April 2017

  • The above picture is of a young child, still a baby. This boy was born on 20 April 1889, and although you wouldn’t think so from this picture, but this baby boy later became responsible for the deaths of millions. You see this little boy is Adolf Hitler. There is a questions which is often

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  • Leo was born on May 31, 1925, in Manhattan to Max and Mollie Lichten. He grew up in Brooklyn, and was described by his best buddy Paul as a “very noble, intelligent and courageous person.” He even saved Paul from drowning once when they were kids. A best buddy indeed.   Pfc Leo Lichten entered the service in New York.City, New York on 11 August 1943. Leo’s company, Company

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  • The Ebensee Concentration Camp was established by the SS to build tunnels for armaments storage near the town of Ebensee, Austria in 1943. It was part of the Mauthausen network. Due to the inhumane working and living conditions, Ebensee was one of the worst Nazi concentration camps because of the death rates of its prisoners.

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  • On April 19, 1995, a truck bomb exploded outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people and injuring 500. (Timothy McVeigh was later convicted of federal murder charges and executed.) A cargo truck laden with more than two tons of explosives was detonated in front of Oklahoma City’s nine-story federal

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  • Admiral Yamamoto, commander of the Imperial Japanese Navy’s Combined Fleet, was the Harvard-educated, poker-playing mastermind of the December 7, 1941, attack.   On April 14, 1943, naval intelligence scored another code-breaking coup. The message began: “On April 18 CINC Combined Fleet will visit RXZ, R–, and RXP in accordance with the following schedule . .

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  • Once upon a time in WWII

    Once upon a time in the West is not only one of my favourite westerns, it is also one of my favourite movies of all time. Many people don’t appreciate this fact but it is one of the few if not the only movie where Henry Fonda plays the bad guy. But before I ramble

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  • Shell Shocked Watch

    On 14 May 1940, German planes sighted the Dutch gunboat Johan Maurits van Nassau just off the coast of the town of Callantsoog in the Netherlands. Earlier the ship had successfully helped to defend the Afsluitdijk, the large enclosure dam in the north of the Netherlands. For days, Dutch troops managed to hold the front

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  • The Dove Brigade

    As early as May 1940, the Germans issued an ordinance stating that all carrier and fancy pigeons had to be killed in the Netherlands. Free-flying pigeons might be used to get messages to the Allied Forces A furious protest from pigeon owners ensued – there were more than 25,000 in the Netherlands – and this seemed to help.

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  • Karl Gebhardt was Gruppenführer in the SS and Generalleutnant (Lieutenant General) in the Waffen SS; personal physician to Reichsfuehrer-SS Himmler; Chief Surgeon of the Staff of the Reich Physician SS and Police (Oberster Kliniker, Reichsarzt SS und Polizei); and President of the German Red Cross. He served as Medical Superintendent of the Hohenlychen Sanatorium. As a

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  • (updated April 14,2024) 112 years ago today , as the Titanic was sinking, band leader Wallace Hartley decided to stay on the ship together with his fellow musicians. Why?  I don’t really know, but I think it was to give that glimmer of hope to those who were facing their last minutes before their mortal

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