A Brief History On February 26, 1935, the militant German nationalist leader Adolf Hitler defied the terms of the Treaty of Versailles and ordered the reestablishment of the German Air Force, known as the Luftwaffe. Digging Deeper Hitler and his Nazi buddies had plotted this for some time, disguising pilot training as lessons to fly gliders, something allowed by the treaty. As German industry developed war planes, the ruse that these planes were civilian craft was used as a cover story. German pilots got their first taste of combat flying in the Condor Legion of “volunteers” during the Spanish Civil…
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A Brief History On February 25, 1336, the 4,000 defenders of the medieval Lithuanian fortress of Pilénai thought they had no other choice but to make the horrible decision to kill themselves and their families after torching and destroying everything they had of value to deny their Teutonic besiegers the spoils of victory and the opportunity to kill or enslave them. Digging Deeper The number of women and children sacrificed is unknown, but even just the number of defenders, recorded at 4,000, is more than enough to rank as history’s largest mass suicide, eclipsing the 900+ dead at Masada in 37-31 B.C. and the 900+…
This Just In! In February 2015, news broke that singer-songwriter and comedian Rolf Harris would be stripped of his Order of Australia honors amidst revelations that he is still under investigation for alleged sexual offenses. He has also had his two honorary doctorates rescinded, and he has been removed from the Australian Recording Industry Association Hall of Fame. These are just some of multiple honors he has been stripped of in the past year. Digging Deeper Just a week ago, we ranked Harris third on our list of “10 More Fantastic Novelty Songs” for his memorable “Tie Me Kangaroo Down…
A Brief History On February 21, 1973, the Israeli Defense Force sent American-built F-4 Phantoms to shoot down a Boeing 727 operated by Libyan Arab Airlines. Flight 114 had taken off from Tripoli and was headed to Cairo when it got lost over Egypt due to weather and equipment malfunction. Digging Deeper The two Phantoms intercepted the jet liner over the Sinai desert after it had strayed there from the Suez Canal. The Sinai had been occupied by Israel since the 1967 Six-Day War. The failure of Egypt to shoot missiles at the plane, and the seeming approach toward a secret Israeli nuclear (possibly bomb making?) facility exacerbated the situation, especially since…
A Brief History Quick! Give me the top ten things that could destroy your planet. Quick! Give me your top ten favorite foods. Admit it, you started to make a list. Top ten lists are extremely popular and permeate our media. How could we not come to adore them? There are top ten lists of Do It Yourself renovations, foods and apocalyptic countdowns on the television, the radio and the internet. Top ten lists are everywhere, we can no longer turn on a television without surfing past a top ten something. Our culture is fascinated by them. History and Headlines — A…