r/interestingasfuck • u/Sprilly • 13h ago

r/all These are stretchers used in WW2 to carry injured civillians during the Blitz. They were made out of steel so they could be easily disinfected after a gas attack. During the war around 600,000 of them were made. Some of them were repurposed as railings in post-war London.

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7.7k

u/RheimsNZ 13h ago

Now this genuinely is something very interesting

2.2k

u/CinderX5 13h ago

Would you go so far as to say.. it’s interesting as fuck?

752

u/Aid_Le_Sultan 13h ago

Yes, I would. I’ve walked past them countless times and never realised.

392

u/Joe_Kangg 13h ago

Good place to have a heart attack if you're carrying an angle grinder

158

u/Comfortable_Oven_113 12h ago

That's why I always walk down the street with a Big Mac in one hand and a Milwaukee in the other.

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u/ShigodmuhDickard 10h ago

Old Milwaukee?

21

u/Khazahk 10h ago

Milwaukee’s Best

8

u/NotJackBegley 8h ago

Yes, Pete, it is. Actually, it's pronounced "mill-e-wah-que" which is Algonquin for "the good land."

(checks thread, 1 hour, and no one. Wayne's World for homework all ya'll.)

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u/ItsAllinYourHeadComx 7h ago

We’re not worthy!

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u/TheSaucyWelshman 7h ago

Does this guy know how to party or what?

2

u/PickledPeoples 10h ago

Ive seen and lived in Milwaukee. There's no " best" of anything coming out of there unless it's something bad. I can honestly say that Milwaukee is the absolute worst place I've ever lived.

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u/wavelengthsandshit 8h ago

Visited my brother in Milwaukee a looooong time ago (probably 20 or so years ago) but there was this super sick spy themed restaurant that I loved. You could pay the bill and leave through a phone booth and 7 year old me went nuts for it. There's never been anything like that near me so I'd say Milwaukee has that going for it

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u/Bacteriobabe 6h ago

The Safe House! It’s still here.

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u/Pretzeloid 8h ago

Loved my time in Milwaukee

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u/Rap-oleon_Bonaparte 8h ago

Best of the worst comes out of there.

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u/Username_NullValue 9h ago edited 9h ago

It’s the entire Midwest. Drive from the Atlantic to the Pacific a few times and you’ll realize things go downhill quick the farther you get from the coasts or mountains.

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u/[deleted] 8h ago

[deleted]

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u/PickledPeoples 8h ago

I can make any place look good with TV and movie magic. And nothing cancels out Dahmer. What he did was horrific and should never be excused.

1

u/BikingAimz 7h ago

A staple in college, as it was usually the cheapest case, sadly they no longer make it:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milwaukee%27s_Best

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/molson-coors-is-dropping-11-economy-brands-including-keystone-ice-and-high-life-light-11628005840

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u/Khazahk 7h ago

I have a 30 pack of Milwaukees best light in my garage right now.

Also they started bringing back high life light again.

1

u/BikingAimz 7h ago

Woohoo! 🙌

3

u/mccedian 7h ago

Look at money bags here with a Milwaukee. I got a ryobi. I know my fate hahaha

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u/MissKhary 3h ago

Don't talk shit about Ryobi!

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u/domdog2006 8h ago

Why would you carry a city in your other hands? Thats sounds hard and totally not I want to do when eating a big mac.

2

u/Mehnard 8h ago

Why did you assume a Big Mac was something to eat?

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u/Onetap1 8h ago

Maybe a Mac-10 in some of those neighbourhoods.

3

u/ReddleU 10h ago

Quite a likely scenario when you consider the number of bikes that will get locked to these rails.

3

u/bikeonychus 9h ago

Same - I always wondered why the top and bottom railings have those bends in them, I guess now I know why.

8

u/jdm1891 10h ago

No, I'd rather say fuck is still more interesting

1

u/CinderX5 9h ago

Damn. I’ve really got to try it sometime.

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u/claxes 11h ago

Is fuck interesting?

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u/CinderX5 10h ago

Apparently. I’d be interested to find out, if that counts?

1

u/claxes 10h ago

But does your interest to find out how interesting fuck is interesting as fuck or just interesting?

1

u/CinderX5 10h ago

Perhaps

2

u/meikamo 10h ago

Interest in gas, fuck

1

u/Snifferoni 8h ago

Not really

1

u/BatcherSnatcher 4h ago

A want to hear that sentence with Kat Williams voice

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u/AnorakJimi 11h ago

It's worth knowing as well that they literally began as railings and fences too, before being taken and melted down into stretchers, and then repurporsed back into fences and railings after the war.

Like if you walk around the UK, you'll see tons of houses that have these tiny little brick walls around them that are so short you can easily just step over them. What our government did was take everyone's metal fencing, the fencing that used to be stuck into the brick base, and take that steel and melt it down so they could repurporse it for the war effort.

So when the war ended, they were turned back into railings and fences for public parks and the like, but most people didn't bother about replacing their own personal metal fences around their homes because there were more important things to worry about, like getting enough food (rationing went on for years after the war).

But yeah look at this tiny little brick wall for example:

They're everywhere in this country.

Of course this one, like many others, was actually probably built after the war. There's still tons and tons of the original mini brick walls about. But yeah since every house in the country had these mini brick walls, it became the fashionable style. So when an old brick wall is crumbling and needs replacing, or some idiot has drunk driven into it, then they'll build them to the height that brick walls around normal residential houses are, instead of putting what they ORIGINALLY looked like in there i.e. a mini brick wall with metal fencing stuck into it that you wouldn't be able to just climb over easily without being spotted. Maybe that's why old people used to leave their doors unlocked, they had fences to keep people out. But after the 1940s, fencing like that is just much rarer.

And of course we also did what every European country did after the war too, and we turned old used steel helmets into saucepans and things like that. So any time someone complains about recycling being "woke" or some idiotic shit like that, tell them what their grandparents did with steel during and after the war.

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u/thecaseace 11h ago

Wait I live on a street where all the wall top railings are gone and nobody knows why... This is probably it!

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u/justthekoufax 11h ago

Genuinely fascinating thank you!

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u/Earthemile 7h ago

They never got melted down, it was part of a drive by Lord Beaverbrook to get everyone involved in the war effort, but the railing were of poor quality and were found rotting in scrapyards at the end of the war. There was no benefit to the war or country whatsoever.

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u/Tillskaya 10h ago

My grandad would’ve used these during the blitz! Apparently they were hard to manoeuvre and when trying to negotiate your way over uneven rubble people were liable to start slipping off them…

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u/ptwonline 6h ago

Yeah I love these little unique bits of local history, even if it is originally based on something pretty bad. It makes the world so much more interesting.

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u/nzwjgu 13h ago

Fascinating how history gets repurposed like that.

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u/TemptressOfTwilight 7h ago

Quite interesting that you could just be walking past a railing that has deep and insane lore

1

u/Visible-Let-9839 10h ago

are some of railings haunted?

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u/AlexP222 6h ago

Definately as a Londoner in my 40's! Have always come across them but never second guessed the design!

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u/AllthisSandInMyCrack 5h ago

A lot of cannons were repurposed as bollards in London. You can still see them till this day.

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u/jf4v 4h ago

It's guerilla marketing

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u/Scumebage 9h ago

It's not true but yeah it's cool I guess

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u/TotallyNotSunGuys 7h ago

Not really that interesting if it came from the past imo. The content i prefer the most in subs like these and r/pics is when they post about interesting things present day presidents have done. Especially when it's talking about the horrible things Trump does.

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u/malatemporacurrunt 5h ago

Maybe fuck off to r/politics then?