March 19, 2020 • 51 mins
The battle between Britain and Argentina over the rocky, cold Falkland Islands is one of the weirder wars in history. Learn all about it today!
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Do Do Do? Or wait, what's the opposite? How about
do do Do? Do? Sad Trombone Vancouver and Portland, Oregon. Uh,
we can't come see right now. We're sorry to say.
It's not us. It's the coronavirus told us not to come.
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(00:24):
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well them to stuff you should know. A production of
I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to
(01:10):
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant,
here's Jerry over there and that friends makes this stuff.
You should know. The final studio recording. That's pretty good, Chuck.
Maybe not final. That sounded a little final, The temporarily
for now final studio recording, the indefinitely suspended recordings in
(01:36):
the studio. Yeah, starting after obviously everyone knows what's going
on in this world, say this country, uh coy, but uh,
we are getting set up in our homes. Yeah. I
set up a system yesterday that I just didn't quite
trust for today's. Yeah, it was a little little premature
(01:58):
to test the day after, I think so, but um
I posted a picture of it on the movie Crush
page and I was pretty excited. I was like, guys,
after twelve years, I'm finally a dude recording a podcast
in this basement. Right. You went full circle backwards, full circle.
That's nice. It was funny. People were saying stuff like
just make sure your mom keeps it down upstairs and
(02:19):
that kind of thing. Yeah, I saw that picture. I
love the quilt tablecloth. It's really homespun. It's beautiful. Yeah,
that's my daughter's quilt. I had a gank that, but
it's not okay. It all sounds pretty I mean, she's
not cold at night. We have other blankets. Um, it
sounds pretty good, though. You know, the band room already
had sound baffling, so I just sort of moved some
(02:43):
I moved my bass player out of the way and uh,
because this is kind of over in his corner, and
just kind of positioned it where I'm speaking into this
sort of dense corner, and I did a sound check
and it sounds pretty good. That's great, man, So look
for that coming soon every one. Hopefully you want no difference. Yeah, yeah, well,
I mean like we should we should just not even
(03:04):
mention it and see if anybody notices. Well, our aim
is to keep bringing everyone shows every week, and uh
to not because you know, podcasts are going to be
a pretty big deal moving forward for people, you know, Yeah,
I guess. So, I mean, like if we can record
remotely and still release on time, like that'll hopefully be
a source of comfort for people who are just sitting
(03:26):
at home board that's getting a little stir crazy. So yeah,
that's the aim. So our two aims are to not
come down with coronavirus ourselves and also yeah, and then
also keep releasing on time and on schedule. That's number two,
all right, so let's do it. Yeah, let's do it, Chuck. Um,
So we're talking the Falklands War and you requested this one, right,
(03:47):
so this is this is your idea? Yeah, you know why.
It was one of those things that happens to us
every now and then where we think of something that
we remember but you know nothing about. Like I remember this.
I was eleven years old, but I'm like, what was
that all about? Where are the Falkland Islands even right?
What's going on? Now? I know all about it, yes,
(04:07):
but I was wondering if you were, um, if you
requested it because of the fact that it's starting to
heat up again geo politically down there. No, I had
nothing to do with it, Okay, because it is. It
turns out it is. We'll talk about it at the
end there. But but I was like, wow, that's that's
very prescient. Chuck's got his finger on the pulse of
like some real arcane geopolitics right now. No, this was
(04:29):
this was all just sort of h yearbook memories, right
the Falkland Islands said stay cool this summer, see you
next fall. So I was the first one to write
on your crack. Um, did people do that to you? Oh? Yeah,
that's timeless man. So what we're talking about, though, is
the Falkland Islands War in nine two. Great Britain went
(04:56):
to war with Argentina over a little tiny group Well
they're not so tiny. We'll get into that. But um,
as far as livable thrivable areas, these little rocky islands
out in the middle of nowhere in the Atlantic Ocean,
and and not to say that they're useless, they're definitely
not useless. There are people who live there and have
lived there for hundreds of years now, um, but there's
(05:19):
no there's been archaeological studies of the area and they're
they've turned up zero evidence of prehistoric people living there.
So it's not a highly valuable area. But it is
a place that some people call home. And we're in
no position to poo poo anywhere somebody calls home. It's
just again geo politically speaking, it's really bizarre that that
(05:42):
Great Britain went to war with Argentina over this particular
set of islands. Yeah, and we'll get into the the
ins and outs of that, but in general, it's fair
to say that um old time. Colonialism had a part
in it, but it was also the fact that it's
the fog Land Islands are not super far and if
(06:03):
you're talking about the size of the world from Antarctica,
and you know, anytime there's there's a there are different
countries that want to be set up near other places
seemingly unpopular land but can become popular. It is. Yeah,
every country wants to stake some sort of outpost near
(06:24):
the ancient sleeping ones, the eldritch gods that are asleep
beneath Antarctica right now, to worship them, you know, when
they wake up. But uh that that can lead to
disputes among nations, and in particular Argentina is like, hey man,
these are like four miles off of our coast. Surely
they belong to us. They're about a thousand miles above Antarctica,
(06:47):
the northernmost outpost of Antarctica. But the British say, no, no, no,
these are this is a British territory, even though it
is nowhere near Great Britain in any sense that ever
something before it really hasn't, but and it does. It
has to do with colonialism in the British Empire. But
they they have said, no, we've been here for a while.
This is our place. Yeah. And the Grabster put this
(07:10):
together very detailed, Yes, account, Um, but we're gonna talk
a little bit about the the origin of these islands
and why different countries thought that they were theirs. Yes,
starting in about I think, um, well they think possibly Magellan,
maybe Americo Vespucci. I love that guy's name. They may
(07:32):
have seen the Falklands. Um. But the first the first
British person to have landed on the Falklands was named
John Strong, and he showed up in six And the
Falkland Islands look kind of if you squint and use
you know, eighty percent of your imagination, look a bit
like a butterfly. And the body of the butterfly is
(07:54):
a channel that runs between the two main islands, East
and West Falklands. And so he named that channel the
the Falkland Sound after the guy who was running the
show for them, the Admiralty the Navy, I guess of
Great Britain at the time. Um, And he got his
title from Scotland. So it actually is kind of appropriate
(08:17):
that you would name this area after someplace in Scotland,
because it is kind of Scottish climate wise, apparently it's
a little soggy, it's kind of cold, um, and you
kind of have to like that kind of weather to
to survive there and not go crazy. Yeah, and some there.
He wasn't the first person. Other people had discovered it before.
People came afterward, and it's sort of so removed that
(08:39):
people showed up afterward. Uh in seventeen and won the
French uh seventeen sixty four more French, and they both said, well,
nothing's going on here. This is ours, and they named
them French names. Yeah. The the the guy who really
made a the first real attempt at settling the place,
(09:00):
Antoine Louis de Bougaonville. He set up a colony and um,
the Spanish showed up and they said, hey, you know
how we basically owned South America. We owned this too.
It's only four dred miles east of us, so so
get out of here. And Bougunville said, um, okay, but
I set up this legit colony and I want some
(09:20):
money for it. So they gave him what would amount
today to about one point one million dollars for it.
Not bad at all. So the French said, okay, Spanish,
this is yours. We recognize that. Well. At about the
same time, some English settlers showed up and they said,
we're going to settle this place. Had no idea that
the French were even there, had even less of an
idea that the French had just sold their claim to
(09:42):
it to Spain. And the British kind of made their
home there, uh for about a year before they noticed
a French settlement there and went over and said, hey,
this is our place. You need to get out. Yeah.
It's funny too, because Ed made a very ed joke.
Uh he said que yeah, and he said x because
that's kind of what it sounded like at first, like
(10:04):
Britain settled it. They didn't even notice that there was
a French settlement there until yeah, until a year later. Uh.
And then this weird exchange starting in nineteen I'm sorry,
seventeen sixty nine started going back and forth where yeah,
you can say that every time we went in the
year from now, I almost let it slip by, and
(10:25):
I was like, last possible second, I'm I'm going for it.
That's pretty good. So this starting in seventeen sixty nine
is weird exchange started where British ships and Spanish ships
would go back and forth trading letters that got a
little more heated, saying no, you leave, no, you leave
you And then eventually Spain said, oh, you know what,
(10:49):
We're going to send all of our ships and Britain said, fine,
it's yours and in a certain way, yeah, in a
certain way. And this is really kind of critical because
I guess the the Spanish forced the British out, but
I don't know if there was any kind of treaty
signed or any kind of like. Okay, so so this
the Spanish um, the Spanish forced the British out, and
(11:10):
basically I guess took at least possession of the islands. Um.
But this is a big deal. This was um. The
Falklands have been a site of international wars for years now,
and the first one was called the Falkland Islands Crisis
of seventeen seventy, where the French were down there, the
English were down there, the Spanish were down there, and
(11:31):
all of them wanted this island, mainly because the English
and the French didn't want the Spanish to control the
entire southwestern hemisphere of the world, which they basically did
by controlling South America for the most part. And Uh, conversely,
the Spanish were like, I don't want the French and
the English to have even just a little bit of
a toe hold here, so they need to get out.
(11:53):
But it was a big deal. It was. It was
literally called the Falkland Islands Crisis of seventeen seventy and
America was like, oh, can we please be a country
quickly so we can get down there too. All right,
We'll just hang in the background and manipulate everything, all right.
So after that crisis point, England and Spain both had
settlements down there for quite a few years, and they
(12:14):
were just sort of both down there. It was kind
of odd if you look historically, that's usually not how
things go. Yeah, apparently the crisis never came to a
full head and actually just went to a breaking point.
It just continued to simmer. I guess with everybody hanging
out on the island. I bet there were some good
times too, though maybe so. Uh. In the eighteen hundreds, Uh,
(12:36):
they both left and then that kind of it was
like a reboot almost for the Falklands. No one really
had a claim. Uh, it fell into I mean, it
sounds scary on one hand, but it also sounds like
a wild party because pirates and whalers basically uh ed
described it as had their way with the island for
(12:56):
two decades, so I guess they had sex with the island.
