History
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In the years 535 and 536, several remarkable aberrations in world climate took place. They were the most severe and protracted short-term episodes of cooling in the Northern Hemisphere in the last 2 Millennia. Including bizarrely low-temperatures, with snow fall during the summer months in some locations; widespread crop-failures and famine; greatly decreased levels of…
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The photograph above is of Gezina de Leeuwe-de Jong with her four children. I presume the photo was taken by her husband and the father of the children, Louis de Leeuw. I reckon that’s why he is not in the picture. He was a son of Barend de Leeuwe and Sientje van Minden. He married…
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The photo above is the gate at Buchenwald Concentration Camp. The phrase on the gate says “Jedem Das Seine” which is the literal German translation of the Latin phrase suum cuique, meaning “to each his own” or “to each what he deserves.” Buchenwald was a concentration camp established on Ettersberg Hill near Weimar, Germany, in…
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(Originally posted on December 28, 2018) For the size of the country it is astonishing how many football greats come from the Netherlands. Names like Johann Cruijff, Johan Neeskens, Ruud Gullit, Marco van Basten and Arjen Robben to name but a few, but the name Sjaak Swart certainly belongs in that list. Sjaak (Sjakie) Swart…
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The title is a line from a song by Gary Moore and Phil Lynott, “Out in the Fields.” Although the song has nothing to do with the Holocaust, the particular line I used for this title was a reality for millions. Millions were murdered for no reason other than hate and a warped sense of…
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Following the Hiroshima bombing on August 6, the Soviet declaration of war and the Nagasaki bombing on August 9, the Emperor’s speech was broadcast at noon Japan Standard Time on August 15, 1945, and did reference the atomic bombs as a reason for the surrender. The broadcast was recorded a day earlier but was broadcast…
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On this day 21 years ago, I escorted my wife to the maternity hospital in Limerick. Our beautiful baby girl was born that day. Although I did not like James Blunt’s song “You’re Beautiful” prior to that moment, when it played on the radio in the maternity hospital room at the exact second she was…
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It was January 7,1942, just about a month after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Fearing imminent chemical attack on American soil, the government issued thousands of gas mask to civilians. But the smallest citizens couldn’t fit into the regulation-sized masks. They were too heavy and too big. Plus, aren’t those things scary? The production of…
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As the title might suggest I was trying to find some poetic sentences to describe this picture. But I couldn’t,because the more I looked at the picture the less sense it made. In fact it made no sense to me at all. What is the sense of keeping all these shoes? Were they meant as…
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