五件严肃但却成了闹剧的历史事件 [联合国媒体]

If history were a person, it'd be a stuffy old white guy in an ascot who still says the word "orientals." Or so historians would have you believe. In reality, history is more like a toga-wearing frat boy named Moose who duct-tapes malt liquor bottles to his hands before he gropes you. See, some of the most serious moments in history were total farces behind the scenes. Like how ...

如果历史是一个人，那他一定是一个打着宽领带，嘴里念叨着“东方人的”的老白人，或者是历史学家会让你这么觉得。实际上，历史更像是一个穿着袍子兄弟会男孩，名字叫做穆斯，还会在摸你之前用管子将麦牙酒瓶绑在手上。看，一些最严肃的历史瞬间的背后完全是闹剧。就像...

5

The Manhattan Project's Safety Standards Were So Bad That A Guy Once Accidentally Swallowed Plutonium

曼哈顿工程的安全标准非常糟糕，一个家伙竟偶然吞下了钚

One would assume the Manhattan Project had some rigorous safety standards, what with the atomic bombs and all.

人们会认为由于事关原子弹和其它原子器，所以曼哈顿工程会有着严格的安全标准。

One would be wrong.

人们错了。

An example: During one of the project's critical experiments, the only thing keeping the whole shebang from going nuclear was a single screwdriver held by a nearby technician. Naturally, the screwdriver slipped, and the plutonium went critical, killing the technician.

举个例子：在该项目的一次临界测试的实验期间，唯一阻止所有的一切变成原子级的物什就是一把技术员手里的螺丝刀。自然，那个螺丝刀滑落下来，钚变成临界态，杀死了这个技术员。

This happened twice.

这种事情发生了两次。

They nicknamed it the "demon core," because it was easier to blame the deaths on an evil experiment rather than horribly lax safety protocols.

他们昵称其为“恶魔核心”，因为将造成死亡的过错归咎于邪恶的实验比起归咎于松散的安全规章要更为容易。



And then there was the case of scientist Don Mastick, who once picked up a vial of plutonium, unaware that some of the liquid inside had converted into gas. When he tried to uncork it, the vial popped open and sent plutonium spewing into his mouth. He washed his mouth out with sodium citrate and repeatedly pumped his stomach, then handed the contents to a colleague and told him to go separate out the precious plutonium. No point wasting it, right?
Mastick survived without any major health problems, though for days afterward, his breath remained so radioactive that it could affect sensitive lab equipment from across the room. Did he use his powers to briefly fight crime as a superpowered vigilante? History doesn't say, so we're forced to assume that yes, he did, and further that his name was Dr. Meltmouth.

下面就是马斯蒂克先生的案例了，他拿起了一瓶钚，浑然未觉里面有些液体已经转化成了气态。当他试图打开时，小瓶呯地一下就开了，将钚喷进了他的嘴里。他用柠檬酸钠冲洗嘴巴，反复地洗胃，然后把吐出来东西交给了一个同事，让他去把宝贵的钚分离出来。没理由浪费的，对吧？
马斯蒂克幸存了下来，身体也没有大恙，虽然接下来的几天里，他的呼吸仍带有放射性，会从房间对面影响到整个实验室的敏感的设备。
他有用他的暂时的超能力去像一个超能警察那样打击犯罪吗？历史没有说，所以我们只能去假设他这样做了，进一步设想，他的名字叫做曼哈顿博士。

4

The First Time Mao Met Stalin, Stalin Stole Mao's Shit

毛泽东与斯大林的第一次会面的时候，斯大林偷了毛的便便

Mao Zedong made his first historic visit to Moscow in 1949, and for some reason, Joseph Stalin declined to meet with him for several days. It was almost as if Stalin was ... putting it off. Once could even say he ... delayed the meeting. Get it?

