In space, no one can hear you scream when you step on a Lego brick barefoot...

@PanamaGirl pure gold. Pure gold.

@WestofAragon

The real challenge would be managing to step on anything with enough force to hurt, in microgravity.

@WestofAragon Actually, Lego is pure plastic

@PanamaGirl This made my day.

The France thing though - that is a sick burn.

@star3catcher in my room im trying to collect all six texas flags but i was missing france so im hanging a white pillowcase and calling it the french flag XD

@TexMex
hilarious

The swedish astronaute Krister Fuglesang was in space before the danes and soon in about 5-7 years sweden will have the biggest space platform in Europ.

@FriezaDoge No use talking sense to these people.

@FriezaDoge Yeah, but will you have Lego? I think not!

Hmm... France: attacked on 10 May, 1940, surrendered on 25 June. Denmark: attacked on 9 April, 0415 AM, surrendered six hours later.... Just sayin'...

@Varangian Shhh! They mustn't know. We surrendered boldly that day.

@Varangian Yes, but Denmarks entry into recorded history was Viking pillaging, subjugating, occupying and exacting tribute from much of England, and even setting up a Scandinavian empire; Frances into recorded history was Julius Cæsars book about how he completely overran the whole country, and it pretty much continued the same way until... what time it now? The greatest of Frances few successful wars was regaining independence England, and even that took nearly 130 years despite the advantage of an interior supply line against occupiers forced to cross an ocean.

Nothing against the French (after all, the second greatest of their few successful wars was blockading the British fleet to prevent it landing reinforcements at Yorktown) but, from a military perspective, their two millennia history has been almost uniformly disastrous, and the only consistently successful French general I know of was Charlemagne (for all his reputation, even Louis XIV was a bit hit and miss.) So, y'know, every thousand years or so there is a truly formidable French commander; the rest of time, the Arc de Triomphe feels slightly ironic.

@JOL Uhh, well Napoleon for one thing (if you want successful French generals), what with defeating 5(?) different country coalitions raised against him before his eventual defeat (I highly suspect if Nelson hadn't defeated his fleet he'd have taken us (England), too). William the Conqueror, too. You know, when he conquered England in 1066? Held it for about 100 years, too. I mean, France has had at least 24 wars with England alone, never mind the other countries it's fought.

Of course, if you count it by places they conquered Denmark did very well - they had most of Scandanavia, England, Greenland at one point (colonially). However, the French Empire was at it's time the second largest empire behind the English one and spanned nearly 13 million square km. The Danes have a pretty impressive military history, but France well and truly trumps it. I think the American stereotype of the French surrendering has really corrupted the way the rest of the world view them

@MadnessInTheMethod

Napoleon was Corsican (Italian) not French.
William the Conqueror was Norman (Scandinavian) not French.

Beyond that the military prowess of France should not be understated. They survived for 800 years against at the heart of Europe with unfriendly neighbours all around.
Ohh and Denmark surrendered in 6 hours due to every major city having been secured and having it's military infrastructure demolished and the government deciding against fighting a battle which was already lost. It cost them 16 killed and 20 wounded (including civilian losses) vs 203 german soldiers KIA (not confirmed by Germany btw). Denmark did not have any outside support against the surprise assault by the Wehrmacht due to having been a neutral country.
The invasion of France took 46 days with the loss of Paris and subsequent flight of the government. The invasion cost the Axis 163,676 dead or wounded vs the allies 360.000. France had military support from GB and had taken up defensive positions (albeit in the wrong spot) after their own declaration of war.

You see, DK may have surrendered very fast, but it is also a relatively small country which had multiple simultaneous incursions with naval landings in Copenhagen, Gedser, Nyborg and Korsør as well as airborne assaults at Masnedø (first ever recorded btw) and Karup and a border incursion by mechanised infantry. DK didn't have a modern army at the time but still managed to inflict relatively heavy losses on the technologically, tactically and numerically superior German Wehrmacht.

@JOL Hmmm, more than a thousand year of warfare between squabbling monarchs, religious turmoil, revolutionary struggle, Napoleonic foolhardy and general involvement in most of the ≃70 major European wars on the continent and France is still the third largest country in Europe beside Russia and Ukraine (and about twice the initial spread of West Francia’s territory). Surely there is more to the french military record than 100 years war and the assist of American Independence (which may be seen as a really great success from an American point off view but was really much more a little side-war, just to spite the British without too much military involvement —still soundly depleted the royal treasure at the time and probably stirred the French revolution some time later but… well… defeating the Albion in a NAVAL battle ? Totally worth it.)

