Whats To Say?

Wow Wow

2008-01-29T16:50:00.000-08:00

Wow, it certainly has been a long time since I've posted. I have a ton of Knowledge news emails to post and I will eventually. Well I did. Just checked and now have about 19 emails to post. I guess I deleted the over 200 ones I did have. Oh well. Will get them posted so I can delete them I guess.

Onward I go.

The Battle of Hastings: William the Conqueror's Race Against Time

2006-08-23T10:37:00.001-07:00

William, the Duke of Normandy, faced a major problem in his quest to rule England: time. William was related to England's King Edward by marriage, and Edward had bequeathed the kingdom to William before he died in January 1066. However, with William across the English Channel in Normandy, a group of noblemen elected the Anglo-Saxon Harold to be king. William intended to back his claim to the throne by sailing to England with an army of 10,000 men in mid-August, but contrary winds delayed his departure until late September. That delay cut into his army's supplies, putting William in a bind.
Medieval armies could not stay in the field for long. They lacked organized supply systems common in modern armies, and most of the soldiers served under feudal obligations, without pay. Furthermore, William's army was too large to live off the land, and the English weather would be worsening soon. William had only a few weeks to achieve his objective before he would have to return to Normandy.
When William landed near Hastings--on England's southern coast--on September 28, Harold was in northern England fighting another claimant to the throne. William decided to goad Harold into rushing south by ravaging the countryside near Hastings, destroying homes, burning crops, and killing peasants. The strategy worked: In the space of three weeks, Harold's army marched 180 miles north, fought a major battle, then marched south to fight again. As a result, when William attacked on October 14, Harold could not bring his full strength to bear, and he died in the defeat.
As for the countryside William had desolated, the typical village in Sussex lost 80 percent of its assessed value, and some villages had not recovered even 20 years later. For waging war on his future subjects, William the Conqueror faced numerous rebellions during his 21-year reign.

Soviet Marshal Georgi Zhukov: The High Cost of Defending Stalingrad

2006-08-23T10:37:00.000-07:00

The German army was poised to capture the Russian city of Stalingrad in the fall of 1942. To prevent this, Soviet Marshal Georgi Zhukov devised a two-part plan: On the southern half of the Russian front, Zhukov would engage the Germans at Stalingrad directly; on the northern half, he would launch surprise attacks intended to break through the German lines and divert enemy troops away from Stalingrad. Zhukov did save the city, but Operation Mars proved to be one of the costliest military campaigns ever.
Having risen through the ranks of the Soviet army after serving in World War I, Zhukov insisted during the 1930s that the army be modernized. The thousands of new planes and tanks he succeeded in having built may have saved the Soviet Union from collapse in the face of Germany's 1941 invasion. As a strategist, Zhukov relied on overwhelming force, which allowed him to launch simultaneous offensives in order to surround enemy units. This approach proved effective in defending Leningrad and Moscow, so Zhukov amassed a force of more than 1.5 million troops for his plan to liberate Stalingrad.
In the north, massive Soviet artillery bombardment led to several breakthroughs in the German lines, but Zhukov underestimated the effects of wintry weather and German anti-tank defenses. German artillery destroyed frozen roads easily, preventing Soviet reinforcements from reaching the front, and the suddenly isolated Soviet attackers were butchered.
Perhaps because of his history of success, Zhukov refused to call off the offensive until weeks later, when he had lost 500,000 men--more than the United States lost during all of World War II. But because his forces in the south were able to encircle and destroy the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad, Zhukov's record remained untarnished. He ensured his status as the Soviet Union's greatest war hero when he led the army into Berlin two years later.

History's Greatest Raiders: Vikings

2006-08-23T10:36:00.000-07:00

The English island of Lindisfarne was both sacred and wealthy. Pilgrims who came to the island's monastery to visit the grave of St. Cuthbert often brought donations with them--donations that drew the attention of Norsemen known as Vikings (which means "pirate"). Beginning in 793, Vikings launched a series of violent raids to plunder the monastery, and the monks eventually fled, taking St. Cuthbert's body with them. For the next 60 years, the threat of Viking raids forced the peoples of England, Ireland, and France to regard the sea in terror.
Coastal communities rarely had even an hour's notice to prepare for an attack. Vikings had fast ships, were heavily armed, and chose lightly defended targets. They were also willing to kill anyone that stood in their way--including women, children, the elderly, and monks. A Christian prayer from this period reflects the fear instilled by Vikings: "From the fury of the Norsemen, deliver us O Lord."
In 845, the Viking chieftain Ragnar carried out a particularly brazen raid on Paris. His target was well inland and would have to be approached by river. Furthermore, his progress would be slowed by winter ice. As a result, Charles the Bald, the king of the Franks, had plenty of time to prepare.
Unfortunately, Charles decided to split his army so it could defend both banks of the river. Ragnar easily defeated the smaller force and hanged 111 captives in full view of the other French soldiers. Meeting no further resistance, Ragnar's men entered Paris on Easter Sunday, where Charles paid Ragnar 7,000 pieces of silver so he would go away. Although Charles was criticized for paying this ransom, he bought himself eight years of peace. In hindsight, he probably wished he had greeted Ragnar at the mouth of the river with the silver.

George Washington at Fort Necessity

2006-08-23T10:33:00.000-07:00

On May 28, 1754, a group of colonial militiamen encountered 30 Frenchmen (some of them soldiers) preparing breakfast near the Ohio River in present-day Pennsylvania. When 22-year-old Lt. Col. George Washington ordered his men to open fire on the French, he started the French and Indian War--and got himself in serious trouble.
Virginia Governor Robert Dinwiddie had ordered Washington to build forts along the Ohio River before the French could do the same. After learning that the French already were settling the river valley, Washington took it upon himself to drive them out. After the May 28 skirmish that killed 10 Frenchmen, including the group's leader, Coulon de Jumonville, Washington learned that he had attacked a diplomatic party. The French army, led by Jumonville's brother, intended to retaliate.
Washington moved his troops and supervised the hasty construction of the aptly named Fort Necessity. Defending the fort would be difficult. It was built in a creek bottom, an unadvantageous location for defense. To make matters worse, forested hills surrounded the fort on three sides and the defensive perimeter was cut too close, allowing attackers to approach the fort. The fort also did not have enough supplies to withstand a siege. When the French arrived on July 3, the colonists found themselves outnumbered 700 to 293, and Washington's force suffered 100 casualties in one day of fighting. Washington surrendered the next day.
The French drew up a treaty Washington thought was generous--he and his men were allowed to keep one cannon and retreat with flags flying. Because of an inexperienced translator, however, Washington's signature on the treaty also meant that he had admitted to assassinating a French diplomat. The British were outraged. Washington's mistake allowed France to justify a war in North America by arguing that his actions had demonstrated Britain's hostile intent. Ridiculed in Europe as an inept colonial and demoted to captain, Washington resigned from the militia.

Germ Warfare Throughout History: From Blankets to Missiles

2006-08-23T10:31:00.000-07:00

DID YOU KNOW? On October 3, 1932 with its admission into the League of Nations, Iraq became independent after 17 years of British rule and centures of Ottoman rule.

Germ warfare is not a new concept. Armies have attempted to spread disease among their enemies since the 15th century, when the Mongols catapulted corpses infected with plague into Genoese settlements. British troops gave blankets infected with smallpox to Native American tribes during the French and Indian War (1754-1763). It was not until the 20th century, however, that germ warfare attracted widespread interest--and fear.
World War I, for example, is often associated with the use of chemical weapons (in the form of chlorine and mustard gas), but the German military also attempted to disrupt Allied transportation capabilities by injecting the deadly bacterium anthrax into mules and horses. Worldwide outrage prompted the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which banned the use of chemical and biological weapons but allowed their research and production.
During World War II, the Japanese army subjected the people of Manchuria to cruel germ warfare tests. Airplanes dropped 15 million plague-infested fleas on the cities of this Chinese province, and prisoners were intentionally infected with typhoid, cholera, salmonella, and meningitis. At Nanking, Japanese soldiers handed out chocolate laced with anthrax to local children.
By 1972, the world's superpowers had concluded that the prospect of releasing deadly bacteria into the air--where they would be subject to the unpredictable forces of wind and weather--was simply too risky. That year's Biological Weapons Convention banned the development and production of biological weapons, but not all countries embraced the treaty.
Iraq, for one, threatened to use biological weapons during the Gulf War (1990-1991), and the subsequent capture of Iraqi bombs and missiles filled with anthrax and botulism proved Saddam Hussein could have followed through on that threat. The fear of US nuclear retaliation may have deterred him from using these weapons, but their existence confirmed that the possibility of germ warfare is no less likely today than before the Biological Weapons Convention was signed.

The Mystery of India's Lost Civilization

2006-08-23T10:30:00.000-07:00

DID YOU KNOW? On February 19, 1931, New Delhi becomes the capital of India.

When the British built a railway through Harappa in northwest colonial India (now the Pakistani Punjab) in the 1850s, they took scattered bricks near the tracks to fill the space under the railroad ties. The discovery of unique, inscribed seals inspired serious excavations beginning in 1876. By 1950, archaeologists had traced the origins of the bricks to a 5,000-year-old city that had harbored some 50,000-80,000 people, unrecorded in the texts of ancient India. We now know that Harappa was just one of many urban centers spread across the Punjab, Indus River Valley, and possibly beyond.
This sprawling megalopolis, which emerged circa 3500 BC and flourished between 2500 and 1500 BC, was perhaps the largest of all ancient civilizations. Variously referred to as the Indus Valley Civilization (IVC) or Harappan Civilization (after its first discovered city), it includes the large city discovered at Mohenjodaro in the 1920s. Harappan artifacts have been found as far away as Bombay, New Delhi, Gujarat, northern Afghanistan, Iraq (Mesopotamia), and the Iranian border--signs of substantial trade and possibly emigration.
Because its written language still resists decoding, archeologists must look to excavated structures and artifacts for clues to culture, commerce, and society. Harappa's seals, toys, pottery, and detailed human figurines are beautiful, but shed meager light on these basic subjects. Equally little is known about Harappan religion, although the mythic figures on some seals bear similarities to Hindu gods.
The culture seems to have persisted unchanged by outside influences until its rapid decline. Although Harappan society collapsed over a 200-year span starting about 1,700 BC, the causes elude scholars. Only a short, indefensible wall surrounds Harappa, with little evidence of an army, so destructive nomadic invaders seem a plausible factor. India's ancient Rig Veda texts describe warlike nomads (termed "Aryans") who drove darker-skinned farming peoples (termed "Dravidians") from northern to southern India. But it is also possible that Harappans themselves were the India-invading "Aryan" authors of the Vedas, driven east and south by population pressures, desertification of farmlands, and anonymous invaders.

The Marshall Plan: Rebuilding Europe After World War II

2006-08-23T10:29:00.000-07:00

DID YOU KNOW? On December 9th, 1961, SS Colonol Adolf Eichmann is found guilty of war crimes in Israel.

In a now-celebrated speech delivered at the Harvard University commencement in 1947, newly appointed American Secretary of State George C. Marshall described the colossal rebuilding task that Europe faced following World War II. "Europe's requirements are so much greater than her present ability to pay that she must have substantial additional help or face economic, social, and political deterioration of a very grave character," Marshall declared. This speech marked the official beginning of the Economic Recovery Program (ERP), better known as "The Marshall Plan."
Before his historic speech, Marshall had hoped all of Europe would embrace his ideas. On March 1st, 1947, he attended a meeting of foreign ministers in Moscow, in the hope of addressing the suffering of the European people. But following a private and contentious interview with Joseph Stalin, Marshall realized that the Russian dictator meant to profit from Europe's devastation rather than seek a program of healing and reconstruction. Disgusted, Marshall returned to America determined to lead the recovery efforts himself.
Under Marshall's guidance, 16 European countries (absent the Soviet Union and areas under its control) drew up a proposal for the planned reconstruction and presented it to the US government in September 1947. Over the six years during which the Marshall Plan was formally in operation, Congress appropriated $13.3 billion in aid.
In April 1948, the European nations receiving the aid formed the European Economic Cooperation (forerunner of the EEC). Countries were allowed to use the aid as they deemed necessary, with most earmarking the funds for housing, transportation, and industry.
The Marshall Plan would prove to be an extraordinary success. By 1949, less than five years after World War II, the agriculture, industry, and foreign trade of most of the participant countries were at or near prewar levels, and industrial production in some was actually 15 percent above.

The Secret Weapon that Won World War II

2006-08-23T10:28:00.000-07:00

DID YOU KNOW? On November 23, 1940, Romania signs the Tripartite Pact, officially allying itself with Germany, Italy, and Japan.

America's lesser known secret weapon caused even more destruction than the atomic bomb. Called Operation Magic, this weapon was military and diplomatic intelligence, and its chief practitioner was Commander Joseph J. Rochefort, an eccentric army officer who dressed in a velvet smoking jacket and slippers.

The Signal Intelligence Service (SIS) was the branch of the US Army responsible for cracking other countries' codes--including those of America's allies. It had been working to break Japan's diplomatic code since the late 1920s, and in 1937, it finally succeeded. In fact, most of Japan's encrypted messages were being deciphered when the Pacific war began four years later. Commander Rochefort, the man behind this operation, had his hollow-eyed, often unshaven staff working on their IBM tabulating machines around the clock. Because he, too, would stay locked in his office for days at a time, Rochefort made sure to dress comfortably.

"Magic" tipped the Japanese Imperial Navy's hand at the battle of Midway and other naval engagements, and enabled American submarines to locate (and sink) thousands of Japanese cargo ships. Another key success was deciphering the itinerary of an inspection tour Japan's Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto was planning to make of bases in the South Pacific. US fighter planes shot down the admiral's plane as a result and deprived Japan of its most respected military leader.

Although regular army and navy types seldom knew what to make of brilliant but eccentric codebreakers like Rochefort, the work of these unsung heroes was essential in securing Allied victory in the Pacific. Sometimes, it seemed like they truly could work magic.

The Louvre: A Palace Unfit for a King

2006-08-23T10:27:00.000-07:00

DID YOU KNOW? On November 18, 1793, the Louvre officially opens in Paris.

The Louvre, one of the world's finest art museums, was once a residence of French kings--but not an altogether pleasant one. No one knows exactly what the name means, but suggestions have included "Saxon fortress," "leper hospital," "signal tower," "wolf kennel," "oak tree formation," and "red place." We do know the original structure was built in the 12th century as a fortress, not a palace. Compounding the Louvre's inadequate accommodations was its unfortunate location: Paris in the Middle Ages was a town widely known to be a breeding ground for plague and other maladies.
Over the centuries, various kings rebuilt and added onto the Louvre, but never stayed in it for long. In 1666, Louis XIV decided he had had enough of his uncomfortable apartment inside the palace and the stench of raw sewage that rose from the ditches surrounding it. He moved out to the countryside of Versailles, leaving a jumbled mess of a palace that would only get messier.
Louis XIV authorized various state academies to occupy the Louvre, including those associated with art, poetry, philosophy, and theology--even the royal rabbits moved in! The palace fell into a state of disrepair that saw prostitutes roaming the halls and duels fought in the courtyard. By the time of the French Revolution, some of the stone walls actually were falling down.
Today, the Louvre has benefited from ongoing major renovations and ultramodern additions, but you can still get a feel for its dreary origins: Parts of the original 12th-century tower meant to protect King Philippe Auguste from British attacks were recently excavated and put on display.

The War in Vietnam: One Soldier Stops a Massacre

2006-08-23T10:26:00.000-07:00

DID YOU KNOW? On November 11th, 1967, three U.S. prisoners of war are released by the Viet Cong in a ceremony in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

In March 1968, the US Army's Americal Division was on a search-and-destroy mission in a Viet Cong stronghold popularly called "Pinkville." So far, the mission was a failure--mines and sniper fire were killing American soldiers, but the enemy was nowhere to be found. The day after an emotional memorial service, Lt. William Calley's platoon went looking for revenge in a nearby village called My Lai. What happened next stigmatized every American soldier fighting in the Vietnam War, and the media overlooked one soldier's courage.
Calley ordered his men to gather the villagers--mostly women, children, and the elderly--into groups. No one resisted. Calley then gave the order to open fire. When some soldiers hesitated, Calley took a weapon himself and fired. By the end of the day, somewhere between 175 and 400 Vietnamese were dead. Besides the mass killings, there were individual murders by Calley and others, and at least one gang rape.
Flying overhead, Americal Division helicopter pilot Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson witnessed some of the killings. Seeing soldiers approaching a group of about 10 civilians, he landed in front of the soldiers, then ordered his crew to cover him while he confronted the soldiers and shepherded the civilians to safety. Later, he saw movement in a pile of corpses, landed, and rescued a toddler.
The My Lai massacre tarnished the Army's image, helped divide public opinion about the war, and gave rise to the epithet "babykiller" that stung returning veterans. While reporters concentrated on Calley's trial, conviction, and dishonor--which they perceived as emblematic of an out-of-control military--Thompson's heroism was reduced to a footnote. Three decades later, however, the Army finally presented him with the Soldier's Medal, its highest non-combat award. Out of the Vietnam War's darkest moment, an ember of honor glowed.

Revealing the Past: Stonehenge

2006-08-23T10:22:00.000-07:00

DID YOU KNOW? On October 28, 1914 Dr. Jonas Salk was born in New York City.

Revealing the Past: Stonehenge
Who built Stonehenge, the majestic and enigmatic prehistoric monuments on the Salisbury plains in southern England? One legend states that the devil bought the stones from an old woman and used his magical powers to transport them to England. Another has it that dancing giants were magically turned into the stones.
Early scientists guessed that the standing stones were the site of rituals held by Druids. Unfortunately, the stones had been standing for nearly 3,000 years when the Celts arrived. Modern archaeologists believe that Stonehenge was constructed in three phases over 25 generations. Around 3000 BC, the so-called Heel Stone was erected outside of a circular ditch.
During the second construction stage around 2150 BC, an avenue was built and two crescent-shaped rows of standing stones were erected in the center of the circle. Around 2000 BC, a circle of sandstone pillars topped by lintels replaced earlier stones, and five trilithons--pairs of upright stones connected by a horizontal stone--were built in a horseshoe shape.
One of the many mysteries of Stonehenge is how the huge upright stones were dragged to Stonehenge from where geologists say they must have stood originally, about 14 miles away. The most popular theory holds that they were carried on rafts from the Welsh shore. The greatest mystery of the site, however, concerns its purpose.
Early archaeologists believed that Stonehenge was a temple. Some believed it was dedicated to sun worship. Recent theorists argue that Stonehenge was an astronomical "computer" used to predict solar and lunar alignments. Four "station" stones are believed to predict sunrise, sunset, moonrise, and moonset. Yet another theory is that the site was important for its sexual symbolism. The many questions Stonehenge raises are really an indication of how much we have left to learn about life in early Britain.

Military Disasters: The Long Defeat at Gallipoli

2006-08-23T10:18:00.000-07:00

In January 1915, Russia appealed to its World War I allies for help in fighting a Turkish invasion. Although Russian troops managed to foil the invasion on their own, Britain's First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill convinced the Allies to attack Turkey anyway. This political gesture resulted in a monumental military and political disaster.
The Allies planned to strike the Turkish capital of Constantinople by sailing through the Dardanelles--a 38-mile-long strait defended on either side by Turkish troops and guns. The strike was assigned to a fleet of 12 obsolete warships that were too old for maneuvering on the open sea, and would have succeeded if the commander had not turned back after losing three ships. He didn't know the Turks had run out of ammunition.
Thus, the Dardanelles would have to be captured by land. On April 25, the largest amphibious invasion in history began when 52,000 British, Australian, and New Zealand troops landed on Turkey's Gallipoli Peninsula. The Turkish defenders, occupying cliff-top fortifications, were able to keep the Allied troops pinned down on the beaches. Even when reinforcements arrived, the Allies could not advance.
The battle dragged into December before the Allies admitted defeat. In 259 days of fighting with nothing to show for it, more than half of the 480,000 Allied troops ultimately deployed were dead or wounded. Nowhere was the loss greater than among the ANZAC (Australia/New Zealand Army Corps) troops: New Zealanders sustained a casualty rate above 150 percent, indicating that many wounded men were sent back into battle, only to be wounded again or killed. To this day, Australians and New Zealanders observe April 25 as ANZAC Day in remembrance of the tragedy.
In Britain, the battle also caused significant political bloodletting. The head of the Royal Navy, the war secretary, the prime minister, and Churchill all resigned over the misguided operation.

