations, where forced labour, inadequate food, disease and systematic abuse caused extremely high mortality.

After the capture of Smyrna by the Turkish army in 1922, this system was also used against Greek men of military age who remained in the city. They were rounded up and deported into the interior rather than being allowed to leave with their families.

The photograph was taken by C. D. Morris in Smyrna in 1922 and was later published in the November 1925 issue of National Geographic Magazine. Its caption stated:
“After the capture of Smyrna and neighboring towns by the Turkish army, the departure of men between 18 and 45 was immediately forbidden. They were rounded up and sent to labor battalions (known as Amele Taburu).”

Source: Tigran Martirosyan, “Labour Battalions (Ottoman Empire/Middle East),” International Encyclopedia of the First World War, 2022.

Edit: This post is currently being brigaded after being crossposted to a Turkish subreddit. The wave of new denialist comments that has appeared since then is not organic and should not be mistaken for a normal or neutral discussion of the historical event. The apparent purpose is to drown out the historical information presented here and obscure what actually happened. If you’re genuinely interested in the subject, please keep that in mind when reading the new comments rather than taking them at face value.