WORLD HISTORY AND LOCAL GIST

  On January 27, 1945, a group of Soviet soldiers were moving through southern Poland when they came across what looked like an empty Nazi camp near the town of Oświęcim. They didn’t even know the camp was there and were shocked to see thousands of thin, weak, and mistreated people staring at them through barbed wire. Some were so sick and starved they could barely stand. One soldier later said, “I still remember their faces, especially their eyes. Their eyes told the story of what they had been through.” This place was Auschwitz—the biggest and deadliest of all the Nazi concentration camps—and the soldiers were about to see just how terrible things had been for the people there. When the soldiers went inside, they found no guards. The Nazis had left not long before, taking 60,000 prisoners with them and trying to hide the terrible things they had done. But there was too much proof left behind. The soldiers found buildings full of shoes, eyeglasses, and other personal items—belo...

On September 10, 1945, farmer Lloyd Olsen of Fruita, Colorado, United States, was planning to eat supper with his mother-in-law and was sent out to the yard by his wife to bring back a chicken. Olsen chose a five-and-a-half-month-old Wyandotte chicken named Mike. The axe removed the bulk of the head, but missed the jugular vein, leaving one ear and most of the brain stem intact. Despite Olsen's attempt to behead Mike, the chicken could still balance on a perch and walk clumsily. He attempted to preen, peck for food, and crow, though with limited success; his "crowing" consisted of a gurgling sound made in his throat. When Mike did not die, Olsen decided to care for the bird. He fed him a mixture of milk and water via an eyedropper and gave him small portions of corn and worms. It was determined that the axe had missed the jugular vein and a clot had prevented Mike from bleeding to death. Although most of h...

  He was the team medic of the 6th Soviet Antarctica Expedition whose 14 members were preparing for hibernation in April 1961 at the newly opened Novolasarewskaya Research Facility in Queen-Maud-Land. On April 27th, a typical winter storm hit the station and cut it off from the outside world. The meteorologists predicted a duration of several days to weeks. On April 29th, Rogosov developed symptomps of an acute appendicitis. He treated it initially with high doses of antibiotics in the hope to delay the inflammation process until external help could reach the station. On April 30th, his health condition deteriorated. Fever set in at 38° C and overall Rogosov felt weakness and increasing pain. In the afternoon, he decided to perform an Autoappendectomy, i.e. he planned to remove the appendix himself through a surgery. After consulting the expedition leader and the central in Moscow, Rogosov received approval and prepared the surgery. He selected two assistants, the meteorologist and...

  1945 - Audie Murphy, the most decorated U.S. service member of World War II earned his legacy in a fiery fashion. Murphy received the Medal of Honor for valor that he demonstrated at the age of 19 for single-handedly holding off a company of German soldiers for an hour at the Colmar Pocket in France in January 1945, then leading a successful counterattack while wounded and out of ammunition. Audie Leon Murphy (20 June 1925 – 28 May 1971) was an American soldier, actor, songwriter, and rancher. Murphy was born into a large family of sharecroppers in Hunt County, Texas. His father abandoned them, and his mother died when he was a teenager. Murphy left school in fifth grade to pick cotton and find other work to help support his family; his skill with a hunting rifle helped feed his family. After the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Murphy's older sister helped him to falsify documentation about his birthdate in order to meet the minimum-age requirement for enlisting in the military. ...

  ⚠️ Warning: This post contains folklore involving death, violence, and disturbing imagery. Reader discretion advised. "This is Anna Maria Von Stockhausen’s corpse, strapped to keep her coming back from the dead. She was accused of being a witch during the Middle ages and Black Plague. This folklore about Anna was that she was killed about 6 times. She was first hanged and later clawed herself out of the grave. The town people captured her in a nearby town and quickly drowned her in a lake, by tying her to a plank. The townspeople said they checked her several times after dragging her lifeless body out of the water.  They buried her again, only to see an empty grave 2 days later! It was said they found her rotting corpse dwelling in her old place, with worms, dirt and water spitting out of her. So the townspeople dragged her out, drove a stake in her heart and once again buried.  They placed a guard at her grave and felt she was finally buried for good. The guard failed...

