World War 2
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“Little Boy” was the codename for the atomic bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 during World War II by the Boeing B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay, piloted by Colonel Paul W. Tibbets, Jr., commander of the 509th Composite Group of the United States Army Air Forces. It was the first atomic bomb to be used in warfare. The Hiroshima bombing was the second artificial nuclear explosion in history, after the Trinity…
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After Japan invaded the Dutch East Indies, the Japanese occupier put 100,000 Dutch people in camps. There were separate camps for prisoners of war, for men and boys ages ten years and older and for women and children. Helen Lotichius-Sokolowski was sent to the women’s camp Banjoe Biroe 10, near the city of Semarang on…
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Leon Jessel,(January 22, 1871 – January 4, 1942) was a German composer of operettas and light classical music pieces. Although if it had been up to his parents Samuel and Mary Jessel, he would have become a textile sales man.His Father however was a gifted violinist. Today Leon Jessel is best known internationally as the composer of the popular jaunty…
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It is often assumed that “Little Boy” the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima was the first atomic device to be detonated, however truth is “the Gadget” was the 1st atomic bomb. Trinity was the code name of the first detonation of a nuclear weapon. It was conducted by the United States Army at 5:29 am on July 16, 1945, as part…
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On Aug. 3, 1943, Lt. Gen. George S. Patton slapped a soldier who was hospitalized for psychoneurosis, accusing him of cowardice. The incident nearly ended Patton’s career.. Lt. Gen. George S. Patton, commander of the Seventh U.S. Army, visited a military hospital in Sicily on Aug. 3, 1943. He traveled past the beds of wounded…
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The Dutch famine of 1944–45, known as the Hongerwinter (“Hunger winter”) in Dutch, was a famine that took place in the German-occupied part of the Netherlands, especially in the densely populated western provinces north of the great rivers, during the winter of 1944–45, near the end of World War II. A German blockade cut off food and fuel shipments from farm areas.…
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One out of every five inhabitants of the town of Aalten located in the Achterhoek, the so-called back corner in the east of the Netherlands bordering Germany, was in hiding there during the Second World War. The occupier was on constant look out for people on the run, Jews or young men trying…
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Freedom! Suddenly Dutch flags were hanging all over the place and people were singing and dancing arm-in-arm in the streets. But pent-up emotions were also unleashed: ‘Kraut whores’, girls and women who had consorted with the Germans during the war, were targeted. They were dragged from their homes, marched through the streets, jeered and spit…
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It was shortly after midnight—on the 30th of July, 1945—when disaster struck. After delivering the Hiroshima-bomb components to Tinian Island, the USS Indianapolis and her crew of 1,196 sailors were sailing west, toward Leyte (in the Philippines). At 00:14 on 30 July, she was struck on her starboard side by two Type 95 torpedoes, one in the bow and one amidships, from the…
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