The Strange Side of Jewish History. The scientists who designed Germany’s rockets in World War II were interested not only in developing Nazi secret weapons, but also enthusiastic about pioneering a space program.
In fact, Wernher von Braun, who headed the research, was briefly arrested by the Gestapo. Allegedly von Braun had asserted, one evening, that he was sorry he was not working on a spaceship instead of trying to help Hitler win a war that was lost. A German rocket team had plans of an A11 rocket designed to fling an astronaut into orbit, and an A12 rocket that could launch a payload of eleven tons.
Hacksaw Ridge: The Bloody, True Story of Faith in Action. After scandals and controversy led to his very public downward spiral and subsequent exile from Hollywood a decade ago, Mel Gibson has kept a pretty low profile.
The Oscar-winning actor and director of Braveheart and one-time evangelical darling (for directing the blockbuster Passion of the Christ) has been gradually redeeming himself of late, beginning with an acclaimed starring turn in Blood Father this summer. Hacksaw Ridge, Gibson’s first directorial outing since 2006’s Apocalypto, should expedite his return to respectability. The World War II epic, which received a 10-minute standing ovation when it premiered in September at the Venice Film Festival, is artistically masterful and thematically timely. It is sweeping and surprising cinema of the sort that feels more and more rare in Hollywood’s current funk of recycled franchise junk. Hellcats in the Royal Navy. The Royal Navy acquired large numbers of F4Fs as Grumman Martlets and made extensive use of the type.
The F4F’s successor was the Grumman F6F Hellcat, designed as a private initiative in response to feedback from fleet aviators, which entered front-line service in mid-1943. It was powered by a 2,000 horsepower Pratt & Whitney R-2800 18-cylinder radial engine, giving it a maximum speed of 376 miles per hour, a cruising speed of 168 miles per hour, and a range of 1,090 miles on internal fuel or 1,590 miles with a 150-gallon drop tank. The F6F was armed with six 0.5-inch machine guns and also could carry rockets or bombs. BBC News Channel - The Schoolgirl Who Helped to Win a War.
Yesterday Channel. Obituary: Stephen Ambrose. The American historian Stephen Ambrose, who has died of cancer aged 66, published his first work - on General Henry Halleck, President Lincoln's civil war chief of staff - four decades ago, while still a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin.
More than a score of books were to follow, including biographies of presidents Eisenhower and Nixon, a history of West Point, and a volume on US foreign policy. So Ambrose already had a successful career when, in 1992, he published Band Of Brothers: E Company 506th Regiment 101st Airborne From Normandy To Hitler's Eagle's Nest, based on interviews with the men of Easy Company. Short titles, or short books, were not his style. The World At War Ep25 Reckoning. Ww2 casualties by country. The Little-Known Story of the Night Witches, an All-Female Force in WWII. In the Nazi-occupied Soviet Union, German soldiers had a very real fear of witches.
Namely, the “Night Witches,” an all-female squadron of bomber pilots who ran thousands of daring bombing raids with little more than wooden planes and the cover of night—and should be as celebrated as their male counterparts. How the U.S. is Recovering Oil from a 1946 Warship. Children’s Drawings from the Terezín. The kids who lived and drew the Holocaust. (…read in spanish) Subscribe to Kurioso in english Terezín was the nazi concentration camp located at Prague’s outskirts.
The “Lobby of the hell” was the last stop for 150.000 Jews and 15.000 kids and pre-teenagers. A woman –Friedl Dicker Brandeis– dedicated her time during the internment teaching stealthily art and paintingas evasive therapy for many of those kids. Before leaving Terezín for going to her final destiny, she rescued 4.500 drawings. These drawings were used as clues during Nuremberg’s Trial, and they’re an indelible sample of the horror.
“Everyone was hungry” Liana Franklová 10 years old. Friedl Dicker achieved that those kids remember through the drawing the life they were pulled out besides representing the sad and horrible truth of the concentration camp. Helga Weissova. 13 years old. Ella Liebermann. 16 years old. Ella Liebermann. 16 years old. Anne Frank Museum Amsterdam - the official Anne Frank House website. The Righteous - Martin Gilbert. The Remarkable, War-Torn, Spacefaring History of the Slinky. The toy became a national phenomenon by the 1950s.
But as the decade wore on, James's personal interest in the business waned. He became enthralled with a religious cult in Bolivia, and he began donating money to the group shortly after. One morning in 1960, James told his family he was moving to Bolivia to join the cult and serve as a missionary. All were welcome to join him, but his family—Betty and six children—chose to remain in Pennsylvania.
70 years on, Primo Levi’s If This is A Man is still a powerful reminder of what it means to be human. Close to Home: Exploring a German U-Boat Sunk off U.S. Coast (1940-1942) The Truth in the Tale About Fanta and Nazis - Modern Notion. There’s nothing quite like the taste of Fanta to quench the thirst of evildoers during wartime.
Some believe that may as well be the slogan for the tongue-staining orange drink: Fanta emerged from warring Germany in the 1940s, and apparently was created specifically to sate the Nazi thirst. I myself hadn’t heard of this association between the Third Reich and my all-time favorite soda—until recently, when I found myself in Berlin.
Wandering through its streets, past the restored Reichstag building that Hitler (allegedly) had set on fire, and the Gestapo’s former headquarters, I came across the tale of Max Keith, the German who popularized Fanta and supposedly made the Nazis his target market. “When you drink Fanta Orange, that’s the Nazi drink,” says Michael Moore emphatically, in this documentary clip. Everywhere, I began to see the soda—most shockingly, I felt, in the café of Berlin’s Jewish Museum. It begins with Coca-Cola, Fanta’s original maker. So what was Keith? Exploring the Amazing Abandoned Sea Forts of World War II. Dickey Chapelle - Women War Reporters. Dickey Chapelle: 1919-1965 “That was the goddamndest thing I ever saw anybody do in my life!
Do you realize – all the artillery and half the snipers on both sides of this f**king war had ten full minutes to make up their mind about you?” The furious lieutenant screamed at Dickey Chapelle. How India Bailed Out The West In World War II - Swarajya. Seventy years ago, this month, Germany surrendered to the Allies to end World War II in Europe.
It is time India’s game-changing contribution to the victory is acknowledged in the actual context of Britain’s limitations. Also, what India got in return. One of the little known facts about World War II is that it was India’s contribution of men and material that bailed out the West. Bletchley Park. Anne Frank Museum Amsterdam. Home - Red Tail Squadron Red Tail Squadron. Athens 1944: Britain’s dirty secret. This article is the subject of a column by the readers’ editor. “I can still see it very clearly, I have not forgotten,” says Títos Patríkios.
Potsdam Revisited Documentary Film featuring Stuart Canin.