France

  • They gave their today for our tomorrow. Our tomorrow was sacred to them. They gave their today for our tomorrow. Sacrificing their own lives for those they would never meet. They gave their today for our tomorrow. A tomorrow that we should cherish even more. They gave their today for our tomorrow. Their bravery should…

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  • On June 18, 1940, Charles de Gaulle and Winston Churchill both gave speeches that instilled hope in the darkest hour. Some of their speeches of defiance still ring true today. The Appeal of 18 June—Charles de Gaulle (Translated) The appeal is often seen as the origin of the French Resistance to the German occupation during…

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  • When  214 crates containing the body parts of a Lady, arrive on a ship, in the harbor, you would expect a frantic Police investigation/ But nothing could be further from the truth, the Police just couldn’t care less. Well to be honest I could not blame the Police on this occasion. Because the Lady in this…

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  • This is one of those men that makes me proud to be Dutch, and like me he has also a connection with Ireland. He was born in Hattem, a small town  in the east of the Netherlands. His father was an officer in the Dutch Navy. Willem studied mathematics at Trinity College, Dublin, where he…

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  • What a sense of relief it must have been when the French people found out that the allied troops had finally arrived on June 6 1944. Unfortunately though D-Day wasn’t the end of the war it was only the start of the end and many innocent lives were still lost between that day and the…

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  • Robert Desnos was born in Paris on 4 July 1900,the son of a successful café owner,He was a French surrealist poet who played a key role in the Surrealist movement. When World War II broke out in 1939, he  was drafted as a sergeant. His wartime journalism appeared in magazines such as Europe, Commune, and…

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  • No, this is not a long-lost book written by Jules Verne—it is, however, a forgotten event that happened on June 7, 1940, a few days after Germany bombed Paris. The Jules Verne was the name of a Farman 223.4 airplane of the French Navy. Determined to revenge the bombing of the French capital, the French…

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  • It’s May 17 1942, you country is occupied by a hostile foreign nation. Fellow country man are dying on battlefields or being executed for being members of the resistance and other fellow country men are being deported to death camps. What do you do? Well watch a football match of course. Since the champions league…

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  • You often hear the term ‘the coldest winter,or hottest summer on record etc’ but the oldest ongoing instrumental record of temperature in the world is the Central England Temperature record, started in 1659. Although I am not disputing the climate change, the fact is there have been climate changes  or freak weather events ever since the…

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  • Punks in WWII

    Before you start thinking that this will be a blog about Punk bands like the Sex Pistols singing about WWII, you’d be wrong. In fact, it has nothing to do with Punk music but more about Jazz. I am referring to Punk as a rebellion against the establishment. During WWII there were 2 groups very…

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