July 2026
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On 6 July 1942, Otto Frank took his family into hiding in the now-so-well-known secret annex where Anne wrote her diary. Otto and Edith Frank planned to go into hiding with the children on 16 July 1942. However, Margot received a call-up notice from the Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung (Central Office for Jewish Emigration) on 5 July,…
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(Originally posted 1 August 2018) It is safe to say that the Olympic Games are the biggest sporting event. Every four years, the event attracts the attention of hundreds of millions of sports enthusiasts and people with very little interest in sports, for aside from the sports, it is also entertainment, especially the opening ceremony.…
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The Netherlands remained neutral during the First World War. However, that did not mean the country was unaffected by the conflict. In the course of 1916, for instance, food shortages began to emerge. In Amsterdam, this led to the so-called Potato Riot in the summer of 1917. Potatoes were the staple food of the common…
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Recently I heard this bizarre debate on how humane the killing with Zyklon B was. It was so much better then being executed. Fortunately the site where this was debated on was taken down ,unfortunately I didn’t take note of the names. In case if any one is wondering if the killing with Zyklon B…
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(Originally posted on July 25, 2023 on Dr Helmy’s 122 birthday) When you opened your Google page today, you would have seen a doodle celebrating the 122nd birthday of the birthday of Dr Mohamed Helmy. Before I go into the important story of this great man, I want to highlight a disturbing trend that is…
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++++++++ Warning: Contains Graphic Images+++++++++ One could be forgiven to think that the photos in this blog are photos of a famine in a 3rd world country, as we have seen so often before. However, these photos are from one of the richest countries in the world, the Netherlands. Towards the end of World War…
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On this day, July 5, 1937, Hormel Foods Corporation, headquartered in Austin, Minnesota, USA, first introduced the product SPAM, a square can of pork, salt, water, sugar, potato starch, and sodium nitrite that rolled off the assembly lines 82 years ago during the late Depression era. Hormel created SPAM to capitalize on the previously unprofitable pork…
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A picture tells a thousand words, but never the full story. There is nothing more powerful then the words of those who survived the darkest era of mankind. Barbara Stimler was born in Poland, in the town of Aleksandrow Kujawski, close to the German border. She was 12 years old when the Nazis invaded Poland…
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On March 10, 1865, just weeks before the final collapse of the Confederacy, a slave named Amy Span was hanged on a sycamore tree before the courthouse of Darlingon, S.C., for anticipating her liberty a little too exuberantly. Amy Spain’s slave master was Major Albertus C. Spain, a Mexican-American War veteran who owned a large…
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There are very few items of fashion that please both women and men. The Bikini would be one of them, women like to wear them and men like to look at them, although nowadays some men wear them too, why? I do not know. The bikini was born at a Paris poolside photo shoot on…
History of Sorts 