Browsing: Places

A Brief History On September 3, 1783, the treaty that ended the American Revolutionary War was signed in Paris, France, thus becoming known as the Treaty of Paris.  Paris is often referred to as “The City of Light,” and many other cities have notable nicknames as well.  Here 10 are listed.  (This list is American-centric because there seem to be more nicknamed cities in the U.S. than in other parts of the world.) Digging Deeper 10. Hershey, Pennsylvania, “Chocolate City” People love chocolate, so Hershey must be one of the most beloved cities in the U.S.  The motto of the city is “The Sweetest Place…

A Brief History On August 24, 1349, 6,000 Jews were massacred in Mainz, Germany by being burned alive.  Blamed for so many ills, this time they were held responsible for spreading the bubonic plague.  Digging Deeper On this same date in 1391, at least 300 Jews were murdered in Palma on the Balearic island of Majorca (Mallorca).  All across Spain, Jews were being massacred, and their only hope for survival would be to readily agree to being baptized in the Christian faith and to convert to Christianity.  Previously, Crusaders had traveled through Spain on their way to the Holy Land…

A Brief History On August 4, 70 A.D., the Romans punished the rebellious Jews by destroying the Second Temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.  In 66 A.D., the Jews had rebelled against Roman rule, and four years later, the Romans retook Jerusalem. (See our other articles about the Second Temple, Jerusalem, and Israel.  These links are just some of our Jerusalem and Israel related articles.  For more articles, use the search function.) Digging Deeper The original temple was built around 1000 B.C. and was known as Solomon’s Temple.  After it was destroyed around 586 B.C., construction of the Second…

A Brief History On July 29, 1993, Ukrainian-American retired auto worker, John Demjanjuk, was finally acquitted by the Supreme Court of Israel and was a free man.  Or was he? Digging Deeper The long sad story began when Demjanjuk was born in the Ukraine in 1920.  Life was normal (which in the 1930’s Ukraine was starvation during Stalin’s famine) until World War II when he was drafted into the Red Army of the Soviet Union.  Captured by the Germans, he finished the war as a POW under horrible conditions.   This moment is where the story hit’s a snag.  According to…

A Brief History On October 2, 1187, one of history’s most significant sieges ended: The Siege of Jerusalem in which Saladin captured Jerusalem after 88 years of Crusader rule. Digging Deeper Jerusalem must hold some kind of record for the number of times a city has been besieged or at least sought after by so many different people over such a long expanse of history. Long before the Crusades, the originally Hebrew city had been besieged by Egyptians in 925 B.C., Assyrians in 701 B.C., Babylonians in 597 B.C. and again in 587 B.C., Romans in 63 B.C., Herodians in…