A Brief History On December 28, 1943, the Soviet secret police, NKVD, under the direction of its commander Lavrentiy Beria, began a three day operation called Operation Ulusy to forcibly remove 93,139 people of the Kalmyk nationality to forced labor camps in the remote areas of Siberia.  The Soviets had accused the Kalmyks of being pro-German and anti-Soviet, even though 23,540 Kalmyks were serving in the Red Army against the Germans and only 5000 Kalmyks had sided with the Germans, forming the Kalmykian Cavalry Corps.  Soviet officials, ever paranoid and seeing sedition under every rock, overreacted to the Kalmyk nationalist…

A Brief History On December 27, 1966, the largest cave in the world was discovered in Aquismón, San Luis Potosi, Mexico.  Boasting a single cavern that covers a ground space of 994 feet long by 442 feet wide, the so called Cave of Swallows (alternately called “The Cave of the Swallows”) had been known for many generations by indigenous Huastec people, and was considered “discovered” only when a documented descent into the cave was made by T. R. Evans, Charles Borland and Randy Sterns, the first outsiders known to have visited the cave. Digging Deeper Known as a “pit” type…

A Brief History On December 26, 1871, the famous opera writing duo of Gilbert and Sullivan collaborated on Thespis, the first of many operas the much beloved pair worked together on.  Today, we use this occasion to list some of the greatest musical collaboration teams in the history of musical entertainment.  Feel free to nominate other musical collaborators that you think should belong on this list, or to denounce any of our picks.  Honorable mention: Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, the 2 Swedes that wrote most of ABBA’s hit songs, some of the biggest hits of their time (including “Dancing…

A Brief History This article presents a video timeline for students of Western Civilization (History 112) at Ashland University. For each date below, please click on the date to be taken to a video covering that date’s event.  After watching that video, please write a one or two sentence comment that demonstrates that you watched the video. These comments or “thesis statements” are 1-2 sentence summaries of the video. They should include the most important aspects of each video. In other words, the thesis statement should include the individuals involved, the time period, and significance of the event. For example,…

A Brief History On December 25, 1951, Civil Rights activists Harry T. Moore and Harriette V. S. Moore were killed by a bomb explosion at their home in Sanford, Florida.  Unfortunately, for many people, Christmas has not always been a time of happiness and celebration, but a time of death and destruction.  Today we examine several of the unhappy incidents that have happened on this otherwise jolly holiday.  Feel free to nominate other incidents that could be included on such a list, or to take exception with anything we have listed.  (The list is in no particular order and we…