毛于1949年在莫斯科进行了他的第一次历史性访问，出于某种原因，几天的时间里斯大林拒绝与毛会面。当时就像斯大林将会面取消了似的，甚至可以说是斯大林推迟了会议，明白了吗？



Anyway, Mao became convinced that the place was bugged, and took to shouting at the walls that he was there "to do more than eat and shit." Which we know, because obviously the place was bugged.

无论如何，毛变得确信此地装了窃听器，所以就大声说话显得他在这个地方除了吃饭拉屎还做了更多的事，我们就是知道这一点，因为很明显这个地方装了窃听器。

But it's the shitting part the Soviets were truly interested in. According to former Soviet agent Igor Atamanenko, the Russians had secretly disconnected all the sewage lines in the house and rerouted the pipes to special boxes, which collected Mao's bodily waste each night. Stalin himself ordered secret police chief Lavrenti Beria to steal his rival's precious poop, in what was surely the stupidest espionage plot hatched this side of a Tom Clancy novel.

但是“拉屎”才是苏联人真正感兴趣的部分。根据前苏联特工，伊戈尔·亚塔曼年科所说，俄国人秘密地将该房间的下水管道切断，通到一个特殊的盒子里，每晚都在收集毛的身体废物。斯大林指示秘密警察头子拉夫连季·贝利亚去偷他的国际对手毛的珍贵便便，一定是最愚蠢的间谍计划才能设计出这种汤姆·克兰西小说式的情节。



According to Atamanenko, the Soviets were trying to put together a psychological profile of Mao, and thought stool analysis could help with that. For example, if their tests found an excess of the amino acid Tryptophan, they might conclude that Mao was a pretty chill dude. But not enough potassium would mean he was a real nervous nelly, and probably not down to party. Sadly, we do not know what results they came up with, but in a bit of happy news for Mao, he eventually got his revenge on the Soviets. He forced Nikita Khrushchev to don water wings and nervously doggy-paddle around in a swimming pool, all while Mao swam laps around him.

根据亚塔曼年科所说，苏联一直试图拼凑出毛的心理档案，觉得粪样分析对此有帮助。举个例子，如果他们的测试发现色氨酸含量过多，就可以得出毛是个冷漠的人的结论。如果没有足够的钾就意味着他是一个神经质的娘娘腔，可能连派对也不会去。不幸的是，我们不知道他们得出了什么结论，但有一点毛的好消息，毛最终报了苏联的一箭之仇，他迫使尼基塔·赫鲁晓夫在一个泳池里狗刨式地游来游去，而同时毛则绕着他游圈圈。

3

LBJ Announced The First African American Presidential Secretary By Having Her Stump Contestants On A Game Show

约翰逊宣告了第一任非裔总统秘书，通过让她在一场游戏表演中挑战竞争对手

Geraldine "Gerri" Whittington broke barriers when she became the first African American executive secretary to the president. Since the president in question was Lyndon "Let Me Show You My" Johnson, you can bet that he handled the announcement like only he could.

杰拉格尔丁·“格里”·惠廷顿打破障碍成为了第一个非裔总经行政秘书。因为问题中的总统是林登·让你看看我的·约翰逊，所以你可以打赌他操办了相关新闻发布会，就像只有他能似的。

First, he broke the news to Whittington by cold-calling her at 10 p.m. and asking her to come to the White House. Once she got there, Johnson told her about the promotion, and that he intended to announce it by having her appear on the hit game show What's My Line?, which featured celebrity panelists trying to guess the occupation of mystery guests.

首先，他冷不丁地在晚上十点给惠廷顿打电话爆料，让她到白宫来。惠廷顿一到，约翰逊告诉了她升职的事，还有打算要通过让她在猜谜游戏明星猜猜看（What's My Line）现身，这个节以让一组名人猜神秘来宾的职业为特色。

She waited for him to laugh.
He did not.

她等着他笑。
他没有笑。

See, Johnson didn't want to hold a big press conference to announce his new hire, because that would've been the presidential equivalent of boasting about your one black friend. Johnson also knew that What's My Line? would get way bigger ratings than any press conference, though his plans were almost spoiled when Jet broke the news of Whittington's appointment with a full-page profile ...