They literally humped the island. That's what it was like
down there. But it was it fell into uh lawlessness
and uh piracy, like we said, um. And then the
Argentinian Revolution came around. Spain lost all the claim, but
Argentina it was so rough. Argentina tried to say, hey,
(13:20):
this is ours and put governors on the island, but
they got rebuffed by the party scene. Yeah, the party
people said get out of here, and they actually did
they this. The the Argentinians failed to install any kind
of government on the island, and so in eighteen thirty
four the British showed up with the governor and they said,
(13:40):
we're installing some law around here. And either they were
more apt to kill people to get their way, or
the people down there already were more down with the
British than the Argentinians. I'm not sure, but either way,
the British were successful at installing a government there starting
in eighteen thirty four, so here's the thing, um, from
(14:01):
that moment on, the British had a government set up
and connected to the Government of Great Britain from that
moment on, and that is basically the basis of the
claim that they make that they say, we have been
living on these islands and one one way or another
(14:22):
continuously since eighteen four. Of course this is our territory. Yeah,
I mean they built a town Stanley, which is as
far as I know, still the sort of biggest thing
going there. Oh, by far. They were farmers, are farmers, sheep, cattle, pigs. Uh,
they would do a little fishing. It was a place
where um boats could stop off and get fixed or
(14:46):
fueled up or something or resupplied. Yeah. They make a
little money on the side from tourists who come to
see people humping islands. But we're talking less than five
thousand people and they are all basically Scottish and Welsh
descendants of those settlers. So if you were to go
down to the Falkland Islands in the early nineteen eighties
(15:08):
and even now, you would think this is a British outpost. Yeah, dude.
As recently as two thousand thirteen, Great Britain held a
referendum for you know, um self determination among the Falklanders,
and all but four four residents, not four percent, four
residents voted to stay a British territory. What do you
(15:30):
the four Rossberer they all they want to do is
hump the island. They don't want to be bothered to
think about politics at all, which they call the rossbero Rossberger.
You get it? Get it? Oh boy, maybe we should
take a break, take a little cool shower, and uh,
we'll come back with more falkland Mania right after this. Okay.
(16:15):
So the British are saying, hey, not only have we
had a claim on this since at least eighteen thirty four,
the people who lived there consider themselves British, it's ours.
But the Argentinians said, no, you know what, the Spanish
held this place before the British, and we inherited any
any title to it from the Spanish after the revolution. Um,
there's a there's a it's closer to us. What else
(16:39):
do you want? What do you want to hear? And
the Argentinians claim on the Falklands is actually fairly tenuous. Um,
but that has not stopped them from from kind of
coveting these islands and making attempts to go after them
over the years. Yeah. I mean, you know, Argentina will say,
(17:00):
you guys left in seventeen seventy four, Uh, so you
abandon it. Britain would say, well, you never established any
kind of serenity there. Uh, there were no indigenous people.
It's not like we came down here and kicked all
your people out of here and displaced them. Um. So
there's really no big moral claims either. And I don't
(17:20):
know if I know enough about it even after all
this to to really say without making some people mad,
But it seems like it was Britain's Yeah right, I'm yeah, No,
it's it's still like a point of national soreness in Argentina,
and I think there's a little bit of national pride
in in the UK of it. But yes, the fact
(17:40):
that the people who lived there and have are descended
some people who have lived there since eighteen thirty four
considered themselves British, that's I agree with you. That to
me says it's it's a British territory, which ostensibly would
make Argentina the the the invading force, the bad people. Yes,
and that's the thing like we all have to have
good guys and bad guys, and there you know, both
(18:02):
sides did good and bad things during this conflict. They
were bad people on both sides. But you can you can,
oh man, you can make man chuck. You can make
the case that, yes, if you have to identify an
aggressor in this situation, it was Argentina who who did it,
because again the Spanish settled it before the British, but
(18:25):
then the Spanish left and the Argentineans overthrew the Spanish.
There were no indigenous people that lived on these islands
that were connected to Argentina. Argentina in any way. There's
really no legal or moral claim that Argentina had aside
from proximity, and that just doesn't really hold up when
it comes to teri territorial dispute. So yes, you can
(18:47):
really make the case that Argentina was the aggressor. And
it doesn't hurt that the proportion of Argentinean listeners to
stuff you should know, pales in comparison to the British proportion.
So leading up to the war, this is sort of
the scene. You've got the people living on the Falkland Islands,
(19:08):
um the economy wasn't great. It's never been booming. Like
we said, it's a very small seaside hamlet of farmers. Uh.
They were depending on the British government subsidies to to
even get by. And this is you know, back in
the late seventies, early eighties. Uh. Brittain says, you know what,
we would like to start trading with Argentina. We would
(19:30):
like to help these islanders out. Maybe let them move
some wool, maybe make it easier to get fuel and supplies.
And Margaret Thatcher comes into power and says, maybe it
might also be nice to sell them weapons in Argentina. Yeah,
they need missiles and we've got them. Yeah. She opened
her trench coach. She's like, what do you need? What
do you need? I got it? I got it. Never
(19:50):
one went whoa lady. I'm not saying she was new
to okay, just that she had missiles in her trench. Gotcha.
So there was one other thing. It wasn't just that
the British were being patrimonious and really wanted to help
the Falklanders out by opening up trade between them and
the Argentinians. They also wanted to potentially offload responsibility for
(20:15):
the Falklands to Argentina, kind of like how you would
consider selling a car that you knew maybe had fifty
miles left in it, but you could sink some money
into repairing it to whatever, or you can sell it
to some schmo And Great Britain identified that this would
(20:35):
be a great bargaining chip. The Argentinians really want this thing,
so maybe we can sell them this used car in
addition to selling them some missiles for a few billion pounds.
Argentina said, can I take it for a spin? And
Britain went, I can't find the keys right now, but
we go ahead and make the deal. I'll see if
I can find them. It runs great though, yeah exactly,
(20:56):
so just trust me. But but imagine you just said
in a British accent, Yeah, I thought about doing it,
but so. Um. The thing is is this didn't go
over very well with Great Britain. Um. They were like, well, well, whoa,
you can't just these are British subjects in some form
or another. You can't just abandon them to the Argentinas.
(21:16):
You can't sell them out. And the people on the
island of the Falklands were not very happy with this either. Um,
supposedly they used to call themselves kelpers, and I think
I get the impression that's one of those things that
they can still call themselves kelpers. But if you're from
Argentina and you call them kelpers, then that's that's fighting words.
But um, they did not, uh, they did not like
(21:39):
the idea of being sold off to the Argentinians in
a as a pawn in a larger trade negotiation to
sell missiles. That that just didn't sit well with them.
And you get why. I totally get why. And the
other problem is is this is this is just so
neo lib too. The Thatchery administration went in, it was like,
(21:59):
this is really what we want to do is sell missiles,
but we're not going to give one way or another.
There's no compromise on the Falklands. He's either all or nothing.
And um, they they, I guess, wanted to open trade
to Argentinians, but didn't want to give them to the Argentinians,
but Argentinians wanted them. And rather than find a compromise,
like I said, it was just all or nothing and
(22:20):
they just left it as this. They basically scared the
pants off of the Falkland Islanders, saying we're willing to
basically leave you guys hanging um. But at the same
time they weren't willing to to pull the trigger and
go all the way and and let Argentina have the
Falklands and maybe administer them correctly who knows. So instead
(22:41):
the Falkland Islands were left in this weird geopolitical limbo
in starting about nineteen seventy nine, I believe, um to
where no one quite knew exactly how interested Great Britain
was in holding these islands. Our Argentina was very interested
in getting these islands, and the Falkland island As were
caught in the middle of this. Yeah. And on the
(23:02):
Argentinian side, they were sort of in the midst of
a right wing military dictatorship that after a seventy six
coup um. They were not nice people. They terrorized people,
they murdered their opponents, they imprisoned people. It was called
the Dirty War um. Within that or a few years
after that n one there was in an internal coup
(23:25):
within that same party where a General Leopoldo Galtieri m good, sure,
all right, um, he went into power. But still that
same right wing faction and they wanted not only the Falklands.
They wanted the South. Uh, they wanted South Georgia Island
and South Sandwich Islands and basically wanted that whole sort
(23:48):
of South Atlantic area because of Antarctica. Yeah yeah, so
they um. The other thing is and a lot of
people point to this. Did you mention the name of
that the tatorship? Oh the uh the NPR. Now it's
the opposite of the NPR. It's yeah, it's not the
opposite National reorganization process. Oh it is. I guess, I guess,
(24:14):
although they're both into re education for sure. So um,
Argentina basically was saying like, okay, we're a military junta.
We don't know what to do with the economy. We're
super oppressive, especially against our opposition, will like make you
disappear and murder your family and all this stuff. This
(24:35):
is a bad jam at home. We need something to
make everybody feel good about being Argentinean again. Maybe maybe
if we go get these Falkland islands, this little adventurism
that we go on will restore patriotism in Argentina and
will make everybody look the other way on this what's
called the dirty war that we've been fighting for the
(24:55):
last few years since we've come to power, and that
was kind of like the big impetus toward Argentina. They
had like these military aspirations because it was after all,
the merit military coup that took over as a military dictatorship.
To what else are they gonna do? Military stuff? But
at the same time, Britain was widely viewed around the
world is not really caring much about what happened to
(25:16):
the Falklands, And I think that they gave Argentina an
overblown sense of how easy it would be to just
go ahead and take these islands once and for all
is their own. Yeah, they needed this for nationalism. They
couldn't count on Diego Maradonna to come in and save
the day for another four or five years. You have
(25:38):
no idea what I'm talking about. He was a a
soccer player, Yeah, he must have been a contemporary place.
Then the Hand of God, that was very famous soccer
goal that he scored. I think in the hand of
you can't use your hands in soccer exactly, huh, look
it up. So I think that's kind of sets the
table for what's what's about to happen here. Um, It's
(26:02):
not like England or I'm sorry, che's always do that.
