Cracked lost me on this one

[lizerdbits]

http://www.cracked.com/article_18809_the-6-most-strangely-convincing-real-life-curses.html

"The seventh and final death (so far) was in 2005: Tom Loy, a scientist who discovered human blood on Oetzi's clothes and weapons, died of a hereditary blood disease. This would normally be considered nothing more than a natural death if it weren't for the fact that his condition was diagnosed in 1992, the year he started working with the Iceman."

Do they know that "hereditary" means you're born with it?

"Sure enough, in 1941, Stalin dispatched Soviet archeologist Mikhail Mikhaylovich Gerasimov to excavate Timur's gravesite, we're guessing to one-up the Nazis' recent archeological breakthroughs at Tanis and Iskenderun.

According to Kaumov, local Uzbek elders were understandably upset about the excavation: "These old men showed me a book saying that the tomb of Timur should not be opened, otherwise a war could be provoked. I was young at the time and not too wise. I did not pay too much attention to this event. On 21 June we removed the skull of Timur. Then, on the 22 June the war with the Germans began.""

Because there was nothing else leading up to the war, it just *suddenly* happened on that day.

Now they do say "But there are a few eerie coincidences out there that combine the truly inexplicable with creepy details that make you have to wonder ..." and don't come right out and say 'these curses are true' but I don't like their implication.

[laconicsax]

1. Not everyone who writes for Cracked does a good job.

I've seen things misunderstood to the point of ridiculousness and one article actually linked to the Journal of Irreproducible Results.

[LeftishBrit]

2. One could possibly interpret it as...

that though he already had the blood disease from birth, it was not expected to prove fatal.

As regards the war, however, the article is pretty idiotic, especially as the war didn't begin in 1941 but in 1939, even though America and the Soviet Union only entered it later. What is it about the lack of knowledge about very basic history of WW2, among people who should know better? David Cameron, who after all got a first-class degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Oxford, stated in a speech that Britain was a 'junior partner' to the USA in the war in *1940*, which is obviously not true!

[realisticphish]

3. the war "began" on June 22?

yeah, because it's not like Hitler had massed troops long before that, or decided to attack the USSR weeks before...


Cracked puts out some fantastic stuff, so I'll let one of their authors drop a turd now and then :)

[Deep13]

4. Pretty sure the fighting started in '39. nt

[realisticphish]

5. well, I think we can be generous and assume

they mean German/Soviet hostilities