看，约翰逊不想通过大型新闻发布会来宣布他的新任命，因为吹嘘一个黑人朋友，这才是配得上总统身份的做法。约翰逊知道明星猜猜看是什么吗？这样会比新闻发布会获得的收视率更高吗，虽然杰特用整版版面爆料了惠廷顿的任命，几乎使得约翰逊的计划破产。

Luckily, even in the age of magazines, nobody read magazines.

幸运的是，即使是在杂志的时代里，也没人去读杂志。

Whittington appeared on the show as planned. Journalist Dorothy Kilgallen eventually guessed that she was a secretary in the White House, and that's how racism was ended forever.

惠廷顿按计划出现在了节目里。记者桃乐茜·基尔加伦最终猜中了她是一名白宫秘书，而种族主义也自此消亡。

2

Civil War Soldiers Continually Stopped Fighting ... To Watch Fistfights

内战士兵们逐渐地停止战斗...来观看格斗赛

During the extremely bloody Battle of the Wilderness, one Union and one Confederate soldier ended up hiding together in the same gully. Naturally, they tried to take each other prisoner, which devolved into a bare-knuckle boxing match.

在整个怀尔德尼斯的血腥战斗期间，一名联邦士兵和一名同盟士兵都不再躲在沟里。自然地，他们都试图俘虏对方，最终演变成了一场徒手搏击赛。

Eventually, the fight spilled into view of the rest of the battle, which promptly came to a halt as both sides stopped firing ... so they could get closer to the fight and cheer for their boy. The Confederate fighter won and took the Yankee prisoner, as was agreed upon before the fight.

最终这场搏斗加入了战争中的其他人观看，两方士兵都停止了开火，战斗就这么产生了空档，这样他们才能近距离观看格斗，并为已方选手加油。最终同盟军的选手赢了，把北方佬俘虏了，就像赛前约定的那样。

A similar report came out of 1862, in a battle near Fredericksburg, wherein a Wisconsin regiment had gotten into a shootout with the Confederates that somehow became personal for two soldiers. A makeshift truce was called solely so the two soldiers could punch each other in the face in relative peace. A few missing teeth and bruised kidneys later, and the fight was declared a draw, and anyway, that's probably how the Civil War ended.

1862年也有一个相似的报道，弗雷德里克斯堡附近的一场战斗，其中威斯康星州一个兵团同同盟军进行交火，最终也演变成了两个士兵之间的私人战斗。双方暂时停战，让两士兵能够宽心地把拳头往对方脸上招呼。在掉了几颗牙，而且肾脏也受伤后，这场战斗平局收场，不管怎么说，这也可能是内战结束的原因。

1

The Soviets Grabbed A Random Peasant Off The Street And Took Him To Negotiate Russia Pulling Out Of World War I

苏联人随时从大街上抓了一个农民，让他去谈关于苏联退出一战的相关事宜

In 1917, Lenin's Bolsheviks seized control of Moscow, and decided to try to win the hearts and minds of ordinary Russians with the bold new policy of not making them run straight at German machine guns. To that end, they scheduled a peace conference in Brest-Litovsk to end Russian involvement in the First World War. Although the delegation was led by prominent activists, the Bolsheviks made a point of also bringing a soldier, a sailor, and an urban worker to really hammer home that communism was all about the good of the common people.

在1917年，列宁的布尔什维克党夺取了莫斯科的控制权，为了赢得民心，列宁决定采取一个醒目的政策，即不再让人民去面对德国人的枪口。为此，他们计划在布雷斯特-立托夫斯克来谈让俄国退出一战的事。虽然代表团由一个杰出的政治活动家带队，但是布尔什维克还是决定再带上一个士兵，一个水手和一名城市工人来宣示共产主义完全是为了大众好。

But you know how it goes when packing for a trip -- something always gets forgotten. In this case, the politicians were on their way to the train station when they realized they had forgotten to bring a peasant!