Let's just say Britain to be safe, that's what I've
been doing. Britain wasn't really planning for this UM. Even
though there had been a lot of back and forth
about the Falklands. I don't think they expected uh, ultimately
a surprise attack. They weren't really prepared UM. Like you mentioned,
(26:22):
the Argentines thought it would kind of go pretty easily
because they didn't seem like they cared about it. The Britain,
the Brits, and they're like, we're gonna go get all
these islands. But then this weird sort of start to
the war, to the start of a very weird war happened,
which is it was an incident at South Georgia Island
with a with a scrap metal dealer of all things.
(26:46):
Yeah yeah, so I mean at this at that time,
remember the Argentinian dictatorship was like just looking for any
opportunity to take these islands. And that scrap metal dealer
got a UM contract to dismantle the whaling station in
South Georgia Island, and so we chartered a an Argentinian
(27:07):
naval navy vessel to carry him and his salvage crew
over there, and Argentina actually thought this would be a
good opportunity for us to secretly invade South Georgia Island
of just sort of parking their car there and saying, hey,
this is exactly exactly And they didn't. Even as they
were backing in, somebody else was coming in front ways Seinfeld, Yes,
(27:33):
and they just had to stand there and argue for
a while. But finally the Argentinians won. And when they
got this is the weird thing. When they got to
South Georgia Island, the first thing they did the salvage
crew was raised the Argentinian flag. They replaced the Union
jack with the Argentinian flag. As dude, you could be
(27:53):
a second grade cub scout and recognize that you are
not supposed to do something like that, not even as
a joke, which is what Argentina ultimately claimed that was
just getting around, just joking, was their international diplomatic response. Yeah,
and Britain does not take kindly to that, no, because
they knew that Argentina wanted these islands. But here's the
(28:14):
thing that it was a really stupid thing to do,
because right when British diplomats pointed out that they had
done this and demanded that it be removed in the
Union Jack be put up. The Argentina's were like, just kidding,
just kidding, and put the flag back up. But it
immediately put the British on high alert. Like the diplomatic
tensions were raised. Um, it was it was a dumb
(28:37):
thing to do and if they were planning on really
um tactically invading and holding the Falklands, because it got
the British, the British the British's attention. Yeah, it didn't
seem like any of this is very well thought out. Um,
they work closer, so like they both start sending ships. Um,
(28:58):
Argentina is going to get there quicker. Obviously. Um, they
sent clear indication that they were gonna invade the Falklands. Uh.
The Endurance was a British ship, and Captain Barker of
the Endurance brought this news to London. There were only
sixty eight marines on the islands. Royal marines, British marines
(29:19):
didn't have great weapons were really under they were under weapons,
under artillery, under staff. They they were just it was
sort of those deals where they're like, what are we
doing down here? Guys for a long time, I think
until this happened. UM. So I mean imagine being that
there was like sixty eight of them, I guess, just
(29:41):
hanging out like sixty knowing that the Argentineans were coming
right or thinking that they probably were. They knew it
was on the way. Well, here's the thing. So back
in London, UM, Margaret Thatcher and her Tory government were
um not convinced like they she said later on UM,
(30:02):
I think she her diaries got published about this or whatever.
But in the days leading up to it, she was
like she could not believe that Argentina would actually go
through with an invasion because it was such a stupid
thing to do that she just couldn't believe it. UM.
And so that was combined with um eventually with some
(30:24):
of her um like military advisers saying, if they take
these islands, there's no guarantee we're going to get them back.
And she realized that if she lost the Falkland Islands
to Argentina, that was it. She was never going to
be re elected and her government would basically just limp
along until the next election. It would be a really
bad look for her. UM. So she had to win
(30:46):
these back. But at the same time, she couldn't just
send the Royal Navy down there for nothing. So she
had to make this decision about what to do, whether
to be proactive or reactive, and she ultimately waited and
was reactive, and by the time she reacted, she was
she was kind of um. She was working with the
(31:06):
knowledge that it wasn't guaranteed that that now that they
have invaded, that Great Britain would be able to take
it back. That's right, And you say take it back,
we haven't even mentioned the fact that Argentina took it
to begin with. Yeah, I think that was implied. April two,
about three o'clock in the morning, their tactical dive team
(31:26):
came aboard the island. They approached the capitol. They under
cover of darkness fired on the barracks, which they because
the Royal Marines knew this was coming, so they had
abandoned the barracks and we're sort of falling back, essentially
toward the Government House, which is where they were going
to hold up on their final stand. Argentineans had a
(31:47):
lot more people, they had amphibious assault vehicles, and eventually
the Brits retired to the Government House and said we
give up, We surrender uh ten a m. The Union
jack was replaced by the Argentinean flag and Argentina broke
their arms, patting themselves on the back. They lost five people,
(32:09):
they killed one I'm sorry, zero British soldiers and we're like,
all right, we did it. That was super easy, just
like we thought. And so the Argentineans were thinking, well,
you know, that was very easy. The British are clearly
disinterested in the Falklands. They're probably just gonna say, well,
you guys captured at fair and Square, we'll get our
people out of there. There your islands now. But this
(32:29):
is not at all what happened. In fact um, the
British did not take very kindly to this, and I
propose we'd take a break and talk about the actual
Falkland War after this. Let's do it, okay. So where
(33:04):
we left off was Argentina had taken the Falklands with
very little effort, and then Margaret Thatcher realized what was
going on in a big way and she went not old,
my watch, that was dead on. So once Britain said,
you know what, we're gonna fight back here and we're
(33:25):
gonna take these islands back. It became the real deal thing. Uh,
and we'll talk about in the end there. You know,
casualties numbered at about a thousand on both sides, so
it still wasn't the biggest conflict, but it was a
real conflict. No, it really was. And Britain was in
this weird position. Argentina was in a weird position, and
that they were fighting a pretty substantial military but Britain
(33:49):
was in a weird position, and that they knew that
if they overshowed force, if they just pounded the Argentineans
into dust, other countries might actually enter the war on
the on the side of Argentina. So they had to
get these islands back with with without just using all
of their might against Argentina. Yeah, and with also saying
(34:12):
we're not going to come after you Argentina. In Argentina
supposedly they explicitly said that, huh, yeah, I mean, it's
such a weird war in a weird time. It really was.
It was a weird war. But yeah, a lot of
people just kind of joke like, oh, you know, the
British invaded the Falklands, what a what a over overblown move.
(34:33):
But at the same time it was like you know
Thatcher's Prime ministry was on the line. And also, um,
the the idea that these were British subjects who were
being occupied. Like like, make no mistake about it, if
you were if you were living on the Falklands and
you left your house, you were living under Argentinian occupation.
They changed what side of the roads you're supposed to
(34:55):
drive on, which is crazy a little bit you had
to um, oh, either way, one of these days we're
gonna have to do with short stuff on dogg and h.
It was in either Sweden or I think Sweden. It
was the day that they changed from one side of
the road to the other for driving around the country. Yes,
it was just a big mess, so we'll talk about
(35:16):
this sometimes. But um you also had to carry like
a white flag around with you to basically let them
know you were noncombatant. And even still even under those conditions, um,
I think at least three Falkland Islanders were killed during
this war. So like this was you know, it was
it was a big deal and there was there were
reasons for the British to invade. Um. And again you
(35:38):
can really make the case of the Argentineans where the
aggressors in this situation. Yeah, So April six, the Great
Britain finally um puts together a war cabinet. They name
their operation Operation Corporate, and they send down a couple
of aircraft carriers, about a hundred and twenty seven ships.
(35:59):
They send down fighter jets. There's helicopters um while they're
doing this, because like you mentioned it, it takes a
long time to get down there on an aircraft carrier.
They were still hoping to work this out. Like France
got involved and they said, you know what, we're not
gonna sell arms to Argentina anymore. Uh, they're flying our
fighter jets, by the way, So here's some help in
(36:20):
defeating them. If you want a little inside scoop, there's
a little button on the back as long as you
push it, and they won't be able to drop bombings
will fold in. Reagan got involved. He called up Galtieri specifically,
said let's try and work it out peacefully. I'm gonna
send al Haig down there, and they said, nope, we
(36:41):
don't want your help, Reagan. So British Britain said, oh,
you don't want Ronald Reagan's help, then screw you, it's on. Yeah,
and so it was on. From that point on. The
British were like, all right, well then it's just war
is what we're going to do. So there UM two
aircraft carriers showed up and since they only had two,
had a limited number of UM jets. But it turns
(37:03):
out that their jets were mostly useful in keeping the
Argentinean fighter jets away from bombing and missile attacks on
the ships, but weren't successful in every case. Like as
funny as it seems, you know, like the British were
fighting the Argentineans are did the Argentina had some some
successes definitely in this war too. It wasn't just totally lopsided. Yeah,
(37:28):
I mean Britain. Uh. It all really really started on
April and kind of one of the first things that
Britain did was go after one of their submarines, the
Santa Fe. Damaged that one pretty heavily. That that submarine
made it to the South Georgia Island, but the crew
jumped off and basically retired that submarine on the spot.
(37:50):
UM Royal Marines were getting reinforced the whole time, and
this was really what made the biggest difference is Britain
had complete control of the the naval side of things, right, yeah,
just immediately the Argentinians figured out like, oh, we're we
we aren't going to be able to do much with
our navy. But again, we've got some fighter jets and
(38:11):
you know, their French, and they worked pretty good as
long as you don't press that one button. Um. And
they used them to good effect in that they would
fly decoy flights to get the British jets to come
chase them, and then the real um attack jets would
come in and actually attack like a ship or maybe
the mainland or something like that. Yeah, that worked. They
(38:35):
also had some They also had surface to air missiles
that they used fairly well, although they apparently accidentally shot
down one of their planes at least once. Um. The
point of all this, the upshot, is that despite you know,
the British superiority and just about every single way um,
Argentina did did have some success and they managed to
(38:56):
stave off the British retaking the Falklands, which spoiler alert,
the British retook the Falklands. Um. For you know, this
whole conflict lasted seventy four days. Yeah, they sunk a destroyer.
I think they sunk some other ships. The big one
of the big turning points was when on May two,
(39:17):
uh the General Bell Grano, which was an Argentinian cruiser,
was destroyed by the HMS Conqueror. And that was like
three and twenty three men were killed basically in that attack.