The Master of Chess and Mass Murder

2006-08-23T10:16:00.000-07:00

Timur (1336-1405), the last Mongol conqueror of Central Asia, was so good at shatranj, the direct predecessor of chess, that he created his own, much more complex version. Where chess employs 16 pieces of six types on a board of 64 squares, Timur's game used 28 pieces of 11 different types on a board of 112 squares. His domination and expansion of the chessboard paralleled his success on the battlefield, where he showed opposing armies no mercy and extended his domain.
A leg injury earned Timur the nickname Timur-I-Leng (Persian for "the iron limper"), which became Anglicized as Tamerlane, but the resulting limp belied his military prowess. Through surprise, tactical feints, and the effective use of cavalry (like Genghis Khan before him), Tamerlane enjoyed 35 years of virtually uninterrupted conquest. Although his empire eventually stretched from Syria to Tibet, his objective was not to capture territory but treasure, and after looting one city, he would wait a few years and return to loot it again.
The people who stood in his way frequently were slaughtered en masse. After capturing Delhi in India, for example, Tamerlane killed all the defenders and piled their skulls--some 80,000 in all--into a pyramid as a warning to others.
Indeed, until eclipsed by 20th century practitioners of genocide like Adolf Hitler, Tamerlane was the archetype of despotism in Western minds. Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe and American poet Edgar Allan Poe both invoked his name to symbolize cruel, ruthless tyranny.
But in his capital of Samarkand (now a city of modern Uzbekistan), Tamerlane was revered as a man of culture and learning, who brought the city wealth and prestige. Beautiful mosques and monuments paid for by his plunder still remain, including the mausoleum in which his corpse rests in an ebony coffin covered by a slab of jade.

The Tet Offensive: Turning Point in Vietnam

2006-08-23T10:15:00.000-07:00

In 1968, the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and the Communist rebels known as Viet Cong took advantage of the most important Vietnamese holiday by attacking South Vietnam and its American allies when they least expected it. The Communists hoped their daring offensive would stir revolutionary fervor in the South Vietnamese and inspire them to join the Communist cause. That didn't happen, but the offensive did change the outcome of the war--in a way the Communists could not have expected.
The Vietnamese people believe Tet (the lunar new year) sets a precedent for the rest of the year. Families observe the holiday with a week of feasting, praying, and exchanging gifts. During the Vietnam War, the two sides would observe a cease-fire so everyone could celebrate Tet. At 3 AM on January 31, 1968, however, NVA and Viet Cong troops capitalized on the cease-fire by launching coordinated attacks on 36 South Vietnamese cities and towns.
Although most of these attacks were defeated within hours or days, the fighting in Vietnam's former capital, Hue, raged for 25 days. Much of the violence was replayed on American television, and 142 Marines died in the battle. Nearly 3,000 civilians were murdered during a Communist purge of the city.
The Viet Cong was virtually eliminated as a direct result of the Tet offensive (leaving the war to be fought by the NVA), but the surprise and intensity of the attack was a public-relations disaster for the US. Coming at a time when American military leaders had been telling the US public that victory was near, the Tet offensive fueled the flames of protest against America's involvement in Vietnam. By the time Richard Nixon took office as president a year later, opposition to the war was so strong that Nixon began withdrawing US troops.

The Boxer Rebellion: Chinese 'Fists' Against European Imperialism

2006-08-23T10:14:00.000-07:00

When a ragtag group of poor Northern Chinese first began an anti-foreigner rebellion by killing isolated Christian missionaries, few people either in or outside of China cared. It was 1900, and China's rulers had their own problems, watching helplessly as European and other foreign imperialists competed for commercial, military, and political concessions in China and Western missionaries--many from America's Midwest--competed for souls.
While China boasted a proud history, and a population of 300 million in 1900--more than three times that of the United States and six times that of the largest western European nation (Germany)--centuries of isolationism had weakened her militarily. In the 19th century, European military strength made this dismayingly clear.
Britain took over Hong Kong after defeating China in the first Opium War of 1842, in which the Chinese were forced to accept the sale of opium. After winning the second Opium War in 1860, the Western powers imposed a permanent diplomatic presence in Peking (modern Beijing) and Christian missionaries pushed deep within China. In 1895, the Chinese suffered a disastrous defeat by the newly modernized Japan. By the turn of the century the Europeans and Americans were busily divvying up territories and trading rights, while the Chinese rulers could do nothing more than weakly protest the "tiger-like voracity" of the foreign powers.
The Western diplomats and evangelicals in China made little effort to try to understand or appreciate their unwilling hosts. Unsurprisingly, they were caught off-guard by the rise of the Boxers, a secret society that appeared in 1900, embracing a strange but powerful combination of religion, magic, martial arts, and strong anti-foreign rhetoric.
The "Fists of Righteous Harmony" (nicknamed "Boxers" by Westerners for their physical exercises) were disorganized and lacked a central leader, but they had a simple, violent goal: to rid China of its ever-increasing foreign influence. Strengthened by an unwavering belief in their own invulnerability, they led a deadly movement against the complacent Westerners and the Chinese Christians.

The Marines in Korea: The Marine Who Wouldn't Quit

2006-08-23T10:13:00.000-07:00

DID YOU KNOW? On October 10, 1845 the United States Naval Academy, which was known as the Naval School until 1850, opened in Annapolis, Maryland, with 50 midshipmen students and seven professors.

On June 25, 1950, North Korea invaded South Korea, and US President Harry Truman ordered the American military to intervene. At the time, Marine Col. Lewis B. "Chesty" Puller was 52 years old and seemingly in the twilight of his career. A veteran of four World War II campaigns, the barrel-chested Puller voluntarily gave up his comfortable post as commander of the Pearl Harbor Marine Barracks in Hawaii to lead the 1st Marine Regiment into battle in Korea. It would not be the last time this aging soldier threw caution to the wind and asked to serve his country.
Unlike other officers of his rank, Puller fought on the front lines with the regiment during their successful September 1950 landing at Inchon in South Korea and their December retreat from the Chosin Reservoir in North Korea. During that desperate engagement, Puller earned his fifth Navy Cross--the Navy's highest honor for gallantry in combat.
Though 10 Chinese divisions surrounded his regiment at the Chosin Reservoir, Puller responded with typical bravado, claiming no number of Chinese troops could "stop a Marine regiment from going where it wants to go." Attacks came from all sides, but Puller's men were better trained and equipped than the Chinese soldiers, and managed to fight off seven enemy divisions. His decisive leadership ensured that all of his wounded men and salvageable equipment made it to the town of Hagaru, where the regiment joined other American units.
Promoted to assistant commander of the 1st Marine Division in 1951, Puller's new duties took him away from the front lines. Fifteen years later, he asked for one more chance to fight, this time in Vietnam. The 68-year-old lieutenant general, the only Marine to ever be awarded the Navy Cross five times, was turned down because of his age.

WWII in the Pacific: Admiral Yamamoto Starts the War

2006-08-23T10:03:00.000-07:00

"DID YOU NOW? On August 15, 1914 the Panama Canal, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, is inaugurated with the passage of the U.S. vessel Ancon, a cargo and passenger ship.
Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto believed Japan should avoid war with the United States at all costs. After studying at Harvard and working as a naval attaché in Washington, DC during the 1920s, he understood America's power and resolve. In the late 1930s, he wrote, "Japan lacks the national power for a naval race with America." Nevertheless, as a dedicated military man, Yamamoto had no choice but to prepare his forces for the inevitable conflict he knew they could never win.
A master of both poker and shogi (Japanese chess), Yamamoto was both a gambler and a skilled strategist. By studying a 1940 British aircraft carrier-based attack on Italian warships, Yamamoto hatched Operation Z: a daring plan to cripple the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii before America was even at war with Japan. Launched from aircraft carriers, Japanese long-range torpedo bombers carried out their December 7, 1941 raid with stunning success--except for the fact that America's aircraft carriers were not in the harbor that day. The US fleet was badly damaged, but not destroyed.
Before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Yamamoto had told the Japanese prime minister, "If we are ordered to do it, I can run wild for six months, putting up a string of victories. But if hostilities continue for two or three years, then I have no confidence that victory will be ours." Yamamoto knew the situation well. His Imperial Navy did indeed enjoy an uninterrupted string of victories at the war's outset. But almost exactly six months after Pearl Harbor, the victories ended. The loyal warrior Yamamoto, however, would fight on.

Military Disasters: The Charge of the Light Brigade

2006-08-23T10:01:00.000-07:00

DID YOU KNOW? On August 9, 1974, in the face of impeachment due to the Watergate scandal, Richard M. Nixon resigned as President of the United States and was succeeded by Vice President Gerald R. Ford.

In 1854, Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem "The Charge of the Light Brigade" made heroes of British soldiers who had recently died meaningless deaths in an obscure part of Russia. The famous tragedy might never have happened had the unit attacked the right target.
During the war for control of Russia's Crimean peninsula, some 25,000 Russian troops advanced toward the town of Balaclava on October 25. After capturing a series of hilltop forts overlooking a valley outside Balaclava, their advance was stopped by the charge of the Heavy Brigade--one of British cavalry commander Lord Lucan's two brigades. The Russians fell back and formed lines at one end of the valley and along the hills on either side.
Lord Raglan, the British high commander, sent a written order to Lucan to retake the hills, but the wording of the order led Lucan to believe he should attack only if an opportunity presented itself. So he waited. When a second order to advance arrived, Lucan was unsure if the hills were still the intended target. Raglan's messenger, Capt. Nolan, impertinently gestured toward the end of the valley and said, "There, my lord, is your enemy."
So, Lucan ordered the 673 men of his other brigade, the Light Brigade, into the valley. Some witnesses reported seeing Capt. Nolan racing out on his horse, pointing toward the hills, but he was killed by the first Russian cannon shot. Taking fire from three sides, some of the brigade still managed to reach the Russian lines, but with no reinforcements in sight, they had to retreat. Nearly 40 percent of the unit was killed or wounded.
The battle ended as a stalemate, but Tennyson's poem turned the disastrous charge into a proud moment in Britain's ultimately victorious campaign. His second poem about the battle--"The Charge of the Heavy Brigade"--is mostly forgotten.

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

2006-08-23T09:59:00.000-07:00

One of the prevailing misconceptions about the Holocaust is that the Jews did not resist the Nazi genocide. There were indeed various attempts at resistance, the most famous of which became known as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, in which 750 Jewish partisans held out for a month in 1943 against the German army.
From the outbreak of WWII in September 1939 through the early 1940s, the Nazis had forced Jews into ghettos in Eastern European cities like Warsaw (the word "ghetto" comes from 17th-century Venice, as the name of the quarter where the Jews were legally required to live; similar areas existed in most European cities). Despite terrible conditions of overcrowding, insufficient sanitation, and rampant disease and starvation, many Jews in the Nazi ghettos tried to organize resistance, arming themselves with what few weapons they could find or build.
Mordecai Anielewicz was a young Polish Jew who believed strongly in self-defense and resistance. Though he had escaped Warsaw early in the war, he returned in the summer of 1942, in an effort to defend it. That summer 300,000 Warsaw Jews were deported to Treblinka, a death camp, told that it was a work camp. Soon after, reports of mass murder leaked back to Warsaw, and Anielewicz led a group of mostly young people in forming a resistance organization called the ZOB (from the Polish Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa, the Jewish Fighting Organization).
In January 1943, Anielewicz's fighters fired on Nazi troops as they rounded up more ghetto inhabitants for deportation, and drove the startled Germans back, temporarily.
On April 19, 1943, the first night of Passover, heavily armed, well-trained German troops and police entered the ghetto. The ghetto fighters held out for nearly a month, but on May 16, 1943, their revolt ended when their command bunker was destroyed. Anielewicz and many others committed suicide, rather than face capture by the Nazis. Of the more than 56,000 Jews captured, about 7,000 were shot, and the rest were deported to concentration camps.

Stalin's Harvest in Hell

2006-08-23T09:57:00.000-07:00

When Sir Winston Churchill visited Joseph Stalin at the Kremlin in August 1942, he asked the Soviet premier if the stresses of the ongoing war were as terrible as those he had experienced a decade earlier when his government had collectivized Soviet agriculture forcibly. "Oh, no," Stalin replied, "the Collective Farm policy was a terrible struggle... Ten millions [dead]," he said, holding up his hands. "It was fearful. Four years it lasted. It was absolutely necessary...."
It was a strange admission. One full year of total war was less terrible than the collectivization program? Yet it was true.
One of the centerpieces of Soviet communism was the concept of collective agriculture. Instead of working small, private plots of land, farmers were to be joined in vast, supposedly more efficient collectives. Some of the strongest resistance to this came from the Ukraine.
In 1932, the Kremlin demanded that the Ukraine produce 44 percent more grain, an extraordinarily high number. It essentially was a deliberate attempt to kill off the resisting Ukrainian farmers, as part of the forced collectivization of agriculture.
Soviet law stated emphatically that no grain could be given to feed the peasants until the quota was met. Red Army troops, secret police units, and local Communist party officials were used against peasants suspected of hoarding grain, and an internal passport system was implemented, restricting the movement of Ukrainian peasants so that they could not travel in search of food. Ukrainian grain was collected and stored in grain elevators that were guarded by military and secret police units while Ukrainians starved.
In 1933, Victor Kravchenko was one of the Communist agents assigned to safeguard the new harvest, the "Harvest in Hell" as he called it in his autobiography. "The most terrifying sights were the little children with skeleton limbs dangling from balloon-like abdomens." Historians estimate that Stalin's terror-famine cost the lives of somewhere between five and ten million Ukrainians, but the precise figures will never be known.

Did Marco Polo Tell Millions of Lies?

2006-08-23T09:55:00.000-07:00

DID YOU KNOW? On June 22 1941, Germany launched Operation Barbarossa--over 3 million German troops invaded Russia in three parallel offensives, in what was the most powerful invasion force in history.

First published in 1298, The Travels of Marco Polo was an immediate bestseller in Europe. It earned praise as a comprehensive guide to Asia, but some dismissed it as a book of fables, arguing that Polo might not even have gone to China. Some seven centuries later, the debate continues.
Polo was prone to hyperbole and exaggeration. When asked what he saw on his travels, Polo's responses often were in terms of millions: Kublai Khan (first emperor of the Mongol dynasty and grandson of Ghengis Khan) and his army of millions ruled over millions of cities with millions of ships that carried millions in silk, jewels, and gold. Polo used the term so often that Venetians took to calling him Marco Milione.
But if Polo actually had lived in China and performed high-profile services for Kublai Khan, why haven't the Chinese--often noted for their diligent record keeping--found a single document bearing his name?
Polo also failed to mention key aspects of the Chinese culture and landscape, like foot binding (a crippling custom used to keep women's feet stylishly small), tea, chopsticks. And though he obsessed over the details of fortifications, he never mentioned the Great Wall, China's ultimate defensive structure. Finally, Polo used Persian words to describe Chinese sights, suggesting either that he failed to learn Chinese or that he heard tales of China from merchants along Persian caravan routes.
Other claims Polo made in his book, like the existence of birds large enough to carry elephants, did not help his credibility. But even with the evidence against him, no one has proven that Polo was a fraud. At the very least, his book marks one of Europe's earliest attempts to collect information on other parts of the world, kicking off the Age of Discovery and centuries of Western exploration and colonization.

Vlad the Impaler: The Truth Behind the Legends

2006-08-23T09:53:00.000-07:00

DID YOU KNOW? On September 30, 1399 Henry Bolingbroke was proclaimed King Henry IV of England upon the abdication of King Richard II.

Vlad Dracula, whose surname is derived from the Romanian word for both "devil" and "dragon," was the prince of Wallachia, the main province of what is now Romania. The principality, which had been conquered by the Turks, was chaotic in the Middle Ages, with constant battles among the wealthy landowners. Lawlessness was rampant. Then Vlad inherited the Wallachian throne in the middle of the 15th century.
From the beginning, the hallmark of Dracula's reign was slaughter. Anyone luckless enough to displease him--a peasant who stole a chicken, a noble who forgot to bow, a Turk captured in battle--was put to death. His favorite form of execution was impalement. Whatever his "crime," real or imagined, the offender was skewered on a sharp stake, skillfully driven through his body so as not to pierce critical organs. The victim might take days to die, in agony.
How many did Vlad Dracula kill in this gruesome way? Chronicles disagree--at least 20,000, perhaps as many as 50,000. All historians concur, though, that he loved the carnage. A famous woodcut of the era shows Dracula eating his dinner at an outdoor table, surrounded by a forest of impaled, writhing Turks. Dracula finally was killed in a battle for the throne in 1476, and legend has it that his perfumed head was sent to the Turks as a present.
The whispered legends of this sadist inspired stories of a cruel vampire who feasted on blood, and influenced Bram Stoker's 1897 novel, Dracula. Ironically, Vlad the Impaler is widely regarded as a national hero in Romania, even today. After all, Romanian patriots say, he defeated the Turks and imposed the rule of law upon a savage land.

Magellan: End of a Journey

2006-08-23T09:52:00.000-07:00

Mythology to the contrary, most scientific-minded people in Ferdinand Magellan's day were convinced that the world was round. There was little doubt that one could sail around the world--as long as there was no uninterrupted land barrier that stretched from the top of the world to the bottom.
The voyages of Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, and others in the late 1400s and early 1500s proved that there was, in fact, quite a considerable land mass to the west, and that it was not the Far East but a New World altogether. The question, then, was whether there was a passage around or through the land, and if there was such a passage, how far was it from there to the East Indies?
The Portuguese explorer Magellan answered that question, with his discovery of the passage at the tip of South America between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans that now bears his name--the Strait of Magellan.
Sadly, Magellan himself did not live to complete the voyage. Had he been able to sail on to the west, through the islands of Indonesia, across the Indian Ocean, around the tip of Africa, and back to Spain, he would have completed the first circumnavigation of the world in one voyage. He has always received credit for doing so because some of the sailors in his fleet did manage to return, thus completing the mammoth undertaking Magellan had organized and commanded.
However, on April 27th, 1521, the great navigator himself was killed on a beach in the Philippines, at the end of a lopsided battle with the forces of the chieftain of the Mactan island. Chief Lapulapu himself delivered the final blow, and has been celebrated ever since as the first Filipino to defeat a European would-be conqueror. Today, a statue marks the spot of Magellan's death.

The Iron Curtain's Extreme Edge: No Beards in Albania

2006-08-23T09:51:00.000-07:00

YOU KNOW? On September 15, 1862 Confederate General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson captured Harpers Ferry, Virginia, and 12,000 Union soldiers as General Robert E. Lee's army moved north into Maryland.

After WWII, travelers who dared to venture into remote, isolated Albania often were called on to shave their beards before entering the country. Beards, they were told, were illegal in Albania. What is even stranger than the existence of such a law is that a society existed in post-war Europe where a ban on facial hair was enforced.
Beards were illegal because they were seen as a sign of allegiance to Islam, and religion in all forms was banned in the historically Islamic Albania. Even in the Soviet Union, religion was never abolished. Religious figures were persecuted and church properties looted, but the Soviet regime at least acknowledged the concept of freedom of religion.
The anti-beard law was not the only Albanian oddity. For years, roads were practically empty because it was against the law to own a private car. The countryside was littered with concrete pillboxes (small artillery-holding forts) to deter potential invaders. This fear was based on a series of disagreements between Albania and several more powerful countries, including Yugoslavia, neighboring Warsaw Pact allies, and China.
The result of this isolation was that Albania's economy was the least developed in Europe. After the Iron Curtain fell, southern Italy was swamped with tens of thousands of Albanian refugees who sailed across the Adriatic in search of jobs. The military and police forces that had kept the country under tight control crumbled, leaving the cities in chaos--and awash with guns, which helped revive the culture of blood feuds that had devastated the mountain regions for generations. The anti-beard law, though, was no longer enforced.