  When Sarah Whitney was 31 and halfway through her third pregnancy, she received life-changing news: she had stage 3 breast cancer. The Florida mom underwent a mastectomy and soon began chemotherapy, but throughout her treatments, her biggest concern was making sure her baby would be healthy. In April, her son Kal-El was born strong and well. Photographer Kate Murray was present to capture not only his birth but also a tender moment — Whitney nursing her newborn with her remaining breast. The emotional images, shared online by Whitney’s midwifery practice, Gentle Birth Options, quickly went viral. At first, Whitney chose to remain in the background, focusing on her new baby. But as the photos resurfaced in local and national news, she decided she was ready to share her journey. “They went everywhere, and at that time, I was just an anonymous woman,” Whitney said. “I think they struck people differently — for some, it was about resilience, for others it was about the deep love a mo...

  A Jewish Hospital During the Holocaust Born to a Christian family in Chile in 1893, Maria Errazuriz moved to Paris by the 1930s, where she worked as a social worker. Her responsibilities at Rothschild Jewish Hospital expanded to much more than that of social worker, however, as the Nazis overran France and its capital. From the Nazi occupation in 1942, Maria made it her mission to save as many Jewish lives as she could. The Germans turned the hospital pavilions into barbed-wire detention facilities. As soon as sick Jewish patients held there recovered, the Nazis deported them to death camps. Maria began assisting another social worker, a Jewish woman named Claire Heyman, with running an escape network for the hospital’s Jewish patients. The women gave Jews false papers that either allowed them to be transferred to gentile facilities, or for children, to be placed with foster families. Aunt Maria On the morning of July 16, 1942, the Nazis arrested an eight-year-old girl –...

  Irma Grese, infamously remembered as the “Hyena of Auschwitz,” embodies one of the darkest faces of human cruelty during World War II.  Born in 1923 in Germany, her early life was marked by trauma, losing her mother at the age of twelve after a family scandal. Dropping out of school, she soon joined the Nazi SS, beginning her rise into the machinery of oppression and horror. By 1942, she was assigned as a guard at Ravensbrück concentration camp, where her sadistic tendencies quickly became evident, drawing the attention of her superiors. In 1943, she was transferred to Auschwitz, where she ascended to the role of Senior SS Supervisor, overseeing up to 30,000 female prisoners and wielding power that enabled her to commit atrocities without restraint. Grese’s reign of terror was notorious. Survivors recount her use of heavy boots and whips to beat prisoners across the chest, often inflicting extreme pain for amusement. Dr. Gisella Perl, herself a prisoner forced to witness med...

  She spent 25 years believing her father had thrown her away—until she discovered he died saving her life. In October 1917, a storm slammed into an immigrant ship crossing the Atlantic, carrying hopeful passengers from Italy to New York. Among them was Antonio Russo, a 28-year-old carpenter, clutching tightly to his five-year-old daughter, Maria. His wife had died giving birth to Maria, and this journey was his desperate attempt to start over—to find hope in a country he had never seen, and to give his daughter a life far from the poverty they’d known. But at 2 a.m., everything changed. Waves as tall as houses smashed into the decks. The ship groaned and tilted as icy water rushed into the lower levels where third-class passengers, like Antonio and Maria, slept. Screams tore through the darkness. Passengers shoved and clawed their way to the stairwells. Antonio held Maria above the water, his arms burning as he tried to force his way through the chaos. It was no use. The ship was ...

  He was twenty four years old when he ran toward the gunfire instead of away from it.  Staff Sgt Robert J Miller had spent years training for moments of chaos, but nothing prepared anyone for what happened in Konar Province in January 2008. He was serving as the Weapons Sergeant for a Special Forces detachment assigned to Company A of the 3rd Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group.  Their mission was to move through a narrow valley to clear insurgent positions that had been harassing nearby villages. The team reached a choke point when enemy fighters opened fire from multiple directions. The first burst of machine gun fire tore across the rocks and forced the patrol to take cover.  Miller did the opposite. He charged forward, closing the distance so he could identify where the fire was coming from. His movement pulled the attention of the gunmen toward him and away from the rest of the element. When the team tried to reposition, the valley erupted with even heavier fir...

 The wooden horse, or Spanish donkey, was an extremely painful and gruesome medieval torture device.  It was first used by the Holy Inquisition in France and then in Spain and Germany, and then migrated to the Americas, gaining prominence during the colonial period.  The main design was the same wherever it was used.  It was a triangular wooden box with a very sharp top end (ie where the horse's spine would be.   The apparatus was constructed of wood, with planks nailed together to form a long, tapered ridge, which would serve as the horse's back.  These were supported by four legs attached to a bracket, about 6 or 7 feet (1.8 to 2.1 metres) high, with wheels fitted to the bottom of the legs so that the entire device could roll across the ground.  A head and tail would be attached to make the torture device look like an almost “fun” huge wooden horse.  The defendant would be mounted on the horse, with ankle weights and hands tied behind his b...