And that was you know, not half but the losses
of the whole war, right, and most of most of
(39:38):
Argentina's losses came from the sinking of that one ship.
And that was viewed as fairly grotesque by a lot
of people, by the international community really because remember England
needed to sorry, Great Britain needed to um to basically
show themselves as showing restraint. This was not necessarily a
show of restraint. The UM the Argentinians said that this
(40:00):
was not inside of the no go zone where their
their ship wasn't supposed to be um, that it had
been tracked down by the British and sunk. That they
could have just disabled it, but they purposefully sunk it.
And that you know, it killed three d and twenty
three Argentineans in one shot, which is just bad press
for anybody. It makes England look like an over overblown bully. Um.
(40:24):
And you know, they died in pretty terrible ways, like
a lot of them drowned, but a lot of them
frozen lifeboats because again we're not that far away from Antarctica,
and it took twenty four hours I think for them
to be rescued, So a lot of people froze to
death in lifeboats waiting to be rescued because they were
sunk by this British ship rather than just having their
ship disabled. Yeah. Ed made a nice little Jaws reference
(40:46):
in this, Dude, did you catch that? I didn't? Uh
made a second thousand nine five men went into the
water seven seventy two come out the sea took the rest.
I got it now. Uh? Then the other big yeah yeah, um,
the other big turning point came. Of course, you know
(41:07):
this is all like sinking of ships and naval battles. Uh.
What they needed to do was take the main town
and on MA one. The British gained a very good
foothold when they made a landing on East Falkland and
started advancing towards Stanley, which was not Stanley the guy
that was just they're cleaning up. But Stanley, the town Stanley,
(41:28):
the measuring tape, that's right. Uh. And they basically, you know,
Argentinea would would fight untill they ran out of AMMO,
then they would get captured and the Brits would just
move slowly, I think from one to June eleven. They
finally assaulted Stanley and on June fourteen, Port Stay on
(41:49):
June fourteenth, so just three days after they finally got
to Stanley they surrendered. Argentina did yeah, but but no
here that It was May twenty one that the British
finally landed on East Falkland and June thirteen that they
managed to take control of um Stanley weeks. It was
(42:09):
three weeks and the Argentinians managed to um hold them
off for that long. But this is almost like you know,
um those movies, like the huge, sweeping epic comedies like
It's a Mad, Mad Mad Mad World, where there's like
ten different things going on at once in the scene
just kind of visits, you know, each person. In one scene,
(42:30):
there was a Brigadier general named Tony Wilson who was
I guess on hiatus from running factory records at the time.
He was trying to get to fitz Roy, which was
a smaller town, not as big as Stanley, but it
was a town, and he decided to get some intel
where the Argentinians would He just he just looked up
(42:50):
the number from one of the fitz Roy residents, put
went to a phone booth and called and said, Hey,
are the Argentinians around today? And residents said, no, they're not.
Maybe today would be a good day for you guys
to come. And that's how they overtook fitz Roy, and
so little by little they started taking like the East Falklands,
until like you said, they finally took Stanley. And one
(43:12):
other thing. One of the over overlooked, unsung groups of
soldiers who helped really retake Stanley are um the Gurkhas.
Have you heard about them? Holy cow, dude, there's They're
widely considered to be the toughest um soldiers in the world.
Mother is on the plan exactly. Um. They are from Nepal.
(43:34):
They're the Nepalese like basically Nepalese special forces and they're
known for carrying these uh cou cree knives k u
k r I knives. I'm sure I said that incorrectly.
And by the way, apparently everyone else in the world
except for you and I knows how to pronounce the
national language of the Philippines correctly. Yeah, we did a
(43:56):
listener mail about that, but they're just still pouring in. Yeah.
So the these knives are just really fierce looking and
they're like, these guys are basically just going from like
outlooks or observation stationed observation station, I guess, just taking
out Argentinean guys with their knives and and helping re
established this British foothold on the East Falklands. Check them
(44:18):
out the because you're you'll you'll like him, I think,
like the sou In the end, they like we said,
they surrendered on June four. Um, we should point out
that there was a neutral c zone that had hospital
ships on both sides and throughout this whole thing, which
got really acrimonious. You know, it sounds silly to say
(44:39):
about a war, but it was one of the more
acrimonious wars because it was it was small, and they
were really mad at each other, you know, but these
hospital ships helped each other out. They cooperated, they transferred patients, um,
which says a lot about how things were you know, yeah,
it was still civil even though acrimonious. Right, that's right.
(45:02):
Argentina in the end suffered sixty nine deaths, which was,
like we said, about half of those actually almost exactly
half came from that ship sinking. Yeah, Britain lost to
fifty five and those three three poor kelpers. And I'm
sorry if that's offensive, I think I think, yeah, I don't.
I don't know if it is. Let's just call them
(45:25):
Falkland civilians. They were killed Stanley, It's yes, Stanley and
the Antonians. So it did not work out well for Argentina.
It really backfired. That was pretty humiliating defeat. Uh, the
n RP was defeated in nineteen eighty three and free
election started, So that's a good thing. Yeah, that is
(45:45):
that was this was actually huge impetus for them. Losing
control of power was the you know, the Argentina was
was defeated and kind of humiliated. Actually, um and this
military government since this was like ed put it like
Hail Mary, elastic effort to kind of retain power. They
lost the Falklands, so they lost their power in Argentina.
(46:07):
It's always good anytime a military dictatorship loses control of
a nation. Yeah. So Um. One of the things Chuck
is still to this day, the Falklands are in dispute
by Argentina. And I was asking you if if you, um,
you came up with this idea because the stuff that's
been going on lately, but ever since I think two
(46:28):
thousand nine, Argentina made a claim at the u N
to extend its territorial waters from two hundred nautical miles
off shore to three fifty well three nautical miles off of.
Argentina completely envelops the Falkland Islands, the South Georgia Island,
and the Sandwich Islands. Okay, this is not something that
(46:49):
the British are okay with um, so much so that
that one of the revelations from the Snowden Um whistleblower
files was that the British had engaged in disinformation campaigns
and propaganda campaign secret ones to change public opinion and
Argentina about the Falklands sovereignty and them being part of
(47:10):
a British you know, them being just thoroughly British and
Argentina has no claim on it. And the reason why,
and I was looking into this, I'm like, is another
war there possible. Who knows. The reason why is because
in two thousand ten they found a massive oil deposit
that is in the territorial waters of the Falklands. So
(47:30):
if Argentina's waters extend to envelope the Falklands, that's their
oil deposit. In the UK said, no, now, that's our
oil deposit because that's in the Falkland waters. And I
think in two thousands sixteen the u N Commission ruled
in favor of Argentina um even though they said, well,
we don't really have any teeth, it's just our opinion
(47:51):
that Argentina has a legitimate claim on us, and the
UK said, we're not going to be paying attention to that. Yeah,
So it's still continuing today and even more than just
being like a source of national pride, now it's a
source of national oil. So who knows what will happen
in the coming years over that. Jeez. Plus, when the
(48:11):
eldritch gods wake up, you know, yeah, well then we're
all doomed. So you got anything else about the Falklands,
got nothing else? And now I now I get it. Yep,
me to chuck me too. So thanks for that. If
you want to know more about the Falklands. Well, you
can start reading up on it. There's plenty of stuff
to be read. And since I said that, it's time
for listener mail, I'm gonna call this from a teacher
(48:37):
who was grounded right now because of the coronavirus and
wants a little help from us. Hey guys, my name
is Marissa Stratton. I'm a sixth grade teacher from Springfield, Illinois.
Like most of the country, our school is currently shut down.
I'm wondering if you could help me with a suggestion
for my students. I'm fairly new to the podcast world.
I listened to and love your podcast. I would love
(48:58):
to recommend it to my students, but I know some
topics would be inappropriate for eleven year olds. You got
that right, It's like pumping the island. I was about
to say any of our history shows. Uh. Here's where
your help would be greatly appreciated. You have any specific
episodes in mine it would be great for eleven and
twelve year old er. Do you have suggestions of other
podcasts that middle schoolers might enjoy. Read a lot of articles,
(49:21):
but I'm just overwhelmed. Being out of the classroom is
very stressful and I want to make sure I'm recommending
popularity and quality to my students, not just popularity. That
is from Marissa Stratton. So I thought about this. I
didn't make a specific list, but um, I was just
about to say, most of our history shows are pretty
(49:42):
pretty appropriate, wouldn't you agree? Yeah, I would like to
think that all of our stuff is in the wheelhouse
of eleven and twelve year olds, at least at the
same level of humor I think. So, I mean, it's
pretty easy when you look through the twelve hundred plus episodes.
There's a lot of science in his tree and uh
stuff like that. Like it's I think it's pretty clear
(50:03):
the ones to avoid. Like if you see things on
like magic mushrooms or marijuana grow farms, uh, murder stories
and stuff like that, you may want to avoid. But
you know, aside from that, it's pretty self explanatory. A
few dumb blue jokes aside from us, they're pretty pretty
clean for sure, and a lot of them probably fly
(50:25):
over in eleven year old's head. Yeah, but you know
that's that's for her to decide. They may want to
learn about the Mendel brought set. So so no, no, no,
I mean our jokes are jokes, might play over the
even year old thing. Gotcha, it's true. So yeah, I
guess I would recommend maybe listening to them once before
sharing them. But yeah, like we pride ourselves and being
(50:47):
a pretty family family agreed. Okay, that was Mrs Stratton correct. Well,
thanks a lot of Ms Stratton and hello to your
class who are being taught virtually I'm guessing right now
we're the teachers now, yeah, exactly. Just leave it to us,
America and world. We got this. If you want to
get in touch with us, like Mrs Stratton did, please
(51:07):
feel free to. You can send us an email, wrap
it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it
off to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Ye.
Stuff you should know is a production of iHeart Radios.
How stuff works for more podcasts for my heart radio
because at the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows. H
Do Do Do? Or wait, what's the opposite? How about
do do Do? Do? Sad Trombone Vancouver and Portland, Oregon. Uh,
we can't come see right now. We're sorry to say.