Exodus 1947: The Ship that Launched a State

2006-08-23T09:49:00.000-07:00

The President Warfield was originally a pleasure steamship, traveling Maryland's Chesapeake Bay during the 1920s and '30s. During WWII, she was used for troop transport, even taking part in the Normandy invasion. By 1946, she was a rusting hulk, but she had one last voyage to make, under her new name, Exodus 1947.
The Warfield was secretly purchased by the Haganah, the underground Zionist army that was trying to create a Jewish homeland in Palestine, then still under British rule. The Haganah planned to flood the country with European Jewish refugees, Holocaust survivors living in dreadful conditions in displaced-persons camps.
With her shallow hull, the Warfield was not well-suited for a long ocean voyage. However, she was ideal for coming close to the Palestine coast under cover of darkness in an attempt to bypass the British blockade and land refugees.
Renamed the Exodus 1947 and carrying 4,500 refugees from Germany, she approached Palestine, where she was discovered and boarded by British marines. The ensuing fight lasted for hours, though the British were armed with guns and tear gas, while the defenders had only canned goods and an occasional fire axe. One Exodus crewmember died as the British successfully prevented the ship from landing its human cargo, and the would-be immigrants were returned to the displaced-persons camps in Europe.
Among the appalled witnesses onshore had been the United Nations Special Commission on Palestine; in their report to the newly formed UN, they argued strongly for the creation of a Jewish homeland. Newsreel cameras and newspaper photographers also reported the events on board the Exodus, and the British were bombarded by world opinion. The public shock heralded the end of the British Mandate in Palestine and helped lead to the founding of the State of Israel in 1948.

The Coronation of Queen Victoria: A Crowning Blow

2006-08-23T09:47:00.000-07:00

DID YOU KNOW? On August 27, 1883 the most powerful volcanic eruption in recorded history occurs on Krakatau, a small, uninhabited island located west of Sumatra in Indonesia.

When 19-year-old Princess Alexandrina Victoria retired the night of June 27, 1838, she said she had a feeling that "something awful was going to happen the next day." Celebratory gunfire in the park outside Buckingham Palace woke her at four in the morning, and she slept fitfully until seven, when she arose to face the day--and her coronation as Britain's Queen Victoria.
The future queen was rightfully alarmed about the complicated ceremony. She scarcely had arrived at Westminster Abbey when the aged Lord John Rolle approached to pay homage, tripped on his robes, and tumbled down the stairs. When he fell twice more, the concerned princess asked if she might not get up and meet him. She was ignored as two attendants helped the ancient peer to his goal.
Victoria projected great dignity as the crown was placed on her head, and managed to maintain her composure even when the Archbishop of Canterbury mistakenly forced a ring onto her fourth finger instead of her pinkie, a painful fit that had to be relieved later with iced water.
In the meantime, the Archbishop got so confused that he left too soon. Victoria was sent to St. Edward's Chapel, only to be summoned back when it was discovered that the Bishop of Bath and Wells had accidentally turned two pages at once and omitted a critical part of the ceremony. (New member of Parliament Benjamin Disraeli observed that "the want of rehearsal" was obvious.) Matters worsened when the noblemen were called upon to touch Victoria's crown; most bumped the crown so hard it gave the queen a severe headache.
Somehow, though, Victoria got through the five-hour ritual with an impressive display of grace and decorum. Her first official act as queen was to wave to the cheering crowds as she rode back to Buckingham Palace. Alone at last, her first unofficial act was to race upstairs and bathe her beloved dog, Dash. Later, with typical regal aplomb, Victoria recalled the day as the "proudest of my life."

.

Trying to Kill Rasputin

2006-08-23T09:46:00.000-07:00

"DID YOU NOW? On August 15, 1914 the Panama Canal, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, is inaugurated with the passage of the U.S. vessel Ancon, a cargo and passenger ship.

On December 26, 1916, Grigori Rasputin, the widely hated favorite of Russia's Tsarina Alexandra, dined with Prince Felix Yussopov and Grand Duke Dimitri, the tsar's cousin. Rasputin was served poisoned wine and tarts, and when they had no effect the conspirators riddled him with bullets. Rasputin somehow managed to escape and was discovered crawling toward the palace gates. He promptly was shot again, bludgeoned, bound in chains, and thrown into the icy Neva River. When the body surfaced, Rasputin was found to have drowned, but not before breaking free from the chains. Two months later, a skeptical mob exhumed the corpse and burned it to ashes. They were taking no chances that Rasputin had cheated death one more time.
A fanatical Siberian peasant, Rasputin had risen to power preaching a bizarre mix of religious fervor and sexual excess. He argued that the path to understanding God was through sin (even his name, Rasputin, meant "debauched one" in Russian; his real name was Grigori Yefimovich Novykh). He was famous for his healing powers, which some historians believe may have been based on hypnosis, and used them to gain influence with Russia's royal family.
In 1905, Rasputin was summoned by Alexandra Romanov, wife of Tsar Nicholas II, to cure their only son, Alexei, of hemophilia, a then-untreatable bleeding disorder. Rasputin's apparent success established an unbreakable bond with the superstitious tsarina and, to some degree, the tsar himself.
By 1915, Rasputin's power had grown alarmingly. Nicholas was preoccupied with WWI and Alexandra was firmly under Rasputin's thumb. She gave him virtually unlimited power, which he abused by replacing officials who opposed him with corrupt cronies and continuing his exceedingly public debauches.
For some, Rasputin became a final symbol of Romanov caprice and corruption. The conservatives who killed him hoped their action would save the monarchy, but it was impossible. Within a few weeks of Rasputin's death, the entire court had been destroyed by the onset of the Russian Revolution.

The Dutch Tulip Market Crash: Floral Feeding Frenzy

2006-08-23T09:44:00.000-07:00

DID YOU KNOW? On August 9, 1974, in the face of impeachment due to the Watergate scandal, Richard M. Nixon resigned as President of the United States and was succeeded by Vice President Gerald R. Ford.

The mania for tulips in early 17th-century Holland and its chaotic consequences triggered what has been called the world's first stock market crash. It began with innocent admiration of the tulip, a Turkish import introduced to the Netherlands in 1554, and by 1634, it had spawned one of the most bizarre chapters in the history of greed.
Holland's mass cultivation of tulips, originally a legitimate business, escalated into one of wild speculation as the flowers became the ultimate status symbol for the rich. Bulbs were bought and traded with mind-boggling speed and at astronomical prices. A single bulb fetched more than three times the price of Rembrandt's The Night Watch, one of the great baroque masterpieces. Another cost as much as a ship.
At the height of the 1634-37 craze, entire estates were mortgaged in the frenzy to buy, and the tulip's rarefied value eventually led it to be sold by weight. Everyone who could scrape together a few florins got in on the action, from poor farmers to rich Amsterdam merchants. A few actually profited, such as the family of tavern owner Wouter Winkel. Upon Winkel's death in 1633, his wife and seven children promptly dug up his tulip beds and sold the bulbs at the peak of the craze, guaranteeing their financial security.
Unfortunately, most of the bulbs existed only on paper. When the crash finally came, losing untold fortunes, it was blamed on outrageous speculation and the failure of the Dutch government to impose quality controls.
The tulips causing the most speculative frenzy were the multi-colored, "flamed" varieties that mysteriously appeared in beds of "normal" blooms. The more feathery and colorful the bloom, the higher the price. Ironically, the exotic appearance of these flowers was caused by a virus destined to kill new bulbs. Those beautiful, desperately desired flowers were as doomed as the mania itself.

Pompeii: The Looting of History

2006-08-23T09:42:00.000-07:00

DID YOU KNOW? On July 31, 1975 teamsters Union president Jimmy Hoffa was reported missing in Detroit, Michigan. He was last seen alive in a parking lot outside the Red Fox restaurant the previous afternoon. To this day, Hoffa's fate remains a mystery, although many believe that he was murdered by organized crime figures.When Pompeii was buried beneath Mt. Vesuvius's ash in AD 79, looters went to work before the volcanic lava had cooled and hardened, taking away bronze statues, bits of jewelry, and even marble facings from the forum. Roman Emperor Titus rumbled about relief efforts, but nothing new appeared except graffiti. One anonymous visitor scrawled "Sodom and Gomorrah" on a crumbling wall before the one-time town of 20,000 was abandoned.
The site was discovered in the late 1600s by architect Domenico Fontana, but excavation did not begin until 1748 when the King of Naples, Don Carlos, sponsored military engineer Karl Weber to undertake the monumental task. Weber's work unfortunately attracted the attention of treasure seekers as well, including Sir William Hamilton, British envoy to the King of Naples from 1764-1800, who had a passion for adding to his private art collection.
The statuary, jewelry, and other precious artifacts Hamilton acquired at Pompeii were significant in both quantity and quality, and they might have disappeared forever if it had not been for the luxurious tastes of his beautiful young wife Emma, whose spendthrift habits forced him to sell most of Pompeii's precious loot. Some found their way into museums, but most were gobbled up by greedy collectors.
Controls finally were established in 1860 when Italian archeologist Giuseppe Fiorelli was appointed Director of Excavations. A pioneer in the study of archaeological strata, he divided Pompeii into nine regions and numbered each door, helping visitors differentiate brothels from taverns. His methods of documenting and organizing are still followed today.
Archeologist Amedeo Maiuri continued the work in the 1950s, and by the 1990s nearly two thirds of the city had been excavated. Sadly a surge in crime brought looters back to Pompeii and necessitated the removal of most of the remaining artifacts to the nearby Naples Museum. It seems Pompeii just can't rest in peace.

Caligula: The Power of Madness

2006-08-23T09:41:00.000-07:00

DID YOU KNOW? On July 21, 1865, in what may be the first true western showdown, Wild Bill Hickok shot Dave Tutt dead in the market square of Springfield, Missouri
Proclaiming Caligula his heir, the emperor Tiberius bragged that he was "rearing a viper for the Roman people." The dire proclamation quickly was forgotten when the 25-year-old took the throne in AD 37 and became a popular hero by lowering taxes, paying lavish bequests to the Roman people, pardoning political prisoners, and staging grand gladiatorial games.
The honeymoon lasted six months, ending abruptly when Caligula had a personality change brought on by epilepsy, acute insomnia, or perhaps a nervous breakdown. Paranoia caused him to execute suspected assassins, real and imaginary, including Macro, trusted head of his praetorian (household) guard, who had personally assured the emperor's succession.
Ignoring matters of state, Caligula turned increasingly inward and became consumed by a love for luxury. While the empire gasped in disbelief, Caligula built pleasure barges with colored sails, gem-encrusted walls, and decks covered in mosaics. Caligula's favorite indulgence was his race horse Incitatus for whom he built a stable with a marble stall and ivory manger. Incitatus, swathed in purple blankets and wearing a collar of precious jewels, supposedly was offered the exalted position of consul!
Rome's tolerance steadily was eroded, especially when the deranged emperor declared himself a living god and carried on conversations with Jupiter, the king of the gods. Vainglorious and ashamed of his thinning hair and overly hairy body, Caligula made it a capital offense for anyone to look down on his balding head or mention a shaggy goat.
Caligula proved to the last skeptics that he was a danger to the state when, having exhausted Rome's treasury for his own insane indulgences, he confiscated the property of wealthy Romans and forced them to make outrageous donations or face death. When he executed several senators he believed were plotting to kill him, Caligula finally inspired real assassins. He was murdered in AD 40 by officers of his own praetorian guard.

Blackmailing Your Beloved: Tips from the Middle Ages

2006-08-23T09:40:00.000-07:00

DID YOU KNOW? On June 29, 1613, the Globe Theater, where most of Shakespeare's plays debuted, burned down

Lancelot and Guinevere, Tristan and Isolde: the Middle Ages are famous for their love stories. The rules of courtly love--the code medieval lovers both real and fictional lived by--might still work today, but they were nothing like meeting for dinner and a movie.
A good medieval lover would begin his quest for his beloved's heart by threatening suicide. He might go without sleep for days, until he had dark shadows beneath his eyes. Then he'd speak to her directly, asking her to be kind and end his torment. In the famous romance Guy de Warewic, written in the 1200s, Guy makes this plea to the woman he is courting: "For the love of God, do not be still my enemy, but listen to me, I beg of you … I must love you above all others, whether life or death is in store for me. If you do not take pity on me today, I shall slay myself for sorrow."
Guy is using blackmail, the principal technique recommended in the literature of courtly love for talking a woman into bed. It is used time and again in medieval love poems, love stories, and in the dialogues of The Art of Courtly Love by Andreas Capellanus. Written in Latin in the 12th century, Capellanus's book explains the rules of true love, as well as how to win the woman of your dreams.
Courtly love developed during the 12th century in France, becoming an ideal for nobles throughout Europe for the rest of the Middle Ages. In its unusual emphasis on the illicit nature of love--love affairs should ideally take place outside marriage, be shrouded in great secrecy, be accompanied by passionate jealousy--the notion of courtly love permanently influenced the way we think about romantic love.

s

How to Avoid the Black Plague

2006-08-23T09:32:00.000-07:00

When the Black Plague finished its deadly trek through Europe in the years 1347-1351, 25 million people, nearly a third of the population, lay dead in its wake. The cause of such misery and death--which would not be known until centuries later--was a common rat flea.
The first major outbreak of the Plague occurred in China in the early 1330s. Its original name, the Bubonic Plague, comes from the painful swelling of the lymph glands, called buboes. Splotchy red at first, the buboes would turn black as the disease progressed (hence the name "Black Plague," or "Black Death"). Victims suffered severe pain, high fever, and hemorrhaging under the skin. They usually died within five days.
From the seaports of China, the plague followed the trade routes to Europe. One account from October of 1347 describes the arrival of Italian merchant ships from the Crimean port town of Caffa, a key link in the China trade. Most of the men on the ships were dead or dying from the plague when they reached the Sicilian port of Messina. The blood of ship rats carried the bacteria Yersinia pestis, the plague's deadly agent. Rat fleas drank the blood of the rats and passed the lethal bacteria on to sailors with their bite.
The Black Plague struck entire cities with terrifying speed. People died faster than the living could bury the bodies. Doctors would not treat the dying. Even Pope Clement VI, fearing death from the infected air, sat alone in front of a fire to ward off the plague.
The Florentine writer Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) captured the tragic results of the fear of death during this time when he wrote: "The terror was such that brother fled from brother, wife from husband, yea the mother from her own child."

What Was Emperor Hadrian's Wall?

2006-08-23T09:09:00.000-07:00

DID YOU KNOW? On October 10, 1845 the United States Naval Academy, which was known as the Naval School until 1850, opened in Annapolis, Maryland, with 50 midshipmen students and seven professors.

Roman Emperor Hadrian (AD 76-138) was a pragmatic ruler more interested in art and architecture than war. He was also one of Rome's greatest builders, having designed his own magnificent Villa at Tivoli outside Rome, and rebuilt the burnt ruins of the Pantheon. But none of his constructions compare in scale or ambition to the wall he ordered built to protect Roman Britain against invasion by the Picts of northern Britain (present day Scotland). An extraordinary feat of engineering for its time, Hadrian's Wall also marked the beginning of the end of 700 years of Roman expansion.
The Picts had for decades launched incursions into the northern regions of Roman Britain, and although skilled Roman infantry had repelled these assaults, the emperor Hadrian, upon visiting this part of the empire in AD 121 decided on a more permanent solution. He ordered the construction of a wall that would stretch 73 miles across the breadth of northern Britain, from Bowness in the east to Wallsend in the west.
Hadrian's Wall took three auxiliary legions (approximately 10,000 to 15,000 infantrymen) nearly a decade to build. The 15-foot-high wall was between eight and 10 feet thick, with a rampart walk and six-foot high parapets. Spaced approximately one Roman mile apart along its length were small forts--called milecastles--that housed garrisons of up to 60 Roman soldiers. Between each milecastle were two lookout turrets. Sixteen larger forts capable of housing 500-1,000 soldiers each were spaced out over the wall's length. On the south side of the wall, the Romans built a six-foot deep v-shaped ditch to discourage the sometimes-rebellious Brigantes tribe of northern England from joining with the Picts.
Hadrian's Wall sucessfully withstood further invasions and was manned until sometime around AD 400, when the Roman legions were called home from Britain. They left behind a monument to an empire, as well as to an empire's end.

How to Be a Knight: Bashed Helmets and a Stern Code

2006-08-23T09:08:00.000-07:00

DID YOU KNOW? On October 3, 1932 with its admission into the League of Nations, Iraq became independent after 17 years of British rule and centures of Ottoman rule

At the end of a knightly tournament in France in about AD 1175, two heralds were instructed to award a magnificent weapon to a young knight named William Marshal as a prize for being the best fighter in the tournament. They looked for him everywhere; they finally found him at the smith's forge with his head on the anvil and the smith hitting his helmet with a hammer. His helmet had been so battered during the fighting that the smith had to bash it back into shape before Marshal could get it off his head.
William was lucky to suffer only a bent helmet. Knights were men primarily trained to fight, and they inhabited a rather violent world. What distinguished a medieval knight from the mounted warriors of an earlier day was his awareness of the ideal of chivalry, and his desire for honor.
The concept of chivalry evolved from a simple warrior's code into a sophisticated system of values in which the principles of personal integrity, the duty to defend the weak from oppression, and the practice of knightly virtues, such as largesse (generosity), pitié (compassion), franchise (a free and frank spirit), and courtoisie (courtliness, especially toward women), combined with the more traditional virtues of loyalty and skill in battle. A true knight was both a great fighter and a chivalrous gentleman.
Becoming a knight wasn't easy. It required expensive equipment (armor, weapons, and a horse) and years of training--burdens that tended to restrict knighthood to wealthy or well-connected families. Normally, a boy, eight to ten years old, would go to the castle of his most powerful male relative and serve first as a page (general helper), and then as a squire or man-at-arms assisting knights. During this time, he would learn horsemanship, military skills, and the chivalric code. Only then could he be knighted.

Destroying the Great Library at Alexandria

2006-08-23T08:59:00.000-07:00

DID YOU KNOW? On September 30, 1399 Henry Bolingbroke was proclaimed King Henry IV of England upon the abdication of King Richard II.

The library at Alexandria, built in the fourth century BC, was a vast learning complex without equal in its time. For centuries it was believed that Julius Caesar had burned the library down in 48 BC when he torched the enemy fleet docked in Alexandria. Scholars supposed that wind blew the flames to the library complex, but recent findings suggest that only the books being unloaded at the docks were burned at that time.
There are numerous theories, none of them definitive, on how the library was actually destroyed. One of the most probable is that the Roman Emperor Theodosius I (AD 346-395), a Christian zealot, targeted pagan temples and structures for destruction throughout his empire. In 391, he directed his wrath toward Alexandria and ordered the great library razed and its contents burned.
The library at Alexandria embodied the colossal ambition of its creator, Ptolemy I, to possess all known world literature. Set in the center of the university of Alexandria, the library contained over 700,000 manuscripts and papyrus scrolls, though some experts believe that this number includes multiple copies of the same manuscripts. The library complex also contained a museum, a temple to Zeus, observatories, laboratories, lecture halls, and dining rooms for visiting scholars. There was was a zoo filled with animals from the remote regions of the Alexandrian empire.
In 250 BC, the library was a temporary home to 72 rabbis who translated the Septuagint, or Old Testament, into Greek. This translation survived the destruction of the library and is used in the Greek Church today. But works by Plato, Aristotle, Sophocles, and other great minds were lost when the library of Alexandria was destroyed.

A Barmaid Becomes Empress, and then Saint

2006-08-23T08:53:00.000-07:00

DID YOU NOW? On September 19, 1881 President James A. Garfield died of complications from his wounds eighty days after Charles J. Guiteau, a failed office seeker, shot him in Washington, D.C. Chester A. Arthur was inaugurated the next day.