  In April 2007, the mountains of Paktia Province, Afghanistan, were unforgiving. The roads were narrow dirt tracks carved into cliffs, perfect for ambushes. Riding in the back of a Humvee was Private First Class Monica Lin Brown. She was 19 years old. She was from Lake Jackson, Texas. She was barely five feet tall. And she was the platoon medic. To the men in the 82nd Airborne Division, she wasn't "PFC Brown" or "that girl." She was simply "Doc." In the hierarchy of a combat platoon, the medic holds a sacred trust. When the world explodes, everyone runs for cover—except the medic. The medic runs toward the scream. On April 25, the world exploded. A roadside bomb ripped through the trail vehicle of their convoy. The explosion was massive, tearing the Humvee apart and igniting the fuel tank. The vehicle was engulfed in a ball of fire. Small arms ammunition inside the truck began to "cook off," popping like firecrackers and sending lethal shrap...

    “The nameless, little slave girl never screamed throughout the ordeal” There have been so many unspeakable deeds of monstrous evil committed throughout history. But, there is a handful of crimes that defy imagination, let alone belief. Sometimes a story can be so disturbing that even retelling of the events that had taken place long ago could be deeply traumatizing. However painful, these stories must be told so that we are cognizant of the monster, lying in wait deep inside every human soul for the opportunity to rear its ugly head at the least expected moment. We know all too well that once awakened, it is capable of committing unimaginable atrocities enshrouded in many intricate layers of justification, from religion to ideology. Time and time again it has been demonstrated that sense of infallibility and forgetfulness of the past can easily unleash that lurking, hidden dark side of the merciless human soul. While on the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition, led by renowned exp...

  He was just a young man, fighting in a country full of rage ... Vietnam. It was hell I heard him tell as he watched so many die,  as bloody battles lit up the sky.  So unaware that he was over there, soon the boy became a man.   He was fighting for freedom so he had to take a stand. And the eagle cries... tears fill her eyes. But our flag still flies. Just knowing that every breath he takes could be his last,  And too scared to sleep he could barely stand. His heart beats fast, so hard and fast.  The only thing that pulls him through are the memories he holds of me and you. His family, his world, he left behind weighs heavy on his mind. He dreams of coming home again, while the enemy is closing in. He hits the ground and doesn't make a sound. His heart beats fast, he can hear it pound,  As death lies all around. Maybe he got lucky he missed dying one more day, Or maybe God decided this brave soldier should not stay. We can only pray please keep ...

  "Racism is one of the most sick and twisted manifestations of White/European people’s oppression, exploitation and domination of humanity… although not all White/European people are racist, they benefit from it in one way or another and knowingly allow racism to exist…its reach is international in scope and transcends economic, political, social and spiritual belief systems…it is an evil and violent social construct used to justify White/European people’s crimes against humanity and to breed inferiority, fear and disunity among Black, Brown, Red and Yellow people… It has been the cause of untold pain and suffering to People of Color around the world…it is the single greatest problem humanity faces today…if we are ever to rise as the HUMAN RACE every one of us must defeat racism in all its shapes and forms (individual, institutional and cultural)…the struggle to end racism must be a collective one that begins in our hearts and minds… we must rise above our dependency on White/Eur...

 Sgt. 1st Class Paul R. Smith* (Iraq, 2003) - Sacrificed himself to save his unit from enemy fire. Paul Ray Smith was 33 years old on April 4, 2003, fighting near Baghdad International Airport during the opening weeks of the Iraq War. His unit was hit by a sudden, violent attack that threatened to overrun their position.  Smith was a Sergeant First Class with an Army engineer unit. They were not meant to fight a pitched battle that day. But enemy forces attacked with vehicles, rockets, and heavy weapons, pushing hard toward exposed American soldiers and wounded men.  If the enemy broke through, many would die. Smith saw the danger and made a choice. He climbed onto a damaged armored vehicle and took control of a mounted machine gun. The vehicle was already hit. There was no cover. He was fully exposed to enemy fire. From that position, Smith began firing into the oncoming attack.  He did not stop. Smith directed fire, shouted orders, and covered the evacuation of wou...