It's not us. It's the coronavirus told us not to come.
That's right. Uh. Local authorities are shutting down shows of
the size. We are not able to come. We are postponing.
(00:24):
We will have more information coming as far as rescheduling. UM.
I believe how it works is your tickets are good
if you want to come to that other show, but
we don't know all the details yet. To just bear
with us while we try and figure this out. Right,
and in the meantime, you can get in touch with
the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall and the Chance Center Box
(00:44):
offices to figure out what's what. Yeah, they'll probably have
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and we will eventually see you, guys, we promise. In
the meantime, stay well, wash those hands and don't panic
well them to stuff you should know. A production of
I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to
(01:10):
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant,
here's Jerry over there and that friends makes this stuff.
You should know. The final studio recording. That's pretty good, Chuck.
Maybe not final. That sounded a little final, The temporarily
for now final studio recording, the indefinitely suspended recordings in
(01:36):
the studio. Yeah, starting after obviously everyone knows what's going
on in this world, say this country, uh coy, but uh,
we are getting set up in our homes. Yeah. I
set up a system yesterday that I just didn't quite
trust for today's. Yeah, it was a little little premature
(01:58):
to test the day after, I think so, but um
I posted a picture of it on the movie Crush
page and I was pretty excited. I was like, guys,
after twelve years, I'm finally a dude recording a podcast
in this basement. Right. You went full circle backwards, full circle.
That's nice. It was funny. People were saying stuff like
just make sure your mom keeps it down upstairs and
(02:19):
that kind of thing. Yeah, I saw that picture. I
love the quilt tablecloth. It's really homespun. It's beautiful. Yeah,
that's my daughter's quilt. I had a gank that, but
it's not okay. It all sounds pretty I mean, she's
not cold at night. We have other blankets. Um, it
sounds pretty good, though. You know, the band room already
had sound baffling, so I just sort of moved some
(02:43):
I moved my bass player out of the way and uh,
because this is kind of over in his corner, and
just kind of positioned it where I'm speaking into this
sort of dense corner, and I did a sound check
and it sounds pretty good. That's great, man, So look
for that coming soon every one. Hopefully you want no difference. Yeah, yeah, well,
I mean like we should we should just not even
(03:04):
mention it and see if anybody notices. Well, our aim
is to keep bringing everyone shows every week, and uh
to not because you know, podcasts are going to be
a pretty big deal moving forward for people, you know, Yeah,
I guess. So, I mean, like if we can record
remotely and still release on time, like that'll hopefully be
a source of comfort for people who are just sitting
(03:26):
at home board that's getting a little stir crazy. So yeah,
that's the aim. So our two aims are to not
come down with coronavirus ourselves and also yeah, and then
also keep releasing on time and on schedule. That's number two,
all right, so let's do it. Yeah, let's do it, Chuck. Um,
So we're talking the Falklands War and you requested this one, right,
(03:47):
so this is this is your idea? Yeah, you know why.
It was one of those things that happens to us
every now and then where we think of something that
we remember but you know nothing about. Like I remember this.
I was eleven years old, but I'm like, what was
that all about? Where are the Falkland Islands even right?
What's going on? Now? I know all about it, yes,
(04:07):
but I was wondering if you were, um, if you
requested it because of the fact that it's starting to
heat up again geo politically down there. No, I had
nothing to do with it, Okay, because it is. It
turns out it is. We'll talk about it at the
end there. But but I was like, wow, that's that's
very prescient. Chuck's got his finger on the pulse of
like some real arcane geopolitics right now. No, this was
(04:29):
this was all just sort of h yearbook memories, right
the Falkland Islands said stay cool this summer, see you
next fall. So I was the first one to write
on your crack. Um, did people do that to you? Oh? Yeah,
that's timeless man. So what we're talking about, though, is
the Falkland Islands War in nine two. Great Britain went
(04:56):
to war with Argentina over a little tiny group Well
they're not so tiny. We'll get into that. But um,
as far as livable thrivable areas, these little rocky islands
out in the middle of nowhere in the Atlantic Ocean,
and and not to say that they're useless, they're definitely
not useless. There are people who live there and have
lived there for hundreds of years now, um, but there's
(05:19):
no there's been archaeological studies of the area and they're
they've turned up zero evidence of prehistoric people living there.
So it's not a highly valuable area. But it is
a place that some people call home. And we're in
no position to poo poo anywhere somebody calls home. It's
just again geo politically speaking, it's really bizarre that that
(05:42):
Great Britain went to war with Argentina over this particular
set of islands. Yeah, and we'll get into the the
ins and outs of that, but in general, it's fair
to say that um old time. Colonialism had a part
in it, but it was also the fact that it's
the fog Land Islands are not super far and if
(06:03):
you're talking about the size of the world from Antarctica,
and you know, anytime there's there's a there are different
countries that want to be set up near other places
seemingly unpopular land but can become popular. It is. Yeah,
every country wants to stake some sort of outpost near
(06:24):
the ancient sleeping ones, the eldritch gods that are asleep
beneath Antarctica right now, to worship them, you know, when
they wake up. But uh that that can lead to
disputes among nations, and in particular Argentina is like, hey man,
these are like four miles off of our coast. Surely
they belong to us. They're about a thousand miles above Antarctica,
(06:47):
the northernmost outpost of Antarctica. But the British say, no, no, no,
these are this is a British territory, even though it
is nowhere near Great Britain in any sense that ever
something before it really hasn't, but and it does. It
has to do with colonialism in the British Empire. But
they they have said, no, we've been here for a while.
This is our place. Yeah. And the Grabster put this
(07:10):
together very detailed, Yes, account, Um, but we're gonna talk
a little bit about the the origin of these islands
and why different countries thought that they were theirs. Yes,
starting in about I think, um, well they think possibly Magellan,
maybe Americo Vespucci. I love that guy's name. They may
(07:32):
have seen the Falklands. Um. But the first the first
British person to have landed on the Falklands was named
John Strong, and he showed up in six And the
Falkland Islands look kind of if you squint and use
you know, eighty percent of your imagination, look a bit
like a butterfly. And the body of the butterfly is
(07:54):
a channel that runs between the two main islands, East
and West Falklands. And so he named that channel the
the Falkland Sound after the guy who was running the
show for them, the Admiralty the Navy, I guess of
Great Britain at the time. Um, And he got his
title from Scotland. So it actually is kind of appropriate
(08:17):
that you would name this area after someplace in Scotland,
because it is kind of Scottish climate wise, apparently it's
a little soggy, it's kind of cold, um, and you
kind of have to like that kind of weather to
to survive there and not go crazy. Yeah, and some there.
He wasn't the first person. Other people had discovered it before.
People came afterward, and it's sort of so removed that
(08:39):
people showed up afterward. Uh in seventeen and won the
French uh seventeen sixty four more French, and they both said, well,
nothing's going on here. This is ours, and they named
them French names. Yeah. The the the guy who really
made a the first real attempt at settling the place,
(09:00):
Antoine Louis de Bougaonville. He set up a colony and um,
the Spanish showed up and they said, hey, you know
how we basically owned South America. We owned this too.
It's only four dred miles east of us, so so
get out of here. And Bougunville said, um, okay, but
I set up this legit colony and I want some
(09:20):
money for it. So they gave him what would amount
today to about one point one million dollars for it.
Not bad at all. So the French said, okay, Spanish,
this is yours. We recognize that. Well. At about the
same time, some English settlers showed up and they said,
we're going to settle this place. Had no idea that
the French were even there, had even less of an
idea that the French had just sold their claim to
(09:42):
it to Spain. And the British kind of made their
home there, uh for about a year before they noticed
a French settlement there and went over and said, hey,
this is our place. You need to get out. Yeah.
It's funny too, because Ed made a very ed joke.
Uh he said que yeah, and he said x because
that's kind of what it sounded like at first, like
(10:04):
Britain settled it. They didn't even notice that there was
a French settlement there until yeah, until a year later. Uh.
And then this weird exchange starting in nineteen I'm sorry,
seventeen sixty nine started going back and forth where yeah,
you can say that every time we went in the
year from now, I almost let it slip by, and
(10:25):
I was like, last possible second, I'm I'm going for it.
That's pretty good. So this starting in seventeen sixty nine
is weird exchange started where British ships and Spanish ships
would go back and forth trading letters that got a
little more heated, saying no, you leave, no, you leave
you And then eventually Spain said, oh, you know what,
(10:49):
We're going to send all of our ships and Britain said, fine,
it's yours and in a certain way, yeah, in a
certain way. And this is really kind of critical because
I guess the the Spanish forced the British out, but
I don't know if there was any kind of treaty
signed or any kind of like. Okay, so so this
the Spanish um, the Spanish forced the British out, and
(11:10):
basically I guess took at least possession of the islands. Um.
But this is a big deal. This was um. The
Falklands have been a site of international wars for years now,
and the first one was called the Falkland Islands Crisis
of seventeen seventy, where the French were down there, the
English were down there, the Spanish were down there, and
(11:31):
all of them wanted this island, mainly because the English
and the French didn't want the Spanish to control the
entire southwestern hemisphere of the world, which they basically did
by controlling South America for the most part. And Uh, conversely,
the Spanish were like, I don't want the French and
the English to have even just a little bit of
a toe hold here, so they need to get out.
(11:53):
But it was a big deal. It was. It was
literally called the Falkland Islands Crisis of seventeen seventy and
America was like, oh, can we please be a country
quickly so we can get down there too. All right,
We'll just hang in the background and manipulate everything, all right.
So after that crisis point, England and Spain both had
settlements down there for quite a few years, and they
(12:14):
were just sort of both down there. It was kind
of odd if you look historically, that's usually not how
things go. Yeah, apparently the crisis never came to a
full head and actually just went to a breaking point.
It just continued to simmer. I guess with everybody hanging
out on the island. I bet there were some good
times too, though maybe so. Uh. In the eighteen hundreds, Uh,
(12:36):
they both left and then that kind of it was
like a reboot almost for the Falklands. No one really
had a claim. Uh, it fell into I mean, it
sounds scary on one hand, but it also sounds like
a wild party because pirates and whalers basically uh ed
described it as had their way with the island for
(12:56):
two decades, so I guess they had sex with the island.
