A Brief History On February 18, 1942, the Japanese Imperial Army began a carefully planned massacre of ethnic Chinese men in the conquered territories of Singapore and Malaya, an effort to eliminate what the Japanese perceived to be “hostile elements.”  As many as 100,000 Chinese men were executed in a purge called Sook Ching by the Chinese.  Soldiers carrying out the deadly deeds were supervised by the Kempeitai, the Japanese secret police. Digging Deeper The Japanese saw the Chinese as their main enemy in Asia and called the purge of ethnic Chinese “Kakyō Shukusei”  or  “purging of Overseas Chinese” in…

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A Brief History On February 17, 2019, we take a look back to this date in 2015, when we listed “10 of the Sexiest Songs of All Time.”  Today we list another 10 of the Sexiest Songs of All Time, and as always, invite you, our valued reader, to nominate those songs you believe should be on this list.  The so called “sexiness” can be sort of explicit lyrics (but not out of the range of what you might hear on the radio or in common use), the suggestiveness, use of double entendres, or the general ability of the song…

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A Brief History On February 16, 1960, the US Navy submarine, USS Triton SSRN-586, set out on a voyage of circumnavigation of the Earth, the first time anyone had made such a voyage completely underwater!  Called Operation Sandblast, the voyage of the Triton is one of the most famous trips around the Earth that we list today, joining other pioneering events that have gone down in history as famous trips around the globe. Digging Deeper 1. USS Triton, 1960 (First Underwater). The Triton was a submarine called a “radar picket sub,” of course nuclear powered and commissioned in 1959.  She…

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A Brief History On February 15, 1113, the reigning Pope of the Catholic Church, Pope Paschal II, issued a Papal Bull titled “Pie Postulatio Voluntatis,” recognizing the Order of Hospitallers, a military order of Catholic knights that had existed in the Holy Land since about 1099.  The order had begun in Jerusalem during the 11th Century in service of an Amalfitan (established by people from the Italian city-state of Amalfi) hospital that was founded in Jerusalem to see to the medical needs of Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land, part of the Christian Crusades.  Known more formally as The Order…

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A Brief History On February 14, 2005, former Lebanese Prime Minister and then a multi-billionaire Rafic Hariri was blown up while driving in his motorcade in Beirut by a suicide car bomb.  Born in Sidon, Lebanon in 1944, Hariri worked as a teacher and in the construction business in Saudi Arabia where he made his fortune, He returned to his war torn homeland where he was a force for peace, only to be assassinated by Hezbollah terrorists a year after he left office. Digging Deeper As a young adult, Hariri went to Saudi Arabia to seek work in 1965, soon…

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