History
General history issues, although a lot will be about WW2
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Love her or loathe her, but there is no denying she is a musical icon Madonna (born August 16, 1958, in Bay City, Michigan) is an American singer, songwriter, actress, and entrepreneur whose extraordinary popularity during the 1980s and 1990s enabled her to achieve a level of power and creative control that was almost unprecedented…
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“The Queen Remembered” Eight years ago today, the world dimmed a little when we lost the incomparable Aretha Franklin—a voice that defined an era and a soul that lifted countless hearts. On this solemn anniversary, we once again celebrate not just her extraordinary talent, but the lasting legacy she left behind. A Voice Like No…
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August 16 is not a good day in Music History. On August 16,1938, legendary Blues musician Robert Johnson died at the age of 27. Making him of the first member of the elusive club of 27. Johnson’s death was not reported publicly. Almost 30 years later, Gayle Dean Wardlow, a Mississippi-based musicologist researching Johnson’s life,…
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Josef Jakobs (30 June 1898 – 15 August 1941) was a German spy and the last person to be executed at the Tower of London. Captured shortly after parachuting into Britain during the Second World War, he was convicted of espionage under the Treachery Act 1940 and sentenced to death. Because he had broken his…
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The Omagh bombing, which took place on August 15, 1998, stands as the deadliest single atrocity of the decades-long sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland known as the Troubles. Just four months after the historic signing of the Good Friday Agreement, a car bomb exploded in the busy centre of Omagh, County Tyrone, in an attack…
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A Spontaneous Act of Impulse On August 15, 1936, during the Summer Olympics in Berlin, officials, athletes, and spectators witnessed an unusual and unforgettable moment. At the men’s 1500-metre freestyle swimming final, a 43-year-old American tourist named Carla de Vries from Norwalk, California, made her way close to Hitler’s box. Clad in a red hat,…
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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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Philogelos (Greek: Φιλόγελως, meaning “Lover of Laughter”) is the title of the oldest surviving joke book in the world. It is a collection of roughly 260 jokes, preserved in Greek and traditionally attributed to Hierocles and Philagrios, probably compiled around the 4th century AD, although many of the jokes are considerably older. Here are just…
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Some lives are difficult to describe without resorting to words such as hero, martyr, or saint. Maximilian Kolbe is certainly one of them. Yet I use the word martyr reluctantly, not because the word is inappropriate, but because it can sometimes carry connotations that obscure the extraordinary nature of what Kolbe actually did. He did…
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The Buchenwald Trial was a war crime trial conducted by the United States Army as a court-martial in Dachau, then part of the American occupation zone. It took place from 11 April to 14 August 1947. On 14 August 1947, the Buchenwald main trial United States of America vs. Josias Prince of Waldeck et al. ended. All…
History of Sorts 