In the Roman empire of third century AD, stabularia, or barmaids, were little above prostitutes in social status. Roman soldiers might seek a night's comfort, a mistress, or a "frontier wife" from among the stabularia ranks. Helena (c. AD 250-c. 330) was a pretty stabularia, and her young customer, Constantius Chlorus, was a pale-skinned Roman general who fell deeply in love with her and took her as his mistress.
Constantius later became the Roman Emperor Constantius I (AD 305-306), credited with establishing Christianity as the dominant Western religion. And following her death circa AD 330, the pretty barmaid became St. Helena, the Greek Orthodox Church's most honored saint.
Constantius and Helena spent 19 years together and produced a son, Constantine. Constantius was forced by his patron, the Emperor Maximanius, to forsake Helena and their new son and marry the emperor's stepdaughter, Theodora. Constantine was sent away to be raised, leaving Helena alone. But the boy never forgot his mother.
When Constantine became emperor upon the death of his father in AD 306, Helena was summoned to the imperial court in Rome, where Constantine ordered coins minted bearing her likeness, bestowed the title of "Nobilissima Femina" (Most Honored Noble Lady) on her, and witnessed her conversion to Christianity.
Helena was revered throughout the empire for her acts of charity and kindness, and for her devoutness. Nearly 80 years old, she set out on a pilgrimage to Palestine, where she discovered a cross in the earth of Calvary. The cross, however, was curiously devoid of any signs of age and decay. The popular Church legend of Helena and the True Cross was born. It was on this site (never historically authenticated) that Helena founded the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, destination of thousands of pilgrims annually.

Human Sacrifice on the Aztec Calendar

2006-08-23T08:41:00.000-07:00

DID YOU KNOW? On September 15, 1862 Confederate General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson captured Harpers Ferry, Virginia, and 12,000 Union soldiers as General Robert E. Lee's army moved north into Maryland.

The beginnings and endings of calendar cycles--the turn of a century or a millennium--often bring great anxiety, and then great hope. This was especially true for the Aztecs, who ruled the central valley of Mexico in the century before the arrival of the Spanish in 1519. A wealthy, strong, and sophisticated empire, the Aztecs thought their world came to a stop once every 52 years.
The Aztecs had two calendars. One used 20-day months, with names such as crocodile and flint, which went through 13 cycles. In this 260-day calendar, each day was associated with a particular god and ritual. The other calendar, based on the sun, had 18 months of 20 days and one month of five days, or 365 days. Once every 52 years the two calendars aligned. And when they did, the Aztecs believed the world would end unless they made sacrifices to their gods.
On the last day of the 52nd year, the ritual would begin with the extinguishing of all hearth fires. At sunset, people climbed to their rooftops to feel the sun's warmth for what they feared could be the last time.

At night, a group of priests, nobles, and astronomers made their way to the summit of the Hill of the Star, on the outskirts of Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City). There, a valiant warrior lay bound with his chest thrust skyward. He knew that in giving his life, he would prevent the world from being plunged into endless night.

At midnight, the high priest tore out the warrior's heart and kindled a new flame in his chest. A great shout went up as torches were lit from the sacred fire and runners bore the new fire throughout the empire. Once again the Aztec people had averted the end of days and a new cycle would begin.

Hannibal of Carthage: The Roman Empire's Greatest Enemy

2006-08-23T08:39:00.000-07:00

DID YOU KNOW? On August 31, 1888 prostitute Mary Ann Nichols, the first victim of London serial killer "Jack the Ripper," was found murdered and mutilated in Whitechapel's Buck's Row. The East End of London saw four more victims of the murderer during the next few months, but no suspect was ever found.

In 237 BC, when he was only nine, Hannibal was taken by his father, the great Carthaginian general Hamilcar Barca, to Spain, where Carthage sought to establish a new base against Rome. Barca harbored a deep hatred for the ancient enemy of the Carthaginians and made his son swear eternal enmity to the Roman Empire. The father drowned during the siege of Helice, and, according to legend, the young Hannibal vowed to fight on against the Romans. Twenty years later, in a military feat that remains one of the most extraordinary in history, Hannibal, now a general, launched a massive invasion of Italy that inaugurated a lifelong struggle with Rome.
In 217 BC, with an army of 46,000 men and 37 war elephants, Hannibal trekked through Spain's Pyrenees Mountains, rafted his men and elephants across the Rhone River in southern France, and crossed the Alps into Italy. An estimated 20,000 men perished during this grueling, 5-month, 900-mile march, but Hannibal's depleted ranks were swelled by ferocious Gauls (Celtic natives of what is modern day France and Belgium) who shared his hatred of Rome. Although en route to Rome their combined forces dealt the Romans three major defeats, Hannibal's forces were too depleted when they reached the city and had to abandon the attack.

Carthage and Rome clashed again in 216 BC at Cannae in southeast Italy. Hannibal's army of 50,000 faced 86,000 Romans, but Hannibal knew Roman military strategy. He formed his troops into a long convex line. When the line purposely collapsed, the Romans poured through by the thousands and suddenly found themselves flanked on either side by Hannibal's troops, who set upon them with a fury, killing 50,000 and taking 10,000 prisoners. It was the Roman Empire's greatest defeat ever.

Defeated eight years later in a Roman siege of Carthage, Hannibal eventually fled to Syria, where he led uprisings against Rome for the next 12 years. When he was finally captured in 183 BC, the 64-year-old warrior chose suicide over surrender.

Avicenna's Canon: The First Great Medical Reference Book

2006-08-23T08:37:00.000-07:00

"DID YOU NOW? On August 15, 1914 the Panama Canal, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, is inaugurated with the passage of the U.S. vessel Ancon, a cargo and passenger ship.

As a practicing physician, the Persian Avicenna (c. AD 980-1037) proved his remarkable competence at the early age of 17. After many prominent physicians had given up on the serious illness of the King of Bukhara (present day Uzbekistan), Avicenna devised an effective remedy that won the King's favor. Although the King offered the young doctor a rich reward, Avicenna asked only for access to the royal library, a resource that would enable him to write his later medical and philosophical works. The most famous of these is Al-Qanun, known to medieval Europeans simply as the Canon, the most important medical reference book in the West for well over 600 years.
Written at the turn of the 11th century, the Canon was an exhaustive treatment of classical and medieval medicine that included the work of Muslim sources as well as the fruits of Avicenna's own medical research.
Besides being a compilation of ancient medical learning culled from the royal library, the Canon included many original contributions by Avicenna. He offered an early understanding of the spread of disease, and made connections between mental and physical health, such as the medicinal role of music and the phenomenon of love sickness manifesting itself as a physical sickness. Avicenna contributed greatly to the study of both anatomy and gynecology, and argued for the relationship between nerves, muscle movements, and physical pain.
For medieval Europe, a good medical reference book couldn't have come at a better time. In a world of plague and malnutrition, the common medical acts now taken for granted like simple operations or childbirth would often end in debilitation or even death. As a result, the 12th-century Latin translation of the Canon met with incredible demand, but its availability was hampered by the slow process of hand copying. With the invention of the printing press, production skyrocketed, with 16 separate editions of the book in the last 30 years of the 15th century alone.

Chapter 1: A Free Pass for the Saudis

2006-08-23T08:36:00.000-07:00

Chapter 1A Free Pass for the Saudis
On August 31, 2003, Time published the first review of my book Why America Slept, and focused on the final chapter about the capture and interrogation of an al Qaeda terrorist, Abu Zubaydah. It revealed an American intelligence scheme to dupe Zubaydah into disclosing whatever he knew about imminent terrorist attacks. Using a room in a CIA-linked Afghan facility that was hastily converted to resemble a Saudi Arabian prison, U.S. officials concocted an elaborate ruse.
Two Arab-American Special Forces soldiers pretended to be Saudi interrogators. The Saudis wanted Zubaydah--Osama bin Laden's number three man--for terrorist crimes, and they had a well-deserved reputation for using torture in interrogations. The thinking behind the Mission Impossible-type deception was that Zubaydah would be so frightened he would either divulge critical information to avoid torture or prefer to be handed over to, and cooperate with, American questioners to avoid the tougher fate with the Saudis.
It took almost three years before news leaked out confirming that the government had approved so-called "false flag" operations for terrorists. On January 29, 2005, The New York Times, in its coverage of Michael Chertoff's nomination to be the next homeland security chief, reported that in his former job at the Justice Department, Chertoff had advised the CIA on the legality of coercive interrogation methods for terror suspects under the federal antitorture statute. CIA officials evidently wanted legal protection so its officers minimized the risk of prosecution. "Other practices that would not present legal problems were those that did not involve the infliction of pain, like tricking a subject into believing he was being questioned by a member of a security service from another country," reported the Times.
The subterfuge backfired. Zubaydah seemed relieved rather than frightened when confronted by the fake Saudi interrogators. From memory, he rattled off two telephone numbers and told the startled U.S. Special Forces agents, "He will tell you what to do." The numbers were private home and cell phone lines of Prince Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdul Aziz, the nephew of Saudi king Fahd.
The Western-educated Ahmed was one of the wealthiest members of the royal family and chairman of the Research and Marketing Group, the Kingdom's largest publishing company. Although his media firm was responsible for virulent anti-American and anti-Israeli propaganda, he was considered by most observers simply a Westernized businessman with little apparent political interest. Ahmed was best known as a premier collector of Thoroughbred horses, including the 2002 Kentucky Derby winner, War Emblem. Since 1996, he had spent $126 million buying racehorses.
The CIA officials running Zubaydah's interrogation directed the two American Special Forces agents to falsely tell the terrorist that the telephone numbers he had provided were wrong. By that time, Zubaydah had been deprived of sleep for days, maintained on minimum pain medication for gunshot wounds sustained in his capture, and had been secretly administered a "truth serum" by intravenous drip. Yet, when told his telephone numbers had not panned out, he did not panic.
Instead, he gave the "Saudi" interrogators several more numbers, these belonging to two other Saudi princes as well as the chief of Pakistan's air force, the equivalent of being a member of America's Joint Chiefs of Staff. These were his key contacts inside Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, Zubaydah claimed. And in a rambling monologue that one investigator later dubbed "the Rosetta stone" of 9/11, Zubaydah told his American interrogators that two of those named, the king's nephew and the chief of Pakistan's air force, knew before 9/11 there would be an al Qaeda attack in America around that date. No one had warned the United States.

Excerpted from Secrets of the Kingdom by Gerald Posner Copyright © 2005.
The title presented here is not endorsed by the HBC Advisory Board. It is presented to bring you books on current events, politics and other topics which are of interest to our members.

That's not all! Click here to read the full, uncensored excerpt from Secrets of the Kingdom.

John Quincy Adams's Nude Interview with a Woman Reporter

2006-08-23T08:34:00.000-07:00

John Quincy Adams's Nude Interview with a Woman Reporter
No, John Quincy Adams did not sell an American girl to the Russian Czar from a collection of love slaves he supposedly kept at the embassy. But this did not stop his enemies from saying he did. Actually, the former minister to Russia was possibly the most prudish man to become president.
Like his father John Adams, the second president, "Quincy" was overly serious, stuffy, and in his own words, "a man of reserved, cold, austere and forbidding manners." Still, the president had one burning passion, and that was skinny-dipping. Rising at 3 AM, Adams would sneak out of the White House, and frolic in the chilly Potomac. There were hazards, like the time someone stole his clothes.
One dark morning Adams heard a cry, "Come here!" He looked up out of the water to see a woman on the riverbank, seated on his clothes. Adams swam over. She introduced herself as Anne Royall, a newspaper reporter who hoped for an interview on the major issue of the day, whether or not to have a national bank. Adams begged her to go behind the bushes so he could dress, promising that afterward he would gladly grant the interview.
"No you don't," Royall refused, as the president bobbed in chin-deep water. "I stalked you from the Mansion down here," she said firmly, explaining she had repeatedly "hammered at the White House" with no response. She told Adams that if he rose from the water, she would scream, alerting some fishermen around the bend.
Considering the scandal that could create, the shivering president quickly granted the interview.

The Tet Offensive: Turning Point in Vietnam

2006-08-23T08:32:00.000-07:00

The Tet Offensive: Turning Point in Vietnam
In 1968, the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and the Communist rebels known as Viet Cong took advantage of the most important Vietnamese holiday by attacking South Vietnam and its American allies when they least expected it. The Communists hoped their daring offensive would stir revolutionary fervor in the South Vietnamese and inspire them to join the Communist cause. That didn't happen, but the offensive did change the outcome of the war--in a way the Communists could not have expected.
The Vietnamese people believe Tet (the lunar new year) sets a precedent for the rest of the year. Families observe the holiday with a week of feasting, praying, and exchanging gifts. During the Vietnam War, the two sides would observe a cease-fire so everyone could celebrate Tet. At 3 AM on January 31, 1968, however, NVA and Viet Cong troops capitalized on the cease-fire by launching coordinated attacks on 36 South Vietnamese cities and towns.
Although most of these attacks were defeated within hours or days, the fighting in Vietnam's former capital, Hue, raged for 25 days. Much of the violence was replayed on American television, and 142 Marines died in the battle. Nearly 3,000 civilians were murdered during a Communist purge of the city.
The Viet Cong was virtually eliminated as a direct result of the Tet offensive (leaving the war to be fought by the NVA), but the surprise and intensity of the attack was a public-relations disaster for the US. Coming at a time when American military leaders had been telling the US public that victory was near, the Tet offensive fueled the flames of protest against America's involvement in Vietnam. By the time Richard Nixon took office as president a year later, opposition to the war was so strong that Nixon began withdrawing US troops.

Ending WWII: Operation Cobra

2006-02-13T11:04:00.000-08:00

DID YOU KNOW? On December 16th, 1944, the Battle of the Bulge begins in the Ardennes region of Belgium.

Ending WWII: Operation Cobra
Operation Cobra--the Allied forces' second attempt at a breakout from their Normandy beachheads--did not get off to a good start. After several days of bad weather, the US Army Air Force began bombing German positions on July 25, 1944. Unfortunately, several bombs fell short of the target and killed about 100 Americans, including Gen. Leslie McNair. Seven weeks after the D-Day invasion of June 6, the US Army's European campaign appeared to be going nowhere fast.

The Allies' first breakout attempt, led by British general Bernard Montgomery, had stalled in the Normandy hedgerow country through a combination of cautiousness, tough German opposition, and difficult terrain. The new operation, with primary responsibilities shifted from the British to the Americans, would begin with bombing intended to weaken German positions before Allied ground forces launched their attack.

US Gen. Omar Bradley directed the Eighth Air Force to bomb parallel to his battle lines, which would minimize accidental casualties. Army Air Force commanders, however, believed a parallel approach would subject their planes to heavier anti-aircraft fire, and bombed perpendicular to Bradley's lines. Even after the first day's mistakes, the Army Air Force used time pressures to persuade Bradley into accepting a perpendicular angle of attack on the second day. When 100 more soldiers died, however, Allied commander Dwight Eisenhower intervened and ordered a shift to a parallel approach.

No Americans died the next day, and Cobra proceeded smoothly. Gen. George Patton and the US 3rd Army joined the operation on August 1, and by the end of the month, had conquered Brittany, encircled the German 7th Army, and forced Germany to evacuate southwestern France. As a result, Bradley believed Operation Cobra was the turning point of the war in Europe.

The Philippine Sea: Japan Walks Into a Turkey Shoot

2006-02-13T11:02:00.000-08:00

DID YOU KNOW? On December 23, 1948, Hideki Tojo, former Japanese premier and chief of the Kwantung Army, is executed along with six other top Japanese leaders for their war crimes during World War II in Tokyo.

The Philippine Sea: Japan Walks Into a Turkey Shoot
When US intelligence reports indicated that Japan was planning a major attack against the Pacific Fleet, a pre-emptive air strike was launched on June 10, 1944 against Japanese airfields on Guam, Rota, Saipan, Tinian, Iwo Jima, and Chichi Jima. Vice Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa expected hundreds of aircraft based on these islands to support his naval forces during "Plan A-Go," Japan's last-ditch attempt to turn the tide of the war by destroying American aircraft carriers deployed in the Philippine Sea near the Marianas Islands. The American air strike had foiled this part of the plan, but Ozawa's commanding officer neglected to relay the news to him. As a result, the Japanese fleet sailed straight into disaster.

"Plan A-Go" called for 1,000 Japanese land-based planes to sink a third of the 15 carriers in US Task Force 58; Ozawa's 430 carrier-based planes would finish off the rest. Deprived of their land-based support, however, the Japanese naval aviators were no match for 891 technically superior US aircraft and more experienced American pilots. The Japanese fleet lost 274 planes during its June 11 attack, while shooting down only 22. Worse yet, the Japanese failed to sink any of the 112 American ships, but US submarines sank two of Ozawa's nine carriers. One American pilot exclaimed, "It's just like an old-time turkey shoot down home!" giving the Battle of the Philippine Sea its more colorful nickname, "The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot".

On the second day of the battle, the US fleet turned the tables on the enemy and counterattacked, downing another 65 Japanese planes, sinking a third carrier, and badly damaging two more. The largest carrier-to-carrier conflict in history ended with the virtual elimination of Japan's carrier fleet and naval air power. From that point on, American aircraft based in the Marianas were free to bomb Japanese cities with impunity, culminating in the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that ended the war in August 1945.

Lenin's Siberian Vacation: The Russian Government Misfires

2006-02-13T10:58:00.000-08:00

DID YOU KNOW? On January 6, 1959, the Soviet Union announces plans to cut the size of its standing army by 300,000 troops in the coming year. The reduction was part of a 1956 policy announced by Krushchev in anticipation of "peaceful coexistence" with the West.

Lenin's Siberian Vacation: The Russian Government Misfires
Even with Lenin in jail, the Russian government could not silence the young radical. He had been arrested late in 1895 for smuggling banned Marxist literature into the country and distributing it at the factories of St. Petersburg. In his cell, he wrote a treatise against Russian capitalism and sketched out a Marxist party program in invisible ink, then succeeded in having them published under a pseudonym. The government feared a sedition trial would only give Lenin an opportunity to draw attention to his cause, so in 1897, he was sent into "administrative exile" in Siberia. This proved to be a major mistake.

Given three days of freedom to arrange his own transportation, Lenin sat in planning sessions with fellow members of the Union of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class, and set off for Siberia with a full agenda. The government did not dictate where exactly he would be sent, and since he was funding his own trip, Lenin proposed the province of Minusinsk--known among revolutionaries as "Siberian Italy" because of its mild climate and holiday atmosphere. As with many of his co-conspirators, he pleaded ill health and the government acquiesced.

Living among friends in the town of Shushenskoye, far from Russian authorities, Lenin ironically enjoyed greater freedom than he had ever known in St. Petersburg. He sent for Nadezhda Krupskaya, a fellow member of the Union, and married her in 1898, hired a servant, bought an Irish setter, and passed the time by hunting, fishing, skating with his new bride, and wrestling with other exiles. More importantly, he finished his book The Development of Capitalism in Russia, published it under a pseudonym, and translated books on union organizing into Russian. When his three-year exile came to an end in 1900, Lenin was well organized, well rested, and ready to start his revolution.

Radio Gets a Boost from Live Boxing Match

2006-02-13T10:56:00.000-08:00

DID YOU KNOW? On January 13, 1910, Lee De Forest, the American inventor of the vacuum tube, broadcasts a live performance of Enrico Caruso from the Metropolitan Opera. It is the first radio demonstration anywhere in the world.

Radio Gets a Boost from Live Boxing Match
In 1921, the fledgling radio industry was suffering from the classic "chicken-and-egg" problem: Before the public would buy radios, there had to be radio programs to listen to; but broadcasters refused to spend money on programming until they had an established audience. That was when a 30-year-old general manager at Radio Corporation of America (RCA), David Sarnoff, had an idea to jump-start the market. He suggested to his bosses that RCA broadcast the heavyweight boxing championship fight between America's Jack Dempsey and France's George Carpentier. Because so few people owned radios, Sarnoff arranged for the fight to be broadcast in theaters and auditoriums throughout the eastern US.

The first sports broadcast in history was a huge success, with some 200,000 people listening to the amplified sounds of Dempsey's knockout of Carpentier in the fourth round. On the strength of his marketing triumph, Sarnoff was allowed to direct the production of radio receivers, while RCA simultaneously funded the development of radio programming.

