Wikipedia click trail
I've recently re-watched Bridge on the River Kwai on Bluray plus most of the special features with my parents in the last couple days. Following is a list of Wikipedia pages I've just read:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bridge_on_the_River_Kwai
The incidents portrayed in the film are mostly fictional, and though it depicts bad conditions and suffering caused by the building of the Burma Railway and its bridges, historically the conditions were much worse than depicted.[2] The real senior Allied officer at the bridge was British Lieutenant Colonel Philip Toosey. Some consider the film to be an insulting parody of Toosey. [...]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Toosey
Behind the backs of the Japanese, Toosey did everything possible to delay and sabotage the construction without endangering his men. Refusal to work would have meant instant execution. Termites were collected in large numbers to eat the wooden structures and the concrete was badly mixed. Toosey also helped organise a daring escape, at considerable cost to himself. (In the film the fictional colonel forbids escapes.) The two escaping officers had been given a month's rations and Toosey concealed their escape for 48 hours. After a month the two escapees were recaptured and bayoneted. Toosey was punished for concealing the escape.
The film portrays the Japanese as not being capable of designing a good bridge and so needed British expertise. This is incorrect; the Japanese army had excellent engineers who surprised their enemies by completing the railway within 16 months, albeit at vast human cost, the Japanese having relied upon Allied prisoners as slave laborers. British Army engineers had estimated five years.
(This is a problem I've always had with the film -- it's hard to believe the Japanese engineers could be so incompetent.)
My specific Wikipedia-related interest concerned the Colonel Bogey March:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonel_Bogey_March
The BotRK entry notes: "Lean wanted to introduce Nicholson and his soldiers into the camp singing this song, but Sam Spiegel thought it too vulgar, and so whistling was substituted. However, the lyrics were, and continue to be, so well known to the British public that they didn't need to be belaboured."
viz:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_Has_Only_Got_One_Ball
This Wikipedia page traces the origin and variations of the song in what might seem like painstaking detail if you weren't already familiar with Wikipedia*. One particular version is held out as more likely to be the original: "Only this version is historically accurate in attributing the "one ball" description to Göring, who had lost one of his testicles during the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_Hall_Putsch
And of course, I remember this song from my childhood (do kids still sing it?)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_(song)
ObXKCD: https://www.xkcd.com/214/ and previous reference thereto
*I swear I thought I blogged this already but can't find it right now (wouldn't be my first rerun in any case): a long time ago I'd encountered the page for the Montreal Screwjob and remarked on its considerable length and detail, so it amused me when earlier this year during the SCF I had some random conversation where terrencechan mentioned some other random conversation with I think hgfalling where the subject of the Screwjob came up, and with specific reference to the length of its Wikipedia entry and how it's longer than the entry for, say, Tanzania (although the difference is smaller than the last time I looked). The Screwjob page has a star in the upper right corner, apparently indicating it to be a featured article: "Featured articles are considered to be the best articles Wikipedia has to offer, as determined by Wikipedia's editors. [...] There are 3,431 featured articles out of 3,829,530 articles on the English Wikipedia. Thus, about one in 1,110 articles is listed here."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bridge_on_the_River_Kwai
The incidents portrayed in the film are mostly fictional, and though it depicts bad conditions and suffering caused by the building of the Burma Railway and its bridges, historically the conditions were much worse than depicted.[2] The real senior Allied officer at the bridge was British Lieutenant Colonel Philip Toosey. Some consider the film to be an insulting parody of Toosey. [...]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Toosey
Behind the backs of the Japanese, Toosey did everything possible to delay and sabotage the construction without endangering his men. Refusal to work would have meant instant execution. Termites were collected in large numbers to eat the wooden structures and the concrete was badly mixed. Toosey also helped organise a daring escape, at considerable cost to himself. (In the film the fictional colonel forbids escapes.) The two escaping officers had been given a month's rations and Toosey concealed their escape for 48 hours. After a month the two escapees were recaptured and bayoneted. Toosey was punished for concealing the escape.
The film portrays the Japanese as not being capable of designing a good bridge and so needed British expertise. This is incorrect; the Japanese army had excellent engineers who surprised their enemies by completing the railway within 16 months, albeit at vast human cost, the Japanese having relied upon Allied prisoners as slave laborers. British Army engineers had estimated five years.
(This is a problem I've always had with the film -- it's hard to believe the Japanese engineers could be so incompetent.)
My specific Wikipedia-related interest concerned the Colonel Bogey March:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonel_Bogey_March
The BotRK entry notes: "Lean wanted to introduce Nicholson and his soldiers into the camp singing this song, but Sam Spiegel thought it too vulgar, and so whistling was substituted. However, the lyrics were, and continue to be, so well known to the British public that they didn't need to be belaboured."
viz:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_Has_Only_Got_One_Ball
This Wikipedia page traces the origin and variations of the song in what might seem like painstaking detail if you weren't already familiar with Wikipedia*. One particular version is held out as more likely to be the original: "Only this version is historically accurate in attributing the "one ball" description to Göring, who had lost one of his testicles during the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_Hall_Putsch
And of course, I remember this song from my childhood (do kids still sing it?)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_(song)
ObXKCD: https://www.xkcd.com/214/ and previous reference thereto
*I swear I thought I blogged this already but can't find it right now (wouldn't be my first rerun in any case): a long time ago I'd encountered the page for the Montreal Screwjob and remarked on its considerable length and detail, so it amused me when earlier this year during the SCF I had some random conversation where terrencechan mentioned some other random conversation with I think hgfalling where the subject of the Screwjob came up, and with specific reference to the length of its Wikipedia entry and how it's longer than the entry for, say, Tanzania (although the difference is smaller than the last time I looked). The Screwjob page has a star in the upper right corner, apparently indicating it to be a featured article: "Featured articles are considered to be the best articles Wikipedia has to offer, as determined by Wikipedia's editors. [...] There are 3,431 featured articles out of 3,829,530 articles on the English Wikipedia. Thus, about one in 1,110 articles is listed here."