A Brief History On May 12, 1982, a bayonet wielding assassin was wrestled into custody by the bodyguards of Pope John Paul II at Fatima, Portugal only a year after John Paul II had been shot and seriously wounded in another assassination attempt! The would be assassin was a defrocked Catholic priest, a journalist and lawyer, a veritable living cliché! At least one other attempt was to be made on John Paul’s life, this time foiled when the assassins suffered a fire while building the bomb intended for the murder. Digging Deeper Many world leaders have survived assassination attempts, including…
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A Brief History On May 11, 1713, Finnish residents of Helsinki burned their own capital city to the ground rather than allow the Russian invaders to possess their city during the Great Northern War. The Russians, under Czar Peter the Great, had territorial designs on their neighbors just as the Russians of today under Vladimir Putin are trying to conquer Ukraine. Digging Deeper Ironically, it was the Russian residents of Moscow that burned their own city in 1812 to prevent Napoleon Bonaparte and his invading French Grande Armée from enjoying their pyrrhic victory over the Russians. The Soviets again used…
A Brief History On February 24, 2022, days after recognizing Donetsk and Luhansk as independent states, Russian president Vladimir Putin ordered a full scale invasion of Ukraine. Digging Deeper Russia’s invasion has had five major phases thus far. The first phase covers the period from February 24th, 2022, when Russia launched a military invasion of Ukraine, to April 7th, 2022 when fighting focused away from the northeast and Kyiv and towards the south and east of Ukraine. The second phase covers the period from April 8th, 2022, when the area of heavy fighting shifted to the south and east of…
A Brief History On May 10, 1922, the US annexed an atoll in the North Pacific, an unoccupied, mostly underwater formation called Kingman Reef. Between Hawaii and Samoa, the 7.4 acre reef is known as the Kingman Reef National Wildlife Refuge administered by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Digging Deeper Other than the 50 states and Puerto Rico, the US owns many territories, mostly islands in both the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans. Some of these include the US Virgin Islands in the Caribbean, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, Palau, the Marshall Islands, and the Federated States…
A Brief History On May 9, 1941, German submarine U-110 was forced to the surface by a British corvette and a destroyer that were escorting a convoy attacked by the sub. U-110 had been a successful attack submarine, but on this day, depth charges forced the boat to the surface. Digging Deeper Damaged and in danger of sinking, the captain ordered the sub abandoned and scuttled, but in their haste to get off the sub that was also under fire from the British, the crew failed to scuttle the sub. U-110 was not sinking, so the British kept German sailors…