Sarnoff soon suggested to Owen Young, the chairman of RCA's parent company, General Electric, that he form a subsidiary company that would create national radio broadcasts by stringing together hundreds of stations. Sarnoff dubbed the network the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), which he imagined as both a public service and a means to create demand for more radios.

His plan was to fund NBC's programming by charging consumers higher prices for RCA's radio receivers. The plan worked. Within three years of the Dempsey fight, RCA sold $83 million worth of radio sets, then called the Radiola, priced at $75 per receiver. Yet once NBC's network of radio stations began airing performances in 1927 that ranged from the New York Symphony Orchestra to comedians like Will Rogers, radio sales skyrocketed. Within 20 years, radio broadcasting was a multi-billion-dollar industry, with RCA's revenues topping $300 million in 1947.

The Boxer Rebellion: Chinese 'Fists' Against European Imperialism

2006-02-13T10:54:00.000-08:00

DID YOU KNOW? On January 20, 1841, China cedes the island of Hong Kong to the British with the signing of the Chuenpi Convention, an agreement seeking an end to the first Anglo-Chinese conflict.

The Boxer Rebellion: Chinese 'Fists' Against European Imperialism
When a ragtag group of poor Northern Chinese first began an anti-foreigner rebellion by killing isolated Christian missionaries, few people either in or outside of China cared. It was 1900, and China's rulers had their own problems, watching helplessly as European and other foreign imperialists competed for commercial, military, and political concessions in China and Western missionaries--many from America's Midwest--competed for souls.

While China boasted a proud history, and a population of 300 million in 1900--more than three times that of the United States and six times that of the largest western European nation (Germany)--centuries of isolationism had weakened her militarily. In the 19th century, European military strength made this dismayingly clear.

Britain took over Hong Kong after defeating China in the first Opium War of 1842, in which the Chinese were forced to accept the sale of opium. After winning the second Opium War in 1860, the Western powers imposed a permanent diplomatic presence in Peking (modern Beijing) and Christian missionaries pushed deep within China. In 1895, the Chinese suffered a disastrous defeat by the newly modernized Japan. By the turn of the century the Europeans and Americans were busily divvying up territories and trading rights, while the Chinese rulers could do nothing more than weakly protest the "tiger-like voracity" of the foreign powers.

The Western diplomats and evangelicals in China made little effort to try to understand or appreciate their unwilling hosts. Unsurprisingly, they were caught off-guard by the rise of the Boxers, a secret society that appeared in 1900, embracing a strange but powerful combination of religion, magic, martial arts, and strong anti-foreign rhetoric.

The "Fists of Righteous Harmony" (nicknamed "Boxers" by Westerners for their physical exercises) were disorganized and lacked a central leader, but they had a simple, violent goal: to rid China of its ever-increasing foreign influence. Strengthened by an unwavering belief in their own invulnerability, they led a deadly movement against the complacent Westerners and the Chinese Christians.

Ending WWII: US Army Intelligence

2006-02-13T10:53:00.000-08:00

DID YOU KNOW? On January 27, 1943, 8th Air Force bombers, dispatched from their bases in England, fly the first American bombing raid against the Germans, targeting the Wilhelmshaven port.

Ending WWII: US Army Intelligence
In late 1944, the British intelligence unit code-named Ultra informed Allied generals that the German air force, or Luftwaffe, was planning on using its new Messerschmidt jet fighters to conduct reconnaissance over Belgium's Ardennes forest. The Nazis were only willing to risk losing these planes--the only jets in the world and the pride of the Luftwaffe--because they were part of a critical operation, but US brass ignored the report. The American military's traditional disdain for the intelligence function left the Allies unprepared for the biggest battle of the European campaign.

In the past, US military intelligence had been a dumping ground for officers considered unfit for field command, so ambitious officers like Omar Bradley and George Patton avoided intelligence assignments (which they believed would hurt their careers). Entering World War II, the US Army generally assumed its field commanders could handle intelligence matters themselves.

So, when Germany launched a counteroffensive into the Ardennes on December 16, the woods were only lightly defended by either inexperienced or battle-worn US troops. American casualties were high in the resulting Battle of the Bulge, and the Germans temporarily threatened to stop the Allied advance toward Germany. By the time the counteroffensive had finally been defeated in late January, some 80,000 Americans were dead or wounded.
Between December 16 and January 15, intelligence reports that were not ignored enabled American planes to destroy 66 German planes and damage another 58 while they were still on the ground. Having learned a hard lesson, American generals paid much greater attention to intelligence reports after the Battle of the Bulge. Even Patton, who had on many occasions dismissed Ultra in favor of his own intuition, began to meet with his Ultra liaison officer on a daily basis.

Klaus Fuchs: The Spy Who Gave Away the Manhattan Project

2006-02-13T10:30:00.000-08:00

DID YOU KNOW? On February 3, 1950, Klaus Fuchs, a German-born British scientist who helped developed the atomic bomb, is arrested in Great Britain for passing top-secret information about the bomb to the Soviet Union. The arrest of Fuchs led authorities to several other individuals involved in a spy ring, culminating with the arrest of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and their subsequent execution.

Klaus Fuchs: The Spy Who Gave Away the Manhattan Project
One afternoon in September 1943, physicist Klaus Fuchs, a tennis ball in his hand, left his New York hotel to meet his Soviet courier, Harry Gold -- code-named Raymond. As instructed, when they met, Raymond asked: "Can you tell me the way to Grand Central Station?" During this rendezvous and four more through August 1944, Fuchs shared with his Soviet courier all that he knew about the Manhattan Project, a top-secret US-British program to build an atomic bomb. The information Fuchs passed along proved to be critical in convincing the Soviets they could build an atomic weapon far sooner than expected.

A member of the German Communist Party in the 1930s, Fuchs fled to England when the Gestapo began imprisoning communists. After obtaining his doctorate in physics, Fuchs was asked to join the Manhattan Project as part of the British team of scientists. At the time, the Soviets kept close track of communists persecuted by the Nazis and soon enlisted Fuchs as a spy. Though technically allied with the US and Great Britain in World War II, the Soviet Union had not been informed about the Manhattan Project. When the Soviet spy network uncovered the project, Soviet Premier Josef Stalin directed the KGB to learn all it could, and Fuchs became a key source of early information.

Fuchs left New York in 1944 for the Manhattan Project's headquarters in Los Alamos, New Mexico, where, as a member of the project's theoretical division, he would have complete access to bomb design information. By early 1945, Fuchs was again handing over top-secret documents to Raymond. Over the course of these encounters Fuchs passed along the designs of the atomic bomb that would be dropped on Nagasaki that August. Fuchs was investigated by the FBI in 1949, tried by the British in '50, and jailed for nine years before being released to East Germany.

Experts have estimated that the quantity and detail of information Fuchs provided accelerated the Soviet atomic bomb program by three to five years. In August 1949, the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic device. The arms race had begun.

Kaiser Wilhelm: Germany's Tactless Emperor

2005-08-12T21:30:00.000-07:00

DID YOU KNOW? On August 6, 1945 the United States becomes the first and only nation to use atomic weaponry during wartime when it drops a 5-ton atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

Kaiser Wilhelm: Germany's Tactless Emperor

William II, Emperor of Germany and King of Prussia (1859-1941), better known as Kaiser Wilhelm, personified tactlessness and sword rattling. Famously self-absorbed, he alienated the world through his love of military pomp and intense competitiveness (compensation in part for a withered left arm). In 1890, his pompous stance in an official state painting prompted a French general to gasp, "That's not a portrait. It's a declaration of war!"

Kaiser Wilhelm was determined to have Germany become one of Europe's great powers, to take what he called her "place in the sun," but he failed to understand the weakness of the country's geographical position, sandwiched between France and Russia. Tragically, his boasting and ambition produced some legendary political blunders.

Wilhelm repeatedly insulted his closest ally, the Austro-Hungarian Empire. On an 1888 state visit to Vienna, for instance, he vainly demanded the departure of all other visiting monarchs before his arrival. Austria generally tolerated the Kaiser's whims, but in 1889 their Emperor Franz Josef revealed everyone's true feelings after the suicide of his son. Identical telegrams were dispatched to every head of state, except Kaiser Wilhelm, announcing that the funeral would be a private family affair. The Kaiser received a personal request--to stay away from Vienna.

In 1895, he infuriated Britain by congratulating South African Transvaal President Paul Kruger, whose troops had crushed a British raid. Ten years later, he stunned the French by supporting Morocco's independence when France sought it as a protectorate. In 1908, he alienated Britain, France, and Russia all at once by insisting that Germany's massive naval expansion was directed at Japan, a transparent lie that fooled no one and helped lead eventually to WWI.

Indeed, for years Wilhelm was blamed for deliberately leading Germany into WWI. Recent historians, however, have argued that Wilhelm never intended or wanted such a conflict, but was simply incapable of understanding the political impact of his words and actions.

Preserving the Lindow Man: Stuck in the Mud

2005-08-12T21:03:00.000-07:00

DID YOU KNOW? On August 9, 1974, in the face of impeachment due to the Watergate scandal, Richard M. Nixon resigned as President of the United States and was succeeded by Vice President Gerald R. Ford.

Preserving the Lindow Man: Stuck in the Mud

In 1984, a farmer in Lindow, England found the mummified form of a 2,000-year-old male Celt in a marsh. The mud had preserved his body perfectly, including his neatly trimmed hair and beard. The government claimed the body and placed the body on display in the British Museum, where it is now one of the most popular attractions.

The Lindow Man, as he has come to be known, did not die accidentally. Rather, he was the victim of human sacrifice. In sacrificial ceremonies, the Celts often practiced ritual triple killings, and indeed forensic evidence revealed that the Lindow Man had had his throat cut, his head bludgeoned, and his chest stabbed before he was placed in the bog, probably as an offering to a water god.

We know very little about the old Celtic religion. Most Celts had converted to Christianity by the time they left written records. From archaeological sources, however, we do know that they worshipped bodies of water. Many decorated bronze shields have been found on the bottom of the River Thames, most likely thrown into the water as divine offerings.

Roman authors also wrote about Celtic rites. Julius Caesar, the Roman general who first encountered the British in 58 BC, wrote that the Celtic gods preferred criminals as offerings, but when none were available, they did not mind innocent men and women.

Despite such snippets of information, Celtic culture remains mysterious and we have very little evidence of their belief system. The Lindow Man offers one tangible link to a distant time in England's past.

Kung Foo Squirrel

2005-08-03T00:16:00.000-07:00

I got this in an email and I thought it was so funny so I thought I'd post it. Enjoy!

I never dreamed slowly cruising on my motorcycle through a residential neighborhood could be so incredibly dangerous! Little did I suspect.

I was on Brice Street - a very nice neighborhood with perfect lawns and slow traffic. As I passed an oncoming car, a brown furry missile shot out from under it and tumbled to a stop immediately in front of me. It was a squirrel, and must have been trying to run across the road when it encountered the car. I really was not going very fast, but there was no time to brake or avoid it -- it was that close. I hate to run over animals, and I really hate it on a motorcycle, but a squirrel should pose no danger to me. I barely had time to brace for the impact. Animal lovers never fear. Squirrels, I discovered, can take care of themselves!

Inches before impact, the squirrel flipped to his feet. He was standing on his hind legs and facing my oncoming Valkyrie with steadfast resolve in his beady little eyes. His mouth opened, and at the last possible second, he screamed and leapt! I am pretty sure the scream was squirrel for, "Bonzai!" or maybe, "Die you gravy-sucking, heathen scum!" The leap was nothing short of spectacular... He shot straight up, flew over my windshield, and impacted me squarely in the chest. Instantly, he set upon me. If I did not know better, I would have sworn he brought 20 of his little buddies along for the attack. Snarling, hissing, and tearing at my clothes, he was a frenzy of activity. As I was dressed only in a light T-shirt, summer riding gloves, and jeans this was a bit of a cause for concern. This furry little tornado was doing some damage!

Picture a large man on a huge black and chrome cruiser, dressed in jeans, a T-shirt, and leather gloves, puttering at maybe 25 mph down a quiet residential street, and in the fight of his life with a squirrel. And losing... I grabbed for him with my left hand. After a few misses, I finally managed to snag his tail. With all my strength, I flung the evil rodent off to the left of the bike, almost running into the right curb as I recoiled from the throw. That should have done it. The matter should have ended right there. It really should have. The squirrel could have sailed into one of the pristinely kept yards and gone on about his business, and I could have headed home. No one would have been the wiser. But this was no ordinary squirrel. This was not even an ordinary angry squirrel. This was an EVIL MUTANT ATTACK SQUIRREL OF DEATH!

Somehow he caught my gloved finger with one of his little hands and, with the force of the throw, swung around and with a resounding thump and an amazing impact, he landed squarely on my BACK and resumed his rather antisocial and extremely distracting activities. He also managed to take my left glove with him! The situation was not improved. Not improved at all.His attacks were continuing, and now I could not reach him. I was startled, to say the least. The combination of the force of the throw, only havingone hand (the throttle hand) on the handlebars, and my jerking back unfortunately put a healthy twist through my right hand and into the throttle. A healthy twist on the throttle of a Valkyrie can only have one result. Torque. This is what the Valkyrie is made for, and she is very, very good at it. The engine roared and the front wheel left the pavement.

The squirrel screamed in anger. The Valkyrie screamed in ecstasy. I screamed in.. well.. I just plain screamed.

Now picture a large man on a huge black and chrome cruiser, dressed in jeans, a slightly squirrel-torn t-shirt, wearing only one leather glove, and roaring at maybe 50 mph and rapidly accelerating down a quiet residential street on one wheel, with a demonic squirrel of death on his back. The man and the squirrel are both screaming bloody murder. With the sudden acceleration I was forced to put my other hand back on the handlebars and try to get control of the bike.

This was leaving the mutant squirrel to his own devices, but I really did not want to crash into somebody's tree, house, or parked car. Also, I had not yet figured out how to release the throttle... my brain was just simply overloaded. I did manage to mash the back brake, but it had little effect against the massive power of the big cruiser.

About this time the squirrel decided that I was not paying sufficient attention to this very serious battle (maybe he was an evil mutant NAZI attack squirrel of death), and he came around my neck and got INSIDE my full-face helmet with me. As the faceplate closed part way, he began hissing in my face. I am quite sure my screaming changed intensity. It had little effect on the squirrel, however. The RPMs on the Dragon maxed out (since I was not bothering with shifting at the moment), so her front end started to drop.

Now picture a large man on a huge black and chrome cruiser, dressed in jeans, a very raggedly torn T-shirt, wearing only one leather glove, roaring at probably 80 mph, still on one wheel, with a large puffy squirrel's tail sticking out of the mostly closed full-face helmet. By now the screams are probably getting a little hoarse. Finally I got the upper hand . I managed to grab his tail again, pulled him out of my helmet, and slung him to the left as hard as I could. This time it worked ... sort-of.

Spectacularly sort-of ...so to speak.

Picture a new scene. You are a cop. You and your partner have pulled off on a quiet residential street and parked with your windows down to do some paperwork. Suddenly a large man on a huge black and chrome cruiser, dressed in jeans, a torn T-shirt flapping in the breeze, and wearing only one leather glove, moving at probably 80 mph on one wheel, and screaming bloody murder roars by, and with all his strength throws a live squirrel grenade directly into your police car.

I heard screams. They weren't mine...

I managed to get the big motorcycle under control and dropped the front wheel to the ground. I then used maximum braking and skidded to a stop in a cloud of tire smoke at the stop sign of a busy cross street. I would have returned to 'fess up (and to get my glove back). I really would have.Really... Except for two things. First, the cops did not seem interested or the slightest bit concerned about me at the moment. When I looked back, the doors on both sides of the patrol car were flung wide open. The cop from the passenger side was on his back, doing a crab walk into somebody's front yard, quickly moving away from the car. The cop who had been in the driver's seat was standing in the street, aiming a riot shotgun at his own police car.

So, the cops were not interested in me. They often insist to "let the professionals handle it" anyway. That was one thing. The other? Well, I could clearly see shredded and flying pieces of foam and upholstery from the back seat. But I could also swear I saw the squirrel in the back window, shaking his little fist at me. That is one dangerous squirrel. And now he has a patrol car. A somewhat shredded patrol car ... but it was all his. I took a deep breath, turned on my turn signal, made a gentle right turn off of Brice Street, and sedately left the neighborhood. I decided it was best to just buy myself a new pair of gloves. And a whole lot of Band-Aids

Did You Know?

2005-07-16T01:06:00.000-07:00

DID YOU KNOW? On June 29, 1613, the Globe Theater, where most of Shakespeare's plays debuted, burned down.

DID YOU KNOW? On June 22 1941, Germany launched Operation Barbarossa--over 3 million German troops invaded Russia in three parallel offensives, in what was the most powerful invasion force in history.

DID YOU KNOW? On June 9, 1973 Secretariat became the first horse since Citation in 1948 to win America's coveted Triple Crown -- the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, and the Belmont Stakes.

Blackmailing Your Beloved: Tips from the Middle Ages

2005-07-16T01:03:00.000-07:00

Lancelot and Guinevere, Tristan and Isolde: the Middle Ages are famous for their love stories. The rules of courtly love--the code medieval lovers both real and fictional lived by--might still work today, but they were nothing like meeting for dinner and a movie.

A good medieval lover would begin his quest for his beloved's heart by threatening suicide. He might go without sleep for days, until he had dark shadows beneath his eyes. Then he'd speak to her directly, asking her to be kind and end his torment. In the famous romance Guy de Warewic, written in the 1200s, Guy makes this plea to the woman he is courting: "For the love of God, do not be still my enemy, but listen to me, I beg of you … I must love you above all others, whether life or death is in store for me. If you do not take pity on me today, I shall slay myself for sorrow."

Guy is using blackmail, the principal technique recommended in the literature of courtly love for talking a woman into bed. It is used time and again in medieval love poems, love stories, and in the dialogues of The Art of Courtly Love by Andreas Capellanus. Written in Latin in the 12th century, Capellanus's book explains the rules of true love, as well as how to win the woman of your dreams.

Courtly love developed during the 12th century in France, becoming an ideal for nobles throughout Europe for the rest of the Middle Ages. In its unusual emphasis on the illicit nature of love--love affairs should ideally take place outside marriage, be shrouded in great secrecy, be accompanied by passionate jealousy--the notion of courtly love permanently influenced the way we think about romantic love.

Weapons of War: The Submarine

2005-07-16T01:01:00.000-07:00

At the close of the 19th century, Britain ruled the waves--making ships of the Royal Navy a high-profile target for enemies, both foreign and domestic. Beginning in 1876, Irish revolutionaries known as the Fenian Brotherhood paid Irish-American John P. Holland to develop a way of sneaking up on British ships and sinking them. Little did they know that Holland would eventually turn around and sell his invention--the first practical submarine--to the Royal Navy itself.

Holland's work began in Paterson, New Jersey, on the Passaic River, and then moved to the New York harbor. The Irish militants withdrew their support of Holland's research when he failed to meet their timetables, but private investors kept him going. By 1898, he had produced his sixth prototype, and the US Navy was ready to buy.

Christened in 1900, the USS Holland measured 53' 9" long, 10' 3" in diameter, and featured an ingenious dual-propulsion system: A gasoline engine powered the ship on the surface and charged its batteries, which, in turn, powered an electric motor that could propel the craft up to 50 miles while underwater. Diving planes (fins) made underwater steering possible, and a ballast-management system gave the ship's pilot control over its depth. Torpedoes made the Holland a weapon.

The British, meanwhile, lagged in early submarine development. The Admiralty apparently thought submarine attacks were dishonorable; they declared that captured submariners would be considered pirates and hanged accordingly. Once Britain's rivals commissioned copies of the Holland, however, the Admiralty changed its tune. And John P. Holland was not above making a profit by selling submarines to the very fleet he once had meant to destroy.

Kidnapping a Saint to Get Ahead

2005-07-16T00:57:00.000-07:00

Statues of winged lions--the symbol of Venice's patron saint, St. Mark--can be seen all over the city. The lions carry books bearing an ancient prophecy: "Peace be with you, Mark my evangelist. Here your body shall rest." The prophecy did indeed come true, but it might not have been fulfilled (and Venice would not have its winged lions) if Venetians hadn't stolen St. Mark's corpse from its grave in Egypt.