They literally humped the island. That's what it was like
down there. But it was it fell into uh lawlessness
and uh piracy, like we said, um. And then the
Argentinian Revolution came around. Spain lost all the claim, but
Argentina it was so rough. Argentina tried to say, hey,
(13:20):
this is ours and put governors on the island, but
they got rebuffed by the party scene. Yeah, the party
people said get out of here, and they actually did
they this. The the Argentinians failed to install any kind
of government on the island, and so in eighteen thirty
four the British showed up with the governor and they said,
(13:40):
we're installing some law around here. And either they were
more apt to kill people to get their way, or
the people down there already were more down with the
British than the Argentinians. I'm not sure, but either way,
the British were successful at installing a government there starting
in eighteen thirty four, so here's the thing, um, from
(14:01):
that moment on, the British had a government set up
and connected to the Government of Great Britain from that
moment on, and that is basically the basis of the
claim that they make that they say, we have been
living on these islands and one one way or another
(14:22):
continuously since eighteen four. Of course this is our territory. Yeah,
I mean they built a town Stanley, which is as
far as I know, still the sort of biggest thing
going there. Oh, by far. They were farmers, are farmers, sheep, cattle, pigs. Uh,
they would do a little fishing. It was a place
where um boats could stop off and get fixed or
(14:46):
fueled up or something or resupplied. Yeah. They make a
little money on the side from tourists who come to
see people humping islands. But we're talking less than five
thousand people and they are all basically Scottish and Welsh
descendants of those settlers. So if you were to go
down to the Falkland Islands in the early nineteen eighties
(15:08):
and even now, you would think this is a British outpost. Yeah, dude.
As recently as two thousand thirteen, Great Britain held a
referendum for you know, um self determination among the Falklanders,
and all but four four residents, not four percent, four
residents voted to stay a British territory. What do you
(15:30):
the four Rossberer they all they want to do is
hump the island. They don't want to be bothered to
think about politics at all, which they call the rossbero Rossberger.
You get it? Get it? Oh boy, maybe we should
take a break, take a little cool shower, and uh,
we'll come back with more falkland Mania right after this. Okay.
(16:15):
So the British are saying, hey, not only have we
had a claim on this since at least eighteen thirty four,
the people who lived there consider themselves British, it's ours.
But the Argentinians said, no, you know what, the Spanish
held this place before the British, and we inherited any
any title to it from the Spanish after the revolution. Um,
there's a there's a it's closer to us. What else
(16:39):
do you want? What do you want to hear? And
the Argentinians claim on the Falklands is actually fairly tenuous. Um,
but that has not stopped them from from kind of
coveting these islands and making attempts to go after them
over the years. Yeah. I mean, you know, Argentina will say,
(17:00):
you guys left in seventeen seventy four, Uh, so you
abandon it. Britain would say, well, you never established any
kind of serenity there. Uh, there were no indigenous people.
It's not like we came down here and kicked all
your people out of here and displaced them. Um. So
there's really no big moral claims either. And I don't
(17:20):
know if I know enough about it even after all
this to to really say without making some people mad,
But it seems like it was Britain's Yeah right, I'm yeah, No,
it's it's still like a point of national soreness in Argentina,
and I think there's a little bit of national pride
in in the UK of it. But yes, the fact
(17:40):
that the people who lived there and have are descended
some people who have lived there since eighteen thirty four
considered themselves British, that's I agree with you. That to
me says it's it's a British territory, which ostensibly would
make Argentina the the the invading force, the bad people. Yes,
and that's the thing like we all have to have
good guys and bad guys, and there you know, both
(18:02):
sides did good and bad things during this conflict. They
were bad people on both sides. But you can you can,
oh man, you can make man chuck. You can make
the case that, yes, if you have to identify an
aggressor in this situation, it was Argentina who who did it,
because again the Spanish settled it before the British, but
(18:25):
then the Spanish left and the Argentineans overthrew the Spanish.
There were no indigenous people that lived on these islands
that were connected to Argentina. Argentina in any way. There's
really no legal or moral claim that Argentina had aside
from proximity, and that just doesn't really hold up when
it comes to teri territorial dispute. So yes, you can
(18:47):
really make the case that Argentina was the aggressor. And
it doesn't hurt that the proportion of Argentinean listeners to
stuff you should know, pales in comparison to the British proportion.
So leading up to the war, this is sort of
the scene. You've got the people living on the Falkland Islands,
(19:08):
um the economy wasn't great. It's never been booming. Like
we said, it's a very small seaside hamlet of farmers. Uh.
They were depending on the British government subsidies to to
even get by. And this is you know, back in
the late seventies, early eighties. Uh. Brittain says, you know what,
we would like to start trading with Argentina. We would
(19:30):
like to help these islanders out. Maybe let them move
some wool, maybe make it easier to get fuel and supplies.
And Margaret Thatcher comes into power and says, maybe it
might also be nice to sell them weapons in Argentina. Yeah,
they need missiles and we've got them. Yeah. She opened
her trench coach. She's like, what do you need? What
do you need? I got it? I got it. Never
(19:50):
one went whoa lady. I'm not saying she was new
to okay, just that she had missiles in her trench. Gotcha.
So there was one other thing. It wasn't just that
the British were being patrimonious and really wanted to help
the Falklanders out by opening up trade between them and
the Argentinians. They also wanted to potentially offload responsibility for
(20:15):
the Falklands to Argentina, kind of like how you would
consider selling a car that you knew maybe had fifty
miles left in it, but you could sink some money
into repairing it to whatever, or you can sell it
to some schmo And Great Britain identified that this would
(20:35):
be a great bargaining chip. The Argentinians really want this thing,
so maybe we can sell them this used car in
addition to selling them some missiles for a few billion pounds.
Argentina said, can I take it for a spin? And
Britain went, I can't find the keys right now, but
we go ahead and make the deal. I'll see if
I can find them. It runs great though, yeah exactly,
(20:56):
so just trust me. But but imagine you just said
in a British accent, Yeah, I thought about doing it,
but so. Um. The thing is is this didn't go
over very well with Great Britain. Um. They were like, well, well, whoa,
you can't just these are British subjects in some form
or another. You can't just abandon them to the Argentinas.
(21:16):
You can't sell them out. And the people on the
island of the Falklands were not very happy with this either. Um,
supposedly they used to call themselves kelpers, and I think
I get the impression that's one of those things that
they can still call themselves kelpers. But if you're from
Argentina and you call them kelpers, then that's that's fighting words.
But um, they did not, uh, they did not like
(21:39):
the idea of being sold off to the Argentinians in
a as a pawn in a larger trade negotiation to
sell missiles. That that just didn't sit well with them.
And you get why. I totally get why. And the
other problem is is this is this is just so
neo lib too. The Thatchery administration went in, it was like,
(21:59):
this is really what we want to do is sell missiles,
but we're not going to give one way or another.
There's no compromise on the Falklands. He's either all or nothing.
And um, they they, I guess, wanted to open trade
to Argentinians, but didn't want to give them to the Argentinians,
but Argentinians wanted them. And rather than find a compromise,
like I said, it was just all or nothing and
(22:20):
they just left it as this. They basically scared the
pants off of the Falkland Islanders, saying we're willing to
basically leave you guys hanging um. But at the same
time they weren't willing to to pull the trigger and
go all the way and and let Argentina have the
Falklands and maybe administer them correctly who knows. So instead
(22:41):
the Falkland Islands were left in this weird geopolitical limbo
in starting about nineteen seventy nine, I believe, um to
where no one quite knew exactly how interested Great Britain
was in holding these islands. Our Argentina was very interested
in getting these islands, and the Falkland island As were
caught in the middle of this. Yeah. And on the
(23:02):
Argentinian side, they were sort of in the midst of
a right wing military dictatorship that after a seventy six
coup um. They were not nice people. They terrorized people,
they murdered their opponents, they imprisoned people. It was called
the Dirty War um. Within that or a few years
after that n one there was in an internal coup
(23:25):
within that same party where a General Leopoldo Galtieri m good, sure,
all right, um, he went into power. But still that
same right wing faction and they wanted not only the Falklands.
They wanted the South. Uh, they wanted South Georgia Island
and South Sandwich Islands and basically wanted that whole sort
(23:48):
of South Atlantic area because of Antarctica. Yeah yeah, so
they um. The other thing is and a lot of
people point to this. Did you mention the name of
that the tatorship? Oh the uh the NPR. Now it's
the opposite of the NPR. It's yeah, it's not the
opposite National reorganization process. Oh it is. I guess, I guess,
(24:14):
although they're both into re education for sure. So um,
Argentina basically was saying like, okay, we're a military junta.
We don't know what to do with the economy. We're
super oppressive, especially against our opposition, will like make you
disappear and murder your family and all this stuff. This
(24:35):
is a bad jam at home. We need something to
make everybody feel good about being Argentinean again. Maybe maybe
if we go get these Falkland islands, this little adventurism
that we go on will restore patriotism in Argentina and
will make everybody look the other way on this what's
called the dirty war that we've been fighting for the
(24:55):
last few years since we've come to power, and that
was kind of like the big impetus toward Argentina. They
had like these military aspirations because it was after all,
the merit military coup that took over as a military dictatorship.
To what else are they gonna do? Military stuff? But
at the same time, Britain was widely viewed around the
world is not really caring much about what happened to
(25:16):
the Falklands, And I think that they gave Argentina an
overblown sense of how easy it would be to just
go ahead and take these islands once and for all
is their own. Yeah, they needed this for nationalism. They
couldn't count on Diego Maradonna to come in and save
the day for another four or five years. You have
(25:38):
no idea what I'm talking about. He was a a
soccer player, Yeah, he must have been a contemporary place.
Then the Hand of God, that was very famous soccer
goal that he scored. I think in the hand of
you can't use your hands in soccer exactly, huh, look
it up. So I think that's kind of sets the
table for what's what's about to happen here. Um, It's
(26:02):
not like England or I'm sorry, che's always do that.
