dirkdeklein

  • I still vividly remember this story, I just couldn’t fathom the needless cruelty at the crime. On October 7, 1985, four men representing the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF) hijacked the Italian MS Achille Lauro liner off the coast of Egypt, as she was sailing from Alexandria to Ashdod, Israel. The hijacking was organized by Muhammad Zaidan (a.k.a. Muhammad “Abu” Abbas), leader of the PLF. A 69-year-old…

    Read more →

  • On October 7, 1940, Lieutenant Commander Arthur McCollum of the Office of Naval Intelligence submitted a memo to Navy Captains Walter Anderson and Dudley Knox (whose endorsement is included in the following scans). Captains Anderson and Knox were two of President Roosevelt’s most trusted military advisors. McCollum wrote that it would be in the interest…

    Read more →

  • Friedrich (Fritz) Schubert (21 February 1897, Dortmund – 22 October 1947, Heptapyrgion) was a Greek-speaking German NCO Sonderführer of the  Wehrmacht.  As head of the Jagdkommando Schubert, a paramilitary force terrorizing the civilian population during the Nazi occupation of Greece in World War II, he committed numerous atrocities in Crete and Macedonia. Tried by a special court for war crimes in Athens, he was found guilty over the killing of over 250 civilians, sentenced…

    Read more →

  • This is a very personal blog for me.Not because I was personally involved in it, because I wasn’t, but because it really touched me emotionally. Although I am don’t suffer from depression myself that is really what the song is about,depression and the effects it has especially on teenagers and young adolescents. I first heard…

    Read more →

  • Although I could not be considered to be an athlete,by any stretch of the imagination, I do enjoy walking and going for swims. Ever since I was a kid I was always very interested in the Olympic games. My home nation ,the Netherlands always tends to do well and it does give a sense of…

    Read more →

  • Rebel without a clue

    I could not call myself a music fan and more specifically a Rock music fan without paying tribute to one of the all time greatest Rock musicians, Tom Petty. I have to confess I was quite late getting to know the music of Tom Petty,it was really by chance.Back in the 80s I was a…

    Read more →

  • Tony Curtis is a legend in his own right. He has starred in dozens of classic films including Some Like It Hot, The Defiant Ones ,Spartacus and Operation Petticoat. He enlisted in the United States Navy after the attack on Pearl Harbor and war was declared. He joined the Pacific submarine force. Curtis served aboard a submarine tender, the USS Proteus, until the end of…

    Read more →

  • Originally posted on History of Sorts: It is strange how something can be forgotten and yet be vividly remembered. This disaster had slipped my mind but yet when I was reminded of it the images became very clear again. Today marks the 25th anniversary of the Bijlmer disaster in Amsterdam. At Sunday evening October 4,…

    Read more →

  • Germany re-united 3-10-1990

    I am not going too deep into the re-unification of Germany. I will leave the images do the talking. German reunification (Deutsche Wiedervereinigung) took place on October 3, 1990, when the areas of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR, in English commonly called “East Germany”) were incorporated into the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG, in English commonly called “West Germany”), both…

    Read more →

  • On this day 75 years ago the  first V-2 missile was fired successfully from Peenemunde, heralding the start of space travel. German scientists, led by von Braun, had been working on the development of these long-range missiles since the 1930s. Three trial launches had already failed; the fourth in the series, known as A-4, finally…

    Read more →