UNDILUTED HISTORY AND FACTS

July 7-8, 1950 - Chonan, South Korea  Desperately trying to slow down the North Korean Army onslaught as it continued to move deep into South Korea, the understength, poorly equipped 34th Infantry Regiment, 24th Infantry Division - about 2 000 men - was sent to intercept a 12,000 man enemy division, supported by T-34 tanks, at Chonan. The 34th, at the cost of about 300 casualties (including over 100 killed and 80 captured), managed to delay the NorKs for about a day and a half.  The Regiment's 3rd Battalion was rendered all but ineffective in the struggle. During the action near Chonan, Korea, the 3rd Battalion, had been surrounded by superior enemy forces which then launched a tank and infantry attack.  1LT James C. Little voluntarily took command of a 2.36 inch rocket launching team and a rifle grenade launcher. With these inadequate weapons, he destroyed two of the enemy tanks.  Noticing that a platoon, which was operating without an officer, was preparing to prem...

TEN THINGS YOU DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT THE KOREAN WAR. 1.  Soviet Leader Stalin green-lighted the North Korean invasion partly because an American sergeant who worked in the US Embassy became a spy for the Soviets.  He revealed that the US was withdrawing from South Korea to Japan.  Stalin assumed the US would not fight for South Korea. 2.  The Bodo League Massacre -  before the war, South Korean dictator Syngman Rhee had rounded up hundreds of thousands of suspected communists and political opponents and put them in re-education camps.  This was called the Bodo League.  A few days into the war, Rhee ordered the extermination of many of these people.  The mass executions were done without trial and many innocent civilians were killed.  The estimates range from 60,000 to 100,000.  They were buried in mass grave.  The deaths were blamed on the communists and the South Korean government covered up the crime for four decades.  Some Ameri...

U.S. Army Private First Class Kaoru Moto of Hawaii was posthumously awarded the  Medal of Honor for his heroic actions on July 7, 1944, near Castellina, Italy. Moto was born to Japanese immigrant parents and was a Nisei, which means he was a second-generation Japanese-American.  He joined the Army in March 1941, ten months before the attack on Pearl Harbor. He volunteered to be a part of the all-Nisei 100th Infantry Battalion, mostly made up of Japanese-Americans from Hawaii and the mainland. On July 7, 1944,  near Castellina Marittima, Italy, Moto single-handedly silenced two enemy machine gun positions while acting as a scout and then destroyed a third despite being severely wounded. For his actions on this day, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, which was posthumously upgraded to a Medal of Honor in 2000. Moto left the Army while still a private first class. He died at age 75 and was buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, Hawa...

The torture! In the book Vigiar e Punir Michel Foucault begins his narrative citing the forms of SUPLICATION. The torture for those who are unaware of this practice is a form of torture, which aims to make the condemned confess his crime, his sin and repent of them. During the Middle Ages this method consisted of making the "criminal" suffer so that his sins could be purged. Among the most common methods was the wheel - the condemned had his feet on the ground and hands in the middle of a large wheel, in this way the wheel was turned in order to stretch the whole body, not satisfied in some cases the bones of the legs and fathoms were breaks. According to Lyn Hunt's story in her book "The Birth of Human Rights", this was the last type of torture used by justice. At least officially. Foucault comments that throughout the Middle Ages justice itself realized that such measures were as cruel as the crimes committed by the condemned. That's why the meth...

Masha Bruskina. Masha Bruskina was a Russian teenage female partisan. She was a 17 year old Jewish high school graduate and was the first teenage girl to be publicly hanged by the Nazis in Belorussia (Belarus), since the German invasion of Soviet Union on the 22nd of June 1941.  Her execution and that of the two men hanged with her took place on the 26th of October 1941 in the city of Minsk. In the photos of her, you will see that she has blond hair, but her natural colour was dark. She dyed her hair when she started to work for the underground. Witnesses to her hanging, testified that Masha struggled hard and lost control of her bladder and bowels.  After hanging for three days, she and the men were taken down and only when her body was traditionally washed before her burial by local people and members of her family, did her dark hair show up. She worked as a nurse in a military hospital and was a member of an underground cell which aid...

