WORLD HISTORY AND FACTS

An image purportedly showing "the eyes that saw a nuke," a picture of a girl who was blinded by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in the closing days of World War II, is frequently shared on social media sites: Although the image is a real photograph, the title commonly applied to it may be misleading. The photograph comes from a set of pictures taken by Scandinavian photographer Christer Strömholm in Japan in 1961 and 1963, 16 to 18 years after a nuclear bomb was detonated over the city of Hiroshima.  While it is not possible to verify the age of the woman shown in the photograph, she appears too young to have witnessed the nuclear blast first-hand, and the caption for the picture on Strömholm's official website identifies her simply as "the blind girl": The photographs from Strömholm's "Hiroshima suite" included some pictures of children, presumably the children of Hiroshima survivors. It might be the case that the pictured girl's blind...

How Corrie Ten Boom Saved Hundreds Of Jews From The Nazis. Corrie ten Boom was a Dutch watchmaker who lived above her family's shop when the Nazis invaded the Netherlands in 1940.  Soon after, she and her family decided to build a secret room behind a wall in their home and use it to hide Jewish refugees before they could escape to freedom. Over the next four years, Corrie ten Boom saved more than 800 people from the Holocaust. Cornelia Arnolda Johanna "Corrie" ten Boom (15 April 1892– 15 April 1983) was a Dutch watchmaker and later a Christian writer and public speaker, who worked with her father, Casper ten Boom, her sister Betsie ten Boom and other family members to help many Jewish people escape from the Nazis during the Holocaust in World War II by hiding them in her home. They were caught, and she was arrested and sent to the Ravensbrück concentration camp.  Her most famous book, The Hiding Place, is a biography that recounts the story of her family's efforts an...

The body of the Soviet pilot Boris Lazarev 55 years after his death Founded 55 years after the death of the body of the Soviet pilot  Boris Alexandrovich Lazarev . The Hurricane fighter from Sergeant Lazarev from the 760th mixed aviation regiment of the 259th Fighter Division of the 7th Army of the Karelian Front was shot down in the course of an air battle on February 21, 1943 by the German pilot-ace, Oberfeldwebel Rudolf Müller from the 6th Squadron “Experttenstaffel” (6/JG5 “Expertenstaffel”) of the 5th Luftwaffe fighter squadron and fell into a swamp 40 kilometers from the town of Louhi Karelian-Finnish SSR (the modern Republic of Karelia). The Soviet pilot did not have time to leave the plane and was killed at the time of the impact on the ground. The plane with the remains of the  Boris Lazarev pilot  was raised from the swamp in 1998 by the St. Petersburg search group “Height”. The marshy terrain, petrol and oil from the engine of the fighter did not let the bo...

How The Sinking of The USS Indianapolis Became The Worst Shark Attack in History The tragic sinking of the USS Indianapolis The heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis was part of the U.S. Navy. It was named after the city of Indianapolis, Indiana. It was launched in 1931. At 00:15 on July 30, 1945, the USS Indianapolis was sunk by a Japanese submarine after delivering parts of the atomic bomb that would be dropped on Hiroshima. The ship sank in 12 minutes. About 300 of the ship's 1,195 crew members went down with it. The other 890 people were stuck in the open ocean with few lifeboats and almost no food or water. The Navy didn't find out for four days that the ship had sunk. Into The Pacific Theatre The USS Indianapolis, measuring 610 feet and three inches in length and displacing 9,950 tons of water when placed in the harbor, was launched in 1931 and commissioned by the Navy the following year. The United States joined World War II when Japanese planes bombed Pearl Harbor...

Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia The  massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia  Volyn tragedy,  were carried out in German-occupied Poland by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, or the UPA, with the support of parts of the local Ukrainian population against the Polish minority in Volhynia, Eastern Galicia, parts of Polesia and Lublin region from 1943 to 1945. The peak of the massacres took place in July and August 1943. Most of the victims were women and children. Many of the Polish victims regardless of age or gender were tortured before being killed; some of the methods included rape, dismemberment or immolation, among others. The UPA's actions resulted in between 50,000 and 100,000 deaths The ethnic cleansing was an Ukrainian attempt to prevent the post-war Polish state from asserting its sovereignty over Ukrainian-majority areas that had been part of the...

Execution by cannon in Shiraz, Iran, circa 1890s. The prisoner is generally tied to a gun with the upper part of the small of his back resting against the muzzle.  When the gun is fired, his head is seen to go straight up into the air some forty or fifty feet; the arms fly off right and left, high up in the air, and fall at, perhaps, a hundred yards distance; the legs drop to the ground beneath the muzzle of the gun; and the body is literally blown away altogether. "Blown from a gun" was a punishment often used by colonial powers against locals who believed their body parts must be together to enter the afterlife. It was reserved as a special punishment when just death wasn't enough. Local feral dogs would usually eat the pieces of the dead that could be found. This photograph depicts the dreaded method of execution formally used in several parts of the world: death by cannon. Shiraz, modern day Iran. Circa 1890s.  This method of execution was used ever since at least the...