但你知道当准备行装的时候会发生的事——总是会有什么落下。在本例中，政治家已经到了车站了才想起来还差一个农民！



So they cruised around town until they spotted an elderly guy in shitty clothes, lured him into the car with promises of beets or something, and then told him he was coming to negotiate peace with the Germans. That man was Roman Stashkov, and he was only trying to get back to his village when he suddenly found himself sitting across from European royalty. He rolled with it pretty well, although he apparently kept addressing the other delegates as "master," and when asked whether he wanted red or white wine, he inquired, "which one is the strongest?"

他们沿着城镇到处找，直到发现了一个衣着破烂的老人，用甜菜或者其它什么承诺将老人骗上车后才告诉他要去和德国谈和平。这个老人叫做罗曼·斯塔什科夫，这个老人发现坐在对面的人是欧洲皇室的时候，唯一想做的事就是回家。虽然他还是称呼代表团其他成员为“大人”，但他表现得还好，当问起他想要喝红葡萄酒还是白葡萄酒的时候，他问道：“哪种劲儿大？”

Somebody crack a window, because we smell a motherfuckin' sitcom.

有人打破一扇窗子，因为我们特么闻到了一股情景喜剧的味道。





armitage112
December 19th, 2017    •    9:13 am
RE: #4. "The First Time Mao Met Stalin, Stalin Stole Mao's Sh*t"
Read that, thought: "Oh, so Stalin was some kind of klepto, stealing Mao's clothes, wallet, etc."
Read article: "Oh. Wow. You weren't kidding. He stole his literal sh*t."

第四点“毛泽东与斯大林的第一次会面的时候，斯大林偷了毛的便便”
读标题的时候我在想：“噢，斯大林有偷窃癖，偷了毛的衣服、钱包等等。
读到文章：”噢，哇，你没开玩笑吧。他真如字面上说的偷了便便

fillet_of_soul
December 19th, 2017    •    6:57 am
"I'm here to do more than eat and s**t." How is this not on a million motivational posters, T-shirts, etc.?

“我到这儿除了吃和拉还要做更多的事。”为什么这句话没有印在数百万励志海报和T-恤上呢？

MPullmann
December 19th, 2017    •    6:44 am
Oh. I thought "stole his shit" was figurative.

噢，我还以为“偷了他的便便”是个比喻。

purplemalemute
December 19th, 2017    •    8:35 am
I loved the article, but where the heck is Joesph Stalin in the comments?!

我喜欢这篇文章，但是评论里的约瑟夫·斯大林在哪儿？

ItHurtsWhenIP
December 19th, 2017    •    9:07 am
So, a soldier, a sailor, and an urban worker...wonder if that worker was possibly a butcher, a baker, or a candlestick maker?

一个士兵，一个水手和一个城市工人，我怀疑那个工人是否是个屠夫、面包师或者一个烛台匠？

Eumundiman
December 19th, 2017    •    1:27 pm
Re #4 If Mao had just visited Australia, it would have been “ We’re not here to f**k spiders”.

第四点，如果毛当时访就澳大利亚，那段情节就会变成“我来这儿不是为了法克蜘蛛的。”

bcerney
December 19th, 2017    •    7:20 am
The "which one is the strongest" line made me crack up, because I think I would do the same

“哪种劲儿大”让我笑喷了，因为我觉得我也会这样说。

frankenspider
December 19th, 2017    •    5:28 am
Stalin was coprophile/phage? I'm not surprised. He was always full of ss**t

斯大林是一种噬污菌/噬菌体吗？我不感到意外。因为他总是很操蛋。

thatindianguyII
December 19th, 2017    •    5:43 am
“But it's the shitting part the Soviets were truly interested in“
Wait what does that have to do with- oh . Oh, the title of this segment was meant to be read....literally.

“但‘拉屎'才是苏联人真正感兴趣的部分”
等一下，这句话是怎么回事  噢，这个标题正如其字面意思。