British Captain pilot Albert Ball posing for a photograph with a German propeller following his 43rd aerial victory, ca. May 5, 1917. Colourised by 'Photos Redux' on Facebook. On May 7, 1917, the British flying ace Captain Albert Ball VC was killed in action near Douai on the Western Front - Britain's 4th deadliest pilot of the First World War. In August 1914, Albert Ball enlisted in the British Army at the age of 18. Ball already had military experience, having served in the Officers' Training Corps, and was therefore appointed to train new recruits instead of serving in France. He was promoted to 2nd Lieutenant by October 29, 1914. Ball was  not content with his role on the home front. Seeking more action, he eventually took up private flying lessons in June 1915. Although his flying instructors deemed him an average pilot, Ball found flying thrilling and requested a transfer to the Royal Flying Corps.  His request was granted, and by February 18, 1916 he was in Franc...

Seen here at Titanic’s wreck site are the remains of her crow’s nest, where lookouts Frederick Fleet and Reginald Lee first spotted the iceberg just before 11.40 PM on the evening of April 14th, 1912.  For scale, the hole at center was a doorway, accessible by ladder which ran up the interior of the hollow foremast to the nest itself.  The remains of the base of the crow’s nest can just be seen below in this 1991 photo. Still prominent above this doorway is the metal hook upon which her bell once hung, sounded three times in the moments between sighting and collision on the night of the disaster.  In the years since Titanic’s discovery in 1985, this area has gradually collapsed - as of the most recent dives to the wreck site, it has been reported that the large areas of mast itself are now nearly completely gone, leaving only shadowy trails of rust under its former resting place between the liner’s forecastle and bridge.  For more on the wreck of the crow’s nest, Pau...

Pencil: I'm sorry. Eraser: For what? Pencil: I'm sorry, you get hurt because of me. Whenever I make a mistake, you're always there to erase it. But as you make my mistakes vanish, you lose a part of yourself and get smaller and smaller each time. Eraser: That's true, but I don't really mind. You see, I was made to do this, I was made to help you whenever you do something wrong, even though one day I know I'll be gone. I'm actually happy with my job. So please, stop worrying, I will not be happy if see you sad. Reflection: "Our Parents are just like the eraser, and we are the pencil. They're always there for their children, cleaning up their mistakes. Sometimes along the way they get hurt and become smaller (older and eventually pass on). Moral: Take care of your Parents, treat them with kindness and most importantly love them."..

French soldiers with a Guidetti grenade launcher in a trench, February 8, 1916. The Guidetti rifle was a French grenade launcher first developed in 1915, being a mix of an infantry rifle and a trench mortar. In November 1914, the Western Front had settled into a static trench war and artillery began to play a key role in the war. The French were looking for an artillery weapon that could be used in frontline trenches and that could respond to impressive German “Minenwerfers”. French captain André Guidetti proposed to combine mobile infantry rifles with a trench mortar in 1915, giving birth to the Guidetti grenade launcher. The gun combined unused French 11mm Gras infantry rifles from 1874 that were unused with a cigarette cannon, allowing it to fire grenades by pulling the trigger of the rifle. The Guidetti rifle weighed 35kg and therefore used a tripod to lean on the trenches. The angle of the gun could be adjusted from 20° to 70°, but with a screw you could increase the angle. The gu...

Palestinian Children Live Under the Intensifying Waves of Israeli terrorism  and violence In this analysis about the Israeli atrocities on poor Palestinians, especially their children and teenagers, I want to raise the issue of innocent children, who are being murdered and arrested by evil Israel in, Gaza and occupied Jerusalem during different air and field attacks on Palestinians, it also includes the death of 7 year old Palestinian child-Ali Abd Al-Latif- who was killed during recent Israeli air strike on Gaza.  The purpose of this post is not but to remind Israel that what sort of genocide they commit against Palestinian children is unforgivable for human world, and they have to pay for that sin today or tomorrow. They are doing all this violence against Palestinians for their three missing children as they say but, in fact this fresh calculated terror move has been initiated by Israel weaken Hamas and to kill the effectiveness of reunify of Palestinians.  We all know...

The  Goliad massacre  was an event of the Texas Revolution that occurred on March 27, 1836 The  Goliad massacre  was an event of the Texas Revolution that occurred on March 27, 1836, following the Battle of Refugio and the Battle of Coleto; 425–445 prisoners of war from the Texian Army of the Republic of Texas were executed by the Mexican Army in the town of Goliad, Texas. The men surrendered under the belief they would be set free within a few weeks, however this was not to be. Despite appeals for clemency by General José de Urrea, the massacre was carried out by Lt. Colonel José Nicolás de la Portilla, under orders from General and President of Mexico, Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. The entire Texian force was killed, except for 28 men who feigned death and escaped. Among these was Herman Ehrenberg, who later wrote an account of the massacre; William Lockhart Hunter...

