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Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2015 July 27

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July 27[edit]

What is this heroic trope?[edit]

Guys what is this heroic trope? Let's say Bob is our hero and wants to kill King Charlie who rules as a tyrant in the Kingdom of Alice. Bob wants to kill Charlie for revenge and doesn't care about what happens to the Kingdom. Still, the kingdom is saved when he finished his task. The citizens of Alice wants to congratulate him but Bob simply moves on. Thanks in advance. --Lenticel (talk) 01:37, 27 July 2015 (UTC) --Lenticel (talk) 01:37, 27 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Possibly either The Drifter or Mysterious Stranger. Dismas|(talk) 01:43, 27 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds very much like the plot to The Postman (film). KägeTorä - () (もしもし!) 02:03, 27 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Dismas for the links. I've looked them I think the "Mysterious Protector" variety of the Mysterious Stranger trope is the closest if we're looking at the citizens of Alice's perspective. --Lenticel (talk) 02:25, 27 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
In the context of Lit Hist, Knight Errant may be the medieval source model. Compare the Knights of the Round Table to Samurai and Clint-Eastwoodesque laconic heroes who travel the deserts of some autistic loneliness. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 09:57, 28 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

service personnel killed during the different wars[edit]

I am the commander of a VFW from Minnesota and we are looking to build a memorial for service personnel killed during the different wars that are from Minnesota. Once we find the list we will break it down to our local community. Can you help us find this list, any help will be greatly appreciated. Commander — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rickgwynn (talkcontribs)

Here's a list of Vietnam War dead from Minnesota, with their Official Homes of Record. That's an easy one. The Civil War and the world wars are going to be much tougher. Clarityfiend (talk) 09:32, 27 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Notable people dying at Hiroshima and/or Nagasaki[edit]

I am very surprised that not even one notable person was among those killed by the atomic bomb. I mean, didn′t these cities have mayors or governors? If someone dropped an atomic bomb today on Somerville, which has now less population than Hiroshima did in 1945, certainly there would be many people with Wikipedia articles among the dead. Maybe we have missed some from Hiroshima? 2A02:582:C55:2A00:E58C:3FFC:F108:2131 (talk) 14:29, 27 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yi Wu. Senkichi Awaya. --Viennese Waltz 14:34, 27 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Category:Hibakusha may help. It includes survivors as well as non-survivors. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 20:11, 27 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I would assume that a large fraction of the problem here boils down to two things:
  1. Since the city was mostly reduced to ashes, many of the records that would enable us to establish notability may well have been annihilated.
  2. English Wikipedia is dependent on it's contributing authors to write about such things. Only a very small percentage of us speak and read Japanese well enough to find and understand the source material, and only a tiny fraction of that faction will be interested in writing biographies and an even smaller fraction of that fraction will be interested in people from that time and place. So the pool of people who are working on such matters is likely to be exceedingly small.
Because of the way Wikipedia is written, it's inevitable that our coverage will be patchy, suffering from "recentism" and a bias towards articles about people from English-speaking countries. Please don't interpret this as people being biassed one way or the other - it's just in the nature of a set of disorganized volunteer contributors.
SteveBaker (talk) 04:14, 28 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Ronald Shaw is one notable, a British prisoner of war in Nagasaki. Adam Bishop (talk) 12:19, 28 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
He seems to only be notable for being British and killed by the bomb at Nagasaki. StuRat (talk) 18:56, 28 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, yet another yankee friendly fire event. I wish your guys would f**king choose their targets carefully. KägeTorä - () (もしもし!) 01:37, 29 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
From the British POV the dropping of the bombs ended the war early, saving millions of lives, including thousands of British prisoners in Japanese POW camps that were closer to death camps. So, that was well worth the price of one British death.
I understand that Japan is now trying to change their Constitution to allow fighting abroad by their military. If this happens, they will find out it's rarely possible to kill only the enemy without any innocents being harmed. The only alternative left is to leave ISIL, etc., unchallenged to grow and commit genocide. StuRat (talk) 14:29, 29 July 2015 (UTC) [reply]