• 9/11 1941

    The picture above is an arrest card of Meijer Barmhartigheid. He was one of the 389 young Jewish man who were arrested during raid in Amsterdam on February 22 and 23 ,1941. Of those 389 only 2 survived the Holocaust. 100 of them were murdered in the Hartheim clinic, which was also the clinic used…

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  • 9/11 2001

    This blog will contain images from that awful day. Never Forget. On September 11,1941 the construction of the Pentagon had started. Sixty year later, terrorists tried to destroy it. An image etched forever in my mind. After burning for 56 minutes, the South Tower of the World Trade Center collapses, killing more than 800 people…

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  • Before I get into the story of Mohamed Atta, there is something I need to get off my chest. It appears that in the last few years, there has been a gradual downgrading of acts of terrorism. Terrorists are no longer called terrorists but militants. There are two definitions of a militant:1, Engaged in warfare…

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  • I never got the whole Jane Austen hype. I find her stories boring and there is nothing I can identify with. However the fact that there is a Limerick connection to her I do find intriguing. And I believe if she had lived in Limerick her stories may have been a lot more exiting, but…

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  • The Pacific War (1941–1945) reshaped Southeast Asia and subjected millions to brutal occupation under Imperial Japan. Among the most harrowing stories is that of Batu Lintang camp, located on the outskirts of Kuching in Sarawak, Borneo. Originally a British military barracks, the Japanese converted it into an internment and prisoner-of-war (POW) camp after their conquest…

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  • Victims of 9/11

    I could fill this blog with the horrendous pictures of that day, or of the “Where were you on 9/11 stories?”, But we have all seen the pictures numerous times. And to where you were that day? I leave that up to yourselves to reminisce on that. I rather focus on the victims today. This…

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  • The forgotten James Bond

    Everyone knows there have been 7 actors who played the illusive 007. Sean Connery,Roger Moore,George Lazenby,Timothy Dalton,Pierce Brosnan,Daniel Craig and David Niven(who played Bond in the parody Casino Royale) And when you exclude the parody Casino Royale there have been 24 movies and number 25 due out in the cinemas in April 2020. Well on…

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  • The Lesser Judgment Day

    The 1509 Constantinople earthquake, referred to as “The Lesser Judgment Day”  by contemporaries, occurred in the Sea of Marmara on 10 September 1509 at about 10pm. The earthquake had an estimated magnitude of 7.2 ± 0.3 on the surface wave magnitude scale.A tsunami and forty-five days of aftershocks followed the earthquake. Over a thousand houses and 109 mosques were destroyed, and an estimated 10,000 people died. The…

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  • As Edmund Burke once said”The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”, I would like to add “for good women to do nothing” This is is how the Nazi regime and all its evil could flourish. People saw what was happening, it was often blatantly obvious but…

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  • History is sometimes remembered through great battles, political revolutions and the rise and fall of empires. But sometimes a single moment quietly marks the end of an era. On the morning of 10 September 1977, a 28-year-old Tunisian man named Hamida Djandoubi was led from his cell in Marseille’s Baumettes Prison. Just hours earlier, he…

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