@JOL Uh no, Denmarks "entry into recorded history" is in Jordanes book "Getica" where he describes them as an off-shoot tribe from the Swedes.

"Frances into recorded history was Julius Cæsars book about how he completely overran the whole country"

Because Gaul = France. By the same logic, France won Iraq and Afghanistan because they owned Louisiana for a time.

"The greatest of Frances few successful wars was regaining independence England, and even that took nearly 130 years despite the advantage of an interior supply line against occupiers forced to cross an ocean."

More like "liberating the specific areas of France, controlled by Englishmen who spoke French and were French, culturally."

And wow, you seriously left out Napoleon.

@JOL You mean the French "fighting cocks" whose empire stretched across an enormous swath of Africa in living memory, and whose political influence stretches across Africa still? Whose cultural influence spans the world? Those French?

You're ridiculous.

By the way: How many New World colonies does Norway have? And when was the last time a Tsar of Russia looked at the Norwegians and said, "Ooh! There's the culture we need to emulate!"

@JOL
On the one hand you overlooked several French succeses, on the other hand you gave one to them they don't deserve. Charlemagne or Charles the Great wasn't french, he was a Frank, Franks were a group of germanic tribes that started out in an area surrounding the Rhine. From a modern point of view they are just as much Belgian, German and (I think) netherlandic as they are French. Charlemagnes empire itself is seen as the foundation of both modern French and modern germany and in a way also the modern benelux states. In that regard too, he's not (only partially) french.
Also he was an asshole^^

@Varangian

I presume that you are swedish here, correct me if i am wrong and my scorn will be taken back.
Yes Denmark surrendered during the invasion because we thought that we could ride out the storm as a neutral country, like we did in WW1, so we did not have a standing army and as you know Denmark is not all that full of natural resources so we didn't think we would be important to the nazis.

Seems the germans wanted the coast of Denmark and Norway; now talking about the invasion of Norway, i do believe it was the swedes that allowed the nazis to board their trains and ride the trains into Norway, allowing the nazis to transport men, equipment and jews around more efficiently, once again showing that Sweden is, well... only as neutral as it benefits them... WW2 says more about Sweden that Denmark it seems... Just sayin'...

@azaer You should drop the arrogant holier than thou attitude, WWII says plenty about both of our nations. Denmark thought they could ride out WWII as a neutral country, so did Sweden, you got invaded and we didn't, so you shipped off all your Jewish citizens(to Sweden mind you) and then proceeded to treat the German "occupiers" so well that they referred to Denmark as the "whipped cream front".
Which was absolutely not necessary, Denmark could have given them the French/Polish version of a resistance movement(i.e. a proper one).

Sweden on the other hand didn't get invaded, but had to make a number of concessions to stay that way, our military were similarly complete shit(because a lot of people thought that there couldn't be another Great European war again) that wouldn't have stood up to an invasion. So we were both equally self serving in our own ways, don't delude yourself into thinking otherwise.

It should have been Italy's white flag of surrender... HETALIA!!!! *duck and cover*

Okay, why is France always mocked for surrendering in World War II? It's not like they had any other choice.

@mrnewwanderer Because Denmark is an idiot.

@mrnewwanderer Because it's a massive joke in the UK to claim that all French are cowards. Other such racial jokes include the fact that the word Belgium is hilarious in our language apparently

@RealoFoxtrot

It’s probably more to do with Napoleon than Charlemagne. The French empire under Napoleon was the peak of French smugness over their own excellence and power and it was a heavy fall for them, much to the rejoice of everyone else on the continent. Really everything that happened after the end of the hundred years war has been a build-up of French power until they become the leading military and cultural power of Europe.

So anyway, the French didn’t really get over that “we are the best” mentality and continued to believe that they were indeed the best, which wasn’t that untrue really until the rise of unified Germany which soon left good ol’ France a well deserved second place. Which annoyed, and frightened the French, obviously. So they decided to do something about it, and here starts the sad story that is the military effort of the French military in modern times.