The prophecy supposedly was spoken by an angel, who appeared to Mark while he was passing through the Venice Lagoon in the first century AD. In 828, imbued with the early Christian enthusiasm for sacred relics, Venetians decided to put the stamp of heavenly approval on their earthly activities by laying claim to St. Mark's bones. Some historians allege that the prophecy itself was a Venetian invention, intended to trump all the other cities of the West in a game of religious one-upmanship. No other city possessed the bones of a genuine evangelist except Rome, which had St. Peter.

There was just one problem: St. Mark's bones were in Alexandria, Egypt. Two Venetian merchants overcame this inconvenience by looting the saint's tomb and packing his corpse into a barrel of pork, which Muslim customs agents were forbidden to touch by Islamic law. Back in Venice, St. Mark was buried in a church built especially for him (the 11th-century basilica that bears his name).

Pilfering relics became a sort of Venetian pastime after this escapade--over the years, the remains of 54 other saints made their way to the city. The modern traveler can see testaments to this odd legacy of graverobbing by visiting any of the city's churches, under which is likely to rest the bones of a kidnapped saint.

Were the Ancient Anasazi Cannibals?

2005-07-16T00:50:00.000-07:00

DID YOU KNOW? On July 4, 1863, the Confederacy was torn in two when General John C. Pemberton surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Vicksburg.

In 1967, anthropologist Christy Turner found a dusty box on a top shelf at the Museum of Northern Arizona. The box contained human bone shards excavated at Polacca Wash, a site on the Hopi Indian Reservation in present-day Arizona. The bones were broken, charred, and stripped of their flesh. He concluded that cannibalism had occurred among the Anasazi who had lived at the site.

The popular view of the Anasazi has been that of an advanced, peaceful, and deeply spiritual people who created intricate cliff dwellings, an extensive system of roads, irrigation systems, and beautiful pottery. But the remains Turner examined and painstakingly catalogued told another story. Turner studied 870 skeletons and the human remains found at 38 Anasazi sites to substantiate his theory of cannibalism. He concluded that at least 280 individuals had been violently butchered and eaten at these sites over a period of 400 years, starting in AD 900. These bones, Turner asserted, were "the most convincing evidence of cannibalism in all Southwest archaeology."

The Anasazi (Navajo for "the ancient ones") inhabited the Four Corners region (Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Arizona) from AD 100-1300. Then, according to the archaeological record, they disappeared. Initially, it was believed that a prolonged dry spell known as the Great Drought caused the Anasazi to leave their extensive dwellings in search of water. But subsequent studies of this period made this theory implausible by showing that the evacuation had begun before the drought set in. Other theories speculated famine, disease, and brutal wars.

Because it is contrary to so many long held beliefs about the enigmatic Anasazi, Turner's theory has created a firestorm of debate and has helped intensify the search for an answer to the riddles of what the Anasazi culture was like and why they suddenly vanished.

Swiss Neutrality: Strong Fences Make Good Neighbors

2005-07-16T00:44:00.000-07:00

When Julius Caesar said, "If you would have peace, prepare for war," he might well have been describing Switzerland. Although there was a small civil war in 1847, Switzerland has not fought a war against another country in 500 years.

Switzerland's neutrality comes from its unusual political structure as a loose federation of Catholic and Protestant states, known as "cantons." To avoid internal conflict over whether to support Catholics or Protestants in the many religious wars going on in Europe during the 17th century, Switzerland officially declared neutrality, a policy it still maintains. During WWII, even Hitler left Switzerland alone, despite much speculation that he would invade (though it has become apparent that, during the war, Swiss bankers helped the Nazis loot accounts held by Jewish depositors, which has damaged Switzerland's neutral reputation).

Surrounded by the Alps, Switzerland has excellent natural defensive barriers to protect its neutrality. They have been strengthened by hundreds of secret gun emplacements, air strips, and tank traps hidden within the mountains. Thousands of key points on the Swiss map are also heavily laden with explosive charges. If Switzerland were invaded tomorrow morning, within a few hours hundreds of roads, bridges, and mountain passes would be blown up, rendering much of the nation impassable.

Even if attackers could get through the mountain defenses, they'd still have to face the Swiss army. The Swiss have a full-time professional army of only 3,400. However, over 650,000 Swiss citizens (overwhelmingly male) are members of the reserves--out of a total population of less than 7.5 million--and can be mobilized in less than 48 hours. All soldiers must take their personal weapons and ammunition home with them, to make mobilization easier.

Small wonder that no country has gone to war with the Swiss in 500 years.

The Bloody Origins of the Red Cross

2005-07-16T00:37:00.000-07:00

War, it is said, is often fought in vain. Yet it is also possible for some good to arise from the horrors of war. Consider the battle of Solferino, where 5,500 soldiers lost their lives during Napoleon III's Italian Campaign of 1859. It was on this blood-stained battlefield that an act of heroism and compassion led to the founding of the Red Cross and forever changed the face of war and peace in our world.

Jean Henri Dunant, a Swiss businessman, was in Solferino (an Italian town southwest of Milan) to develop a parcel of land. Witnessing the "chaotic disorder, despair unspeakable, and misery of every kind" that followed the battle, Dunant recruited local peasants and vacationing aristocrats to join him in caring for the wounded and dying.

Upon returning to Switzerland, Dunant penned A Memory of Solferino, a book about the battle and the effort to care for the wounded. Dunant called for the establishment of an international relief society to provide care for wartime wounded. His efforts led to the creation of the International Committee of the Red Cross. The Red Cross was officially founded in August 1864. Its charter guaranteed neutrality to medical personnel and adopted a special identifying emblem--a red cross (in Muslim countries, a red crescent) on a field of white.

Dunant soon went bankrupt and moved to a small Swiss village, where he remained even after he was awarded the first-ever Nobel Peace Prize in 1901. He died alone, leaving his Nobel winnings to endow a hospice for the poor.

The organization he founded fared better: There are now over 160 Red Cross organizations; the Red Cross won a Nobel Peace Prize of its own during WWI.

St. Jerome's Fateful Dream

2005-07-16T00:33:00.000-07:00

DID YOU KNOW? On July 16, 1945 the United States conducted the first test of the atomic bomb at its research facility in Los Alamos, New Mexico.

When he was a young man, St. Jerome (c. AD 347-420) had a nightmare in which he found himself before God's seat of judgment. Asked by God who he was, Jerome replied, "A Christian," to which God responded: "Liar, you are a Ciceronian" [one who places literature and philosophy above faith]. So moved was he by this nightmare that Jerome, a classically trained scholar, abandoned for good "the books of men" to devote himself passionately to God's books. His dedication would in time produce a translation of the Old Testament from its original Hebrew into Latin that remains the most cited and authoritative of its kind.

Soon after completing a revision of the Latin Gospels commissioned by Pope Damasus in AD 382, Jerome began his translation of the Old Testament into Latin, a labor that would occupy him for the next 20 years. At this time, nearly all Christians read the Greek translation of the Old Testament, called the Septuagint, and Rome's status as heir to ancient wisdom demanded the official preservation of the classical language. But Jerome believed otherwise. Latin was the spoken language and was slowly gaining acceptance among priests and theologians in the West.

Not willing to rely solely on this Greek version, Jerome translated from the original Hebrew and even sought the advice of rabbinical scholars for sections of the Book of Job. To some Christians, among them St. Augustine, this recourse to the original Hebrew was a denigration of what they considered the inspired texts of the Greek Septuagint.

In addition to the opposition of prominent members of the Church, Jerome struggled with the difficulties posed by Latin itself. The Old Testament contained religious terms for which there were no equivalent in Latin's more fixed vocabulary, forcing Jerome to Latinize some Greek terms or make certain Latin words bear new and deeper meanings. His translation of the Old Testament reflected his belief that any translation worthy of its original must carry the meaning forward while also displaying the strength and beauty of the new language.

Hezbollah History

2005-06-10T22:51:00.000-07:00

Hezbollah's base is where Lebanon meets Israel

You may have heard that Lebanon is holding parliamentary elections, the first since Syrian forces withdrew from the country in April. The voting, which began May 29, is taking place over four consecutive Sundays. Among the winners so far: Hezbollah and friends. They swept all the seats being contested in southern Lebanon.

You're probably familiar with Hezbollah because of its ongoing fight with Israel. You might be surprised, though, to hear that it also participates in parliamentary politics. So today, we're headed to Lebanon, where we'll look into the brief but bloody history of the "Party of God."
* * * * * *

Hezbollah--Arabic for "Party of God"--was born out of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Israel invaded Lebanon with the aim of eliminating an enemy. Instead, it created a new one.

Seeds of Resistance

By 1982, Lebanon had become a thorn in Israel's side. In the early 1970s, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) established bases in southern Lebanon--a region bordering Israel that is occupied by large numbers of Palestinian refugees. From there, it launched operations against targets within Israel. Israeli forces invaded Lebanon in 1978 and again in 1982, intending to root out the PLO once and for all.

Israel succeeded in driving the PLO out--but at a cost. In 1979, the Islamic revolution in Iran brought Ayatollah Khomeini to power. In 1982, he sent Iranian military advisors to Lebanon to help organize its Shi'ite minority. As the Israeli occupation dragged on, the opposition gained strength. Ultimately, Hezbollah--a Shi'ite paramilitary organization--was founded to fight Israel and promote the goal of turning Lebanon into an Islamic republic like Iran.

Violent Struggle

Israel continued to occupy parts of Lebanon for another 18 years, during which Hezbollah waged a violent campaign against the Israelis and their allies. During the 1980s, Hezbollah was implicated in a series of kidnappings and car bombings. Not all of these were in Lebanon--Hezbollah sponsored two attacks, in 1992 and 1994, on Jewish targets in Argentina.

The U.S. State Department holds Hezbollah responsible for the deaths of more than 300 Americans. In 1983, Hezbollah sponsored a suicide bombing on the American embassy in Beirut that left 63 people dead. That same year, a truck bomb devastated a U.S. Marines barracks in Beirut, killing 241 American soldiers. Hezbollah, for its part, has denied involvement in the barracks bombing, and has denounced other terrorist acts, including the September 11 attack on the United States.

Hearts and Minds

Hezbollah's military operations are widely credited with convincing Israel to withdraw from Lebanon in 2000. Meanwhile, its civilian wing provides essential services for Lebanese Shi'ites. It publishes a newspaper and monthly magazine, operates radio and TV stations, and runs hospitals, schools, and orphanages.

These efforts have won Hezbollah a wide following. Its political arm first stood for elections in 1992 and won 12 seats in Lebanon's parliament. That was its best showing--until the 2005 elections raised Hezbollah to new heights.

Mark Diller
June 8, 2005

To learn more click on the title.

Factor This in -- New Treatment Options for Stroke

2005-06-10T22:45:00.000-07:00

Factor This in

Just 30 years ago, there was virtually no treatment for stroke. Those patients who didn't die often suffered great disability. Health-care professionals, having nothing to offer patients, took a what-can-you-do attitude. Since that time, numerous treatments for stroke, in particular ischemic stroke (by far the most common type and caused by blockages in the blood vessels), have developed and evolved. Awareness also has grown, and today, stroke victims who seek help immediately at the onset of symptoms often do quite well. But another type of stroke -- one caused by intracerebral hemorrhage, or bleeding in the brain -- has remained virtually untreatable.

While hemorrhagic strokes represent just 10% of all strokes (700,000 people had strokes in the US in 2002), about half the people who have one die from it. These are not to be confused with strokes caused by an aneurysm, a weakened artery wall that can eventually leak or even burst. Rather, they occur when a small blood vessel breaks and bleeds into the brain. In most cases, the cause is chronic high blood pressure that, over time, weakens the vessels.

But at long last there is hope on the horizon for treating hemorrhagic stroke. It comes in the form of a product used to treat hemophilia, a blood clotting disorder. Hemophiliacs lack certain proteins in their blood called "factors" that are responsible for clotting. As a consequence, hemophiliacs do not form protective clots in response to internal or external triggers unless they are treated with the type of factor they are missing. One of the blood protein factors, recombinant Factor VIIa (referred to as rFVIIa), was dismissed for a long time by doctors because they thought it was unimportant in the clotting cascade. Ironically, it was discovered that rFVIIa is a critical initiator of clotting, and today it is the treatment protocol for hemophiliacs whose condition is particularly resistant.

How It Works

This factor's key position in the clotting process, says neurologist Stephan Mayer, MD, at Columbia University Medical Center, gave him the idea that it might be an ideal agent for treating intracerebral stroke. He thought that a dose of rFVIIa might supercharge a normal clotting system, and that the resulting clot would quickly staunch bleeding in the brain.
Accordingly, he and his colleagues conducted a trial with 399 intracerebral stroke victims at 73 sites in 20 countries. Some patients received placebos... others received varying strengths of the factor. The results: In three months' time, patients receiving rFVIIa had a 38% drop in mortalities compared with placebo patients. Survivors who took rFVIIa were three times more likely not to have neurological damage than were placebo patients -- 24% versus 8%.

This has exciting implications for stroke treatment, so I called Dr. Mayer to discuss it further. The immediate concern is the risk for inducing clots elsewhere in the body, such as in a coronary artery. Dr. Mayer says that rFVIIa does indeed increase clot risk throughout the body, but the study showed only minor heart attacks and ischemic strokes from it, nothing compared with the catastrophic risk of the initiating stroke. In fact, he says, there are two much more important aspects to the treatment than the risk for thrombus (a clot forming in the bloodstream) -- getting medical help in time, and obtaining optimum follow-up care.

Proper Care Required

To be effective, the patient must receive the dose of factor within four hours of the stroke's onset. Unlike ischemic strokes, which don't present with the same dramatic symptoms, hemorrhagic strokes come on quickly, generally with a ferocious headache followed by weakness, paralysis, numbness, loss of speech or vision and confusion. It is critical to be aware of these symptoms, call 911 immediately and be certain to describe the symptoms, says Dr. Mayer. Only that way can you get proper medical help quickly enough to possibly save your life and avoid disability.

But it gets tricky. Dr. Mayer explains that many emergency departments still do not have adequate equipment or trained staff for the initial treatment of stroke and for the follow-up care of those who survive the immediate danger. Bleeding in the brain, he says, is an incredible biological stressor that causes all systems in the body to go haywire. Although the factor stops the bleeding immediately and no follow-up is needed for that, the patient must have immediate intensive care, whether by a stroke team or a neurointensive team, to properly restore a state of biological health and stasis.

As I explained in Daily Health News on November 15, 2004, a number of hospitals have established themselves as stroke centers, with the necessary equipment, staff and ability to administer the latest forms of treatment. This designation will in time become official. Until then, talk to the emergency technicians and your primary care doctor if a stroke is suspected. If so, insist that the ambulance go to the nearest major medical center to ensure the best care possible. Today, many stroke centers list themselves as such on the Internet, so familiarize yourself with those in your area.

Meet Simón Bolívar

2005-06-10T22:39:00.000-07:00

Bolivia, South America's poorest country, is in turmoil, its cities in the process of shutting down. Leftist protesters, led by the land's impoverished indigenous people, want to nationalize Bolivia's substantial natural gas reserves and distribute the wealth. And since native people make up 65 percent of the population, they have numbers on their side.

On Monday, Bolivia's president resigned, saying the time has come for the "national majority to govern the country." On Thursday, the country's congress met to decide what to do. One thing is for sure. Bolivia has seen many presidents come and go. But right now it could use one with the stature of Simón Bolívar, the founder of the country and father of South American independence.

* * * * * *

To some, he was a dictator. To others, he was El Libertador: The Liberator. Whatever your point of view, Simón Bolívar was one of the most important figures in the history of South America.

Rebellious Youth

Bolívar was born in 1783 in Caracas to an aristocratic Venezuelan family of Basque origin. In 1799, he went to study in Madrid, and there fell in love with María Teresa Rodríguez del Toro y Alayza. In 1802, when he was 19, he married her and took her back to Venezuela. Tragically, she caught yellow fever and died just six months later.

Bolívar took up residence in Paris in 1804, and drank in the revolutionary spirit of Napoleon's imperial France. In Rome in 1805, atop a hill called the Monte Sacro, Bolívar looked out over the ruins of ancient Rome and swore an oath not to rest until South America was free from Spanish rule.

War to the Death

By 1807, he was back in Venezuela, preparing for the revolution. When Napoleon invaded Spain in 1808 and installed his brother on the Spanish throne, Spain's authority throughout its colonies took a hit. Revolutionaries in Caracas seized the opportunity. In 1810, they seized power, and a year later, declared Venezuela's independence. Bolívar became the new government's representative to Great Britain and a colonel in the new army.

Spain wasn't going to leave without a fight. All-out war soon commenced, and by 1812, Spanish forces had re-established control over Venezuela. Bolívar escaped to Cartagena, where he produced the first of his famous revolutionary tracts, the Cartagena Manifesto. He was not one to mince words. In a famous speech a year later, Bolívar declared, "Our land shall be purged of the monsters that infest it. Our hate shall be inexorable and our war shall be to the death."

Bolívar and his troops swept back into Venezuela in 1813 and won a series of victories over the Spanish. In August, the Spanish fled Caracas, and Bolívar entered the city of his birth as a conquering hero. But the "Second Venezuelan Republic" was as short-lived as the first. In 1814, the Spanish gained the upper hand and, after more fighting, Bolívar again fled his homeland. While in exile, he evaded assassination and wrote the "Letter from Jamaica," declaring his desire to "throw out the Spaniards" and "establish in these lands a powerful empire with a free government and benevolent laws."

Spain Bugs Out

Bolívar raised more troops and money and continued his back-and-forth war with the Spanish. In 1817, he achieved an important victory and set up a new government and base of operations in the Venezuelan town of Angostura (now Ciudad Bolívar). From there, he planned more daring attacks and the liberation of the rest of the continent.

In 1819, the Battle of Boyacá freed Colombia from the Spanish and put Bogotá under Bolívar's control. By 1821, Bolívar had proclaimed the independence of the new Republic of Gran Colombia, comprising Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, and Panama. Bolívar became president of the republic. But Peru was still under Spanish rule, so Bolívar's army called there, too, kicking out the Spanish in 1824 and creating the new country of Bolivia--named after Bolívar himself.

Uneasy Lies the Head

By the end of 1826, South America was free of Spanish control. But Bolívar would find it impossible to keep control over all the people and forces he'd unleashed. Angry disputes and separatist movements among the member states of Gran Colombia quickly ensued, despite Bolívar's desire to see South America become a unified power.

He tried to wield dictatorial powers over the nations he'd freed, but uprisings broke out and conspirators tried to murder him. Finally, discouraged, hated by many, and weakened by tuberculosis, he resigned as president and decided to make a new home overseas. He never got there. He died of his illness in Colombia in 1830.

Jeffery VailJune 9, 2005
To learn more click on the title.

3 Questions for the International Criminal Court

2005-06-10T22:30:00.000-07:00

Back in April, the U.N. Security Council determined that the government of Sudan has done nothing to rein in Arab militias responsible for tens of thousands of deaths in Darfur. So, the U.N. told the International Criminal Court (ICC) to take action. This week, the ICC said it would--that it's investigating as many 51 people for possible charges of war crimes. Sudan says it will not cooperate.

There have been international courts before, but they generally focused on disputes between nations. The ICC's mandate is to deal with individuals when their governments will not bring justice--and that's all new. What does it mean? Can the court charge anyone, including you? You've got questions; we've got answers.

* * * * * *

Today's Knowledge:
3 Questions for the International Criminal Court

When did the International Criminal Court get started?

The ICC's history is both long and short. It's only been in operation since 2002, but the impetus to form an international criminal court has been around for much longer. In 1948, the United Nations passed a resolution encouraging the formation of an international court to try charges of genocide. Nothing came of that, but by the 1990s, sentiment had changed. Horrible massacres in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia required the formation of ad hoc legal tribunals and underscored the lack of a permanent body with responsibility for such cases.

