A Brief History On April 18, 1996, the village of Qana in Southern Lebanon was shelled by artillery fire from the Israeli Defense Force, the official Israeli military organization. Unfortunately, Qana was the location of a United Nations compound manned by members of the Fijian United Nations Interim Force and had been providing haven to about 800 Lebanese civilian refugees. The attack left 4 of the Fijian soldiers wounded and killed 106 of the Lebanese civilians, injuring another 116 civilians. The bombardment was part of an Israeli offensive operation from April 11-April 27, 1996, known as Operation Grapes of Wrath,…
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A Brief History On April 13, 1861, the US Army installation known as Fort Sumter located at Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, surrendered to the rebellious forces of the fledgling Confederate States of America after a bombardment. The next day, the fort was surrendered to the Confederates with no men killed on either side. While the armed forces of the United States have been overwhelmingly successful over the course of many wars and conflicts, there have been those inevitable times with failure has resulted in the humiliating surrender of American military personnel and/or installations or ships. Today we address some of…
A Brief History On April 12, 1012, Jaromir, Duke of Bohemia, was deposed by the Duke Oldřich of Bohemia. Of course, merely deposing a royal leader is not good enough, so the Duke Oldřich also had Jaromir blinded before the unlucky now former Duke was forced to flee to Poland. But it gets worse! Digging Deeper Oldřich was the brother of Jaromir, and both of them had been exiled by their other brother, Duke Boleslaus III in 1002. It seems Jaromir had rebelled against Boleslaus III, and the irritated Duke had Jaromir castrated (his own brother!) before banishing both brothers…
A Brief History On April 11, 1079, Bishop Stanislaus of Kraków, Poland, later Saint Stanislaus, was executed either by the order of or perhaps by the direct hand of King Bolesław II of Poland. After the execution, the body of the slain Bishop was chopped up into small pieces and scattered in the forest, presumably to be eaten by the forest critters. Lo and Behold! The pieces of the body of the future Catholic Saint reassembled themselves! Digging Deeper While no word of any coming back to life was noted, chroniclers did say that 4 eagles guarded the body of…
A Brief History On April 10, 1944, 2 Jewish inmates of the German concentration camp at Auschwitz, in Poland, escaped to tell the world of the horrors they had witnessed. (The name of the camp is Oświęcim in Polish.) They soon reported the incredible conditions of the camp and the ongoing extermination of European Jews by the Nazi regime of Germany. Their report, known as the Vrba–Wetzler report, shocked the world and resulted in the government of Hungary, an ally of Germany during World War II, to stop deporting Hungarian Jews to Germany for extermination in the dreaded concentration camps.…