They lost the French-German war in 1870-71 and lost Elsaß-Lothringen to Germany.
Then came the first world war which they only did not loose thanks to their allies and the military incompetence of the Austro-Hungarian forces.

Then came the second world war, which they lost, hard. And in post-ww2 time they also lost their colonial wars, getting their asses handed to them by slanted-eyed jungle farmers and some north african desert hillmen.

Of course in the colonial wars they, like the U.S in Vietnam, had a problem with civil support for the war effort on the homefront, which really was the actual reason they left.

The „we’re the best“ mentality still lives on somewhat amongst the French, and so does the need to ridicule them amongst us others. Hence this funny joke about France always surrendering.

@Svenskefan .... Well. Concerning the "we're the best" mentality... that's pretty much all countries. Really. Also, Denmark was on Napoleon's side back then. Well, sort of. Ish? we had no choice?

@Sigart True, altough it's usually stronger in countries that earlier had been strong and/or powerful nations.

Like Sweden or France. britain, we all have illusions of grandeur on this continent.

@Svenskefan RESTORE KALMAR!!! 1397 BEST YEAR OF MY LIEF!!!

@Sigart Well Denmark was only on Napoleon's side because of England. We tried to stay neutral, but because our fleet was the second biggest England was afraid we would go against them. So they gave us one choice: Join them or stand against them.

And when Denmark said "Neither" England bombed the shit out of our fleet and we then decided to try to beat Englands ass... which didn't go so well, thanks to that Damn Napoleon...

@kbay Are you trying to lecture me about the facts I myself was alluding to? O_o

@RealoFoxtrot Ah, so it's just a stereotype? Like "Americans are fat idiots", "Italians are loud-mouths", "The British have ugly teeth" or "Germans are unromantic alcoholics"?

@mrnewwanderer Two reasons really, though they may not have had a choice there the only country on the coast of eastern Europe to do so which in of itself get's them a fair amount of unwanted attention. Second it's kind of a mark of how far France has fallen from the time when Charlemagne beat almost all of Europe into submission.

@mrnewwanderer
Actually, most people I know love France. What they don't like is the people living there. Thinking back to my own experiences, I tend to agree with them.

@Narf I'm not implying people "hate" France. I'm just curious why France has a reputation of surrendering even though they haven't done it that often. The only times I know of which France has surrendered was when Napoleon was defeated and when the Germans defeated France in WWII.

@mrnewwanderer I read it was initially mostly an American insult for the French when the diplomacy between the two countries was not that good (at first in the fifties with president De Gaule and it blazed again in 2003 with the veto against invasion of Irak – for what good it did… but that’s another matter). Then it spread to the English speaking portion of the web through ignorance and french-bashing, I suppose?

What bothers me with this "joke" is that it isn't a exaggeration and generalization of a flaw –or quality– that can be associated with a culture, like most stereotypes, but a blatant historical lie.
Food for though : in France, the idea that the disaster of 1940 was the soldiers fault because they weren't good enough and surrendered easily was popularized by Vichy's Fascist regime to hide the fact that it was mostly due to huge strategical mistakes of the high command and could be considered a treason of the politicians who agreed to the ceasefire even though good portion of the french army were still fighting. Still a sore spot in France modern history.

'@MaitreLudard' Well, there's admitting a quick surrender vs. admitting intentionally joining the Nazis, which was a popular decision at the time. Resistance was a very unpopular faction until the Nazis lost. Only then were they pretended to be popular heroes, but they didn't even get the country only they were even (internally) fighting for since they were socialists, and the Allies weren't having that. Often easier to whitewash history than admit it since there're always devils in details.

@mrnewwanderer Brother America needed a justification when he realized he could not be bothered to eat _French_ fries any more.

@mrnewwanderer Well personally it's a lot easier than saying "you learned nothing from the last time you idiots, germany used the same strategy on you twice in a row and won"

Everything about this makes me happy.

@Peachy00Keen me too..... ESPECIALLY THAT GRIN OMFG X'DD

An important update: There are now three Lego figurines in orbit of Jupiter aboard the Juno spacecraft.

@Yaivenov
Really!?

It was the only way for him to be safe from the moose.

Of course it was Lego figures. No other toy brand represents Denmark any better.