Marek Morsel tried to find a safe haven after Nazi Germany occupied Prague.  He was one of a small number of Jews who found refuge in a farming commune in the Dominican Republic. On this day 85 years ago, President Roosevelt called together a conference ostensibly aimed at finding homes for the growing number of Jews seeking to flee Nazi persecution.  Over nine days, delegate after delegate expressed profound sympathy for the plight of Jewish refugees. In the end, the vast majority of nations, including the United States, were unwilling to accept more immigrants outside of their existing immigration laws and quotas. The Dominican Republic offered to take in more refugees, but placed limits on who could come. Only about 500 Jewish refugees ever arrived. After the German occupation in 1939, Marek’s sister-in-law had learned that there was going to be a round up of young men. Marek’s wife urged him to flee.   Marek endured a journey to Lisbon where Portuguese police, for an ...

Battle of Verdun, impressions of the fight in the Reduce of Thiaumont Testimonial passages of German soldier Wilhelm Hermanns of the 67th Infantry Regiment, who was destined in the abusive structure of the Thiaumont Reduce, at the end of October 1916, within the scope of the colossal battle of Verdun: "The entrance was a simple hole in the desolate field of the countryside" battle, and the silhouettes of men shrunk with fear, constantly going out and in cramped, looked like giant ants in the middle of darkness.  I went down an iron staircase to that concrete cave about twelve feet deep. It was a huge place, filled with hundreds of soldiers. Some were in their bunk beds, sleeping, snoring or whining. Others crowded the hallways between the bunk beds, chatting or writing letters. And some were sitting or kneeling in a corner, picking up their stuff or pulling it out of the ditches.  The reflection of a lantern or that of a candle, a match or a lit cigarette flashed the darkness...

The Fairchild K-17 aerial camera, used by both the British Royal Air Force and the United States Air Force during WW2, had a 24" lens and weighed a ridiculous 75 pounds (34kg)! One of the later models of this camera, the Fairchild K-20, was famously used to photograph the nuclear mushroom cloud over Hiroshima. This Camera Was Used for Aerial Photos During WWII Check out this absolute unit of a camera that was used to do aerial photography during World War II. Mounted on the front of the camera is a massive 2-foot long 610mm f/6 lens. This viral photo has made the rounds on the Web in recent years, and the camera has widely been misidentified as a Kodak K-24. It’s actually a Fairchild K-17, which was designed by Fairchild Camera and Instrument and manufactured under license for the US Air Force by Folmer Graflex in Rochester, New York (Kodak’s hometown), in the early 1940s. The Fairchild K-17 shot 9×9-inch (22.86×22.86cm) photos on 9 1/2-inch wide roll film. 6-inch, 12-inch...

In honor of Martin Weiss a Holocaust survivor 30. In June of this year, Martin Weiss died in Maryland, USA at the age of 94, a survivor of Auschwitz and Mauthausen. He was born in 1929 in Czechoslovakia, in Ve Narká Po Naran. Martin Weiss came from a very Orthodox family. His father owned a farm and a meat shop, his mother cared for a total of 7 children and a household. Everyone in the family helped take care of the horses and cows. In 1938-1939, his life changed dramatically when Nazi Germany and his allies divided Czechoslovakia. His hometown was occupied by Hungarian troops and the Jews were exposed to discriminatory decree. Czechoslovak schools were closed and students had to learn Hungarian. All the villagers hated the new rulers and the democratic freedoms they enjoyed in Czechoslovakia disappeared. Following the attack of the Soviet Union nazi in Germany in 1941, Hungary joined the invasion. Two of Martin's older brothers were taken to the Hungarian flags of forced labor. T...

British rangers and a German prisoner transporting a wounded soldier passing by French soldiers transporting rations during the Second Battle of the Marne, July 23, 1918.  This is one of relatively few photographs with British, French and German soldiers represented at the same time, the three major Western Front participants during WWI. The photograph was taken on July 23, 1918 by British war photographer Second Lieutenant Thomas Keith Aitken during the phase of the Second Battle of the Marne known as the Battle of Tardenois.  In addition to British, French and German troops, American and Italian troops also participated in the Second Battle of the Marne, which was the last German offensive of World War I. In the battle, the French had suffered 95,165 casualties, the Americans 45,807, the British 16,552 and the Italians 9,000 casualties.  The Germans had suffered 139,000 casualties and an additional 29,367 prisoners were captured.