" Thank God for those tomatoes" Test pilot George Aird, ejected from his English Electric Lightning F1 aircraft at a fantastically low altitude in Hatfield, Hertfordshire September 13, 1962 Jim Meads, September 13, 1962 Jim lived next door to a de Havilland test pilot Bob Sowray who had mentioned to Jim that he was planning to fly an English Electric Lightning F1. These planes are British fighter aircrafts that served as an interceptor during the 1960s, 70s and into the late 80s. They are the only UK designed and built fighter capable of reaching Mach 2 and at the time they were top secret. Jim had planned to go for a walk with his children that day and took his camera along so he could picture Bob landing the Lightning at the airfield. Later that day Jim had found a good spot in a field next to the runway and waited patiently for the plane to return to land. It turned out, however, that the pilot of the plane wasn't Bob and instead was another gentleman called Ge...

Death of Marilyn Monroe On August 4, 1962, Marilyn Monroe, an American actress and sex symbol, died at age 36 of a barbiturate overdose inside her home at 12305 Fifth Helena Drive in Brentwood, Los Angeles, California. Her body was discovered before dawn the following morning, on August 5. Monroe had been one of the most popular Hollywood stars during the 1950s and early 1960s, and was a top-billed actress for the preceding decade. Her films had grossed $200 million by the time of her death Monroe had suffered from mental illness and substance abuse, and she had not completed a film since  The Misfits , released on February 1, 1961; the movie was a box-office disappointment. Monroe had spent 1961 preoccupied with her various health problems, and in April 1962 had begun filming  Something's Got to Give  for 20th Century Fox, but the studio fired her in early June. Fox publicly blamed Monro...

The  Oerlikon 20 mm cannon The  Oerlikon 20 mm cannon  is a series of autocannons, based on an original German Becker Type M2 20 mm cannon design that appeared very early in World War I. It was widely produced by Oerlikon Contraves and others, with various models employed by both Allied and Axis forces during World War II. Many versions of the cannon are still used today OerlikonEdit In 1927 the  Oerlikon S  was added to the existing product line. This fired a still larger cartridge (20x110RB) to achieve a muzzle velocity of 830 m/s (versus 490 m/s for the original Becker 20x70RB gun), at the cost of increased weight and a reduced rate of fire (280 rpm). The purpose of this development was to improve the performance of the gun as an anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapon, which required a higher muzzle velocity. An improved version known as the 1S followed in 1930. Three sizes of gun with their different am...

Indonesian woman swallowed by giant python MAKASSAR: An Indonesian woman has been found in the belly of a giant python after the swollen snake was captured near where she vanished while tending her vegetable garden, police said Saturday. The body of 54-year-old Wa Tiba was found Friday when villagers cut open the seven-meter (23-foot) python which was found bloated in the village of Persiapan Lawela on the island of Muna, offshore of Sulawesi. “Residents were suspicious the snake swallowed the victim, so they killed it, then carried it out of the garden,” said local police chief Hamka, who like many Indonesians has only one name. “The snake’s belly was cut open and the body of the victim was found inside.” Some 100 residents, including worried relatives, launched a search for the woman after she failed to return from her garden Thursday night. Hamka said villagers found the giant serpent lying about 30 meters from Tiba’s sandals and machete, adding she was swallowed head first ...

Sacrificing POWs, slaves, volunteers and an occasional virgin (its why young girls were promiscuous in their culture) was a rite.  Some “slaves” where Aztecs who had fallen in debt (no need for bill collectors) or committed a crime. The religion of the Aztec civilization (1345-1521 CE) was fed by bloodthirsty human sacrifice with lurid tales of the beating heart being ripped from the still-conscious victim, decapitation, skinning and dismemberment. Additionally, the sacrifice of animals was a common practice, for which the Aztecs bred dogs, eagles, jaguars and deer. The cult of Quetzalcoatl required the sacrifice of butterflies and hummingbirds. For many rites, the victims were expected to bless children, greet and cheer passers-by, hear people's petitions to the gods, visit people in their homes, give discourses and lead sacred songs, processions and dances. The cut was made in the abdomen and went through the diaphragm. The priest would grab the heart whi...

Fact Check: Does Hangzhou Regent International House 30,000 Residents? recent internet rumor says that the Hangzhou Regent International, which is in Hangzhou, China, is home to 30,000 people and is the largest residential building in the world. MandyNews.com did a thorough investigation to find out if this claim was true, and this report shows what we found The gate decoration of Regent International is magnificent Examining the viral claim The claim states that Hangzhou Regent International is the largest residential building globally, with 30,000 residents. Sources for the claim are not provided, raising questions about its accuracy. Hangzhou Regent International: A Closer Look The building was initially planned as a six-star hotel but has become a shared apartment complex. It is home to a significant number of “Hang Piao” residents, mostly young profess...