The ICC was formed to fill the gap. It's based on a treaty called the Rome Statute, which was finalized in 1998. According to the treaty, the ICC could begin operations as soon as 60 countries ratified it--and that occurred in 2002. The ICC has since set up operations in The Hague, Netherlands, and elected 18 judges, who are specialists in international law.

What powers does the ICC have?

The Rome Statute established the ICC as a court with jurisdiction over genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The court was also given authority over charges of aggression--though with the proviso that it should not accept such cases until an amendment has been passed defining what, exactly, a "crime of aggression" might be.

The ICC is supposed to complement national jurisdictions, not supersede them. The Rome Statute states that the ICC will not admit a case if it's already "being investigated or prosecuted by a State that has jurisdiction over it, unless the State is unwilling or unable genuinely to carry out the investigation or prosecution."

The ICC has no police force or penal system of its own, so it acts through the agency of the countries that ratified the Rome Statute. When the ICC issues an arrest warrant, member nations are required to enforce it. If convicted, a defendant can be fined or imprisoned. The sentence is carried out within any country willing to enforce the ICC's judgment.

Can I be dragged before the ICC?

You can probably rest easy. First a case would have to be brought against you. Three bodies can refer a case to the ICC: a country that has ratified the treaty, a country that has accepted the ICC's jurisdiction, and the U.N. Security Council. As a fourth option, the ICC's international prosecutor can initiate a case, and a three-judge panel will determine whether to proceed.

Yet the ICC lacks jurisdiction inside a country that has not ratified the treaty--a country like the United States, for instance. The United States signed the treaty, but Congress never ratified it. In fact, quite the opposite. In 2002, Congress passed the American Servicemembers' Protection Act, authorizing the use of force to prevent any U.S. national from being tried in the ICC. Russia, China, Israel, and most of the countries in Asia and the Middle East have also chosen not to sign on the dotted line--meaning the ICC may be international, but it's definitely not universal.

Mark Diller
June 10, 2005

To learn more click on the title.

Meet the Marburg Virus

2005-06-07T18:57:00.000-07:00

Marburg Virus at 100,000 times its normal size

There is no cure for the Marburg virus--or for its equally deadly cousin, Ebola. Right now, if you catch Marburg, there's a good chance you'll die.

But this weekend, scientists in Canada and the United States (including military counterterrorism experts) announced that they just might have a vaccine. It worked in monkeys. The next step is human trials, which might take five or six years. In the meantime, take a shot of Marburg knowledge from us.

* * * * * *

No one knows how the Marburg virus first takes up residence in a human host. Once there, though, it can kill quickly. And there's no cure.

Why "Marburg"?

The world first met Marburg in 1967. That year, several laboratory workers simultaneously got sick in three locales: the German cities of Marburg and Frankfurt, and the Serbian city of Belgrade.

The patients initially complained of headache, fever, and muscle pain. Within a week, other symptoms developed, including a rash on the chest and back, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, chest and abdominal pain, delirium, multiple organ failures, and massive bleeding. The disease later spread to medical personnel and a few family members. There were 37 cases in all, and seven people died.

The massive bleeding signaled that this was a viral hemorrhagic fever. Scientists studying the disease had to invent a new virus family, the filoviruses, to properly classify it. Later, they discovered the only other known members of the filovirus clan: four varieties of Ebola.

Filoviruses are distinguished in part by their filament-like structure (filum is Latin for "thread"). They're also indigenous to Africa. So how did Marburg get to Europe? Turns out, the infected workers came into contact with green monkeys from Uganda sent as lab animals.

How Does It Spread?

Researchers think an animal host carries the Marburg virus, but they don't know which animal it is (the green monkeys of '67 were fellow victims, not the host virus hunters are after). Nor do they know how the virus jumps from its animal host to humans. They don't think that the Marburg virus can spread through the air. It seems to be transmitted mainly through fluids such as blood, saliva, and urine.

That means it's most likely to infect health-care workers and family caregivers. It also means that once outbreaks are identified, they're relatively easy to contain. Three outbreaks--in 1975, 1980, and 1987--resulted in only six cases and two deaths.

How Deadly Is It, Really?

Until recently, Marburg had a 25 percent fatality rate. That's bad enough, but recent numbers look much worse. In 1988, an outbreak among miners in the Congo resulted in 149 cases, 123 of them fatal. A new outbreak in Angola, which started in late 2004, has resulted in about 400 cases, and more than 80 percent of these have been deadly.

Perhaps a new, deadlier strain of Marburg has developed, but investigators suspect that the main culprit may actually be inadequate medical care. According to the Angolan government, the country has only 1,200 doctors, and the hospital at the center of the outbreak was, at one point, reportedly operating without power or running water. Some specialists worry that inadequately provisioned hospitals could do more to spread the virus than to contain it.

Mark Diller
June 6, 2005
To learn more, click the title.

Sinking Ships with a Secret Weapon

2005-06-07T18:49:00.000-07:00

The leaders of Europe were scared. Muslim Turks of the Ottoman Empire had just seized Cyprus and looked ready to terrorize the whole Mediterranean. Europe's Christian powers formed an alliance called the Holy League to fight the Turks. When the two sides' navies faced off near the Greek city of Lepanto on October 7, 1571, the Holy League unveiled a secret weapon.

The Holy League fleet consisted mostly of 208 galleys--oar-driven warships that relied on a battering ram, a few cannons, archers, and hand-to-hand combat to overcome their enemies. The Turkish fleet was bigger, with about 270 ships (also primarily galleys), but the Holy League hoped to counter that disparity with a new type of warship: the galleass.

Because a galley's sides were occupied by rowers, it could only carry a few guns that had to fire straight ahead. The galleass, however, with an added gun deck above the rowers, could carry many guns positioned along its sides--giving it about four times the firepower of a traditional galley. Plus, a galley would probably have only one chance to fire before attempting to ram its opponent, while a galleass could fire again and again.

The Holy League's admiral, Don Juan of Austria, positioned his six galleasses at the front of his fleet. As the Turkish galleys tried to get close enough to ram the Holy League's ships, the galleasses rained cannon fire down upon them. After six hours, the Turks had lost 210 ships, while the Holy League only lost 17. The Ottoman Empire's seaward expansion had been halted.

Lepanto, however, proved to be the only time the galleass played a major role in warfare. Within a generation, the sailing ship, with all of its guns mounted broadside like a galleass, would start its four-century reign as the premier warship.

Coffin Ships and the Irish Potato Famine

2005-06-07T18:45:00.000-07:00

In 1845, famine struck Ireland as a potato blight (or fungus) destroyed the peasants' most important food crop. Thousands starved even while grain and dairy exports to Canada, Britain, and the United States continued. Within 10 years, the population of Ireland fell from 8 million to less than 6 million as people either died or fled, in the single greatest population movement in history. Those that left often boarded the "coffin ships"--ships so packed with people and disease that most onboard perished before they ever reached their final destination, or soon thereafter.

Ship owners refitted old ships to take advantage of the need for travel, but they did so with little care for the passengers. Coffin ships were generally old, ill-provisioned, and horribly overcrowded. Records show that one such ship, carrying more than 270 passengers (though officially it had only 212), had fewer than 35 passenger berths. It carried only two-thirds of its official water ration, for a trip that could take as long as two months, and had no sanitary facilities. Unsurprisingly, disease was rampant.

The United States did not welcome the immigrants, raising rates of passage and demanding that shipmasters pay a bond to ensure that no passenger would require charity. Many ships carrying sick passengers were simply refused entry. Often these ships wound up in Canada, where the sheer numbers of sick, fevered passengers quickly overwhelmed local hospitals and medical facilities. Estimates show that of the 100,000 who fled Ireland for North America in 1847, approximately 17,000 died on the voyage, and more than 40,000 died soon after their arrival.

Sadly, those who made it onto the "coffin ships" were considered fortunate, compared to those left behind. Those who survived the trip often carried great resentment against the English, blaming their policies for the exile or death of so many.

Toddling through Mesopotamia

2005-06-07T18:31:00.000-07:00

Today's Iraq never fails to make headlines. This week alone, news stories have detailed what Saddam Hussein may face at trial (about a dozen charges of war crimes), what efforts are being made to consolidate control (about 900 new arrests and 800 new checkpoints), and what insurgents are doing in response (4 bombs in 7 minutes, killing 18).

There was a time when Iraq made history, not news--when Mesopotamia actually helped get civilization on its feet. Today, let's take the long view and look at the "old news."

Some people say Iraq is democracy'sgreatest test. Others say it's a violent mess. But a historian will say Iraq's the cradle of civilization.

* * * * * *

It's true. Ancient Iraq--Mesopotamia--was likely home to the first agriculture, the first cities, the first laws. It was home to the first wheel and the first writing, too. It was where humans grew out of cultural diapers and into toddler training pants. Here's the story, step by toddler step.

Solid Food --Agriculture

The days of "cavemen" hunting mammoths in the snow really weren't that long ago. The last Ice Age didn't end until around 10,000 BC, and mammoth meatloaf stayed on man's menu for centuries after that. Lunch came largely where you found it--find a berry, eat a berry. Archaeological evidence suggests that a few crafty cowboys (or bad hunters) domesticated cattle, pigs, sheep, and goats and started tending to their food. But nobody grew crops.

People gathered wild grains where they could, of course. Eventually, someone was bound to notice that a few scattered grains of wheat or barley had sprouted beside the grinding place. Archaeologists think this "a-ha!"--perhaps the most important "a-ha!" in human history--happened around 8000 BC, with the first farmers donning seed-corn caps in the fertile land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. They've identified other contenders for the "first farmer" title, too, in Asia and the Americas. One thing is for sure. With a surplus of food like never before, the people of Mesopotamia (Greek for "land between the rivers") flourished.

Getting Wet and Keeping Dry --Villages & Cities

As long as lunch was on the hoof, nobody had much incentive to stay in one place. Farming, for the first time, gave people roots, and semi-permanent villages sprang up with the crops. Still, successive plantings sucked the life out of the soil, and people eventually had to pick up and move to a new garden spot. The farmers of Mesopotamia had an advantage here: river water, and plenty of it, fed the alluvial land. The trick was controlling it, both to water the crops and to keep it from flooding the village. So people learned the art of irrigation, dikes, and dams. Add in crop rotation, and you've got villages built to last throughout Mesopotamia.

You've got one more thing, too: government. Maintaining complex irrigation and flood control systems took organization and specialization. You grow the food, and I'll dig the ditches. And Uncle Gilgamesh will collect the taxes to pay my salary and maintain the public works. By 3500 BC, the world's first city-dwellers lived in Mesopotamian burgs where thousands of people did dozens of different jobs--and where anyone would have recognized the old joke about death and taxes.

Circle Time --The Wheel

Fred Flintstone aside, the wheel was not a Stone Age tool. As Mesopotamian villages gradually morphed into cities between 5000 and 3500 BC, the people closest to the Persian Gulf, called the Sumerians, achieved particular prominence. By 3500 BC, some Sumerian Sam (or Samantha) had figured out how to make a wheel. A Sumerian pictograph from around 3500 BC actually features the wheel in an infomercial-style before-and-after shot, showing a wooden sled side-by-side with a virtually identical wheeled "sled."

Inspiration seems to have come from the potter's wheel, which appeared in Mesopotamia around the same time. All early models of the wheel consisted of three planks of wood clamped together with two crosspieces and carved to roundness. By 2000 BC, deluxe models had spokes. Oxen were sold separately.

One-Two-Three, ABC --Cuneiform

Around the time the wheel became something to write home about, Sumerians learned how to write home. Thank the accountants, not the English majors. City life had gotten complicated, and merchants and tax collectors could no longer just remember who paid how much for what. So they started keeping simple accounts--tallies and tokens designed more to jog the memory than anything else. Soon, would-be writers started using pictographs to represent objects, and the pictographs, in turn, evolved into linear marks denoting not only objects but the sounds of spoken syllables as well.

Scholars today call the Sumerian symbols cuneiform--from the Latin cuneus, or wedge--because scribes made wedge-shaped characters by pressing the slanted end of a reed stylus into wet clay. When finished, they fired the clay to harden it. Thousands of these clay tablets survive today. The earliest tablets simply list commodities in various amounts next to people's names.

Playing Nice with Others --The Law

By 2100 BC, people were writing more than receipts. They were recording the law, allowing legal precedent to pass more easily from one generation to the next. Tribal rules surely existed for thousands of years. But the communal complexity of city life expanded both the need for rules and the number of situations calling for a rule in the first place. The law simply outgrew oral pronouncements.

The first known legal code comes from the Sumerian king Ur-Nammu, who founded a dynasty at the city of Ur in 2112 BC. The most famous comes from Hammurabi, who started his rule in Babylon in 1792 BC, after the Sumerians gave way to the Akkadians upriver. Hammurabi didn't look kindly on criminals. Bad guys were as likely to die as face a fine. But he did apparently try hard for social justice. Those captured in the king's wars were guaranteed ransom, farmers hurt by drought or flood could ignore their debts, and wives abandoned by husbands got alimony and child support. True to writing's original purpose, many of the laws regulated commerce. Rule #105: Always get a receipt!

Michael Himick
June 7, 2005

To know more, click on the title.

The Spanish Civil War: The Lincoln Brigade's Fight for Freedom

2005-06-02T13:09:00.000-07:00

In 1937, more than 45,000 soldiers from 50 countries fought for democracy in Spain as part of the International Brigades. Some were members of the Communist party; others were middle-class intellectuals; and many were young men with a romantic view of war in Europe. They entered the Spanish Civil War against their countries' wishes, determined to protect Spain's democratically elected government against the fascist rebels led by Francisco Franco. Of these soldiers 2,800 were Americans, who made up a unit known as the Lincoln Brigade.
The Lincoln Brigade was led by Robert Merriman, a young economics professor whose idealism was admired by war reporter Ernest Hemingway. (Merriman later served as the model for Robert Jordan, the hero of Hemingway's novel For Whom The Bell Tolls.) It was Merriman who led the Lincoln Brigade into battle for the first time in the Jarama River Valley south of Madrid on February 27, 1937. The American soldiers, who had outdated equipment and little training, were ordered to attack a hill later known as Suicide Hill. Of the 500 American soldiers who participated in the attack, over 300 of them were killed or wounded. Yet the word spread of the remarkable courage displayed by the Lincoln Brigade. Despite such acts of bravery on the part of the Republican armies, Franco's Nationalist forces eventually were victorious.
It would be years before the members of the Lincoln Brigade were recognized for their fight against fascism. Because many of the Brigade's members had been Communist Party members, they were blacklisted by the FBI during the 1950s. But in the years since, their valor has been commemorated by statues and plaques in Europe and America. In November 1996, the Spanish Parliament thanked the surviving members of the International Brigades by making them all honorary citizens of Spain.

Thucydides: The First Great Military Historian

2005-06-02T13:00:00.000-07:00

Greek historian Thucydides (460-400 BC) wrote only one book, and although never completed, it set a standard for military history writing still respected today. His History of the Peloponnesian War, the first true historical narrative, was written in a concise, direct, and highly detailed style never before seen, and was the first known moral and political analysis of a country's war policies.
As an Athenian general in the Peloponnesian War with Sparta (431-404 BC), Thucydides was charged with defending the city of Amphipolis. When in 424 the city was taken by the Spartans, the ultimate victors in the war, Thucydides was recalled, tried, and banished for the duration of the war. It was during his exile that he turned historian and began writing of his experiences of war.
Because he had first-hand knowledge of Sparta's generals and military tactics, Thucydides was able to write with extraordinary accuracy and insightfulness. Despite his past as an Athenian general, his narrative revealed an exceptional degree of impartiality and avoided references to political and social issues unless they had direct bearing on the story at hand. Thucydides was extremely thorough in his reporting, interviewing other eyewitnesses, examining battle sites, and poring over war-related documents.
In places, Thucydides personalized his account of the war through the speeches of famous generals. Whether they were reported to him or heard first hand, the speeches were written in Thucydides's own words; he knew the speeches could not be reproduced perfectly but wanted to be faithful to the motives and ambitions of those who uttered them. The most celebrated of these is the funeral oration of Pericles, the great statesman-general who saw his beloved Athens and many of its citizens destroyed during the war. A remembrance of the Athenians who died in the war's first year, the speech's power and eloquence is such that even today few can read it and remain unmoved.

Military Disaster at Khartoum

2005-06-02T12:52:00.000-07:00

DID YOU KNOW? On May 30, 1431 at Rouen in English-controlled Normandy, Joan of Arc, the peasant girl who became the savior of France, was burned at the stake for heresy.
When the Sudanese city of Khartoum was about to be attacked by a rebel army in January 1884, Britain ordered Major General Charles Gordon to evacuate the city, not fight. Gordon decided to fight to save the city anyway. That impetuous act made him a hero. It also cost him his life and brought down the British prime minister.
Gordon wanted more men and guns to fight the Muslim rebels (dubbed "fuzzy-wuzzies" for their wild hair), but his superiors refused. As the city came under siege, Gordon waited for his continued appeals to be answered. The British government waited, too--for Gordon to follow orders. Months passed.
In July, Britain finally agreed to send help, but it would take another six months for the relief force to be organized and shipped out. Meanwhile, Gordon took comfort in the fact that Khartoum was protected on two sides by the river Nile. He had steamboats with which he could slip past the rebel army at any time. However, as the siege dragged into the desert's dry season, the Nile--Gordon's only escape route--began to evaporate. Not only would his steamboats be useless soon, the rebels would be able to attack Khartoum from all sides. Still he waited.
The British reinforcements arrived on January 28, 1885--two days too late. The rebels had already stormed Khartoum and killed everyone inside. The relief force went home, and the Sudan remained in rebel hands until Britain sent an army to recapture it 13 years later.
Even though Britain had been prepared to lose Khartoum, public perception of the fiasco was that Gordon had been sent to save the city and then abandoned in his hour of need. For that, Prime Minister William Gladstone was pressured into resigning. And Gordon, the insubordinate general, had statues erected in his honor.

12 great outdoor dates

2005-06-01T10:42:00.000-07:00

http://msn.match.com/msn/article.aspx?articleid=4080&articleSrc=2&lid=159

Didn't feel like posting the whole article so I figured I'll just post the link and let you read it there.

