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Wednesday, May 18, 2022

Barbarossa Brothers

Barbarossa Hayreddin Pasha defeats the Holy League of Charles V under the command of Andrea Doria at the Battle of Preveza (1538) - Osman Nuri Pasha and Hovhannes Umed Behzad (1809–1874)

I always wondered where Hitler came up with the name for Operation Barbarossa. Today I'm reading about the Ottoman Empire in the The Verge and he mentions the Barbarossa Brothers. These guys, Oruç and Hayreddin, were corsairs (pirates basically) raising hell in the Mediterranean on behalf of the Sultan. Barbarossa just means "red beard".

Of course, now I'm wondering who Andrea Doria was. I know there was an ocean liner with that name that was involved in some disaster (collision with another ocean liner in 1956, 46 of the 1700 people on board  died). I always figured it was named after a woman, but I was wrong.


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