Let's just say Britain to be safe, that's what I've
been doing. Britain wasn't really planning for this UM. Even
though there had been a lot of back and forth
about the Falklands. I don't think they expected uh, ultimately
a surprise attack. They weren't really prepared UM. Like you mentioned,
(26:22):
the Argentines thought it would kind of go pretty easily
because they didn't seem like they cared about it. The Britain,
the Brits, and they're like, we're gonna go get all
these islands. But then this weird sort of start to
the war, to the start of a very weird war happened,
which is it was an incident at South Georgia Island
with a with a scrap metal dealer of all things.
(26:46):
Yeah yeah, so I mean at this at that time,
remember the Argentinian dictatorship was like just looking for any
opportunity to take these islands. And that scrap metal dealer
got a UM contract to dismantle the whaling station in
South Georgia Island, and so we chartered a an Argentinian
(27:07):
naval navy vessel to carry him and his salvage crew
over there, and Argentina actually thought this would be a
good opportunity for us to secretly invade South Georgia Island
of just sort of parking their car there and saying, hey,
this is exactly exactly And they didn't. Even as they
were backing in, somebody else was coming in front ways Seinfeld, Yes,
(27:33):
and they just had to stand there and argue for
a while. But finally the Argentinians won. And when they
got this is the weird thing. When they got to
South Georgia Island, the first thing they did the salvage
crew was raised the Argentinian flag. They replaced the Union
jack with the Argentinian flag. As dude, you could be
(27:53):
a second grade cub scout and recognize that you are
not supposed to do something like that, not even as
a joke, which is what Argentina ultimately claimed that was
just getting around, just joking, was their international diplomatic response. Yeah,
and Britain does not take kindly to that, no, because
they knew that Argentina wanted these islands. But here's the
(28:14):
thing that it was a really stupid thing to do,
because right when British diplomats pointed out that they had
done this and demanded that it be removed in the
Union Jack be put up. The Argentina's were like, just kidding,
just kidding, and put the flag back up. But it
immediately put the British on high alert. Like the diplomatic
tensions were raised. Um, it was it was a dumb
(28:37):
thing to do and if they were planning on really
um tactically invading and holding the Falklands, because it got
the British, the British the British's attention. Yeah, it didn't
seem like any of this is very well thought out. Um,
they work closer, so like they both start sending ships. Um,
(28:58):
Argentina is going to get there quicker. Obviously. Um, they
sent clear indication that they were gonna invade the Falklands. Uh.
The Endurance was a British ship, and Captain Barker of
the Endurance brought this news to London. There were only
sixty eight marines on the islands. Royal marines, British marines
(29:19):
didn't have great weapons were really under they were under weapons,
under artillery, under staff. They they were just it was
sort of those deals where they're like, what are we
doing down here? Guys for a long time, I think
until this happened. UM. So I mean imagine being that
there was like sixty eight of them, I guess, just
(29:41):
hanging out like sixty knowing that the Argentineans were coming
right or thinking that they probably were. They knew it
was on the way. Well, here's the thing. So back
in London, UM, Margaret Thatcher and her Tory government were
um not convinced like they she said later on UM,
(30:02):
I think she her diaries got published about this or whatever.
But in the days leading up to it, she was
like she could not believe that Argentina would actually go
through with an invasion because it was such a stupid
thing to do that she just couldn't believe it. UM.
And so that was combined with um eventually with some
(30:24):
of her um like military advisers saying, if they take
these islands, there's no guarantee we're going to get them back.
And she realized that if she lost the Falkland Islands
to Argentina, that was it. She was never going to
be re elected and her government would basically just limp
along until the next election. It would be a really
bad look for her. UM. So she had to win
(30:46):
these back. But at the same time, she couldn't just
send the Royal Navy down there for nothing. So she
had to make this decision about what to do, whether
to be proactive or reactive, and she ultimately waited and
was reactive, and by the time she reacted, she was
she was kind of um. She was working with the
(31:06):
knowledge that it wasn't guaranteed that that now that they
have invaded, that Great Britain would be able to take
it back. That's right, And you say take it back,
we haven't even mentioned the fact that Argentina took it
to begin with. Yeah, I think that was implied. April two,
about three o'clock in the morning, their tactical dive team
(31:26):
came aboard the island. They approached the capitol. They under
cover of darkness fired on the barracks, which they because
the Royal Marines knew this was coming, so they had
abandoned the barracks and we're sort of falling back, essentially
toward the Government House, which is where they were going
to hold up on their final stand. Argentineans had a
(31:47):
lot more people, they had amphibious assault vehicles, and eventually
the Brits retired to the Government House and said we
give up, We surrender uh ten a m. The Union
jack was replaced by the Argentinean flag and Argentina broke
their arms, patting themselves on the back. They lost five people,
(32:09):
they killed one I'm sorry, zero British soldiers and we're like,
all right, we did it. That was super easy, just
like we thought. And so the Argentineans were thinking, well,
you know, that was very easy. The British are clearly
disinterested in the Falklands. They're probably just gonna say, well,
you guys captured at fair and Square, we'll get our
people out of there. There your islands now. But this
(32:29):
is not at all what happened. In fact um, the
British did not take very kindly to this, and I
propose we'd take a break and talk about the actual
Falkland War after this. Let's do it, okay. So where
(33:04):
we left off was Argentina had taken the Falklands with
very little effort, and then Margaret Thatcher realized what was
going on in a big way and she went not old,
my watch, that was dead on. So once Britain said,
you know what, we're gonna fight back here and we're
(33:25):
gonna take these islands back. It became the real deal thing. Uh,
and we'll talk about in the end there. You know,
casualties numbered at about a thousand on both sides, so
it still wasn't the biggest conflict, but it was a
real conflict. No, it really was. And Britain was in
this weird position. Argentina was in a weird position, and
that they were fighting a pretty substantial military but Britain
(33:49):
was in a weird position, and that they knew that
if they overshowed force, if they just pounded the Argentineans
into dust, other countries might actually enter the war on
the on the side of Argentina. So they had to
get these islands back with with without just using all
of their might against Argentina. Yeah, and with also saying
(34:12):
we're not going to come after you Argentina. In Argentina
supposedly they explicitly said that, huh, yeah, I mean, it's
such a weird war in a weird time. It really was.
It was a weird war. But yeah, a lot of
people just kind of joke like, oh, you know, the
British invaded the Falklands, what a what a over overblown move.
(34:33):
But at the same time it was like you know
Thatcher's Prime ministry was on the line. And also, um,
the the idea that these were British subjects who were
being occupied. Like like, make no mistake about it, if
you were if you were living on the Falklands and
you left your house, you were living under Argentinian occupation.
They changed what side of the roads you're supposed to
(34:55):
drive on, which is crazy a little bit you had
to um, oh, either way, one of these days we're
gonna have to do with short stuff on dogg and h.
It was in either Sweden or I think Sweden. It
was the day that they changed from one side of
the road to the other for driving around the country. Yes,
it was just a big mess, so we'll talk about
(35:16):
this sometimes. But um you also had to carry like
a white flag around with you to basically let them
know you were noncombatant. And even still even under those conditions, um,
I think at least three Falkland Islanders were killed during
this war. So like this was you know, it was
it was a big deal and there was there were
reasons for the British to invade. Um. And again you
(35:38):
can really make the case of the Argentineans where the
aggressors in this situation. Yeah, So April six, the Great
Britain finally um puts together a war cabinet. They name
their operation Operation Corporate, and they send down a couple
of aircraft carriers, about a hundred and twenty seven ships.
(35:59):
They send down fighter jets. There's helicopters um while they're
doing this, because like you mentioned it, it takes a
long time to get down there on an aircraft carrier.
They were still hoping to work this out. Like France
got involved and they said, you know what, we're not
gonna sell arms to Argentina anymore. Uh, they're flying our
fighter jets, by the way, So here's some help in
(36:20):
defeating them. If you want a little inside scoop, there's
a little button on the back as long as you
push it, and they won't be able to drop bombings
will fold in. Reagan got involved. He called up Galtieri specifically,
said let's try and work it out peacefully. I'm gonna
send al Haig down there, and they said, nope, we
(36:41):
don't want your help, Reagan. So British Britain said, oh,
you don't want Ronald Reagan's help, then screw you, it's on. Yeah,
and so it was on. From that point on. The
British were like, all right, well then it's just war
is what we're going to do. So there UM two
aircraft carriers showed up and since they only had two,
had a limited number of UM jets. But it turns
(37:03):
out that their jets were mostly useful in keeping the
Argentinean fighter jets away from bombing and missile attacks on
the ships, but weren't successful in every case. Like as
funny as it seems, you know, like the British were
fighting the Argentineans are did the Argentina had some some
successes definitely in this war too. It wasn't just totally lopsided. Yeah,
(37:28):
I mean Britain. Uh. It all really really started on
April and kind of one of the first things that
Britain did was go after one of their submarines, the
Santa Fe. Damaged that one pretty heavily. That that submarine
made it to the South Georgia Island, but the crew
jumped off and basically retired that submarine on the spot.
(37:50):
UM Royal Marines were getting reinforced the whole time, and
this was really what made the biggest difference is Britain
had complete control of the the naval side of things, right, yeah,
just immediately the Argentinians figured out like, oh, we're we
we aren't going to be able to do much with
our navy. But again, we've got some fighter jets and
(38:11):
you know, their French, and they worked pretty good as
long as you don't press that one button. Um. And
they used them to good effect in that they would
fly decoy flights to get the British jets to come
chase them, and then the real um attack jets would
come in and actually attack like a ship or maybe
the mainland or something like that. Yeah, that worked. They
(38:35):
also had some They also had surface to air missiles
that they used fairly well, although they apparently accidentally shot
down one of their planes at least once. Um. The
point of all this, the upshot, is that despite you know,
the British superiority and just about every single way um,
Argentina did did have some success and they managed to
(38:56):
stave off the British retaking the Falklands, which spoiler alert,
the British retook the Falklands. Um. For you know, this
whole conflict lasted seventy four days. Yeah, they sunk a destroyer.
