A Brief History On this date, December 12, 1098, in what is now Syria, Crusaders massacred 20,000 Muslims and ate some of them! Digging Deeper Digging deeper, we find European Christians launching what is now known as the First Crusade, an attempt to take back lands overrun by the sweeping Muslim hordes. Besieging a city at Ma’arra (various spellings) the Crusaders were at the walls on December 12, 1098 when the Muslims inside finally surrendered after about a month of resistance. Promises of the safety of residents to the contrary, the Crusaders began the systematic slaughter of the population. Frustrated…
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A Brief History On this date, December 11, 1981, during a time of renewed tension in the Cold War, the United States was eager to help “friendly” countries resist communist rebellions and the USSR was doing all they could to “convert” non-communist countries to Marxism. With this backdrop, the U.S. had been training anti-insurgency forces in El Salvador and helped form the first such unit there. Unfortunately, this day saw a bloody and wrongly applied use of that force when the village of El Mozote and the area suffered the massacre of abut 900 innocent people. Digging Deeper Digging deeper,…
A Brief History Most Americans know that on December 7, 1941, the Japanese launched a massive aerial surprise attack against U.S. military forces on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, mainly at Pearl Harbor. Every year on this date we are reminded of that “dastardly attack” by the various news media and by educational television channels running Pearl Harbor documentaries and conspiracy programs. What many Americans today do not seem to remember, are the other Japanese attacks launched that day! Digging Deeper These neglected battles and American lives lost get only a fraction of the coverage of Pearl Harbor, and they…
A Brief History On December 5, 1945, a flight of U.S. Navy TBM Avenger torpedo bombers flew into history, providing grist for the paranormal mill that the Bermuda Triangle became! Digging Deeper The training flight of Avengers took off from Naval Air Station (NAS) Ft. Lauderdale at around 1410 hours (military time) for a routine navigation training flight. Oddly, although necessary for over water navigation (remember, maps would not help!) each airplane was missing its clock. Assuming the pilots had wrist watches, the flight took off as normal. Things seemed to be going as planned, with a practice bomb drop…
A Brief History On November 30, 1939, Soviet forces crossed the Finnish border in several places and bombed Helsinki and several other Finnish cities, starting the Winter War. (NOTE: For the sequel to this article, please click here.) Digging Deeper In the aftermath of Poland’s collapse in September, 1939—a collapse that the Soviet Union had a major role in contributing to—Soviet leader Joseph Stalin quickly turned his ambitions towards gobbling up even more of eastern Europe. Turning his attention toward the Scandinavian country of Finland—a nation which had the audacity to secede from Russia during its Communist revolution twenty years…