  Sfc. Randall D. Shughart, United States Army, distinguished himself by actions above and beyond the call of duty on 3 October 1993, while serving as a Sniper Team Member, United States Army Special Operations Command with Task Force Ranger in Mogadishu, Somalia. Sfc. Shughart provided precision sniper fires from the lead helicoper during an assault on a building and at two helicopter crash sites, while subjected to intense automatic weapons and rocket propelled grenade fires. While providing critical suppressive fires at the second crash site, Sfc. Shughart and his team leader learned that ground forces were not immediately available to secure the site. Sfc. Shughart and his team leader unhesitatingly volunteered to be inserted to protect the four critically wounded personnel, despite being well aware of the growing number of enemy personnel closing in on the site. After their third request to be inserted, Sfc. Shughart and his team leader received permission to perform this...

  The  Atlantic slave trade  or  transatlantic slave trade  involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people to the Americas. European slave ships regularly used the triangular trade route and its Middle Passage. Europeans established a coastal slave trade in the 15th century, and trade to the Americas began in the 16th century, lasting through the 19th century.  The vast majority of those who were transported in the transatlantic slave trade were from Central Africa and West Africa and had been sold by West and Central African slave traders to European slave traders, while others had been captured directly by the slave traders in coastal raids. European slave traders gathered and imprisoned the enslaved at forts on the African coast and then brought them to the Western hemisphere. Some Portuguese and Europeans participated in slave raids. As the...

On Oct. 3, 1993, Army Rangers, crew members of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, Delta Force operators, and Navy SEALs, along with Air Force pararescuemen and combat controllers, collectively known as “Task Force Ranger,” engaged Somali militia fighters in the Battle of Mogadishu. It was part of Operation Gothic Serpent, the effort to capture warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid in response to his attacks on U.N. peacekeepers during the Somali Civil War. The raid to capture two Aidid lieutenants quickly devolved into some of the most intense U.S. military combat since the Vietnam War. In fact, two Delta snipers received the Medal of Honor for their actions during the fighting, the only Medals of Honor awarded to snipers and the first since Vietnam. When Black Hawk Super Six-One was shot down during the mission, Task Force Ranger pivoted from a capture objective to a rescue mission. A combat search and rescue team was dropped into the crash site, and ground forces were rerouted to...

  Second Lt. Murphy commanded Company B, which was attacked by six tanks and waves of infantry. Second Lt. Murphy ordered his men to withdraw to prepared positions in a woods, while he remained forward at his command post and continued to give fire directions to the artillery by telephone. Behind him, to his right, one of our tank destroyers received a direct hit and began to burn. Its crew withdrew to the woods.  Second Lt. Murphy continued to direct artillery fire which killed large numbers of the advancing enemy infantry. With the enemy tanks abreast of his position, 2d Lt. Murphy climbed on the burning tank destroyer, which was in danger of blowing up at any moment, and employed its .50-caliber machine gun against the enemy. He was alone and exposed to German fire from three sides, but his deadly fire killed dozens of Germans and caused their infantry attack to waver. The enemy tanks, losing infantry support, began to fall back.  For an hour the Germans tried every av...

 The fall of Constantinople ends the Byzantine Empire (1453) The Fall of Constantinople, also known as the Conquest of Constantinople, was the capture of the capital of the Byzantine Empire by the Ottoman Empire. The city was captured on 29 May 1453 as part of the culmination of a 53-day siege which had begun on 6 April. The attacking Ottoman Army, which significantly outnumbered Constantinople's defenders, was commanded by the 21-year-old Sultan Mehmed II (later nicknamed "the Conqueror"), while the Byzantine army was led by Emperor Constantine XI Palaiologos. After conquering the city, Mehmed II made Constantinople the new Ottoman capital, replacing Adrianople. The fall of Constantinople and of the Byzantine Empire was a watershed moment of the Late Middle Ages, marking the effective end of the Roman Empire, a state which began in roughly 27 BC and had lasted nearly 1,500 years. ...

The Black Death was a devastating global epidemic of bubonic plague that struck Europe and Asia in the mid-1300s. The plague arrived in Europe in October 1347, when 12 ships from the Black Sea docked at the Sicilian port of Messina. People gathered on the docks were met with a horrifying surprise: Most sailors aboard the ships were dead, and those still alive were gravely ill and covered in black boils that oozed blood and pus. Sicilian authorities hastily ordered the fleet of “death ships” out of the harbor, but it was too late: Over the next five years, the Black Death would kill more than 20 million people in Europe—almost one-third of the continent’s population. How Did the Black Plague Start? Even before the “death ships” pulled into port at Messina, many Europeans had heard rumors about a “Great Pestilence” that was carving a deadly path across the trade routes of the Near and Far East. Indeed, in the early 1340s, the disease had struck China, India, Persia, Syria and Egypt. The ...