Neal Ulevich won the 1977 Pulitzer Prize for a series of photographs of disorder and brutality in the streets of Bangkok, Thailand.  The Thammasat University Massacre took place on October 6, 1976. It was a very violent attack on students who were demonstrating against Field Marshall Thanom Kittikachorn. Field Marshal T. Kittikachorn was a dictator who was planning to come back to Thailand. The return of the military dictator from exile provoked very violent protests. Protestors and students were beaten, mutilated, shot, hung and burnt to death. Photographer: Neal Ulevich. Neal Hirsh Ulevich (born June 18, 1946) is an American photographer. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1977 for "photographs of disorder and brutality in the streets of Bangkok". Ulevich was born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he attended public and private schools before enrolling at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he graduated in 1968 with a BA degree in Journalism. While there, he began a ...

He was buried about 7,000 years ago, and was in his 60s. This man was dug up only a few hundred yards from my grandparents’ farm; the family has lived in the general area as far back as anyone can trace them. He was buried about 7,000 years ago, and was in his 60s. In all likelihood, he is my ancestor; later waves of immigration has likely diluted his genes, but humans being human, some of his descendants would have had offspring with the newcomers. He is on display in the Historical Museum of Stockholm. The only thing I really feel about it is that I personally wouldn’t want to be on display in a museum. I’m sure there are others who would be positively delighted to. A road not far from here is named for a Viking age chieftain; the Vikings set great store by their reputation and he would have been ecstatic to know that his name was spoken daily 1,000 years later; he might very well have felt the same way about his remains being on display. And there are excellent ...

Freedomite The  Freedomite  movement consists of a split-off of the Doukhobors, a community of Spiritual Christians began a mass migration from Russia to Canada in 1898. The Freedomite movement first appeared in 1902 in Saskatchewan, and later in the Kootenay and Boundary Districts of British Columbia. Freedomites began to divide from Doukhobors in 1902 in Saskatchewan, Canada, self-named as "God's people" and  Svobodniki  (Russian: "sovereign people"). The faction, later called "Freedomites", opposed land ownership, public schools, using work animals, etc. and are mainly known for protesting nude. By 1920 the common English term for them became  Sons of Freedom . Of about 20,000 active Doukhobors in Canada today, ancestors of about 2,500 were Freedomites, and many descendants have joined the USCC Community Doukhobors. Doctrine Freedomite meetings were similar to other spiritual Christian folk-Protestants fr...

Russian soldiers charging across a field into battle on the Eastern Front, ca. 1916 (Likely staged) Today 107 years ago, on July 3, 1916, the Russian Army launched the Baranovichi Offensive on the Eastern Front. To support their Allies at Verdun and on the Somme, in April 1916, the Russians began planning for a major offensive in Galicia against the Austro-Hungarians - the Brusilov Offensive. To support this operation and prevent Austro-Hungarian and German troops from being transferred to Galicia, the Russians planned another offensive further north in the Baranovichi area in modern-day Belarus. This supportive operation were to be carried out by the Russian 4th Army under General Ragoza, who was under the general command of General Evert. However, from the beginning General Evert was against this operation, favoring a defensive approach. On June 4, 1916, General Brusilov launched his offensive in Galicia and broke through the Austrian lines, capturing the city of Lutsk by June 8. Gen...

Out of Portland tear gas, an apparition emerges, capturing the imagination of protesters PORTLAND, Ore. —  She emerged as an apparition from clouds of tear gas as federal agents fired pepper balls at angry protesters in the early Saturday darkness. A woman wearing nothing but a black face mask and a stocking cap strode toward a dozen heavily armed agents attired in camouflage fatigues, lined up across a downtown Portland street. The agents, dispatched by the Trump administration over vociferous objections of state and city officials, are part of a force that has fired projectiles at and detained activists protesting nightly since the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police May 25. Numerous photos and videos posted on Twitter show the unidentified woman as she halted in the middle of the street at about 1:45 a.m. She stood calmly, a surreal image of human vulnerability in the face of an overpowering force that has been criticized nationally by civil rights advocates. The a...