this post was submitted on 19 May 2024
724 points (95.5% liked)
memes
10286 readers
2328 users here now
Community rules
1. Be civil
No trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour
2. No politics
This is non-politics community. For political memes please go to [email protected]
3. No recent reposts
Check for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month
4. No bots
No bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins
5. No Spam/Ads
No advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live.
Sister communities
- [email protected] : Star Trek memes, chat and shitposts
- [email protected] : Lemmy Shitposts, anything and everything goes.
- [email protected] : Linux themed memes
- [email protected] : for those who love comic stories.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I think I saw on QI that WWI was already being called that before the war had ended.
People at the time knew there would probably be another one someday.
Which isn't that odd, really. We use the Term WWIII at times. It's not that we know it will definitely happen but it's not something that's unfathomable either.
Really? That would be an extremely concerning thing to hear anyone say back then.
"Great" did not automatically imply "good" back then - just big.
I've always heard it was called the Great War.
You heard correct. I have never heard any contemporary account from the time call it "WW1" - they did call it "the war to end all wars," though.
I found this citation referring to a book published in 1920, though I couldn't find the text of the book itself online.
What I find more interesting is the use of the phrase "millenial folk".
Good point. Of course, with the number of nuclear war-heads we've built, I would feel pretty confident referring to it as "World War Final".
I actually usually just refer to it as "our extinction event". But I'll acknowledge I'm going out on a limb - there's plenty of other ways we could finish ourselves off.