I think they sunk some other ships. The big one
of the big turning points was when on May two,
(39:17):
uh the General Bell Grano, which was an Argentinian cruiser,
was destroyed by the HMS Conqueror. And that was like
three and twenty three men were killed basically in that attack.
And that was you know, not half but the losses
of the whole war, right, and most of most of
(39:38):
Argentina's losses came from the sinking of that one ship.
And that was viewed as fairly grotesque by a lot
of people, by the international community really because remember England
needed to sorry, Great Britain needed to um to basically
show themselves as showing restraint. This was not necessarily a
show of restraint. The UM the Argentinians said that this
(40:00):
was not inside of the no go zone where their
their ship wasn't supposed to be um, that it had
been tracked down by the British and sunk. That they
could have just disabled it, but they purposefully sunk it.
And that you know, it killed three d and twenty
three Argentineans in one shot, which is just bad press
for anybody. It makes England look like an over overblown bully. Um.
(40:24):
And you know, they died in pretty terrible ways, like
a lot of them drowned, but a lot of them
frozen lifeboats because again we're not that far away from Antarctica,
and it took twenty four hours I think for them
to be rescued, So a lot of people froze to
death in lifeboats waiting to be rescued because they were
sunk by this British ship rather than just having their
ship disabled. Yeah. Ed made a nice little Jaws reference
(40:46):
in this, Dude, did you catch that? I didn't? Uh
made a second thousand nine five men went into the
water seven seventy two come out the sea took the rest.
I got it now. Uh? Then the other big yeah yeah, um,
the other big turning point came. Of course, you know
(41:07):
this is all like sinking of ships and naval battles. Uh.
What they needed to do was take the main town
and on MA one. The British gained a very good
foothold when they made a landing on East Falkland and
started advancing towards Stanley, which was not Stanley the guy
that was just they're cleaning up. But Stanley, the town Stanley,
(41:28):
the measuring tape, that's right. Uh. And they basically, you know,
Argentinea would would fight untill they ran out of AMMO,
then they would get captured and the Brits would just
move slowly, I think from one to June eleven. They
finally assaulted Stanley and on June fourteen, Port Stay on
(41:49):
June fourteenth, so just three days after they finally got
to Stanley they surrendered. Argentina did yeah, but but no
here that It was May twenty one that the British
finally landed on East Falkland and June thirteen that they
managed to take control of um Stanley weeks. It was
(42:09):
three weeks and the Argentinians managed to um hold them
off for that long. But this is almost like you know,
um those movies, like the huge, sweeping epic comedies like
It's a Mad, Mad Mad Mad World, where there's like
ten different things going on at once in the scene
just kind of visits, you know, each person. In one scene,
(42:30):
there was a Brigadier general named Tony Wilson who was
I guess on hiatus from running factory records at the time.
He was trying to get to fitz Roy, which was
a smaller town, not as big as Stanley, but it
was a town, and he decided to get some intel
where the Argentinians would He just he just looked up
(42:50):
the number from one of the fitz Roy residents, put
went to a phone booth and called and said, Hey,
are the Argentinians around today? And residents said, no, they're not.
Maybe today would be a good day for you guys
to come. And that's how they overtook fitz Roy, and
so little by little they started taking like the East Falklands,
until like you said, they finally took Stanley. And one
(43:12):
other thing. One of the over overlooked, unsung groups of
soldiers who helped really retake Stanley are um the Gurkhas.
Have you heard about them? Holy cow, dude, there's They're
widely considered to be the toughest um soldiers in the world.
Mother is on the plan exactly. Um. They are from Nepal.
(43:34):
They're the Nepalese like basically Nepalese special forces and they're
known for carrying these uh cou cree knives k u
k r I knives. I'm sure I said that incorrectly.
And by the way, apparently everyone else in the world
except for you and I knows how to pronounce the
national language of the Philippines correctly. Yeah, we did a
(43:56):
listener mail about that, but they're just still pouring in. Yeah.
So the these knives are just really fierce looking and
they're like, these guys are basically just going from like
outlooks or observation stationed observation station, I guess, just taking
out Argentinean guys with their knives and and helping re
established this British foothold on the East Falklands. Check them
(44:18):
out the because you're you'll you'll like him, I think,
like the sou In the end, they like we said,
they surrendered on June four. Um, we should point out
that there was a neutral c zone that had hospital
ships on both sides and throughout this whole thing, which
got really acrimonious. You know, it sounds silly to say
(44:39):
about a war, but it was one of the more
acrimonious wars because it was it was small, and they
were really mad at each other, you know, but these
hospital ships helped each other out. They cooperated, they transferred patients, um,
which says a lot about how things were you know, yeah,
it was still civil even though acrimonious. Right, that's right.
(45:02):
Argentina in the end suffered sixty nine deaths, which was,
like we said, about half of those actually almost exactly
half came from that ship sinking. Yeah, Britain lost to
fifty five and those three three poor kelpers. And I'm
sorry if that's offensive, I think I think, yeah, I don't.
I don't know if it is. Let's just call them
(45:25):
Falkland civilians. They were killed Stanley, It's yes, Stanley and
the Antonians. So it did not work out well for Argentina.
It really backfired. That was pretty humiliating defeat. Uh, the
n RP was defeated in nineteen eighty three and free
election started, So that's a good thing. Yeah, that is
(45:45):
that was this was actually huge impetus for them. Losing
control of power was the you know, the Argentina was
was defeated and kind of humiliated. Actually, um and this
military government since this was like ed put it like
Hail Mary, elastic effort to kind of retain power. They
lost the Falklands, so they lost their power in Argentina.
(46:07):
It's always good anytime a military dictatorship loses control of
a nation. Yeah. So Um. One of the things Chuck
is still to this day, the Falklands are in dispute
by Argentina. And I was asking you if if you, um,
you came up with this idea because the stuff that's
been going on lately, but ever since I think two
(46:28):
thousand nine, Argentina made a claim at the u N
to extend its territorial waters from two hundred nautical miles
off shore to three fifty well three nautical miles off of.
Argentina completely envelops the Falkland Islands, the South Georgia Island,
and the Sandwich Islands. Okay, this is not something that
(46:49):
the British are okay with um, so much so that
that one of the revelations from the Snowden Um whistleblower
files was that the British had engaged in disinformation campaigns
and propaganda campaign secret ones to change public opinion and
Argentina about the Falklands sovereignty and them being part of
(47:10):
a British you know, them being just thoroughly British and
Argentina has no claim on it. And the reason why,
and I was looking into this, I'm like, is another
war there possible. Who knows. The reason why is because
in two thousand ten they found a massive oil deposit
that is in the territorial waters of the Falklands. So
(47:30):
if Argentina's waters extend to envelope the Falklands, that's their
oil deposit. In the UK said, no, now, that's our
oil deposit because that's in the Falkland waters. And I
think in two thousands sixteen the u N Commission ruled
in favor of Argentina um even though they said, well,
we don't really have any teeth, it's just our opinion
(47:51):
that Argentina has a legitimate claim on us, and the
UK said, we're not going to be paying attention to that. Yeah,
So it's still continuing today and even more than just
being like a source of national pride, now it's a
source of national oil. So who knows what will happen
in the coming years over that. Jeez. Plus, when the
(48:11):
eldritch gods wake up, you know, yeah, well then we're
all doomed. So you got anything else about the Falklands,
got nothing else? And now I now I get it. Yep,
me to chuck me too. So thanks for that. If
you want to know more about the Falklands. Well, you
can start reading up on it. There's plenty of stuff
to be read. And since I said that, it's time
for listener mail, I'm gonna call this from a teacher
(48:37):
who was grounded right now because of the coronavirus and
wants a little help from us. Hey guys, my name
is Marissa Stratton. I'm a sixth grade teacher from Springfield, Illinois.
Like most of the country, our school is currently shut down.
I'm wondering if you could help me with a suggestion
for my students. I'm fairly new to the podcast world.
I listened to and love your podcast. I would love
(48:58):
to recommend it to my students, but I know some
topics would be inappropriate for eleven year olds. You got
that right, It's like pumping the island. I was about
to say any of our history shows. Uh. Here's where
your help would be greatly appreciated. You have any specific
episodes in mine it would be great for eleven and
twelve year old er. Do you have suggestions of other
podcasts that middle schoolers might enjoy. Read a lot of articles,
(49:21):
but I'm just overwhelmed. Being out of the classroom is
very stressful and I want to make sure I'm recommending
popularity and quality to my students, not just popularity. That
is from Marissa Stratton. So I thought about this. I
didn't make a specific list, but um, I was just
about to say, most of our history shows are pretty
(49:42):
pretty appropriate, wouldn't you agree? Yeah, I would like to
think that all of our stuff is in the wheelhouse
of eleven and twelve year olds, at least at the
same level of humor I think. So, I mean, it's
pretty easy when you look through the twelve hundred plus episodes.
There's a lot of science in his tree and uh
stuff like that. Like it's I think it's pretty clear
(50:03):
the ones to avoid. Like if you see things on
like magic mushrooms or marijuana grow farms, uh, murder stories
and stuff like that, you may want to avoid. But
you know, aside from that, it's pretty self explanatory. A
few dumb blue jokes aside from us, they're pretty pretty
clean for sure, and a lot of them probably fly
(50:25):
over in eleven year old's head. Yeah, but you know
that's that's for her to decide. They may want to
learn about the Mendel brought set. So so no, no, no,
I mean our jokes are jokes, might play over the
even year old thing. Gotcha, it's true. So yeah, I
guess I would recommend maybe listening to them once before
sharing them. But yeah, like we pride ourselves and being
(50:47):
a pretty family family agreed. Okay, that was Mrs Stratton correct. Well,
thanks a lot of Ms Stratton and hello to your
class who are being taught virtually I'm guessing right now
we're the teachers now, yeah, exactly. Just leave it to us,
America and world. We got this. If you want to
get in touch with us, like Mrs Stratton did, please
(51:07):
feel free to. You can send us an email, wrap
it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it
off to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Ye.
Stuff you should know is a production of iHeart Radios.
How stuff works for more podcasts for my heart radio
because at the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows. H
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
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