History

  • Willie Nelson is probably the last ,together with Kris Kristofferson, great Country and Western performers. At least one of the last who has the same caliber as Johnny Cash, Jim Reeves, and Freddy Fender. Nelson was born in Abbott, Texas, on April 29, 1933,the son of Myrle Marie (née Greenhaw) and Ira Doyle Nelson.His birth…

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  • Martha Gellhorn was a pioneering female journalist who often reported from the front lines during World War II. Her father was Jewish, and her mother was a protestant. She was married to Ernest Hemingway from 1940–1945. She was the only woman to land in Normandy, France, on 6 June 1944—D-Day. She was also one of…

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  • What is a band without a Bass player? Not much really when you think of it. Yet bass players are nearly always underrated. Most people will be able to name a list of singers, guitarists, drummers and even keyboard players when asked, but they will struggle with listing bass players. The bass is real the…

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  • Buchenwald

    ++++CONTAINS SOME GRAPHIC IMAGES+++++++++ I could do a blog on any of the 44,000 Nazi concentration camps. Yes you are reading that right, there were about 44,000 concentration camps. Some were extermination camps, some were labour camps and there were transit camps. Regardless what their designation was, the ultimate aim was the annihilation of those…

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  • Happy Earth Day

    Happy Earth Day everybody. Although I am a bit confused about the date. Earth day really should be held on October 23. Everyone knows that the earth was created on 23 October 4004 BC at 6 pm to be precise. Well at least according to Archbishop James Ussher. He was born in Dublin on January…

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  • There is nothing I can write that would do any justice to the legend that is Jim Steinman. Without him there would be no Meat Loaf, Bonnie Tyler and probably no Celine Dion either. His songs were not just songs, they were epic mini operas. Something many people don’t know that aside from being a…

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  • American composer and conductor Enrico Nicola “Henry” Mancini was born in Cleveland on April 16 in 1924.But he grew up in Pennsylvania, where he played the flute flute with his father in an Italian immigrant music group called “Sons of Italy”, At age eight, Mancini started to learn to play the piccolo. He later studied…

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  • “I got the military cross. Mind you, I got the Navy a bit annoyed as well!” is just one of those classic one liners from the legendary Tommy Cooper, He was one of my all time favourite comedians, and despite what people may think he actually was a talented magician. But there is so much…

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  • The Dutch were surprised that the Germans did not honour the neutrality of the Netherlands, why I don’t know because there were indications that the Germans had plans to invade the Netherlands. On the other hand the Germans expected to be welcomed with open arms. They had envisaged like the anschluß in Austria. Both nations…

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  • I came across date about the ‘Voormalig Rotterdams kindertehuis’ or Former Rotterdam home for Children. Initially I was a bit confused. I wanted to find out more so I looked in some Rotterdam archives, then I noticed that the actual home was in Arnhem. To make it even more confusing the address was Amsterdamscheweg 1,…

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