On November 29, news broke over Twitter that German Chancellor Adolf Hitler had ordered his soldiers to "make war on British industry."
The tweet went on to say that troops were to "mine and blockade ports, bomb shipping, oil tanks, food stores."
While the events did indeed happen on the date in question, it was of course Nov. 29, 1939. And the tweet was sent in 2011 by a young man who hopes to tell what he calls "the forgotten stories from history."
From the @RealTimeWWII Twitter handle, Alwyn Collinson tweets events from the Second World War in, you guessed it, real time.
The 24-year-old history graduate from Oxford said he was inspired to begin the project by following the unfolding stories on Twitter from the Arab Spring, stories conventional media could not always tell.
"I thought you could use the same effect to tell forgotten stories from history and really put a personal face on things that can seem distant and dry," Collinson told Canada AM in an interview from London.
Collinson sends between 10 and 20 tweets per day, but has sent as many as 40 "on important days."
He spends two to three hours researching and preparing the next day's tweets, using newspapers, books, diaries and journals.
Collinson sent his first tweet on August 31: "SS troops dressed as Poles are attacking radio transmitter in Gleiwitz, to provide pretext for Germany to attack Poland."
While the first tweet reads almost as a news report, and many recount the most devastating events from the War, others provide a glimpse into everyday life that carried on despite the fighting.
On Dec. 2, an early tweet announced that the "UK has just extended the age of military service. Are you 19-41, male, British, & not a student or clergyman? You will be conscripted."
Hours later, another tweet described the so-called "Blackout waltz," popular in the U.K. at the time: "4 steps forward, 3 back, then lights go out & switch dance partners. ‘Helps shy young ladies meet nice airmen.'"
Collinson's busiest tweeting day so far was Sept. 26, when Germany took control of Warsaw.
But he anticipates 1944 to be the busiest year of his campaign, with D-Day, Soviet troops moving in from the east and the start of the Third Reich's collapse.
"But really I think the stories I would like to tell there are not only people on the beaches who are fighting, because that's really been told a lot, but also to give the point of view of people who are living in, say, Germany or the occupied countries like France and Holland as those places were being liberated," Collinson said.
"Again, it's those personal stories that I think make it feel real. It isn't about names on a list of casualties, it's about people who actually lived through it."
As of Dec. 2, @RealTimeWWII had more than 163,000 followers from all over the world, and gains 1,000 more each day. Collinson said he has so many international fans that volunteers are now translating his tweets into seven languages, from French to Italian.
Collinson said he hopes his idea inspires followers to learn more about the War.
"I think there's always an interesting story," he said. "You just need to get past the dates and look instead at the facts of what happened, because they're invariably interesting."
When asked if he intends to carry on right to 1945, Collinson replied: "That's the plan."
