WORLD HISTORY AND FACTS

CROCODILE EATING BALLERINA, FROM THE PINA BAUSCH BALLET ‘KEUSHLEITSLEGENDE’, WUPPERTAL, 1983. HELMUT NEWTON (1920-2004) Crocodile Eating Ballerina, from the Pina Bausch Ballet, ‘Keushleitslegende’, Wuppertal, 1983 🐊 #crocodile This image caused a considerable problem for Peter Beard, to whose self-portrait from 1960 (lot 24) it bears a close affinity. Newton had sent Beard the catalogue of his 1984-85 show at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. This image was on the cover. Later in 1985 the police raided Beard's Hog Ranch home in Kenya on the basis of a corrupt political plot to seize his property. It was claimed by the police that the Pina Bausch artist was 'improperly dressed'. Beard was charged with possessing pornography and trafficking in 'abscene [sic] literature'.  This image caused a considerable problem for Peter Beard, to whose self-portrait from 1960 it bears a close affinity. Newton had sent Beard the catalogue of his 1984-85 sh

The Disturbing History Of Chinese Water Torture — And How It Drove Victims Insane. A centuries-old interrogation method, Chinese water torture was actually invented far from Asia and eventually evolved into far crueler forms of punishment. Human beings have inflicted untold suffering on each other since the dawn of time. Over the centuries, people have worked to devise constantly evolving forms of punishment and coercion. Compared to devices like the Iron Maiden or chains and whips, Chinese water torture may not sound particularly grueling, but history begs to differ. Medieval torture devices typically used razor-sharp blades, ropes, or blunt instruments to pry confessions from subjects. Chinese water torture was more insidious, however. According to the  New York Times Magazine , the torture method involves holding a person in place while slowly dripping cold water on their face, forehead, or scalp. The splash of water is jarring, and the victim experiences anxiety while trying

War Pigs: A Flaming History of Nature’s Cutest Creations in Battle Throughout human history, animals have been effectively domesticated and used as an extension of the territorial desires of human beings. While dogs and cattle became effective elements in the immediate domestic territory, elephants were one of the first animals to be trained and guided by humans for combat, called elephantry. Pigeons, dogs, horses, bears, camels, and even bees have been used in combat, in many cruel and unthinkable ways. War pigs were famously utilized by the ancient Romans to counter elephants, including setting them on fire! Romans and Pigs: A Tactical Maneuver Despite their massive size and power, Pliny the Elder said of the animals that never forget: “ elephants are scared by the smallest squeal of the hog”. Pigs appeared in written sources as tools of combat around 240 BC. Some histories said that the Roman legions would exploit the power of the squeal, by letting the pigs either run loose a

The capture of brave Russian officer Rosinski This is a shocking image and I apologize in advance for sharing it, but here’s one that truly got to me… in Belarus, 1918, after WWI had already ended, the brave Russian officer Rosinski was captured by the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks tortured the captain, likely to get information out of the man, which he bravely refused to give. After that, they simply continued with the torture out of some sick sense of innate cruelty. He was ‘the enemy’ and he was at their mercy, so they brutally murdered their captive. The brave captain was emasculated. And anally impaled on a tree branch. All this while still alive. Alfred Savoir, the man who published the picture and was an eye witness to the death of the brave military officer, described "M. B.", who ordered this atrocity, thus: I knew him not long ago; he was a charming teenager with an ironic wit and joker. He was rubbed with French culture, he admired the novels of Barres and he quot

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 body of the dece