When did the last German military unit surrender during World War II?

I hate ending the old year with an error, but I have to correct myself on the headline item two weeks ago.  I had said that Honey West was the first network television series with a female star and her character’s name as the show’s title.  It turns out I was wrong by a huge margin.

Honey West aired in 1965.  But there was a little situation comedy on CBS called Hazel which began in 1961, and starred the wonderful Shirley Booth.  I stand corrected; Honey West may have been second, but Hazel was there first.  Thanks to David for catching me on that.

I really loved Hazel, too.  How could I have forgotten her?

Happy New Year, my friends!  Read on for the week’s nonsense, and I’ll see you in 2025.

Did you know …

… a European nation has a law that requires its citizens to have bunker access?  The law in Switzerland says that every citizen must have access to a bunker 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  (The Swiss are neutral.  They’re not stupid.)

… when you walk down a steep hill or a flight of steep stairs, the pressure on your knees is equal to three times your body weight?  (Considering what I weigh, that explains why my knees hate stairs.)

… a Major League Baseball player once pitched a no-hitter while high on LSD?  Dock Ellis (1945-2008) was a pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1970 when he took the mound on June 12 against the San Diego Padres.  Ellis threw a complete game at the Padres, walking eight and hitting one batter – but no Padre got a hit off of him.  The amazing thing is, Ellis had taken a dose of LSD at noon that day while in Los Angeles, thinking it was an off day, and he had to pitch that evening in San Diego.  By his own recollection, Ellis only remembered bits and pieces of the masterpiece game.  At one point, he said, he believed the ball was telling him what pitch to throw.  Ellis never again pitched under the influence, and only confessed the entire thing years after his retirement from baseball.  (At least it didn’t inspire other pitchers to try that.)

… that wasabi you get at your favorite Japanese restaurant probably isn’t wasabi?  The actual stuff is pretty expensive, so many companies use horseradish instead, putting it into a paste form and coloring it green.  Real wasabi is milder than what you normally get with your sushi.  (Hot stuff indeed.)

… your love of cat videos goes back a long way?  The invention of the kinetograph in 1892 by Thomas Edison (1847-1931) allowed the inventor to capture and record moving images for the first time, and later see them played back.  While Edison filmed numerous short clips in his Black Maria studio in New Jersey, one of the most famous – and funniest – was The Boxing Cats.  Yes, two cats in a miniature ring, each wearing tiny boxing gloves, mix it up for a few minutes.  Edison filmed the cats in 1894 and the modern cat-video phenomenon was born.  (I always wondered who started the cat video phenomenon.)

… the last German military unit to surrender in World War II did so four months after the Germany itself gave up?  On September 4, 1945, the Svalbard garrison of the Wehrmacht turned itself in.  Commanded by Leutnant Wilhelm Dege (1910-1979), the Svalbard garrison was part of Operation Broadsword, a mission to establish meteorological stations on the Svalbard archipelago north of Norway.  The 11-man unit set up their weather station in 1944 and remained there, almost completely isolated, until they received radio word of Germany’s surrender on May 7, 1945.  The team tried to communicate with Germany for four months afterward, to find out what they should do, but received no response.  In August, they switched to another radio band for help, and finally a Norwegian station answered their by-now-frantic SOS messages.  A ship was dispatched to rescue the team, which surrendered on September 4.  (It does get cold in northern Norway, doesn’t it?)

… cosmetics and clothing may have saved the human race?  Consider:  research has been done into the question of why, if nature prefers well-proportioned bodies and symmetrical faces, all people are not thus beautiful.  Or, to put it more clearly, wouldn’t so-called “ugly” people all have been bred out of the population?  The answer is no, because humans invented clothing and cosmetics to improve personal appearance.  (I never said it was a great study.)

… a man who spent 47 years in government service never accepted any pay for doing so?  Herbert C. Hoover (1874-1964), who in addition to being head of the Food Administration and Secretary of Commerce was also the 31st President of the United States, spent a total of 47 years in one service or another to the government, and he donated every single one of his paychecks to charity.  Hoover had become independently wealthy before he entered politics, and did not need the money.  (Now that’s a nice thing to know, isn’t it?)

… German shepherd dogs exist because of an Army officer?  An officer in the German army during the 19th Century, Captain Max von Stephanitz (1864-1936), didn’t want to be in the Army – he wanted to be a veterinarian and farmer.  But during his service he noticed and admired sheepherding dogs used in the German countryside.  One day von Stephanitz decided to breed a specific kind of herding dog and he purchased an estate in Grafath to raise them.  In 1899 he attended a dog show and spotted one which caught his fancy, a wolf-like dog named Hektor Linksrhein.  He purchased the dog, renamed it Horand von Grafath, and with several investors began breeding a line of herding dogs with Horand’s unique attributes.  These descendants, the von Stephanitz line, are the German shepherds of today.  (Woof!)

Now … you know!