6 guys you don’t want to date after a divorce

2005-06-01T10:33:00.000-07:00

By Lisa Lombardi
Newly single? “There are three rules of dating after divorce,” says Lisa Daily, author of Stop Getting Dumped! “Don’t think of yourself as damaged goods, don’t torture the new guy for your ex’s misdeeds, and even though you’re craving intimacy like chocolate cheesecake after a month of Atkins, don’t give up the goods on the first date.” Oh, and while you’re at it, steer clear of these back-on-the-market buzz kills:
Guy #1: Mr. Angry-I’m-Divorced-Too
How to spot him: He’ll tell you within the first ten seconds that his wife ran off with her trainer. Or drained his bank account. Or both. And he can’t wait to hear all the ugly details of your divorce.
Why he’s tempting: You have a common enemy: The ex. And a heated trash-your-ex session can get you all hot and bothered—in a good way.
Why you should steer clear: If he’s still raging about how she did him wrong, he’s got, ahem, some issues to sort. “A lot of the divorced men I meet are eager to have ‘dump on your ex sessions,’ says Jennifer*, a 32-year-old who got married at 24 and divorced at 26. “But I steer clear of anyone who is harboring that much hostility toward their ex, because they obviously aren’t ready for a new relationship.”
Guy #2: Mr. Best-Friends-with-His-Ex
How to spot him: He’ll nonchalantly work her into conversations: “My ex thinks I should buzz my hair,” “When my ex and I were having lattes yesterday…”
Why he’s tempting: He sounds so enlightened! You think you’ve stumbled upon the most forgiving guy in America.
Why you should steer clear: Staying friendly after a breakup is a good thing, sure. But if his former wife still occupies the role of trusted advisor—Condoleezza to his George W.—beware. “This is a guy who’s still in love, plotting a comeback, or at least hoping for the possibility of breakup sex,” says Daily. “Pass on him.”
Guy #3: The Player
How to spot him: He’s the unusually friendly guy who makes effortless chit-chat, has expensive shoes and a good haircut—and is always ducking outside to talk on his cell.
Why he’s tempting: You know how in tennis when you play with a great player, you don’t suck as much as when you play with a beginner? Same applies here. If your date is a smooth operator who’s never at a loss for words, you’ll feel more relaxed, witty, and confident, says Tessina.
Why you should steer clear: Slick guys love dating. But they are less fond of relationships. If your pro dater has had a ton of five-minute partnerships, doesn't open up, or shies away from discussing personal details, “he probably won’t commit,” says Tessina.
Guy #4: The Dr. Phil Clone
How to spot him: He’s a close talker. And what other guy says, “And how did that make you feel?”
Why he’s tempting: Counseling is expensive. Why not get it for free?
Why you should steer clear: Your dates will soon feel like a therapy session, and that’s not romantic. But the real problem is Dr. Phil wannabes are happiest when you’re unhappy. So unless you want to play the role of despondent-damsel-in-distress to his caring-if-not-slightly-condescending professional, tell this guy to take a hike.
Guy #5: Mr. Crazy-Possessive
How to spot him: When he hears you were married, he jokes, “Did he hurt you? Just say the word, and I’ll get the guy.”
Why he’s tempting: “Jealousy can be flattering,” says Tessina. He wants you all to himself, which is an ego rush.
Why you should steer clear: Intense jealousy is often a sign of emotional instability. “Controlling people are usually very smooth at first,” says Tessina. “But after they charm you into bonding to them, the control can turn very unpleasant, and even lead to stalking or abuse.” So consider yourself warned!
Guy #6: Ashton Kutcher’s Evil Twin
How to spot him: He spots you. And tells you you’re so much hotter than the 22-year-olds he has dated. You’re a single divorced mom? He acts like he won the lottery!
Why he’s tempting: He’s got all his hair and still fits in his 32-waist jeans. Enough said.
Why you should steer clear: So your 24-year-old babe says he “has a thing” for older women? “These guys are just looking for a booty call—they save the real love for women closer to their own age,” says New Yorker Joanne Morris, 40-something, who has dated several guys in their mid-twenties. “One guy tried to talk me into meeting him at a hotel, which he graciously suggested I pay for. I declined!” But the kicker was when she invited a 25-year-old “friend” home for the weekend, and it turned out he had more in common with her 20-year-old son than with her. “They spent the whole weekend together—skateboarding!”
Lisa Lombardi is a New York-based writer and editor.

My grandma

2005-05-30T04:36:00.000-07:00

This is my grandmother. She passed away in Sept. of '98. She was not very nice to me and I grew up to dislike her so much.

2005-05-30T04:34:00.000-07:00

My mommy and me. I miss that pillow.
Posted by Hello

2005-05-30T04:31:00.000-07:00

My pop and me
Posted by Hello

2005-05-30T04:30:00.000-07:00

Wasn't I cute?
Posted by Hello

2005-05-30T04:29:00.000-07:00

Well this is DD in the bathroom. She thinks I'm going to comb her for fleas but she's wrong. I didn't want to at the moment.
Posted by Hello

Take The Dang Survey!

2005-05-19T10:38:00.000-07:00

http://join1.winhundred.com/affiliate/link.php?ref=12332&productid=28&sid=hottie_amanda@hotmail.com

Please take this survey! Once you finish it you will be able to get a laptop, cash, trip to New York, Playstation 2, iPod, mini-bike, and more! Just take the survey and then do everything possible for more people to take the survey once you complete yours. They'll give you a link to post. The more people you get, the closer you are to getting prizes. When you sin up, you're helping me get closer to my goal and you're helping yourself at the same time. Thank you for clicking on it if you do. I really appreciate it!

Revealing the Past: Stonehenge

2005-05-15T21:12:00.000-07:00

Who built Stonehenge, the majestic and enigmatic prehistoric monuments on the Salisbury plains in southern England? One legend states that the devil bought the stones from an old woman and used his magical powers to transport them to England. Another has it that dancing giants were magically turned into the stones.

Early scientists guessed that the standing stones were the site of rituals held by Druids. Unfortunately, the stones had been standing for nearly 3,000 years when the Celts arrived. Modern archaeologists believe that Stonehenge was constructed in three phases over 25 generations. Around 3000 BC, the so-called Heel Stone was erected outside of a circular ditch.

During the second construction stage around 2150 BC, an avenue was built and two crescent-shaped rows of standing stones were erected in the center of the circle. Around 2000 BC, a circle of sandstone pillars topped by lintels replaced earlier stones, and five trilithons--pairs of upright stones connected by a horizontal stone--were built in a horseshoe shape.

One of the many mysteries of Stonehenge is how the huge upright stones were dragged to Stonehenge from where geologists say they must have stood originally, about 14 miles away. The most popular theory holds that they were carried on rafts from the Welsh shore. The greatest mystery of the site, however, concerns its purpose.

Early archaeologists believed that Stonehenge was a temple. Some believed it was dedicated to sun worship. Recent theorists argue that Stonehenge was an astronomical "computer" used to predict solar and lunar alignments. Four "station" stones are believed to predict sunrise, sunset, moonrise, and moonset. Yet another theory is that the site was important for its sexual symbolism. The many questions Stonehenge raises are really an indication of how much we have left to learn about life in early Britain.

Why Did Hannibal Cross the Alps?

2005-05-15T21:09:00.000-07:00

In order for the army of Carthage (modern-day Tunisia) to attack Rome in 218 BC, it would have to march 1,100 miles from its base in Spain. And it would be 1,100 tough miles, across two mountain ranges: the Pyrenees and the Alps. Through narrow passes and up steep paths, the ambitious Carthaginian general Hannibal would lead a force of 40,000 troops, thousands of horses, carts, supplies, dogs, native guides, and the most famous contingent, elephants--38 to be exact.

In battle, these great beasts would charge into the enemy's cavalry carrying archers on their backs. This would serve both a tactical and a psychological purpose: Volleys of arrows would break the Romans' ranks, and the fearsome size of the elephants would scare the Romans into fleeing (or the elephants would simply crush them underfoot). The elephants, however, were less controllable than horses, and their handlers were equipped with mallets and spikes to kill them if they turned hostile.

Hannibal had been taught to hate his country's long-time enemy, Rome, from an early age. His goal was not just to defeat the superior Roman forces in battle, but to do it on their own land. And he was willing to spend 15 days battling snowstorms, starvation, landslides, and hostile hill tribes while crossing the Alps to do it. Five months after leaving the Spanish city of Cartagena in May, his army arrived in Italy.

Years of fighting and retreating followed, and Hannibal was ultimately defeated. His early victory in Italy against a Roman army of more than 50,000 men at Cannae, however, showed the world that Rome, in fact, could be beaten. Hannibal's elephants were never a decisive battlefield weapon, but they have endured as a symbol of his confidence and daring.

Bismarck Invents the Modern Welfare State

2005-05-15T21:06:00.000-07:00

In 1881, at the suggestion of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, Kaiser Wilhelm I sent a letter to the Reichstag, the German Parliament, demanding social insurance benefits for German workers. Disabled and elderly workers had the right to be cared for by the state, he said. The Reichstag's members were astonished: Bismarck was a die-hard conservative who had spent most of his career fighting the Social Democratic Party, yet he was proposing a revolutionary socialist program.

Known as the "Iron Chancellor," Bismarck was a brilliant strategist who understood that he could maintain his own power best by co-opting some of socialism's most popular ideas. In 1883, his Health Insurance Act was passed and Germany became the first major European power to provide state-subsidized retirement, disability, and health insurance.

The German insurance system was not the first welfare system in Europe or even in Germany, but it differed from previous systems in several key respects. Well-paid, skilled workers typically had been able to pay into a sickness or death fund, which provided them with some security, while the state had subsidized some rudimentary poverty relief for the utterly destitute. Private charities tried to fill in the gaps, but the vast majority of workers went unprotected, and usually worked until they died. The idea that workers had a right to comprehensive social insurance was radical.

Bismarck established a three-part system in which money was taken from workers, employers, and the state, and used to fund disability, healthcare for workers, and retirement. The insurance still was far from universal, however, and those not in organized industries--such as farmers and artisans--did not qualify for benefits. Bismarck also set the retirement age at 70, well past the average life span of an industrial worker, as part of a deliberate effort to minimize payments.

Despite their limitations, Bismarck's ideas became the prototype for much of modern social legislation, including the United States' Social Security program.

Yesterday's Word

2005-05-04T11:37:00.000-07:00

Word of the Day for Tuesday May 4, 2005

traduce \truh-DOOS; -DYOOS\, transitive verb: To expose to contempt or shame by means of false statements or misrepresentation; to represent as blamable; to vilify.

Sir Edward rang twice to stress that he had no business relationship with the family other than his consultancy, but also to vouch for the fact that they were "splendid people" who should not be traduced. --Ian Jack, "Generous spirits, secretive souls," [1]Independent, October 17, 1998

I sometimes wonder whether those who traduce today's television have any conception just how much is on offer to the growing number of us with multi-channel television. --Peter Bazalgette, "Golden Age? This is it," [2]The Guardian, November 19, 2001

The only problem is that his corrective arguments tend to traduce rationalism as the exclusive preserve of wild-eyed eggheads who only ever spin webs of marvelously useless deduction. --Steven Poole, "Et cetera," [3]The Guardian, June 30, 2001

Many of you, Our Leader is absolutely sure, were disgusted at the way Rupert has been traduced in the media. --A. N. Wilson, "Modern Britain, modern kitchens! New Labour Web site number 11," [4]Daily Telegraph, March 3, 1998 _________________________________________________________

Traduce derives from Latin traducere, "to lead across, to lead along, to display, to expose to ridicule," from trans-, "across, over" + ducere, "to lead."

Synonyms: Calumniate; vilify; defame; slander.

Thesaurus.com.References
1. http://www.independent.co.uk/
2. http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian/
3. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
5.http://thesaurus.reference.com/roget/VI/934.html

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=9&q=traduce

Pope Alexander VI: Rotten To The Core

2005-05-04T11:34:00.000-07:00

When Pope Alexander VI died in 1503, he was laid out in the Sistine Chapel and left until his flesh turned deep purple and his tongue was swollen and bent double. When the time finally came for burial, the bloated corpse was rolled up in an old carpet and crammed into the now too-small coffin. It was a grotesque but appropriately inglorious end for history's most corrupt and profligate pope.

Rodrigo de Borgia (1431-1503) was a cardinal by age 25 and vice-chancellor of the Holy See at 26, a position that he held for 35 years, and which earned him a fortune through the sale of indulgences and the devious manipulation of his power and position. When he was "elected" to the papacy in 1492 and became Alexander VI, his winning vote came from the 96-year-old, totally senile patriarch of Venice

Before becoming pope, Alexander fathered four illegitimate children by different women, including one Giulia Farnese, who became his mistress at 15. By Vanozza dei Catanei, he had three more illegitimate children, including a son, Cesare, and a daughter, Lucrezia, whom he used like a pawn. Alexander forced Lucrezia into three marriages by the time she was 21, always to men who could benefit him financially or politically. He forced her to divorce the first husband and had the second murdered. Lucrezia remained unhappily married to the third, the Duke of Ferrara.

Alexander's son Cesare was invested with several bishoprics at only 18 and was made cardinal a year later. Ruthless and cruel like his father, Cesare employed a chemist known to be a master of poisons, ordered at least one murder, and was suspected of many more.

Pilgrims to Rome during the Jubilee (Holy Year) of 1500 were shocked by Alexander's brazen excess. There were others who had come to despise this flagrantly corrupt papacy, and when the pope fell ill from a fever three years later his personal physicians hastened rather than prevented his demise.

DID YOU KNOW?

2005-05-04T11:32:00.000-07:00

DID YOU KNOW?

On May 7 1945, the German High Command, in the person of General Alfred Jodl, signed the unconditional surrender of all German forces, East and West, at Reims, in northwestern France.

Did Ya Know

2005-05-01T16:55:00.000-07:00

Toad-licking became a popular pastime amongst drug users in Australia and the US in the late 1980s. The giant cane toad was found to produce a chemcial called bufotenine as a form of defence against its enemies. Humans who licked its head discovered a hallucinogenic property which had the side effects of vomiting and diarrhoea.

Report: 'Idol' Finalist Faced Drug Charges

2005-05-01T16:48:00.000-07:00

Report: 'Idol' Finalist Faced Drug Charges Apr 28, 5:55 PM EST

"American Idol" finalist Bo Bice was arrested twice in the past four years on drug charges, a Web site reported Thursday, but Fox TV is standing by the rocker.

"From the beginning, Bo was honest and forthcoming in revealing his previous indiscretions and their outcome," the network said in response to the thesmokinggun.com report.
His participation with the show will be unaffected, Fox said Thursday.

The hit talent contest, among TV's top-rated programs, has been roiled this season by tabloid allegations about one judge's behavior and by ABC News' vow to examine "explosive" claims in a special next week.

Several past contestants were booted for failing to disclose arrests, but those who have been forthcoming haven't been penalized.
Scott Savol, who with Bice is among the top five finalists, had told the series' producers and Fox that he had been arrested on a domestic violence charge and pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count.

Smokinggun.com, citing court documents, said Bice, 29, of Helena, Ala., was arrested in 2001 on a felony cocaine possession charge. The charge was dismissed after he completed a diversion program for first-time offenders.
A marijuana possession charge stemming from another arrest, in 2003, also was dismissed following Bice's completion of the diversion program, the Web site reported.
The series' finale is set for May 24-25.
———
On the Net:
http://www.fox.com
http://www.thesmokinggun.com
Copyright 2005 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Word a Day

2005-04-30T12:42:00.000-07:00

pusillanimous \pyoo-suh-LAN-uh-muhs\, adjective: Lacking in courage and resolution; contemptibly fearful; cowardly.

Evil, unspeakable evil, rose in our midst, and we as a people were too weak, too indecisive, too pusillanimous to deal with it. --Kevin Myers, "An Irishman's Diary," [1]Irish Times, October 20, 1999

Under the hypnosis of war hysteria, with a pusillanimous Congress rubber-stamping every whim of the White House, we passed the withholding tax. --Vivien Kellems, Toil, Taxes and Trouble

You are now anxious to form excuses to yourself for a conduct so pusillanimous. --Ann Radcliffe, The Italian

_________________________________________________________

References
1. http://www.ireland.com/

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=9&q=pusillanimous
Pusillanimous comes from Late Latin pusillanimis, from Latin pusillus, "very small, tiny, puny" + animus, "soul, mind."

Civilian Deaths in Vietnam

2005-04-30T12:35:00.000-07:00

One US Marine serving in the Vietnam War recalled an incident when two Vietnamese men on a motorcycle rode past an Army engineer sitting at an urban café and tossed a satchel onto his lap. As the men disappeared into the crowded streets, the satchel exploded, killing the engineer and several Vietnamese children. The Communist guerrillas known as Viet Cong did not wear uniforms (unlike their allies in the North Vietnamese Army), so US soldiers had no way of distinguishing them from civilians. That made fighting the guerrillas risky; innocent people were often caught in the crossfire.

American firepower was superior to the Viet Cong, and the US attempted to capitalize on that advantage with "harassing and interdiction fires"--unobserved artillery strikes on areas of suspected enemy activity. But that, in turn, frequently resulted in what the military began to call "collateral damage"--damage caused to something other than the intended target.

More than in any war Americans had previously fought, mistakes had terrible implications in Vietnam, and US soldiers often harbored guilt about the damage they inadvertently caused. Marine Jack Frietag, for example, tells of an incident when his unit requested an artillery strike on a hut where a sniper was believed to be hiding. After the strike, the Marines found no weapons in the hut-only an old woman, her chest split by a wound, sitting in shock over the body of her dead husband. "Marines are number one," she told them.

A precise number of civilian casualties during the war doesn't exist, but the lowest estimates begin at 415,000. Collateral damage became a focus of antiwar demonstrators, and Gen. Creighton Abrams ended the practice of harassing and interdiction fires when he took command of Allied ground forces in 1968. He admitted they rarely hit the enemy.

Another Day Has Passed

2005-04-27T12:28:00.000-07:00

I can always think of something to post but then once I get here...I'm lost. Oh well. For the most part today hasn't been bad. I've about slapped the crap out of Scott but then again that wouldn't have been too hard. I have a cold and tomorrow is my choir concert. I can't stand doing these things but we only have two songs so I hope I can last. We need a lot more practice because some people keep singing the wrong things and then not singing when they are supposed to. its driving me nuts but oh well. My AP English teacher passed out this morning. Low blood sugar or something like that. She may not be back so I've heard but still not sure about that. She hasn't even made out any of the semester tests for the ones who have to take it. Not sure what they're going to do about that if she doesn't come back. I have just four more days left. wow. Kinda scary.

Well I won bronze in a photo contest which I say is pretty good considering how many people entered.

I hate to say it but I am in love with Hayden. oh my goodness!! anyway, just sitting here staring at a picture of him wishing he was here. Ok, better go before I get into that whole convo.

What Title

2005-04-26T17:52:00.000-07:00

Ok I have a head cold. I don't know how to write a stupid student response essay or a dialectic journal. How wonderful. I have about 5 school days left before I am out and then graduation is May 13th. Yay. Kinda happy but kinda sad b/c I'm leaving my friends. Oh well. I'll live. I know this is short but I have to start voting for Bo soon so I need to get off the computer.

Garage Sales

2005-04-26T17:27:00.000-07:00

http://www.ediets.com/news/article.cfm?cmi=1103182&cid=7&code=24044

Garage sales are coming up. Here is an article that may help ya out.

Word a Day

2005-04-26T17:20:00.000-07:00

Word of the Day for Sunday April 24, 2005

euphonious \yoo-FOH-nee-uhs\, adjective: Pleasing or sweet in sound; smooth-sounding.

She combines alliteration and deft word choices with the grace of an oral storyteller, creating euphonious and precise sentences that are perfect for reading aloud. --Amy L. Cohn, "Children's Books," [1]New York Times, March 10, 1991

Einstein originally proposed the more appropriate (but less euphonious) title of "theory of invariants" for his work, but gave up pushing for it when "relativity" caught the public's imagination. --James Trefil, "The Most Beautiful Theories Are The Truest," [2]New York Times, October 5, 1986

In the first draft, their names had been alphabetized, but during a speech session Rosenman and Sherwood suddenly perceived the more euphonious sequence of Martin, Barton, and Fish. --Carol Gelderman, [3]All the Presidents' Words

Early in life, on the basis of my easy grasp of biological nomenclature and what I consider aesthetic reasons -- all those euphonious names -- I resolved to be a medical doctor. --Paul Theroux, [4]Fresh Air Fiend: Travel Writings, 1985-2000 _________________________________________________________

Euphonious comes from Greek euphonos, "sweet-voiced," from eu-, "well" (hence "sweetly") + phonos, from phone, "voice, sound." The noun form is euphony.References

1. http://www.nytimes.com/

2. http://www.nytimes.com/

3. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/asin/0802713181/ref=nosim/lexico

4. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/asin/0618126937/ref%3dnosim/lexico

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=9&q=euphonious

Today

2005-04-24T18:44:00.000-07:00

Today has been an annoying day. DD has been driving me up the wall because she can't go out of her room. I finished all but one of the scholarship applications. Yay for me! Hmmm...tomorrow is the Spanish festival...Kinda ready for that. Um. dunno what to post now. Been checking out other blogs...quite boring but then again I suppose mine is not all that wow either. Lets see how this orange looks.

2005-04-24T18:43:00.000-07:00

Purty sunrise in Arkansas
Posted by Hello

2005-04-24T18:41:00.000-07:00

Here is my cat, DD, who is currently being a pain in the ass...
Posted by Hello

2005-04-24T18:40:00.000-07:00

Here is my friend, Heather, when we were at the vet's taking care of Wade's dog, Jasmine.
Posted by Hello

Two Blogs

2005-04-24T16:07:00.000-07:00

Erin

Has some cool pictures.

http://langavitleysa.blogspot.com/

I was bored and looking through some blogs. I've realized most I saw today were pretty stupid and boring.

2005-04-24T14:29:00.001-07:00

John and Carmine
Posted by Hello