A Brief History On December 28, 1943, the Soviet secret police, NKVD, under the direction of its commander Lavrentiy Beria, began a three day operation called Operation Ulusy to forcibly remove 93,139 people of the Kalmyk nationality to forced labor camps in the remote areas of Siberia. The Soviets had accused the Kalmyks of being pro-German and anti-Soviet, even though 23,540 Kalmyks were serving in the Red Army against the Germans and only 5000 Kalmyks had sided with the Germans, forming the Kalmykian Cavalry Corps. Soviet officials, ever paranoid and seeing sedition under every rock, overreacted to the Kalmyk nationalist…
Browsing: December 28
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A Brief History On December 28, 1958, the Baltimore Colts played the New York Giants at Yankee Stadium in New York City for the National Football League Championship game, the first game in NFL history to played to “Sudden Death” overtime. The Colts scored the game winning touchdown in overtime, and ever since NFL fans have referred to the contest as “The Greatest Game Ever Played.” Digging Deeper Of course, other sports may have their own versions of “the greatest game,” but this game is the one most often referred to in that sense. Multiplying the effect of the game…
A Brief History On December 28, 1795, construction began on Yonge Street in York, Upper Canada (modern day Toronto). Yonge Street went on to fame as “The longest street in the world” according to The Guinness Book of World Records at 1178 miles long, running from Lake Ontario to Lake Simcoe and on to the Minnesota-Ontario border at Rainy River. Many other streets and roads across the world have achieved a measure of fame, and here we list 10 of those famous roadways. Is the list a little US of A centric? Yes, but that is to be expected with…
A Brief History On December 28, 1503, the exiled Gran Maestro of Florence, Piero di Lorenzo de Medici, known as Piero the Unfortunate, drowned in the Garigliano River while trying to escape the advancing French and Spanish armies that had just defeated the Italians in a battle over the control of Naples. Digging Deeper Piero was the son of Lorenzo de Medici, also known as Lorenzo the Magnificent (a much more positive sounding moniker) who died of natural causes at the age of 43 (not good, but better than Piero who died at the age of 31). The elder Medici…
A Brief History On December 28, 1895, the world of medicine and airport security were forever changed when William Roentgen published his paper describing the production of X-rays. Digging Deeper Digging deeper, we find Roentgen, a German physicist, having invented a machine to produce electro-magnetic radiation emitting X-rays. Sometimes called Roentgen Rays in honor of their discoverer, his research and careful documentation led to Roentgen receiving the first Nobel Prize for Physics. Quickly seizing the opportunity his research afforded him, Roentgen developed a way to pass X-rays through an object and onto a target material to create a picture of…
